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“I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”  Donald Rumsfeld, September 10, 2001
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were a turning point in world history. We have been told that these attacks were planned and implemented by nineteen Arab Muslim hijackers under the direction of the leaders of al Qaeda. According to the official account, this...
HistoryCommons.org has compiled an incredible historic resource that documents the rise and escalation of the climate denial industry over the last 15 years. Without editorializing the content, these articles summarize 178 headlines (often with multiple news article sources...
Over the first half of 2012, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been demonstrating its commitment to support the scaling up of renewable energy in Africa with the approval of US $800 million in loans to spur private investment in Morocco’s growing wind and solar markets...
Much hay was made of Paul Ryan's dishonesty when he accepted the Republican Party's nomination for vice president last week in Tampa. Suddenly, everyone was very excited about fact-checking. Predictably, the same scrutiny has not been applied to the recently released...
Just looking at the video images of the two conventions — the Republican one last week in Tampa, Florida, and this week’s Democratic convention in Charlotte, NC — one can see the fundamental contrast between the rank-and-file of the two parties.
Meet Gina Rinehart. Born Georgina Hope Hancock, Rinehart is heir to her father’s fortune built at Hancock Prospecting in Australia, where Rinehart remains as executive chair. Hancock Prospecting holds the rights to the world’s largest iron ore deposit and has made Rinehart...
It speaks the language of riffles and babbles, not legal rights and codes, but the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third largest, has received something no other river in the country – and possibly the world – yet has: a legal voice.
With the anniversary of September 11th, 2001 being remembered today, we can expect America and our media to look back once again on this turning point in our nation's history.
The 9/11 attack was one of the most pivotal events in world history. Its impact will be felt for years to come. You owe it to yourself to go beyond the sound bites and the simplified official story. This is an extremely complicated story with numerous players and motives. The...
I was talking recently with a new friend who I’m just getting to know. She tends to be somewhat conservative, while I lean more toward the progressive side.
Late in the day on 9/11, CNN put out a story that began: “Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney, alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN.” According to this story...
Yesterday was August 28th 2012. Remember that date. It marks the day when the world went raving mad. Three things of note happened. The first is that a record Arctic ice melt had just been announced by the scientists studying the region. The 2012 figure has not only beaten...
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...
I’ve written about or linked to a great deal here “chronicling Mitt’s mendacity” — to borrow Steven Benen’s phrase.
Thanks and Disclaimer: This F.A.Q. is taken from "Life After The Oil Crash, compiled by Matt Savinar," which is no longer online. We are aware that the solutions of L.A.T.O.C. are more "self-sufficiency"oriented, rather than with building solidarity and community, which we...
Agenda 21: It’s the biggest threat to your freedom, and unless you regularly attend yahoo-filled local planning and zoning meetings, you’ve probably never even heard of it. Until recently, this 20-year-old United Nations plan to promote “sustainable development” was known...
Ten and a half years into the Guantánamo experiment, as it becomes ever harder for those who are still appalled by the prison’s existence, and by the failures of all three branches of the US government—
New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."
Detailed information from the families of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and from local sources on strikes that have targeted mourners and rescue workers provides credible new evidence that the majority of the deaths in the drone war in Pakistan have been civilian...
An irony of modern life is that, in spite of spectacular increases in material abundance and centuries of technological progress, hunter-gatherers, people who have lived with almost no material possessions, have enjoyed lives in many ways as satisfying and rewarding as lives...
'White supremacists are all too frequently declared to be psychotic loners, where others are seen as part of organised ideological networks'. Photo: Heiko Junge/AP
The Black Hills were stolen from the Sioux in 1877. Now, Indians are in a desperate quest to buy back their sacred sites When I was a little girl, a long time ago, we would go camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We had to pay, just as tourists do, to camp there and...
Here in the United States, whether we look to the language used amongst ourselves, in the media, or by politicians, we may find that our standard method of communication is based on rhetoric – a style of argument that relies on a set of distinctly isolated viewpoints, with...
A chemical widely used in plastic food and drink containers may narrow coronary arteries, raising the risk of heart attacks, research suggests. High levels of bisphenol-A (BPA) in the urine were seen significantly more often in patients with severe damage to the arteries...
By Agence France-PresseWednesday, August 15, 2012 17:38 EDT WASHINGTON - Two US lawmakers probing bribery allegations against Walmart in Mexico say they have documents suggesting the US retail giant may also have engaged in tax evasion and money laundering.
This is a little window into our strategy to help catalyze a Global Paradigm Shift
Over many years as an activist, attorney and artist working on environmental campaigns, Chris Desser began to wonder about the sensual pleasures that will disappear from our lives as more and more species go extinct. That was the genesis of her “Catalog of Extinct...
My aim in this essay is to explore the history of the terms sustainable and sustainability, and their various published definitions, and then to offer a set of five axioms (based on a review of the literature) to help clarify the characteristics of a durable society.
The crime on Sunday that left a community devastated and a nation wondering how such evil still happens today Terror and tragedy struck a Milwaukee suburb on Sunday as a white supremacist opened fired in a Sikh temple, killing six and critically injuring three.  Worshippers...
"I remember the first time that a grading rubric was attached to a piece of my writing….Suddenly all the joy was taken away.  I was writing for a grade -- I was no longer exploring for me.  I want to get that back.  Will I ever get that back?"-- Claire, a student (in Olson...
Last weekend, news cameras zoomed in on a theater in Aurora, where many moviegoers were shot down, apparently by a gunman trying to act out a crazed fantasy. While the mass killing reignited a nationwide debate on gun control, a different, but similar, tragedy unfolded not...
To the Residents of Anaheim, I am one of the outsiders who's coming to your city today to protest the cowardly shooting of Manuel Diaz, the five other fatal police shootings this year alone, and the police incursion into a neighborhood protest with guns and dogs. Before I...
Update 8/6, a clarification. The below article's quotes were taken a bit out of context: http://www.rt.com/news/bolivia-coca-cola-ban-770/
Hosting film screenings can be used as a powerful method to accopmlish many goals. They can be used to launch solutions-oriented campaigns (either designed by your group or to assist already on-going campaigns). They can create a common foundation of understaning among a...
Fraternities, sororities and football, along with other outsized athletic programs, have decimated most major American universities. Scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and a search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression—in short, the world of ethics...
Systems thinkers have given us a useful metaphor for a certain kind of human behavior in the phenomenon of the boiled frog.
There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism?
As the climate has warmed during the past several decades, there has been a growing imbalance between record daily high temperatures in the contiguous U.S. and record daily lows. A study published in 2009 found that rather than a 1-to-1 ratio, as would be expected if the...
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is  If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June...
The Human Future - A Problem In Design
With excellent independent media sites like Common Dreams, Truth Out, Grist, and others providing progressive news and perspective in written form, Films For Action has dedicated itself to filling in the progressive video niche.
Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the...
The disparity between what the average worker earns and what CEOs take home is staggering — and it makes clear that the 99% does, in fact, need a raise. But while fighting for a $15 minimum wage is important, we also have to recognize that raising the minimum wage alone...
Studying inequality in America reveals some facts that are truly hard to believe. Amidst all the absurdity a few stand out. A homeless person sits under blankets at a Wall Street subway station in New York City. (Credit: AP/Mark Lennihan)
Several items today relate to the issue of gross U.S. media propaganda and Obama’s national security policies:
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) on Thursday introduced an amendment to the farm bill that would give states the power to label genetically modified food.
U.S. cable companies have become the subject of a wide-ranging antitrust probe launched in secret by the Department of Justice, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The New York Times revealed this week that President Obama personally oversees a "secret kill list" containing the names and photos of individuals targeted for assassination in the U.S. drone war. According to the Times, Obama signs off on every targeted killing in Yemen and...
Hosting film screenings can be used as a powerful method to accomplish many goals. They can be used to launch solutions-oriented campaigns (either designed by your group or to assist already on-going campaigns). They can create a common foundation of understanding among a...
One of the world's biggest environmental crimes has been more or less forgotten. This is part of our collective guilt as the world's ecosystem continues its accelerated collapse. But the new documentary film The Big Fix takes a detailed, daring look at what happened in the...
A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged. The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an...
A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to...
Although the story of the CIA’s actions in the run-up to 9/11 is complicated, at a fairly early point in any examination of them it becomes clear the agency committed multiple failures, and that these failures enabled the attacks to go forward. The key issue that remains in...
If you're not the type to keep up with ugly, soul-killing political controversies, let me catch you up: A while back, hugely popular political commentator Rush Limbaugh lost a bunch of advertisers because he publicly called a college girl a slut and a prostitute after she...
Stand in solidarity with the people of Syria calling and dying for their freedom and right to choose their leaders.
For the last two months, Occupy UC Davis has been blockading a campus branch of U.S. Bank. Now, in a victory for Occupy that potentially gives birth to a new movement tactic, U.S. Bank has capitulated and permanently closed the branch.
If you're a regular reader of The Salt, you've probably noticed our interest in foraging. From San Francisco to Maryland, we've met wild food experts, nature guides and chefs passionate about picking foo
File-sharers, beware: By July 12, major US Internet service providers (ISPs) will voluntarily begin serving as copyright police for the entertainment industry, according to Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The so-called...
The U.S. military has unveiled its newest approach to crowd control, the Active Denial System, a heat ray that sends out a high-frequency electromagnetic ray. People hit with the ray feel an intense, unbearable heat.  The military touts the ray's "far-ranging" capabilities...
Kampala, Uganda - From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter. I don't watch YouTube and the Ugandan papers didn't pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues...
SolidarityNYC is a New York City-based group which works to create links between social movements and the "solidarity economy." The latter consists of cooperatives, small businesses, non-profits and other economic activities which "reinforce values of justice, ecological...
Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. By hosting community film screenings and sharing them online, they offer a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait for anyone or anything.
Panglossian Disorder? What on earth is that? And how does it apply to peak oil?
I have travelled frequently to Uganda since 1998.   In 2007 I had the privilege of travelling extensively through the northern part of Uganda and visited the town of Gulu and several Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.I am an independent global citizen that does not...
It’s time we put economics into some sort of physical scientific context that makes sense.
Yesterday, 60,000 marched on Madison to mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of Governor Scott Walker's drastic dismantling of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Last year, Walker's attacks on labor rights sparked massive protests that saw hundreds of...
Over fifty years have passed since most African nations gained their independence. Since then, and despite the expenditure of over $1 trillion in aid, poverty has, according to the World Bank, nearly doubled. But, the idea of aid was to reduce poverty and close the gap in...
BALANDI, Afghanistan — An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai who called it an "assassination" and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children...
The Group of 8 Summit, a meeting of the governments of the world's eight largest economies, was supposed to convene in Chicago this May. For months, Occupy Chicago, international anti-war groups, Anonymous, and hundreds of allies have publicly planned to shut it down. Now...
The usual error is assuming that other people are just like you.
Dow pays "strategic intelligence" firm to spy on Yes Men and grassroots activists. Takeaway: movement is on the right track!
WikiLeaks has released the first 200 of a cache of 5m emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a US-based intelligence firm.
The leaked Heartland Institute documents proved what most people know to be true anyway – that mainstream climate deniers are secretly funded by industry and will stoop to any level t
Films For Action recently released a Facebook App that features a top-100 compendium of documentaries made to change the world...
There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of...
In the midst of the students and conservative stalwarts in business attire at CPAC, Howard Wooldridge stands out like a sore thumb — but not because of his cowboy hat and big belt buckle. It’s his T-shirt, which loudly proclaims “COPS SAY LEGALIZE POT ASK ME WHY.” And people...
What do you do when you are the heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune and you have spent years surrounding yourself with new agey thinking and conspiracy theories?  You make a film like ‘Thrive‘, the latest conspiracy theory movie that is popping up all over the place.  I’ve...
Two summers ago, at the U.S. Social Forum, I attended a panel discussion about ways to expand the use of credit unions as alternatives to the “too big to fail” banks whose risky investments had helped tank the economy. Each of the speakers—people involved in credit union...
While much has been made of the $535 million loan guarantee made to the failed Solyndra Corporation in 2009 to encourage alternative energy, you may have missed the court decision this week, halting expansion plans for a Kansas coal plant facing similar problems.
LONDON — Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet.
Ever since the FBI claimed (for a second time) that it had discovered in 2008 the identity of the anthrax attacker — the recently-deceased-by-suicide Army researcher Bruce Ivins — it was glaringly obvious, as I
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?
Neoclassical economics has severe flaws.  But since the field is captive to the monopolistic money and banking system, it is very difficult for economists who are aware of this to speak up.  If they were to speak about the flaws, their careers would be severely limited.  Only...
January 25, 2012 - We've launched our new mobile site today, bringing the site's library of over 900 films, independent news and actions to the small screen inside your pocket.
REMIX : To combine or edit existing materials to produce something new. If you’ve seen it, you’ll probably have guessed that here at The Crisis of Civilization we love Remix films – and we want you to have a go too. We would like to invite you to create your own Crisis of...
As students, we are told that we are being made into an “informed citizenry” capable of maintaining a vibrant democracy. Indeed, we are told that we must give up most of our constitutional rights in the name of achieving this goal. We are compelled to attend an institution...
Long before we could vote, we learned to sit still, follow directions, and ignore the world outside the classroom window. This slowly dimmed the wild common sense we needed to fight corporate rule and reclaim our world, but it's not too late to reclaim what was lost.
New laws took effect in Vermont and Virginia [July 11, 2011], giving ethical business a boost. If Vermont's law had been around 11 years ago, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield might not have had to sell their ice cream company.
Faith in Public Life reports that more than 40 Catholic leaders and theologians across the country are calling on two of their “fellow Catholics,” GOP contenders Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, to stop using divisive rhetoricabout race and poverty on the campaign trail.
Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military...
In case you haven't heard the thunderous celebration by the North American climate movement, today the State Dept is set to outright reject the Keystone XL pipeline. #booyah This is a reminder that people power works. Direct Action works. Social movements work. Grassroots...
It usually starts with a lack of sleep. Then I notice I'm only eating carbohydrates, and mostly things which require less than 10 minutes to prepare.
from the let's-walk-through-the-reasons dept There's been plenty of talk (and a ton of posts here on Techdirt) discussing both SOPA (originally E-PARASITE) and PROTECT IP (aka PIPA), but it seemed like it would be useful to create a single, "definitive" post to highligh
Tuesday marks the four-month anniversary of the Occupy movement. Perhaps it’s time to ask the question: Is it working? In four months, has progress been made toward realizing the movement’s goals? As much as I would like to be able to answer with an emphatic “yes,” reality is...
What is the full truth of 9/11/2001? It is, quite simply, to tell all sides of the story.
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...
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before
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