Dennis Trainer Jr. (of AcronymTV.com) recently appeared on Abby Martin’s “Breaking the Set“.
Mr Trainer spoke about the anniversary of the Occupy Movement and was suggesting the Movement now focus its efforts on the issue of climate change. I think he was mistaken.
One of the most telling, and accurate, arguments levelled against the wonderful Occupy Movement was that it had no direction: it was clear about what it was against, but not clear what it was for. The Movement was obviously against economic injustice. Although this fact was hugely and solidly supported by millions all around the world, there was …
However painful the remedy, America the Dense apparently needs another round of 2 X 4’s to the head. Despite fiery warnings from the world’s best social, economic and scientific analysts — aghast how many mammoth problems are trivialized, key state voting majorities still buy the faery dust of the failed right. Don’t Tea Partiers have slews of educated children desperate for absent career positions? Don’t they realize big banks thrive when elected Republicans (and conservative Democrats) call the shots? Hats off to GOP propaganda: worsening conditions are simply wished away, covered over with their perverse version of …
Blood money means different things to different people. In some cultures it’s the price paid to the victim’s family by the perpetrator after a family member is murdered. Elsewhere it can be a fine paid for committing libel, theft, physical harm, or rape. If you employ a contract killer, their payment is also blood money.
In cultures influenced by Christian traditions, blood money refers to a historic market transaction. When you talk blood money there, you’re talking about those infamous thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for squealing on his boss. After the fact, when Judas tried to return …
Ready for the rollout. Tanks on every street. Snipers atop every building. Skyscraping bullets unleashed in a militarized theater of war. Occupied brainstems. Parasite in the blood. Psychologically based, trauma induced, hypnotic trance. Categorized demolition of old theory propaganda. Irreconcilable differences of opinion go nowhere fast down a one-way street. Ears clogged. Waxed over canals of disinformation. Vibration pollution. Cell phone tower broadcasted belligerence. Presidential decrees sent via text message disturbances. We interrupt your day with a war-mongering warning from the dictator. White House monstrosity. Black soul of darkness. Poison the hearts of the young. Get them early while in …
A letter signed by 43 veterans of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit declaring their refusal to continue serving the occupation has sent shock waves through Israeli society. But not in the way the soldiers may have hoped.
Unusually, this small group of reservists has gone beyond justifying their act of refusal in terms of general opposition to the occupation.
Because of their place at the heart of the system of control over Palestinians, they have set out in detail, in the letter and subsequent interviews, what their work entails and why they find it morally repugnant.
There is a pronounced deceptive aura to the Obama Administration’s disclosures about the new U.S. war in Iraq and Syria against the religio-fascist Islamic State (IS). The White House even says it is not a war but a simple counterterrorism strategy, as in Yemen. This is intended to mislead Americans and to generate substantial support for the long war to come.
Every U.S military intervention in Muslim countries since the late 1970s has eventually resulted in unintended negative consequences, both for Washington and the target country. There is no reason to think that President Obama’s latest Middle East military adventure will …
UN Summit on Failed Climate Change … Not Showing Up to 90 Percent of Our Jobs Would Save the World
More and more parades, theater of the absurd, mugging for media, book tours, and academics and Jewish writers speaking for the masses on “alternative media.” For planet earth. Can we just say goodbye to Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and this fucked up Facebook and Google and Apple and “the world will be better without energy and dirty hydrocarbon investments” mentality about really stopping climate change, or even talking about it. None of this is rational, none of it, and I …
Among those who will be speaking there briefly is Medea Benjamin, who remarked Monday evening:
This is exactly what ISIL wants. They’re trying to get the U.S. involved in a war. There are already U.S. troops in combat and this will mean more. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of another immoral and unwinnable war.
Today the US – backed by “moderate” Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Jordan – started bombing territory in another sovereign state, Syria, without a UN Security Council resolution or a plausible argument that it is acting in self-defence. That makes it a crime of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
In a sign that Obama’s war on ISIS in Syria could quickly be extended into a war against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Israel downed a Syrian jet inside Syria this …
On September 3, 2014 The Associated Press reported: “Secretaries of State past and present meet for rare reunion for a museum ground breaking event…a museum and education centre that will demonstrate the ways in which diplomacy matters now and has mattered throughout American history. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Wednesday against creeping American isolationism, making the case that U.S. global leadership is essential in uncertain times as he hosted a rare public reunion of five of his predecessors.”
Accompanying the text was a picture of these emissaries of tokenism walking in single file on a strip of carpet laid down …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 22nd, 2014
Professor Chris Williams says a solution to the climate crisis requires a restructuring of the global economy, but when the last opportunity to do so came after the 2008-9 financial crisis, world leaders saved the banks instead.
An in depth look at the events that unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri following the police murder of Michael Brown, a black teenager. Also features an exclusive interview with former Black Panther, Ashanti Alston, about the state of black “America”, abolishing penile power and taking care of your peeps in the muthafuckin resistance.
The greatest action ever for the protection of Mother Earth took place in 166 countries, September 21. We were half-a-million people filling streets in some 3000 events (a few, the day before).
Three hundred thousand marched in New York City, the city where some 125 heads of states were to meet on September 23. Among many celebrities and politicians participating was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He had called for the UN summit, the first in which so many heads of state were to attend since the COP15 fiasco held in Copenhagen, December 2009. At that time 100,000 people marched demanding …
by Nicholas Smaligo and James Anderson / September 22nd, 2014
How did the student debt regime come to be?
The question was posed as the first debtors’ assembly of the fall semester got underway on Southern Illinois University campus.
The following analysis is derived from the talk that took place at the beginning of the assembly held September 17, on the third anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
To begin, we pose as a problem the $1.2 trillion cumulative student load debt supposedly owed to the government and financial institutions and the almost 30 grand graduates owe on average in student loan debt.
Student loan debt is a relatively …
The big climate march in New York City and a big new book have concentrated attention on the climate. Enough denial and delay the marchers chant; This Changes Everything, says Naomi Klein in her latest call to action.
“It’s not about carbon, it’s about capitalism,” says Klein.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s time we faced not just the symptoms, but the system that is cozying us up to catastrophe.
Our economic system of extract, exploit and profit is colliding with our eco-system, writes Klein and in case anyone is unclear about the consequences of that: when the ideology of infinite growth meets the …
No one should have to choose between their hairline and their health. But increasingly, men who use Finasteride, commonly known as Propecia, to treat their male pattern baldness are making that choice, often unwittingly. In the 17 years since Propecia was approved to treat hair loss from male pattern baldness, so many disturbing urogenital and other side effects have emerged, the term Post Finasteride Syndrome (PFS) has been coined and hundreds of lawsuits have been brought.
Finasteride inhibits a steroid responsible for converting testosterone into 5?-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) the hormone that tells hair follicles on the scalp to stop producing hair. …
As concerned citizens mobilise for climate change demonstrations across the world, never has it been more important to embrace a collective demand for ‘system change’ as the surest way to limit global warming and ensure environmental sustainability.
More than two decades after international climate change negotiations officially began, governments have made little progress towards implementing a response that is commensurate with the scale of the crisis. Not only have policy-makers all but failed to ensure that global warming will not exceed the two degree target, emissions have soared by 61% since 1990 and scientists predict a rise of between …
National Security Adviser Susan Rice recently wound up her stay in China to prepare the November visit of President Obama, President of The Indispensible Nation. She was greeted with due pomp by Xi Jinping, President of China, one of the Dispensible Nations.
I wrote about that visit earlier. A transcript of the interchange was not available at the time, but it has now been provided by anonymous sources, every bit as reliable as those of the NYT’s Chief Military Correspondent, the indispensible Michael R. Gordon. (For those not aware of Gordon’s reportorial prowess, he co-authored, with Judith Miller, the key article …
In one of the fiercest clashes of the insurrection, Syrian troops finally took control of the town of Rastan after five days of intense fighting with …
Raúl Castro, President of Cuba, said that he wants to start relations with the U.S., but first the U.S. must provide health insurance to all 46 million people who lack it; stop extrajudicial assassinations in sovereign countries through drone attacks; make higher education affordable for all; reform the prison system which has by far the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, with a drastically disproportionate amount of prisoners being minorities; grant Puerto Rico its sovereignty as required by the U.N. Charter, U.N. Declaration on Decolonization, and the popular referendum in Puerto Rico in 2012; halt the economic …
Faculty & alumni threaten to resign and boycott donating to the university if John Thrasher is selected
by Roshan Bliss / September 19th, 2014
Florida State University is poised to appoint former ALEC Legislator of the Year John Thrasher as new president after “sham” presidential search and Koch funding scandal.
For months now, a battle has been raging at Florida State University to stop what student and faculty say is “[a] hostile political takeover of the presidential search process at FSU.”
Students, faculty, alumni, and the Tallahassee community have mounted a campaign of protests, disruptions, petitions, letters, and a proposal for a reset of the process in response to the increasingly clear reality that FSU’s Presidential Search Advisory Committee (PSAC) has been rigged to select former …
The drums of war are beating once again with the vanguard of U.S. bombers already over Iraq (and soon Syria) to, in President Obama’s words, “degrade and destroy ISIS.” The Republican Party, led by war-at-any-cost Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, wants a bigger military buildup which can only mean U.S. soldiers on the ground.
Here they go again. Another result of Bush’s war in Iraq. Washington has already expended thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of American injuries and illnesses, and over a million Iraqi lives. The achievement: the slaying or capture of Al Qaeda leaders, but with that …
President Obama has announced that he is seeking a coalition to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS in Iraq, Syria and wherever else it may be. That coalition, however, will apparently be neither a NATO coalition nor a United Nations coalition. Why not?
Part of the problem is that NATO member Turkey is refusing to allow air strikes against ISIS to be launched from its territory. Does this have anything to do with the fact that Turkey has been providing safe passage, safe haven, arms and other support for ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and – oh yes – buying …
A few months ago, not many Americans, in fact, Europeans as well, knew that a Yazidi sect, in fact, existed in northwest Iraq. Even in the Middle East itself, the Yazidis and their way of life have been an enigma, shrouded by mystery and mostly grasped through stereotypes and fictitious evidence. Yet in no time, the fate of the Yazidis became a rally cry for another US-led Iraq military campaign.
It was not a surprise that the small Iraqi minority found itself a target for fanatical Islamic State (IS) militants, who had reportedly carried out unspeakable crimes against Yazidis, driving them …
As Scotland decides peacefully whether to quit the Union, let's remember history
by Stuart Littlewood / September 18th, 2014
The polling booths have opened on Scotland’s Big Day and the world is watching, mesmerised, to see which way they jump. It’s too close to call, we’re told.
But the Scots weren’t always so evenly split over their desire for freedom. I’m staring at my breakfast tray which commemorates the Battle of Bannockburn, 1314 — the date indelibly etched on every Scotsman’s memory when Robert the Bruce trashed the English army of Edward II and won independence the hard way.
In my younger days when I lived and worked in Scotland, I was …
A Fusion Center for United Against Nuclear Iran & Foundation for Defense of Democracies?
by John Stanton / September 17th, 2014
The Justice department would like to the see the UANI lawsuit go away as it is aware that what is being described as “law enforcement” documents would include both privileged and classified Treasury Department work product relating to individuals and companies that it has investigated for sanctions busting. Passing either intelligence related or law enforcement documents to a private organization is illegal but the Justice Department’s only apparent concern is that the activity might be exposed. There is no indication that it would go after UANI for having acquired the information and it perhaps should be presumed that the source …
Scottish voters will go to the polls on September 18th to decide whether Scotland should become an independent country. As video blogger Ian R. Crane colorfully puts the issues and possibilities:
[T]he People of Scotland have an opportunity to extricate themselves from the socio-psychopathic global corporatists and the temple of outrageous and excessive abject materialism. However, it is not going to be an easy ride . . . .
If Alex Salmond and the SNP [Scottish National Party] are serious about keeping the Pound Stirling as the Currency of Scotland, there will be no independence. Likewise if Scotland embraces the Euro, …
For those who believe in marijuana and cannabis freedom, the future has never been brighter. Right now there is an awakening to the benefits of cannabis for medicinal purposes, specifically something called CBD oil. But is the new CBD craze being manipulated by media and politicians?
