Watch as security guards swarm the stage, cutting short Lupe Fiasco’s set at Washington D.C.’s Hamilton Live Theater Sunday night. The rapper had been invited to headline the concert celebrating Obama’s second inauguration. The offending lyrics likely were: “Gaza Strip was getting bombed / Obama didn’t say shit / That’s why I ain’t vote for him / I’m part of the problem / My problem is I’m peaceful”
Unlike in 2009 (when corporate donations were not used), much of the bill for today’s festivities in Washington D.C. is being paid by powerful corporate interests. Truthout writes:
Obama’s inaugural festivities Monday are bankrolled by several of the nation’s most powerful corporate lobbying forces. Chief among corporate inaugural donors: AT&T Inc., Microsoft Corp., energy giant Southern Co., biotechnology firm Genentech and health plan manager Centene Corp.
Together, more than 300 registered lobbyists worked on the five companies’ behalf to influence legislation and government policy. Among numerous other influence efforts, Southern Co. lobbied the Executive Office of the President to curtail environmental regulations. AT&T pressed the Treasury Department to extend research and development tax credits and lobbied heavily — and unsuccessfully — to win regulatory approval of a merger with rival T-Mobile. Microsoft targeted the [federal government] for support in strengthening online piracy and intellectual property regulations.
Doug Mills/NYT (Fair Use)
What a difference a term in office makes.
Look at the picture (at right) yesterday of the President becoming president again in an oval office ceremony surrounded only by his family swearing an oath administered by a Chief Justice he should be swearing at.
Today what fans turn up will cheer him on, but the die seems to be cast.
He is really alone, shorn of so many of the hopes and expectations his supporters invested in his candidacies.
Even his advisors are distancing themselves. So much for any sense of a grand crusade or plan for change! He is a reactor, not an enactor, a conciliator, not a combative fighter.
We know him now, even if we wish we didn’t. Illusions keep disillusion away, but not forever.
Even his advisors are slipping away, leaving him to relay on managers and national securocrats He may not have sold out–because he was always this way—but he surely bought in.… Read the rest
A fair look at those who believe that societal collapse may be immanent? This VICE piece features perspective on conspiracy theorism and the breakdown of the American Dream from several angles, including Alex Jones and Chris Hedges:
Traveling from Texas to Massachusetts, VICE investigates whether the country is actually on the verge of the 2nd Revolutionary War.
The Department of Homeland Security classifies them as potential “domestic terrorists”; they prefer to be called patriots. As the economic crisis deepens, a growing movement of Americans is rejecting the two-party system and the mainstream media. They believe a violent revolution is imminent, and they’re getting ready for it now. We meet Sgt. Charles Dyer, a U.S. Marine who has taken an oath to disobey unconstitutional orders and take up arms against the government if it becomes tyrannical — and is training a citizen militia to do the same.
via chycho
The United States is ripe for a revolution. People are pissed, and rightfully so. The only question that remains is if the restructuring will be peaceful, like what we saw happen in Iceland, or will it be violent, like what we see happening in Greece and Spain.
As Chris Hedges has implied on multiple occasions, the revolution is well on its way:
“I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force.
Beth Brogan writes at Common Dreams:
A former security adviser for Barack Obama now says the Pentagon’s targeted drone program is counter-productive, is “encouraging a new arms race,” and has killed far more civilians than has been acknowledged.
In an article for the January 2013 issue of the journal International Affairs, Michael Boyle, a La Salle University expert on counterterrorism who served as an adviser on the Obama campaign’s counterterrorism expert group from July 2007-November 2008, writes that the Obama administration’s increasing reliance on drone attacks is having “adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists,” the Guardian reports.
Although Obama pledged to end the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ Boyle continues:
“Instead, he has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor … while President Bush issued a call to arms to defend ‘civilisation’ against the threat of terrorism, President Obama has waged his war on terror in the shadows, using drone strikes, special operations and sophisticated surveillance to fight a brutal covert war against al-Qaida and other Islamist networks.”
Boyle argues that the administration has been “successful in spinning the number of civilian casualties” because it has reportedly begun counting all military-age men in the strike zone as militants unless the administration has clear evidence to the contrary, the Guardian reports.
We’ve seen massive amounts of dark money in politics co-opt and buy our former democracy wholesale. This was especially clear in the post-Citizen’s United elections in the U.S., with special interests, corporations and/or lobbyists spending billions of dollars (that they otherwise argue they need to keep hold of with preferential legal and legislative treatment).
Wall Street, in particular, holds sway over the thinking in Washington, D.C. Our elected policy-makers are increasingly owned, or at least bought and paid for, in other words; whores. So they’re exercising their freedom of speech, and just as with their other shady deal-making, they tend to bet big. Wall Street gave big to the Democrats and Obama in particular in 2008. They gave to him early on before backing Romney as ‘one of their own’ in the financial sector.
But is there anything to the idea that their toxic objectivism is severely conservative nowadays? Open Secrets Blog, a great research site from the Center for Responsive Politics that was instrumental during the election, before and since, for exposing the flow of money from profiteering barons to pandering politicians.… Read the rest
via chycho
United States involvement in Syria has nothing to do with a repressive regime. After all, in 2002 the United States willingly used Assad’s regime to torture Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, when they renditioned him to Syria from New York. The world was also quite grateful to Syria for accepting 1.5 million refugees created by the US invasion of Iraq, especially considering that for approximately the same period the United States had only accepted 7,000 Iraqi refugees. What’s happening in Syria is part of a bigger picture, a grand chessboard if you’d like, and what’s happening there is definitely not the end game.
Irrelevant if Assad stays in power or the rebels take control, what’s important to know about Syria is that an attack on Syria is an attack on Iran and a threat to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – a mutual security organization founded in 2001, which “includes not only the two giants Russia and China, but also the energy-rich Central Asian states Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.”
In 2006 Syria signed a defense agreement with Iran.… Read the rest
Mother Jones has a revealing look inside the leading tea party group’s internal memos. Included is the revelation that the supposed “grassroots” organization is funded almost entirely by a small number of ultra-rich donors, as well as their mission to make austerity and corporate tax breaks “cool” and youth-friendly:
In 2013, FreedomWorks plans to spend between $25 million and $30 million, according to the board book. Favored causes projects include the annual Blog-Con convention, the right’s answer to Netroots Nation; fly-ins for activists to lobby members of Congress; briefings with lawmakers; and the recently launched FreedomWorks University. FreedomWorks also plans to continue its financial support for Glenn Beck’s media enterprise.
The board book is chock full of strategy talk by the FreedomWorks’ brass. CEO Kibbe acknowledged that his group’s plan to help flip control of the US Senate to the GOP failed miserably (“We take our lumps with humility”), and he insisted that it’s time to replace the aging image of the conservative movement with “younger, more diverse, more substantive voices for freedom in America.” Kibbe asked: “Can liberty, personal responsibility, and doing things for yourself be the new ‘cool’?”
Such a makeover, Kibbe wrote, can begin if FreedomWorks courts so-called “Ron Paul Millennials,” the loud, loyal twentysomethings who in 2008 and 2012 followed the GOP libertarian presidential candidate from one stump speech to the next.
via chycho
A lot of documentaries have been produced on cannabis over the last few years and I have no doubt that many more will most likely be produced in the future, especially now that the battle to end prohibition has kicked into high gear.
The focus of these documentaries varies vastly, and it’s sometimes hard to know beforehand if what you are about to watch will satisfy your curiosity. There are overlaps between the works, understandably so since the central theme of all of them is cannabis, however, the ones that do standout are the ones that emphasize certain details of the story. Four of these documentaries are embedded below.
In the first we address some of the basic issues at hand by taking a tour with a very pleasant and delightful young man. The second is about the business of getting high, centered on the marijuana trade industry in British Columbia, Canada.… Read the rest
