1/11 Guillermo Jimenez and writer/activist Larry Pinkney discuss the recent release of Lynne Stewart in the context of past and present COINTELPRO actions against activists at Traces of Reality:
1/13 On the Black Agenda Report they commemorate the life of Amiri Baraka, discuss the war on poverty, important people-powered movements for 2014, failures of the moderate democrats and the International Criminal Court, the Washington Post as CIA asset, and an update on the Dallas 5:
1/13 Guy Evans and independent journalist Rania Khalek discuss positive aspects and limitations of independent media, the school-to-prison pipeline, Nelson Mandela, the NSA and other topics on Smells Like Human Spirit:
1/15 On the C-Realm Podcast, KMO and David J. Blacker explore the themes of David’s new book, The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame. They cover big questions related to technology and economics such as “If public education in the 20th Century was shaped by the needs of capitalist production, what form does education take when what Capitalists really need a growing segment of the population to do is go away?”:
1/16 Another great Smells Like Human Spirit interview featuring former LAPD police officer and whistleblower Michael Ruppert. They discuss JFK, the rise of corporate power, and the future of the surveillance state among other topics:
With the impending demise of World Wide Web “net neutrality,” which has afforded equal access for website operators to the Internet, the one percent of billionaire investors are busy positioning themselves to take over total control of news reporting on the Internet.
In the latest move by billionaires to monopolize the Internet, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and billionaire Nick Berggruen announced the creation of World Post, a news and views website that will be officially launched at the World Economic Forum conclave of one percenters in Davos, Switzerland.
Among the announced contributors to World Post are Microsoft owner Bill Gates, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The move by Huffington and Berggruen follows the creation of the “investigative” news website First Look, Inc. by PayPal’s billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar. First Look plans to distribute the remaining cache of National Security Agency (NSA) documents originally leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald.
Another billionaire who has joined the rush to seize part of the Internet is hedge fund tycoon George Soros. Soros has backed two media operations, Pro Publica, which promised to disclose many Snowden documents but has not followed through, and Project Syndicate, which paves the Internet with editorials backing all of Soros’s global initiatives.
Greenwald and his associates have published only one percent of the estimated 50,000 documents downloaded by Snowden from classified NSA databases. In a recent interview by Israel’s Channel Ten, Greenwald made it very clear that he would release more documents concerning NSA surveillance of Israeli leaders based on what the Obama administration does with regard to convicted and jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. There are increasing calls for Pollard’s release from prison and permission for him to move to Israel.
Greenwald stated to Israeli television that the slow pace of document release would continue and that he agreed with Israel on the issue of Pollard: “I think you are absolutely right to contrast the Jonathan Pollard case with revelations of American spying on their closest allies within the Israeli government, because it does underlie, underscore exactly the hypocrisy that lies at the center of so much of what the U.S. government does.”
Pollard is serving a life sentence in the Butner, North Carolina, federal penitentiary for disclosing a cache of documents that resulted in a number of U.S. intelligence assets in the Middle East being compromised to Mossad. The Mossad approached the U.S. assets and offered them a deal: cooperate with Mossad or risk being outed to their governments as CIA assets. In either case, the assets faced a certain death sentence: disclosure of work for Israel or the United States would have been met with the same fate of execution as spies.
A number of American journalists are now coming out in support of clemency for Pollard to placate Israel over the NSA spying reports leaked by Greenwald. First Look’s initial operating budget is $250 million. Along with Greenwald, journalists such as The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill; Dan Froomkin, formerly with The Washington Post; and Entertainment Weekly.com’s Bill Gannon jumped ship to sign on to First Look. The hiring of an entertainment editor who once worked for Lucas Films, the producer of Star Wars movies, raised eyebrows among those who believed Greenwald and Omidyar intended First Look to be a no-nonsense news operation. It now seems certain that First Look will be no different than Disney Corporation’s running of ABC News.
There have been some outrageous examples of corporate parents spiking stories by their news divisions in order to avoid bad publicity. In 2006, ABC News was pressured by Disney and its then-CEO Michael Eisner to kill an investigation of pedophiles being employed by Disney World in Orlando. The end of net neutrality will stymie and possibly eliminate investigative reporting on the Internet as we now know it.
The formation of the two newest media companies follows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ acquisition of The Washington Post. It is believed that Bezos will begin to streamline the newspaper with more focus on Internet distribution than the print run.
Under President Obama, the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission have done little to advance the cause of net neutrality. In fact, the regulatory agencies have gone the other way in order to facilitate the creation of a multi-tiered Internet that will permit high bandwidth access in a “pay to play” scheme. In other words, only billionaires like Omidyar, Berggruen, Bezos, and others will have access to the top tier of the Internet to distribute varnished “news” reports.
Those media organizations without deep pockets will be relegated to the slower tiers of the Internet, sharing limited bandwidth with pornography, quack medicine, and get-rich-quick scam operators.
Rupert Murdoch’s British Sky Broadcasting and Virgin Media, formerly owned by Sir Richard Branson, have been at the forefront of establishing a “two-speed Internet.”
It is painfully clear that the top one percent are feverishly engaged in an orgy of carving up the Internet after the collapse of net neutrality for the benefit of corporatism and oligarchic control over news dissemination.
It is noteworthy that Obama’ old friend from Columbia and Harvard and his first FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, has just joined a new firm after offering only lukewarm support for net neutrality. Genachowski now works for the eternally dubious Carlyle Group.
There is little wonder why one of World Post’s first contributors will be Google’s Schmidt, the frequent habitué of the Davos and Bilderberg secret conclaves of financial and political vipers who run the world. The journalists who have joined the frenzy to climb into the one percenters’ Internet top tier deserve nothing but condemnation from their peers.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report.
Last week, French comedian, actor and activist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala gained international attention when, in a move backed by French President Francois Hollande and the country’s highest court, his comedy tour was banned in several French cities. The bannings followed a January 6 announcement from France’s interior minister Manuel Valls that he considered Dieudonné’s performances anti-semitic and a “a grave disturbance of public order”.
To be honest, I can’t say I’m familiar enough with Dieudonné to know whether he is anti-semitic or, as has happened to many others, he was given that label because he’s anti-Zionist or just critical of certain policies of the Israeli government. However, given his background it’s highly unlikely that he’s racist. He himself is of mixed race, his father being a white artist and his mother a black accountant originally from Cameroon. He was raised mostly by his mother since they divorced when he was one. His first comedy partner and childhood friend was Jewish, and in the 1997 and 2001 legislative elections in Dreux, he campaigned against racism and ran against the National Front.
Even if Dieudonné was a racist and anti-semite he should not have been censored (though it’s true if his performances weren’t banned I may not have heard of him). No matter how offensive one might find someone’s words and ideas, the best policy is open discussion and debate so people can decide for themselves what to believe and what to reject.
New studies demonstrate the deep power of human empathy, debunk right-brain and left-brain personalities, explore neural structures during sleep and way more…
It’s been an awe-inspiring few years for neuroscience.
By peering inside the living brain, neuroscientists have made all kinds of incredible discoveries.
Here are ten of my favourite–click the title to get the full story.
A new study on the brains of 949 young people found striking gender differences in the brain’s connectivity between males and females. These may help explain some of the classic psychological differences between men and women.
A new study published in the prestigious journal, Science, found that the brain may wash away toxins built up over the day during sleep.
The research discovered “hidden caves” inside the brain, which open up during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to flush out potential neurotoxins, like β-amyloid, which has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Those who were confirmed night owls (preferring late to bed and late to rise) were found to have lower integrity of the white matter in various areas of the brain.
Lower integrity in these areas has been linked to depression and cognitive instability.
104 years ago on this day, Bass Reeve passed away from Bright’s Disease. Who was he and why haven’t we heard of him before? This great article from Political Blindspot‘s Micah Naziri explains:
The REAL ‘Lone Ranger’ Was An African American Lawman Who Lived With Native American Indians
The real “Lone Ranger,” it turns out, was an African American man named Bass Reeves, who the legend was based upon. Perhaps not surprisingly, many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics remained the same: a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark.
Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man was African American, a free black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern states.
While historians have largely overlooked Reeves, there have been a few notable works on him. Vaunda Michaux Nelson’s book, Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal, won the 2010 Coretta Scott King Award for best author. Arthur Burton released an overview of the man’s life a few years ago. Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves recounts that Reeves was born into a life of slavery in 1838. His slave-keeper brought him along as another personal servant when he went off to fight with the Confederate Army, during the Civil War.
Reeves took the chaos that ensued during the war to escape for freedom, after beating his “master” within an inch of his life, or according to some sources, to death. Perhaps the most intruiging thing about this escape was that Reeves only beat his enslaver after the latter lost sorely at a game of cards with Reeves and attacked him.
After successfully defending himself from this attack, he knew that there was no way he would be allowed to live if he stuck around.
Reeves fled to the then Indian Territory of today’s Oklahoma and lived harmoniously among the Seminole and Creek Nations of Native American Indians.
After the Civil War finally concluded, he married and eventually fathered ten children, making his living as a Deputy U.S. Marshall in Arkansas and the Indian Territory. If this surprises you, it should, as Reeves was the first African American to ever hold such a position.
Burton explains that it was at this point that the Lone Ranger story comes in to play. Reeves was described as a “master of disguises”. He used these disguises to track down wanted criminals, even adopting similar ways of dressing and mannerisms to meet and fit in with the fugitives, in order to identify them.
Reeves kept and gave out silver coins as a personal trademark of sorts, just like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets. Of course, the recent Disney adaptation of the Lone Ranger devised a clever and meaningful explanation for the silver bullets in the classic tales. For the new Lone Ranger, the purposes was to not wantonly expend ammunition and in so doing devalue human life. But in the original series, there was never an explanation given, as this was simply something originally adapted from Reeves’ personal life and trademarking of himself. For Reeves, it had a very different meaning, he would give out the valuable coins to ingratiate himself to the people wherever he found himself working, collecting bounties. In this way, a visit from the real “Lone Ranger” meant only good fortune for the town: a criminal off the street and perhaps a lucky silver coin.
Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves was also expert crack shot with a gun. According to legend, shooting competitions had an informal ban on allowing him to enter. Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves rode a white horse throughout almost all of his career, at one point riding a light grey one as well.
Like the famed Lone Ranger legend Reeves had his own close friend like Tonto. Reeves’ companion was a Native American posse man and tracker who he often rode with, when he was out capturing bad guys. In all, there were close to 3000 of such criminals they apprehended, making them a legendary duo in many regions.
The final proof that this legend of Bass Reeves directly inspired into the story of the Lone Ranger can be found in the fact that a large number of those criminals were sent to federal prison in Detroit. The Lone Ranger radio show originated and was broadcast to the public in 1933 on WXYZ in Detroit where the legend of Reeves was famous only two years earlier.
Of course, WXYZ and the later TV and movie adaptions weren’t about to make the Lone Ranger an African American who began his career by beating a slave-keeper to death. But now you know. Spread the word and let people know the real legend of the Lone Ranger.
In “Bad Boy Bubby” (1993), an Australian film by writer/director Rolf de Heer, Nicholas Hope gives a brilliant performance as Bubby, a man who’s been kept confined and abused physically and emotionally by his mother for 35 years. He eventually escapes and has a number of chance encounters which reveal different aspects of himself and society. The first portion of the film is the most brutal, but as Bubby ventures out into the world the film’s tone lightens a bit and becomes more of a traditional (yet still twisted) dark comedy. Bad Boy Bubby is definitely not for all tastes and is initially difficult to watch, but is ultimately rewarding for its uniformly great performances, writing and direction.
Yesterday Amiri Baraka, a longtime activist and one of the great American poets, passed away at age 79. The cause of his death, at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, was not immediately released, but he was hospitalized in the facility’s intensive care unit since Dec. 21 and had a long struggle with diabetes.
Reflecting the exploratory and always-evolving nature of his mind, Amiri’s career path connected him to the Greenwich Village Beat community, the Black Nationalists, the Black Arts Movement (which he founded in 1964), and Marxist-Leninists. Though his beliefs during different stages of life may have different labels, he was consistently committed to justice, unity, social change and the struggle against oppression. As a revolutionary organizer, cultural critic, poet, novelist, essayist, historian, playwright, publisher and orator, Amiri Baraka’s words and ideas have influenced and inspired untold numbers of people around the world. His works have also been the source of much controversy, outrage and condemnation, at least during the initial time of their release.
One of Baraka’s last great acts as a rabble-rouser was his recitation of his poem “Somebody Blew Up America” before 2,000 people at the September 2002 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival held in Stanhope, New Jersey. This was incredibly courageous because throughout the country (especially on the East Coast) just one year after the attacks, questioning the official 9/11 story was enough to make one viewed as a conspiracy theorist, an apologist for terrorists, possibly traitorous, and/or insensitive to victims and their families. To do so and implicate the Israeli government, as Amiri Baraka did in his poem, led to accusations of antisemitism from the Anti-Defamation League. Many at the time believed the accusations even though under closer scrutiny it was obviously untrue because in the poem he clearly condemns the murder of Jews in the Holocaust and the lines in question could more accurately be described as anti-Zionist.
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion And cracking they sides at the notion?
Amiri Baraka was appointed Poet Laureate of New Jersey just one month before delivering “Somebody Blew Up America” to the public. Despite pressure from the powers that be to resign immediately, he steadfastly refused. In his own words, from an October 2, 2002 post on his website: “I WILL NOT ‘APOLOGIZE’, I WILL NOT ‘RESIGN!'” Governor Jim McGreevey and state legislators discovered there was no legal way to remove Poet Laureate appointees so in an act revealing their fear, hatred and desperation, they abolished the post in July 2003. This is just one chapter of many from Baraka’s often history-making career, but it’s emblematic of his courage, integrity, dedication to truth, and stubborn stance against injustice. This isn’t to say he was a saint or superhero. None of us are without fault, but what we can learn from Amiri is that development of political thought and civic engagement can and should be lifelong processes, and one can remain true to oneself yet open to new ideas and experiences. Above all, his life is a reminder that simple words (especially when composed and unleashed with skill at the right place and time) contain immense power; sometimes enough to change the world.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Somebody Blew Up America
They say its some terrorist, some barbaric A Rab, in Afghanistan It wasn’t our American terrorists It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads Or the them that blows up nigger Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row It wasn’t Trent Lott Or David Duke or Giuliani Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn’t The gonorrhea in costume The white sheet diseases That have murdered black people Terrorized reason and sanity Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say?) Who do the saying Who is them paying Who tell the lies Who in disguise Who had the slaves Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations Who genocided Indians Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street The first plantation Who cut your nuts off Who rape your ma Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers Who had the match, who set the fires Who killed and hired Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only Who the most goodest Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything Who the smartest Who the greatest Who the richest Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art Who define science
Who made the bombs Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names Who say Dahmer wasn’t insane
Who? Who? Who?
Who stole Puerto Rico Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan Australia & The Hebrides Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings Who got the money Who think you funny Who locked you up Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship Who run the army
Who the fake president Who the ruler Who the banker
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the mine Who twist your mind Who got bread Who need peace Who you think need war
Who own the oil Who do no toil Who own the soil Who is not a nigger Who is so great ain’t nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air Who own the water
Who own your crib Who rob and steal and cheat and murder and make lies the truth Who call you uncouth
Who live in the biggest house Who do the biggest crime Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the most niggers Who killed the most Jews Who killed the most Italians Who killed the most Irish Who killed the most Africans Who killed the most Japanese Who killed the most Latinos
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes Who own the malls Who own television Who own radio
Who own what ain’t even known to be owned Who own the owners that ain’t the real owners
Who own the suburbs Who suck the cities Who make the laws
Who made Bush president Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations Who 666 Who know who decide Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest terrorist Who change the bible Who killed the most people Who do the most evil Who don’t worry about survival
Who have the colonies Who stole the most land Who rule the world Who say they good but only do evil Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the oil Who want more oil Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who? Who? Who?
Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan Who pay the CIA, Who knew the bomb was gonna blow Who know why the terrorists Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain’t goin’ nowhere
Who make the credit cards Who get the biggest tax cut Who walked out of the Conference Against Racism Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing? Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada Who made money from apartheid Who keep the Irish a colony Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani, the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral, Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane, Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone, Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo, Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney, Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin’s head
Who put the Jews in ovens, and who helped them do it Who said “America First” and ok’d the yellow stars
Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt Who murdered the Rosenbergs And all the good people iced, tortured, assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo Who invented Aids Who put the germs In the Indians’ blankets Who thought up “The Trail of Tears”
Who blew up the Maine & started the Spanish American War Who got Sharon back in Power Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo, Chiang kai Chek
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go Reconstruction, The New Deal, The New Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for Who doo doo come out the Colon’s mouth Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop, Who poison Robeson, who try to put DuBois in Jail Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs, Garvey, The Scottsboro Boys, The Hollywood Ten
Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
Explosion of Owl the newspaper say The devil face cd be seen
Who make money from war Who make dough from fear and lies Who want the world like it is Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell? Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever Seen God?
But everybody seen The Devil
Like an Owl exploding In your life in your brain in your self Like an Owl who know the devil All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell Who and Who and WHO who who Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
After the Crash 