Marcy Wheeler: I Always Hated Pink, Anyway

Wheeler ..

Komen just pretended to reverse its decision defund Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening services (it promises only to consider Planned Parenthood applications in the future, not to fund them) .. But now that everyone has become aware of Komen’s sleaziness, it’s time to look at what they – and the cancer industry – do more generally. They fund efforts to diagnose and find a cure but they work against things like prevention. They also tend to push back against research that shows we’ve been over-diagnosing and over-treating breast cancer .. We ought to use this scandal to examine more closely where cancer money gets spent – on treatment, turning cancer patients into customers – and rarely on prevention. While I appreciate the gesture, pink ribbons to me have come to symbolize cancer patients as profit centers, both for consumer goods capitalizing on an association with the goodwill (and Komen), as well as for ungodly expensive drugs that don’t always provide better outcomes

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, February 4, 2012

“Gasland” Director Josh Fox on Democracy Now – Part 1

Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, February 3, 2012

“Gasland” Director Josh Fox on Democracy Now – Part 2

Josh Fox: Obama’s Support for Natural Gas Drilling "A Painful Moment" for Communities Exposed to Fracking
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, February 3, 2012

At Hearing on “Fracking,” Capitol Police Arrest Director of “Gasland”

Sari Gelzer at Truthout ..

On Wednesday, House Republicans ordered Capitol police to arrest Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland," along with his crew. The group was attempting to film a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment that was to discuss hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking" .. Fox faces a court hearing on February 15 on charges of "unlawful entry." As an independent filmmaker, Fox called on congress to make all meetings and hearings accessible to independent journalists. "The truth that fracking contaminates groundwater is out, and no amount of intimidation tactics - either outright challenges to science or the arrest of journalists - will put the genie back in the bottle," he stated.

we're being China-fied in the US - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, February 2, 2012

Pesticides Blamed for Bee Decline

Jonathan Owen reports in The Independent ..

Compelling new evidence from the US government's top bee expert that modern pesticides may be a major cause of collapsing bee populations led to calls yesterday for the chemicals to be banned. A study published in the current issue of the German science journal Naturwissenschaften, reveals how bees given minute doses of [Bayer's] widely used pesticide imidacloprid became more vulnerable to infections from a deadly parasite, nosema. Bee experts described this as clear evidence of the role pesticides play in the plight of bees. Although research into the furry insects may seem like a very academic exercise, bees are vital to human survival. More than 70 of the 100 crops that provide 90 per cent of the world's food are pollinated by bees, and Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees died out, "man would have no more than four years to live."

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Adbusters: Spiritual Insurrection, the Ultimate Culture Jam

We awoke one morning to the dark realization that humanity is being dragged into a black hole of ecological, financial and spiritual catastrophe … that our democracy has been seized by a corporatocracy … that every day two hundred species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become forever extinct … that a deluge of advertising is sleepwalking our civilization to the brink of insanity … and that unless we fight back in the most visceral and creative way possible all will be lost.

And yet, what sets our struggle apart in 2012 is that we are not fighting to save a distant future. We are not trying to prevent some terrible event that is still to come. This is not about our unborn grandchildren. Instead, many of us sense that the threshold has already been crossed; the tipping point has already happened and what we are fighting for is our present. We are living in that tragic moment of eerie stillness where the fatal damage has been done, widening cracks can be seen, yet the edifice still stands and business as usual continues … but for how much longer?

Our days may be shadowed by this dark realization, but there is reason to be deeply optimistic for “where danger is, grows the saving power also.” Never before has the tantalizing possibility of a Global Spring, a worldwide people’s insurgency for democracy, seemed as close. For perhaps the first time in human history, we just might be on the edge of an everywhere-at-once revolution against the financial fraudsters, corporate lackeys and the ideology of consumerism that has brought the Earth to the precipice of collapse.

In this, the era of the total and transcendent indignato swarm, we look to each other, not to the masters above, to find out what it will take to pull off the ultimate culture jam: spiritual insurrection.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

- Adbusters
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Marijuana Again Dominates President Obama’s Online Forum

Jon Walker at Firedoglake ..

So far every attempt by Obama to directly reach out to young voters through some form of online question and answer system has resulted in young adults overwhelming voting to confront the President with questions about our government’s marijuana policies. It happened with his transitional website Change.gov, his first Youtube townhall and with the White House’s new “we the people” petition site. Marijuana reform is an issue young voters across the ideological spectrum care deeply about. While marijuana legalization is rarely talked about in our mainstream political discourse, at every opportunity regular Americans use the internet to try to make legalization an issue Obama can’t ignore.

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, January 30, 2012

Police Use Teargas on Occupy Oakland; 300 Arrested

Occupy Oakland statement via Common Dreams ..

Yesterday, the Oakland Police deployed hundreds of officers in riot gear so as to prevent Occupy Oakland from putting a vacant building to better use. This is a building which has sat vacant for 6 years, and the city has no current plans for it. The Occupy Oakland GA passed a proposal calling for the space to be turned into a social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement. The police actions tonight cost the city of Oakland hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they repeatedly violated their own crowd control guidelines and protester’s civil rights. With all the problems in our city, should preventing activists from putting a vacant building to better use be their highest priority? Was it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent?

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, January 29, 2012

Matt Stoller: Lanny Breuer, Task Force Leader, Doesn’t Bother Showing Up For Mortgage Fraud Press Conference

Stoller in nakedcapitalism ..

.. the FBI has assigned 10 agents and analysts to work with the group immediately. In the coming weeks, another 30 attorneys, investigators, and support staff from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices will join the Group’s work. So that’s a total of 55 people, 10 of whom are FBI agents. Let’s do a few comparisons. During the Savings and Loan crisis, Bill Black reminds us that there were about a thousand FBI agents working on the various cases. That’s one hundred times the number of people working on a scandal that is about forty times larger and far more complex

in a related story, Matt Taibbi asks "Is Obama's 'Economic Populism' for Real?" - short answer: No - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, January 28, 2012

Adbusters Tactical Briefing #25: In the Tradition of the Chicago 8 | #OCCUPYCHICAGO | May 1 – Bring Tent

Adbusters ..

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, January 27, 2012

George Lakey: How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

Lakey in Waging Nonviolence ..

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different. Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, January 27, 2012

After Occupy Journalist Arrests, US Plummets in Global Press Freedom Rankings

Common Dreams ..

Reporters Without Borders has released its annual World Press Freedom Index and the United States fell 27 points to No. 47 on the list. Why? "more than 25 [reporters] were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police" during Occupy movement protests

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, January 26, 2012

Gawker: Newspaper Editor – Israel Should Consider Assassinating Obama

Oy ..

Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper serving Atlanta's Jewish community, devoted his January 13, 2012 column to the thorny problem of the U.S. and Israel's diverging views on the threat posed by Iran. Basically Israel has three options, he wrote: Strike Hezbollah and Hamas, strike Iran, or "order a hit" on Barack Obama. Either way, problem solved!

Chemi Shalev in Haaretz writes "I know, and most of you know, that Adler’s crazy and criminal suggestions are not the ranting of some loony-tune individual and were not taken out of thin air" - Adler, meanwhile, has resigned - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, January 26, 2012

Markos Moulitsas: Occupy owns the Republican nominating contest

Kos ..

Iowa and New Hampshire were disasters for Newt Gingrich, relegated to also-ran status. At that moment, he made a decision .. It was a populist call to arms by someone claiming to represent the 99 percent, against the 1 percent. Rush Limbaugh and the Club for Growth, among others, got the vapors. How dare Newt criticize the free market system? It was an attack on capitalism itself! Heck, much of what Gingrich was saying could've been heard at any Occupy encampment around the country! .. It's a stunning turn of events. Last summer, all the Beltway press wanted to talk about was deficits and the Catfood Commission. Today, even the Republican nomination contest is revolving around Occupy's themes of rogue capitalism and income inequality. That's why Gingrich has stayed on the attack over Bain despite a mass GOP establishment backlash. Because, quite clearly, it's working

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Ray McGovern: Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats

McGovern gives a good summary of all the scary shit that Israel/AIPAC is continually trying pull off, giving you the creeping feeling that its just a matter of time ..

To disrupt what had appeared to be an unstoppable march toward war with Iran, gaining momentum in December and early January, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta intervened with his own rendition of “Let me be clear.” Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Jan. 8, and apparently unsure whether host Bob Schieffer would have the courage to ask the $64 question, Panetta decided to ask it himself rhetorically: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.” Yet, in a highly illustrative example of media hypersensitivity on this issue, PBS was not even willing to let the Defense Secretary’s comment reach the ears of the network’s listeners. Its “NewsHour” program deleted Panetta’s emphatic “no” and played only his subsequent comment: “But we know that they are trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, January 22, 2012

Adbusters: Robin Hood Tax Gains Traction

Adbusters ..

As Occupy gears up for the American Spring, our European counterparts will soon have one OWS victory to put in their cap. In France this past week, lawmakers put their backing behind a bill for a Robin Hood (Tobin) Tax. The tax, a fraction of a percent on all derivative, currency and securities transactions, will equate to billions of dollars for social programs (at a nominal cost to the markets) and will reign in the worst elements of speculative trading in Europe. This marks the long beginning of the necessary radical shift in the economic paradigm of our age. Germany and the Eurozone states are already on board, leaving only the U.K. and the U.S. defending unbridled neo-conservative free market gains

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, January 21, 2012

Arundhati Roy: Capitalism’s Real Gravediggers

the great Arundhati Roy ..

In India, the 300m of us who belong to the new, post-“reforms” middle class – the market – live side by side with the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800m who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than 50 cents a day .. Corporations have their own sly strategy to deal with dissent. With a minuscule percentage of their profits they run hospitals, educational institutes and trusts, which in turn fund NGOs, academics, journalists, artists, film-makers, literary festivals and even protest movements. It is a way of using charity to lure opinion-makers into their sphere of influence. Of infiltrating normality, colonising ordinariness, so that challenging them seems as absurd (or as esoteric) as challenging “reality” itself. From here, it’s a quick, easy step to “there is no alternative”.

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, January 20, 2012

Democracy Now: Journalist Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

HEDGES: Amy, one of the most sort of disturbing aspects of this is that the security establishment came out against it—the CIA, the FBI, the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence. None of them wanted it .. And I think we have to ask, if the security establishment did not want this bill, and the FBI Director Mueller actually goes to Congress and says publicly they don’t want it, why did it pass? What pushed it through? And I think, without question, the corporate elites understand that things, certainly economically, are about to get much worse. I think they’re worried about the Occupy movement expanding. And I think that, in the end—and this is a supposition—they don’t trust the police to protect them, and they want to be able to call in the Army. And if this bill goes into law, and it’s slated to go into law in March, they will be able to do that
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Nathan Schneider: Occupy Wall Street’s new-year resolve

Schneider on Waging Nonviolence ..

Whenever there was a break, someone would jump up on a chair and start telling radical jokes. Why do anarchists only drink coffee? How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Somebody else would already know the punchline and shout it out, while others burst into laughter until they could hardly breathe. This was not the mood one would expect to find in a bygone movement. Nor would one expect the litany of upcoming actions reeled off by a woman named Tammy, who, as part of the Interoccupy project, was helping to coordinate occupations nationwide .. On January 20, Move to Amend would be organizing actions throughout the country against corporate personhood. There was Occupy Education on March 1, a global day of action on May 12 and actions against the G8 and NATO summits in Chicago later that month. Other people added more: an Egypt solidarity march on January 21, a day recognizing violence against women on February 14 and a mobilization in DC marking King’s assassination on April 4.

Nathan also has a great article in Harpers about the lead up to OWS (no link, you have to go buy the mag .. its the Feb issue) - and OWS is Occupying Congress today! - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, January 17, 2012

FDL: Colbert SuperPAC Goes on the Air in South Carolina

David Dayen @ Firedoglake (w video of Colbert and Stewart making the announcement) ..

This caps off one of the most brilliant pieces of performance art in quite some time. Colbert is “running” for President now as an evolution of his show-don’t-tell critique of the Citizens United decision and what it has meant for campaign finance in America. His SuperPAC has run ads in Iowa, used candidate Buddy Roemer in spots that technically didn’t “coordinate” with the candidate because they were considered issue ads, and tried to purchase naming rights to the South Carolina primary, adding a referendum to the ballot asking voters whether corporations are people or “only people are people.” .. As satire, this goes light years beyond the March to Restore Sanity. Colbert is displaying every single problem with the Citizens United decision, and the mess of our campaign finance laws, by showing the practical application of them in the real world

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, January 15, 2012

Colbert Super PAC: Mitt the Ripper –or– Attack in B Minor for Strings

Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, January 15, 2012

Glenn Greenwald: NYT’s Arthur Brisbane and selective stenography

Glenzilla ..

The New York Times‘ Public Editor Arthur Brisbane unwittingly sparked an intense and likely enduring controversy yesterday when he pondered — as though it were some agonizing, complex dilemma — whether news reporters “should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” .. While reporters typically react with fury over the suggestion that they are stenographers, Brisbane was essentially posting that this is all they are, and then earnestly wondering aloud whether they should be anything more than that, as though it was some sort of exotic or edgy suggestion

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, January 14, 2012

Hamilton Nolan: Piss on War

Nolan in Gawker (of all places) ..

Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control.

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, January 13, 2012

TPM: Gingrich Unloads 28 Minute Attack Ad on Romney with OWS Theme

Eric Kleefeld at Talking Points Memo ..

The 28-minute documentary.. details the corporate practices of Romney’s old company Bain Capital. Its scenes achingly depict the devastation caused to small-town America when profit-obsessed large corporations shut down local plants, and would not be out of place in a Michael Moore documentary .. The video also makes heavy use of the famous publicity photo of Romney and his colleagues at Bain, all flashing cash to the cameras and smiling — plus the video from last year, of Romney’s “corporations are people” argument with a voter in Iowa. Of course, the odd thing here is that in a video produced by a supposedly conservative group, these are presented as bad things .. Who would have thought that in 2012, the first documentary laying out in detail the underlying philosophies of the Occupy Wall Street movement would be produced by…a super-PAC supporting Newt Gingrich!

latest poll from South Carolina shows Romney lead has shrunk to just 2% over Newt .. i think its official, OWS won - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, January 12, 2012

ACLU: City Removes Illegal Barriers at Zuccotti Park One Day After Rights Groups Send Threatening Letter

Thanks ACLU !!! ..

NYPD officers removed barriers tonight at Zuccotti Park, just one day after the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild put New York City on notice that its arbitrary and inconsistently applied rules and security measures restricting the public’s access to the park violated city zoning laws .. The groups said that these security measures and the constantly changing, selectively enforced and unwritten park rules violated zoning laws, longstanding city policies, and park-owner Brookfield Properties’ legal obligations under a 1968 special zoning permit that established the park as a “permanently open park” for “the public benefit.”

in other news, nypd take a stand against .. can't make this up .. books - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, January 11, 2012