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Notes Toward a Future of Activism

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anonymous_telecomix_2012_5_31

By Micah White

Source: Reconstruction 10.3

<1> Contemporary activism begins from the realization that for the first time in history, a synergy of catastrophes face us. Our physical environment is dying, our financial markets are collapsing and our culture, fed on a diet of junk thought, is atrophying — unable to muster the intellectual courage to face our predicament. While some may caution against immediate action by pointing out that societies often predict perils that never come, what is remarkable about our times is that the apocalypse has already happened.

<2> When we compare the anxiety of our age to that of the Cold War era, we see that what differentiates the two periods is where the threat is temporally located. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear destruction was always imagined to be in the future. What terrorized the Cold War generation was the thought of life after a nuclear holocaust. Anxiety was therefore centered on what life would be like “the day after” the future event, which was symbolized by the blinding light of a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Thus the post-apocalyptic narrative was deployed in a series of nuclear holocaust science-fiction stories either to mobilize fear in the name of anti-nuke peace — the exemplar of this tactic being the horrifying and scientifically realistic 1984 BBC docudrama Threads in which civilization collapses into barbarism — or, like Pat Frank’s 1959 novel Alas, Babylon, convince a wary public that winning and happily surviving nuclear war is possible, given resourcefulness, discipline and patriotism.

<3> But for those of us alive today, the catastrophic event is not located in the future. There is no “post”-apocalyptic per se because we are already living in the apocalyptic. And although we can anticipate that life is going to get starker, darker and hellish, the essential feature of our times remains that we do not fear the future as much as we fear the present. We can notice this temporal shift in the work of James Lovelock, whose Gaia Hypothesis is gaining traction inside and outside of the scientific community. According to Lovelock’s latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, even if we were to immediately cease all C02 emissions, sudden and drastic climate change will still occur. In fact, Lovelock argues that a drastic decrease in emissions would trigger climate catastrophe immediately whereas continuing emissions will trigger climate catastrophe eventually and unpredictably. This realization — that the line into a post-climate-change world has already been crossed — fundamentally changes the temporal and spatial assumptions underpinning activist struggles. And the first aspect of activism that must be rethought is our notion of temporality.

<4> The typical activist project is inscribed within the horizon of a modern conception of temporality. The modernist activist acts as if we occupy a present moment that is a discrete point on the linear progression between a mythical, ancient past and an either utopian or dystopian future. But if we accept this model, then the goal of the activist can only be to change the future by preventing the dystopian possibility from being realized. This involves pushing for changes in laws and behaviors in the present that will impact our predictions of how the future will be. But activism based on this temporal model — which as John Foster points out in The Sustainability Mirage: Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change underpins “green capitalism” and “sustainable development” — inevitably fails. For one, unable to accurately predict the future, we constantly play the game of basing our actions on rosy predictions while the future grows increasingly gloomier. Another problem with relying on linear temporality is the assumption that time moves in only one direction. Without the freedom to imagine going backwards, we are left the task of steering the runaway train of industrialization without hope of turning around.

<5> Of course, linear time is not the only way to understand temporality and some models can have even worse political consequences. Take for example, the notion that time is cyclical. For the Roman Stoics, time was marked by a series of conflagrations in which the world was razed and a new one formed only to be razed again. In times of adversity when resistance seems impossible, such as the build-up to World War 2, a watered down version of cyclical temporality sometimes enters the cultural consciousness. It infected Nazis who cheered total war and anti-Nazis who used the spurious argument that only by a catastrophic Nazi triumph would a communist state be realized because only then would the people rise up. A similar line of thought was pursued by Martin Heidegger in a letter to Ernst Jünger in which he wondered if the only way to “cross the line” into a new world is to bring the present world to its awful culmination. Unlike the linear conception of time that calls the activist to act in order to realize an alternate future, the cyclical conception is often leveraged to justify inaction or worse, action contrary to one’s ideals.

<6> To escape the problems of linear time and cyclical time, activism must rely on a new temporality. Perhaps the best articulation of this new activist temporality is in the work of Slavoj Žižek. In his most recent book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek blames the failure of contemporary activism on our assumption that time is a one-way line from past to future. He argues that activism is failing to avert the coming catastrophe because it is premised on the same notions of linear time that underpin industrial society. According to Žižek, therefore, a regeneration of activism must begin with a change in temporality. Paraphrasing Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek writes, “if we are to confront adequately the threat of (social or environmental) catastrophe, we need to break out of this ‘historical’ notion of temporality: we have to introduce a new notion of time.” This new notion of time is a shift of perspective from historical progress to that of the timelessness of a revolutionary moment.

<7> The role of the activist should not be to push history in the right direction but instead to disrupt it altogether. Žižek writes, “this is what a proper political act would be today: not so much to unleash a new movement, as to interrupt the present predominant movement. An act of ‘divine violence’ would then mean pulling the emergency cord on the train of Historical Progress.” To accomplish this act of revolutionary violence involves a switch of perspective from the present-looking-forward to the future-looking-backward. Instead of trying to influence the future by acting in the present, Žižek argues that we should start from the assumption that the dread catastrophic event — whether it be sudden climate catastrophe, a “grey goo” nano-crisis or widespread adoption of cyborg technologies — has already happened, and then work backwards to figure out what we should have done. “We have to accept that, at the level of possibilities, our future is doomed, that the catastrophe will take place, that it is our destiny — and then, against the background of this acceptance, mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the past.” In other words, only by assuming that the feared event has already happened, can we imagine what actions would need to have been taken to prevent its occurrence. These steps would then be actualized by the present day activist. “Paradoxically,” he concludes, “the only way to prevent the disaster is to accept it as inevitable.”

<8> Žižek is right to suggest that activism is at a crossroads; any honest activist will admit that lately our signature moves have failed to arouse more than a tepid response. The fact is that our present is being swallowed by the future we dreaded — the dystopian sci-fi nightmare of enforced consumerism and planet-wide degradation is, day-by-day, our new reality. And thus, activism faces a dilemma: how to walk the line between false hope and pessimistic resignation. It is no longer tenable to hold the nostalgic belief that educating the population, recycling and composting our waste and advocating for “green capitalism” will snatch us from the brink. Likewise, it is difficult to muster the courage to act when the apocalyptic collapse of civilization seems unavoidable, imminent and, in our misanthropic moments, potentially desirable. Žižek’s shift in temporality offers us a way to balance the paralyzing realization that our demise is inevitable with the motivating belief that we can change our destiny. By accepting that as the world is now we are doomed, we free ourselves to break from normalcy and act with the revolutionary fervor needed to achieve the impossible.

<9> The question for would-be activists is therefore not, “how does one engage in meaningful activism when the future is so bleak?” but instead “how does one engage in revolutionary activism when the present is so dark?”

<10> Corresponding to the necessary temporality shift is a spatial change in activism. The future of activism will be the transformation of strictly materialist struggles over the physical environment into cultural struggles over the mental environment. Green environmentalism, red communism and black anarchism will merge into blue mental environmentalism — activism to save our mental environment will eclipse activism to reclaim our physical environment. A key opening to this new form of politics appeared in 1989 with the founding of Adbusters, the internationally distributed anti-consumerism magazine whose subtitle is The Journal of the Mental Environment.

<11> Adbusters is a Situationist inspired offspring of the environmentalism movement. At the time of its formation, there was an active anti-logging movement in British Columbia, Canada. And responding to sagging public support for cutting down old growth trees, the logging industry introduced the “Forests Forever” advertising campaign. As the name suggestions, this campaign argued that the logging industry was not cutting down forests as much as they were protecting forests. It was the kind of disingenuous advertising ploy known as “greenwashing”– a term that, it is worth noting, originated in that same year. Disgusted by what he saw, Kalle Lasn, who was an experimental filmmaker at the time, created a short claymation anti-ad in which an old-growth tree explains to a sapling that a ancient forests are being replaced by tree farms. His intention was to air the anti-ad on the same television stations that the logging industry had used.

<12> When Lasn tried to buy airtime for his anti-ad on the same television station that aired the Forests Forever advertisements, he was refused. That was the founding event of Adbusters: the realization that while corporations can lie to us via the airwaves, we are unable to respond using the same means. But the message of Adbusters goes beyond concerns over the veracity of the information we receive — and here we would do well to follow Jacques Ellul who spoke of the difficulty in distinguishing between information and propaganda. Instead, it is a matter of how the advertisements we see populate our minds with a picture of reality. This picture of reality, our worldview, colors everything we perceive. Thus, the mental environmentalist movement is concerned with the pollution of our minds.

<13> While some may wish to frame this transition in terms of a new development, I think it is just as accurate to view it as an old phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, for example, “pollution” had an exclusively unscientific, immaterial and spiritual meaning. In the 14th century to pollute meant to desecrate, defile, or contaminate what is sacred such as one’s soul or moral sensibility. Not until the late nineteenth-century did pollution take on the scientific and materialist connotation it has today. The unfortunate consequence is that with the changing meaning of the word pollution, we’ve become increasingly concerned about desecration of our external, natural environment while ignoring the defilement of our internal, mental environment. The future of activism is a return to the early meaning of pollution.

<14> Activism is entering a new era in which environmentalism will cease viewing our mental environment as secondary to our physical environment. No longer neglecting one in favor of the other, we will see a push on both fronts as the only possible way of changing either. This will involve a shift away from a materialist worldview that imagines there to be a one-way avenue between our interior reality and the external reality. Instead, recognition of the permeability of this barrier, an exploration of the mutually sustaining relationship between mindscape and landscape, will open, and reopen, new paths for politics.

<15> This movement toward an activism of the mental environment is based on an ontological argument that can be stated succinctly: our minds influence reality and reality influences our minds. Although simply stated, this proposition has profound implications because it challenges the West’s long standing Cartesian divisions between internal and external reality that serve to ignore the danger of mental toxins. Whereas traditional politics has assumed a static mind that can only be addressed in terms of its rational beliefs, blue activism believes in changing external reality by addressing the health of our internal environment. This comes from an understanding that our mental environment influences which beings manifest, and which possibilities actualize, in our physical reality.

<16> At first it may seem like a strange argument. But the imaginary has been a part of environmentalism since the beginning. Most people trace the lineage of the modern environmentalist movement back to Rachel Carson’s 1961 Silent Spring. Carson’s book argued that the accumulation of toxic chemicals in our environment could work its way up the food chain, causing a widespread die- off. It may not have been the first time the bioaccumulation argument had been made, but it was the first time that it resonated with people. Suddenly, a movement of committed activists and everyday citizens rallied under the environmentalism flag.

<17> Looking back on Carson’s book from the perspective of mental environmentalism, it is significant that it begins, not with hard science as we may expect because Carson was a trained scientist, but with fantasy. The first chapter, entitled “A Fable for Tomorrow,” reads like a fairy tale: “There once was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” She then goes on to describe an idyllic, pastoral community known for its abundant agriculture and wild biodiversity. She writes of foxes and deer; laurel, virburnum and alder; wild birds and trout. However, the beauty of the place is not permanent – an evil, invisible malady spreads across the land. Birds die, plants wilt and nature grows silent. The suggestion is that the land has been cursed; if this were a different story perhaps the farmers would have prayed, offered sacrifices to the gods or asked their ancestors for help. Instead, Carson shifts the blame away from transcendental forces and back to the materialist domain of man. “No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life on this stricken world.” Carson concludes, “The people had done it to themselves.”

<18> Some literary critics have argued that the reason “Silent Spring” resonated with the larger public, sparking a movement of everyday people is largely due to this opening fable. They explain that Carson’s story takes Cold War era fears of radioactivity (an invisible, odorless killer) and redirect them into a new fear over environmental pollution that is, likewise, an invisible, odorless killer. This is a compelling interpretation that explains the rhetorical power of Carson’s story but it misses the larger point. Namely, that at its origin, environmentalism was grounded in a mythological story about a cursed land. Faced with a choice over whether to continue in this fantastical, narrative vein or enter the domain of scientific facts, environmentalism tried the latter. Environmentalism has thus become a scientific expedition largely regulated by Western scientists who tell us how many ppb of certain pollutants will be toxic and how many degrees hotter our earth can be before we are doomed. But here we see again the linear temporal model cropping up again which may explain the inability, according to James Lovelock, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to predict the rising temperatures we have experienced. In light of the failures of the exclusively scientific approach, it is worth considering another option.

<19> What if Carson had written about how the disappearance of birds was accompanied by the appearance of flickering screens in every home? What if she had drawn a connection between the lack of biodiversity and the dearth of infodiversity? Or the decrease in plant life and the increase in advertised life? To do so would necessitate a new worldview: a blue worldview that acknowledges the interconnection between mental pollution and environmental degradation, spiritual desecration and real-world extinctions.

<20> Keeping one foot within the domain of imagination, environmentalism could speak not only of the disappearance of the wild birds due to physical pollutants but also their disappearance due to mental pollutants. We could wonder at the connection between a culture’s inability to name more than a handful of plants, and the lack of biodiversity in the surrounding nature. And instead of assuming that the lack of biodiversity in external reality caused our poor recognition skills, we would entertain the opposite possibility: that the fewer plants we recognize, the fewer plants will manifest.

<21> Blue activism begins with the realization that internal reality is connected to external reality and then wonders at the relation between pollution of internal reality and the desecration of external reality. The primary pollutant of our mental environment is corporate communication. It is no longer controversial to claim that advertisers stimulate false desires. Any parent knows that after their child watches the Saturday morning cartoons they will suddenly “need” new toys, new treats, new junk. But the effects of advertising go beyond, what the marketers call, “demand generation”. Advertising obliterates autopoesis, self-creation. It is an info-toxin that damages our imagination and our world picture, essential elements of our mental environment. Activists must work on the assumption that there is a connection between the level of pollution in our minds and the prevalence of pollution in our world. At the most basic level, this is because when our minds are polluted, and our imaginations stunted, we are unable to think of a different way of doing things. At a more complex level, it is because our mental environment dictates, to a certain extent, whether certain beings manifest in our physical environment. Naming calls beings into existence and when all the words we know are corporate-speak, the only beings that will manifesto are corporate- owned.

<22> To understand how the pollution of the mental environment can impact the manifestation of beings, consider the story of the Passenger Pigeon. In 1810 one of the great American ornithologists, Alexander Wilson, observed a flock of Passenger Pigeons so plentiful that it blacked out the sun for three days. On another occasion he documented a flock estimated to be two hundred and forty miles long and a mile wide and comprised of over a billion — 1,000,000,000 — birds. A century later, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914. How do we explain this alarming extinction of the Passenger Pigeon?

<23> If we take a materialist activist position, then we will argue that their sudden demise is due to a combination of forces, all of which are located outside the psyche: overhunting combined with unenforced laws against killing the birds in their nesting places was exacerbated by the telegraph which was used to track the birds over hundreds of miles. The species death of the passenger pigeon is thus interpreted as a tragedy of specific technologies: guns, nets, laws and communication systems. Of course, this account is not wrong; it would be mistaken to argue that these technologies did not play a major factor in their extinction.

<24> But physical environmentalism boils down to conservationism. It is allopathic, only able to treat the symptom, the disappearance of the birds, without considering the root cause. By focusing our attention exclusively on material forces, we are confined to certain activist tactics: a spectrum from reformist gestures of calling for greater enforcement of environmental protection laws, courageous tree sits and militant ELF arsons. And while these actions are commendable, and with open acknowledgment that a diversity of tactics is necessary, the focus on a secular materialist politics is limiting our success. Under this model, Ted Turner is considered a philanthropic hero because he is the nation’s largest landowner and maintains the largest privately owned bison herd. What we do not need is a rich patron of endangered species, but instead a world without endangered species. That requires more than money, it necessitates a paradigm shift.

<25> The unexplainable extinction of the passenger pigeon is a symptom of the state of our mental environment. Species facing extinction can only be saved if we take their disappearance as a symptom and address the root cause of their disappearance. Because of an over-reliance on a secular, materialist conception of politics, scientists dictate the aims of activists. The irony is that our exclusive concern over the physical environment renders us unable to save it.

<26> The curious interplay between our imagination and external reality gives credence to the argument that the struggles over the mental environment are the future of activism. The future of activism begins with the realization that only with a clear mind, a clean mental environment, do we approach the possibility of a clean physical environment.

<27> Dispel immediately the notion that our mental environment is unique to each individual. Just as we share our natural environment, we also share our mental environment, which is crafted through the culture we consume – the television shows we watch, the websites we frequent and the symbols and concepts that comprise our thoughts. Thus, the mental environment is not something entirely within us but is instead something that is outside of our complete control and shared collectively.

<28> Activism of the mental environmentalism is not a politics of solipsism, or an attempt to dodge the imperative of direct action. Instead, developing a politics of anti-consumerism and anti-materialism, places the role of imagination back into the forefront. Denying corporations the right to dominate our mental environment is the most effective long-term strategy of insurrection in the twenty- first century because it directly influences the manifestation of our natural environment. By targeting the mental polluters, vandalizing billboards and blacking out advertisements, we do more than clean up urban blight — we clear a creative space for a revolutionary moment.

FBI Agent Who Executed Ibragim Todashev is a Corrupt Ex-Oakland Cop

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Ibragim Todashev

By Joanne Potter and Abby Martin

Source: Media Roots

The city of Boston was shaken last year when its marathon was tragically bombed, leaving three people dead and 264 others injured. The alleged mastermind behind the deadly attacks, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with Boston police. His little brother and alleged co-perpetrator, Dzhohar, is now awaiting trial and will potentially face execution.

Amidst the insanity ensuing from last year’s horrors, one story was largely swept under the rug: the bizarre execution of 27 year old Chechan-American Ibragim Todashev. A month after the bombings, Todashev was interrogated by state and federal officials at his Orlando apartment about his alleged association with the Tsarneavs and his purported role in the Waltham triple murders of 2011.

According to official reports, Todashev was in the process of writing a confession to the Waltham homicides when for no apparent reason, he ‘flipped out’ and propelled a coffee table into the air, striking the agent on the back of his head. He then ran to the kitchen area of his apartment and armed himself with a red pole/broom handle. The unnamed FBI agent shot Todashev seven times, once in the head.

Earlier this year, an internal FBI investigation and Florida State Attorney cleared the FBI agent who fatally shot Ibragim Todashev of any wrong doing. Prosecutor Jeffrey L. Ashton ruled the shooting was reasonable in that: ‘the actions of the Special Agent of the FBI were justified in self-defense and in defense of another’.

Aaron McFarlane

Recent unredacted documents reveal the unnamed agent to be Special Agent Aaron McFarlane, an ex-Oakland police officer with quite a controversial record in his short stint on the force.

The ‘Riders’ case was the biggest police corruption scandal ever witnessed by Oakland Police Department. It cost the Department nearly $11 million to settle civil lawsuits by 119 people who claimed they were falsely arrested, beaten, and had evidence falsified against them. The plaintiffs also alleged that Oakland Police Department turned a blind eye to the police misconduct.

Officers Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno, and Matthew Hornung stood accused of 26 counts including kidnapping, assault, conspiracy, false arrests and lying in police reports. McFarlane testified in defense of Mabanag, stating that he had always taught him how to write accurate police reports. However, under cross-examination it was alleged that McFarlane had falsified his own reports at the request of the group’s leader. Once he was faced with evidence proving his guilt, McFarlane pled the fifth.

After five years and two mistrials, the charges were dismissed against the three officers. McFarlane was never charged in connection with falsifying police reports or potentially lying on the witness stand. Regardless, he ended up in legal trouble for committing the same types of actions as the riders.

In November 2003, a man named Aaron Girard filed a civil suit against Aaron McFarlane and his Oakland PD colleague, Steven Nowak, for aggravated battery, false arrest, violation of his civil rights and emotional distress. Girard stated he had witnessed McFarlane and Nowak physically beating an individual who had already been subdued in front of a hospital. Girard took a photograph of the incident and when McFarlane and Nowak realized, they attacked him. The plaintiff alleged he was beaten, kicked and punched around the body, suffering injuries to his shoulder, arm, knee and neck. He claimed he was then falsely arrested by McFarlane and Nowak. Neither McFarlane nor Nowak ever faced charges over the incident.

Additionally, both officers were previously sued by a man named Michael Cole, who filed his complaint on March 26 of the same year (2003). The full details of the complaint are unavailable, although the pair were accused of beating the plaintiff with a ‘hand foot and billy club’ before falsely imprisoning him.

After serving only four years in the police force, Macfarlane retired on disability with a leg injury, collecting a pension of more than $52 thousand dollars annually for the rest of his life.

In his short time as an officer, McFarlane had been accused of falsifying police reports, lying under oath, aggravated battery, making false arrests, violating the rights of suspects, assault with a weapon and false imprisonment, yet was never convicted of any charges.

Other than the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of Ibragim Todashev, it is not known if Aaron McFarlane has ever been involved in any other incident after leaving the Oakland Police Department. And it’s not likely to be known, considering the agency’s secrecy surrounding the release of his identity.

According to Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU of  Massachusetts,

“We still don’t know what happened…nor why the explanations from those who were present at the shooting death have been inconsistent, suggesting at various times that Mr. Todashev allegedly threatened agents, including with a knife, a pipe, a stick or pole, an agent’s gun, the deceased’s martial arts training, or even a samurai sword.”

Unfortunately, the investigators on the case weren’t able to interview McFarlane himself about what happened, and had to rely only on prewritten statements.

This alone should prove the report is inconclusive, and prompt the investigation to re-open. However, a New York Times FOIA request reveals that between 1993 and 2011, FBI agents fatally shot about 70 subjects and wounded 80 others, and in every single case, the agent’s use of force was determined to be justified.

When a federal agency coordinates with so many forces to try to suppress the truth, there’s usually something to hide.

**

Watch Abby Martin break down Aaron McFarlane’s track record and the case of Ibragim Todashev starting at 14:45:

Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan Sentenced to 3 Months in Jail, 5 Years Probation

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Cecily McMillan being arrested as the NYPD clears Zuccotti Park during a six-month memorial celebration of the Occupy Movement in March 2012

Cecily McMillan being arrested as the NYPD clears Zuccotti Park during a six-month memorial celebration of the Occupy Movement in March 2012

By Dave Lindorff

Source: This Can’t Be Happening

Occupy activist Cecily McMillan, convicted on May 5 of second-degree felony assault of a New York cop whom she and witnesses claimed had grabbed her breast from behind, bruising it, stood her ground before her sentence was rendered, refusing the judge’s insistence that she should “take responsibility for her conduct.”

Risking the possibility that Judge Ronald Zwiebel might sentence her to the maximum seven years for the charge she was convicted of, McMillan would only apologize for what she termed “the accident” of involuntarily throwing back her elbow when grabbed by behind from someone she could not even see. Insisting to the judge that she lived in accordance to the “law of love,” she said, in her pre-sentencing statement, “Violence is not permitted. This being the law that I live by, I can say with certainty that I am innocent of the crime I have been convicted of… I cannot confess to a crime that I did not commit. I cannot throw away my dignity in return for my freedom.”

It was a bold and risky stand for the 25-year-old New School for Social Research graduate student to take, given the high sentencing stakes. In the end, though, the judge, — who during the trial had blocked her defense from presenting key evidence that she had acted in her own defense against being groped by a cop (for example the police officer’s record of brutality and corruption), while allowing the prosecution to present evidence and statements normally not considered permissible in a trial (such as presenting to the jury evidence about an arrest of McMillan that had not yet been tried or adjudicated) — sentenced her to only a short term in jail.

She still has a five-year felony probationary sentence, which leaves her a convicted felon, a serious impediment to employment, and one that could leave her subject to limitations on her freedom of movement for five years.

McMillan’s many supporters nonetheless hailed the short sentence, which could see her released in as little as 60 days, as a victory, one which many attributed to the massive outpouring of support she has received since her arrest, during her trial, and since especially since her conviction. That support has included a jailhouse visit by two members of Pussy Riot, who condemned her conviction and jailing, a letter of of support from the president of the New School, support from five members of the New York City Council (but so far not a word from New York City’s supposedly leftist and former activist Mayor Bill De Blasio), an online petition signed by over 167,000 people, and an unusual letter from nine of the 12 jurors in her case calling on the judge not to sentence her to any jail time.

McMillan’s attorney Martin Stolar, said he was “relieved” that her sentence was not two years, but also said that he had appealed the conviction to the state’s Court of Appeal.

The 5/14 episode of the “This Can’t Be Happening” podcast featuring McMillan’s attorney Martin Stolar and Lucy Parks, a member of her support team at JusticeforCecily.com, who provide more background about the case.

http://s51.podbean.com/pb/731f8f8398fd122e92501fb18648dbdc/537ae434/data1/blogs18/661545/uploads/ThisCantBeHappening_051414.mp3

This American Empire, It Too Will Collapse

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Imperial_Overreach

By Dave Lefcourt

Source: RINF.com

Here is my sense; like all empires before it this American one reached its apex after WWII. It’s on a downward trajectory and will eventually fall or be overtaken.

And I believe most Americans will be taken by surprise as in “How could this happen”?

That’s because most Americans are in the words of Paul Craig Roberts “insouciant”, without a care, too passively indifferent, too besotted with technological gadgetry, have feelings of entitlement and believe in American exceptionalism to bother to notice their government has become sinister-which most others in the world recognize, but their governments too intimidated or blackmailed into following us or they will be demonized. Think Iran, Iraq under Saddam-though earlier an ally in his war with Iran in the 80′s-now the newly announced new cold war with Russia and soon to be China.

As for us Americans take an honest look at what passes for our modern American “culture” nowadays-and contributes to maintaining domestic tranquility at all costs. In no particular order:

Consumerism-excessive and beyond all need. And in conjunction with it

Corporatism and commercialization of the public square i.e. the “mallization” of America.

Sports mania, particularly over Pro football and its marketing.

Popular movies featuring gore, crashes, mayhem, aliens, illusion, “virtual” characters replacing real people.

Celebrity gossip as “news”.

Government surveillance by way of technological gadgetry-cell phones, ipods, computers, email, GPS, EZ pass, toll cameras.

MSM becoming complicit in government actions and its propaganda

Addiction with drugs and alcohol

Incarceration-the highest rates of all 1 st world industrialized democraci

Militarization of local and state police

A trillion dollars in college student debt.

Though certainly not contributing to maintaining domestic tranquility, throw in the bailouts of the big banks too big to fail, income inequality worse than the 1920′s and clearly articulated in the 2011 occupy movement that coined the disparity between the 1% and the 99%, no single payer universal health insurance coverage for all, ignoring global warming and the further despoiling of the environment, the demise of domestic manufacturing, the outsourcing of jobs, home foreclosures and bankruptcy stemming from unscrupulous lenders et al and domestically its an America becoming unrecognizable to these old eyes.

As for the policies and actions of our government that unmistakably reveals its true nature, here again in no particular order are:

  • The war industry-the trillion dollar military/corporate/political complex and its revolving door of key players that move seamlessly between each to maintain its control. The other key element is the creation of,
  • “Enemies” contrived such as the “global war on terror”, and the new “cold war” with Russia.
  • Initiating unnecessary and illegal wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq
  • CIA coups, assassinations to create instability to promote endless war
  • NSA surveillance of everyone in the world through “back doors” of computers and software
  • Absolute control of the political agenda and the enacting of laws, regulations oversight and enforcement to the benefit of corporate interests
  • Justice Department lawyers writing memos “legalizing” all executive actions but kept secret for reasons of national security with no oversight by the Congress or the courts
  • Exercise hegemony worldwide, surround Iran, Russia with “allies”, NATO, a thousand military bases worldwide and a floating armada of carrier task forces
  • Initiate cyberwarfare as was done in Iran in 2010 and its enrichment of uranium
  • Engage in extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of suspects
  • Targeting and prosecuting whistleblowers, hounding Edward Snowden for exposing the NSA‘s illegal surveillance practices.

These domestic and foreign policies and actions are not those of a government that is representative of the people in a democratic republic. These are policies and actions of a plutocracy of oligarchs and an empire willing to go to any length to maintain its hegemony worldwide and control domestically.

Incredibly, what’s propping up this edifice of domestic indulgence and propaganda and foreign villainy is the FED printing money, selling billions in treasury notes to China, Japan, even Russia underpinned by what else, our previous debt in the trillions and all based on the assumption these countries will continue to buy our debt. But it’s a form of blackmail these other countries have accepted, at least for the present. That can’t last forever.

For sure one can’t predict the actual demise of an empire, even the American one. But hubris, American exceptionalism, the sense of entitlement and the idea of it being the “indispensible nation” surely won’t save it from the trash heap of other empires long gone. Such illusions may contribute, even hasten that inevitable collapse.

Dave is the author of “DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW THE MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA AND HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK”, Authorhouse, 2009

5/15 Global Day of Solidarity for Fast Food Workers

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The New Yorker Daily, December 5 2013

The New Yorker Daily, December 5 2013

Today is the day of the largest global fast food strike yet, targeting major chain restaurants including McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and KFC. Organized with the help of Fast Food Forward, the Service Employees International Union and a number of regional activist organizations, fast food workers in 150 cities and 33 countries (including Morocco, Japan, India, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and New Zealand) are taking action for better pay and working conditions.

RT will post updates of the event throughout the day here: http://rt.com/news/159180-fast-food-worker-strike/

Sarah Kendzior describes the nature of the struggle that fast food employees commonly experience in the following excerpt from “The Minimum Wage Worker Strikes Back”:

Jenina dropped out of nursing school after her mother lost her job, because she needed the tuition money to pay bills. Her income from McDonald’s, where she started working as a high school senior, helps support her mother and younger sister. Patrick’s Chipotle income helps support his mother, a makeup artist who has struggled to find steady work since the recession. Krystal’s Taco Bell income helps support her son; her sister, who lives with her and works at Jack in the Box; and now, her newborn daughter.

Every worker I interview is supporting someone: an unemployed parent, a child, a sibling, a friend. Most of their friends and family members work in fast food or other service industries. Everyone is in their twenties or older. All but one is African-American.

They dream of different jobs. The women want to be nurses, the men want to work in the automotive or culinary industries. But no one can pay for training when they cannot save for day to day, much less for the future.

As a result, fast food workers are turning to activism: not out of ideological motives, but because overturning the economic system seems more feasible than purchasing the credentials for a new career.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/debt-ridden/fa4c36eb306b

The US Government Thinks it Can Fool Us into a War with Russia

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By Nick Bernabe

Source: The Anti-Media

It seems like only a few months ago (because it was) when the government that rules America was condemning the brutal crackdown against protesters by the Ukrainian government. The then-Russian backed regime was fending off large crowds of protesters who were angry about the Ukrainian government’s close ties with Russia, resorting to violence and anti-riot tactics to disperse the crowds.

In a statement issued by the White House on January 19th, before the new Western backed ‘legitimate’ government of Ukraine took power, US officials condemned the violence against protesters:

“We are deeply concerned by the violence taking place today on the streets of Kyiv and urge all sides to immediately de-escalate the situation. The increasing tension in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the government failing to acknowledge the legitimate grievances of its people.

Instead, it has moved to weaken the foundations of Ukraine’s democracy by criminalizing peaceful protest and stripping civil society and political opponents of key democratic protections under the law. We urge the government of Ukraine to take steps that represent a better way forward for Ukraine, including repeal of the anti-democratic legislation signed into law in recent days, withdrawing the riot police from downtown Kyiv, and beginning a dialogue with the political opposition.

From its first days, the Maidan movement has been defined by a spirit of non-violence and we support today’s call by opposition political leaders to reestablish that principle. The U.S. will continue to consider additional steps — including sanctions — in response to the use of violence.”

In a noble yet ironic –selective at best– attempt to stand up for human rights, what the US government said in the above statement made sense. Kind of.

While fighting for freedom of speech is a good thing, it should be stood up for even when it’s inconvenient. Now, as the US and allies in the West deliver billions in loans, tech and intel to the new central-banker-run government in Ukraine, Kiev is fully engaging (and killing) pro-Russian protesters in the East of Ukraine and even in the Southwestern port city of Odessa. Ahh yes, the sweet smell of selective humanitarianism.

Then –lockstep with American political talking heads– US media outlets immediately began referring to these pro-Russian (former)protesters as insurgents, militants, militiamen, radicals, separatists and terrorists just before the killing started a few months ago. They knew it was coming. 40 pro-Russians were burned alive in a building on Friday and there was hardly a mention of it in the news. You see, now the protesters are called terrorists so it’s okay to kill them. When did the media stop calling them protesters and start calling them terrorists? When it became politically convenient. Iraq remembers.

The US government (and citizen by default through taxes) is actively supporting the crony, human rights abusing, unelected Ukrainian regime through billions in loans, military training and equipment of which we can only speculate about.

As an American citizen, I do not consent to this insane foreign policy. And, according to a recent survey by the Wall Street Journal, it seems that at least 47% of Americans agree with me:

Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.

…The poll findings, combined with the results of prior Journal/NBC surveys this year, portray a public weary of foreign entanglements and disenchanted with a U.S. economic system that many believe is stacked against them. The 47% of respondents who called for a less-active role in world affairs marked a larger share than in similar polling in 2001, 1997 and 1995. 

Good! So the propaganda isn’t working, but the government doesn’t really care about public opinion anymore. After all, how many Americans would actually support sending billions of US dollars to an oppressive Ukrainian puppet regime while our own schools and infrastructure dwindle into a bureaucratic wasteland and the country falls $16+ Trillion into debt? Not me.

Another small detail to remember as the US government escalates tensions in Ukraine under the banner of de-escalation (I know it’s Orwellian, but what isn’t nowadays) is that the American government likely helped overthrow the democratically elected, Russian-aligned former government of Ukraine. As this leaked tape of a conversation between diplomats proves, the US government hand picked central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the new ‘legitimate’ leader of Ukraine long before the coup took place. Oh yeah, “Fuck the EU” while we’re at it!

Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, later haphazardly apologized for her remarks that were recorded and leaked anonymously when she appeared at a press conference, clearly shaken up and taken back by the leak:

So while the US government and their media cohorts continue to push for the West’s version of “stability, democracy and self-determination” in Ukraine, the truth is that they were and continue to be part of the driving force causing these very problems they seek to fix. But hey, what’s new?

In no way do I seek to condone Putin or Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Russia is also a large oppressor in the region and is an oligarchy which is structured and governed much like America, for the rich. The Russian-American proxy war in Ukraine will have one guaranteed loser, the innocent Ukrainian civilians who are caught in the crossfire of this banker resource conflict. Both American and Russian citizens must regain control over their governments or these injustices will continue. Please share this article if you think WWIII is a bad idea.

Piketty, Meet Orwell: Why Modern Oligarchy MUST Turn Fascist

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By Patrick Walker

Source: OpEdNews.com

If Frenchman Thomas Piketty, for all his brainiac academic wonkiness, has become a U.S. publishing sensation and economics rock star, it’s not merely due to his high-profile promoters. Granted, Piketty touters like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz carry high-brow clout (rather justified, given their own economics Nobel Prizes), among both fellow economists and intellectually serious progressives; it’s hardly surprising they help set intellectual fashions. But the deeper reason Piketty crossed the Atlantic so well is his timeliness: he had an economic message America’s most politically aware citizens were desperately waiting to hear.

For me (and, I suspect, for millions like me), the translated Piketty message–and I mean translated not just from French to English, but from economics to political activism, is this: your governance is illegitimate, and you now have the go-ahead signal to REVOLT. Not that many of us weren’t ready to revolt anyway (Occupy Wall Street, the anti-XL pipeline movement, and the food service workers’ strike were among the most prominent foreshocks), but the point is that Piketty gave us a new intellectual legitimacy. All true idealists are at some level truth seekers, and nothing gives us the needed conviction to go overturning the social order (a task people of conscience don’t undertake lightly) than indisputable evidence that the current order is illegitimate–a menace to the common good.

Having been irreversibly persuaded ourselves of the need for revolt, we feel free–in good conscience and citing the same evidence that persuaded us–to spread the message of revolt.

Piketty gave us the needed evidence–and as I mean to argue passionately here, Orwell closes the deal. I mean to say the twentieth-century Brit has “crossed the pond” perhaps even better than Piketty, and that we’ll fail to grasp the truly sinister implications of Piketty if we don’t make Orwell his required intellectual “diet supplement.” All modern oligarchic governance must end, in Orwell’s unforgettable image, in “a boot stamping on a human face forever.” Nothing less is at stake in our call to radical action.

Before proceeding, I wish to make one point of intellectual clarity. Careful readers will perhaps have noted that what I called illegitimate, in light of Piketty, is our governance. Now, I could easily have chosen a more familiar word, like government or system or society, but I fear that in doing so, I would have lost needed precision. Even a qualification like political system might not do the trick. For by governance I mean something wider than government and narrower than society, and wish to avoid (for now) distracting questions about the adequacy or legitimacy of the political system bequeathed to us by this nations’ founders. By governance, I means the whole collection of institutions, organizations, laws, and practices that determine how we are actually governed. So in the term, I very much intend to include the media, police and military, political parties, PACs, and other interest groups. Everything variable, in short, that enters the equation of how our nation is governed. It’s the final result of that equation–summarized in the word governance– that’s now provably illegitimate.

As I feel no shame (but rather, great pride) in saying, I write as a tribal progressive–NOT as a tribal Democrat. In fact, it’s my being a tribal progressive that frees me of the intellectual blinders necessarily entailed by being a tribal Democrat. For no tribal Democrat is intellectually equipped to grasp the illegitimacy of our governance, which is clearly–in a system monopolized by two parties–a bipartisan affair. Not that any sane person would say that both parties share culpability equally; anyone who fails to properly assign greater blame to Republicans has respected, heavyweight constitutional scholars like Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein–writers long noted for their nonpartisan balance and objectivity–to answer to. Their deservedly popular book It’s Even Worse than It Looks places the lion’s share of the blame for Congressional dysfunction (the piece of the illegitimacy puzzle they deal with) squarely on right-wing extremism. But our governance is scarcely a matter simply of Congress–or of one party. Any thorough analysis of our current illegitimacy would have to include Congressional Democrats, the Supreme Court, President Obama, the “shadow governance” of the Deep State, and the maggot swarms of lobbyists who descend on Washington daily. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But it’s hardly my purpose to sort out in depth the agents responsible for our gravely dysfunctional oligarchy, but rather to spotlight its grievous, jackboot-trampling-face consequences. For, as I intend to prove, oligarchs can ultimately rule us in no other way.

Now, my calling myself a “tribal progressive” is something of a joke, modeled of course on the notion of unthinking, party-line-towing tribal Democrats and Republicans. In fact, I also self-identify as an intellectual and truth seeker, and therefore as someone for whom–as for Orwell–there’s something deeply sinister in the notion of a banned or off-limits book. Consequently, I’ve been known to indulge myself in authors and works whose reputation among the politically correct Left is, to put it mildly, dubious. Hence, I’ve read with pleasure Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, a thoughtful and thought-provoking work once favorably reviewed by no less a lefty idol than John Maynard Keynes. And I’m now reading Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, a work bearing even the sulfurous stench of favorable reviews by adoring neocons. Yet, it’s reading Fukuyama that–far from reinforcing my faith in current U.S. governance–has, in conjunction with Piketty, obliterated all sense of its legitimacy. In fact, it’s because of Fukuyama (a learned, thoughtful author unfortunate in his associates and admirers–perhaps culpably) that I consider the whole question raised by Picketty as one of legitimacy.

And it’s the crucial question of legitimacy–the very heart of governance–that forcefully links Piketty to Orwell.

So here we’ve reached the heart of my topic. As Fukuyama deeply understands, the very survival of a political system or government depend on its legitimacy in the eyes of enough of its citizens. Crucially, not all of its citizens, indeed not even a majority, but enough citizens wielding the means of force and control to keep the doubters of its legitimacy in line. Hitler, as Fukuyama for example notes, was never elected by a majority, and probably never even freely supported by one. Little matter; the millions of Nazi supporters he did have were able to acquire near-monopoly of the means of force and control in German society, with the lethal consequences known to history. The complacent, misguided souls who cowishly nod their heads to Sinclair Lewis’s famous title statement “It Can’t Happen Here” probably fail to grasp that fascists’ required legitimacy is a minority matter; they certainly fail to grasp that Lewis himself believed it could. The it of course being U.S. fascism–and I believe it’s not only possible, but largely in place, and inevitable if we don’t soon change course.

Why? This is where Piketty’s strongly argued thesis about the nature of capitalism meets the brutal rubber of Orwell’s fascist road. See, Piketty’s central thesis is that the very nature of capitalism, because rewards to capital owners normally accumulate faster than general economic growth, is to produce oligarchic societies. Unless, says Piketty, extraordinary circumstances or government intervention–like high taxes–bring the rewards to capital in line with everyone else’s benefits from the economy. Now, the extraordinary circumstances, like world wars, are hardly desirable, and even depend for much of their effect on giving society a compelling rationale to tax the very rich. But as Piketty is keenly aware, extraordinary circumstances are by definition rare, and barring them, capital-owning oligarchs possess powerful means for thwarting government correctives to natural capitalist inequality. Like, say, buying the governments that would implement those correctives. Which clearly describes our current U.S. predicament–especially after the Supreme Court, itself an oligarchs’ plaything, has made buying our government infinitely easier.

So where does Orwell come in? The quick-and-dirty answer is, in vividly detailing the thoroughly modern, technology-based methods by which a tiny minority, hell-bent on exploiting a majority, recruits a critical mass of supporters (only a minority–though of millions–is needed) to keep the exploited majority at bay. In other words, as the word supporters clearly implies, the tiny minority (in our case, capitalist oligarchs) recruits just enough people who believe the exploitative governance of a majority by a capitalist minority is legitimate. And uses those millions of recruits to hold the exploited majority in terror. For once the majority gradually awakens to the illegitimacy of their exploitation by a handful of oligarchs, only a sizable minority (say, millions) of brainwashed or paid-off recruits wielding powerful modern weaponry, can keep the awakening majority from turning on the oligarchs. In other words, only a fascist government–one that recruits by technologies of propaganda and reigns by technologies of terror–can ultimately serve the aims of modern oligarchs.

Now, Piketty’s own historic examples might seem to refute the notion of oligarchs needing the modern Orwellian toolkit, but citing such historical counterexamples is shallow, and does not account for the fact that times–and above all, technologies–have changed. The key notion is that Orwellian methods are serving the aims of modern twenty-first century oligarchs, not those of nineteenth century France or England–a golden age for oligarchs Piketty often cites. In fact, today’s oligarchs require an economically richer, better-educated populace of servants than their nineteenth century counterparts; and even where they don’t strictly require it, such a populace is a fact on the ground they simply have to deal with–and control.

So, for example, even your average Walmart or McDonald’s peon needs to be–and in fact is–more literate and economically better off than your average eighteenth-century peon (or factory drudge) pure and simple. While condemning large segments of the population to unthinking drudgery (with no leisure for thoughtful politics) remains a perennial part of the oligarch toolkit, it simply can’t play the same role in population control it did when the drudges weren’t even allowed to vote. And of course, with legions of the unemployed poor, often replaced by cheaper foreign workers or robots, now having leisure for politics (if not necessarily thoughtful politics), the old-timey oligarch trick of denying the franchise is quickly making a comeback. But sadly for oligarchs, big enough segments of the U.S. population consider this trick illegitimate that it can never come anywhere close to being the chief means of control. So again, this is where Orwell comes in–and even building support for denial of the franchise requires massive Orwellian propaganda. Oligarchs must thank God every day for a critical mass of fearful, resentful racists and xenophobes–which clearly describes much of the Republican Party’s base.

Of course, racism and xenophobia are the hardly only Orwellian propaganda tools for recruiting oligarch lapdogs, though it must admitted they have served –and will long continue to serve–Republican oligarchs admirably. Patriotism, especially of the self-interested zero-sum variety where foreigners’ agendas and competition for resources and market share make them a threat to “our way of life,” has admirably served oligarchs from both parties. This has been especially true of fossil fuel oligarchs, who’ve successfully brainwashed Americans on the “energy independence” necessity of fossil fuels–even though our nation has been dramatically affected by the global climate harm these outmoded fuels are causing. And fossil-oligarch propaganda is remarkably adaptable; fossil fuels’ role as geopolitical muscle can be stressed now that large-scale plans for export prove the energy-independence argument was always hogwash.

But neither propaganda nor force exhaust the control tools in the oligarch toolkit; the fact is, there are certain “oligarch support industries” that have distinct trickle-down benefits. Not that trickle-down economists ever worked in the manner its ideologues proposed; in fact, the successful trickle-down depends on Big Government in a way that would have horrified trickle-down economics’ original small-government proponents. Understanding the mechanism involves understanding what I mean by “oligarch support industries”; by and large, I mean the industries, based on force and spying, that either distract attention from oligarchs, or potentially crack skulls on their behalf, once the legitimacy of their governance has been shaken in the eyes of large segments of the population. Offhand, I’d say this constitutes all branches of the U.S. military, mercenaries, and military contractors; government and private surveillance organizations; and police and private security organizations. Now, no one ever went broke serving the needs of the rich; in fact, providing oligarch support industries has become a huge U.S. business sector. But the very hugeness of that sector has swollen well beyond meeting oligarch needs, and can only be attributed to a perverse (perverse because it depends on Big Government) form of trickle-down.

See, precisely because no one ever went broke meeting the needs of the rich–and protecting their sorry asses in case the legitimacy of their governance breaks down is a huge oligarch need–investors in oligarch support industries soon become–if they weren’t already–oligarchs themselves. Now, a standard part of Piketty’s model is that oligarchs spend a portion of their vast wealth to buy government, in order both to protect and expand their already excessive wealth. Unsurprisingly, oligarchs created by oligarch support industries behave in exactly the same way: they invest heavily in lobbying government to support and expand their industries. Now, since the oligarch support industries in question straddle the public and private sectors, the lobbying successfully expands jobs–essentially, spying and potentially cracking skulls, both inside and outside our government. In no other case I can think of has “trickle-down economics” been so wildly successful. And even without oligarch propaganda, the overly swollen leagues of soldiers, spies, cops, rent-a-cops, and surveillance and weapons manufacturers–by now swollen well beyond the original protection needs of their oligarch employers–have a vested interest in serving oligarchs both inside and outside their industries.

And of course–though legally and morally this is not supposed to be the case–one must include many elected officials, elected and unelected judges, and journalists in corporate-owned media–as unofficial members of the oligarch support industries. While Republicans are clearly worse, it’s clear once again that these illegitimate members of the oligarch support industries are bipartisan–as was most recently proved by the eleven Democrat Senators (let’s brand them “the Keystone Eleven”) who were ready to surpass even Obama’s service to fossil fuel oligarchs by taking approval of the environmentally insane Keystone XL pipeline out of his cowardly, dithering election-year hands. Clearly, these Democrats are prepared to use the fascist jackboot against conscientious Americans on behalf of fossil-fuel oligarchs, since thousands of heroic citizens are pledged to civil disobedience against the unconscionable pipeline.

While the “boot stamping a human face” approach, backed by fascist pro-government courts, has already been used against Occupy Wall Street, I suspect approval of the XL pipeline will show us fascism–Orwellian brutality supporting Piketty’s increasingly dominant oligarchs–in its most blatant form. This will be, of course, because enough conscientious citizen have seen through oligarch propaganda to realize oligarch agendas threatens humanity’s very survival. So bipartisan is the push for pro-oligarch fascism that eleven Democrats openly decided noble Keystone protesters deserved Orwellian brutality.

Until we widely disseminate the fact that Orwell is other side of Piketty–that a “boot stamping on a human face forever” is the logical conclusion of runaway economic inequality–we’ll never (until we’re ALL destroyed by climate change) see an end to illegitimate oligarch rule.

Video News Roundup

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5/7 RT interviews a survivor of the Odessa massacre who witnessed police complicity in the violence:

5/6 Mark Dice on the NSA and freedom of speech:

5/6 A NextNewsNetwork report on a test of the limits of religious freedom in Oklahoma:

5/5 Before Snowden there was NSA whistleblower Russ Tice, who has had suspiciously less corporate media coverage. Fortunately WeAreChange and other independent journalists are helping to get his message out:

5/5 GlobalResearchTV posted this PressTV report linking chaos in Ukraine to US policy:

5/5 Lee Camp on the military-industrial complex: