America Condemns One Violent Mob While Celebrating Another

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Tear gas being deployed outside the Capitol on January 6 as Trump supporters stormed the building. [Tyler Merbler / CC BY 2.0]

Where is the corporate media’s disgust for the courtesans of corporate destruction that wreak violence on Americans daily?

By Lee Camp

Source: ScheerPost.com

Most rational Americans have correctly criticized and denounced the violent insurrection in the Capitol last week. Those moments of attack by a racist, disgusting mob have not lacked for condemnation and denunciation. They were violent. They were reprehensible. They called for the killing of lawmakers, demanded the hanging of Congress members. The liberal media and even most of Fox News have not held their tongues when it comes to excoriating the morally bankrupt people who took part. And I agree with those thoughts.

BUT – why don’t we see an equal amount of disgust and condemnation for the violence done by our ruling class, the courtesans of corporate destruction?

Is allowing people to die or fall ill due to lead pipes in Flint, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and hundreds of other cities not violence?

Is allowing citizens to lose their lives to cancer from Teflon™ chemicals dumped in their water or preventable oil spills not violence?

Is allowing tens of thousands to die of preventable illnesses from our garbage healthcare system not violence?

Is allowing 15 million to lose their healthcare during a pandemic and therefore fear going to the hospital when they get sick not violence?

Is imprisoning millions of people for years for non-violent crimes not violence?

Is locking up political prisoners like Steven Donziger, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Reverend Pinkney, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Leonard Peltier not violence??

Is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes on innocent people in countries thousands of miles away not violence??

Is allowing millions in this country to go hungry while we throw out 40% of all food not violence?

Is arresting people who try to feed those who are starving not violence?

Is allowing hundreds of thousands to go homeless, living under bridges or on benches or squatting in collapsing structures while this country has trillions of dollars and millions of empty houses —is that not violence?

Is arresting, beating, and persecuting those who try to give those people houses not violence? And bulldozing the homes — is that not violence?

Is causing the sixth great extinction, the mass death of half the world’s wildlife, in pursuit of corporate profit not violence?

Is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans via economic warfare not violence?

Is creating an opioid epidemic by pushing pills on desperate people, ultimately leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands not violence?

And then arresting those who stand up and fight back against the pollution, against the pipelines, against the factory farming, against the war industry —IS—THAT—NOT—VIOLENCE?

Of course it is.

It’s violence on a breathtaking scale, far greater than what was done at the Capitol and far greater than any of us will witness in person. And yet large scale corporate-endorsed violence, death and destruction is not only allowable, it’s celebrated, it’s furthered, and promoted. Oil company documents show that they tell cities that oil spills are good for the economy. Other documents show that fossil fuel companies have known about the harm climate change would do since the 1970’s, but they simply saw it as the price of doing business. Corporate sacrifice zones like “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana are well known to be deadly to those who live there, yet it doesn’t matter to the corporations because their money will be green nonetheless. It doesn’t matter to the politicians because the poor who live in these sacrifice zones have no political power. The 40% of food that’s thrown out is not a secret. The subsidies paid to factory farms encourage them to produce heaping mountains of food and dairy and meat even if they can’t sell it all in our market economy. So they throw it out or bury it. Giving it to those in need would take too much time and effort.

Should the racist violent insurrectionists at the Capitol be punished? Absolutely. But so too should the bought-off politicians who do the bidding of our morally bankrupt corporate America. These politicians and the CEOs they serve are purveyors of violence. They trade in, produce, and reap violence. They sit on hordes of money—the obscene profit from feeding American lives into the death cult of unfettered capitalism.

Our mainstream media are blanketing the airwaves with talk of how the violent insurrectionists must be punished, and while they are not wrong, the criminal behavior those same talking heads and “reporters” ignore speaks volumes. All violence is not equal. Some of it is profitable and protected. Some of it is the American way.

Biden, DC Protest and the Post-Corona ‘Great Reset’

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By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Source: Global Research

In the wake of the Wednesday January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Event, we must reflect on what a  Joe Biden Administration will look like.

Joe Biden was not duly elected, he was selected. He is a groomed and “reliable” politician. He is a political instrument of the global capitalist establishment.

Biden is a firm supporter of the Corona lockdown. His statements concerning a “Dark Winter” in 2021 confirm that he not only endorses the adoption of staunch Covid-19 lockdown policies, his administration will pursue and adopt the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” Worldwide.

In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the corona virus lockdown.

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives Worldwide.

This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The Biden White House will be used to instate what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance”, which is tantamount to a Worldwide “democratic dictatorship”.

It should be noted that the protest movement in the US, against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders, most of which are aligned with the Democratic Party have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.

In a bitter irony, antiwar activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden, who is now being accused by Trump supporters of being a “socialist”.

The following text is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of my E-Book: entitled.

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”  first published in mid-December 2020.

To access the full text of nine chapters click here 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 9, 2021

***

“Elected President” Joe Biden is a groomed politician, a trusted proxy, serving the interests of the financial establishment.

Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.

Evolving acronyms. 9/11, GWOT, WMD and now COVID: Biden was rewarded for having supported the invasion of Iraq.

Fox News describes him as a “socialist”  who threatens capitalism:  “Joe Biden’s disturbing connection to the socialist ‘Great Reset’ movement”. While this is absolute nonsense, many “progressives” and anti-war activists have endorsed Joe Biden without analyzing the broader consequences of a Biden presidency.

The Great Reset is socially divisive, it’s racist. It is a diabolical project of Global Capitalism. It constitutes a threat to the large majority of Americans workers as well as to small and medium sized enterprises. A Biden-Harris administration actively involved in carrying out the “Great Reset” is a threat to humanity.

With regard to Covid, Biden is firmly committed to the “Second Wave”, i.e. maintaining the partial closing down of both the US economy and the global economy as a means to “combating the killer virus”.

Joe Biden will push for the adoption of  the WEF’s “Great Reset” both nationally and internationally, with devastating economic and social consequences. The 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) scheduled for Summer 2021 will focus on the implementation of  the “Great Reset”. 

A Joe Biden administration would actively pursue Big Money’s totalitarian blueprint: The Great Reset. 

Unless there is significant protest and organized resistance, nationally and internationally, the Great Reset will be embedded in both domestic and US foreign policy agendas of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.

It’s what you call Imperialism with a “Human Face”.

Moreover, many so-called “progressive voices” have endorsed Joe Biden.

Where is the Protest Movement against this Unelected Corona “public-private partnership”?

The same philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, et al) which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing Climate Change activism, the Extinction Rebellion, the World Social Forum, Black Lives Matters, LGBT, et al.

It’s what you call “manufactured dissent” (far more insidious than Herman-Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”).

The objective of the financial elites “has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement.”  (Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent, Global Research, 2010)

In the words, McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979):

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government

The Protest movement against this “Global Coup d’état” requires a process of Worldwide mobilization:

.”There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests [WEF, Gates, Ford, et al] which are the target of the protest movement”.

The Road Ahead

More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.

What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as well as the national and regional governments (States, provinces) involved in carrying out the lockdown and closure of economic activity as a means to combating “V the Virus”. The legitimacy of politicians and their powerful corporate sponsors must be questioned, including the police state measures adopted to enforce the various policies. (Face masks, social distancing, public gatherings, etc. )

This network would be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.

The first task would be to disable the fear campaign and media disinformation as well put an end to Big Pharma’s Covid vaccination programme.

The corporate media would be directly challenged, without specifically targeting mainstream journalists, many of whom have been instructed to abide by the official narrative. This endeavour would require a parallel process at the grassroots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of  virus, the PCR test, the impacts of the lockdown, the face mask and social distancing.

“Spreading the word” through social media and independent online media outlets will be undertaken bearing in mind that Google as well as Facebook are instruments of censorship.

The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the financial elites as well as the structures of political authority at the national level, is no easy task. It will require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history.

It will also require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society (i.e. between political parties) and acting with a single voice. We must also understand that the “corona project” is an integral part of the U.S. imperial agenda. It has geopolitical and strategic implications. It will also require eventually unseating the architects of this diabolical “pandemic” and indicting them for crimes against humanity.

(Excerpts from Chapter IX).

The link to Michel Chossudovsky’s recently published E-Book consisting of nine chapters:

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”  

Read Michel Chossudovsky’s Biographical Note.

Government propaganda: deflecting public attention from the most serious crimes of the oligarchy

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By Carla Binion

Source: Intrepid Report

People of the U.S. often fail to notice the methods their own government uses to do what amounts to brainwashing them. The book Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Hermann and Noam Chomsky details how U.S. corporate-controlled mainstream media outlets (today that includes mainstream TV “news” networks, most mainstream magazines, newspapers, etc.) act as propagandists. Another excellent source on U. S. media propaganda is Michael Parenti’s book, Inventing Reality.

When mainstream TV, magazines, newspapers and mainstream Internet sites all repeat the same false talking points over and over, they’re often deliberately attempting to brainwash, rather than inform, the public. Their motive is usually to gain mass public support for something that brings dishonest politicians and the oligarchy money and power. For example, they often propagandize the public to support illicit war for profit.

Today’s political propagandists pretend only the right wing criticizes them, but many on the left oppose misleading propaganda as well. I’m politically progressive, don’t like Biden or Trump because they are both far too right wing in my view. However, I think the extremist push to “get Trump” and paint him as inciting the January 6 protest are obvious efforts to manipulate the public’s thinking. Trump encouraged the protesters to “fight”, but to “fight” politically has traditionally been used to simply mean to battle verbally, to argue, or to boycott or strike. He didn’t specify or urge physical violence.

This opinion piece has nothing to do with minimizing the harm done by any actual violence on January 6. Violence should never be condoned and is a separate issue from protests in general. Instead this is about being aware of ways the U.S. government is now employing methods long used to promote propaganda, to discourage even peaceful protests, and to influence the public mind. The current government manipulation is a way of manufacturing consent, or as Michael Parenti called it, inventing reality.

What is the U.S. government likely to gain by manipulating the public into dropping their critical thinking skills and becoming lost in emotional rage, and by turning the public against protest and implying that all forms of dissent are possibly “insurrection” or sedition?  (1) The focus on Trump and January 6 turns the public’s attention away from the country’s many other problems, including the fact that we’re the world’s only advanced nation without an adequate healthcare system. It also distracts us from the urgent need for environmental reform. (2) If the powers that be can get most Americans to focus on only Trump, there will be no focus on the U.S. politicians responsible for turning the U.S. into an oligarchy, with much money funneled away from the middle class to the wealthiest one percent. [Source]    (3) If the powerful corrupt politicians can increase penalties for even peaceful protests, they’ll frighten and shame innocent people and prevent them from needed legitimate protesting, (4) If the public can be manipulated into believing that only right-wing racists and fascists refuse to accept government propaganda and authoritarianism, the left can be intimidated through guilt by association and through fear of being identified with the right wing.

People should walk the fine line between too much skepticism and not enough. Excessive suspicion is doubt not supported by evidence. Healthy skepticism is based on reality, including the U. S. government’s characteristic way of using disinformation to control public opinion throughout history. The thing that should give people pause and keep them aiming toward a balance of skepticism is the fact that the U.S. government has a long and well documented legacy of using widely-known propaganda techniques on the U.S. public. For anyone who doubts the U.S. government routinely propagandizes the public, at least read the two books mentioned above, which provide many additional reference sources and essentially prove this is true beyond any doubt. If the U.S. population likes to be maneuvered and more or less brainwashed by their own government, they’re free to do that. However, thoughtful skepticism, independent research and honest scrutiny are preferable.

Destroying The Web Of Life: The Destruction Of Earth’s Biodiversity Is Accelerating

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By Robert J. Burrowes

In August 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ According to the UN Environment Program, ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life’ with scientists estimating that ‘150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours’ which is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate. Moreover, it ‘is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago.’ See ‘Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief’.

Two months later, at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held from 18 to 29 October 2010, in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, a revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the 2011-2020 period was adopted. See ‘Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, including Aichi Biodiversity Targets’.

You can read the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets on the Convention’s website. They were ambitious but represented a realistic assessment of what needed to be achieved by 2020 if national governments were to achieve the longer term goal of ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’ by 2050. The 2050 Vision for Biodiversity required ‘a significant shift away from “business as usual” across a broad range of human activities.’ See ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’.

So how have we done in the past ten years?

In 2015, distinguished conservationists Professor Gerardo Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich and Professor Paul R. Ehrlich published their book titled The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals which tells the story of humanity’s ‘massive and escalating assault on all living things on this planet’ precipitating what is now Earth’s sixth great mass extinction: ‘a time of darkness for our planet’s birds and mammals’.

Noting that the roots of this destruction ‘run deep through time’ with human hunting and other activities responsible for pushing populations of animals to extinction long before the agricultural revolution (which began about 10,000 years ago), they observe that the current collective assault on animals, plants and microbes has reached a level so horrendous that ‘any alarm call we might sound will be too faint to match the tragedy that is unfolding’. But while the decimation of life that is currently underway is being caused by Homo sapiens, the consequences of this decimation will also have impact on humanity itself because the life-forms being annihilated are ‘working parts of life-support systems on which civilization depends’.

Despite the impressive statistics that record the demise of life on Earth and the fundamental threat this extinction crisis poses, Cebellos and the Ehrlichs are well aware that the public and politicians generally are not reacting emotionally to this crisis as do those who are ‘deeply familiar with the impoverishment of nature’. They hope we can relate to the fate of the last Spix’s macaw, a male that searched fruitlessly for a mate until it disappeared from the savannah of northeastern Brazil in 2000.

And did you know that even the iconic African lion may be facing extinction in the wild? In 2015, as a result of decades of hunting, disease and habitat loss, only 23,000 lions remained in Africa’s vast savannahs: less than 10% of what roamed there in 1950. There are fewer lions today.

But separately from species extinctions, Earth continues to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization’. In a 2017 report, Professor Ceballos and his coauthors describe what they label ‘a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’.

Beyond even this, however, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) six-part series ‘Our Vanishing World’.

Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?

What Is Driving the Sixth Mass Extinction?

Homo sapiens. And the key tool is always destruction of habitat, whether on land or in the ocean.

Of course, particular human behaviours have a huge impact. Fighting wars (or even just wasting resources to manufacture weapons and other military infrastructure) is one (particularly given that the perpetual war in which the US is engaged is to secure resources and markets), destroying the climate is another and deploying 5G is yet another. But there are many other destructive human behaviours too.

Consider the forests. Just last year, 6.5 million hectares of pristine forest were cut or burnt down for purposes such as clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds) and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper (including cheap toilet paper). See ‘Our Vanishing World: Rainforests’.

One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are now threatened with extinction. In addition, rainforest destruction is also the primary cause of species extinctions globally given the number of species that live in rainforests. See ‘Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’.

Another outcome is that ‘the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we’. See ‘Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action’.

And in relation to another major habitat that is being destroyed, consider the world’s oceans. In summary, the oceans are warming, acidifying and deoxygenating; being contaminated with nuclear radiation, by offshore oil and gas drilling as well as oil spills; being damaged by deep sea mining; being polluted by industrial (including chemical) and farming wastes while being damaged in a myriad other ways and being overfished.

In short: the oceans are under siege on a vast range of fronts and are effectively ‘dying’. For a comprehensive 18-point summary, see ‘Our Vanishing World: Oceans’.

If you like, you can read comprehensive summaries of the fate of Earth’s birds and insects too. See ‘Our Vanishing World: Birds’ and ‘Our Vanishing World: Insects’.

What Is the State of Play in Early 2021?

In a report published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2020, the authors observe that ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely.’ With a total estimated number of animal and plant species on Earth of 8 million (of which 5.5 million are insect species), an accelerating daily extinction rate combined with an ongoing decline in ecosystem health, the report concludes that 1,000,000 species of life on Earth are threatened with extinction. See ‘Nature’s Dangerous Decline “Unprecedented”; Species Extinction Rates “Accelerating”’ and ‘A million threatened species? Thirteen questions and answers’.

And the latest edition of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s flagship publication ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’ was published on 18 August 2020. It reports that ‘Humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy it leaves to future generations. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying. None of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will be fully met.’

But this is an understatement, to put it politely.

In their commentary on this predicament in November 2020, scholars Ruchi Shroff and Carla Ramos Cortés note that ‘Despite wide-spread international calls to curb the sixth mass extinction, no single goal of the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the second consecutive decade, have been met. In some cases, biodiversity loss has been made worse as no action has been taken to curb pesticide use, pollution, fossil fuels and plastics.’ See ‘The Biodiversity Paradigm: Building Resilience for Human and Environmental Health’.

But the destruction is far worse than suggested by this. Given, as already noted above, the ongoing destruction of rainforests and oceans, not to mention other habitats ranging from wetlands to deserts, the annihilation of life on Earth continues to accelerate with no indicators signaling that this destruction is being slowed in any way.

Therefore, destruction of biodiversity remains one of the four primary paths to human extinction (along with nuclear war, the deployment of 5G and the climate catastrophe).

Is It too Late to Do Anything?

It might be. As mentioned above: Because many species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated, many further extinctions are now inevitable.

However, we can take action to save those individuals and species not yet trapped in a feedback loop and that might yet be saved. But if you wait for governments or corporations to act responsibly, you will wait in vain as the last 20 years has demonstrated.

So you have some powerful options to consider. The first, and most important, is to consider the ways in which you can reduce your own consumption. The planetary environment is only being destroyed so that governments and corporations can respond to consumer demand. Everything from military spending and war to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are fundamentally driven by what you buy. And each and every item that you buy has a negative environmental impact. There are no exceptions.

If you reduce your own consumption and increase your self-reliance, you will reduce the burden that extraction, transport, manufacture and distribution of resources imposes on the natural environment resulting in the destruction of habitat and the annihilation of biodiversity.

One option to consider is ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a graduated series of steps for reducing consumption and increasing self-reliance.

If you want to better understand why so many human beings are addicted to endless consumption, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. There is more detail on the origins of this behaviour in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you are inclined to campaign to defend biodiversity in one context or another, whether by campaigning to end war, halt the climate catastrophe, stop the deployment of 5G or end wildlife trafficking for example, consider doing so strategically. See ‘Nonviolent Campaign Strategy’.

You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if the options above seem too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

One species – Homo sapiens – is annihilating life on Earth, driving at least 200 species to extinction each day. In the time it took you to read this article, another species of life on Earth vanished into the fossil record.

This annihilation of life is driven by our over-consumption. As Mahatma Gandhi, already wearing his own homespun cloth, noted more than 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’

Of course, many people around the world are not responsible for over-consuming; they live life on its margins, with barely enough to eat let alone thrive. And this reflects inequities built into a global economic system that prioritizes profit for the few, not resources for living for all.

So that means that the burden for reducing consumption must fall on those in industrialized societies who benefit from the maldistribution of planetary resources.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted that ‘The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.’

If we are to prove him wrong, we do not have much time left.

This is because Homo Sapiens is a part of the web of life. And we are ruthlessly destroying that web.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Saturday Matinee: Chicago Conspiracy Eight

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The Real Chicago 8 Movie: R.G. Davis Gets it Right

By Jonah Raskin

Source: CounterPunch

In January 1970, R.G. Davis, the founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and one of the fathers of guerrilla theater, filmed a 60-minute video with seven of the defendants in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Long buried, the film which is titled “Chicago Conspiracy Eight,” recently surfaced thanks to the Media Burn Archive. Unedited and uninterrupted, it can be viewed on Vimeo.

According to the web site, the Media Burn Archive “collects, restores and distributes documentary video created by artists, activists and community groups.”

They’ve done a great job with the “Chicago Conspiracy Eight,” which illustrates the wonders one can work with a camera, a cast of colorful characters and a lot of gumption. By January 1970, when R. G. Davis produces the video, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party had already been severed from the federal case, which indicted eight men on charges of conspiracy and rioting in the streets during the 1968 Demcratic National Convention.

In the video, R. G. Davis and the seven defendants sit around a large table littered with food and drink. R.G. serves as the moderator, though he doesn’t really moderate the discussion. Indeed, it’s a wild hour in which everyone gets to speak, albeit some longer than others. An empty chair sits at the head of the table and carries a sign that reads, “Mr. Bobby Seale.” His absence is palpable.

The video tells a story that Aaron Sorkin’s feature film, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” can’t and doesn’t tell. In this case, reality beats fiction. The magnificent seven each have their own individual hair styles: Dave Dellinger with long sideburns, Abbie with a Jewfro, as it was called, Jerry and Lee Weiner with full beards, Fronies with a mustache and Tom with the unkempt hair on the top of his head. Rennie Davis looks the cleanest cut of the lot. The era was a lot about hair. Our side clearly won on that front.

The seven defendants talk about Chicago in the summer of 1968, the Conspiracy Trial and anything and everything else that comes up, spontaneously. There’s a great deal of humor and a lot that’s serious, though no one seems to be afraid of going to jail. No topic is sacred. Everything can be and is the butt of comedy, including Abbie raising his middle finger and shouting “Fuck the Movement.”  As a Yippie who battled the stogie members of SDS, that’s understandable.

The video is often about language and the spoken word. Jerry explains that “the most beautiful moment” in the trial takes place when poet Allen Ginsberg of Howl fame testifies on the witness stand and “the courtroom becomes a religious place.” In the video, Abbie is the most literary and cultural of the defendants. He likens the trial to Brave New World and describes Judge Julius Hoffman as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. Tom Hayden calls the U. S. “a police state” and recounts the murders of members of the Black Panther Party, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Rennie Davis explains that racism “effects every major institution” in American life. That it did.

John Froines jokes about being “a male chauvinist.” Dellinger plugs non-violent tactics as “revolutionary” and Jerry says that the word “Fuck is the biggest issue” in the courtroom. It did push a lot of buttons. Abbie tells R. G. Davis that he and the other defendants want to be honest and not fudge facts and at the same time “beat the rap.” That’s the tricky part, coping to the revolution and aiming for a not guilty verdict. The Chicago eight aimed to beat the rap in the courtroom and outside the courtroom where they organized, appealed to the media and aimed to put pressure on the judge and the prosecutors.

Here and there, bits of history show up in the video: the Haymarket Riot of 1886; and U.S. Communist Party members who defended themselves when they were on trial. Abbie adroitly weaves together comedy and ideology. He calls the Hilton “a symbol of American imperialism” and adds that the demonstrators marched on the hotel with the intention of “changing the sheets.”  That’s still pretty funny.

Near the end of the hour, R.G. Davis tells the others, “I got some good points.” Indeed, he did. He deserves credit for his realization that it was essential to bring the defendants together while the trial still raged. Starr Sutherland and Tom Weinberg produced the 2020 video, along with the team at MediaBurn who deserve praise from everyone who rioted then and everyone who protests these days.

9/11 Was the Prelude. 1/6 Is the Holy Grail

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By Pepe Escobar

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Whether civil war is coming will depend on the degree of stoicism prevalent among the Deplorable multitudes.

I hear the sons of the city and dispossessed
Get down, get undressed
Get pretty but you and me
We got the kingdom, we got the key
We got the empire, now as then
We don’t doubt, we don’t take direction
Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me

Sisters of Mercy, Lucretia my Reflection

9/11 was the prelude. 1/6 is the Holy Grail.

9/11 opened the gates to the Global War on Terror (GWOT), later softened by Team Obama to the status of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) even as it was suavely expanded to the bombing, overt or covert, of seven nations.

9/11 opened the gates to the Patriot Act, whose core had already been written way back in 1994 by one Joe Biden.

1/6 opens the gate to the War on Domestic Terror and the Patriot Act from Hell, 2.0, on steroids (here is the 2019 draft ), the full 20,000 pages casually springing up from the sea like Venus, the day after, immediately ready to roll.

And as the inevitable companion to Patriot Act 2.0, there will be war overseas, with the return in full force, unencumbered, of what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern memorably christened the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank) complex.

And when MICIMATT starts the next war, every single protest will be branded as domestic terrorism.

The faux coup

Whatever really happened on 1/6 in the militarized Valhalla of a superpower that spent untold trillions of dollars on security since the start of the millennium, the elaborate psy op/photo-op circus – complete with a strategically photogenic MAGA Viking actor – could never had happened if it was not allowed to happen.

Debate will rage till Kingdom Come on whether the break in was organic – an initiative by a few hundred among at least 10,000 peaceful protestors surrounding the Capitol – or rather a playbook color revolution false flag instigated by an infiltrated, professional Fifth Column of agent provocateurs.

What matters is the end result: the manufactured product – “Trump insurrection” – for all practical purposes buried the presentation, already in progress, of evidence of electoral fraud to the Capitol, and reduced the massive preceding rally of half a million people to “domestic terrorism”.

That was certainly not a “coup”. Top military strategist Edward Luttwak, now advising the Pentagon on cyber-war, tweeted, “nobody pulls a coup during the day”. That was just “a show, people expressing emotions”, an actually faux coup that did not involve arson or widespread looting, and relatively little violence (compare it to Maidan 2014): talk about “insurrectionists” walking inside the Capitol respecting the velvet ropes.

A week before 1/6, a dissident but still very connected Deep State intel op offered this cold, dispassionate view of the Big Picture:

“Tel Aviv betrayed Trump with a new deal with Biden and so they threw him to the dogs. Sheldon Adelson and the Mafia have no trouble switching sides for the winner by hook or crook. Pence and McConnell also betrayed Trump. It was as though Trump walked as Julius Caesar into the Roman Senate to be stabbed to death. Any deal Trump makes with the system or Deep State will not be kept and they are secretly talking about ending him forever. Trump has the trump card. Martial law. Military tribunals. The Insurrection Act. The question is whether he will play it. Civil war is coming irrespective of what happens to him, sooner or later.”

Whether civil war is coming will depend on the degree of stoicism prevalent among the Deplorable multitudes.

Alastair Crooke has brilliantly outlined the Top Three main issues that shape Red America’s “Epiphany”: stolen elections; lockdown as a premeditated strategy for the destruction of small and mid-size businesses; and the dire prospect of ‘cancellation’ by an incoming woke ‘soft totalitarianism’ orchestrated by Big Tech.

Cue to a Corpse Reading a Teleprompter, also known as The President-Elect, and his own ominous words after 1/6: “Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists.” Some things never change. George W. Bush, immediately after 9/11: “Either you’re with us, or with the terrorists”.

That’s the hegemonic, set in stone, narrative now being implemented with an iron fist by Big Tech. First they come for POTUS. Then they come for you. Anyone, anywhere, not following Big Tech’s Techno-Feudalist diktat WILL be cancelled.

Bye bye Miss American Pie

And that’s why the drama is way, way, bigger than a mere discombobulated POTUS.

Every single institution controlled by the ruling class – from schools to mass media to the way workplaces are regulated – will go after the Deplorables with no mercy.

Professional CIA killer and liar John Breenan, key conceptualizer of totally debunked Russiagate, tweeted about the necessity of, in practice, setting up re-education camps. Media honchos called for “cleansing the movement”.

Politically, the Deplorables only have Trumpism. And that’s why Trumpism, with a possible avenue to become an established third party, must be smashed. As much as the 0.0001% is more terrified by the possibility of secession or armed revolt, they need urgent pre-emptive action against what is, for now, a nationalist mass movement, however inchoate its political proposals.

The “unknown unknown”, to evoke notorious neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, is whether the exasperated plebs will eventually reach for the pitchforks – and make the 0.0001% feudal hacienda ungovernable. And then there’s a literally smokin’ element – those half a billion guns out there.

The 0.0001% knows for sure that Trump, after all, was never a radical revolutionary change agent. Inchoately, he channeled Red America’s hopes and fears. But instead of the promised glitzy palace adorned with gold, what he delivered was a shack in the desert.

Meanwhile, Red America, intuitively, understood that Trump at least was a useful conduit. He lay bare how the corrupt swamp actually moves. How these “institutions” are mere corporate puppets – and completely ignore the common man. How the Judiciary is utterly corrupt – when even POTUS cannot get a hearing. How Pharma and Tech actually expanded the MICIMATT (MICIMAPTT?) And most of all, how the two party paradigm is a monstrous lie.

So where will 75 million disenfranchised voters – or 88 million Twitter followers – go?

As it stands, we’re deep into Hardcore Class War. The Top of the Scam Gang are in full control. The remains of “Democracy” have gelled into Mediacracy. Ahead, there’s nothing but ruthless purge, protracted crackdown, censorship, blanket surveillance, smashing of civil liberties, a single narrative, overarching cancel (in)culture. It gets worse: next week, this paranoid apparatus merges with the awesome machinery of the United States Government (USG).

So welcome to Full Spectrum Domestic Dominance. Germany 1933 on steroids. 1984 redux: no wonder the hashtag #1984 was banned by Twitter.

Cui bono? Techno-Feudalism, of course – and the interlocking tentacles of the trans-humanist Great Reset. Defy it, and you will be cancelled.

Bye bye Miss American Pie. That’s the legacy of 1/6.

 

Consent-Manufacturing For Patriot Act II Continues

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

It’s been obvious for a long time that the best way to stop the rise of right-wing extremism in America that everyone’s so worried about today is not to pass a bunch of authoritarian laws, but to reverse the policies of soul-crushing neoliberalism and domestic austerity which led to Donald Trump. Instead of doing this, the next president is already pushing a Patriot Act sequel and reducing the stimulus checks he’d promised the public before he’s even been sworn in.

President-elect Biden promised unambiguously that if voters gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate by electing Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia earlier this month, checks of $2,000 would “go out the door immediately”. Warnock blatantly campaigned on the promise of $2000 checks if elected, literally using pictures of checks with “$2000” written on them to do so. This was not an unclear promise by any stretch of the imagination, yet when Biden unveiled the “American Rescue Plan” on Thursday, the number 1400 was written where the number 2000 should have been.

The argument being pushed out at the moment is that when Democrats were blatantly promising stimulus checks of $2000 what they really meant was that Americans would receive $1400 on top of the $600 checks they’d received earlier, and everyone should have just known this somehow (perhaps via some sort of psychic precognition or sorcery). Which of course makes as much sense as someone hiring you to do a job for a given amount of money and then paying you the amount promised minus the amount you’d made at your last job.

It’s just so emblematic of US austerity policies, which are so normalized they don’t even use that word. Keep people stretched so thin that even a paltry $2000 after months and months of nothing can be spun as an excessively exorbitant indulgence which must be scaled back to keep it reasonable. In reality a grand total of $2600 in the richest nation on earth after all this time would still be a huge slap in the face, but generations of media spin have gone into keeping Americans from attaining that level of rightful entitlement.

So as of this writing the internet is full of angry Americans actually typing the words “$1400 is not $2000”, which is totally bananas. People should not have to say that the number 1400 is not the same as the number 2000. It feels like if my Twitter feed was full of people saying “Cars are not birds”, or “Pogs are not iPhones”, or “Mimes are not salad”. People should not have to make such self-evident clarifications.

But they apparently do need to make such clarifications, because scumbags like Adam Schiff are looking them right in the eye, sharing information that says “$1,400 checks” on it, and telling them that it says “$2000 relief checks”.

2 + 2 = 5.

So again, it’s pretty clear that America isn’t going to attempt to reverse the conditions which created Trump and all the extremist factions that everyone’s been freaking out about since the Capitol riot. Obama led to Trump, and the strategy going forward is to just keep tightening the neoliberal screws like both Obama and Trump did throughout their entire administrations. And, of course, to advance new “domestic terrorism” laws.

As we discussed previously, Biden has often boasted of being the original author of the Patriot Act years before it was rapidly rolled out amid the fear and blind obsequiousness of the aftermath of 9/11. Now in the aftermath of the Capitol riot we are seeing a push to roll out new authoritarian laws around terrorism, this time taking aim at “domestic terror”, which were also in preparation prior to the event used to manufacture support for them.

In a new article for Washington Monthly titled “It’s Time for a Domestic Terrorism Law“, Bill Scher argues against left-wing critics of the coming laws like Glenn Greenwald and Jacobin‘s Luke Savage saying such “knee-jerk reactions” against potential authoritarian abuses fail to address the growing problem. He opens with the acknowledgement that “Joe Biden’s transition team was already working on a domestic terrorism law before the insurrection,” and then he just keeps on writing as though that’s not weird or suspicious in any way.

Scher lists among the growing threat of domestic terror not just white supremacists and right-wing extremists but “extremist left-wing domestic terrorism” as well. He approvingly cites Adam Schiff’s Confronting The Threat of Terrorism Act, which “creates a definition of domestic terrorism broadly encompassing plots that carry a ‘substantial risk of serious bodily injury’ along with an ‘intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population’ or ‘influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.’” The ACLU has unequivocally denounced Schiff’s bill, saying it “would unnecessarily expand law enforcement authorities to target and discriminate against the very communities Congress is seeking to protect.”

Known CIA asset Ken Dilanian has also been trotted out to make the case that Americans have too many rights for their own good, co-authoring an NBC article titled “Worried about free speech, FBI never issued intelligence bulletin about possible Capitol violence“.

“FBI intelligence analysts gathered information about possible violence involving the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6., but the FBI never distributed a formal intelligence bulletin, in part because of concerns that doing so might have run afoul of free speech protections, a current and two former senior FBI officials familiar with the matter told NBC News,” the article warns, making sure to inform readers that “experts say the lack of a domestic terrorism statute constrains the FBI from treating far-right and far-left groups the same as Americans who are radicalized to violence by Al Qaeda or ISIS ideology.”

We can expect to see more such articles going forward.

The only way to sincerely believe more Patriot Act-like laws will benefit Americans is to believe that the US will only have wise and beneficent leaders going forward, and the only way to sincerely believe the US will only have wise and beneficent leaders going forward is to be completely shit-eating stupid. The trajectory has already been chosen, and that trajectory is the one that has already given rise to Trump. Continuing along that same trajectory can only give rise to something far uglier, and that something far uglier will have whatever new authoritarian powers are added by Joe Biden.

They’re not actually worried about “domestic terror”, they’re worried about any movement which threatens to topple the status quo. They want to make sure they can adequately spy, infiltrate, agitate and incarcerate into impotence any movement which provides a threat to America’s rulers and the system which funnels them wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. The movements which most threaten this are not rightists, who are generally more or less aligned with the interests of the oligarchic empire, but the left.

This is who they’ll end up targeting going forward, and whatever Biden and Company wind up rolling out to fight “domestic terrorism” will help them do so.