FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as “the most gagged person in the history of the United States” by the American Civil Liberties Union. This week, Nafeez mosaddeq Ahmed released an article about her story which has gone viral. You can read the article HERE In this podcast we discuss her case and feature a long in depth skype- chat between Sibel Edmonds &...
Before 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev was interrogated, President Obama asked, “Why did these young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?” Yesterday, the Washington Post provided the answer to the president in a news article entitled, “ Boston Bombing Suspect Cites U.S. Wars as Motivation, Officials Say...
In general I refrain from commenting on Syria, because the politics of that country are hugely complex and I simply do not know enough about it. If in the media in general people refrained from commenting on things they know they do not clearly understand, life would be easier for readers – except, of course, that most columnists don’t understand that they don’t understand...
Image : (Edlib News Network Enn, via Associated Press) Al Qaeda terrorists in Idlib, Syria. It is now admitted by the New York Times that the entire armed so-called "opposition" is comprised entirely of Al Qaeda, meaning the torrent of cash and weapons sent to the "opposition" by the West and its regional allies, were intentionally sent directly to listed terrorists...
In the wake of Thatcher’s departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby’s daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although...
The revelation that the family of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was from Chechnya prompted new speculation about the attack as Islamic terrorism. Less discussed was the history of U.S. neocons supporting Chechen terrorists as a strategy to weaken Russia, as ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley recalls. I almost choked on my coffee listening to neoconservative Rudy Giuliani...
Nine thousand heavily armed police including SWAT teams were deployed in a manhunt to capture a 19 year old student at U-Mass, after his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon terror mastermind was shot dead by police allegedly after a car chase and shoot out with police. Prior to the conduct of a police investigation, the 19 year old student has already been designated as...
Power is not to be conquered, it is to be destroyed. It is tyrannical by nature, whether exercised by a king, a dictator or an elected president. The only difference with the parliamentarian ‘democracy’ is that the modern slave has the illusion of choosing the master he will obey. The vote has made him an accomplice to the tyranny that oppresses him. He is not a slave because...
Carson indicts historically existing capitalism as a betrayal, rather than a manifestation, of free-market libertarian principles. He points out that libertarians have typically focused on the role of state coercion in the present-day capitalist market, neglecting what he calls the “subsidy of history” — the role of past state coercion and robbery, including selective state...
The "Islamic terrorism" that is an excuse for the enduring theft of Africa's vast store of minerals was all but invented by US, Pakistani and British intelligence agencies, which created the mujahedin of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan...
Being a libertarian means opposing the use of force to restrain peaceful, voluntary exchange. That doesn’t mean it should be understood as involving support for capitalism. Whether this claim makes any sense at all depends, of course, on what you mean by “capitalism.” For some people, perhaps, the term just refers to free exchange. And if that’s all you intend when...
“…everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.” —Arthur Young; 1771 Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the l
If YouTube was a race, gold would go to South Korea with Psy’s ‘ Gangnam Style ’ easily topping one billion hits, while silver would go to North Korea for it's documentary ‘ Propaganda ’ currently sitting at 1.3 million hits. This hard hitting expose on capitalist public relations techniques takes a pot shot at almost every aspect of the Western system and...
Amidst the White House and congressional theatrics surrounding the so-called fiscal-cliff negotiations, a number of bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama that renew some of the worst excesses of the Bush years. Largely ignored by the media, these laws further entrench odious policies like indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and the continued operation of the U.S. gulag...
Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership, which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content. The TPP...
Many of you have visited the Films For Action website and asked us why we have not posted any Alex Jones documentaries or included Infowars, Prision Planet, Natural News or other like-minded sites on our list of recommended independent media. Unfortunately, we feel it would be irresponsible to promote Alex Jones, his websites, or any of his films. His films were always overly sensational...
In recent years, populist explanations for world events have become common and often taken the form of anti-establishment conspiracy theories. The contradiction between how people believe the world should be, according to the mainstream propaganda pertaining to liberty and democracy, and how it is in this time of crisis leads people to search for easily digestible answers. It’s easy...
2012 was another big year for break-out films in the social change genre. With most of the bases covered for all of the major problems we're facing, more and more films this year focused on the solutions side of the equation, giving a voice to the uplifting stories of people working to realize their dreams of a thriving, sustainable world. For the films that focused on the...
Looking out upon the horrid ruin we seem to have made of the planet, in spite of the kind hearts and good intentions of the vast majority of human beings, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some nefarious force has hijacked civilization, driving it towards ends that serve almost no one. If we are headed for a future that no one would consciously choose, it stands to reason, some say...
Daniel Quinn is the author of many works including The Story of B , My Ishmael , and Beyond Civilization . His first book, Ishmael , was published in 1992. Since its release as the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, it has gone on to great success, and been read by millions. It has inspired new ideas in a diverse spectrum of people ranging from doctors and lawyers to musicians a
Last week, PFC Bradley Manning offered to accept responsibility for releasing classified documents as an act of conscience – not as charged by the US military . As people who have worked for decades against the increased militarization of societies and for international cooperation to end war, we have been deeply dismayed by his treatment. The military under the Obama administration...
“Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.” “Get Away Sandy – God and Obama Will Save Us” read the graffiti, scrawled man-high on a cinderblock wall in the majority Black town of Plainfield, New Jersey. It is an apt articulation of African American politics as we descend into the First Black...
Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – 'disposition matrix' – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim A primary reason for opposing the acquisition of abusive powers and civil liberties erosions is that they virtually always become permanent, vested not only in current leaders one may love and trust but also...
Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives. But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise . The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air...
Barack Obama has been called everything from a gun-hating, closet-Muslim hiding socialist to a big-government loving, deficit exploding , tax increasing, class-warfare waging liberal elitist. He's been compared to Hitler and denounced for wanting to destroy capitalism and/or America. He pals around with terrorists . They say he wasn't born in America and secretly hates white people...
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These are the questions that the artist Paul Gaugin wrote in the corner of one of his paintings when he was living in Tahiti in 1897, and they’ve been asked by thinking people for as long as we’ve been thinking – especially today, when there’s a solid case to be made from the ecological evidence that our...
Scott Noble is the director of several acclaimed and politically charged documentaries, including Psywar, Human Resources and Lifting the Veil. His documentary on Occupy Wall Street, Rise Like Lions, took the #1 spot on Films for Action’s Top Ten Occupy films. His latest, The Power Principle, takes on the American empire, with emphasis on the Cold War period. We sent him a few questions...
The following is an excerpt of “Columbus and Western Civilization” written by Howard Zinn that appears in the Disinformation anthology You Are Still Being Lied To edited by Russ Kick. Author’s Note: In the year 1992, the celebration of Columbus Day was different from previous ones in two ways. First, this was the quincentennial, 500 years after Columbus’ landing...
Excerpt from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet...
Protests that began at a US Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday have now spread to the US post in Sanaa, Yemen, where demonstrations are believed to have been sparked by an anti-Islam film trailer posted to YouTube. But Yemen has more reasons than an offensive 14-minute video to be upset with the United States. We asked Jeb Boone, who has reported for GlobalPost from Yemen
The history of America is the one story every kid knows. It's a story of fierce individualism and heroic personal sacrifice in the service of a dream. A story of early settlers, hungry and cold, carving a home out of the wilderness. Of visionary leaders fighting for democracy and justice, and never wavering. Of a populace prepared to defend those ideals to the death. It's the story of a...
Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in -- a government, company, or marriage -- even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust? A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science , a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, illuminates the conditions under which we're...
As I’ve written about before , America’s election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture — obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace “reporting,” and mindless partisan loyalties — become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts...
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation...
The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is Russell Means's most famous speech. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, he was perhaps the most outsized personality in the American Indian Movement...
A week ago, police fired rubber bullets, bean bags, and canisters into the crowd of protesters in Oakland. Their brutality almost cost Marine veteran Scott Olsen his life. And it turns out, the police used tactics that aren’t even allowed to be used in war zones. A former Marine with special operations in crowd control says that what the police did in Oakland last week is something...
My three-year-old son’s favorite book is Out of the Blue . It has large color photographs of sea animals, from plankton to clownfish to orcas. I often find my son, dressed in his pajamas, on the floor of his bedroom in the morning carefully turning the pages of the book. And every time I hear him naming out the magnificent creatures before him, my heart breaks. Within my son’s...
Something is wrong, and the signs of it are everywhere. Somebody flies a plane into an IRS tax office in Texas, and millions of people around the country cheer, while the media speak of a “senseless attack.” In a black neighborhood in the slums of Hartford, someone opens fire on a SWAT team that has busted down their door, and people in the gathered crowd of neighbors whisper...
The last refuge of Obamaphiles is that no matter how many times the First Black President double-crosses us by cutting Medicare and Medicaid, no matter how completely be betrays his voters by ignoring black unem ployment, by deporting one million Latinos, by protecting the banksters responsible for the foreclosure crisis and by invading, bombing, occupying and subverting even more countries...
The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. Indeed, the new story put out on Tuesday by White House press secretary Jay Carney bears little resemblance to the original Sunday evening story. The fierce firefight did not occur. Osama bin Laden did not hide behind a woman. Indeed, bin Laden, Carney said...
Reaching out to young people is especially critical at this time. With mounting psycho-social stress attributed to an increasingly uncertain future, young people are going to need support grappling with the social effects of so many convergent crises. The world is rife with uncertainty about our fate on the planet. Declining ecosystems and biodiversity, a quickly destabilizing climate and an...
Each day there are opportunities for resistance, liberation, freedom, creativity, engagement, and meaning. It is easy to miss these opportunities and get distracted and bogged down by day-to-day hassles -- stuck in traffic, staring at the internet, emotionally numb, confused, and feeling disconnected from anything important. There are no easy answers about how to live our lives but we all make...
Editor’s Note : The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics speak for themselves. In previous Revolution Roundups [22] , before we were...
And he continues to kick our asses posthumously. That’s right, he’s been dead for eleven fucking years and we’re still on orange alert. After years of dialysis and a less than comfortable lifestyle, despite his wealth, in December 2001 Osama bin Laden died in the mountains of Tora Bora and was buried in an unmarked grave, according to Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera...