WHEN AN ACTIVIST FALLS THROUGH THE CRACKS: AN INTERVIEW WITH JODDA MITCHELL by Jack Balkwill

Jodda Mitchell is an activist who lives in Arkansas, surrounded by people who hate her for her beliefs in feminism, peace, a clean environment, social justice and other progressive causes.  She's carried on her activism despite a threat that she's losing her home and may be evicted if she doesn't get help soon.  I interviewed her this week.

Jack:  What do you consider to be the most important thing currently happening for activists to address?

Jodda: Despite the grinding poverty in my own life, and the general poverty I observe in this part of Arkansas, my main concern is ending wars for corporate profit. Given the tremendous impact on our national budget, the horrific effect on the environment, and the injury, starvation, loss of life, and displacement of victims of US aggression, it's easy to conclude that every other Leftist cause is affected by war.

If you support women's rights, keep in mind that wars kill women. LGBT people are killed in wars. Animals are killed in wars. Corporations feed on wars.  Wars enrich the 1% tremendously. Wars consume money that could be spent on health care, education, infrastructure, and social programs.
If you vote for pro-war candidates, you vote against everything the Left stands for, including the working class which is sent to kill and die for the enrichment of the 1%. There is no way around this. There is no way to mitigate it other than to take a stand against war.
War is the stinking, blood-soaked, raging psychopathic elephant in the room that liberals continue to ignore at the expense of all that is good in the world.

Jack:  Are you supporting a candidate for president this year?

Jodda:  Yes. I have been voting for Green Party candidates since the 2000 election, and I will vote for Dr. Jill Stein this November. Unlike the corporate-owned candidates, Jill Stein is completely opposed to wars for profit, and is 100% supportive of the working class. In addition to supporting free college, she also supports elimination of all current student debt. I love the plans in her Green New Deal.  http://www.jill2016.com/plan


Jack:  How are you doing on keeping your house?

Jodda:  We are constantly threatened with foreclosure. We have applied for a loan modification several times now, only to be turned down because Kenny's income from Walmart is too low.

Jack:  Are you doing anything new to attempt to bring in income?
Jodda:  Yes, two things. I have been an astrologer for more than 25 years and have started giving readings for a fee. Through an analysis of your unique natal planetary placements and aspects, I can help you find your life's path, discover any current astrological influences, and can help you determine if particular love interest is the right person for you.
You can find my astrology service here:

https://www.facebook.com/Drops-of-Jupiter-Astrology-Service-269962756516353/

I am also an excellent genealogist. I am very affordable, and my customers love my work, judging by the reviews on my business page.

Recent research has shown a positive psychological influence occurs when we think about our ancestors. I also believe everyone should know their family origins. It provides a grounding effect, and can make one feel a part of something much bigger than self.

(research here:) http://digest.bps.org.uk/2010/12/benefits-of-thinking-about-your.html

My page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/Genealogy-Finding-Your-Kith-and-Kin-in-History-996167740394499/

Jack:  I'm aware that you rescue animals and wonder if you can share why you do it?

Jodda:  I do it because I have to. I simply cannot see an animal abandoned alongside the road without stopping to help. Given the elevated poverty rate in the area, many people don't spay and neuter their pets and the unwanted litters end up dumped on the highway. There are no animal control services in this area, no one to call for help.
At times, the most I can offer is a meal and a drink of water, so I always carry dog and cat food, water, a leash and collar, and a pet carrier in my car. Nearly all of these animals are terrified and I am unable to catch them, so I do the best I can by putting out food and water. Now and then, I find one who is brave enough to come to me, or one who is injured and can't run away. These are the ones who become family! 


There are also colonies of feral cats I feed each night, sallying forth through all sorts of weather to provide a meal. When possible, I trap them and have them spayed and neutered and get them a rabies shot.

My mother impressed on me from a very early age that it is our duty to help those less fortunate. "As ye do unto the least of these", "Entertaining angels unawares", "A defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in distress"–those are three of the more than three hundred Bible verses commanding us to make tending those in need a major theme of our lives, and it is how I was raised. Incredible woman, my mother, and I'm so glad to have had such a powerful social justice warrior in charge of my upbringing.

Jack:  How did you get so behind on your mortgage payments that you were threatened with foreclosure?

Jodda:  When we purchased this home, my partner of the past 14 years, Kenny, had a well-paid factory job. He had been at this job for 5 years when he inadvertently violated a safety rule and was fired. He was unable to collect unemployment, and it took several months for him to find another job. We live in a very small town, and the only other job available is at Walmart, where he has worked for the past 2 years, earning less than half what he made at the factory. We have applied for loan modifications, but we keep getting turned down because Kenny's income is so low.
I have always fought for the poor and homeless, and now as I'm falling through the cracks in the system I realize this could happen to anyone. There are no jobs that pay a living wage around here, and we are a step away from homelessness.


Jack Balkwill has been published from the little read Rectangle, magazine of the English Honor Society, to the (then) millions of readers USA Today and many progressive publications/web sites such as Z Magazine, In These Times, Counterpunch, This Can't Be Happening, Intrepid Report, and Dissident Voice.  He is author of An Attack on the National Security State, about peace activists in prison.

What if Hitchcock got it all backwards in 'The Birds?' | Mickey Z.

"The Birds" trailer screenshot. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

March 13, 2016

I recently revisited a 2011 study involving crows that proved -- yet again -- how humans are the only species supercilious enough to be astonished when another species performs "advanced cognitive tasks." (Humans, for that matter, are also the only ones arrogant enough to believe "advanced cognitive tasks" could and should remain constant from species to species.)

The study "found" (among other things) that crows "remember the faces of threatening humans and often react by scolding and bringing in others to mob the perceived miscreant."

Perceived? Only a human would insert that qualifier when myriad aspects of modern miscreant, I mean, human behavior -- e.g. habitat fragmentation and environmental toxins -- present a clear and present threat to global bird populations. Here are a few examples:

Windows: In the United States, between 365 million and 988 million birds are killed each year by collisions with plate glass windows in tall buildings.

Automobile Culture: Some 60 million to 80 million birds are killed each year by motor vehicles (and it’s likely impossible to calculate how many are lost during the endless construction of carchitecture. 

Domestic Cats: Feline companions allowed to roam free may kill as many as 4 billion birds per year in the continental U.S. alone.  

Factory Farming: Worldwide, more than 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered annually. Every day, 23 million chickens are killed in the United States for food. That's 269 dead chickens per second.

Communication Towers: Whether they are radio-transmission or cell phone towers, the annual avian death rate is roughly 7 million. However, high tension line collisions are believed to be far more common, with perhaps 174 million fatalities annually.  

Pesticides: Estimates are as high as 72 million deaths per year. 

For those of you scoring at home, that's billions and billions of birds killed annually by humans and human-related behavior while time and money is funneled into specious, phallocentric experiments to discover what should already be apparent to all. 

This astounding disconnect is the root of so many current problems. The natural world, seen as inferior, goes conveniently misunderstood as humanity's necrophilic "progress" cuts a broad swath through our shared eco-systems. In such a scenario, denial and justification become crucial. 

Breaking this pattern of denial and justification sure sounds like an "advanced cognitive task” to me. Any bets on whether a certain miscreant species is up to handling it?

Mickey Z. is the author of 13 books, most recently Occupy these Photos: NYC Activism Through a Radical Lens. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, you can “like” his Facebook page here and follow his blog here.

THE FUTURE DOESN'T LIKE YOU by ANTHONY FREDA

The future is place where people will believe that giving up their liberty will help fight terror and save the Earth.

(It will do neither)

The future is a place where your every move will be recorded, tracked and analyzed without you even knowing it.

(Because They-hate-your-freedumb)

The future is a place where your car will drive itself with the promise of giving you more freedom and autonomy.

(You will lose both)

The future is a place where "humanitarian" wars will continue to destroy millions of human lives and fuel terror.

(To keep you safe)

The future is a place where your neighborhood police will look and act like soldiers on a battlefield.

(To protect and serve)

The future is a place where drugs, media and technology will used respectively to keep you sedated, misinformed and distracted from the fact that

The Future Doesn't Like You.

 

 

Stipulated: War is a Lie (SOAPBOX PODCAST 3/13/16)

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX

MARCH 13, 2016

GUEST: DAVID SWANSON

TOPIC: WAR IS A LIE

This week, on the Soapbox, Cindy chats with Soapbox friend, David Swanson about the 2nd edition of his book: War is a Lie.

Please click on the book image for more information and links.

 THE WAR MONUMENT TO END ALL WAR MONUMENTS
by 
DAVID SWANSON

Judge Rules Iran Must Pay for 9/11 -- WTF?

by

David Swanson

Destroying a dam is terrorism (except when it isn’t) | Mickey Z.

Eder Dam on 17 May 1943. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-C0212-0043-012 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

March 6, 2016

The title of a March 3, 2016, article definitely baited me to click: “1.5 Million May Die if Mosul Dam Fails: Iraq Expert.” From that article: 

“The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said a collapse of the dam in the north of country would be ‘serious and unprecedented.’ Some 500,000 and 1.47 million Iraqis would ‘probably would not survive’ the wave, while water could reach depths of 45 feet in the nearby city of Mosul, it said in a statement.”

Even a skeptic could easily imagine how Iraq’s failing infrastructure included its dams. But what if I reminded you that Mosul is an ISIS stronghold? And what if I added that U.S. and Iraqi forces have been planning a massive joint attack on ISIS in Mosul?

Before you answer those two questions, let’s learn a little about dams.

Dam Nation
 

The U.S. government tells us: “Dams provide a range of economic, environmental, and social benefits, including recreation, flood control, water supply, hydroelectric power, waste management, river navigation, and wildlife habitat.”

But Jacques Leslie, author of Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, paints a different picture: “The world's dams have shifted so much weight that geophysicists believe they have slightly altered the speed of the earth's rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field.”

More than 45,000 large dams (read: at least 45 feet high) were built in the 20th century and these structures impact all life on earth. In California alone, dams have resulted in the loss of 90 percent of that state's river environment and 95 percent of the salmon and steelhead habitat -- all at a cost 50 times higher than more efficient solutions. And here's more:

1. Dams cause greenhouse gas emissions
 

According to a study done by the National Institute for Space Research, India's 4,500 dams (third highest behind the United States and China) "emit an amount of methane that is equivalent to 850 million tons of carbon dioxide per year." It seems both carbon dioxide and methane are "released from the decaying vegetation of spillways, reservoirs and turbines of hydropower dams, but methane is twenty-three times more formidable in trapping heat than carbon dioxide."

2. Dams displace people
 

As many as 80 million people have been displaced by dams worldwide. This is due to the reservoir created by the dam. In addition, those who live downstream from the dam will no longer have the dynamic river ecosystem that created their environment in the first place. 

3. Dams promote erosion
 

The folks at International Rivers explain that dams hold back sediments that would naturally replenish downstream ecosystems. "When a river is deprived of its sediment load, it seeks to recapture it by eroding the downstream river bed and banks, undermining bridges and other riverbank structures," they continue. "Riverbeds downstream of dams are typically eroded by several meters within the decade of first closing a dam; the damage can extend for tens or even hundreds of kilometers below a dam."

4. Dams lead to plant and animal extinctions
 

The introduction of such an unnatural structure quite predictably has led to the extinction of many fish and other aquatic species, the disappearance of birds in floodplains, and massive losses of forest, wetlands, and farmland.

Bearing all this in mind, it should come as no surprise that some eco-activists have contemplated the demolition of dams. It should also come as no surprise that such musings are deemed “terrorism” by the powers-that-be. What might come as a surprise to some is that those same powers-that-be have absolutely no problem blowing up a dam… if it serves their interests.

“Starvation and slow death”
 

During World War II, British scientists invented a spinning cylindrical “dam buster bomb” specifically to demolish German dams. Less than a decade later, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) bombed the Toksan Dam (among others) in order to flood North Korea’s rice farms. Here’s how the USAF justified such tactics: “To the Communists the smashing of the dams meant primarily the destruction of their chief sustenance -- rice. The Westerner can little conceive the awesome meaning that the loss of this staple food commodity has for an Asian -- starvation and slow death.”

Fast-forward to the U.S. assault on Southeast Asia: In a now-declassified memorandum dated April 15, 1969, popular evangelist Billy Graham urged President Richard Nixon to blow up dikes which “could overnight destroy the economy of North Vietnam.” Even without Rev. Graham’s heavenly sanction, U.S. bombing of dikes in South Vietnam was already a common and uncontroversial tactic.

Fast-forward even further to modern-day Iraq: ISIS, which has replaced Osama as Public Enemy #1 (during a presidential election year, no less), rules Mosul and there just so happens to be a crumbling dam nearby.

Reminder: Destroying a dam is terrorism… except when it isn’t.

Mickey Z. is the author of 13 books, most recently Occupy these Photos: NYC Activism Through a Radical Lens. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, you can “like” his Facebook page here and follow his blog here.

"Destroying a dam is terrorism (except when it isn’t)" by Mickey Z. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://worldnewstrust.com/destroying-a-dam-is-terrorism-except-when-it-isn-t-mickey-z.

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  Sunday, 06 March 2016
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• TOON: HEY UTAH! | Gregory Crawford
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Drug Lords of the CIA (SOAPBOX PODCAST 3/6/16)

 MARCH 6, 2016

GUEST: BOB KIRKCONNELL

TOPIC: CIA DRUG AND ARMS DEALING

***********************************************************************************

CLICK FOR BOOK ORDERING INFO

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The shocking story of how seeds of destruction were sown into the foundations of America at the very beginning. How did slavery come about in the "land of the free" How did a native population of over eighteen million dwindle down to two hundred thousand? How did the American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, turn into the American nightmare we have now of racism, genocide, and war? Who assassinated JFK, how, and why? How do drugs come into the country, and who is behind it? Other startling questions are explored here: Why were thousands of the Nazi Germany's worst war criminals given refuge in the U.S. Who really financed Hitler? Where did Hitler get his "master race" and genocidal ideas from? Was Lee Harvey Oswald a C.I.A. agent? Were Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVey, and the "Peoples Temple" CIA mind control subjects? What really happened in the Jeffery MacDonald, "Fatal Vision" case? You will get the real story behind these and many others disturbing questions right here!

BOB KIRKCONNELL AMERICAN HEART OF DARKNESS RADIO

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Bob Kirkconnell was in Vietnam from February, 1968 to August, 1969 and provided airlift support for American combat troops during the siege of Khe Sanh, the battle of Hue, and the battle of the A Shau Valley. He received a Bronze Star with combat "V" for heroism during the second Tet offensive in February, 1969, while attached to the Korean Tiger Division, Qui Nhon, Republic of Vietnam. Later he was a logistics systems analyst investigating fraudulent travel on military aircraft, and he planned and organized Joint Chiefs of Staff directed Air Assault Training exercises. He started writing about some of his experiences that were at odds with U.S. stated objectives in 1998 which led to his first book.
 
He is married to Leila (Majaj) Kirkconnell and their children are Lynley, Marcy, and Brian. They also have six Grandchildren and four Great Grandchildren. Bob is now retired and Leila teaches high school special education. Activist groups they belong to include: Metis Nation of the South, Veterans for Peace, Academics for Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Civil Liberties Union, Green Peace, the Wilderness Society, Amnesty International, and many others. Leila and Bob have participated in many demonstrations opposing the current invasions and occupations in the Middle East. Further,they have authored hundreds of Op-Eds, and they have also written government officials hundreds of times.

Fascism as Usual in Turkey, Fascism of a New Type in the USA by Muhsin Y.

Fascism as Usual in Turkey, Fascism of a New Type in the USA by Muhsin Y. The world media is abuzz with news of the fascist Turkish state's seizure of the newspaper Zaman. For years, internal conflicts among the ruling elite in Turkey have caused similar aggressive moves by the perpetually victorious Erdoğan faction (still ruling under its AKP government, despite having to resort to restarting the war in Kurdistan to preserve its power after the June elections of last year). Liberal commentators, whether pro-Moscow or pro-Washington, view this as evidence of "emerging" "fascism" or "dictatorship" in Turkey. Those of us with a deeper knowledge of Turkey know better: Turkey has been a fascist dictatorship since at least the 1980 coup led by Kenan Evren, and backed by US imperialism. The Turkish state, which takes journalists into custody for "insulting" prominent government figures, which murdered Hrant Dink in the street through a still-uninvestigated conspiracy, which still denies the Kurdish people their national rights even while it wages a war of collective punishment against them for voting the "wrong" way in a supposedly "free" election, is apparently at risk of being declared undemocratic! Turkey has not been a bourgeois democracy for a long time. Turkey is a fascist state, and real opposition figures risk their safety and indeed their very lives by speaking the truth about its history and functioning now as then. This does not mean, however, that we have nothing to notice in the latest move by the Turkish state. The AKP government faces a real threat from the left, with the progressive HDP (an umbrella party which represents the Kurdish Liberation Movement and various socialist and democratic trends) having pushed them out of government in the June elections. The AKP is nervous, because it knows its castle (or Erdoğan's massive presidential palace, newly built at tremendous public expense) is built on sand. In such a context, other right-wing players have attempted to attack the AKP to seize power for themselves. It was mere months ago that Can Dündar's Cumhuriyet newspaper made the risky decision (as a mainstream news source) to reveal what the left and Kurdish movement in Turkey have known all along: That the Turkish state under AKP control had been aiding ISIS against the Kurdish movement in Syria. In the case of Zaman, however, the power-hungry maneuvering is quite clear for all to see: Behind Zaman lies the power of the anti-communist cleric Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania under the apparent protection of the US state whose clients in Turkey originally recruited him as part of their plot to use reactionary religious sentiment against the threat of communism. As various power-sharing disagreements drove a more and more significant wedge between Gülen and Erdoğan, now Gülen's supporters pose as champions of "democracy" and cry that the constitution has been suspended. But it is under this same constitution that the Turkish state covered up for the murders of Armenians and Alevis, throwing out investigations, and it was under this same constitution that the Turkish state trampled on the national rights of the Kurdish people, imprisoning their children for the "crime" of throwing stones at the heavily armored police vehicles that patrol their streets as an occupying force! Where were the tears of the constantly teary-eyed Fethullah Gülen for dead Alevis and imprisoned Kurdish children? And where is the US, the protector of democracy around the world, now? Will it declare Turkey to be a fascist dictatorship? Why would it, when it accepted, defended, and funded the implementation of the fascist coup order in 1980? No, Zaman readers, expect no such protection from "the free world" that gave sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein to gas the Kurdish people in Iraq, that denied he commit such crimes against "his own people" (!), only turning on him when he got into a fight with the Kuwaiti monarchy. Besides, the Americans have their own problems: While it may be that Donald Trump cannot win the presidency, he has already opened up a dangerous space for fascists in the US. Americans may claim "it can't happen here", because they have been raised on a fairy tale of bourgeois democracy being in conflict with fascism. In fact, the history upon which this fairy tale is based is WWII, when it was the forces of the socialist world which dealt the decisive blow against Nazi fascism. The role played by the bourgeois democracies was not nothing, but it is worth asking: Did they fight Nazi fascism because bourgeois democracy and fascism are irreconcilable? If such tactical alliances were based on deep principle, they would be hard-pressed to explain their alliance with the Soviet Union. And the United States built fascist dictatorship after fascist dictatorship around the world in the post-war era to protect its imperial hegemony against the "threat' of the Soviet Union! The war between the imperialist camp and Nazi Fascism was simply a war for redivision of world power, just as one observed in WWI between various imperial powers, none of them more democratic than the others. We Marxist-Leninists do NOT understand fascism as something OUTSIDE of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie represented in some "pure" bourgeois democratic form. Bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie WHEN it rules (more or less) with consent and some basic respect to some basic rights of dissenters (their safety etc.). Fascism emerges when this "nice" order is not practical for the ruling elite. In Turkey, there is never any real guarantee of the freedom and safety of real dissenters against the (US-backed) coup-imposed order. In the US there still is. Thus we say that the US is still a bourgeois democracy (internally, although there is a question about which parts of internationally recognised US territory might be considered colonial holdings, on which the law is always different from in the "core" territory). However, the emergence of trends like Trump show that it can indeed happen here. The KKK and other "white nationalists" are rejoicing with the news that their views are now acceptable in (a part of) the mainstream. If rule by consent is no longer practical, the reader will look back to the Trump candidacy as a qualitative change whereby fascist trends (always extent within US bourgeois democracy) emerged and began their takeover. But when that happens, we must not become nostalgic, and think that the emergence of full fascism in the US is a "betrayal" of wholesome US bourgeois democracy. This bourgeois democracy was always the rule of the bourgeois class which would similarly reap the rewards of open fascist rule. If fascism emerges in the US, it will only be a defence mechanism of the real rulers of the United States against an increasingly ungovernable day to day. Just as it was in Turkey.

Cindy Sheehan in Chelsea, Mass for Celebration of International Working Womens Day

ON THE 13^TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE US-LED INVASION OF IRAQ:

 

Jeanette Rankin in 1917

 

 

 JOIN THE CHELSEA COMMUNITY CELEBRATION OF INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN’S DAY

 

WITH FAMED “PEACE MOM” CINDY SHEEHAN

 

Cindy, 2009 in Martha's Vineyard

 

 

 

SUNDAY, MARCH 20, 2016

STARTING AT 2PM

 

ROCA YOUTH CENTER

101 PARK STREET

CHELSEA, MA 02150

 

(On 111 Bus line from Haymarket station -- Open Parking Lot on Pearl Street behind ROCA Building)

 

Sponsored by Chelsea Uniting Against the War/

Chelsea Uniéndose en Contra de la Guerra

 

For more information, call 617-889-2841 or 617-840-3892

My Psychopath is Better than Yours by Anthony Freda

Our only choice may be between a corrupt, mendacious war criminal and a seemingly unhinged egomaniac.

We will have no other options. We are prisoners to the divide-and-conquer duopoly.

Not voting, or voting for a sane candidate from a third party is insane.

Voting for power-mad psychopaths is perfectly rational.

Why throw your vote away on a "loser" when you can use it to help elect a despot?

One candidate helped lie us into the Iraq War and build the police state, and the other sprang from her legacy of chaos and failure like a mutated creature spawned in a fallout zone.

Both are intent on imposing their twisted agendas upon the world, backed up by the staggering might of empire, but 

"My devil is not as evil as yours"

This is the suicidal, national consensus born of mass narcissism, mutual paranoia and communal hypocrisy posing as pragmatism.

War What is it Bad For? Absolutely Everything! (Soapbox Community Conference Call)

Soapbox Community Call-in Show

February 27, 2016

On February 24th, The Soapbox hosted a community call in show about the problem of the continuing wars for Empire and the pathetic lack of antiwar opposition to it.

Since the Obama regime was installed by another coup d'etat of the War Machine and Wall Street in 2009, I have tried to do what I can with the modest energy and resources I have to keep peace alive. 

This year, not only are principled activists struggling against another divisive circus of US electoral politics, but personally, my sister and partner in peace Dede Miller has stage 4 cancer--so we continue to do what we can and Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox is my modest way to share the truth.

Please listen to this show as a contribution to the conversation of principled antiwar activism and for the great comments and sometimes lively discussion we had at the end.

SPECIAL GUESTS

 

ANTHONY & CINDY AT OCCUPY PEACE

ANTHONY FREDA: Anthony is an illustrator and artist who definitely has a very stunning way to express opposition to war and Empire using multi-media. Anthony spoke on the call about the need for the peace movement to rebrand itself from "hippy-ness" to being strong, brave, with unwavering integrity (like we really are). Anthony also expressed the general feeling that it would be good for the movement if a Republican were elected. (Which just proves the hypocrisy of the so-called movement). CLICK for Anthony's website.

ROSE BROWN: Rose is the assistant editor of the newsletter of

the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA (ROL, USA) and she presented a way for people who do care about peace and social justice to be involved in the Sanders campaign while opposing and being critical of his foreign policy record and low-lights. For more information read Ray Light's article: The Revolutionary Approach to the Sanders Campaign.

 DEBRA SWEET: Debra is the national director of The World Can't Wait and one of my most enduring comrades since Camp Casey in 2005. Debra spoke on the need of the "movement" to be non-partisan and not support imperialist candidates and how even though the Bush regime peacefully left office in 2009, the policies of Empire have expanded under Obama--there will also be protests on the weekend of March 19-20 against the wars and particularly the not over one in Iraq. 

Gerald Celente: Gerald is the director of the Trends Research

GERALD AT OCCUPY PEACE

Institute and founder of Occupy Peace. On the call, Gerald spoke to the assumption that protests are ineffective and the need for a movement with "teeth." The link to Occupy Peace shows the "Five Guiding Principles of Occupy Peace." 

 

A Revolutionary Approach to the Sanders Campaign by Ray Light

A Revolutionary Approach to the Sanders
Presidential Campaign
by RAY LIGHT

“Engels is most definite in calling universal suffrage an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, … is the ‘gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state.’” (Cited by Lenin in The State and Revolution)

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race thus far reflects the bitter experience of the working class, the urban and rural poor, and the middle class with the capitalist austerity for the 99% and the almost unprecedented boom years for Wall Street and finance capital. This assault on our conditions of life has been provided by the bipartisan “Republicrats” under Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic President Barack Obama since the economic crisis hit in 2007 and 2008.

Under the banner of “universal suffrage,” the TV debates, polls, rallies, and constant media coverage have revealed that there is remarkably little support for the “Republicrat” “2016 heavy favorites” (mainstream Democratic and Republican candidates, Hillary Clinton and especially Jeb Bush). Instead, the strong showing of right wing, fascistic Tea Party candidates such as Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Cruz, Rubio et al. on the Republican side and the social-democrat Sanders on the Democratic side reflects some level of popular mass rejection of “Republicrat Rule” and the Wall Street imperialist ruling class they represent.

Many of the ruined privileged petty bourgeoisie especially the white supremacist, great nation chauvinist, and Christian fundamentalist among them) are backing Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Cruz or Rubio and have helped these candidates attract large numbers of (especially white) impoverished workers and the poor. This campaign is accelerating the already formidable fascist direction in which the USA has been going for some time now — especially during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years. It is a disturbing and dangerous development.

On the other hand, large numbers of lower middle class and working class folks who have also experienced increasing economic hardship are supporting Bernie Sanders. This has been shown by the huge numbers of people that have attended a Sanders Rally and/or donated to his campaign, dwarfing the numbers for other presidential candidates. The Sanders campaign is mobilizing this mass support in spite of the pro-imperialist, pro-Wall Street national AFL-CIO and NAACP misleadership with their early endorsement of arch imperialist and Wall Street puppet Hillary Clinton. As 2016 begins, only three national unions have endorsed Sanders — National Nurses United, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Yet these three unions, with their Sanders endorsement and progressive leadership, do not represent any significant break with the treacherous AFL-CIO leadership, such as had occurred in the 1930’s in the split between the stagnant, top-down AFL bureaucracy and the then new and rising, emerging democratic mass-oriented CIO, with its large Communist Party influence. Moreover, Sanders’ commitment ahead of time to support Clinton or Biden or whatever imperialist war criminal the Democratic Party ultimately picks as its candidate sharply diminishes the extent to which the Sanders Campaign represents any real alternative to the “Republicrats” and to the Tea Party.

After six decades of U.S. imperialist hegemony in the world capitalist camp, a period that witnessed the dismantling of the international communist movement and the demise of the socialist camp, the U.S. sector of the international working class remains largely isolated from the rest of the class. It is still politically overwhelmed by its immediate and direct bourgeois enemy, U.S. imperialism. This still powerful global force, the U.S. Empire, as the main bastion of international capitalism, continues to draw its strength from its international connections, from the oppression of the world’s peoples.

This unequal conflict between U.S. labor and U.S. capital is reflected, among other things, in the lack of a revolutionary working class vanguard party in the USA today. Furthermore, there seems to be no short term prospect for the re-establishment of proletarian international solidarity among the rest of the international working class and especially with the U.S. workers such as existed in the days of the Soviet-led Communist International. 

Nevertheless, the U.S. Empire is itself in rapid decline, a factor that provides renewed opportunities for the advance of the proletarian revolutionary cause in the USA.

In the Presidential Campaign thus far, the Sanders For President Campaign is helping to educate the working  class and oppressed nationalities and the poor that they are entitled to a better life, after decades in which most of the workers and the 99% have bought Wall Street’s idea that the problems in the USA are due to the workers receiving more than they deserve! (The Democratic Party and its AFL-CIO Labor Lieutenants, NAACP misleaders, etc. claim that “the middle class” needs and deserves more but not the increasing masses of poor people and the working class.)

At the same time, the Sanders Campaign makes concrete positive mass demands on the U.S. imperialist ruling class. Single payer universal health care, $15/hr minimum wage, defense of the public good, i.e. free public college tuition, public schools and public post office, etc. Most or all of this Campaign’s demands had already been identified by the Revolutionary Organization of Labor (ROL-USA) as worthwhile goals of the class struggle around which we are trying to mobilize the working class and the masses. Both within and in conjunction with the Sanders Campaign we can now continue and deepen the political struggle around these demands.

Trump and the other Republican tea party candidates are moving U.S. society rapidly and decisively toward fascism (Trump’s anti-Latino immigrant bashing, Fiorina’s spearhead of an anti-women campaign, the Carson-led anti-Muslim immigrant hysteria). On a positive note, however, the Sanders Campaign is moving a segment of the U.S. populace toward opposition to Wall Street rule.

Can the weak and isolated revolutionary working class forces in the USA today afford to stand outside the fray and refuse to critically support the Sanders campaign’s half-hearted and fatally compromised defense of the petty bourgeoisie, the workers and the poor?  Half-hearted and fatally compromised because Sanders himself remains wedded and committed to the Democratic Party wing of the “Republicrat”party of Wall Street and U.S. imperialism and to defense of the U.S. Empire.

Remember the guidance of our boldest leader, comrade Lenin, — we need to make political compromises and alliances. But these maneuvers can only advance the proletarian revolutionary cause if we implement a principled policy using both “unity with and struggle against” our temporary allies. For example, Lenin observed: “The Bolsheviks … since 1905 have systematically insisted on an  alliance between the working class and the peasantry against the liberal bourgeoisie and tsardom, never, however, refusing to support the bourgeoisie against tsardom (for instance during second ballots) and never ceasing their relentless ideological and political struggle against the bourgeois-revolutionary peasant party, the ‘Socialist-Revolutionaries,’ exposing them as petty-bourgeois democrats who falsely masqueraded as Socialists.”

Following the Bolshevik example, we can endorse the Sanders petty bourgeois democratic domestic platform, while ceaselessly opposing and exposing his criminal support for the U.S. Empire with its continuous imperialist war and oppression of the peoples of the world. In order to have successful (pro-revolutionary) united front work with the Sanders Campaign, however, it is crucial that we remain constantly mindful that Sanders is no better than “the extreme left wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie” and that we have a constant duty to educate the workers and oppressed within the USA and around the world of that fact.

In a section of Ray O’Light Newsletter #59 (March-April 2010) entitled, “Obama and the Federal Government Preside Over the U.S. Empire in Decline” we opened with the following sentence: “Barack Obama is well suited for the difficult task of presiding over an orderly march of the U.S. population to impoverishment in the desperate effort of the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class to save itself and its hegemonic position in the world capitalist system.”

After elaborating how, in the face of the Obama bailout of Wall Street, the Obama-Biden Democratic Administration had seduced much of the U.S. “left,” the Afro-American people, Latino immigrant workers, and the organized section of the U.S. working class under AFL-CIO leadership, we concluded that: “This march to impoverishment, however, is still only in its beginning stages. And the challenge to the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class and President Obama to lead the masses of working people and oppressed nationalities in the USA to poverty without us opting for revolt, without us turning to socialist revolution  for the way out of our difficulties, will only get more difficult.”

Since we made the above observation, the more than five years of bitter experience of the 99% of the U.S. population on our backward march to austerity, under the leadership of the Obama Regime and U.S. imperialism, is the concrete material basis for the strength of the Sanders Campaign that has surprised everyone – including Sanders. In this light it is clear that a section among “the 99%,” among the U.S. workers, the oppressed nationalities and petty bourgeoisie, are beginning to turn “to socialist revolution as the way out of our difficulties.” This helps explain why Sanders raises the need for a “political revolution,” despite having already committed himself to support the nominee of the Democratic wing of the imperialist ruling party, the “Republicrats.”

The Sanders Campaign represents a step, though a small one, by thousands of U.S. workers and of the 99%, including some youth, toward open “revolt,” toward “socialist revolution.” ROL-USA and the handful of other proletarian revolutionaries in the USA have a responsibility to help the class and the masses to continue on this revolutionary path to workers power and socialism.

What if I told you disorderly conduct could change the world? | Mickey Z.

NYPD Police Academy Graduation Ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Monday, June 30, 2014. Credit: Diana Robinson.Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

Feb. 25, 2016

When the Blue Bloc goes on an arrest binge at a protest or rally, the ostensible reasons may range from trespassing to carrying illegal signs to wearing masks to blocking pedestrian traffic. However, the most common rap remains that old standby: disorderly conduct. 

In other words, it's illegal to not conduct oneself in an orderly fashion. 

But who exactly is discerning order from disorder in the Home of the Brave™? On the streets, it's typically that militarized gang wearing blue. The unarmed folks calling for justice? They have no virtually say in deciding how order is defined. Which, I submit, leaves us with no other choice than to embrace disorder.

“In chaos, there is fertility.” (Anais Nin)

What the elites call "order" is threatening all life on the planet and thus requires the rest of us to embrace militant noncompliance… pronto. Orderly conduct is what got us into this mess and is not going to suddenly stop the top 1% from sabotaging the future. That, my friends, requires the cultivation of chaos.

Those of you who know me personally are likely smirking right now as I will -- every now and then -- exhibit a penchant for precision… and um, a little over-analysis (on rare occasions). But paradoxically, my heart never fails to skip a beat when I hear the Situationists bellow: "Trade your boredom for chaos."

“I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.” (Bob Dylan)

During my public talks over the years, I've occasionally presented this bit: 

"How many of you think the planet is in peril?" (Everyone raises his or her hand)

"How many think those in power -- those most responsible for putting the planet in peril -- will voluntarily relinquish that power any time soon?" (No one raises hand)

At this point, I deliver the predictable punchline: "So, if most of us think the planet is in peril but also believe the elites are not going to surrender their power, I have one more question: How much more are we willing to tolerate before we finally get serious about creating change?"

If “order” has brought us to the precipice and we all know it, what do we have to lose by trying disorder?

"In all chaos, there is a cosmos. In all disorder, a secret order." (Carl Jung)

Okay, I just re-read what I've written for this article so far and goddamn, I’m so tempted to edit it and make it more, um… orderly. But I won't. Instead, I'll just remind you that the defenders of order love nothing more than we embrace their Machiavellian methodology.

Revolutionary change is not based on order. Experimenting with alternate models of human culture is chaotic work, dismantling patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism isn’t a linear process, protecting our shared future is an evolving and messy journey, and recognizing that the dominant culture is "out of order" and must be taken down is where and how it all begins.

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” (Mary Shelley)

Oh, how many times I've heard the misguided Gandhi quote about "becoming the change" bandied about in so-called activist circles throughout my so-called activist life. I say, if we’re gonna look inward before banding together to make much more than ego-soothing personal changes, it's high time we move past the Gandhi facade and try this: Become the disorder you wish to see in the world!

Destroy the present, become the future.

#shifthappens

Mickey Z. is the author of 13 books, most recently Occupy these Photos: NYC Activism Through a Radical Lens. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, you can “like” his Facebook page here and follow his blog here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.

 
"What if I told you disorderly conduct could change the world?" by Mickey Z. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://worldnewstrust.com/what-if-i-told-you-disorderly-conduct-cou

Facing Facebook by Anthony Freda

Facebook is an electronic ghetto.

A place of phantom friends and real enemies.

A virtual gulag in Cyberia where ideas deemed dangerous by central planners are selectively censored by robots 

who have been alerted to the thought crimes by vigilant and easily offended 'followers".

 

A digital Dannemora where the prisoners fight with each other for the amusement of the guards.

A place where the worst of human frailties are on constant display and the intimate details of our lives are 

transformed into commodities to be traded in ways to which we are never privy.

I know all of this and more, yet I don't leave.

Why can't I break it's spell?

Is it just habit, or is my instinctual desire to be part of the hive, to "like" and be liked just too strong to resist?

I tell myself I am there to expose Big Brother, but maybe I have been broken by him.

Do I love Big Brother?

 

 

SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE WITH DAN YASEEN (FEBRUARY)

SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE

FEBRUARY

 

On “Speaking Truth to Empire” Dan Yaseen interviews Christopher Bollyn, author and independent investigative journalist who has investigated, researched and written extensively about the events of 9-11. His website is www.Bollyn.com.

https://soundcloud.com/speaking-truth-to-empire/20160217-speaking-truth-to-empire-christopher-bollyn

 

 

Wall Street Seeks Bailout by South Carolina Afro-Americans (STATEMENT BY REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION OF LABOR

WALL STREET SEEKS BAILOUT BY SOUTH CAROLINA AFRO-AMERICANS!

Statement by Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA – February 14, 2016


The Bush II and Obama Administrations each in turn gave Wall Street an almost one trillion dollar bailout within the first year after these same Wall Street criminals created the 2008 economic crisis. As Senator Bernie Sanders has pointed out, Wall Street has paid $200 billion in fines yet not one of these criminals has gone to jail. In fact, we can calculate that the bailout gifts from these two "Republicrat" administrations (from our tax money) left Wall Street at least one and one-half trillion dollars ahead! Meanwhile, the crisis still plagues most of the rest of the 99% of us in the USA till this very day, almost eight years later.

The "generosity" of the rest of us toward the super rich U.S. ruling class evidently does have some limits though: In the 2016 presidential election season thus far the candidates of the mainstream Republican and Democratic parties, the "Republicrat" candidates of Wall Street such as Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, have been unable to mount effective campaigns — even with their campaign coffers flush with largely untraceable corporate cash thanks to the Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the fascistic Tea Party candidates — Trump, Cruz, Carson and Rubio — are attracting the Republican primary voters, they are even scarier than the Republicrats. It is in the Democratic Party primaries that the Sanders campaign provides some limited ability of the U.S. working class and masses to express our political needs and aspirations. It is in this campaign that thousands of us are gathering around the elementary truth that Wall Street has much too much and Main Street is entitled to much more than we have. It is here that we are taking the first political baby steps toward seizing political power from Wall Street finance capital backed by "Republicrat" political rule and the U.S. military/police forces at home and around the world.

Tragically, Sanders, like all the other "Republicrat" and Tea Party candidates, is a defender of the U.S. Empire. Thus, on foreign policy issues, as usual, the Democratic/Republican political duopoly in the 2016 Campaign effectively suppresses the ability of the U.S. population to express solidarity with the rest of the international working class and the oppressed peoples against the unceasing U.S. imperialist-led War of Terror from North Africa and the Middle East to Asia and Latin America. This is why Sanders could say from the outset that he will support the Democratic Party candidate and that he "likes" the brutal war criminal Hillary Clinton with her hands stained with the blood of the peoples from Honduras to Syria and Libya.

Nonetheless, the Bernie Sanders campaign is mobilizing among the 99% of us to make economic, political and social demands on the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class. And the campaign is gathering momentum far beyond anything even Sanders had imagined. After a virtual tie in Iowa, Sanders decisively defeated Clinton 60% to 40% in New Hampshire, even winning among woman voters.

In fact, the Clinton campaign, with the hopes and prayers as well as the financial blessings of the Wall Street ruling class, is counting upon the Black masses of South Carolina to deliver Clinton and Wall Street from the serious and simple demands for single payer health care (that would wipe out the health insurance industry), free public college tuition (that would stop the loan sharks feeding on struggling students), $15/hour minimum wage (almost a living wage). Yet, there is almost no other sector of the U.S. population that would benefit more than South Carolina's Afro-American population from taking from the Wall Street rich and funding these programs for the rest of us!

–Why the Wall Street Rich Believe the Afro-American people of South Carolina Will be Their Deliverance–

Eight years ago, Obama won his first primary victory in South Carolina. We reported then, “In South Carolina, in a record turnout, more than half of the votes in the Democratic Primary were Afro-American. Eighty percent of the Afro-American voters supported Obama. It was on the basis of this Black solidarity or Black electoral power that Obama won an overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary—55% to Hillary Clinton's 27% and Edwards' 15%. Yet Obama did nothing to encourage the hard-pressed Afro-American people of South Carolina.

Exultant in this decisive victory, Obama and his campaigners chanted, "Race doesn't matter!" in the face of the obvious fact that 'race' had mattered there ... instead of expressing appreciation to the Black masses for the victory and dedicating himself to representing their interests, Obama and his 'campaigners' insulted the Black masses, deprecating their effort. As if ashamed of their support, Obama distanced himself from the very people who had provided his victory.” (“The 2008 Presidential Election, the Barack Obama Campaign, and the Need for Afro-American National Liberation,” Ray O' Light Newsletter #47, February-March 2008)                                      
(over)


Through the eight years since, the Afro-American people of South Carolina have continued to show remarkable loyalty to Obama, in spite of the fact that his seven years in the U.S. Presidency have seen their fortunes grow ever more desperate economically and politically and socially. From the execution of Troy Davis to the immediate and unjust firing of Shirley Sherrod, the first Afro-American head of the Georgia Department of Agriculture, to the Obama-Ied War on Libya and the African Continent and his elimination of the Department of Homeland Security monitors of White Supremacist terrorist groups which paved the way for Dylann Roof to massacre the bible study group at Charleston's most historic Afro-American church, Emanuel AME Church, just days after a white North Charleston cop fatally shot a Black man eight times in the back. Obama and U.S. imperialism praised those among the bereaved church families who had reverted to a slave culture. They forgave the cold-blooded Roof who had not shown any remorse or asked to be forgiven.

***

Now, days before the 2016 South Carolina presidential primary, a huge fraud is being perpetrated upon the Black masses of South Carolina. On February 11th, the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee, announced its endorsement of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. There had been no vote by the Congressional Black Caucus itself! There are 46 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The CBC PAC voters had included eleven lobbyists, 2 PAC officials and seven elected officials. These are the people responsible for bringing the money into the CBC. And they dutifully followed the money. And the money is with Clinton. And most of the CBC members kept their mouths shut.

To try to seal the deal, Congressman John Lewis, a true icon of the 1960's civil right movement, grabbed center stage at the CBC PAC Press Conference and disgraced himself with a fraudulent statement no doubt addressed directly to the Black masses of South Carolina.

Congressman Lewis, at other times a modest person, trashed Bernie Sanders' role in the civil rights movement. Lewis who, with other civil rights heroes, functioned in the Black Belt South in the early 1960's, dismissed Sanders by stating that he had never met Sanders in that period. Lewis immediately added that he had met Hillary and President Clinton. Hillary Clinton had actually been an active supporter of Senator Barry Goldwater's Republican Presidential run in 1964. And Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964! In fact, Hillary Clinton had remained a Young Republican until 1968. Sanders had been an active member and leader in Chicago of CORE, a major civil rights organization.

The only member of the Congressional Black Caucus who has endorsed Sanders, and the only Muslim in Congress, Keith Ellison, exposed the absurdity of Lewis' "testimony" about not knowing Sanders in a period when there were thousands in the movement all over the country and when Sanders and Lewis were working in different parts of the country. Others have come forward with documentation including photos of Sanders in action back then. This was very positive. In addition, Ben Jealous, the former head of the national NAACP has also endorsed Sanders. If the word from Congressman Ellison and President Jealous gets to the Afro-American voters in South Carolina, they will have the opportunity to think for themselves about who to vote for and against.

A final thought: Hillary Clinton has been wrapping herself around Obama and is now touting the fact that Barack Obama got more money from Wall Street than anyone else in the 2008 Campaign. She then tries to say Obama wasn't bought and she praises Obama's alleged "fight" against Wall Street, challenging Sanders to spill the beans about Obama and lose the vote in South Carolina. Because Sanders is tied to the Democratic Party and the U.S. Empire, it is unlikely he will tell the people the truth about Obama and Wall Street. Nevertheless, Sanders has stated that the people of this country understand that if the sharks on Wall Street are "investing" in political candidates they expect to get a big pay-off. So, on this fundamental question of Big Money in politics, the Sanders Campaign is helping to educate the people. It is all to the good.

Meanwhile, the fact that Ben Jealous, Keith Ellison and other Black leaders are supporting Sanders against the Wall Street candidate and against the tired old leadership of a corrupt Congressional Black Caucus is the beginning of a new way forward for an Afro-American liberation movement that has been unwilling to participate in constructive and principled criticism for decades since the martyrdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. placed him and black leadership "above criticism."

We are confident that when the Afro-American masses of South Carolina grasp this truth, they will reject the Wall Street bailout. 

No to Wall Street Bailout in South Carolina!
Toward Victorious Afro-American National Liberation!

— Ray Light

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