Things to consider—

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way. —Stephen LendmanFor over a century now US ambassadors have acted as fifth columns in the nations they are embedded in, their role chiefly to foster corporate and plutocratic power and coordinate machinations against any truly pro-democratic government.•••••"The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life...." —Randy Shields
Oct 012011
 

By Chris Hedges

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state…”

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
Oct 012011
 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:
Empowerment through understanding the phases of a cause

By the editors of ANIMAL PEOPLE

William Moyer

Social Movement Empowerment Project founder Bill Moyer was last mentioned in ANIMAL PEOPLE in his obituary,  published in our January/February 2003 edition.  His insights,  however,  have helped to inform almost every ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial.

A key strategist for Martin Luther King’s 1966 open housing campaign in Chicago,  Moyer after 1972  spent the rest of his life teaching advocacy tactics.  At invitation of ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett,  who was then editor of the long defunct Animals’ Agenda magazine,  and Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, Moyer in September 1989 visited Stamford,  Connecticut,  to present one of his Movement Action Plan workshops to about 40 leaders of national animal rights groups. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
Oct 012011
 

By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The Americans that spoke at a New York dinner and audience with Iranian President Ahmadinejad “were very passionate about social justice issues in the United States and abroad, but unfortunately, none of them made the most essential points about this nation’s relationship with Iran.” Clearly, that’s a serious problem for a country that is in the crosshairs of the U.S. and Israel. “What Iran does not have is a critical mass of Americans who would consistently and forcefully declare that any attack on Iran would be a crime against humanity.”

The United States, with its history of making war against Iran and other countries, is in no position to claim that it can assist them in bringing any changes that would benefit their nation.” Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
Oct 012011
 

By Paul Craig Roberts

THE “Underwear Bomber” case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.

How realistic is it that Al-Qaeda, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA and Mossad asset, had reported him to the CIA and Mossad. Does anyone really believe that Al-Qaeda would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable? Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
Oct 012011
 

Bhaskar Sunkara – September 27, 2011
From Dissent Magazine
Mark Engler’s commentary on my symposium entry and the “legacy of anti-globalization” more generally is appreciated. I don’t disagree with him on the specifics. “Anti-globalization” had its genesis before Seattle, rattled on after 9/11, and left behind a tangible legacy. But was this legacy an unambiguously positive one? The diversity of the global justice movement is undeniable, but to the extent its prominent intellectual voices represented broader trends, we can see the crystallization of a new type of radical that would come to prominence on the Left. The reconfiguration of the Left at the end of the twentieth century created a void. The “anarcho-liberal” filled it. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it: