Glenn Greenwald Town Hall Seattle, WA 17 June 2014 Imagine a gigantic vacuum cleaner scooping up all electronic communications. That’s what the National Security Agency does. Think you are safe from NSA snooping? That you can hide behind clever passwords? Think again. The Agency has the capability… Continue reading →
Jeremy Scahill Lincoln Center Fort Collins, CO 9 April 2014 The National Security Beast is a terrifying behemoth that extends its tentacles across the globe. Like a many-headed hydra it grows and grows. It has an insatiable appetite for weaponry. For example, in late 2013, the navy launched the… Continue reading →
Ray McGovern University Temple United Methodist Church Seattle, WA 17 October 2013 What is one to do when confronted by blatant criminal actions and illegalities? Look the other way? Punch out at 5 and go home? That’s not what Edward Snowden did. His disclosures have informed and educated the people… Continue reading →
Richard Wolff Brecht Forum, New York, NY 9 October 2012 Cascading economic problems and crises, coupled with dysfunctional political responses, have plunged many societies into deepening turmoil. Capitalism, the dominant economic system of our time, has once again become the subject of criticism and… Continue reading →
Noam Chomsky Denver, Colorado 7 May 2013 The Magna Carta is the foundational document of the legal system. It crucially asserted that law is sovereign, not the king. Today, the term rule of law is invoked by whoever is in the White House. But you have to wonder what do they mean? There is one set of… Continue reading →
Dennis Kucinich Santa Barbara, CA February 8, 2013 The U.S. has the world’s most powerful military machine. Its navy controls the seas, its air force the skies. Almost 70 years after the end of World War Two, its armies occupy bases from Germany and Italy to South Korea and Japan. Its CIA-operated… Continue reading →
Michelle Alexander Santa Fe, NM September 12, 2012 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Michelle Alexander speak for herself here. Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race… Continue reading →
Medea Benjamin Eugene, OR July 1, 2012 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Medea Benjamin speak for herself here. Medea Benjamin is a renowned peace activist and social justice advocate. She travels around the world and documents human rights violations. She’s co-founder of Global… Continue reading →
Glenn Greenwald Socialism 2012 Rosemont, IL June 28, 2012 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Glenn Greenwald speak for himself here. Glenn Greenwald is an attorney and the author of How Would a Patriot Act?, Great American Hypocrites, and Liberty and Justice for Some. He is the… Continue reading →
by John Cusack From Truthout Tuesday, September 4, 2012 I wrote this a while back after Romney got the nom. In light of the blizzard of bullshit coming at us in the next few months I thought I would put it out now. ______________ Now that the Republican primary circus is over, I started to think… Continue reading →
One of the weapons Holmes used to shoot up the Aurora theatre by Jay Wenk, World War II veteran, member Veterans for Peace> A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. What part of “regulated” isn’t… Continue reading →
Morris Berman Elliot Bay Bookstore Seattle, WA November 4, 2011 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Morris Berman speak for himself here. From the boarded-up storefronts to foreclosed homes to the homeless and unemployed, the signs of decay in the U.S. are all too apparent. The… Continue reading →
by Jack A. Smith editor, Activist Newsletter This year’s presidential campaign is taking place within an extremely conservative era in American political history that will substantially influence the domestic and foreign priorities of the next administration, regardless of whether it’s headed by… Continue reading →
Please watch this short video: Amazing speech of Iraq Veteran Against War. If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy…. The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad…. –James Madison Continue reading →
By Jack A. Smith, Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter editor Less than six months before the November presidential elections in an exceptionally distressed United States the narrow, unpleasant parameters of political possibility are emerging. Two alternatives confront the American people, both to the… Continue reading →
Check out this brief and crucial history of the United States… In less than 23 minutes, you’ll get the big picture. Let your life be a friction to stop the machine. Continue reading →
by Fred Nagel Most US citizens don’t know whether to cheer the assassination of US citizen and cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, or not. Apart from the fact that he was a Muslim and wore religious garb, we just don’t know too much about him. What did he say or write that brought on the death penalty? There… Continue reading →
The following is an excerpt from War Is a Lie by David Swanson, who served as press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign. He is the cofounder of WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDownStreet.org) and was instrumental in exposing the Downing Street Minutes and other evidence of Iraq… Continue reading →
by Jodie Evans Interviewed by David Barsamian Boulder, CO August 7, 2011 available from Alternative Radio Jodie Evans is a veteran activist with more than 30 years experience in organizing for social change. She cofounded Code Pink with Medea Benjamin. They’ve also edited the book Stop The Next War… Continue reading →
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: The problems today are not the the evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. Linda Milazzo: Peace and non-violent solutions are beyond the capacity of this US government. We The People must govern. As an American, it is my… Continue reading →
The Obama administration is accused of going over the top in pursuing government whistleblowers, following the Wikileaks affair, finds the BBC‘s Tom Burridge in Washington. Continue reading →
Check out Democracy Now! and ALEC exposed for insights on just how it seems the John Birch Society is finally winning. Barry Goldwater and Robert Welch would be very pleased. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), formed nearly four decades ago, has become, in its own words, “the nation’s… Continue reading →
by Chris Hedges, interviewed by David Barsamian Santa Fe, NM 18 May 2011 available from Alternative Radio Chris Hedges is an award-winning journalist who has covered wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig.org and is a senior fellow at The… Continue reading →
by Glenn Greenwald This talk, which was broadcast on Alternative Radio (Alternative Radio) was delivered on March 9, 2011, at Lone Star College in Kingwood, Texas Glenn Greenwald is an attorney and the author of How Would a Patriot Act? and Great American Hypocrites. In 2009, he received an Izzy… Continue reading →
This is from Al-Jazeera English by William I. Robinson, professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara: The global economic crisis and the attack on immigrant rights are bound together in a web of 21st century fascism. “The crisis of global capitalism is… Continue reading →
Check out Osama bin Laden’s American legacy by Tom Englehardt on his Tomgram blog. “As is now obvious, bin Laden’s greatest wizardry was performed on us, not on the Arab world, where the movements he spawned from Yemen to North Africa have proven remarkably peripheral and unimportant. He helped open… Continue reading →
An op-ed by Margaret Kimberley in Eurasia Review: The latest Wikileaks revelations about the prison camp at Guantánamo bring all the horror [that] began with Bush [and that] candidate Obama pledged to end…. He obviously had no intention of ever doing so, because two years into his term, the prison… Continue reading →
See Democracy Now! for a revelatory interview about what the Koch brothers are doing, with the capabilities they get from last year’s Supreme Court Citizens United decision. Last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision granted free speech rights to corporations and effectively removed… Continue reading →
by Ed Pinkington in The Guardian: Commander in Chief Obama is ultimately responsible for Manning’s treatment, but he says the treatment is “appropriate and meets our basic standards”. Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and he entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader, but… Continue reading →
by Nina Totenberg at the endangered National Public Radio (where you can listen to the story and see a picture of the wrongly convicted man, who served 18 years for a crime someone else committed): When prosecutors violate the law to deprive a person of a fair trial, is vindication enough, or should… Continue reading →
From Democracy Now!: One of the worst things about executing an innocent prisoner, exonerated by DNA and recanting witnesses, is that the actual perpetrator is free and might do it again. More than anything else, this makes capital punishment an example of the original, primitive, barbaric scapegoat… Continue reading →
by Glenn Greenwald for Salon: “In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, [current Obama administration official Cass] Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-“independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups… Continue reading →
See this short Quantico video, where Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Quantico is our Tahrir Square.” Continue reading →
From the “Balkinization” blog of Jack Balkin, provided evidence that validated his 2006 prediction that the next president, whether Democratic or Republican, would ratify and continue many of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism policies. What he called the National Surveillance State… Continue reading →
From Firedoglake is this article (with photo) from CodePink activist Logan Price, who, clad only in jock strap in front of the State Department on March 14, 2011, protested the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning. Our military has sent so many of my peers – idealistic young Americans – to die… Continue reading →
Ralph Nader, the former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate, and Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, were interviewed on Democracy Now! (click here and here… Continue reading →
From CNN: By Terry A. Kupers, Special to CNN Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in the Quantico Marine Corps Brig for nine months, suspected of giving highly classified State Department cables to the website WikiLeaks. He has not been tried, yet is kept in solitary confinement in a… Continue reading →