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Tangled, Weakening Webs: Paraguay, Syria and the Last Ditch Efforts of a Crumbling Elite Class

I'm not going to say I know a lot about South American politics. I do know more than most people in the United States do, which is to say "nothing". So, even knowing next to nothing I am seeing a bigger pattern here, one of panic, one of over-extending themselves everywhere while trying to retain of a World increasingly set against the Powers That Be in the US.

I know this is hard for the average North American to think about. In our minds, before the Western colonization there was nothing here. Ok, a few Pocahontases and some really weird people who made pyramids and cut people's heads off. Then after we got here, anything South of our border reads like this to Joe Six pack: "All them Mexican countries... lessee, drug lords, poor people trying to steal our jobs, then further down, all there is is jungles and a few resorts." If you press them a little, they might remember that "One of those countries has some oil, got too big for their britches and some of them are downright pinko, like that Castro." They have no idea about any of our interventionism in South America and the Caribbean. To them, it is a no-mans land, other than a place to go on vacation in some enclave of whiteness and drink too much rum. A place that must not be able to run themselves, they have so many regime changes... never once thinking that those changes are due to a constant battle between US interests and the people trying to be autonomous and free of our tyranny.

Chances are, none see our hand in the Coup d'etat in Paraguay.



A primer:

I've written much about it, how Clueless of the Caribbean we are when it comes to places like Haiti and Puerto Rico struggling to be free of us I wrote last June. Has awareness improved?

Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela have just submitted to the UN for the 13th time a request that Puerto Rico be free and independent.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is reporting the US-backed Police in Puerto Rico documented cases of "excessive force, sometimes deadly, to suppress speech, subdue protesters, and target ethnic and racial minorities" against those who want Independence.

What follows is formulaic US puppets' accusations of it being "about" drugs, and asking for our intervention. This, in turn, overshadows the fact that we recently overturned PR delegates the right to vote in committee.

So much for representation, eh? See the full chart in my "clueless" post for more detail on places like American Samoa, Guam, Virgin Islands, Gitmo and others. Its hard to get to express the depth of our control without giving at least a brief history lesson.

Here's a news flash! THE USA DID 9/11 BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT. The first one, I mean.

...the torture and murder of thousands upon thousands of Chileans were "disappeared" or outright assassinated by the brutal killer Pinochet in 1973? More than 130,000 citizens were imprisoned in the following years for daring to want the right to self-determination.

This was another CIA backed attempt to stop the People-based government of Allende, a leftist and replace him with a brutal dictator from the furthest reaches of the neo-con right. President Salvador Allende was murdered in the coup, though there are claims he committed suicide.

Right now, there are student protests happening in Chile in opposition to the Chilean government's trying to privatize education; the student march to stand for it being a social right. They feel it should not be a profiteering enterprise. This is HUGE, yet nary a word about the "Springs" happening on our own continent makes our press.

You weren't supposed to notice the Honduran Coup June of 2009.

You aren't likely to even have heard of the attempted coup in Ecuador after they cut themselves out of the IMF.

You have no idea in this time of economic hardship, that we are throwing 20 MILLION at overthrowing Chavez in their election. Your tax dollars tamper with elections in a sovereign nation, while you cannot get health care. Nice, eh?

We, here are painfully unaware of the perpetual war on ALBA Nations waged perpetually by the US/Western money interests.

The Contras being backed by our drug/arms sales to overthrow the People's movement is the closest we get to having a clue about our thousands of interventions in South America.

http://www.yachana.org/teaching//resources/interventions.html



Paraguay:

So, the latest Western intervention, coup d'etat just happened in Paraguay. Fernando Lugo, former Catholic Bishop was a leftist struggling to help the poor and return some of the stolen by the rich lands to the people. Reactions have been almost unanimous in denunciation of this act, but other than Venezuela fairly toothless.

We have been intervening in Paraguay for years, propping up the rightist Laino in the early 80's. This is no different. We could not let a leftist stand, and surely had a hand in the parliamentary trickery that ousted a legally and democratically elected even "kind of" leftist remain in power.

Even Uruguay voted to not let the new President attend a MERCOSUR summit! Only Costa Rica and Uruguay have been traditionally the "whitest" and most western-friendly of nations, have remained relatively untouched by our CIA. Lets face it, they were friendly enough to our interests to not have needed to. Yet Costa Rica, long holding a face-value "nuetral" status has since 2010 allowed US troops on their soil under the ever-hand "drug danger" allegation that nearly always is the smoke screen for pushing back on any leftist movement. If the people want power, if the people want to thrive from their own resources, rather than allow a few rich Norte Americanos to profit off them? Drugs or "human rights violations" are always the go-to cover story.

These are the bare bones of the stories that make up the atrocities done by the US to our Southern neighbors. A primer, if you will. We on the left are more prone to questioning what is happening in our Middle Eastern and African forays... yet pay so little attention to what is happening on our own continents.

I wonder what it is about Junes and Septembers with our CIA and S.A.?

COMMON THREADS:

It is becoming more and more apparent daily that Syria and all her atrocities is backed and funded by the CIA and that the Houla Massacre was the act of NATO allies not Assad.

Lets see, that would be Syria that just made trade agreements with Iran and Venezuela. Syria, whose allies and trading partners Russia and China refuse to allow the US to create another Libyan type fiasco.

Any of us remotely aware at all realizes that Iraq was over oil, and Iran will be over control of the Straits of Hormuz through which it flows.

Iraq and Af/Pak over-extended our troops, but the uptick, hell tsunami of dronings have eased the need for boots on the ground.



We are now in:

Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan Somalia Libya Syria Yemen Uganda

We are banging the drums of war at, and infiltrating Iran as well.

We are suddenly militarizing and overthrowing at an increasing rate any leftist countries in South and Central America.

We are arming drones against our own civilians and calling them enemy combatants with kill on sight orders.

It really does plead for the leap of logic to explain why now, why when the US economy is about to crash, when all Western Nations are about to be sucked down the swirling ponzi drain of inequity with us, would they possibly want to expend the time and energy to work so hard to subvert other Nations?

The answer my friends is couched smack dab in the question with those with eyes to see.

The US has become the bane and bully of the World, and is rapidly losing traditional Western support among traditionally "with them" Nations. At least among the people who are demonstrating in Occupies around the globe. They are desperate that the Nations trading outside their interests do not spread the most frightening thing of all: The idea that post-collapse we must never again allow an Elite Class to exploit resources up to the hand of the few at the expense of the many.

Strategically, they know that there is really no more they can tap out of a broke, unemployed and largely unemployable class of serfs in the United States, and are looking for smaller, less armed Countries from which to create a new base for their hegemony.

If nothing else, taking over a smaller country and setting up a dictator there, insures somewhere to hide for our War criminals, much like the Nazis did after their War Crimes.

If this "ship" is going down, they are in a mad scramble to snatch and grab what they can, where they can, and hoard it to tide themselves over whatever Armageddon they have created.

The BRIC countries, those who have decided to trade outside of the dollar; the ALBA countries, anyone with even soft-pink economies like the Scandinavian countries all are enemies to their goals. The former seen as "evil to be destroyed"; the latter as "stupid nanny states to be punished" in their propaganda.

There is no portend of a Global Revolution than the desperation of the Predatory Capitalist Class to grossly over-extend themselves in order to hedge their last minute bets on either surviving, escaping or controlling things from somewhere else on a smaller scale, where they still may live as Kings among paupers.

Because to them? The only other option is unthinkable.

The Age of Obama

From Hope and Change 

to the 

Age of Revolt

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

This Sunday (June 24) on

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox,

Cindy welcomes and interviews

revolutionary Political Cartoonist/Author

Ted Rall.

Ted's new book is called:

The Age of Obama: From Hope and Change

to the Age of Revolt

Click for ordering info

Tune in at 2pm (Pacific Time) at

Community Progressive Radio

or anytime at the archives at:

www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com

CLICK TED'S PICTURE TO GO TO HIS WEBSITE

TED'S BIO

Cindy Sheehan at Bohemian Grove Protest

Wesley Clark Told The Truth

People need to be investigated. There needs to be accountability. Here's an article from Glenn Greenwald on what Clark said.

Cindy Sheehan Speaks In Washington D.C. - 5/20/2010

99% For Obama? MoveOn Plays the Election Game Again

By Edmund Berger

On May 9^th, Joshua Kahn Russell of 350.org and the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s Harmony Goldberg published a piece on ZNet defending the now controversial 99% Spring coalition. Russell and Goldberg have reason to justify this movement, one that has been attacked by many as an attempt by the moderates as a well-planned co-option of Occupy: both 350.org and the National Domestic Workers Alliance are key participants in the 99% Spring, and both are far more moderate organizations than perhaps Russell and Goldberg themselves. The presence of moderate voices alongside the far more radical participants, they argue, is not a reason to scream ‘co-option;’ instead, they define it as “alliance building,” a practical application of Antonio Gramsci’s idea of building a power bloc beyond the working class to challenge capital. But many, including myself, have argued that the 99% Spring is distinctively reminiscent of MoveOn’s Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which tapped grassroots political energy and diluted its adversarial potentials by channeling it into a voting base for a president who has shown himself to just as willing – if not more so – than Bush when it comes to militarized hijinks overseas. Russell and Goldberg, on the other hand, disavow this line of thinking. “…lets put aside the important discussion of whether or not engaging in electoral work to some extent will be a necessary part of a radical process in this country,” they write, before later adding “Our enemy is existing power structures promoted by the 1% and elites in both political parties who prop them up.”[1]

Sometimes the “elites” who prop up each respective party are deceptive. MoveOn, regardless of the protestations of many of its ground-level members, has an undisputed history of operating in close proximity with the Democratic Party. The upper management are certainly not 1%ers, but many of them drift in and out of the nebulous circuits surrounding the party, like the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. These aren’t the people who control the purse strings per se, but they are the people that transform corporate money into action. And it doesn’t have to mean political ads, speech tours, and publicity stunts. If the Koch Brothers have taught us one thing, corporate money can create an interactive campaign machine at the grassroots level. With this end mind, it would appear that MoveOn is continuing the 99% Spring’s appropriation of Occupy jargon, but unlike the coalition itself, this tactic makes no qualms that Obama’s reelection is the agenda on the table.

               
          The latest trick in MoveOn’s bag is “99airlines,” a creative strategy built to counter the slew of campaign ads that saturated the media during election season. 99airlines will consist of planes flying over political rallies, towing banners attacking the prevalence of corporate money in politics. Neat idea, but the kicker? An email blast sent out by Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s current executive director and architect of the organization’s 2004 election activism, reveals that 99airline’s target will be rallies held for Mitt Romney. That is well and good, but nowhere in the email are there any plans to navigate the skies above Obama fundraisers. Instead, we’re treated with electoral soapboxing about how 99airlines “will transform Romney fundraisers into an opportunity to remind voters what he really stands for—corporations and the 1%.” Apparently top Obama donors – which have included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan & Chase, CitiGroup, Google, Microsoft, General Electric, Morgan Stanley – don’t make the cut as 1% corporations in MoveOn’s campaign. The funny thing is that Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and CitiGroup are, in actuality, Romney’s top donors in the present election cycle.

This case of one-sided grandstanding becomes even more opaque when one looks at some of the proposed banners for the campaign, many of which focus on Romney’s former employer Bain Capital. It is true that Bain, worth some $66 billion from its twenty-eight year run in the financial services sector (where it frequently partners with Goldman Sachs in corporate acquisitions buyouts), is indicative of the high levels of income inequality in America; Obama himself has used Romney’s affiliation with Bain as a populist-style rhetorical point. However, regardless of Obama’s public stance, Bain has chipped in to the president’s reelection campaign fund.[2] While the amount of money is significantly lower than Bain’s contributions to Romney, it’s clear that corporations do not see too much of an adversary in Obama, and why should they? Corporate welfare – namely bailouts - means that CEOs still get their giant bonuses regardless of the turbulent economic climate. Of course, this only matters when a Republican in office, not a Democrat.

A second email from MoveOn about the 99airlines drives the point home even further. “Imagine if Mitt Romney and his Super PAC friends had to deal with the sights and sounds of airplanes following them everywhere, reminding Americans how Romney stands for corporations and the 1%.” This email, one that completely sidesteps the fact that Obama’s own super PAC is a frequent recipient of money from corporations and powerful lobbying firms, was sent out by MoveOn’s National Campaign Director, Garlin Gilchrist II. Interestingly enough, in 2008 Gilchrist served as a social media director for the Obama campaign, while a firm that he had founded two years earlier, Opportunity Technology, LLC, is credited on his LinkedIn page as the “Creator [and] implementer of advanced social media and Internet strategy plans for non-profit organizations, political campaigns, including the Washington for Obama campaign…”

Furthermore, Gilchrist is a trainer at the New Organizing Institute (NOI), a close partner of MoveOn and member of the 99% Spring coalition. The NOI itself is staffed with participants in Obama’s 2008 campaign. For example, another trainer is Tom Matzzie, who engineered MoveOn’s Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, while their technology, communications, and campaign teams includes individuals who organized for the Obama campaign in Wisconsin, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. Judith Freeman, NOI’s founder, executive director, and official representative in the 99% Spring, served on Obama’s media team, and has recently lauded the president’s reelection campaign for its ability to tap into social networking with greater efficiency than the 2008 cycle. “They’ve taken everything we’ve learned since 2008 in offline and online campaigning, and built it in there,” she says.[3] One can’t help but wonder if, in some way, this is referring to the useful appropriation of anti-corporate and anti-establishment sentiments that are swirling around in the grassroots arena.

It’s great to point out that Mitt Romney is, to use MoveOn-speak, “Mr. 1%,” but their methodology of touting this fact while ignoring that his opposition is, for all intents and purposes, both deceptive and manipulative. It is political maneuvering at its finest: excluding crucial information paints a lopsided and unbalanced picture of reality, a form of reality that fully propagandized and instilled with intent. Such bastardizations are no different than MoveOn’s alleged qualms with corporate money in politics, since both hijack the political system to its own ends and not that of the mass constituency of the nation. What is even worse about this case is that the imagery and sensations being drawn upon are an extremely radical ethos that, in practice, have bypassed the electoral process and sought to generate a truly participatory society, autonomous from the massive centralizations of wealth and power that occur in the head-on collision of national government with capitalist economics. In fact, to prop up Obama – a man whose time as president has seen the expansion of America’s interventionist mentality, the NDAA, cronyism and repeated failures to push for legitimate change – as someone who is far more representative of the everyperson than his GOP counterparts is an insult.

MoveOn’s slogan is ‘democracy in action.’ Maybe it’s time they put their money where their mouth is.

---

[1] Joshua Kahn Russell and Harmony Goldberg “New Radical Alliances for a New Era” ZNet May 9^th, 2012 http://www.zcommunications.org/new-radical-alliances-for-a-new-era-by-joshua-kahn-russell

[2] Russ Choma “Obama’s Bain Backers” Open Secrets, May 22^nd, 2012 http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/05/obamas-bain-backers.html

[i3] Sarah Lai Stirland “The New and Not-So-New in Obama’s ‘Dashboard’” TechPresident, Wednesday, May 23^rd, 2012 http://techpresident.com/news/22232/obama-campaign-unveils-its-organizing-dashboard-focus-metrics

Barack Obama: The more insidious evil

Barack Obama: The More Insidious Evil"Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves...(and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." --Howard Zinn

To be sure: Neither the corporate owned Democrat or the corporate owned Republican parties are viable choices for the struggling everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation. In fact, these corporate owned parties are the antithesis to the needs and hopes of ordinary people in this nation, and throughout Mother Earth.


The American Heritage College Dictionary defines the word 'insidious,' in relevant part, as "Working or spreading harmfully - in a subtle or stealthy manner. Beguiling, but harmful; alluring." Indeed, Mr. 'hope and change' - predator drone - 'you'll never see it coming' - U.S. president Barack Obama is the very embodiment of the word 'insidious.'


Barack Obama's secret negotiations with economic bloodsucking multinational corporations, his trillion dollar criminal 'bailout' of the corporate elite of Wall Street, his signing into law of the draconian indefinite detention (NDAA) horror, his ongoing wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere, his bombing of Libya, North Africa, his feverish clamp down on corporate and government 'whistleblowers,' and his infamous 'Kill List' are but a few of the horrible actions that Obama, has and is, engaging in under the cover of insidious stealth and beguilement.


Obama's flagrant violations of U.S. Constitutional and international law have, in less than four years, far surpassed even the outrages committed by his predecessors. His constant tactic of baiting the everyday people with omissions, half truths, and outright lies has quite possibly been the most insidiously effective against ordinary people of any U.S. president - ever.


Due, in substantial measure, to the support of many 'liberals,' so-called 'progressives,' and much of the 'left,' who hypocritically refuse to hold Barack Obama to the same standards of accountability as they did his Republican party predecessors, he has been able to hoodwink and emaciate the struggling everyday people of this nation. The Obama regime, from its very beginning, was (and continues to be) one of deception, subterfuge, political repression, and non-transparency. This is precisely why it was so crucial for the systemic power-brokers (both Democrat and Republican) to have ensured that the 'Obama brand' was, in 2008, installed as the head of the U.S. corporate/military Empire. The terribe damage that Barack Obama has inflicted upon the people of this nation and world is incalculable.
Back during the corporate 'election' cycle of 2008, relatively few people in this nation were aware of, or willing to face, the fact that an 'Obama brand' presidency would mean 'More Of The Same - Only Worse.' [Reference: An Obama Presidency - More Of The Same Only Worse, November 5, 2008


The time is here and now for everyday people of all colors to come to grips with reality. It is the political plantation / reservation corporate owned system of both Democrats and Republicans that is keeping us all enslaved economically, politically, and socially. We must follow the course of pragmatism versus cynicism by rejecting this entire corrupt political system. We must cease following the course of systemic cynicism and helplessness. Rather, we must seek out and find the ways and creative means to develop and bring about a political model that serves the people instead of pimping and emaciating them / us. Be assured that the Democrats and the Republicans will use every sordid means at their disposal to distort, subvert and crush the will of the people. But it is the people, just plain everyday ordinary people, who must recognize that we can no longer allow ourselves to be the canon fodder of this hypocritical, repugnant, and unjust corporate-owned system.


It's time for a change - REAL systemic change, brought about by we, the people. Yes, there will for a certainty be disagreements among we the people, for if there were not, someone would be lying. But do not allow our disagreements to continue to be used against us collectively. We must find the ways and creative means to collectively throw off the yoke of this system. We must do this thing in this long, protracted, and important struggle.


Turn off your televisions and turn on your minds! We're not hamsters endlessly running on a spinning wheel going nowhere. It's time to stop acting like hamsters and regain our collective wills and humanity.


Each one reach one. Each one teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!...



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21159.htm] They were then, too enthralled and allured by the corporate-backed, pro-Zionist, double-talking 'Obama brand.' However, It is clear now in 2012, that an increasing amount of people are painfully awakening from their corporate-induced slumber. Notwithstanding the ongoing fake skirmishes between the corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans, stoked by the U.S. corporate-stream media and heightened by this current 2012 corporate 'election' cycle; the fact remains that the entire system is utterly corrupt and that the Democrats and Republicans are two symbiotically-joined peas from the same systemic pod.

Read What Hollywood Execs Call Their Black Clients When They Think No One Is Watching!

Cynthia McKinney

The "N" Word from the Champs Elysée to Avenue of the Americas

13 June 2012

 

The latest Hollywood brouhaha over Gwyneth Paltrow’s decision to tweet the caption “ni**as in Paris for real” to accompany a picture of her with friends Jay-Z and Beyoncé while in Paris doesn’t compare to the new evidence of "fraud upon the Court"  that has emerged in a largely unnoticed civil rights case that very well should be reopened after being unfairly dismissed six years ago.  How about Hollywood executives regularly referring to their own clients, and Blacks in general, as "niggers," "niggas," "coons," "spooks," and "monkeys" while they intentionally discriminated against Black concert promoters, putting them out of business?  It is the contention of Leonard Rowe, perhaps the best-known and most successful of all Black concert promoters, that the regular use of these words by powerful Hollywood executives is a telling indicator of Hollywood's pervasively racist attitudes toward Blacks, an attitude that produced illegal trust-like business practices that essentially made Black concert promoters extinct.

How could these particular Hollywood executives do that? 

According to music industry veterans, once a Black entertainer "crossed over" to a White audience, Black concert promoters were almost never allowed to promote that entertainer again.  Moreover, according to Rowe, not once was a Black concert promoter allowed to promote a White entertainer.  According to Rowe, this collusion to fix profits effectively denied the Black community the spin-off economy associated with concerts and concert promotions, and the multiplier effect of dollars turning over in the Black community.  Someone presented  evidence to me that was just presented to District Judge Robert P. Patterson and Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska of the Southern District of New York:  a summary of the racially-charged words that were regularly used by these particular Hollywood executives: "nigger," "spade," "colored," "monkey," "nigga," "uncle tom," "spook," and "coon."  It makes for depressing reading:  page after page after page after page, the evidence provided to me shows the last name of the particular executive and the number of times that person used one of the above words in e-mail traffic.  It is 18 pages, with two pages mysteriously missing, of heartbreak where specifically the word "nigger" is used hundreds of times.  Even more to the point of "fraud upon the Court," decisions were made in Rowe's previous case without even a mention of the e-mail evidence.  In fact, Rowe was never given the e-mails that produced the 18-page summary sheet although he paid for them.  Rowe's case was dismissed by the Court at Summary Judgment.

To think that this is the way these Hollywood executives view their African-American clients is not only appalling, but represents more than a virtual throwback to the ignominious days of a Southern Plantation.  According to Marcus Washington who worked at William Morris, that company client list has included Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Lauryn Hill, Rihanna, Outkast, Trya Banks, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Whitney Houston, Maxwell, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Spike Lee, Janet Jackson, Tyler Perry, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Usher, Halle Berry, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, and Denzel Washington to name a few. 

The evidence of how particular Hollywood executives referred to their own clients is available for anyone interested in seeing it.  Just click here:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/93697362/Rowe-Entertainment-Inc-v-William-Morris-Agency-et-al-98-8272-Breakdown-of-Racial-Epithets-Including-Nigger-Used-By-Execs-Email-Search-Re

And who exactly are these particular Hollywood executives?  Rowe's lawsuit is against The William Morris Agency (now known as William Morris Endeavor) and Creative Artists Agency, the biggest and the baddest of the bunch.  (And adding political muscle to this tawdry script, William Morris Endeavor is currently headed by Ari Emanuel, brother to the former Chief of Staff of President Obama and now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel.)  For many aspiring Black entertainers, signing with these agencies represents a dream come true.  Too bad that this new evidence brought forward in the Leonard Rowe case shows how these agencies truly feel about African Americans when they think no one is watching.

Sadly, Leonard Rowe is not the only witness to Hollywood’s institutional racism.  Marcus Washington, with whom I have spoken, has his own sordid tale of life while employed at Hollywood’s titan--The William Morris Agency.  In published reports on the internet, Marcus, acting as his own lawyer, filed a $25 million lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in December 2010.  Among the many details in his 80-page complaint, Washington said that upon his entry into William Morris’ New York office in September of 2008, there were zero Black, zero Latino, and only one Asian-American Agent employed out of an executive staff of 50.  Washington wrote that he was the only Black hired into the Agent Trainee program and while he had recently graduated from the University of Miami with his Masters in Music Business and Entertainment Industries and helped co-manage the career of J Records singer/songwriter and now eight-time GRAMMY® nominated artist Jazmine Sullivan, all of his White counterparts advanced above him having considerably fewer academic achievements and less professional work experience. 

According to Washington, William Morris immediately sought to have Washington's case compelled into arbitration because of an arbitration agreement Washington signed as a condition of employment.  Washington argued that the provision which stated that “any issue” including ones of “discrimination” and “retaliation” were to be arbitrated was “unconscionable, tainted with illegality and malum in se” given the historical evidence presented to the Court showing the company’s 113-year history of systemic disparate treatment towards Blacks.  In July 2011, Washington's judge ruled in favor of William Morris.  In September 2011, Washington appealed to the Second Circuit that his lawsuit against William Morris was erroneously compelled into arbitration, and over the last nine months, Washington has attempted three times to have this decision reversed so that his case can be impartially decided in a public forum by a jury that reflects the diversity of New York City.  Each time, the Court has denied his appeal without providing a judicial opinion.  Sadly, this industry has been successful at keeping this type of racial discrimination away from the eyes of a jury.  But now, after acquiring the new evidence discovered in the Rowe case, Washington filed a motion in the Court to introduce evidence that various attorneys at Loeb & Loeb LLP--the law firm representing William Morris in both the Rowe and Washington cases--as well as judges, have been involved in a corrupt conspiracy to collude and commit “fraud upon the Court.”

Because of what Rowe felt were unreliable lawyers colluding and conspiring with his opponents' lawyers, Rowe has joined Washington as a pro se litigant in the Southern District of New York.  They both have refiled their cases and they are awaiting decisions from the Court.  This time around, the Southern District Court of New York has the opportunity to do the right thing.  Both Rowe and Washington are involved in litigation that could produce landmark Civil Rights decisions.  Both of them are willing to share the evidence unearthed in the Rowe case that could deal a devastating blow to "business as usual" in the entertainment industry.

Leonard Rowe and Marcus Washington are available, together or individually, for interviews to explain their firsthand experiences with Hollywood, racism, or corruption in the U.S. justice system.

Leonard Rowe can be reached at roweentertain@aol.com
Marcus Washington can be reached at humanrights.areamust@gmail.com

Cindy Sheehan And Kathy Kelly On Drones - CIA Headquarters - 1/16/2010

On January 16th, 2010, Cindy Sheehan, Kathy Kelly, Debra Sweet, and several other activists gathered at CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA. to protest drone strikes.

The Political Plantation (Soapbox for June 17)

Dear Friend, Last week on the Soapbox, I presented a young activist named Edmund Berger who has written some detailed and well-researched articles about how movements and people are "astro-turfed" by establishment foundations and donors. The show (listen here) illicited quite a response from people who had differing opinions, but the differing opinions didn't come in the form of details or research, just on the order of "how dare you!" As I point out in the enclosed article I wrote called: Inscrutable Icons of Liberaldom no one should be above analysis and knee-jerk attacks on the messenger are not helpful. This week's show is something special as I interview our very good Soapbox friend, Brother Larry Pinkney, and we chat about Obama's "Hit List." Brother Larry is an editor and writes a column called, Keeping it Real at Black Commentator. Brother Larry has quite an impressive resumé, which can be read here. Our new show called, The Political Plantation, after what Brother Larry calls the attempts of the establishment to keep us tied to the slavery of partisan political politics. Happy Father's Day to all fathers out there, but if you have some time at 2pm Pacific, the show can be heard at: Community Progressive Radio or anytime at the archives: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox. Love & Peace Cindy Sheehan

From Cartoonist Ted Rall www.TedRall.com

The Inscrutable Icons of Liberaldom by Cindy Sheehan "In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." – Bertrand Russell “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Glinda the Good to Dorothy Gale, Wizard of Oz I am always happy to get feedback about my radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, even if it’s bad—because I am happy that someone is listening—we work really hard to produce a relevant show... CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST

Cindy Back in Cascadia to talk about Revolution, A Love Story and other topics of relevance. CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF EVENTS IN EUGENE, PORTLAND, AND SALEM, OREGON AND EVERETT AND SEATTLE, WASHINGTON FROM JUNE 22-27 CLICK FOR INFO

The Sunflower is a symbol of the anti-nuke movement and this Thursday, Cindy Sheehan, will be in federal court in Santa Barbara for her arrest at Vandenberg AFB in February opposing the test launch of the Minuteman Missile. Cindy, Daniel Ellsberg and others are pleading "Not guilty" and the trial for this arrest will be on October 17th in Santa Barabara. Civil Resistance, arrests, trials, etc, are time consuming and financially draining--please donate to help Cindy cover expenses for her trip and loss of time.

Inscrutable Icons of Liberaldom by Cindy Sheehan

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

– Bertrand Russell

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

Glinda the Good to Dorothy Gale, Wizard of Oz

I am always happy to get feedback about my radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, even if it’s bad—because I am happy that someone is listening—we work really hard to produce a relevant show.

Recently, I featured a young author/activist named, Edmund Berger, who has written two thought-provoking pieces that featured something that I am very interested in: the co-option, or “astro-turfing” of movements and I received some very hostile comments from readers/listeners who were offended that Berger could criticize some icons of “Liberaldom” (my word, not theirs).

First of all, the thought that anyone is above analysis and criticism is wrong, especially people who make a living from notoriety. For example, it’s one thing to attack a person for perceived character or physical flaws, but when one points out iffy connections to foundations with known and deep ties to the establishment, that is, in my opinion, fair game.

Everyone makes mistakes…everyone, with no exception. However, a line is crossed when that person, or organization, leads others astray by not being totally honest about from where the money comes or where partisan political loyalties lie. I will quote examples for some of the seemingly inscrutable ones that I got in trouble for allowing to be criticized. (Apparently, and thankfully, I am highly "scrutable.")

Again, why is the messenger being crucified instead of the information being read and analyzed with some balance instead of some people “pedestalizing” others with knee-jerk adoration?

If we want to have any success as movements and people, we need to realize that there are forces loyal to the Democratic Party that glom on to people and movements to steer what could be actually affective towards electoral politics, usually in favor of the Democrats on the Liberal side of the political spectrum.

There were especially two Inscrutable Icons of Liberaldom that my listeners were offended about being analyzed by my guest, Edmund Berger: Naomi Klein and 350.org. We'll start with 350.org because Ms. Klein is now on the national board of that NGO.

350.org

The below is from my friend and radical environmentalist (integrity of vision and not co-opted by foundation money), Gregory Vickrey, of Wrong Kind of Green, about the establishment environmental groups:

President Obama has a bevy of support from environmental groups, many of whom (like the Sierra Club) have already endorsed him for a second round of degradation and destruction. This fawning for a Democratic President is certainly not without precedent, but it is particularly egregious when one looks at Obama's environmental record.

Unlike his over-arching abilities to pre-emptively criminalize the common protester, this President has neither the wherewithal nor the spine to hold BP to account in the ongoing Gulf of Mexico tragedy. Rather, he continues to exacerbate the destruction, fast-tracking oil and gas leases in Alaska and additional deep water drilling in the Gulf.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric over a temporary suspension of the final phase of the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama gave an enthusiastic pass to a significant portion of the tar sands pipeline (already operational) in 2009, shortly after being inaugurated.

And he (Obama) is more effective than a denier when it comes to climate change, avoiding or stalling mandatory mitigation and adaptation practices that should have been deployed years ago.

His inaction-with-a-purpose preserves the status quo for his corporate, corrupt base of financial support, thus making him the greatest enabler of environmental destruction on the planet, and no resonant speech from on high changes that reality.

And here I must correct myself - stating above that the President has an "environmental record" is almost as recidivist as the man himself.

Not to be outdone by the Sierra Club and other corporate-environmental organizations who have endorsed President Obama and his despicable policies, faux "grass-roots" organizations such as the Rockefeller (think oil) funded 350.org likewise lift President Obama up whenever he tosses a rhetorical bone their way. 350 and its corporate marketing arm were quick to praise the President with the Keystone XL delay ("We won! What a brave man you are, Mr. President!" author's note: there's a far more complex story behind this), but never utter a word about the realities on the ground of, say, fracking in New York; Or mountaintop removal in West Virginia; Or $2 Billion in coal subsidies to the President's home state of Illinois; Or those fast-tracked wells in the Gulf; Or those leases in Alaska. Like their partners at Sierra Club and elsewhere, at the end of the day, 350 are nothing more than a faux-roots front for the President and his party, insane environmental policies be damned.

And as Edmund Berger points out in his article published in Swan’s Commentary called: Harnessing People Power Continued: the 99% Spring and the Professional Left:

The first organization to be looked at is 350.org, a climate change awareness advocacy organization launched in 2007 by the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben. McKibben's approach to environmentalism is positioned firmly in the ideology of "green capitalism," advocating a return to localized market economies while eschewing the notions of collectivization or wealth redistribution. Halting catastrophic climate change, he argues, "will not mean abandoning Adam Smith" and "doesn't require that you join a commune or become a socialist." Espousing this moderate viewpoint has led 350.org's subsidization by large liberal philanthropies, primarily, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). This is an important connection, as RBF's current president, Stephen Heintz, is the founding executive director of Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action, a "non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization committed to building an America that achieves its highest democratic ideals." Deepening the ties, Demos, funded by the RBF and Ford Foundation, hosts 99% Spring material on their website and also counts Rebuild the Dream founder Van Jones on its advisory board. Furthermore, in 2011 350.org merged with another environmental coalition, 1Sky, where Jones can be found yet again on its director board.

350.org is what it is, but, please, let’s stop pretending that it is on the side of revolutionary change.

Naomi Klein

I know Naomi personally and I think she is a sweet person and she has contributed a lot to the world’s understanding of neo-liberalism. There’s no doubt about it, she’s brilliant, but when it comes to being on the board of 350.org and Obama, in my opinion, she is off the track.

In a speech Naomi gave at Loyola University in February of 2009, she was advocating for “collectivism” and “nationalization,” but, as pointed out above her alliance with 350.org is at odds with those goals.

Here is Berger's analysis of Klein’s connection to 350.org:

However, a close reading of The Shock Doctrine reveals her glaring refusal to attack capitalism's production modes; instead, she prefers to refer to her "emergent Keynesianism" and waxes poetically about the days when "young men from Ivy League schools sat around commanding table... having heated debates about the interest rate and the price of wheat." This vision of a benevolent technocracy is at odds, certainly, with the desires for true democracy that she expresses elsewhere in the text, and her longing for Ivy League-directed economics should be contrasted with the sociological analyses of the liberal contingencies of the elite establishment as presented by C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff. While Klein's critique is undoubtedly vital to helping undermine the grand narrative of neoliberalism, it is ultimately deflective in nature -- did imperial ambitions (the Vietnam War, for example) not exist during the "heyday of Keynesianism," and was this economic system not wrought with its own internal tensions and structural flaws? Regardless, her discourse is completely compatible with viewpoint of the moderate American left.

In an article called, Criticism of Shock Doctrine from the Left, the author points out:

Most critics of the war believe the notion of exporting democracy to a hostile Arab country was doomed in its conception. Some war supporters counter that the occupation could have succeeded, but bungling and incompetence caused it to fail. Klein is staking out a third, esoteric, highly original position. She says that the occupation could have succeeded, but the Bush administration did not want it to succeed. She is explicit about this:

"Had the Bush administration kept its promise to hand over power quickly to an elected Iraqi government, there is every chance that the resistance would have remained small and containable, rather than becoming a countrywide rebellion. But keeping that promise would have meant sacrificing the economic agenda behind the war, something that was never going to happen."

My question is “small and containable” to whom? In the beginning of the US plague on Iraq called, Shock(ing) and Awe(ful), tens of thousands of Iraqi were killed—war is never “containable.”

On November 11, 2011, despite Obama’s delaying tactic (until 2013, after the 2012 elections, conveniently) Naomi Klein touted a “victory” on the show of another Inscrutable Icon of Liberaldom, Amy Goodman:

Environmental activists are claiming victory after the Obama administration announced Thursday it will postpone any decision on the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline until 2013. The announcement was made just days after more than 10,000 people encircled the White House calling on President Obama to reject the project, the second major action against the project organized by Bill McKibben’s 350.org and Tar Sands Action. In late August and early September, some 1,200 people were arrested in Washington, D.C., in a two-week campaign of civil disobedience. "We believe that this delay will kill the pipeline,” says the Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein. “If it doesn’t, if this pipeline re-emerges after the election, people have signed pledges saying they will put their bodies on the line to stop it." Klein notes that, “I don’t think we would have won without Occupy Wall Street... This is what it means to change the conversation.”

But guess what? This from a news article on March 12, 2012: 

Barack Obama will speed up approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline during his "all of the above" energy road trip, White House officials said.

The president will use a stop in Cushing, Oklahoma on Thursday morning to announce an executive order directing government agencies to speed up permits for the southern US-only segment of the pipeline, running from the town to Port Arthur, Texas...

The article also claims the environmental groups were “angry,” but in searching the internet, I see that there was no angry response from Klein, McKibben, or 350.org to the speech Obama gave in Cushing, Oklahoma. Parts of the pipeline were in construction long before the “protests” in front of the White House last year, anyway. Apparently Obama is more afraid of his puppet-pay masters and the Republican Party than a group of activists who make light demands on him with no consequences attached to Obama's non-compliance. 

There are many other "Inscrutable Icons" of Liberaldom who range from being nearly perfect, in my view (ie, Noam Chomsky), to almost always being an astro-turfer for the establishment (ie, Van Jones)--and I would like my readers to put on their Critical Thinking Caps and research anything that anyone says. That’s not being “divisive,” it’s being responsible.

 

 

 

Cindy in Washington State--Flyer

Cindy Sheehan Back in Cascadia!

Mt. Ranier in the Cascades

Revolution, A Love Story!

Can Hugo Chávez beat the odds against cancer and the U.S. Empire?

CLICK FOR INFO ABOUT BOOK

Cindy will be speaking about her new book and other topics of interest in June in Oregon and Washington.

Oregon

June 22nd: Eugene

Community potluck at 6pm at Marie Jacob Park mini Amphitheater by the Willamette River

Talk at 7pm

June 23rd: Portland

6PM

First Unitarian Church of Portland Oregon

1211 SW Main Street, Portland, OR 97205

Organizer: Malcolm Chaddock

madmal@gmail.com

June 25th: Salem

7pm

First Congregational United Church of Christ, Salem, Oregon
700 Marion St. NE, Salem, Oregon

Contact: Michele Darr (971)388-3809

Washington

June 26th: Everett

6:30-8:30 PM

Firewheel Books and Beans in Everett, WA. 

(Run co-operatively by Occupy Everett)

June 27th: Seattle

6:00 to 9:00

(BOOK EVENT)

University Temple United Methodist Church, 

http://utemple.org/?page_id=171, 

hosted by Pastor Rick Lang


FOR MORE INFO ON THE WASHINGTON STATE
EVENTS, EMAIL
SUSAN O'NEIL
SUSONE@GMAIL.COM

This is another Obamanation!

UN SAYS FIVE OF THESE BEAUTIFUL

CHILDREN KILLED EVERYDAY IN

AFGHANISTAN

THANKS TO BARACKISTAN O'BOMBER

AND HIS 

SUPPORTERS

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

One Had a Dream; One Has Drones!

CINDY SHEEHAN SPEAKS IN WASHEDUP, DISEASE

CLICK PIC TO WATCH SPEECH

You've been Astroturfed!

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

10 June 2012

Today, Cindy chats with a very bright and perceptive young 

man named, Edmund (Ed) Berger who, in Cindy's opinion,

has done a very amazing analysis of how the "professional

left" co-opts movements that may actually have a chance

of challenging the corporate "duopoly."

Berger's articles are:

Strange Contours: Resistance and the Manipulation of People Power

and:

Harnessing People Power: Continued

The 99% Spring and the "Professional Left" 

The show can be heard today at 2pm (Pacific Time) at:

Community Progressive Radio

or anytime at the archives.

Thanks to listener/fan, Janice Golden, for sending us information about Edmund Berger and his analyses.

Cindy can always be contacted at:

RevolutionALoveStory@gmail.com

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