___________________________________________________________ GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION : WHY WE NEED IT AND HOW WE CAN ACHIEVE IT (C) 2004 Richard K. Moore GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION ________________________________________________________ THE TRANSFORMATIONAL IMPERATIVE AND WE THE PEOPLE * Civilization in crisis Civilization, and humanity, are now facing the most severe crisis of survival that either has ever faced. The unbridled exploitation and waste of resources, required by capitalism's growth imperative, is destroying the bio-infrastructure upon which future human life depends. The pace of this devastation is ever increasing, as corporations must seek each quarter to achieve greater growth than the quarter before. In many ways, civilization has already passed the point of no return. So much carbon dioxide has already been released into the atmosphere, for example, that the effects of global warming will continue to worsen even if we were to somehow stop burning fossil fuels immediately and totally. Huge tracts of agricultural land have been irreversibly turned into barren desert, many fishing stocks are near extinction levels, and the global population is already so large that feeding everyone--even under some ideal system of agriculture and distribution--would be a major challenge. If we look at this situation from an objective point of view, as an outside observer, it makes no sense at all. Humanity as a species is behaving insanely, like lemmings jumping over a cliff. Given finite resources, the only sensible strategy for humanity is to carefully manage the resources that remain, to help the environment begin healing, and to transform our economies and cultures so that we are able to survive sustainably using renewable resources. And the sooner such a transformation begins, the better--the longer we continue on our current path, the fewer resources will be left to manage and survive on. There is no natural law or dictate of the gods that requires us to continue on our ill-fated course. If the societal will existed, we could readily scale down our industrial operations and re-purpose them toward producing the the technologies and products which can be used to build sustainable societies. When the will exists, as we have often seen under the pressure of war, societies are capable of great creativity and resourcefulness. Some people believe that it is already too late to save most of humanity--there are just too many of us. This may serve as a rationalization to acquiesce in the status quo, but it is largely a myth. India, for example, could end its own starvation problem if it simply diverted 5% of its food exports to feed its own hungry. Although population levels do present a significant problem, it is not population per se that accounts for widespread poverty and the rapid depletion of our resources. The causes of both are the wasteful and reckless manner in which resources are exploited, and the excessive consumption that characterizes the richest societies. The USA for example, with 5% of the world's population, uses 20% (?) of the world's energy. As long as there were new lands to conquer and plenty of room to grow, humanity could operate--even if unwisely and unjustly--under an economy based on the paradigm of growth and development. Such a paradigm was never sustainable, not in the long run, but the long run always seemed far away--and the visible benefits of 'progress' were seductive. Unfortunately for those of us alive today, the long run has finally arrived and the visible benefits are declining as well. Either we somehow wake up as a species and deal with this crisis, or else civilization will continue down the slippery slope to mass die offs, perhaps the collapse of civil order, and in any case a very dismal future for our grandchildren and future generations. * Economic sustainability In economic terms, a conversion from unbridled exploitation to sustainability and environmental husbandry would be as radical a shift as one can imagine. There would need to be fundamental changes in the way our societies operate, particularly the most advanced ones. We would need major changes in food production, energy usage, trade, and transport systems. We would need to change our financial and monetary systems so that they facilitate sustainability rather than encouraging growth and development. There would be changes in how we live, what kind of work we do, and certainly in our travel patterns. Such a transformation in economics would be a monumental social and engineering project, requiring the creativity, participation, and cooperation of all segments of society worldwide. This is not the place to try to anticipate precisely what new systems would need to be developed, but they would surely involve the deployment of advanced technologies as well as a return to older ways of doing things. We might develop efficient hi-tech rail systems, for example, and we might at the same time return to using horses, canals, and sailing ships. Undoubtedly we would need to move toward local production for local consumption, and devote a lot less energy to transporting goods all over the globe. Different solutions would be likely to emerge in different societies, depending on environmental conditions and cultural preferences. And although the goal would be to deploy sustainable systems, we would presumably need to use a considerable amount of our remaining energy sources--a one time expenditure--in order to build the required new infrastructures. * Political sustainability There would be little point in undertaking such an economic transformation if it could not be sustained politically. If our economies could be somehow transformed, but our political systems remained essentially unchanged, then all we had gained would be at risk. As long as our systems of governance are hierarchical, rule by elites is inevitable. Such is the nature of hierarchy--as has been demonstrated by history and is clear from an understanding of the dynamics of hierarchy. And as long as we are ruled by elites, society will evolve according to the perceived self-interest of those elites, not the best interests of humanity as a whole. If we do not transform our politics as well as our economics, we would leave in place the political dynamics that have brought us to our current crisis. Sustainability requires political transformation as much as it requires economic transformation. We need to find a way to govern ourselves which does not involve hierarchy. The needed political transformation is in fact more radical than the needed economic transformation. The economic transformation is basically a technical project, not qualitatively more difficult than many other projects humanity has dealt with in the past. It would be more a matter of sound management than a matter of scientific breakthroughs or complex technologies. Although the scale of the project would be larger, economic transformation would be technically less difficult than was sending men to the moon. The kind of political transformation we need, on the other hand, would require charting entirely new ground. In the whole history of civilization, we can find very few models that would be useful to us. After all, the history of civilization has, at a structural level, been the story of evolving and competing hierarchies. * The dynamics of localism and the myth of human frailty The idea of governance without hierarchy, I must admit, sounds rather far fetched, or even frightening. It conjures up images of bomb-throwing anarchists or of angry lynch mobs. Indeed, fear of self governance is programmed into our education systems, and pounded into our psyches in countless ways. The story "Lord of the Flies" expresses this fear-myth very graphically. In this nightmarish tale a group of well-behaved school children are stranded on an island. They rapidly develop a frightening and savage little culture, and they are saved at the end only by the intervention of a distinguished British Naval officer--symbol of the beneficent saving grace of civilization. The story is from a tradition that goes back to Thomas Hobbes (and earlier), and his unsubstantiated and incorrect claim that primordial societies have been characterized by a short, brutish, and unpleasant life. The myth that civilization saves us from savagery is twin to the myth that a non-human divinity saves us from sin. It is important to civilization that something be WRONG with humanity, it is important to the maintenance of hierarchy that we see ourselves as incapable, morally frail, and undeserving--if not ourselves personally, then at least "people generally". We must believe that we NEED government and religion, or at least government, and that's what civilization stuffs into our heads. It is good for us to be aware of our conditioning. Let's compare two verbs, 'civilize' and 'domesticate'. A domesticated animal is one that has accepted captivity as its way of life. After a while the species atrophies, like modern sheep or cattle, and would have little hope of surviving except in captivity. Similarly, a civilized person is one who has accepted subservience to hierarchy as their way of life. And our cultures have atrophied, so that most of us have lost the skills to survive without civilization. In a very real sense, to be civilized is the same being domesticated--it's just that we use a different word for us humans. We have been domesticated to being ruled by others. We expect to wear a bridle. We are afraid of what would happen if the bridle were to be removed, particularly from "those others". Even if we dream fondly of living without a bridle, we have no shape to give our dream except to fantasize having power over others--our mainstream culture is devoid of models of non-hierarchical self-governance. Let us consider for a moment primordial societies, and see if any useful models can be extracted. Earlier I argued, based on an examination of a large number of late-surviving societies, that primordial societies shared, and still share in remote places, certain general characteristics. Such societies are based on hunter-gathering by small autonomous bands, the bands are egalitarian and self-sufficient, and they live sustainably within the carrying capacity of their territories. Each band has a culture, which prescribes in some detail the practices of the band and the range of acceptable behaviors for members. The culture is generally shared with a larger tribe, but the economy operates at the band level, not the tribal level--apart from the fact that bands from the same tribe tend to collaborate on territorial allocations and defense. Territories are not owned, they are used, and they are used in common and used with respect. Within that scenario, we can see certain stabilizing dynamics operating, where one characteristic encourages and reinforces another. For example, consider the fact that the band is required--by external constraints--to survive from generation to generation within a certain territory. That economic necessity helps to reinforce the cultural traditions of band cooperation and respect for the environment. Consider also that the band is autonomous within its territory. That gives it the power to do what is required to survive, and the flexibility to respond creatively to new circumstances as they arise. The band thus has both power and necessity--power over its territory and the necessity to provide for its own welfare within that territory. That power and necessity give the band both the means and the incentive to evolve and maintain a culture which is appropriate to the economic constraints of the local environment. Finally, consider that the band is both small and co-located. This encourages frequent formal and informal communication among band members, as they go about their daily lives. The small size and frequent communication help to reinforce a spirit of community identity and cooperation, and help to enable egalitarian decision making. These mutually stabilizing dynamics all arise from a strong emphasis on the local: local autonomy, local self-reliance, and locally-managed economic activities. If autonomy and responsibility are both based in a local community, then that community has both the power and the incentive to learn how to operate effectively and sustainably within its economic constraints. The economic feedback loops are visible locally, and they can be adjusted locally. We have all experienced examples of the opposite in hierarchical societies--where gross inefficiencies are obvious locally, but centralized bureaucracy and budgeting prevent corrective measures from being taken. LOCALISM--a strong emphasis on local autonomy and responsibility--facilitates sustainability, economic efficiency, and adaptability to change. Localism also goes a long way toward enabling egalitarian, non-hierarchical governance. To the extent communities have autonomy and sovereignty, then to that extent the society at large is governed non-hierarchically. And to the extent communities are governed internally by consensus, then the overall society's governance is that much more democratic and non-hierarchical. In an ideal case, where communities have full local sovereignty and are governed internally by egalitarian consensus, then we would have genuine democracy and no hierarchical governance. Most of us have no experience with consensus governance, but it is easy to see that such governance would be more readily achieved in a local community than in any larger societal unit--where people do not generally interact with or know one another. These considerations do not prove that localism can provide a sound basis for democratic and sustainable societies. Far from it. But they do suggest that localism is a structural paradigm that deserves further investigation. Are local cooperation and consensus governance things that can be practically achieved by ordinary people in ordinary communities? Would a strong emphasis on local sovereignty enable us to deal with large-scale issues, such as sustainable fishing rights, access to regional resources, and the resolution of conflicts between different communities or societies? Is it possible to pursue the value-creating synergies of trade, industry, and specialization without destabilizing local autonomy, egalitarianism, or sustainability? We would need to be able to answer these questions in the affirmative before we could be comfortable with localism as a fundamental principle of sustainable societies. I suggest, however, that the investigation of these questions is well worth our time and effort. I see no other paradigm that has any hope of preventing the emergence of hierarchy and elite rule. I see no other system basis that can hope to provide sustainability both economically and politically. Localism is the only ark that shows promise of providing passage to a new world of democracy and sustainability. That ark's potential seaworthiness, or lack thereof, should be of considerable interest to us all. In later chapters I hope to show that localism is indeed seaworthy--that it is a sound basis for a peaceful and stable global society. Indeed, I intend to show that sustainability, cooperation, peace, and local sovereignty are all mutually reinforcing. * We the people "If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs." --Daniel Quinn, "The Story of B" If civilization is in dire crisis, and if only a radical transformation of our economic and governance systems can provide a lasting and favorable outcome to that crisis, then we must inquire into what means might be available to bring about that kind of radical transformation. Changes in society are usually initiated from the top, by elites acting through their various hierarchical institutions. In those cases where change has been initiated from the grassroots, by elements of 'we the people', that change has always come by the efforts of a social movement. 'Social movements' is a broad category, including everything from polite reform organizations to armed insurrections, from labor unions to anti-globalization protests. In general, a social movement is an attempt to give voice to popular sentiment, to provide a vehicle that enables the members of the movement to act as a whole, to be a collective 'actor' in society, to have a coherent effect on society. Quite clearly the kind of transformation we are seeking will not be initiated by the elite establishment. If such a transformation is to be achieved, the initiative will need to come from we the people in the form of a social movement that is suitable to that task. That social movement might be quite unlike previous movements, as its objectives are uniquely radical. But by examining various existing and historical movements, we can gain some insight as to the kind of movement that would be suitable for our needs. Let's first take a look at the anti-globalization movement, a movement whose sentiments are largely in harmony with the kind of transformation we have been discussing. The anti-globalization movement understands that unbridled capitalism is destroying the world, and the movement seeks a radical shift towards democracy, justice, and sustainability. The movement also has many thousands of committed supporters worldwide, who are willing to participate in movement events at considerable expense and risk to themselves. Is the anti-globalization movement an appropriate vehicle for achieving global transformation? Unfortunately, this movement has not proven to be particularly effective. It's heart is in the right place and it's supporters show commitment, but it has no clear vision of a transformed society, no strategy to bring about change, and no program to expand its constituency. It is in the amorphous mold of the protest movements of the 1960s, and those kinds of movements can no longer be effective in this post-neoliberal age. Neoliberalism brought the economic abandonment of the middle classes, and elites no longer see any need to maintain an illusion of popular consensus. In the 1960s governments were concerned when masses of people protested, and they responded with a Civil Rights Bill, a Freedom of Information Act, and an Environmental Protection Agency. Today's neoliberal elites respond to protests by suppressing them or ignoring them, and then simply carry on with business as usual. One of the things leaders are taught at globalist gatherings is to avoid being distracted by popular 'sentimentality'. About a century ago, just prior to 1900 in the U.S., there was a movement which provides a closer model for the kind of movement that might bring about transformation today. Its goals were not nearly as radical as what we are considering, but they were radical, and they did represent a challenge to the ascendency of monopoly capitalism. This movement did have a vision of a transformed system, a strategy for bringing about change, and an effective program for expanding its constituency. It began as the Farmers Alliance, was later known as the Populist Movement and the Peoples Party, and it became a very significant actor in society. In 1890, for example, Georgia and Texas elected Alliance Governors, and thirty-eight Alliance members were elected to the U.S. Congress. The Farmers Alliance began in 1877 as a self-help movement in Texas, organizing cooperatives for buying supplies and selling crops. The cooperatives improved the farmers' economic situation, and the movement began to spread throughout the Midwest and the South. By 1889, there were 400,000 members. This was a thinking movement as well as an action movement. Howard Zinn, in "A People's History of the United States", writes, "The Populist movement also also made a remarkable attempt to create a new and independent culture for the country's farmers. The Alliance Lecture Bureau reached all over the country; it had 35,000 lecturers. The Populists poured out books and pamphlets from their printing presses...". Zinn goes on to cite from another source, "One gathers from yellowed pamphlets that the agrarian ideologists undertook to re-educate their countrymen from the ground up. Dismissing 'history as taught in our schools' as 'practically valueless', they undertook to write it over--formidable columns of it, from the Greek down. With no more compunction they turned all hands to the revision of economics, political theory, law, and government." And from another source, "...no other political movement--not that of 1776, nor that of 1860-1861--ever altered Southern life so profoundly." There is much here that makes sense for a transformational democratic movement. Our current systems are supported by cultural mythologies, and "writing it over" is a good description of what needs to be done if the illusions of the old culture are to be exposed and the culture of a new society is to be developed. The emphasis on education of the membership shows a respect for popular intelligence, and it builds a shared cultural perspective that enables a movement to act with increasing unity and coherence. The emphasis on outreach and recruitment is necessary if a movement hopes to grow large enough to bring about significant changes. The Populist Movement arose due to economic problems that were being faced by farmers, and the movement set out to find practical ways to solve those problems. I suggest that such a problem-solving emphasis is appropriate to a democratic transformational movement. If a movement makes demands, then it is affirming that power resides elsewhere--in that person or agency which is the target of the demands. If a movement creates solutions, then it is asserting its own empowerment, it is taking responsibility for its own welfare. Furthermore, problem solving ability in general is necessary for any movement which intends to achieve radical goals. Such a movement is bound to encounter all sorts of challenges and barriers along the way, and it will need to be able to respond creatively and effectively to them. The emphasis on economics in particular is also appropriate to a transformational movement. Economics is the basis of most social activity, and it is in the realm of economics that solutions can be found to our social and environmental malaise. The Populists, being largely farmers, were closely connected to place, and their movement was in part an expression of localism. The movement built up its constituency region by region, rather than by seeking isolated members spread throughout the society, as do modern reform organizations like the Sierra Club. To use a military metaphor, the movement 'captured territory' and then 'consolidated that territory' through education and by implementing its solutions in that 'territory'--and by winning elections there and gaining some degree of official political power. Such a territorial emphasis is very appropriate to a transformational movement. Within a 'captured territory'--a region in which people generally have become part of the movement--the vision and culture of the movement has an opportunity to flower and to find expression in ordinary conversation among people. The culture has a place to take root and grow, and people's sense of empowerment is reinforced by being in the daily company of those who share an evolving vision, and who are in effect collaborators in a shared project. The Populist Movement was also an expression of localism in another way. At the core of the Populist political agenda was a set of economic reforms. Those reforms represented an attempt to stem the ascendency of centralized big-money capitalism--and reassert the interests of locally-based farms and small businesses. The Populists were calling for fundamental reform of the financial system, the debt system, and currency policies. They wanted to give local communities and regions enough economic viability to be able to take responsibility for their own welfare. In their relationship to the political process, the Populists again had much to teach a transformational movement. They began as a grassroots organization oriented around self-help, not as a movement attempting to influence the political machine. They were successful at their self-help endeavors, and they expanded their focus to recruitment and territorial expansion. Only when they had achieved overwhelming success at the grassroots level did they turn their attention to the ballot box. In this way they were able to achieve some measure of political power without compromising their objectives in the horse-trading that characterizes competitive politics. They were able to integrate politics into their tactical portfolio and also retain their integrity as a grassroots movement. But ultimately the Populists faltered and collapsed, and we have as much to learn from that experience as from their earlier successes. They ran up against an unavoidable barrier, one that all radical movements must run up against eventually, and that is the limit on how much can be accomplished in the face of establishment opposition. In order to promote their economic reform agenda, and encouraged by their electoral successes, they decided to commit their movement wholeheartedly to the political process. They joined forces with the Democratic Party and backed William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896. The Populists had then placed themselves in a no-win situation. If the Democrats lost, the movement would be defeated and shattered; if the Democrats won, the movement would be swallowed up in the horse-trading of Democratic politics. The reactionary capitalist establishment responded vigorously to this opportunity to put a final end to the upstart Populist movement. Corporations and the elite-owned media threw their support to the Republican candidate, William McKinley, in what Zinn calls "the first massive use of money in an an election campaign." Bryan was defeated, and the Populist movement fell apart. The establishment was taking no chances: even diluted within the Democratic party, the Populists represented too much of a threat from below, they were too successful at providing a voice for we the people. Democracy had raised its ugly head, and elites chopped it off at their earliest opportunity. Any transformational movement that wants to go the distance must be prepared to resist the seductive siren call of electoral politics--a siren whose voice becomes even more appealing after the movement has made some significant progress. As the Populists' earlier experience showed, politics can be used successfully to consolidate gains made on the ground, particularly if the expansion program employs a territorial strategy. But when electoral politics is allowed to dominate movement strategy--before the territory of the movement encompasses the entire electorate--then the hope of ultimate success has been lost. Either the movement will be destroyed abruptly, or it will die a slow drowning death in the quicksand of factional politics. Any transformational movement must also eventually run up against the barrier of establishment opposition. Like the Populists, it makes good sense for a transformational movement to focus initially on what people can collectively do for themselves, without confrontation and within the constraints of the existing system. This is how the movement can be built, and how a culture can be fostered based on common-sense analysis, creative problem solving, self-reliance, and democratic empowerment. But the movement's self-help progress will eventually be frustrated by the economic and political constraints of the establishment's system, and that's when the movement needs to decide what it's really about. At that point the movement can either take the 'blue pill', and settle for temporary reformist gains within the elite's political circus, or it can take the 'red pill' and face the challenges of the real world--of power and engagement. As much as we may be enamored of a win-win, love-your-enemy approach to the universe, we must face the fact that the currently entrenched regime is ruthless in its tactics, determined to stay in power, and resourceful in its application of its many means of suppression, subversion, and co-option. Though we may carry universal love in our hearts, the strategic thinking of the movement must at some point focus on the principles of effective engagement. The Populists have little to offer us here. A better model for this phase would be the non-violent grassroots movement against British rule in India, led and inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is most renown for his non-violence and for his universal empathy for all people, including even the British oppressors. Those are wise principles for any transformational movement that must engage an armed establishment and that seeks to create a just and democratic society. But Gandhi should be equally renown for his strategic acumen, and we can learn much from that aspect of his work. Like a skillful Go player, he was able to set up situations where the British felt compelled to respond, yet any response they chose would undermine their position. They had to choose between yielding ground to the movement, or else engaging in suppressive measures which could only serve to build greater sympathy and support for the movement. The point is not that a movement should emulate Gandhi's tactics, but rather that flexible and creative strategic thinking is absolutely essential to successful engagement. Gandhi's movement did succeed in its immediate objective of ousting the British occupiers, but it failed to achieve Gandhi's deeper goals for a new kind of harmonious and democratic society. The leadership of the movement was concentrated too much in him personally and after his assassination his followers reverted to traditional political patterns. His movement was in the final analysis a hierarchical movement. A successful transformational movement--which seeks to establish a democratic, non-hierarchical society--would be best served by taking a non-hierarchical approach from the very beginning. Goals and strategy should be developed at the grassroots level, and the movement culture should facilitate the exchange of ideas and solutions, thus building a self-reliant and holographically led movement--and a movement which is not vulnerable to death by leadership decapitation. The Populist Movement too had a hierarchical leadership structure, and this limited its transformational potential in several ways. In the long run hierarchy is the bane of democracy, so in that sense the Populists were from the beginning not pursuing a path toward a transformed democratic society. And by monopolizing strategic thinking, the wisdom of the movement was limited by the cultural perspective and prejudices of the relatively small leadership cadre. In particular the rural, farmer-based leadership limited the growth of the movement to what we might in some fairness call 'their own kind of people'. Although movement activists sympathized with urban industrial workers, and expressed support for their strikes and boycotts, the culture of the Populist leadership did not lead them to bring urban workers into their constituency, to make them part of the Populist family. From an objective strategic perspective, it is clear that this was a fatal error of omission. There was a natural alignment of interests, based on mutual exploitation by monopoly capitalism, and an effective joining of forces would have propelled the expanded movement onto a new and much higher plateau of political significance. Any movement which aims to create a transformed and democratic society needs to keep this in mind: when the new world is created, everyone will be in it--not just the people we agree with or the people we normally associate with. Certainly any particular movement is likely to attract certain kinds of people before others, and that must inevitably give a certain flavor to the emerging movement--but a movement must aim to be all inclusive if it seeks to create a democratic society that is all inclusive. Is there anyone you would leave behind, or relegate to second class citizenship? If not, then you should be willing to welcome to the movement anyone who shares the goal of creating that new world. * The transformational imperative We the people have found our identity and common purpose many times in the past: on the fields of Lexington and Concord, at the gates of the Czar's palace and the Bastille, and in many movements like the Populists. We have a tradition to learn from, and there are many wrong turns we must avoid. Martin Luther King used a phrase that sums up one of the most important lessons we need to take to heart, "Keep your eyes on the prize." If we want a world which is democratic, and which is sustainable both economically and politically, then we must stay true to that vision. We must anticipate that the devil, that is the regime, is likely to offer us enticing distractions when we show up on their radar. But only a thorough and radical transformation can rid us of the dynamics of hierarchy, exploitation, and elite rule. There is no one out there, no actor on the stage of society, who can or will bring about the radical transformation required to save humanity and the world--no one that is except we the people. Not we the electorate, nor we the public, but we who are members of the intelligent and aware human species. We who are capable of thinking for ourselves, and envisioning a better world, and working together with others in pursuit of our common visions. There is no one else who will do it for us, and it is a job that must be done. This is our transformational imperative. ________________________________________________________ -- ============================================================ If you find this material useful, you might want to check out our website (http://cyberjournal.org) or try out our low-traffic, moderated email list by sending a message to: •••@••.••• You are encouraged to forward any material from the lists or the website, provided it is for non-commercial use and you include the source and this disclaimer. Richard Moore (rkm) Wexford, Ireland _____________________________ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs. _____________________________ "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog _____________________________ Informative links: http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================