SWING STATE: How the Fix was Nixed in Ohio

By James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan, EON [Updated]

“Let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy! We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. We should have a revolution in this country! The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”
Post-Election Tweets by Donald Trump…Donald Trump?!

There are many who would agree with Mr. Trump, though not for the same reasons.

Here are Preview Clips from a new EON Work in Progress in cooperation with FreePress.org.
Please go to IndieGoGo.com/SwingState to help support it and please spread the word to your networks!

Why Did Karl Rove’s ‘Head Explode’ Election Night on Fox News?
There he was, near midnight on election night, ‘Boss Rove’ his very pundit self, disputing the other networks’ (and Fox’s own) data-crunchers’ unanimous decision to call the election for Obama. There he was, boldly naming exact counties in Ohio, which he was sure would soon flip for Mitt.

Why was he so sure? Why was he so wrong?

Were those counties rigged for a fix? If so, why wasn’t the trigger pulled?

Mitt Post Mortem
Pols and pundits may well ponder: How was it that Rove and the Republicans lost an election they were so sure they would win? Was it because of Storm Sandy? Was it because – as Grover ‘Drown-it-in-the-Bathtub’ Norquest opined – the Obama campaign’s TV ads successfully painted Romney as a ‘poopy-head?’ Was it because Romney was the ‘wrong messenger’ for a message that, according to George Will, nearly half the electorate agreed with? Was it because of the ‘gifts’ with which – as Mitt told his sorowing funders – Obama bribed all his minority moocher supporters? Was UberGeek Nate Silver just right all along?

Or was it because (once again, as in 2008), despite their best efforts, they couldn’t pull it off to steal Ohio? Who set up the fix, and how did they do it? Who nixed the fix, and how did they do it? There-in lies our tale.

Inside Story
As we write this just a week later, the 2012 presidential election, with all its hoopla, histrionics, horrendous voter disenfranchisement tactics, and electronic hankie-pankie has slipped away down the Great American Memory Hole. The flying, fickle, focus of media attention has moved on to military sex scandals, the Bengazi brouhaha, and delusional “Fiscal Cliff /Grand Bargain” posturing.

But the sordid and sobering inside story of that election has yet to be told.

Vote Fraud Ground Zero
Ohio was a microcosm of, and a key element in, that dramatic and revealing story. We documented the action as Green Party campaigning, relentless investigative reporting, election protection activism, pre-emptive litigation, and just plain brave, determined, angry grassroots voters combined to derail a last-minute election fix by the Rove/Romney forces.

If you don’t believe it, (or don’t want to know) you’ve been had, and the future of real democratic choice in our dysfunctional and fraud-vulnerable, privately-owned, electronic election system looks very bleak indeed.

If you do believe it, please help spread the word to your networks – and contribute what you can to help us tell the inside story in our projected TV documentary:

SWING STATE: How the Fix was Nixed in Ohio.

Pivotal Politcs – The Backstory
The world as we know it hangs by a thread. Our society is literally in a ‘swing state’ between sustainability and collapse; between ecocidal business-as-usual pursuit of ‘growth,’ and adaptive evolutionary change on a finite, ravaged planet; between faith-based denial and reality-based affirmative action.

The progressive/planetarian conundrum: where is the ‘progress’ in preventing election fraud so that the Obama Administration can continue its wars, drone strikes, domestic surveillance, prosecution of whistleblowers, suppression of dissent and quest for full spectrum dominance of the planet and its remaining resources?

Here’s our answer…

10 Days That Shook Karl Rove
We’ve just returned from Ohio, where we spent an intense week-and-a-half capturing on video the process by which the actions of a handful of people, combined with grassroots anger to prevent the 2012 election from being stolen by the joint efforts of Karl Rove’s billionaire-funded superpac machine and the GOP’s Romney campaign.

Though it is unlikely ever to be acknowledged by the Dems – much less the by the GOP – on the basis of our own personal observation, the story is this:

In their overriding commitment to the cause of election integrity, people strongly opposed to Obama’s policies prevented the election from being stolen from him.

Reporting the story took us from Columbus, to Cincinnati, to Washington, D.C., and back to Columbus as we followed the activities of reporter and Green congressional candidate Bob Fitrakis; investigative reporter Harvey Wasserman; managing wonderwoman Suzanne Patzer; cyber-sleuth Gerry Bello; crusading attorney Cliff Arnebeck; and, last, but in no way least, intrepid Green presidential candidate Jill Stein and Green VP candidate Cheri Honkala.

Their conjoint efforts – backed by election protection watchdogs, a turnout of angry voters outraged by GOP state officials’ blatant voter-suppression tactics, and the reportedly watchful presence of Department of Justice and FBI agents – combined to prevent activation of the last-minute electronic vote-flipping scheme put in place by Karl Rove’s agents and the Romney campaign.

‘Speaking Truth to Power”
We have been following the work of the Columbus-based FreePress.org investigative reporting team since the 2004 election in a series of documentaries and video reports. [Playlist here See also A LITTLE LIGHT’LL DO YA – Defending Democracy in America and The PRICE of LIBERTY – America’s Election Protection Movement] Their cutting edge reporting, litigation and organizing on election fraud vs. election protection issues have been a major force in the growth of the national election integrity movement in the U.S..

Despite their voluminous reporting and the publication of 8 books on election protection, their work has received much less mainstream media attention than it deserves…until now.

This time, their work exposing how the Romney family and allies owned the Hart InterCivic electronic machines that would count and tabulate many of the votes in swing state Ohio, and how un-certified ‘experimental computer patches’ had been placed on ES&S-owned electronic voting machines in key Ohio counties, made it into mainstream media attention.

The likes of the Business Insider, Forbes Magazine, Computerworld, WashingtonBlog, and even a Fox local affiliate picked up the story.

Green Power
Campaigning as the Green Party Congressional candidate gave Fitrakis, an attorney, as well as college professor and journalist, a bully pulpit for spreading the story. In this he was joined by the truly ‘dynamic duo’ of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her VP running mate Cheri Honkala. They crisscrossed Ohio, including the facts uncovered in the FreePress.org reporting in their campaign speeches, and committing to demand – and fund if necessary – a total hand recount of ballots, if evidence of vote tampering was revealed.

Stein also traveled to Washington, D.C. to join a National Press Club press conference on election-eve chaired by FreePress.org Senior Editor Harvey Wasserman. [See videos here and here.]

Pre-Emptive Litigation
Fitrakis’ Green Party candidacy also gave him legal standing to intervene in the courts to attempt to preserve electoral integrity. Attorney Cliff Arnebeck represented Fitrakis in suits filed the day before the election in both the Federal District Court and the Ohio State Court. The suits addressed the last-minute, uncertified ‘experimental patches’ placed on electronic voting machines in key counties by GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted. They introduced testimony by retired National Security Agency (NSA) cyber-security master Michael Duniho detailing how the patches made the machines vulnerable to fraud.

In his presentation to the State Court Arnebeck put the State Attorney General and Secretary Husted on notice that, in the event of apparent anomalies in the Ohio vote count, they would be held legally responsible. The Court also suggested in its ruling that the question of who would bear the cost of any necessary recount could be discussed (meaning it would not necessarily be the Green Party.)

Arnebeck had also forwarded the information revealed in FreePress.org reporting to the Justice Department and the FBI, and received confirmation that their agents had been alerted. He believes that, because communication between Rove and his Ohio allies was known to be being monitored by Federal authorities, Rove was not made aware that his Ohio allies had decided ‘not to pull the trigger’ on the planned vote flip. Thus his eleventh-hour freak-out on Fox News (‘We have to move on, Karl’).

So, Why Tell This Story?
Admittedly, there is irony that in large part, thanks to the FreePress Team’s and the Green Party efforts, we now get four more years of ObamaNation: multiple wars; the presidential suspension of habeus corpus; drone attacks on innocent civilians; unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers; proliferating domestic surveillance; police repression of dissent; more bankster bailouts; continuing ecocidal pursuit of economic growth combined with criminal inaction on climate change.

Undoubtedly a GOP win would have had even more dire consequences. Trump is more right than he knows. Rule by the corporate party with ‘two right wings’ – as the late Gore Vidal was fond of pointing out – is, in Trump’s words, ‘a travesty of democracy.’ Stein and Honkala’s being shackled to chairs for eight hours for just trying to enter a duopolistic presidential debate at Hoffstra University, is a clear case in point. [link?]

So why bother telling the story of how election fraud was prevented in Ohio?

Here’s why:

1. The U.S. electorate needs to know how vulnerable their electoral system is to rigging – past and present.
2. The story presents an inspiring and embowering template for progressive journalistic, political and legal action.
3. It will give documented historical credit where credit is due – to both the fix-plotters and the fix-busters.
4. It is a true story that needs to be told because it points to a clear agenda for fundamental reform of our dangerously dysfunctional election system – the bedrock of our truly democratic choice on all other issues.

According to an examiner.com article a report released by the Bipartisan Policy Commission and the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, reveals that, although there has been an increase in the number of eligible voters, this year 93 million eligible voters declined to show up at the polls.

According to PressTV, there were 121,366,971 total votes cast. Obama got 61,304,426, or 50.51%. Romney got 58,230,919, or 47.98%. Johnson (Libertarian): 1,178,442, or 0.97%. Stein (Green): 414,545, or 0.34%. Goode (Constitution):113,947, or 0.09%. Barr (Peace and Freedom): 49,380, or 0.04%. Anderson (Justice): 35,490, or 0.03%. Others: 39,822, or 0.03%

So, in fact, only an estimated 57.5 percent of eligible voters turned out in 2012, a drop from 62.3 percent in 2008. As Green presidential candidate Jill Stein is fond of pointing out, when nearly half of the eligible electorate stays home out of apathy or distrust of the system, real democracy is in trouble. But, as she also says, the party that galvanizes the stay-at-homes to turn out could change the shape of politics in America.

Citing FreePress.org reports among his primary sources, Forbes contributor Anthony Wing Kosner concludes:

1.Many of the systems currently in use do not maintain the basic principle of containment that prevents the breach of a single machine from having an impact on other parts of the system.
2.Many of the systems currently in use contain “back doors” through which alterations can be made to voting data without leaving a trace.
3.The transmission methods from precincts to the central tabulation repositories in many states are compromised and open to “man-in-the-middle” attacks.
4.The source code for all of these systems is closely held by the five big voting machine companies. When some of it was examined in the The 2007 Ohio EVEREST Voting Study, the software was deemed inept and insecure.
5.If there were systemic fraud in the system, we would have no way of knowing it, except through analysis of statistical anomalies.

SWING STATE will reveal how easy it is to steal privately-owned, electronically-based election systems. It will tell how the fix was nixed. And it will show what we know about how to repair (instead of fix) our broken election system.

As Fitrakis and Wasserman argue in their recent article An Election Protection Agenda for 2016 , there is a list of concrete steps than can and must be taken:
• Get money out of politics: Corporations are not people, money is not speech.
• Abolish the Electoral College (even Trump agrees with that one)
• A guaranteed right to vote at the age of 18
• Universal automatic voter registration
• Universal hand-counted paper ballots
• A four-day holiday weekend for voting
• Statehood for Washington, D.C.

Please go to IndieGoGo.com/SwingState, give what you can, and spread the word to your networks. This is a joint project of EON and the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ), both 501 c 3 tax-exempt organizations.

Yours for Election Protection,

Jim and Mary Beth

WHO COUNTS IN OHIO?
That’s the question being asked by our friends Harvey Wasserman, Bob Fitrakis and the rest of the FreePress.org investigative team based in Columbus.

Their research has revealed links between Romney and Hart InterCivic, the electronic voting machine company that will be counting and tabulating the votes in Hamilton County – a key swing county in a key swing state. You can view their Skype interviews on their findings below.

We’re off to Columbus to help provide video documentation of their efforts, and have set up an IndieGoGo funding site to help fund the joint project.

Please visit our IndieGoGo site, circulate the link to your network and contribute what you can.

Here’s the trailer.

Here are the FreePress.org updates:

“The greatest danger to democracy in America is the belief that we have one.” Former Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy….

But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, …by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

. . .The policies that are vital and necessary for America are no longer subjects of significant disagreement, but are disputable only in detail, procedure, priority, or method.” Carroll Quigley
Tragedy and Hope – 1966

“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again . . . Take this great power away from them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”
Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England, 1927
Quoted in Web of Debt by Ellen Hodgson Brown, 2007

Koch or Pepsi? That is the Question
As the theater of make-believe that is the American electoral process unfolds before our wondering eyes, its the same old same old, only more so. Having covered the last three elections on video extensively in both Washington, D.C. and Ohio (click here for our retrospective playlist), we’re questioning whether or not we have the energy, resources and interest to do it again.

With Mr. Obama’s many disappointing moves looming large, even in the light of the GOP’s dangerous delusional absurdities, many former ‘election protection’ activists seem to be wrestling with the same conundrum.

In their new book, Will the GOP Steal America’s 2012 Election? and the articles based on it, award-wining investigative reporters Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman cite this lack of election protection enthusiasm as a potential electoral danger this time round.

So baldfaced are the GOP’s several approaches to monkeywrenching the electoral process that the issue is finally getting wider attention. What follows is a selective digest of recent video, audio and print coverage of this issue, plus some good news of two victories for democracy. Wasserman, Fitrakis, Palist, Maddow, et al are on it. Scroll on down.

THE SIMPSONS – Homer Votes 2012
Who will Homer Simpson vote for in the 2012 Elections? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

Former US President Carter: Venezuelan Electoral System “Best in the World”
by Ewan Robertson
By Global Research News
Global Research, September 23, 2012
Venezuela Analysis

Former US President Jimmy Carter claimed Venezuela’s electoral system is “the best in the world” (agencies).

Mérida, 21st September 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Former US President Jimmy Carter has declared that Venezuela’s electoral system is the best in the world.

Speaking at an annual event last week in Atlanta for his Carter Centre foundation, the politician-turned philanthropist stated, “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Venezuela has developed a fully automated touch-screen voting system, which now uses thumbprint recognition technology and prints off a receipt to confirm voters’ choices.

In the context of the Carter Centre’s work monitoring electoral processes around the globe, Carter also disclosed his opinion that in the US “we have one of the worst election processes in the world, and it’s almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money,” he said referring to lack of controls over private campaign donations. more

Could New Voter ID Laws Really Disenfranchise 10 Million Latinos?
By EMILY DERUY – ABC News
Sep. 24, 2012

Millions of Latinos may have a difficult time voting this year.
New laws that require voters show proof of citizenship and photo identification at the polls — as well as recent voter roll purges — could hinder at least 10 million Hispanics in 23 states who try to cast a ballot in November. The number of Latinos eligible to vote who might be blocked from voting this year is equal to the margin of victory in a number of states, according to a new study https://b.3cdn.net/advancement/18ff5be68ab53f752b_0tm6yjgsj.pdf by the Advancement Project, a civil rights group.

Overall, 17 states have enacted laws that would require voters to present photo identification at the polls before casting a ballot. Propoents have said the laws are needed to combat voter fraud, but civil-rights activists have countered that the laws are a political ploy on behalf of Republicans to limit turnout from minority voters who traditionally favor Democrats.

Let My People Vote – Sarah Silverman
Common Dreams says:
In honor of National Voter Registration Day, and in recognition of a new study finding that bogus voter I.D. laws could disenfranchise up to 10 million eligible Latinos, a riotously profane video https://www.letmypeoplevote2012.com/ from Sarah Silverman blasting those laws. The seriously foul-mouthed ad was paid for by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, which might or might not regret it. More on voting rights at LetMyPeopleVote2012.com.
[Sarah seems to have forgotten Latino voters in this piece. ]

WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA’S 2012 ELECTION?
Green Power and Wellness
September 10, 2012
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman discuss WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA’S 2012 ELECTION?….CORPORATE VOTE THEFT AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. Bob and Harvey’s new e-book—their fifth on election protection—is introduced by Greg Palast and makes it clear that even if Barack Obama legitimately wins the popular vote this fall, he could well be kicked out of the White House. We look at the six key reasons why on this deeply troubling but absolutely essential investigation into what is being done to our electoral system.
www.harveywasserman.ning.com www.freepress.org

Will the GOP Steal America’s 2012 Election?
Published on Thursday, September 6, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis
The Republican Party could steal the 2012 US Presidential election with relative ease.
Six basic factors make this year’s theft a possibility:
1. The power of corporate money, now vastly enhanced by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens’ United decisions;
2. The Electoral College, which narrows the number of votes needed to be moved to swing a presidential election;
3. The systematic disenfranchisement of—according to the Brennan Center—ten million or more citizens, most of whom would otherwise be likely to vote Democratic. More than a million voters have also been purged from the rolls in Ohio, almost 20% of the total vote count in 2008;
4. The accelerating use of electronic voting machines, which make election theft a relatively simple task for those who control them, including their owners and operators, who are predominantly Republican;
5. The GOP control of nine of the governorships in the dozen swing states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 campaign; and,
6. The likelihood that the core of the activist “election protection” community that turned out in droves to monitor the vote for Barack Obama in 2008 has not been energized by his presidency and is thus unlikely to work for him again in 2012.
Winning a fair and reliable electoral system can be achieved only with a massive grassroots upheaval.

The Greatest Election-Stealing Conspiracy in US History
By Alex Slater, Guardian UK
10 August 12
In Washington, conventional wisdom is everything. It’s the driver of perceptions, and often of self-fulfilling political prophecies. That’s why you might notice a guarded confidence amongst the Obama campaign these past few weeks: generally speaking, most realistic experts predict a victory for the president in this November’s election.

This perception is reinforced by current polling, some of the most recent being published by Quinnipiac University, the New York Times and CBS News, giving President Obama an edge over Romney in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Certainly, it will be a tight race, but by any realistic standard, the money is on Obama to pull out a victory, even narrowly.

But it’s exactly the likely closeness of the race that may turn Washington’s conventional wisdom on its head on election day. That’s because, until relatively recently, political experts and journalists have been oblivious to a widespread and pernicious phenomenon occurring in many critical swing states – one that, unless checked, could erase Obama’s electoral edge.

This phenomenon takes the form of a spate of new voter laws: efforts by Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass restrictive new voting rules just in time for election day. As a result, at least 5 million Americans could essentially lose their right to vote, according to the non-partisan Brennan Center in New York.

Report Cites US as Example of World’s Failing Democracies
International commission warns of growing influence of money in politics and attempts to suppress voter turnout
– Common Dreams staff
An international commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan warns that the world’s democracies, and the United States specifically, are being corrupted by the increasingly strong role of “uncontrolled, undisclosed, illegal and opaque” financing of political campaigns.
… The Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security is presenting its finding today in London.
Regarding elections in the US, the commission’s report, Deepening Democracy: a Strategy for Improving the Integrity of Elections Worldwide, took special issue with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case.
Citizens United has “undermined political equality, weakened transparency of the electoral process and shaken citizen confidence in America’s political institutions and elections”, the report said.
According to the Guardian, the report criticizes individual states “which have sought to introduce voter identification laws and other measures that have the effect of suppressing African American participation in the political process.”

The report cited a national survey this year by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, which found a majority of people believe nominally independent Super Pacs to be a danger to democracy.
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans said that they trust government less because big donors have more influence over election officials than average Americans,” the report said.
It concluded that, although Super Pacs must disclose their contributors and may not coordinate directly with candidates by law, in practice, “both constraints have been flouted”.
The report, again with a global perspective, provides a comprehensive series of recommendations to strengthen electoral processes and norms in all nations. Specific measures include:
• National Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) should create a global certification process to evaluate and grade EMBs on their professionalism, independence and competence, including a code of conduct
• Urgent attention must be given to address the growing threat to democracy posed by financing of political campaigns, parties and candidates by transnational organised crime
• Domestic election observers should commit to global standards through the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors
• A new transnational civil society organization – “Electoral Integrity International” – should be created to bring global attention to countries that succeed or fail in organizing elections with integrity
• Governments and donors need to prioritise funding and political engagement throughout the entire electoral cycle of countries with problematic elections, supporting necessary dialogue and citizen participation as well as technical improvements
• Regional organisations must create and communicate “red lines” of egregious electoral malpractice that would trigger immediate multilateral condemnation and sanction if crossed

Greg Palast’s Blog
September 25, 2012
Tales from the Crypt of Democracy
Pow! Zap! Full color investigative comics by Ted Rall:
Tales from the Crypt of Democracy – Soul Crushing Political Terror.
Out Today!
Check out Greg’s “Billionairs & Ballot Bandits”

Maddow: Tea party groups trying to steal election via voter purges

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow – GOP Official Blocked from Purging Iowa Voters

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

British Banking and the Global Drug Trade
By Tom Burghardt
Global Research, September 25, 2012
Antifascist Calling…

Death penalty doesn’t mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like… the bankers who launder the drug money. The bankers, who launder, the drug money. Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers. White, middle class Republican bankers. — George Carlin, ‘Back in Town Special,’ 1996

In a recent investigation I presented the case that British banking and financial giant HSBC interfaced with banking institutions which had links to terrorist financing.

Drawing upon evidence published by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in their mammoth report, “U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History,” we learned that senior HSBC officers, despite misgivings voiced by staff in internal correspondence, had relations with Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank, described by U.S. law enforcement agencies as moneymen for Al Qaeda. More

We Won—for Now
Posted on Sep 17, 2012
By Chris Hedges
In January I sued President Barack Obama over Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, strip them of due process and hold them in military facilities, including offshore penal colonies. Last week, round one in the battle to strike down the onerous provision, one that saw me joined by six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, ended in an unqualified victory for the public. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, who accepted every one of our challenges to the law, made her temporary injunction of the section permanent. In short, she declared the law unconstitutional.

Fifteen Issues this Election is NOT About
Published on Monday, September 24, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Bill Quigley

ending the death penalty
closingGuantanamo
prosecuting Wall Street banksters
prosecuting torturers
ending drone murders
fighting for a living wage
killing, not trying Osama bin Laden
refusing to bomb Iran
huge campaign contributions
reversing global warming
surveillance society/incarceration industry
creating public jobs
phasing out nuclear power

The Villified Us. We Won. (Quebec Students Hail Their Movement’s Victories)
by Camille Robert and Jeanne Reynolds
Many mocked us, many vilified us, many told us we would achieve nothing.
But after a wave of student mobilization in Quebec through the spring and summer, we can count our victories: on the first day of the new PQ government’s term, it cancelled a tuition hike and repealed an anti-protest law that curbed basic freedoms of expression and assembly. more

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Documenting the Election Protection Movement

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Believe it or not, America, the self-proclaimed ‘democracy creator,’ has a rich history of election theft.

From 2004 to 2008 we produced the 7 documentaries and video reports viewable below, documenting recent citizen efforts to reverse that history. In many ways, they’re all as current as today’s election news.

International election observer, former President Jimmy Carter says, “we have one of the worst election processes in the world, and it’s almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money.”

As our friends Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman point out more specifically in their recent book and articles, the vulnerabilities of our system to election fraud (not the non-existent ‘voter fraud’ about which the GOP obsesses) have actually increased and become more blatant.

They show that the flood of corporate money; the Electoral College system; the systematic disenfranchisement of millions of voters through purges and ID laws; wide-spread use of privately-owned electronic voting machines; GOP control of nine of the governorships in swing states; and Obama’s lack of popularity among the election protection activists whose efforts helped put him in office, all put the integrity of this upcoming election in jeopardy.

The 7 videos below portray part of the history of the election protection movement, many of whom this time seem to be saying, “If we help keep Koch-acola from stealing the election, we’re still stuck with Pepsi.”

EON Election Protection Links

The PRICE of LIBERTY – America’s Election Protection Movement
October 31, 2008

This fast-moving 58-minute documentary by award-winning filmmakers James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan explores the issues and strategies embodied in America’s growing grassroots, people-powered ‘Election Protection movement. Scientists, journalists, activists, attorneys and whistleblowers reveal how, why and by whom the last two presidential elections were stolen, even as they work on many fronts to keep it from happening again.

A LITTLE LIGHT’LL DO YA – Defending Democracy in America
2005
Blacked out or dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ by corporate news outlets, reports of massive vote fraud in the 2004 presidential election circulated on the internet and independent media.

As the Jan. 6th, 2005 deadline for a challenge to the Electoral College vote drew near, a tiny village on the California coast raised funds to send a delegation of its citizens and an award-winning documentary team to Ohio and Washington, D.C. to get the facts.

They found overwhelming evidence of a stolen election and a small, diverse group of committed people – from the street and the elite – defending democracy against overwhelming odds.

This is their report.

HELP AMERICA VOTE…ON PAPER!
Sep 12, 2006

A citizen call for election integrity 18 mins.
An empowering, fast-moving 18-minute briefing on the dangers to democracy posed by privately owned electronic voting machines, what patriotic citizens, activists and officials of all parties are doing about it – and how you can help.

GETTING OVER IT – The Citizen Push for Election Integrity
Nov 3, 2006

Ed Asner hosts an Emergency Town Hall Forum on America’s vote fraud crisis and what we can do about it. San Diego, CA Oct. 25, 2006 With voting investigator Bev Harris, election integrity attorneys Lowell Finley and Paul Lehto, Utah whistleblower Bruce Funk, sportscaster/blogger Jim Lampley and local activists.

BUSTING the ‘Man-in-the-Middle’ of Ohio Vote Rigging
2008
STEPHEN SPOONAMORE, a lifelong Rebublican, successful serial entrepreneur, and top level cyber-security sleuth for major credit card companies and U.S. Federal defense and security agencies, blows the whistle on the design of the hacked computer system that delivered the vote to George Bush in 2004…and was still in place in 2008. Did his courageous whistleblowing contribute to the integrity of the 2008 election?

FREAKING OUT THE WHITE HOUSE
2008
CLIFF ARNEBECK, lead attorney in the controvercial King-Lincoln v. Ohio Sec. of State lawsuit, talks about the aim of the suit and the impact on the planned fix of the recent election of deposing under oath Mike Connell, head IT operative for the Republican Party and the McCain campaign, on the day before the vote.

AFTER ROVE: Democracy Restoration in the U.S.
2008
Ohio attorney CLIFF ARNEBECK gives an update on the King Lincoln-Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell suit he is is pursuing with co-council Bob Fitrakis. The suit aims to expose and dismantle the GOP’s ‘Man-in-the-Middle’ computer system set up by Carl Rove to steal Ohio’s elections.

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All Industry Eyes are on California…Again
This time its not about rolling back ‘smart meters,’ listing cell phone emissions or closing down nukes. It is because of the initiative Prop. 37 on the state’s November ballot calling for the labeling of GMO products. Why do you suppose the industry would object to that?

For more on the campaign go to CaRightToKknow.org
Here’s the ad:

And here’s our coverage of a recent Marin County Symposium on the issue:

Just Label It GMO ! – Pt. 1 – Jeffrey Smith

Jeffrey Smith, Founder-Director of ResponsibleTechnology.org – talks about California’s ground-breaking Prop. 37 Initiative on the CA . NOV. 6 BALLOT at Marin County’s Label GMO Symposium, July 25,2012. Sponsors included Good Earth Natural Foods, GMO Free Marin, Community Media Center of Marin.

Just Label It GMO ! – Pt. 2 – Pamm Larry
Pam Larry, Founder-Director of LabelGMOs.org – talks about California’s ground-breaking Prop. 37 Initiative on the CA . NOV. 6 BALLOT at Marin County’s Label GMO Symposium, July 25,2012. Sponsors included Good Earth Natural Foods, GMO Free Marin, Community Media Center of Marin.

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As NATO Meets OCCUPY in Chicago… [Scroll down for updates on related stories. ]
Bruce Gagnon, Founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, talks about the ‘permanent war economy,’ ‘full spectrum dominance,’ and the peace agenda, April 10, 2012 at the Berkeley Unitarian Church. For more info: Space4Peace.org Space4Peace.blogspot.com

Full spectrum dominance requires full spectrum resistance!
Introductory Notes from Mary Beth Brangan

This important talk connects a lot of dots in our current political/economic situation.
Bruce Gagnon looks at what’s happening globally from the huge perspective of his international network that monitors & opposes the ‘war in space.’  Bruce shows what the current power elites want in terms of total control or ‘full spectrum dominance’ (makes you wonder about the global roll out of ‘smart meter technology and the continuing push for nuclear reactors) and how that necessitates endless war and weapons in space.

He talks about how they want each country to have an assigned purpose.
They want the USA’s role in the new world corporate system to provide ‘security’ for them.   Our military will be sent to other countries to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. Hence, the forced  shrinking of our  educational system making the military the only option for our youth.

The U.S. addiction to war and violence is linked to our communities being so dependent on military spending for jobs since the weapons industry is already the US’s largest industry and product.

Bruce believes the antidote is to work to convert the military industrial complex to sustainable technologies like wind power, solar, and mass transit.
Full spectrum dominance requires full spectrum resistance!

Beyond the Empire of Denial
Introductory Notes from James Heddle

Presidents and pundits will never admit it to you, but corporate control of global resources through overwhelming military force is the core motivation of U.S. economic and foreign policy. That’s why there are over 700 American military bases worldwide. That’s why Pentagon war planners divide the planet into six regional military commands and four functional commands, with a four-star general or admiral heading each. But the war planers don’t limit their their attentions to just the planet. That’s why ‘Vision for 2020,’ a rarely mentioned 1996 report of the U.S. Space Command, calls for a Space Command uniform patch and motto that says ‘MASTER OF SPACE.’

That’s why lifelong peace campaigner Bruce Gagnon tirelessly travels the country and the world blowing the whistle on the sociopathic, ecocidal project that is America’s ‘permanent war economy,’ a term first coined in a book of the same name by economist Seymour Melman. It’s why he and his partner Mary Beth Sullivan – author of ‘Moving from a War Economy to a Peace Economy’ – chose to live and base their organizing in Bath, Maine, near the General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works, where naval destroyers, fitted with Aegis weapons systems, the spearhead of Obama’s ominous ‘strategic pivot’ toward the Asia-Pacific, are built.

In his eloquent presentation Gagnon gives a sweeping look at the connections between perpetual war and economic crisis, drilling down to the plan’s basic strategy: fund U.S. world domination from space by (you guessed it) cutting social security and Medicare. He lays out the role of grassroots social movement in rolling back this mad scheme of a desperate, declining empire of denial and showing that ‘a better world is possible.’ Check it out.

For more on this issue, see an example of what Bruce is speaking about in the articles below. Bruce is currently in Chicago at the NATO protests. (May 20, 2012)

United States to Unveil Plans to Bolster NATO Alliance
By THOM SHANKER
Published: May 19, 2012

NATO decides to activate missile shield despite Russian threats
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, May 20, 2012 19:25 EDT

That’s why these guys are smiling…

Published on Monday, May 21, 2012 by Common Dreams
Drones of Its Own: NATO Signs Deal with Northrup Grumman for ‘Global Surveillance Capabilities’
Part of its ‘Allied Ground Surveillance’ system, the five Global Hawk UAVs will cost $1.7 Billion
– Common Dreams staff

As part of NATO’s planned multi-year and multi-billion dollar investment in an increased global surveillance capability, building what it calls an ‘Allied Ground Surveillance (AGS)’ system, the 28-nation military alliance penned a deal with defense contractor Northrop Grumman on Sunday for a fleet of unmanned aerial drones along with the requisite command and control base stations needed to operate them. Read more.

Published on Monday, May 21, 2012 by Real News Network
NATO Summit Kicked Off with Massive Demonstrations
Thousands of police flood downtown Chicago

Published on Sunday, May 20, 2012 by Common Dreams
Shut Down the War Marchine!: Thousands in Anti-NATO Rally
Protesters head towards site of NATO negotiations in Chicago, veterans to return medals
– Common Dreams staff

[See Twitter stream and livestream on this story for live updates.]
Thousands of protesters marched in a sweltering Chicago today from downtown Chicago to near the site of the NATO summit at McCormick Place to call for an end to the NATO war machine. More

Democracy Now report:
“No NATO, No War”: U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

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Peace, Power and Pushback
Are humans hardwired for war or peace? Is war an aberration or the eternal norm. Has non-violent people-power pushback ever wrested lasting change from power elites? How are the current power holders responding to the current uprisings springing up all over the planet? As the U.S. makes war for the last remaining oil, Spain, Germany and China are forging ahead with alternative energy. Will this change the balance of power on the rocky road to a sustainable future?

These are the questions addressed by Brad Jacobson, John Nichols, Frances Fox Piven, Noam Chomsky, Grace Lee Boggs, Michael Klare and others in this edition. The take-home message: Resistance is Fertile.

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Why War Isn’t Inevitable: A Science Writer Studies the Secret to Peaceful Societies
By Brad Jacobson, AlterNet
Posted on March 18, 2012, Printed on March 20, 2012

When President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he expressed a well-worn notion about warfare: “[W]ar is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings.” Today, as the drumbeats for war with Iran once again reach bellicose heights, a timely new book argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, waging war is not an innate part of human nature.

In The End of War, veteran science journalist John Horgan applies the scientific method to reach a unique conclusion: biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as we are to be violent. So what keeps humans bound by a seemingly never-ending cycle of war?

In a phone interview with AlterNet from his home in New York’s Hudson Valley — situated within earshot of the mortars and howitzers at West Point Military Academy’s artillery range — Horgan dispelled multiple myths about the impetus for war, the combination of which, he believes, sustains the institution of war despite rational thought and an overwhelming human aversion to killing. A longtime Scientific American writer and director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, Horgan also charts a new course for rejecting the old paradigm of war’s inevitability and finally releasing mankind from its destructive grip.

Brad Jacobson: Was there an overriding factor that drove you to write this book?

John Horgan: Yeah, it was my discovery that started right after the U.S. invasion of Iraq: the vast majority of people, both American and people around the world, believe that war is a permanent part of the human condition. Read more.

John Nichols interviewed by Kris Welch on KPFA’s ‘Livingroom’
His new book is Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street

[You can fast-forward through the opening 5-minute news summary and get right to the excellent interview.]

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Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street John Nichols

Strategic Directions for Occupy Wall Street: Foreclosing Banks, Defending Homes, Making History – Democracy Now March 20, 2012

Famed sociologist Frances Fox Piven and labor organizer Stephen Lerner discuss how Occupy Wall Street could grow into a major political movement that draws millions into the streets. “I’m absolutely convinced that Occupy is the beginning of another massive protest movement,” Fox Piven says. “Protest movements have a long life—10, 15 years—and they are what we have to rely on to take our country back.” Fox Piven is professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of “Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.” Lerner is a labor organizer who was the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign and is on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union. He has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable. “I think there’s never been a more exciting time in my 30 years of organizing to imagine building the kind of movement that can transform the country, that can really talk about redistributing wealth and power. And there’s never a better time to get involved,” Lerner says. We are also joined by Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux, who has been reporting on Occupy Wall Street extensively.

Chomsky: Are We About to Get Embroiled in a Nightmare War With Iran?
As tensions escalate, there are eerie echoes of the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
March 13, 2012 | Alternet

The January/February issue of Foreign Affairs featured the article “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” by Matthew Kroenig, along with commentary about other ways to contain the Iranian threat.

The media resound with warnings about a likely Israeli attack on Iran while the U.S. hesitates, keeping open the option of aggression – thus again routinely violating the U.N. Charter, the foundation of international law. Read more.

Grace Lee Boggs: An American Revolutionary Comes To San Francisco Chinatown (Clip 7 of 15)

A celebration & tribute to Grace Lee Boggs, philosopher-activist from Detroit, MI. Presented by the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco at the Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny St., 3rd Floor, San Francisco Chinatown on Saturday, March 3, 2012. Born in 1915, a daughter of Chinese immigrants, Grace received her B.A. from Barnard College (1935) and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College (1940). She married black autoworker, James Boggs, and together they became actively and deeply involved in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the 1960’s and ’70’s in the Detroit area. She authored and co-authored numerous books, including “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century” and “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs.”

Grace Lee Boggs: ‘We Need to Grow Our Souls’
Boggs: The “secret to visionary organizing” is a “combination of philosophy and activism”
Common Dreams staff – Published on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 by Common Dreams

At an event to celebrate the work of Grace Lee Boggs, the long-time activist says that “we need to grow our souls” and emphasizes that the “secret to visionary organizing” is “a combination of philosophy and activism.”

The Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco held the event on March 3 titled Building the Next American Revolution: A Celebration and Tribute to Grace Lee Boggs. Read more.

5 Freedom-Killing Tactics Police Will Use to Crack Down on Protests in 2012
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on March 16, 2012, Printed on March 20, 2012

The First Amendment right to assemble and protest is going to get a black eye in 2012—as it has every time there has been an upsurge in America’s social justice movements.
Already in city after city, protesters and civil rights lawyers are troubled by proposed and newly enacted anti-protest rules, many of which are likely to be found unconstitutional if they have their day in court. In the meantime mayors, police and in some cases federal agencies are making detailed plans to thwart protests at local and national events.

In many cities, ordinances aimed at Occupy protesters are emerging to restrict protests and anything resembling camping on sidewalks, streets and parks. New fees are being drawn up to discourage large demonstrations. Anti-leafleting and postering rules are also muzzling people trying to spread the word about events. And all of that is being shepherded with a new pretext for using paramilitary tactics, replacing last year’s “health and safety” excuse for sweeping away Occupy sites with the rationale of protecting “national security” in a presidential election year. Read more.

POLICE STATE USA: New Obama Executive Order Seizes U.S. Infrastructure and Citizens for Military Preparedness Global Research
by Brandon Turbeville

In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of national defense.

Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime. Read more.

Complete text of the Executive order.
Source: the White House, March 16, 2012

8 Creepy Spy Technologies That Can Be Hitched to Your Neighborhood Drones
America’s cities may soon be swarming with surveillance drones equipped with high-tech snooping tools.
March 13, 2012 | AlterNet / By Tana Ganeva

Last fall, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s department got together for a photo op showing off a new unmanned surveillance craft. The $300,000 drone did not have an auspicious debut. Minutes after take-off, the UAV lost touch with the control console and plummeted to earth, crashing into the police officers assembled for the launch. No one was hurt, because police were hanging out in their armored car (“the Bearcat”) another warzone weapon that has crept into the arsenals of local cops around the country (the Bearcat came out alright). Read more.

5 Countries That Could See an Uprising Next
Here are several places to look for social unrest, mass protests and perhaps even another Bastille Day.
March 14, 2012 | AlterNet / By Nicholas Pell

What a difference a year makes. It’s hard to believe that this time in 2011, the world was abuzz over the Arab Spring. Flying in the face of the “death of history” narrative, the Arab Spring shocked the world by overturning some of its most entrenched authoritarian governments. Soon after, Occupy Wall Street became the American protest movement, both inspired by actions in the Arab world, as well as urging young Arabs on to further action. It seems pretty safe to say that the 21st century will definitely be interesting times; the protest movements have little sign of letting up any time soon. Revolutions and uprisings spread like wildfire once they reach critical mass. Here are five places to look for social unrest, mass protests and perhaps even another Bastille Day. Read more.

Video: I Got Blasted by the Pentagon’s Pain Ray — Twice
Spencer Ackerman – Wired – Danger Room

…That reaction is among the reasons why the technicians at the Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate consider the Active Denial System one of their most impressive weapons. But it’s a troubled system. Some of the Pain Ray’s woes are technical. Others are more fundamental.

Usually the Active Denial System is described as a “microwave” weapon. That’s not really correct. True, Pete and Ralph’s guts contain a gyrotron, the older brother of your microwave’s magnetron, through which energy passes through a magnetic field to become heat. But millimeter waves don’t penetrate nearly as deeply as microwaves — only 1/64th of an inch. Even though the weapon uses much, much more energy than a microwave, the Directorate has tried and failed to use it to cook a turkey.

That’s not all the Active Denial System has failed at.

The system’s gone through battery after battery of tests, including one that put an airman in the hospital. (The Directorate’s rejoinder: it’s tested the Pain Ray 11,000 times and only two people, including that airman, got hurt.) But its “attenuation” — that is, its potency — goes down when it’s raining, snowing or dusty, concedes one of its chief scientists, Diana Loree of the Air Force Research Laboratory, without specifying the degree of reduction. And that’s not its biggest design flaw.

Loree says the boot-up time on the Pain Ray is “sixteen hours.” So if the system is at a dead stop on a base and, say, the locals protest the burning of a Koran, guards at the entry points won’t be burning anyone. The Directorate says that in a realistic deployment, the Active Denial System will be kept in ready mode — that is, loudly humming as its fuel tanks power it, or hooked up to a base’s generator. But that makes it a gas guzzler, at a time when the military’s trying to reduce its expensive fuel costs….

…The system is effectively in limbo, as none of the services want to purchase it — and it hasn’t even been upgraded since 2010. It’s fundamentally the same Pain Ray that McChrystal returned to sender. Read more.

U.S. Military Heat Ray Weapon Unveiled

The military is packing a lot more heat.

As in, an ultra-sci-fi sizzler dubbed the Active Denial System, known in comic book parlance as a heat ray.

The military claims the device, mounted on a vehicle as far as a kilometre away, rains non-lethal electromagnetic waves at misbehaving crowds. The payload is apparently so unbearably intense — the equivalent of standing in front of an open furnace — crowds reverse course in a hurry.

As the Globe and Mail reports, the military is particularly proud of its latest crowd-busting cannon.

“You’re not gonna see it, you’re not gonna hear it, you’re not gonna smell it: you’re gonna feel it,” Marine Col. Tracy Taffola told reporters during the system’s public unveiling at a U.S. Marines base near Washington, D.C.

But is it safe? According to the military, the heat ray, or ADS, is its “safest non-lethal” option — essentially a strong suggestion to its target to run away immediately.

The military has a name for that too: ‘The goodbye effect’. Read more.

Active Denial System Riot Demo

Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System (V-MADS)

ENERGY

Michael Klare: The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources
Democracy Now interview – March 14, 2012

We look at rising fuel costs, one of the major issues raised by the Republican contenders in the 2012 presidential campaign. Since the beginning of the year, the average of price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 16 percent to more than $3.80. Earlier this week, President Obama partially blamed his Republican rivals, saying one reason for the increase is rumors of war with Iran. Meanwhile, Republican candidates have used the spike in gas prices to attack President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and his stance on expanded domestic oil drilling. Our guest, Michael Klare, says oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come because most of the remaining oil on the planet is no longer easily accessible. Klare’s latest book is “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources.”

China’s spending on renewable energy soars
Raw Story
World’s biggest polluter spends £4bn a year on wind and solar power generation in single region as it aims to cut fossil fuel use.

The remote, wind-blasted desert of northwestern Gansu could be the most unloved, environmentally abused corner of China. It is home to the country’s first oilfield and several of the coalmines and steel factories that have contributed to China’s notoriety as the planet’s biggest polluter and carbon dioxide emitter.

But in the past few years, the landscape has started to undergo a transformation as Gansu has moved to the frontline of government efforts to reinvent China’s economy with a massive investment in renewable energy.

The change is evident soon after driving across the plains from Jiuquan, an ancient garrison town on the Silk Road that is now a base for more than 50 energy companies.

Wind turbines, which were almost unknown five years ago, stretch into the distance, competing only with far mountains and new pylons for space on the horizon. Jiuquan alone now has the capacity to generate 6GW of wind energy – roughly equivalent to that of the whole UK. The plan is to more than triple that by 2015, when this area could become the biggest windfarm in the world.

This is the other side of China’s development. Although it is the world’s biggest CO2 emitter and notorious for building the equivalent of a 400MW coal-fired power station every three days, it is also erecting 36 wind turbines a day and building a robust new electricity grid to send this power thousands of miles across the country from the deserts of the west to the cities of the east. Read more.

Thousands of Anti-Nuclear Protesters Face Police in India, 200 Arrested
Green signal for nuclear power ‘is a red signal for our lives’
Published on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 by Common Dreams Common Dreams staff

After thousands gathered in Idinthikarai, Tamil Nadu, India on Monday to protest the vastly contested Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant there, police forces came out en masse to repress demonstrations. Over 200 protesters have been arrested including key anti-nuclear organizers.

Thousands of Koodankulam protesters have gathered in front of St Lourdes church (Photo: TEHELKA) Police initiated “operation Koodankulam” arresting protesters and blocking all entry points to the coastal villages surrounding the nuclear power plant.

Since the arrests, thousands have gathered on the grounds of St Lourdes Church in the area as several have begun a hunger strike. “We will continue our protest till we die,” said one protester. Read more.

Germany Embarks on Historic Alternative Energy Push
As it phases out nuclear power in wake of public outcry, Germany to make largest investment since World War II
Published on Monday, March 19, 2012 by Common Dreams – Common Dreams staff

Spurred by a public outcry following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany’s Prime Minister, Angela Merkel, announced last year that Germany would phase out all of its nuclear power plants. Now, with a looming 20% energy gap to fill, the European nation plans to follow on its early leadership in the green energy sector with an unprecedented investment in alternative and renewable sources, including wind and solar. Read more.

Solar power station in Spain works at night

FUENTES DE ANDALUCIA, Spain — A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night.

The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.

From the road between Seville and Cordoba, one can see its central tower lit up like a beacon by 2,600 solar mirrors, each 120 square metres (28,500 square feet), that surround it in an immense 195-hectare (480-acre) circle.

“It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!” said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.

The mechanism is “very easy to explain,” he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun’s rays reaching the earth.

Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity.

It is the station’s capacity to store energy that makes Gemasolar so different because it allows the plant to transmit power during the night, relying on energy it has accumulated during the day. Read more.

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Who Gets to Call the Shots? [Updated 2-7-2012]
As climate chaos, economic crisis and resource wars converge on what remains of the ‘world as we know it’ and the last tattered vestiges of U.S. democracy disappear under a mountain of corporate money and delusional absurdities, the question arises: Is anybody really in charge here, or does Raw Random Occasion rule?

Into this governance breach many actors and agencies are eager to leap, most of them arrogant, unelected and unaccountable.

This edition surveys some of the actors, factors, forces and agencies fighting over the steering wheel as the world bus heads for the wall.

Naomi Wolf, Christian Parenti, Walden Bello, Vandana Shiva, Michael Hudson, Chris Hedges, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Ellen Brown, Pepe Escobar, Daphne Wysham, Leo Panitch, Tom Engelhardt, Bill Moyers and Bill Quigley and others look at transnational corporations like Apple and Goldman Sachs , meta-national agencies like the IMF, the European Central Bank, and new international blocs like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Arab League, the BRICS – all competing for control of the joy stick for Planet Earth. And who was Saul Alinsky?

The Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy
Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.
by Vandana Shiva – Published on Monday, February 6, 2012 by Al Jazeera English
Activist and author Dr Vandana Shiva is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

New Delhi, India – The seed is the first link in the food chain – and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty – and consequently no food sovereignty.

The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.

Saul Alinsky, Who?
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Published on Monday, February 6, 2012 by Common Dreams

And now, a word about a good American being demonized, despite being long dead. Saul Alinsky is not around to defend himself, but that hasn’t kept Newt Gingrich from using his name to whip up the froth and frenzy of his followers, whose ignorance of the man is no deterrence to their eagerness, at Gingrich’s behest, to tar and feather him posthumously.

Bill Moyers Makes Newt Gingrich Look Like an Idiot

Bill Moyers Essay: Newt’s Obesession with Saul Alinsky from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

USDA Forces Whole Foods To Accept Monsanto
“The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.”   –  Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,” gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation” of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa.  Beyond the regulatory euphemism of “conditional deregulation,” this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto’s premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants “compensation.”

…o pressure Whole Foods Market and the nation’s largest supermarket chains to voluntarily adopt truth-in-labeling practices sign here, and circulate this petition widely.
And please stay tuned to Organic Bytes for the latest developments in our campaigns. Power to the People! Not the Corporations!

Occupying Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power
by Bill Quigley
Published on Monday, February 6, 2012 by Common Dreams
“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people.  But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations.  This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations.  We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work.  People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.

One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm.  The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.

Christian Parenti – Tropic of Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/user/newsfromunderground

Euro-Chaos and Global Capitalism
Leo Panitch: We are witnessing the irrationality of capitalism and the incredible struggle of people in the street. – The Real News Network

For Greece, It’s Austerity — or Else
“Bankruptcy for Greece would be hell.”
– Common Dreams staff

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel continue their push for Greece to accept further austerity measures in order to receive bailout funds and warned that Greece was “running out of time” to accept the deal presented to them. Today Merkel told Greece that it needed to make up its mind on taking the reform package while Greek unions announced a nationwide strike for tomorrow in protest of the austerity measures.

Fracking Perils
The ongoing bonanza in the U.S. hydraulic fracturing industry marks a dangerous misstep on the road to U.S. energy independence.
By Daphne Wysham – Other Worlds

Folks, I’ve got some good news and some bad news about the nation’s ever-elusive quest for a sound energy policy. The good news: Finally there’s some under-the-radar bipartisan consensus in Washington. The bad news: Both parties are dead wrong.

Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria
By Pepe Escobar – Asia Times

Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.

The Cancer in Occupy
Posted on Feb 6, 2012
By Chris Hedges
The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.

Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment.

Offshore Everywhere 
How Drones, Special Operations Forces, and the U.S. Navy Plan to End National Sovereignty As We Know It

By Tom Engelhardt
Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning….
For Washington, “offshore” means the world’s boundary-less waters and skies, but also, more metaphorically, it means being repositioned off the coast of national sovereignty and all its knotty problems.  This change, on its way for years, will officially rebrand the planet as an American free-fire zone, unchaining Washington from the limits that national borders once imposed.  New ways to cross borders and new technology for doing it without permission are clearly in the planning stages, and U.S. forces are being reconfigured accordingly.

The Millions Funding Geoengineering
Bill Gates among wealthy funding large-scale geoengineering
– Common Dreams staff -Monday, February 6, 2012

As scientists search for a plan to deal with climate change, some have pushed for a controversial approach known as geoengineering, a technological fix for climate change that involves efforts such as reflecting solar energy back into space or fertilizing the oceans.

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is backing a group of climate scientists lobbying for geoengineering experiments. (photo: Ted S. Warren/AP) Bill Gates is among other wealthy individuals financially backing scientists to lobby governments to push geoengineering, raising concerns that this small group may have a large impact on further decisions on geoengineering.

‪1/28/2012 — Further dissection of the ‘HAARP ring’ theory / ‘Frequency manipulation’ of the weather‬
Dutch Since
https://youtu.be/zTRI-E8_yhY

Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
by Ellen Brown
Published on Sunday, February 5, 2012 by Common Dreams

A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of “robo-signing” and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle.

That is good. She and the other AGs should not sign until a thorough investigation has been conducted. The evidence to date suggests that “robo-signing” was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008.  It is not just distressed homeowners but the entire economy that has paid the price, resulting in massive unemployment and a shrunken tax base, throwing state and local governments into insolvency and forcing austerity measures and cutbacks in government services across the nation.

The details of the robo-signing scam were spelled out in my last article, here [or see below].  The robo-signing fraud and its implications are expanded on below.

The Shadow Banking System: A Web of Financial Fraud
by Ellen Brown
Published on Friday, January 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19th that the Obama Administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the “robo-signing” scandal.  The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed.  Evidence reveals that it was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes.  If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail – fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion. 

The Apple Connection
By Walden Bello, February 1, 2012 – Foreign Policy in Focus

…Apple’s products are top of the line, distinguished by their superior design, engineering, and personality or “soul.” But the company’s march to market supremacy has been accomplished at tremendous cost to both American and Chinese workers. The iPad and iPhone are engineering masterpieces. But these commodities are not simply material. They also incarnate the social relations of production. They are the expression of the marriage between a demanding enterprise that has become the cutting edge corporation of our time and what Slavoj Zizek has called today’s “ideal capitalist state”: China, with the freedom it offers capital along with its unparalleled capacity to discipline labor. One cannot but agree with Jared Bernstein, a former White House economic adviser, when he told the Times, “If it’s [the Apple system] the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Corporations Have No Use for Borders
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Jan 30, 2012
What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

…The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere.

What the Occupy movement must learn from Sundance
These great documentary films have a simple lesson: effective political protest needs good organisation and smart messaging
by Naomi Wolf – Guardian UK

…Media exposure, a clear message, smart soundbites, clearly stated demands, and, most importantly, tasked, empowered negotiators working on the inside in concert with mass disrupters applying pressure from without – this equals political life.

Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy
by MICHAEL HUDSON
Welcome to a new era of polarization as financial oligarchy replaces democratic government and reduces populations to debt peonage

The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their government’s capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the €50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.

Currency Warfare: What are the Real Targets of the E.U. Oil Embargo against Iran?
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – Global Research

Who Benefits? The Economic Targets are beyond Iran…
The end of Iranian oil exports to the European Union and the decline of the euro will directly benefit the United States and the U.S. dollar. What the European Union is doing is merely weakening itself and giving the U.S. dollar the upper hand in its currency rivalry against the euro. Moreover, should the euro collapse, the American dollar will quickly fill much of the void. Despite the fact that Russia will benefit from higher oil prices and greater leverage over E.U. energy security as a supplier, the Kremlin has also warned the European Union that it is working against its own interests and subordinating itself to Washington.

Many important questions are at play about the economic consequences of increased oil prices. 

Will the European Union be able to weather the economic storm or a currency collapse? 

What the E.U. oil embargo against Iran will do is destabilize the euro and snowball globally hurting non-E.U. economies. In this regard, Tehran has warned that the U.S. aims to hurt rival economies through the adoption of E.U. oil sanctions against Iran. Within this line of thinking, this is the reason why the U.S. is trying to force China, India, South Korea, and Japan in Asia to reduce or cut Iranian oil imports.

Within the European Union, it will be the most fragile and struggling economies, such as Greece and Spain, which will be hurt by the E.U. oil embargo against Iran.

Obama’s Drone Program Includes Targeting Rescuers and Funerals
– Common Dreams staff – February 5, 2012 by Common Dreams

A week after President Obama spoke publicly for first time about the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan, a new investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times in London reports the program has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.

Missiles being loaded onto a military Reaper drone in Afghanistan. Research by the Bureau has found that “since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners.”

U.S. Accused of Using Drones to Target Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan
Democracy Now – February 06, 2012
The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Has the Nobel Peace Prize lost its way?
Nominations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize closed last week. However, Nobel officials are facing an investigation into the view that their recent awards have lost sight of Alfred Nobel’s original intentions. By REBECCA DAVIS.

…Over the years the Nobel committee has made some intriguing choices for its Peace laureates, including US diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973. Possibly the most controversial award in recent years was 2009’s choice of US President Barack Obama, who was barely a year in office. An MSNBC poll at the time found that 62% of Americans polled did not believe Obama deserved it. Brian Becker, US coordinator of the Act Now To Stop War group, told Reuters at the time: “This is the Nobel committee giving Obama the ‘you are not George W Bush’ award. Unfortunately Obama is continuing many of the same policies of Bush.”
Obama seems to have been awarded the prize ‘aspirationally’, in the hope it would encourage him to work harder for peace. Foreign Policy magazine suggested in 2009 “the committee has increasingly given the peace prize to honour the awardees’ cause, even when their aspirations are not matched by concrete accomplishments”. The magazine pointed out, though, that the 27 aspirational prizes awarded since 1971 have not accomplished much.

Inside the World Bank’s Population Policy
January 18, 2012
By Michael Hudson
Taken from Super Imperialism, 2nd Edition, p213 (1972)

For instance, the World Bank is essentially an American instrument, and the United States is a food-surplus nation threatened with loss of foreign markets for farm products as modernization of European agriculture proceeds. For the World Bank to finance such institutional reforms in developing nations as would lead them toward self-sufficiency on food account would run counter to American interests. U.S. farm surpluses would become unmanageable as the overseas market for U.S. farm products dwindled. Hence, the World Bank prefers perpetuation of world poverty to the development of adequate overseas capacity to feed the peoples of developing countries.
There is a yet more subtle point to be considered. Mineral resources represent diminishing assets. It is in the interest of developing peoples to conserve such assets for their own ultimate use in manufacturing industries, as these develop within the borders of nations rich in raw materials but backward in general development. In the short run such domestic use of mineral resources is not possible because of inadequate industrial capital and consumer markets place. The specter is thus raised that in the long run these countries will find themselves depleted of resources as World Bank programs accelerate the exploitation of their mineral deposits for use by other nations.

The long-term prospect is thus for these countries to be unable to earn foreign exchange on export account sufficient to finance their required food imports. The World Bank has foreseen this. Its proposals for population limitation in these countries is a cold-blooded attempt to extort from them their mineral resources, without assuming responsibility for the sustenance of these peoples once the industrialized West has stripped them of their fuel and mineral deposits.

…Whether the United States and the World Bank have been led to this objective by their intention to preserve the obsolete and oppressive militaristic class institutions in developing nations, or whether they have been led to the preservation of these institutions in order that the mineral resources of these countries can continue to be stripped from them, may be a matter for conjecture. But the facts remain, whatever the dominant motives at work. Excessive industrialization in the United States, coupled with increasingly wasteful uses of resources on armaments and on personal luxuries that are essentially trivial in terms of human well-being, makes essential the U.S. exploitation of the developing countries, their resources and peoples. The United States is in deficit on raw-materials account, but is unwilling to limit its industrial expansion correspondingly. It is in surplus on farm products account, but is unwilling to limit its agriculture accordingly. The peoples of developing countries therefore are to be turned into the instrument through which the otherwise untenable U.S. economic process is perpetuated.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – Half Of Humanity, Counterbalance To U.S. And NATO
by Bassam Javed

The 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) heads of governments meeting will take place on November 7 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The prime minister of Pakistan will participate in the meeting at the invitation of Russian Prime Minister Alexander Putin. The Organization, originally founded in 2001 has evolved into an effective mechanism over the years to enable its member states trans-act on strategic regional issues and economic development….

…Since its inception the organization has come a long way wherein it is now given due importance at all regional and international organizations. As it happens with every upcoming organisation it is confronted with many external and internal challenges as well. Externally, its security concepts run counter to that of Nato and the United States. The SCO believes in ‘non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-interference in the affairs of other countries’ by preferring to convince the countries to solve their differences through peaceful means. The United States still relies on its military prowess to realize its own security and as well as that of its allies through military means. The SCO is working towards ending the ‘cold war’ concepts and transcending ideologies unlike the Americans who still follow them….

…With the incorporation of India and Pakistan, this unique organization will have four nuclear powers (two recognized and two yet to be recognized), a landscape full of energy resources and mineral wealth and accommodating half of the global community; it has all the ingredients to play a powerful role in the world affairs to maintain a balance.

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The Empire Bites Back
As Klaus Schwab, founder and host of the World Economic Forum, the 40-year-old gathering of global elites now being held in Davos, Switzerland puts it, “We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual…capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us.” [ see: Davos elites to seek reforms of ‘outdated’ capitalism ]

As the economic, military and geopolitical underpinnings of American global dominance begin to look as rickety as the delapidated U.S. infrastructure, ruling elites are understandably jumpy and defensive.

Frog Pot Politcs
The true face of the national security state with its permanent war economy is increasingly unmasked both domestically and internationally. Banker-backed ‘austerity’ demands, mounting public dissent, escalating severe crackdowns – that’s the pattern. The ‘Patriot Act,’ the NDAA and now the proposed ‘Enemy Expatriation Act,’ authored by Joe Lieberman (that smiling man on the left above).

The late, great Chalmers Johnson identified the three main common characteristics of a withering empire as: Military Over-extension, Corruption and Unreformability. Sound familiar? [ You can view our popular interviews with Prof. Johnson here and here. ]

When a system like ours is fibrillating – ‘far from equilibrium,’ as systems scientists say – that’s when seemingly small actions, that would otherwise be ineffectual, can have the greatest impact, nudging the system in another evolutionary direction.

The heat is being turned up in the frog pot. Will us frogs wake up in time? These posts should help us smell the coffee. These developments in the U.S. threaten to have serious planet-wide impacts, that’s why they’re part of the planetarian perspective.

The NDAA: Just one more link in the chain of tyranny‬

With the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act into law, more Americans than ever before are wondering how the country could have descended so quickly into a police state. Far from a unique or isolated act, however, the NDAA is just the latest entry in a long list of steps toward the codification of outright martial law.
Find out more about the history of this agenda in this week’s GRTV Backgrounder.

How Congress Has Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest Act
by Naomi Wolf

I never thought I would have to write this: but—incredibly—Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Section 1021, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The section is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention — but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one’s lawyer’s calls are monitored, witnesses for one’s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books…

New Bill Known As Enemy Expatriation Act Would Allow Government To Strip Citizenship Without Conviction
Stephen D. Foster Jr.

First, Congress considered the National Defense Authorization Act, sections of which gave the President the authority to use the military to arrest and indefinitely detain Americans without trial or charge. The language was revised because of strong condemnation from the American people. But now a new bill has emerged that poses yet another threat to the American citizenry.
Congress is considering HR 3166 and S. 1698 also known as the Enemy Expatriation Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA). This bill would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being “hostile” against the United States. In other words, you can be stripped of your nationality for “engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.” Legally, the term “hostilities” means any conflict subject to the laws of war but considering the fact that the War on Terror is a little ambiguous and encompassing, any action could be labeled as supporting terrorism. Since the Occupy movement began, conservatives have been trying to paint the protesters as terrorists.

The new law would change a part of US Code 1481 which can be read in full here. Compare 3166 to 1481 and the change is small.

The US is a Police State
– by Prof. John McMurtry – 2011-11-09
According to Andrew Kolin, a police state is unlimited state power of armed force freely discharged without citizen right to stop it. What is featured in this account are the laws and directives which empower the police state norms.

Global Research Editor’s Note

This article by Professor McMurtry had been commissioned by an academic  journal called New Politics. 

Upon receiving Professor McMurtry’s text, the editorial board decided to reject it: “We are sorry to inform you that the Editorial Board finds it inappropriate”.

  
Review of Andrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy (2011), New York: St. Martin’s Press/Palgrave Macmillan, 248 pp.
Many readers may have thought the U.S. is “like a police state” – – think of the security dress down of everyone boarding a flight within the U.S. sphere of control. Political scientist Andrew Kolin goes far beyond hasty analogue. He argues with rich factual substantiation that the U.S is a police state all the way down – not only since the stolen elections and war state of George Bush Jr., but before and since in a cumulative throughline of bureaucratized despotism across borders.

Documented examples are reported in detail from 1950 on to disclose a record that is as systematic in suppressing public dissent as its client dictatorships elsewhere – albeit far more successfully kept out of public and scholarly attention. Since the electoral contests of, by and for the rich in America are proclaimed as “the leader of the Free World” in the ad-vehicle media many still watch and read…
…The sustaining concern of this work, however, is not to define ordering principles, but to track the bureaucratic trails of legally terrorist offices, directives, and channels. The result is a detailed history of the inner workings of the U.S. state which exposes the legal suppression of democratic speech and action (omitting the use of laws against harmless non-pharmaceuticals as lettres de cachet to imprison the poor and the rebellious by the millions). Beneath continuous  corporate-state and media proclamation of America’s freedoms and simultaneous academic fear to expose the lines of despotism, this work largely succeeds in providing the procedural workings of the U.S. police state building both before, and dramatically after, the turning point of 9-11….

U.S. Police State in Formation from the Revolution through Reagan to Bush-Obama
Kolin goes back to the U.S. state’s foundation to find the dictatorial impulse. “The truth of the matter”, he says, “is that after the American Revolution there was thinking among economic and democratic elites that America had become too democratic, especially as mass democracy was expressing itself on the state level”(p. 3) – a view better known since a Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission Report made it famous centuries later.

The U.S. state is in these ways structured not only towards total force and control. It is, more deeply, programmed to liquidate what serves the lives of people so as to grow transnational corporate profit for the few. Always however, there is a pretext of a demonic enemy that people are being protected from – “communism”, “subversives”, “Islamic militants”, “terrorists”, “violence-threatening protestors”, all with no criteria. Most warred upon by the U.S. state are societies’ social life support systems – including public water, electricity, health and living subsidies….

Totalitarianism: The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Latest Chapter In the Road towards “Police State USA”

by Sherwood Ross

“I believe,” warned James Madison in a speech to the Virginia Convention on June 16, 1788, “there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Surely, this is the story behind the New Year’s Eve, 2011, signing by President Obama of the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA). While they were merry-making and tootling horns, NDAA stripped Americans of the last vestiges of their liberties. Now that President Obama can order the military to arrest and imprison you indefinitely on suspicion without trial, your First Amendment rights of speech, press, assembly, and petition have no meaning. Who are you going to assemble with from your jail cell?

NDAA is only the most recent chapter in a creeping totalitarian horror story going back decades….

When Power is Unaccountable – Why the NDAA is Unconstitutional
by BRIAN J. TRAUTMAN – Counterpunch

Each year, Congress authorizes the budget of the Department of Defense through a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA of 2012, however, is unlike any previous ones. This year’s legislation contains highly controversial provisions that empower the Armed Forces to engage in civilian law enforcement and to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus, as well as other rights guaranteed by the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, for terror suspects apprehended on U.S. soil. The final version of the bill passed the House on December 14, the Senate the following day (ironically, the 220th birthday of the Bill of Rights). It was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. With his signature, for the first time since the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the dark days of the McCarthy era that followed, our government has codified the power of indefinite detention into law.

This pernicious law poses one of the greatest threats to civil liberties in our nation’s history.

THE INAUGURATION OF POLICE STATE USA 2012. Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act ” 
by Michel Chossudovsky
…”Democratic Dictatorship” in America

The “National Defense Authorization Act ” (H.R. 1540) repeals the US Constitution. While the facade of democracy prevails, supported by media propaganda, the American republic is fractured. The tendency is towards the establishment of a totalitarian State, a military government dressed in civilian clothes.

The passage of  NDAA is intimately related to Washington’s global military agenda. The military pursuit of Worldwide hegemony also requires the “Militarization of the Homeland”, namely the demise of the American Republic….

…To say that January 1st 2012 is “A Sad Day for America” is a gross understatement.

The signing of NDAA (HR 1540) into law is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Inauguration in 2012 of Police State USA.

As in Weimar Germany, fundamental rights and freedoms are repealed under the pretext that democracy is threatened and must be protected.

The NDAA is “Obama’s New Year’s Gift” to the American People. …
The President Who Signed Indefinite Detention Without Charge or Trial Into Law
by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”

Happy New Year: Don’t Bother Asking for an Attorney When You’re Detained
by Gale Courey Toensing
The headlines said it all. The Huffington Post teaser shouted: HAPPY NEW YEAR: YOU CAN NOW BE DETAINED INDEFINITELY while Infowars proclaimed a more sedate: Happy New Year: Obama Signs NDAA, Indefinite Detention Now Law of the Land.

The NDAA is the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed into law on New Year’s Eve. In addition to funding the United States’ ongoing wars and the 900 military bases it maintains in 130 countries, the bill provides for the U.S. president to have draconian worldwide authority to have the military seize anyone suspected of “terrorism” or providing aid to terrorists or “associated forces” anywhere in the world, including U.S. citizens on American soil, and detain them without charge or trial indefinitely. “It’s a little New Year’s present to our constitutional republic,”

Alex Jones says angrily in a YouTube video. Obama Signs Martial Law Bill: NDAA Now Law‬
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How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sea?
As the escalating planet-wide wars for the last dwindling drops of the world’s oil proceed, one of the areas under growing dispute is the area the Philippine Government refers to as the West Philippine Sea, and China insists should be called the South China Sea. Other nearby countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia have dogs in that fight, too, with the U.S. lurking in the background. A recent CNAS (Center for a New American Security) study argued that ‘the South China Sea is an “epicenter” in terms of globalization and geopolitics, and it will determine whether the US can preserve its dominant role in the Asia-Pacific region.’ The root of the dispute is that the region contains vital shipping routes and is thought to hold as much as 213 billion barrels of oil.

That’s the background of this video report sent to us by longtime friend, EON Advisory Board Member and Philippine legislator Dr. Walden Bello. A BBC print report on the visit follows below.

KALAYAAN: Peace and Sovereignty Mission to the West Philippine Sea July 2011
To bolster the Philippine claim over its territories in the West Philippine Sea, Akbayan Representatives Walden Bello and Kaka Bag-ao led the first-ever civilian mission to Pag-asa Island, Municipality of Kalayaan in the Spratly Archipelago. Joining the team were Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat, Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, Kalayaan Mayor Jun Bito-onon, Palawan Governor Baham Mitra, AFP Western Command Commander Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, and a group of journalists. The mission followed reports of China’s aggression against Filipino fishermen in the region, and reports of their attempt to construct infrastructure that would establish their dominance over Philippine territories.

South China Sea dispute: Philippine MPs visit Spratlys BBC

A group of Philippine politicians has visited a disputed island in the South China Sea, reigniting a row with China.

The politicians landed on Pagasa island, the only island in the Spratlys chain populated by Filipinos, and sang the national anthem with residents.

The island is also claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam as part of a wider dispute in the South China Sea.

China has already said that the politicians’ visit could harm relations between Beijing and Manila.

Landing on Pagasa island, congressman Walden Bello said the visit was a historic moment and declared the island “Philippine territory”.

“We come in peace, we support a diplomatic solution. But let there be no doubt in any foreign power’s mind that if they dare to eject us from Pagasa… Filipinos will not take that sitting down,” he said.

Before the trip, the Chinese embassy in Manila said it served no purpose “but to undermine peace and stability in the region and sabotage the China-Philippines relationship”.

The BBC’s Kate McGeown in Manila says that while the two countries’ governments are exchanging a war of words, the island’s residents are getting on with their lives.

Locals told reporters they often wave at their Chinese neighbours while out fishing, and even barter for cigarettes, our correspondent adds.

Pagasa, also known as Tithu island, lies about 480km (300 miles) west of the western Philippine province of Palawan.

Philippine legislator Walden Bello speaks at a press conference in Manila on July 18, 2011, to announce plans by lawmakers to make a special visit to the Spratly islands in order to assert the country’s claim to the outcroppings amid rising tensions with China over the area. Philippine congressman Walden Bello made a fiery speech on the island

It has an airstrip, a military base and a small town hall, and is occupied by about 60 civilians.

Tension in the South China Sea has been ramped up this year, with frequent spats and diplomatic rows – particularly between Vietnam and China.

The regional political bloc Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations) is currently meeting in Indonesia in a summit likely to be dominated by the South China Seas issue.

Asean diplomats on Wednesday said they had reached an agreement with China on new guidelines aimed at solving the dispute.

But analysts said the guidelines did nothing to solve the underlying tensions and did not tackle sovereignty issues directly.

The Spratly Islands lie in an area thought to be rich in oil and gas. The region also has vital shipping routes

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