Fools Rush In

Allow me, after roughing you up a bit, to tell you a personal story and offer a quick glimpse into my journey as a political activist over several years, and through two presidential administrations. I offer this as an illustration as to why we need to be less sure of ourselves, more measured in our passions and perhaps to reassess how much we think we know about our own government.

The unfortunate events which occurred in the nations capitol,

the misled but entirely legitimate rage of America's abandoned labor class, is being used to push a transparently undemocratic agenda;

the ongoing censorship of unpopular political opinion through google and social media algorithms, the elimination of fact inconvenient to the prevailing narrative, closing down Parlor, the most popular downloaded app on Apple, abruptly forced off the internet by three of the four big tech platforms and more frightening, the retooling of the War on Terror to fit domestic needs.

After the bludgeoning of the free speech rights of the angry mob, the left will quickly find itself in the crosshairs of these same new laws, for whom I believe, they are being crafted. The actual left, those that practice the political; activists.

Real activism is dangerous. What is now being proposed and embraced by democrats as patriotic, will make it more so. The first amendment is there to protect "unpopular speech". People who have never been activists, or risked arrest, have little idea how dangerous it can be to embarrass or speak truth to power. Those individuals I most respect as sources, have either had their careers ruined, gone to or narrowly avoided going to jail or worse.

My own activism began pre-Snowden and lasted some short time after the Occupy movement. It was at this point I decided I could no longer continue and worried I would be putting my family in jeopardy. Snowden had made Americans aware of my civil liberties concerns and the non violent protest movement I had been vigorously advocating for amongst the activist community, had spread both across the country and the planet. It was time to retire.

We travel a lot. Every time we crossed a border I worried I would be arrested for my political work. Following a casual interview on the plane which ended with our late arrival in the Twin Cities, Annette and I, split up during the flight, realized we hadn't enough time to make our connection. The man sitting next to Annette, several seats away, announced that he would make a phone call on our behalf and have them wait till we arrived. We sprinted to the gate, they closed the hatch behind us, and the plane took off directly. They had definitely waited. Perhaps just another coincidence but I was sure of my having been interviewed and that this was the second time while passing though this particular airport that I had been.

During this period, my seat, and the mirror inside the locked car, would be in the wrong places when we returned to retrieve the vehicle at the airport. Admittedly, the subject matter I was dealing with on a daily basis, for several hours or more a day, seven days a week, for several years, was rather stressful. I had hard time convincing myself I was merely being paranoid.

In PDX, I was pulled aside and told there was bomb making residue in my back pack. Held for a couple hours, during which time I lectured my guards on the loss of their civil liberties as a result of the War on Terror, we barely managed to make it on the airplane. Upon arrival in San Francisco, we drove to our favorite Mexican spot in the Mission. Within minutes we received a call from the SFPD, explaining the rental car had been broken into, a smash and grab, right after we had parked it, witnessed by a store owner. Perhaps the two events were unconnected ? I was already nervous, and this incident did little to put my mind at ease.

A piece I had written, Dancing with Tyrants, the posting of which months earlier had led to many sleepless nights, and some contention, was I believe the second most read piece after Hedges, on the site originally set up by activists to aid in the planned occupation of DC. Both posts advocated mass civil disobedience.

Set up by among others, Kevin Zeese and Margret Flowers, the site later morphed into popular resistance. org. That single post was the extent of my association with that organization, though I followed their exploits and later court appearances, as they risked serious prison time to protest American foreign policy at the Venezuelan embassy.

On firedoglake, Jane Hamsher and the moderators faced a quandary in my publishing Dancing with Tyrants there. Rain in particular, felt that I would land them all in jail and I understood his reservations. He moved to censor my involvement on the site and I believe decided to himself either he or I would go. He departed the blog soon after and his ample contributions were lost to the community. I think to this day that Jane was probably the most savvy political operator on the field. It was a privilege to have known and interacted with these people.

As activists made feverish arrangements to gather in DC, Occupy Wall Street appeared to come out of nowhere, moved the location from DC to NYC, the timetable up by weeks and the original Occupation in DC never occurred.

One morning about this time, as was my routine, I walked into the only cafe in our little town of 3,500 people, and Phil, the owner informed me, "Star, this guy wants to talk to you". JJ Sandlin, a large bald fellow with a long coat and a derby, introduced himself as a personal friend of the Clintons, and the Annapolis roommate of the Dep Sec of Def. He then went on to tell me, a complete stranger, that he had seen my wife walking to the store earlier and wondered how such a beautiful woman could have ended up in Goldendale. He claimed he had recently been offered a position as a judge on one of the Appeals Courts but was also considering other projects, which is what had brought him to me. He wrote in a small notepad as we spoke.

I decided if I was to be interviewed again and as they obviously knew where I lived, we may as well continue the conversation at my home, a block away. My kids ran past and up the stairs, we sat in the living room, Annette present throughout, and discussed my political concerns; torture, rendition, secret prisons, the secret assassinations of American citizens and others outside a court of law, domestic spying, etc... for a number of hours, after which he remarked that our car looked good and sturdy and perhaps I would like to continue our conversations further, as he owned a house and vineyard near Yakama about an hour north of where we live. For the few that might get a good laugh at an inside joke I was asked, "Star, you connected with the UFO group in Trout Lake "? I'm not. I assumed John Podesta had pitched the question from afar. He left his name and number and departed.

In my mind I was probably being offered a job to co opted me and was fairly sure I would be used in the association to shore up something they may have missed in their calculus and that we likely didn't have the same agenda. Maybe that was just my own cynicism and I've done the man a disservice. Allow me to add some context.

I had a long history at Think Progress as a poster, before and after Bush, had met all the young guns in person in DC, several of whom now work for the Intercept. Before Obama's election, I joked with Faiz Shakir on the site, who went on to head the ACLU, that they should be paying us for doing their work for them, as a good number of us posted on the site several hours a day or more.

The entire community at the time was wedded to opposing Americans loss of basic rights, civil liberties and far more unsavory details that you probably don't want to know about. Few people outside a small circle of activists had any idea of the extent of what was actually happening inside the country before the Snowden revelations but we were here before Snowden, he and Greenwald just delivered the coup de gras, and we helped with that too.

John Kiriacou had yet to be incarcerated under the espionage act and we hung torture over the shoulders of the Bush administration like an albatross in front of a sizeable audience. The blogsite attached to the democratic party's only think tank, Think Progress, was only too happy to have us and all the energy the community of bloggers was bringing it. We felt as though we were pushing back a monster and we were.

This was all quite fraternal until Obama won the election and Bush left office. Suddenly, it was the Obama administration that was embracing and expanding these abuses, and exponentially. Defending them in court, the state secret privilege. Torturing continued according to the Red Cross, at Bagram.

I began to receive threats online and was sent links with viruses in the replies. The comment section we had previously inhabited, filled up with vulgarities before being removed entirely. We were no longer useful.

Marcy Wheeler, a regular firebagger, hit it out of the park, and the Obama administration was caught defending extra judicial assassination, having gone so far as to assassinate three Americans ,that we knew of. The youngest sixteen, by drone at a cafe, all of which was initially denied. The administration's attempts to do damage control were comic tragedy.. The NYT tried to put a human face to secret assassinations and gave us Terror Tuesdays. Welcome to the Disposition Matrix.

Obama went on, despite campaigning on protecting whistleblowers, to prosecute more whistleblowers under the revived and draconian Espionage Act, than all other presidents combined.

I never called Mr. Sandlin, but did end up in Zuccotti Park with my family. We were among the first there. A few days later Occupy spread across the planet and to hundreds of US cities, where it remained non violently for more than a year. To say I found this empowering would be a serious understatement. We were on fire.

Firedoglake regulars worked to provide blankets and supplies to the encampments, provided moral support to John Kiriacou in prison, buying a swing set for his kids and were the only ones provided access to Chelsea Manning in jail. The bloggers on the site had became notorious.

Occupy had become a global movement and would erupt again many months later, in places like Hong Kong and Turkey.

Every time I flirt with the idea of becoming a serious activist again, I shake, get sick to my stomach and deal with a good several day bout of PTSD.

Besides making dialogue between the two camps impossible, a good portion of you here, usually the ones who are quickest to take offense when a modicum of the same behavior is applied to themselves, are making a bad job, done in the shadows at great expense, a good deal more dangerous.

Your Personal Apocalypse

Your Personal Apocalypse

Your personal apocalypse,
 your private Babylon,
 your polo horses, pool, and manicured lawn,
 the edifice is crumbling, what more is there to say.

I see you in the hallway,
 but the house is burning down ,
 a fool , a jester, prince without a crown.
 politician banksters, world renowned .

 Boarded windows,
 locks on doors,
 people seeking answers not found in any stores.
 You fear tomorrow coming,
 but your standing in the door !

 In the halls of government,
  hypocrisy abounds,
  money lenders in the temple,
  play monopoly with clowns.
  Get up, take a bow !

 Your personal apocalypse,
  your private Babylon,
  your polo horses , pool and manicured lawn,
  edifices crumbling, what more is there to say .

Thoughts on Evolution Part 1

Modern man lives for number one. What’s ironic about this is the small fact that more than any of his predecessors, he is dependent on others for every element of his survival . His clothes, transportation, food, shelter, entertainment and indeed all the most vital services which he enjoys and consumes daily are provided by others. Previously, as his very lifestyle was built around an agrarian farming culture that provided his sustenance, he depended on an intimate network of extended family , other farmers and the village which sprung up around him to house the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker. The products he consumed until very recently were all produced locally by people he, by and large, knew personally.

 This urban scheme has been with us since the first farming communities sprung up. An arrangement dating back to our earliest recorded history, beginning with the departure of our ancestors from a nomadic hunter gatherer existence which lasted hundreds of thousand of years to move into villages leading to the creation of the worlds earliest civilizations in places like Sumeria and Mesopotamia. The elements of our modern lives have changed very little since the beginning of our earliest written history a mere four thousand years ago. Shops, markets, money, houses and streets, writing and book keeping, the wheel and much of our technology, the nation state, war, ethics, morality and the laws which govern us are all very similar to those we now employ in daily life in the twenty first century. Outside a few tweaks, all of what makes us modern , the vast majority of it, has been with us since that time. Even our religions in the West, the Bible stories which are still clung to and interpreted literally by a large portion of the American population such as the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark as well as many others are in fact originally from Sumerian pre Judaic sources. Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was a Sumerian.

This adopted city dweller approach to survival has indeed made us very successful, coupled with the extensions of basic technological innovations acquired as we moved on from living with the natural world so closely. The harnessing of fire or combustion, the little trick of spinning magnets around a coil of wire to produce electricity, the generator. Electricity, which when reintroduced into the very same mechanism, spins a wheel and becomes the electric motor. Some cultures, the few indigenous ones still present in many places but vanishing quickly, continue to maintain that pre urban lifestyle but these are increasingly extinguished as separate cultural differences, ancient skills and knowledge disappear in the march towards mono culture that can be seen the world over.

While the “new” approach has certainly made us very successful in evolutionary terms, the so called “masters of nature”, it has also, as can be seen in the impending destruction of the natural world which all life, including people intrinsically depend upon, put us in a position where the very strategy which has made us so successful imperils our continued survival along with the rest of life on the planet. No longer consciously connected with nature, human life now occurs entirely within an artificial system of man’s own creation.

 Specialists, whose entire lives are lived within civilization’s comfortable cocoon, removed from any personal awareness of the community of life around us or our effects upon it, we have become alienated from the very web which our survival as a species depends. Ironically, everything about us , the edifice of our civilization, our books, our housing, buildings , televisions, computers transportation, entertainment, and indeed the windows we look out at the world from, are all square , all come in boxes. We seem incapable of any experience outside this simple package, blind to the damage we are inflicting on our own future, we are truly boxed in by the limitations we put in place only a few thousand years ago .

 Perhaps we need to heed an older voice , one that was with us far longer than civilization has been, in order to evolve beyond our present conundrum . Perhaps things have come full circle and progress is not a line from here to there but rather a spiral making it’s way to a perfection at the heart of the evolutionary process that all life obeys. I think the words of the Sioux medicine man and shaman Black Elk , who knew Red Cloud and Crazy Horse and was witness himself to the battle of the Little Big Horn and the massacre at Wounded Knee stated what we, in our linear thinking have all but forgotten.

“You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it… Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The Sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The Moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back to where they were. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.”

First published on firedoglake , Wednesday July 31, 2013
 http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2013/07/31/rewriting-the-dominant-paradigm-thoughts-on-evolution-part-1/

If You Haven’t Panicked Yet About Syria, A Few Of The Many Reasons You Should !

An American strike on Syria could very conceivably be the shot that is heard around the world. It could lead to a Third World War involving the most important players and economies on the world stage.

 Below are just a few of the facts that point to such a possibility.

 Russia’s only international military base outside the former Soviet republic is the port of Tartus, Syria. It’s warships entered the Eastern Mediterranean for the first time in decades recently and it is sending more ships plus advanced weaponry to Syria, as we speak. Syria already has the most sophisticated anti ship missiles on earth which can reach Cyprus where US forces are likely to be stationed and any strike on Syria will be conducted from the sea.

Iran, a nation which the US has sought to make war with for a decade has a mutual defense pact with Syria, which places them in a position of having to defend Syria by treaty obligation.

 Iran is sitting on the second largest Natural Gas and the third largest oil reserves in the world.
It controls 35% of the oil provided to the entire world and more than half of the amount is provided to China through the Hormuz Strait, the world’s single most important geostrategic pathway for energy.

 Iran refuses US currency for it’s oil trading, a direct blow to American hegemony. Dominating Iran is also seen by American war hawks as a way to control China based on the reasons stated above. These are transparently the real causes for American aggression towards Iran, a signatory to the nuclear non proliferation treaty with every right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Since the nuclear red herring isn’t gaining traction, a war with Syria is seen as the next best thing.

China is the world’s second largest importer of oil. Perhaps as much as half of China’s oil and gas come directly from Iran and this action, if taken by the US, is the backdoor to a war with Iran, make no mistake.A small disruption in Mid East oil passing through the tiny opening known as the Straits of Hormuz and the effects on the worlds economy will be unmistakable. Between that fact and the obvious Russian and the Chinese elements involved in a conflict with Syria, this could be the riskiest gambit any administration has taken since Hitler invaded Poland.

Meanwhile, if you are an American, the country you are living in spends as much as the entire planet combined on it’s military and has it’s entire population under surveillance. Your government is controlled entirely by corporate money. More than nine out of every ten elections are decided by which candidate has the most corporate money, which means unequivocally that as a point of fact the US in no longer either a functioning democracy or a representative government where it’s citizens can reasonably expect to affect the outcome through participation. The nation’s government assassinates it’s own people in secret without any due process and claims the right to arrest and hold those people or anyone else indefinitely without ever charging them. It is currently operating military operations in at least seventy four other countries, often without those nations blessings.

 Wondering what it felt like to be German before the Second World War ?

Originally published on firedoglake
Saturday September 7, 2013 12:56 pm

 http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2013/09/07/if-you-havent-panicked-yet-a-few-of-the-many-reasons-you-should/

Occupying the Voting Booth

I won’t be voting Republican, that being said I think it’s important that we should be able to have an honest discourse on just how bad it’s gotten under the good guys, a discussion which would leave our candidate in a pretty bad light all in all . This is too taboo to discuss among true believers in the democratic camp because the other guys are “even worse” which is exactly the danger in the lesser of two evil approach to politics.The danger being that the most important issues of our times are now too taboo to truly reflect upon in the public forum. Essentially no matter how far to the right the democrats move or how awful the policies they embrace, they seem to be the only choice left us within the system. A system transparently, in the wake of Citizens United, entirely bought and paid for by large for profit corporate interests. Over ninety percent of all congressional elections are decided by the candidate with the most money.

 Obama has expanded the definition of war, enlarged and embraced the neo cons attack on civil liberties and stands with the Bush Administration before it on the assumption of sweeping new powers for the executive, such as, we are told, the right to assassinate American citizens, abroad or at home .These powers include the authority to arrest and detain us on no charges or try us on secret charges in front of a military tribunal. Meanwhile domestic spying according to the ACLU has risen exponentially under Obama’s watch. He has resurrected the Espionage Act and despite protection of whistle blowers being one of his major campaign planks now brags that his administration has prosecuted twice as many whistle blowers under it than any other in history . This of course is the diametrical opposite of what he campaigned on previously .

 Drones ravage civilians and children , 800 of them in Pakistan alone, a country we are not officially even at war with. The images of their bodies never make it onto the evening news. The military budget grows uninterrupted and the health care offered by Obama is itself little different from Romney’s in Massachusetts, straight out of the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank. The man has done virtually the opposite of everything he ran on and that’s inexcusable. Remember FISA ? It’s gone downhill dramatically since then . We’re like the Nazis in this country , both parties .

 So what’s the downside to a knife in the back exactly and why should the democrats ever move to the left ? They can merely offer you any alternative short of the unthinkable and you will vote for them anyway. The government is no more than a subsidiary of industry, the entertainment division, as Frank Zappa aptly put it , of the military industrial complex. Unfortunately both at home and abroad what happens here will have dramatic consequences for all of us because of America’s present position on the world stage .

 One half of all life on the planet will disappear in the next 100 years . Scientists now believe the Arctic will be free of summer ice within the decade .As a result of the fact that one third of the carbon we are putting into the atmosphere ends up settling into the oceans scientists predict a mass extinction event in those oceans “unseen in human history” within the next few decades .The Greenland ice sheet melted in four days this summer. Hear about this at the debates ? Didn’t think so.

 We do know through the Wiki Leaks documents that the lesser evil party bribed and threatened smaller countries NOT to sign on to any binding agreement on greenhouse gas emissions though and have opened the arctic up to oil drilling. They also apparently support a pipeline to bring Canada’s tar sands to Texas for refining, a move Nasa’s chief climatologist has called game over for the planets climate because it is far more polluting than what we have been using till now and will dramatically extend our use of dirty fuels way past our species expiration date.

This is not advice on how to vote , for that I suggest you use your own best judgement but please stop fooling yourselves with your cheer leading, the good guys aren’t very and have managed to rival the worst of the Bush years while you all remained silent out of political convenience or actually defended what should be indefensible if you care about the fate of the human species or democracy in America.

Originally posted Thursday October 18, 2012 1:54 pm

 http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2012/10/18/occupying-the-voting-booth/

The Rags of Liberty

An original song in commemoration of the death of the Bill of Rights at the hands of the two corporate parties .

The fact that it was a democratic administration which asked that the language exempting American citizens from indefinite detention without charges be removed from the NDAA is lost on very few .

The remarkable bipartisan enthusiasm displayed for legislation which clears the way for the military to operate on American soil should be an epiphany for all those still sleeping .

Nothing illustrates the depth of this betrayal of the oath of office better than the passage of the NDAA and it’s being signed into law by a man who ran as a constitutional law expert and predicated his campaign for the presidency on fixing the grave abuses to that document under Bush and the neoconservatives .
  
                   Good luck out there .

   
                     The Rags of Liberty

They don’t serve cupcakes in this jai.
indefinitely detained here , no charges evidence or bail ,
My advice ?
Be careful with your mail.
Keep opinions to yourself or you’ll end up in a cell .
Bipartisan consensus, the government has finally come to it’s collective senses .

“Torturer , that could be a good occupation . I mean if in you can’t find work flippin hamburgers !”
My living room is front and center . In America’s global holy war on terror .

“Whadda you worried about , your innocent ,. You don’t even have an opinion !”
At least now you can be happy knowing that your never really alone !

“Who needs rights anyway , I don’t care , you can assassinate my children !”

You say you can bug my telephone,
Geo locate me when and where I roam.
I once felt safest in my home,
then I committed treason when I wrote this silly poem.
They can torture people as they please ,
use a bloody scalpel between your navel and your knees,
You never get a lawyer, not when your seized,
they feel about the constitution the way a leper feels towards his disease .

” Just wave that flag faster ,maybe they won’t notice us !”

My living room is front and center , In America’s global holy war on terror.

“The Bill of Rights ? Didn’t I already pay for that ?”

My Observations While At The Wall Street Occupation

Yesterday , along with my wife and daughters , I spent several hours at the wall street occupation. I have several observations to make and report of what I found there as well as my own attempt at activism, largely made up of talking with the police which surrounded the event in large numbers.

  
"Straw Poll on Direct Action" by Colin David Anderson on flickr. 
Straw poll on the consensus to form a subcommittee to explore being autonomous actions leading to arrest

As expected, the vast majority of people I saw there were white and in their early twenties. Most were radical looking middle class youngsters who sat together looking somewhat frayed around the edges, having spent several damp nights hassling with the authorities, though the weather yesterday was better than nice , which I’m sure helped raise spirits. It is obvious that not many older citizens were able to attend due to the need to pay bills and mortgages , which the youth is typically exempt from for a time . Aside from a few construction workers , eating lunch in the park, there was no one who could be representative of those people,who made Madison Wisconsin so successful, working men and women and union members.

I commended the young individuals there. There were not more than a few hundred present at best and without their presence there wouldn’t have been anything happening at all , but as always , where people are concerned, they were not entirely homogenous in their attitudes .

 While most were respectful there were also those who were more confrontational with the police, dancing into an area of sidewalk which the local authorities were compelled to keep clear , a woman who decided this was the right place to go without a shirt ,and someone holding a sign up with something along the lines of “GO FUCK YOURSELVES ZIONIST PIGS “, none of which IMHO did much to create sympathy from the passers by.

In addition to this scenario was the obvious fact that most of those present lacked enough information to truly explain why they were there and it was hard to see that there was any real spokespeople to represent the movement and accurately portray the reasons for the action. This could easily have been remedied though some printed talking points but as far as I was aware this hadn’t happened. Invariably the media focused in on those pushing the line over the side walk area that the police had been instructed to keep clear for pedestrians and the more unsavory looking and uninformed youths.

I spent between three and four hours talking to the police , all in groups of between two and four, asking them first what they thought of the protest and if they knew what the reasons were for it . Essentially none had any idea whatsoever but were polite and listened respectfully to what I had to say about income inequality, record poverty and profits, Citizens United and our loss of basic rights such as habeas corpus and rampant domestic spying etc. At the end of each conversation I believe the police I communicated with were far more aware of what is at stake and why the action was occurring ,becoming both supportive of the occupation and somewhat shocked by the facts and statistics I offered in defense of my positions .

My question is are we going to bring working men and women, union members , people of color, religious congregations , other political groups and older statesmen into the fray or can we expect only the youth to carry the standard without clear talking points and a thorough understanding of the issues to present our reasons for attending ?

posted on Firedoglake, Friday September 23, 2011

http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2011/09/23/my-observations-while-at-the-wall-street-occupation/

A Sense of Urgency

                        Original music and video 

  

Widows and Orphans

                             Original music and video 

Got a hundred billion in the bank,

run the market make economies tank,

think it's time we talked, wanna be frank,

hand us a check leave the amount it's for blank.

                               

Space Invaders or Maybe the Banks Don't Know Squat

Timothy Geitner said a few months back that 40% of the houses in foreclosure remain unoccupied and that that is having a disastrous effect on neighborhoods and causing stress on municipal services .

In European cities , in Germany, England, Holland, Spain for instance or the case of Christiana in Denmark , alternatives expressed themselves by squattering vacant buildings, houses and in the aforementioned case of Christiana, an abandoned military base.

Why not stand with those who have lost their homes by putting them back in them through methods such as these ? Seems like a good way to bring attention to the issue, get some free press and provide housing to the homeless and dispossessed in a nation whose people are facing record poverty because of the banks and big business !

Our laws were created for the good of the citizens , the citizens were not created for the good of the laws !Apparently those laws now only apply to 98% of the population.

Killing more than a million in an illegal war based on transparent lies for resources and then profitting handsomely by doing so,( halliburton and the carlyle group )

Torturing and kidnapping individuals never formally charged with a crime and then using the states secret defense to shield those responsible from justice,

Spying on the American public en masse without a warrant and then passing retroactive immunity for the criminality,

Defrauding millions in the stock and housing markets and then putting billions of borrowed dollars, to be paid by the poor and their children with interest, into the hands of those who perpetrated the fraud, people who then promptly awarded themselves multi million dollar bonuses for their service to the elite on wallstreet .

Violating virtually every law known to God and man is alright apparently, if you have the right connections.

The rule of law is what keeps society civil . Perhaps the elite should consider this before violating them so openly !

Dancing With Tyrants or Why Civil Disobedidience Is Now The Only Way Forward

Recall, if you will, the sudden rise of Barack Hussein Obama and his quick ascent to the throne.

An unknown , unelected, constitutional law professor seemingly made to fit history, right down to his middle name, at the time of the worst constitutional crisis in our nations history .

Introduced to the nation at the democratic national convention by the party establishment, Obama served less than half his term as Senator while campaigning for and clinching both the democratic nomination and presidency all at the same time. Pretty slick huh .

Remember FISA ?

Along side the other contenders for the democratic nomination for president Obama pledged not to allow retroactive immunity for the telecoms. The FISA laws had teeth, carrying a penalty of up to $10,000 and five years in jail for each citizen whose rights had been violated. FISA would have locked up Bush officials and anyone caught spying on American citizens for something like a million years and this was seen by progressives as the best chance of restoring what had been destroyed under Bush and bringing those responsible for dismantling our rights to justice . Then, just shortly after receiving the nomination, surprise, a complete about face on our best chance at restoring democracy in America.

But he would still stand firm for the constitution in the courts and roll back the abuses of the Bush era once coronated we were told .

Well we now know that Obama has defended all the powers he inherited from Bush and even expanded his evil footprint claiming even the right to assassinate Americans abroad and essentially eliminating Miranda. Spying without oversight had reached a level that could be admired by Stalin, who lacked today's technology . Innocent individuals tortured and later released were prevented from ever seeking retribution in the courts . Bush administration officials, implicated in shameful crimes never before imagined possible in the US, were shielded through the use of the states secret privilege in American courts and defended against all comers abroad .

The democratic super majority

Progressives and independents aware of our nations descent into tyranny worked feverishly to place "progressive democrats in power in Washington over two election cycles. These democrats then voted in the largest military budget since the second world war with the majority we handed them , a majority larger than any enjoyed by republicans for over seventy years . At a time of record poverty and at a time when the disparity of wealth was greater than at any time since 1928 our nation was spending as much as the entire planet combined on it's military and invading oil and gas rich nations for their resources.

Torture, secret prisons,use of the states secret privilege, warrant less wiretapping,extrajudicial rendition,the loss of habeas corpus,military commissions,and indefinite detention of suspected enemy combatants all continued unabated . Practices such as signing statements and the supposed reinstatement of posse comitatus which Bush attached a signing statement to have never been adequately addressed and the new administration worked to eliminate Miranda protections while proclaiming the right to assassinate American citizens abroad without judicial interference.

This has been, from the onset , a very involved con job by people responsible for the deaths of 100s of 1000's at least, who have demonstrated a complete lack of compassion for the average man here or abroad and who run big business, the government and both parties.

We are living in a surveillance state without meaningful constitutional protections for it's citizens, global warming threatens our existence as a species on this planet in a very real way and the corporate entities which control our government are obligated to produce as much profit for their stockholders as possible making ethical behavior essentially impossible and outside their abilities .

It may make you feel good to believe that signing petitions and running progressive candidates in the primaries will change this ,or that voting once every two years in federal elections will help save America but may I suggest that that is rather naive. I believe that without a popular uprising involving the majority of the American population and direct non violent non cooperation en masse with the powers that be, we will never see any change meaningful enough to address the dire situation our nation and planet find themselves in .

Change You Can Believe In

As long as oil companies control our energy policies , as long as the insurers and big drug companies control our health care , as long as the military machine controls our economy ,we can never hope to exercise any control of our destiny as a democracy .

We will only continue to catalog and whine about events after they have already happened until we break the chain of corporate control of our collective destinies as a people .

We must unite and focus the outrage , expressed across the political spectrum .

A national boycott of big oil and a general strike nationwide must now be considered as the only viable way of pushing for a constitutional amendment barring corporate person hood from controlling our democracy .

Anything else is just ignoring the fact that we are being played and the change will never come from voting for either of the two parties at the voting booth .

Lets stop commenting on the news and start making some !

Opportunity and Treason

The Massachusetts election was a message to the establishment in Washington that they are too cozy with the banks, phrma, the health insurers, and wall street . Only a day later the Supreme court hands down a decision that amounts to treason, allowing corporations whose person hood is an obvious falsehood to trump the people’s voice in our faltering democracy .

The best solution in the wake of both the special election and this obscenity from the supreme court is to pass a constitutional amendment revoking the ridiculous claim of person hood for corporations and there by protections under the first amendment .

Entities which exist simultaneously all over the globe , who can clone themselves , have unlimited resources , never die and are comprised of many stockholders who are not American citizens are not people !

The arrogance of the five justices may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise. However if this ruling stands, without a constitutional amendment to fix it ,the only place democracy will find a voice is in the streets !

The root of all our largest problems in Washington is the intrusion of corporations in our government .

All attempts at reform and to address the dire problems which confront our species on planet earth, war, poverty, and the environment are rebuffed and repelled by these moral less entities, who by there very legal definition exist solely to pursue profit for their stockholders.

This may well be the best opportunity we have ever been given to fix the root of the problem !

No problems only solutions !

Think of this ruling as part of the “healing process” . This is an opportunity !

Our opponent is off balance.

It has been a piece meal approach up till now .

By Scotus over stepping themselves they have left their flank exposed.

Just because they are rich and powerful doesn’t mean they’re smart.

Tell the democrats that the population which handed them an electoral defeat in Mass,because of bank bailouts and talk of a mandate unanimously agrees that corporations have too much power in their government!

Let any republican who wants to go down in defeat in November oppose such an amendment

Why the Massachusetts Elections Are The Next Best Thing to a Popular Uprising

I'm a progressive and my hard work helped the democrats over two election cycles into a majority in both houses of congress and the presidency .

If Coakley loses, The Health Insurer Corporate Welfare Act of 2010 goes down and the American people win.
May I suggest a little hard ball ?

A Coakley defeat would be a shot across the bow of the establishment .

It would eliminate the 60 vote super majority we gave them .

It would kill the corporations bogus reform as it is now or force the democrats to do what they wouldn’t do to pass what the public wanted , the public option, by using only 51 votes in the senate.

It would send a wake up call to the party’s leadership and all those seeking re election that unless they move left their screwed in November .

The symbolic value of this being Kennedy’s vacated seat , the man who this reform is to be named after is priceless.Perhaps the symbolic value of that seat is more important than the seat itself ?

The downside ? The loss of a senate seat that will only be occupied for two years by a non progressive candidate !

The End of American Democracy or atleast the pretense of it

The line between corporate economic interests and American governance is quite likely to become blurred irreparably this week as the Supreme court is set to decide the fate of our democracy and the ability of the citizenry to have a reasonable voice in it going into the future .

The Supreme Court's decision in the campaign finance reform case Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission , which may be announced as early as today ,will be a watershed moment for American democracy with far reaching implications .

The case revolves around corporate funding during the last election cycle and a movie on Hillary Clinton. At issue is whether as legal "persons" corporate money spent to influence elections is protected under the first amendment as free speech and whether limits on corporate money spent during elections should be eliminated altogether !

With the increasing corporate control of the military and intelligence communitites, as well as the likelihood of a mandate to purchase the flawed product of the health insurers , a decision in favor of persons which, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out during the Citizens United oral argument, are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, seems inevitable.