We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, June 22, 2013

PRISM and the Rise of a New Fascism

Click here to access article by John Pilger from CounterPunch.
The power of truth-tellers such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema and the corporate media.
I'm not as confident as Pilger is that the three whistle-blowers have dispelled corporate mythologies among the majority of the US population. I've noticed that whenever Edward Snowden is mentioned in mainstream media, he is always referred to as a "high school drop-out". This readily translates in the minds of many Americans as a "loser", or someone not to be taken seriously.