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, June 17, 2013

Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from The Guardian.  

This excellent article provides considerable documented evidence--if you need any--to support a leftist thesis that the US now possesses all the core characteristics of fascism: the seamless integration of corporations, military, and government under the management of the ruling capitalist class. The people, the 99 Percent, are now viewed as the potential enemy; and the One Percent governors are not only using widespread methods of surveillance on them, but have been preparing to use all necessary violence against them to preserve their rule. 

Of course, this liberal publication doesn't express it that way. Although the author (and The Guardian editors) doesn't really challenge the carefully sanitized, public relations-shaped statements of the ruling class directors, he and The Guardian editors, are non-the-less disturbed by this phenomenon because they still believe in the old version of capitalism that contained a thin veneer of civil rights, rule of law, and social supports.
The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA's global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state. 
Here is more evidence in an article posted on Salon entitled " The irony of joint FBI/private sector OWS policing".