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, July 5, 2013

New Documents Shed Light on NSA's Dragnet Surveillance

Click here to access article by Tom Burghardt from his blog Antifascist Calling.

The authors assembles considerable details on the government spy programs which government authorities continue to lie about. Unfortunately, the author can't seem to get beyond targeting the presidential administrations for these sins. Americans need to get beyond such shallow thinking to see the real political operators who are employed by a ruling class and the system of capitalism that sustains them. 

Another example of this sort of thinking is illustrated by this piece entitled "Rule of Law vs. Rule by Law" from Raging Bull-Shit. The author adds his rant against government spying to the chorus of liberals, and concludes his essay with this:
...the U.S. government has gone rogue, succumbing to a shadow government that operates in complete secrecy and holds itself and its corporate partners above all laws of all lands. Once a beacon of hope and inspiration for a world grown weary of monarchical tryanny, the U.S. consitution has been rendered almost entirely meaningless — apart from as a rallying point for those who, like Snowden, continue to see the difference between the rule of law and the law of rule. It is now up to them — and all other supporters of democracy and freedom across the globe — to reclaim the democratic heritage bestowed upon us by the founding fathers.
The author has swallowed all the indoctrination provided by educational institutions, corporate media and entertainment industries. He celebrates the "founding fathers" who brought their European system to North America to plunder the continent and establish their very own empire independent of the British which merely wanted a colony serving their Empire. Our "founding fathers" were mostly slaveholders, land speculators, and bankers.

Such thinking is like someone who exclaims against some evil monster, but fondly remembers this monster when it was young and supposedly cute and cuddly when it was a baby. Simply put, when you have a system that allows individual to "own" economic property which by nature is social property, and you celebrate and encourage in every way the concentration of ownership in ever fewer hands, then you arrive at where we are today. The monster has simply grown up and wrecking havoc on the societies that nurtured it and the entire world.