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

Thursday, July 29, 2010

NYT’s Ignores Documents Showing Large Numbers of Unreported Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan: “We Know All That.”

by Carolyn C from Fire Dog Lake.

The article reports on the efforts of the Empire to manage dissent following the release of the Empire's war documents by WikiLeaks. 
The willingness of the Times to further American empire building while participating in the MSM black-out of ongoing US atrocities abroad, not only endangers our safety, it diminishes our humanity. The press of the country that once declared "all men are created equal," and claimed that they possess "certain unalienable rights," now no longer seems to believe that self-evident truth. Apparently, not all deaths are equally important — some are insignificant enough to be ignored. In their coverage of our senseless, ongoing wars, The New York Times and the rest of the media perpetuate the fiction that American lives are more important than the lives of the persons in the countries we brutally invade and occupy.