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

Friday, October 11, 2013

NSA wants even greater powers … to defend Wall Street

Click here to access article by Natasha Lennard from Salon
Feel this blow as a coup de grâce: The NSA not only, we now know, hoards data on our every communication, but, we now learn, wants to have broader surveillance dragnets and deeper spycraft capabilities in place to defend that other great villain of the past decade — Wall Street. The nexus of power and control linking Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street was made almost cinematically complete in comments from NSA Chief Keith Alexander to lawmakers this week.
The general knows who really runs this country and pays for his services, however he needs to take a course in public relations to become as skilled as Obama.