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

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

NSA building massive surveillance facility, 'everybody with communication is a target'

Click here to access article by James Bamford  from Wired. 

It's clear that the political operatives of the One Percent are afraid of US citizens. It is also clear that we are seeing what has been hidden from us over the past several decades: the growth of a state within the US that ignores the official legal structure in order to serve the narrow interests of the One Percent. This inner state depends on total surveillance, police brutality and the threat of violence or incarceration to intimidate citizens into submission to its dictates. This is the 21st century's version of fascism.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.
Meanwhile, the liberal American Civil Liberties Union seems incredibly naive when they run reports like this: "FBI FOIA Docs Show Use of "Mosque Outreach" for Illegal Intel Gathering".