Agents of Chaos SI2 2017
Anti-Indian Movement CWIS 2018
Breaking Free NW Citizen 2016
Charms of Naomi Wrong Kind of Green 2014
Christian White Supremacy INSiGHT 2016
Communications in Conflict IC 2013
Corporate Crimes, First Nations CWIS 2018
Extinguishing Sovereignty IC 2012
Netwar Mill U 2019
New Dark Age Wrong Kind of Green 2019
The Reign of the Internet Counterpunch 2016
San Francisco Trophies The San Franciscan 2016
Through the Looking Glass Wrong Kind of Green 2012
Given the array of presidential candidate warmongers running as Democrats, it is perhaps time for a wild card performance in the ultimate of American political theatre. My personal recommendation is to draft Jeff Bridges, star of The Big Lebowski.
At least he knows how to bowl.
Isolation, whether in a New York City apartment or on the wide-open spaces of the Navajo Reservation, can be discouraging. As a sovereign and a subjugated people, the Navajo live on the surface of their homeland, while corporations mine what is underneath it. These contradictions, along with the traumas of dislocation and attempts to Anglicize and Christianize them, have caused numerous suicides. In the midst of this American tragedy, some Navajo have turned to Enduro riding on mountain bikes as a means to make them feel they have a reason to live.
The American story is one of a people against freedom. Due to their psychological limitations imposed by Christianity and capitalism, they could not allow the indigenous peoples, fish and wildlife to roam freely. They had to either imprison or kill everything that was free.
To illustrate this fact, simultaneous with the conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, i.e. Battle of the Little Bighorn, was the destruction of bison to deprive Indians of their primary protein source. In Montana, there were 13 million bison in 1870; by 1884, the slaughter authorized by Congress reduced bison in the entire United States to 325.
Coming to grips with this ugly reality requires an open mind, free from the disingenuous mythology.
He who delivers victory in battle is valued above all others.
–Elan Ua Niall
When white pioneers of the city of Seattle burned down the 90 majestic longhouses of the Duwamish Tribe, the arson was perpetrated by people of the same mentality that others would–a century later–burn down Black churches in the Deep South.
I have nothing against lost causes like the environmental and human rights movements; for a brief period of time in the 20th Century, they achieved important objectives. But now, in the 21st Century, the goals of economic sustainability and human dignity have been annihilated.
Protests by the politically powerless may be interesting subversive gestures to anthropologists, but they have no chance of stopping the finance sector or the military-humanitarian-industrial complex.
When all of America’s oil and gas has been exported, Bill Gates can realize his dream of a nuclear future, in which he and other oligarchs reign supreme.
The convergence of Christian religious fanatics and ethically-challenged opportunists embodied in the Trump Presidential Cabinet is disturbing, but the fascist tendencies of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan offer an unprecedented monopoly of power at the dawn of an age of pandemic panic. With the recent news that lethal bacteria is now resistant to all antibiotics, an epidemic of untreatable disease will provide ample excuse for abridging civil liberties and establishing martial law. Like 9/11 under Bush, the coming plague in the US is viewed by the power elite as a golden opportunity to end democracy in America, and to consolidate the control of all aspects of civil life.
As President Obama transitions from Commander-in-Chief to elder statesman, liberal pundits will need to cherry-pick his record on human rights for posterity. Unfortunately for the man who received the Nobel Peace Prize as president-elect in 2008, his first week in office included his lifting of the arms ban on Kopassus, the Indonesian military special forces used to murder indigenous religious leaders in the illegally-annexed West Papua.
As Cory Morningstar and Forrest Palmer report, the corporations that fund the non-profit industrial complex through tax-exempt foundations have a clear agenda, even though that agenda is obscured by the much-hyped show business of the so-called ‘activists’ on their payroll. For corporations like Unilever–owner of Ben & Jerry’s, as well as the “Fair and Lovely” line of products for people of color to whiten their skin–funding foundations run by sellout NGO elites in service to Wall Street is just part of doing business.
When these co-opted NGOs, i.e. Greenpeace USA and Earth Economics, partner with Wall Street fronts such as 350, Avaaz and Ceres, they function as well-heeled pied pipers that distract concerned people from more serious and effective political engagement. To call this aspect of the thoroughly-corrupted, non-profit industry serious fraud is an understatement. When this complex exploits indigenous peoples fighting for their lives against Wall Street, it becomes an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak.
As a result, caring but naive followers of these pied pipers are led into “consumer activism” and other infantile civic roles, where they are easily manipulated by public relations firms such as Agit-Pop Communications (formerly Ruckus Productions). These PR firms, in turn, promote fascist enterprises such as The New Economy.
Friends of Spartacus 