Open Letter to BoA from Anonymous Olympia

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In the wake of recent revelations of documents confirming Bank of America’s use of social media trolling teams to spy on activist groups, Anonymous Olympia has released an open letter (reposted below) stating that they will hold them accountable. Whether or not they follow through on their promise, they make good arguments for why we should not be giving our money to such banks. There’s plenty of alternatives more deserving of our trust and which make better investments, such as public banks, community banks, credit unions, community currencies, digital currencies (do careful research first) and safe deposit boxes for physical precious metals. Currently, only North Dakota has a state-owned bank, but it’s been such a success, at least 20 other states are considering proposals to create their own.

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Dear Bank of America,

Thank you for your interest in Anonymous Olympia. After careful review

of your actions, we have prepared the following open letter:

Your institution is like a large, festering carcass that smothers all

of the life beneath it as it wallows, decaying in its own gluttonous

vastness. Nobody pretends that you’re a decent banking institution

these days except you, and we all know you’re not. You’re swollen,

sallow with your own misdeeds.

It blows our minds how anyone could still bank with you, or why they

would want to. Your commercials smile and lie, but everyone can smell

the bullshit wafting from behind those carefully constructed scenes of

gentle middle-class life that you promote on television and in the

lobbies of your bank branches.

The way you nickel and dime your customers to financial death is

disgusting, and you should be ashamed. A fee to close an account, a

monthly fee to have an account, a thirty five dollar over-draft fee

for as little as a $0.01 over-draft, a fee for bill-pay, the five

dollar debit-usage fee.

You’re a vampire, Bank of America. You’re a parasite, bloated with the

blood that you suck from the financial life of your customers.

Shall we mention your colluding with Visa and MasterCard to keep ATM

fees outrageously high? Or all the times that you illegally and

wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of families that banked with you,

leaving those families homeless, their lives ruined? Or the miniscule

amount of taxes that you’re supposed to pay, but don’t?

What about the six former Bank of America employees who came forward

and revealed your despicable practices, including rewarding employees

who managed to place ten or more mortgage accounts into foreclosure in

one month with a $500.00 bonus?

We suppose a financial institution with your track record of being

evil could justify spying on a group of average citizens who were

attempting to exercise their right to air grievances through public

assembly, but that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make what we

do any of your business, either.

In fact, your actions directly violate our constitutional right to

privacy. The fact that you worked with Washington State Patrol to

share information represents a terrifying fusion of financial and

state interest, one that I hope keeps your employees up at night.

Fascism is defined as a merging of state and corporate interest, so

make of that what you will, Bank of America.

We know that you were asked to comment on your spying, but declined to

do so- this leaves us with little hope that you will hold yourself

accountable for this and other actions, so we’re going to start

holding you accountable, instead, and we’re going to ask all of our

brothers and sisters to join us.

You may have been watching us, Bank of America, but we’ve been

watching you, too, and our memories are long.

We do not forgive, we do not forget.

Regards,
Anonymous Olympia

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

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Chris Hedges’ regular columns for Truthdig.com are consistently informative and provocative, but his latest piece offers a particularly critical analysis of the current political moment in the United States. In the following excerpt he ruminates on a number of recent actions of our modern corporate totalitarian state:

Via Truthdig:

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

The corporate state, in our case, has used the law to quietly abolish the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private lives. The loss of judicial and political representation and protection, part of the corporate coup d’état, means that we have no voice and no legal protection from the abuses of power. The recent ruling supporting the National Security Agency’s spying, handed down by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, is part of a very long and shameful list of judicial decisions that have repeatedly sacrificed our most cherished constitutional rights on the altar of national security since the attacks of 9/11. The courts and legislative bodies of the corporate state now routinely invert our most basic rights to justify corporate pillage and repression. They declare that massive and secret campaign donations—a form of legalized bribery—are protected speech under the First Amendment. They define corporate lobbying—under which corporations lavish funds on elected officials and write our legislation—as the people’s right to petition the government. And we can, according to new laws and legislation, be tortured or assassinated or locked up indefinitely by the military, be denied due process and be spied upon without warrants. Obsequious courtiers posing as journalists dutifully sanctify state power and amplify its falsehoods—MSNBC does this as slavishly as Fox News—while also filling our heads with the inanity of celebrity gossip and trivia. Our culture wars, which allow politicians and pundits to hyperventilate over nonsubstantive issues, mask a political system that has ceased to function. History, art, philosophy, intellectual inquiry, our past social and individual struggles for justice, the very world of ideas and culture, along with an understanding of what it means to live and participate in a functioning democracy, are thrust into black holes of forgetfulness.

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” It differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader; it finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new structures. They instead purport to honor electoral politics, freedom of expression and the press, the right to privacy and the guarantees of law. But they so corrupt and manipulate electoral politics, the courts, the press and the essential levers of power as to make genuine democratic participation by the masses impossible. The U.S. Constitution has not been rewritten, but steadily emasculated through radical judicial and legislative interpretation. We have been left with a fictitious shell of democracy and a totalitarian core. And the anchor of this corporate totalitarianism is the unchecked power of our systems of internal security.

Our corporate totalitarian rulers deceive themselves as often as they deceive the public. Politics, for them, is little more than public relations. Lies are told not to achieve any discernable goal of public policy, but to protect the image of the state and its rulers. These lies have become a grotesque form of patriotism. The state’s ability through comprehensive surveillance to prevent outside inquiry into the exercise of power engenders a terrifying intellectual and moral sclerosis within the ruling elite. Absurd notions such as implanting “democracy” in Baghdad by force in order to spread it across the region or the idea that we can terrorize radical Islam across the Middle East into submission are no longer checked by reality, experience or factually based debate. Data and facts that do not fit into the whimsical theories of our political elites, generals and intelligence chiefs are ignored and hidden from public view. The ability of the citizenry to take self-corrective measures is effectively stymied. And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly, monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.

Read the full article here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Saturday Matinee: Max Headroom

“Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future” (1985) was a television movie originally broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 and served as a pilot for a series co-produced with ABC in 1987. It’s widely considered the earliest science fiction TV movie and series of the cyberpunk subgenre. Part of the reason for its enduring cult status is the sharp social satire of its vision of the future which remains topical to this day.

The film takes place in a corporate dystopia controlled by an oligarchy of media conglomerates. Like in Orwell’s 1984, television is used as a tool for propaganda as well as mass surveillance. Similar to Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, reporter Edison Carter works within the system while questioning the ethics of his employer, but unlike Smith, Carter has enough clout and connections to challenge the system and whistleblow  while retaining relative autonomy. He is helped by his producer Theora Jones, computer hacker Bryce Lynch, pirate broadcaster Blank Reg, and rogue artificial intelligence personality Max Headroom.

In Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future, Edison uncovers a conspiracy involving a new commercial technology called blip-verts: subliminal advertising that can cram greater amounts of data into minds of viewers but with devastating side-effects. During the struggle to bring the investigative report to the airwaves, Max Headroom is accidentally unleashed.

Mass Dolphin Deaths Linked to BP Oil Spill

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A study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, produced the strongest evidence to date linking mass dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico to petroleum hydrocarbon exposure and toxicity. The focus of the study, 29 dolphins from Barataria Bay (an area heavily oiled during the BP spill), were found to have lung disease, abnormally low levels of adrenal gland hormones, liver problems and other health effects which are rare but consistent with exposure to oil.

A quarter of the dolphin subjects were found to be significantly underweight, 48 percent were given a guarded prognosis, and 17 percent were in poor or grave condition, meaning they were expected to die soon. The study concludes that the health effects seen in the Barataria Bay dolphins are significant and likely will lead to reduced survival and ability to reproduce.

In an earlier NOAA study in 2011, preliminary research findings indicated oil and Corexit physically stressed Gulf dolphins to death by decreasing their immunity and making them more susceptible to diseases such as brucella and morbillivirus. Morbillivirus was found to be the cause of a majority of dolphin deaths in a recent die off pattern along the Eastern Seaboard throughout the year.

According to a New York Times piece from last Sunday, in the past year at least 1,000 bottlenose dolphin carcasses (eight times the historical average) washed up on beaches in New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. In Florida, 80 dolphins who live permanently in the state’s polluted Indian River Lagoon estuary have died while 233 were reported dead in the northern Gulf of Mexico this year.

While effects of the BP oil spill and corexit haven’t been ruled out as a factor in the East Coast dolphin deaths, research on some of the dead dolphins in the Florida estuary found high levels of mercury, fungal diseases, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, oral-genital tumors and emaciation, most likely a result of environmental pollution.

Swiss to Vote on Basic Income for All

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Switzerland is one of the world’s wealthiest countries per capita, and also one of the most democratic. It’s the only European country with true direct democracy in which all citizens have to do is gather 100,000 signatures calling for a vote to hold a nationwide referendum with a binding result. Last November, Swiss citizens created the so-called 1:12 referendum, which would limit the wages of top executives so they couldn’t earn more in a month than lower paid employees do in a year. That proposal lost the vote, but early next year they’ll have an opportunity to decide on an equally radical referendum: a $2,800 basic income for every adult, whether employed or unemployed. There is currently no minimum wage in Switzerland, but there will also be a vote on that next year.

Anger about salaries and fairness has surged among Swiss voters because some of their biggest banks including UBS are responsible for speculative investment bubbles and continue to pay top executives huge bonuses while reporting huge losses. According to Bloomberg News, Switzerland is home to at least five of Europe’s top 20 paid executives. The inequality pay ratio in Switzerland is 1:194 (while in the U. S., average CEO to average worker compensation was 1:243 in 2010).

The idea of a Basic Income or Universal Wages are not only supported by Marxists and Communists, but have have been gaining traction among Libertarians as well. A great post at Thought Infection recently made an argument for such proposals from a civil libertarian perspective:

Freedom in the 21st century should mean freedom from having to engage in productive work simply to meet your basic needs for comfort and dignity. 

At one time, the ready availability of jobs amply filled the need for a basic access to a comfortable and dignified life, but precipitous technological and economic changes erode this dynamic further each day. The function of the economy has never been to provide gainful employment to people, but simply to provide material goods. As the economy manages to produce more with less human labor, we must create new mechanisms aimed specifically that maintaining and raising the minimum level of comfort and dignity to everyone in a society…

…Worse than just being immoral, the desperate poverty of the lower classes is both immoral and useless. It is not a lack of money that compels the great successes of the modern age, but rather the availability of opportunities. It is because healthy, well-fed people were able to get a good education that allowed us to realize the great miracles of the modern age (eg, the internet, smart phones, Google, etc…). 

We must rebalance the right of society to compel people into productive work with the obligation of society to support its citizens. It should be noted that basic income is not aimed at the unrealisitic and undesirable goal of unfettered access for all to every luxury of the world. Freedom from work does not mean the right to luxury; it simply sets a baseline below which no person should fall. Basic income seeks to strike a fair balance between allowing the benefit of work to coexist with a system aimed at delivering dignity and opportunity for all in a society.

Beyond just better enabling access to opportunities, basic income will also allow people the freedom to live as they choose; to explore unpaid work in the form of volunteering, participating in creative projects, or starting new business ventures. Some argue that there would be less incentive for people to start businesses and be productive, but it could just as easily be argued that it would remove the disincentive from the high-risk, high-reward ventures that are so valuable to modern society…

…Requiring people to live so much of their life working simply to earn a basic income is a waste of human potential and bad for progress. By eliminating the obligation to work just for simple survival, basic income would allow a new dynamic expansion of human freedom and human potential.

A society compelled to perfect cohesion and homogeneity lacks the dynamism to compete in the modern world. New ideas can only come into being at the chaotic interface between contrasting worldviews and lifestyles. In a world where progress is completely reliant on our ability to innovate and create new ideas, we should be seeking to maximize the spectrum of lifestyles which can be expressed within the society. By removing the need to work just to live, we will let people explore their true potential, and we will realize the untold benefits of a new dynamism.  

And this brings us to the real reason that I think basic income will happen soon, not only because it is morally the right thing to do (which it is), but because it makes good sense economically. Just as slavery ended when factories made the economic model of slavery obsolete, we will move towards basic income because it makes good economic sense for the modern innovation economy.

Dynamic, creative and competitive economies of today must seek to stretch the social fabric to its limits. Basic income will serve to reinforce this fabric and enable the risky ventures that will power us forward in the 21st century.

Read the full article here: http://thoughtinfection.com/2013/12/15/basic-income-means-basic-freedom/

 

83 Numbers From 2013 That Are Almost Too Crazy to Believe

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Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog recently compiled a long list of astounding social-economic statistics from the past year. They paint a bleak picture of the future of our current economic system and unless major changes are made, the numbers will only worsen in 2014. There’s probably many more indicators left off the list, but just a small sampling of what’s on it would be enough to worry even the most die-hard optimists:

#1 Most people that hear this statistic do not believe that it is actually true, but right now an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job.  That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

#2 Because of the lack of jobs, poverty is spreading like wildfire in the United States.  According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.

#3 As society breaks down, the government feels a greater need than ever before to watch, monitor and track the population.  For example, every single day the NSA intercepts and permanently stores close to 2 billion emails and phone calls in addition to a whole host of other data.

#4 The Bank for International Settlements says that total public and private debt levels around the globe are now 30 percent higher than they were back during the financial crisis of 2008.

#5 According to a recent World Bank report, private domestic debt in China has grown from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

#6 In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left.

#7 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

#8 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets.  The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

#9 JPMorgan Chase is roughly the size of the entire British economy.

#10 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

#11 Right now, four of the “too big to fail” banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

#12 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

#13 According to the Bank for International Settlements, the global financial system has a total of 441 trillion dollars worth of exposure to interest rate derivatives.

#14 Through the end of November, approximately 365,000 Americans had signed up for Obamacare but approximately 4 million Americans had already lost their current health insurance policies because of Obamacare.

#15 It is being projected that up to 100 million more Americans could have their health insurance policies canceled by the time Obamacare is fully rolled out.

#16 At this point, 82.4 million Americans live in a home where at least one person is enrolled in the Medicaid program.

#17 It is has been estimated that Obamacare will add 21 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#18 It is being projected that health insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent under Obamacare.

#19 One couple down in Texas received a letter from their health insurance company that informed them that they were being hit with a 539 percent rate increase because of Obamacare.

#20 Back in 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#21 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

#22 Incredibly, 74 percent of all the wealth in the United States is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans.

#23 According to Consumer Reports, the number of children in the United States taking antipsychotic drugs has nearly tripled over the past 15 years.

#24 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of just 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.

#25 According to a shocking new study, the average American that turned 65 this year will receive $327,500 more in federal benefits than they paid in taxes over the course of their lifetimes.

#26 In just one week in December, a combined total of more than 2000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

#27 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.

#28 The rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.

#29 Only 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point.

#30 The unemployment rate in the eurozone recently hit a new all-time high of 12.2 percent.

#31 If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#32 In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

#33 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006.  Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

#34 Only 19 percent of all Americans believe that the job market is better than it was a year ago.

#35 Just 14 percent of all Americans believe that the stock market will rise next year.

#36 According to CNBC, Pinterest is currently valued at more than 3 billion dollars even though it has never earned a profit.

#37 Twitter is a seven-year-old company that has never made a profit.  It actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter.  But according to the financial markets it is currently worth about 22 billion dollars.

#38 Right now, Facebook is trading at a valuation that is equivalent to approximately 100 years of earnings, and it is currently supposedly worth about 115 billion dollars.

#39 Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.

#40 Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.

#41 At this moment, there are 6 million Americans in the 16 to 24-year-old age group that are neither in school or working.

#42 The “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has just hit a brand new all-time record high.

#43 It is hard to believe, but in America today one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency.

#44 Middle-wage jobs accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession, but they have accounted for only 22 percent of the jobs created since then.

#45 According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all U.S. workers make less than $20,000 a year.

#46 Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

#47 After accounting for inflation, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#48 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#49 Investors pulled an astounding 72 billion dollars out of bond mutual funds in 2013.  It was the worst year for bond funds ever.

#50 Small business is rapidly dying in America.  At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed.  That is an all-time record low.

#51 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

#52 Once January 1st hits, it will officially be illegal to manufacture or import traditional incandescent light bulbs in the United States.  It is being projected that millions of Americans will attempt to stock up on the old light bulbs before they are totally gone from store shelves.

#53 The Japanese government has estimated that approximately 300 tons of highly radioactive water is being released into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear facility every single day.

#54 Back in 1967, the U.S. military had more than 31,000 strategic nuclear warheads.  That number is already being cut down to 1,550, and now Barack Obama wants to reduce it to only about 1,000.

#55 As you read this, 60 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty and there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.

#56 Wal-Mart recently opened up two new stores in Washington D.C., and more than 23,000 people applied for just 600 positions.  That means that only about 2.6 percent of the applicants were ultimately hired.  In comparison, Harvard offers admission to 6.1 percent of their applicants.

#57 At this point, almost half of all public school students in America come from low income homes.

#58 Tragically, there are 1.2 million students that attend public schools in the United States that are homeless.  That number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.

#59 According to a Gallup poll that was recently released, 20.0 percent of all Americans did not have enough money to buy food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year.  That is just under the all-time record of 20.4 percent that was set back in November 2008.

#60 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

#61 Right now, one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.

#62 The U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#63 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#64 According to one survey, approximately 75 percent of all American women do not have any interest in dating unemployed men.

#65 China exports 4 billion pounds of food to the United States every year.

#66 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

#67 The number of Americans on Social Security Disability now exceeds the entire population of Greece, and the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

#68 It is being projected that the number of Americans on Social Security will rise from 57 million today to more than 100 million in 25 years.

#69 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars.  Today it is over 56 trillion dollars.

#70 Back on September 30th, 2012 our national debt was sitting at a total of 16.1 trillion dollars.  Today, it is up to 17.2 trillion dollars.

#71 The U.S. government “rolled over” more than 7.5 trillion dollars of existing debt in fiscal 2013.

#72 If the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#73 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 101 percent.

#74 The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the Obama administration.  In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

#75 The federal government is borrowing (stealing) roughly 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.

#76 At this point, the U.S. already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

#77 Japan now has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 211 percent.

#78 As of December 5th, 83 volcanic eruptions had been recorded around the planet so far this year.  That is a new all-time record high.

#79 53 percent of all Americans do not have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.

#80 Violent crime in the United States was up 15 percent last year.

#81 According to a very surprising survey that was recently conducted, 68 percent of all Americans believe that the country is currently on the wrong track.

#82 Back in 1972, 46 percent of all Americans believed that “most people can be trusted”.  Today, only 32 percent of all Americans believe that “most people can be trusted”.

#83 According to a recent Pew Research survey, only 19 percent of all Americans trust the government.   Back in 1958, 73 percent of all Americans trusted the government. [While it’s unfortunate we can’t trust government, it’s a good thing that more are now aware of reasons why we shouldn’t trust it.]

News Video Roundup

12/11 A short but informative primer on the TPP:

12/11 Abby Martin critiques a New York Magazine article distorting and dismissing CIA drug smuggling operations:

12/12 Retired Marine General Michael Lehnert on why Guantanamo is a mistake and should be shut down:

12/12 Activist pranksters hijack a Shell Oil greenwashing event in Berlin (click “CC” icon for subtitles):

12/13 Joy Camp selling RFID chips in the style of a pharmaceutical commercial:

12/13 James Corbett on how to nullify the NSA and other tyrannical government agencies:

12/14 We Are Change interviews the Florida cop arrested for refusing to remove a Guy Fawkes mask: