Facts Do Not Cease To Exist Because They Are Ignored
Deep…especially Part 2. Absorb it.
Chauncey DeVega Podcast Episode 183: Tim Wise on White Privilege
Anti-racism activist, author, and scholar Tim Wise is the guest on this week’s edition of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Tim Wise is the author of numerous books including his most recent Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.
Continue reading “In Conversation: Chauncey DeVega & Tim Wise”
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Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth,
in the child starving, in the political prisoner.
Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket,
on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop.
Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy.
See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present,
the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness,
and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky,
that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding
will appear as a beautiful flower.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
The most widely teased passage of former FBI Director James Comey’s book is plucked from a scene set after the election, when intelligence community leaders, including Comey himself, traveled to Trump Tower in Manhattan to brief the incoming administration on the intelligence community’s conclusions about the scope and purpose of Russian interference.
Comey writes that Donald Trump and his advisers couldn’t have been less interested in the substantive implications of Russia’s efforts to interfere with American democracy—it was a messaging problem in their minds, and one they expected the assembled spies and counterspies to help them solve.
This film will change the way you look at the mainstream media or “MSM”. Giant media conglomerates are increasingly reluctant to investigate or criticize government policies – particularly on defense, security and intelligence issues. They are ceding responsibility for holding governments and corporations accountable to the independent journalists and filmmakers who risk their careers, their freedom and their lives in war zones – to expose the truth.
Continue reading “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone”
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An investigator with the California Highway Patrol recently interpreted the Black Power salute as proof of “intent and motivation” to violate the civil rights of right-wing protesters. The FBI Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit last August announced a new designation of “Black Identity Extremist,” which it now deems a violent threat. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump just appointed as director general of the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration someone who’s made anti-Muslim comments. Arrests for deportation by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement rose 30 percent in the first year of the Trump administration. And the Trump administration continues to enforce its Muslim ban and to seek funding for a wall on our Southern border.
When you add to that the hypermilitarized policing we have witnessed on the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, and around the country, the use of a robot bomb to kill a criminal suspect in Dallas, Texas, and the NYPD surveillance of mosques and Muslim businesses post 9/11, a pattern arises: Increasingly, our government is turning its own citizens and residents into an internal enemy. A new way of thinking is taking hold. A new way of governing.
Continue reading “The Counterrevolution: Governing Our New Internal Enemies by Bernard E. Harcourt”
“The government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.” By replacing the term “people” in Abraham Lincoln’s well-known phrase with those who have real power in the United States, we gain a more exact idea of how U.S. politics and society work.
Progressive thinkers have been warning for decades that it is money that pulls the strings in Washington; while the democratic system, since the country’s founding until today, is a mask to conceal the interests of the rich minority.
Continue reading “The United States is an Oligarchy, not a Democracy by Sergio Alejandro Gómez”
Continue reading “The Climate “Doomsday” Is Already Here by Joe Brewer”
Chris Hedges talks to Professor Albert Raboteau, author of “American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice”. They discuss the theological and ethical motivations of prophetic figures and their importance in an age of radical evil. Given that we are currently in a dark age of radical evil, this is quite insightful & inspiring.
There is a “mystery” we must explain: How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid and international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically throughout the world over the last half century, so has poverty? The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. What do we make of this?
Continue reading “Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti”
The Israeli army’s wanton slaughter of unarmed Palestinians trapped behind the security barriers in Gaza evokes little outrage and condemnation within the United States because we have been indoctrinated into dehumanizing Muslims. Islam is condemned as barbaric and equated with terrorism. The resistance struggle against foreign occupation, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza, sees Muslims demonized as the enemy. Muslims are branded as irrational and inclined to violence and terrorism by their religious beliefs. We attack them not for what they do but because we see them as being different from us. We must eradicate them to save ourselves. And thus we perpetuate the very hatred and counterviolence, or terrorism, that we fear.
Continue reading “The Campaign to Exterminate Muslims by Chris Hedges”
For well over 2000 years a competitive “dog-eat-dog” mindset has dominated the world’s most powerful human civilizations. The goals of our leaders (as well as most members) have been to conquer, defeat or control whatever (and whomever) we can. Those who thought differently were quickly pushed to the side, silenced, enslaved, ignored or demonized.
Continue reading “The Perpetual Curse of the Warrior Mindset by Christopher Chase”
One Strange Rock is a documentary series that premiered on the National Geographic Channel on March 26, 2018. The ten-part series tells the story of how life survives and thrives on planet Earth, as told by eight astronauts from their unique perspective of being away from Earth . Hosted by actor Will Smith, it features contributions from astronauts Chris Hadfield, Nicole Stott, Jeff Hoffman, Mae Jemison, Leland Melvin, Mike Massimino, Jerry Linenger and Peggy Whitson.
You might say, having read some of my recent essays, “Umair! Don’t worry! Everything will be fine! It’s not that bad!” I would look at you politely, and then say gently, “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re taking collapse nearly seriously enough.”
Continue reading “The Strange New Pathologies of the World’s First Rich Failed State by Umair Haque”
Nina Turner is the president of Our Revolution. She is a former Ohio State Senator, college professor, public speaker, frequent media commentator and author, and was a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary. She has been the host of the Nina Turner Show on the Real News Network.
The term, “Stockholm Syndrome”, was coined in the early 70’s to describe the puzzling reactions of four bank employees to their captors. On August 23, 1973, three women and one man were taken hostage in one of the largest banks in Stockholm. They were held for six days by two ex-convicts who threatened their lives but also showed them kindness. To the world’s surprise, all of the hostages strongly resisted the government’s efforts to rescue them and were quite eager to defend their captors. Indeed, several months after the hostages were saved by the police, they still had warm feelings for the men who threatened their lives. Two of the women eventually got engaged to the captors.
Continue reading “Are Trump Supporters Suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?”
Some of the world’s most profound melting of glaciers is happening in the Antarctic; and is invisible from above.
According to a study recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the underwater melting of Antarctic glaciers is now occurring at a rate that is doubling every 20 years. This means that melting in the ice continent of Antarctica could soon outpace that occurring across Greenland, which would make Antarctica the single largest source of sea level rise.
