I don't think it's a pendulum swing.
Yeah, I do think changes are occurring. But not all changes are pendulum-swings. For example, the pendulum never swung back to hunting & gathering once a given society got agriculture. Likewise, I think we're on the edge of a HUGE societal change--the information revolution. Information is power, and the people are gaining access to information at unprecedented rates despite the efforts of the powerful to maintain control over the flow.
Copyrights and patents will soon be dead, and the world will be better off without them. Innovation works best when ideas are allowed to freely mingle and mutate.
As an old scholar, trained many years before the Internet age, I can only look in wonder at how the world is changing. I spent years in university libraries and gigantic computing centers.
Now I can do all that from my laptop, sitting in my old farm house surrounded by fields and woods. With a few memberships in professional organizations, I have access to hundreds of journals, and with membership in a few listserves I have access to colleagues around the world who can and will consult with me and get any articles I need for me upon request, usually within a few hours and often within minutes. I can write articles and reports at home and submit them electronically. I can find out damn near anything I want with a Google search.
Anyway, I think all this information is the ultimate defense against the Corporate State, which seeks to rule through the twin tools of force and information control (secrecy, disinformation, propaganda).
When they (as they shortly will) finally lose the information battle, the Corporatists will have nothing left but force, and when they try that, they will be overthrown. The overthrow must and will be nonviolent in nature. General strikes, simple noncompliance, all the old tactics and some new ones, all linked in a worldwide network of information transmission, like a planetary cerebral cortex, will do nicely for the purpose.
As far as Europe and the rightward swing goes, I see that as driven by desperation on the part of the international bankers. They are trying to grab everything, just like here, and they know that the endgame is approaching. They must terribly fear the Icelandic solution, and are pushing as hard as they can to nail things down before the PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) escape from the control of their politicians.
I hail Anonymous and Wikileaks for tearing the lid off the cesspools of the world's power centers so that we all may see what floats within.
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that events will eventually swing to the side of truth, honor, justice, accountability.
but...remember the same folks who control our "free internet" are part of the system that works for it's own. Not much has changed, though, except to hook us on the "idea" of free information exchange (and a new world of infomation exchange)...then see it organized, packaged and then sold under the same corporate entities we've been conditioned to learn to love because they are "BRANDS" and Wall Street Sells them to fund our 401-K's, Pensions (for those who are still getting some benefits from them) and keep our Stock Market afloat for the new investors and to keep our "economy" afloat.
When we buy our Kindles, Nooks, I-Pads, I-Phones, I-Pods...etc..and hook up to the "Cloud (the latest tech investment enterprise) we might be going backwards in some ways by our growing dependence on the same Media folks who will make sure they find a way to control us all, once again. The "Free Libraries with Access for All"...that served us well the last hundred years might be gone and what's left is "Pay for View."
That's the "Dark Side." 
that events will eventually swing to the side of truth, honor, justice, accountability.
but...remember the same folks who control our "free internet" are part of the system that works for it's own. Not much has changed, though, except to hook us on the "idea" of free information exchange (and a new world of information exchange)...then see it organized, packaged and then sold under the same corporate entities we've been conditioned to learn to love because they are "BRANDS" and Wall Street Sells them to fund our 401-K's, Pensions (for those who are still getting some benefits from them) and keep our Stock Market afloat for the new investors and to keep our "economy" afloat.
When we buy our Kindles, Nooks, I-Pads, I-Phones, I-Pods...etc..and hook up to the "Cloud (the latest tech investment enterprise) we might be going backwards in some ways by our growing dependence on the same Media folks who will make sure they find a way to control us all, once again. The "Free Libraries with Access for All"...that served us well the last hundred years might be gone and what's left is "Pay for View."
That's the "Dark Side."
that events will eventually swing to the side of truth, honor, justice, accountability.
but...remember the same folks who control our "free internet" are part of the system that works for it's own. Not much has changed, though, except to hook us on the "idea" of free information exchange (and a new world of information exchange)...then see it organized, packaged and then sold under the same corporate entities we've been conditioned to learn to love because they are "BRANDS" and Wall Street Sells them to fund our 401-K's, Pensions (for those who are still getting some benefits from them) and keep our Stock Market afloat for the new investors and to keep our "economy" afloat.
When we buy our Kindles, Nooks, I-Pads, I-Phones, I-Pods...etc..and hook up to the "Cloud (the latest tech investment enterprise) we might be going backwards in some ways by our growing dependence on the same Media folks who will make sure they find a way to control us all, once again. The "Free Libraries with Access for All"...that served us well the last hundred years might be gone and what's left is "Pay for View."
That's the "Dark Side."
that events will eventually swing to the side of truth, honor, justice, accountability.
but...remember the same folks who control our "free internet" are part of the system that works for it's own. Not much has changed, though, except to hook us on the "idea" of free information exchange (and a new world of information exchange)...then see it organized, packaged and then sold under the same corporate entities we've been conditioned to learn to love because they are "BRANDS" and Wall Street Sells them to fund our 401-K's, Pensions (for those who are still getting some benefits from them) and keep our Stock Market afloat for the new investors and to keep our "economy" afloat.
When we buy our Kindles, Nooks, I-Pads, I-Phones, I-Pods...etc..and hook up to the "Cloud (the latest tech investment enterprise) we might be going backwards in some ways by our growing dependence on the same Media folks who will make sure they find a way to control us all, once again. The "Free Libraries with Access for All"...that served us well the last hundred years might be gone and what's left is "Pay for View."
That's the "Dark Side."