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, November 4, 2010

Anti-Communism 101: Hijacking History

by William Blum from Foreign Policy Journal. 

Real information is so thoroughly repressed or distorted in the US that we Americans often must wait for the passage of time to find out what really happened. The author of this piece provides some very interesting revelations and corrections to the US propaganda version of history regarding Greece, Brazil, and the Cold War. 
The cases of Brazil and Greece were of course just two of many leftist governments overthrown, as well as revolutionary movements suppressed, by the United States during the Cold War on the grounds that America had a moral right and obligation to defeat the evil of Soviet communism that was — we were told — instigating these forces. It was always a myth.
The ruling capitalist class always hides its goal of accumulating more wealth under various themes such as Manifest Destiny, fighting communism, protecting the "free" world, War on Drugs, and War on Terror.
 

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