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

Monday, September 1, 2014

Full Spectrum Dominance: US Policy From Iraq to Ukraine

Click here to access article by Thomas S. Harrington from Common Dreams. 

Having spent a number of years in Europe, this author provides a unique perspective on changes he has observed with European media. He suggests a dumbing-down of Europeans by establishment media much as we have witnessed here in the US.

Referring to parts of the European press as American stooges, he writes:
...for much of the last three decades, they constituted but one current among many other competing strains in the European press.

Since approximately 2004, however, their specific gravity within European opinion-making apparatus—as evidenced by the changes at El País and other similar “liberal” media outlets—has increased dramatically. Now simplistic American assumptions about who is bad and who is good once chuckled at on the continent, are the new normal in the editorial boards Europe’s “prestige press”.