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, August 31, 2013

YouTube Censors Anti-Oil Videos

Click here to access article by Andy Rowell from The Price of Oil.

This report illustrates how big corporations will on occasion use outright censorship to protect and support each other and their system of capitalism. Because they "own" the means of communication of information, they control the content, and to a considerable extent the minds of their subservient populations. This ethos has infected even parts of the internet which many young people have seen as offering a "bastion of...freedom":
The website, which is owned by Google, argues it “provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.”
But that distribution platform only goes so far as activists and film makers have recently found out.
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