Dr. Gabor Mate @ Occupy Wall Street (video)

Democracy Now!, Occupy Wall Street
LINK (Bigsteelguy3, Oct. 11, 2011)

On a trip from Vancouver, Dr. Gabor Maté stopped by Occupy Wall Street. He talked to "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman and observed:

"50 percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness. And much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature of what causes stress, it's uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control, and lack of expression of self.

"And the uncertainty that has been forced upon the American population by the recent economic crisis -- the loss of control as power has flown into the hands of very, very few people, and the absolute powerlessness of the many in the face of all that, and the lack of expression through the ordinary political process -- people are totally disempowered and deprived of their voice.

"This protest addresses all those issues. So I can only say that this is an extraordinarily healthy thing to happen. People who participate here will be healthier as a result. And maybe society in general as well."

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"Thrive" the Movie (trailer)

(Thrive)

"Thrive" is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's REALLY going on in our world. It follows the money upstream -- uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness, and activism, "Thrive" offers real solutions, empowering us with bold and unprecedented strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.

Interviews

Duane Elgin, Nassim Haramein, Steven Greer, Jack Kasher, Daniel Sheehan, Adam Trombly, Brian O'Leary, Vandana Shiva, John Gatto, John Robbins, Deepak Chopra, David Icke, Catherine Austin Fitts, G. Edward Griffin, Bill Still, John Perkins, Paul Hawken, Aqeela Sherrills, Evon Peter, Angel Kyodo Williams, Elisabet Sahtouris, Amy Goodman, and Barbara Marx Hubbard.

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News in Times of Turmoil (Democracy Now!)

"A Declaration of War on the Poor": Cornel West and Tavis Smiley on the Debt Ceiling Agreement

The veteran broadcaster Tavis Smiley and the author and Princeton University Professor Cornel West are in the midst of a 15-city, cross-country trek they have dubbed "The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience." The tour comes on the heels of last week’s deficit agreement, which has been widely criticized for excluding a tax hike on the wealthy, as well as any measures to tackle high unemployment. "Any legislation that doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, doesn’t close a single corporate loophole, doesn’t raise one cent in terms of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again -- the banks, Wall Street getting away again -- and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people," says Smiley.

• Cornel West & Tavis Smiley on Obama: "Many of Us Are Exploring Other Possibilities in Coming Election”

• Atomic Cover-Up: The Hidden Story Behind the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

"Debt: The First 5,000 Years" (video)

It's not just the US, the UK and Europeans are being made to suffer by the same banking corporations and military-industrial complex.

(DemocracyNow, July 1, 2011) More than 750,000 British public sector workers staged a 24-hour strike Thursday in a stand-off with the government's plans to reform public sector pensions. The reforms come as the government tries to trim its deficit and would require public workers to work longer, pay more toward their pension and receive less upon retirement. Meanwhile in Greece, thousands of workers staged a 48-hour strike and many took to the streets after the Greek Parliament approved a raft of austerity measures that include spending cuts, tax increases and privatizations as a condition for a massive bailout to avert the Eurozone's first default. "There is a common theme to the protests that are taking place across Europe, and that is not just the public sector workers defending their pension rights, but also a generation of young people for whom quite a stark picture is being painted of their future," says Paul Mason on Democracy Now!, an economics editor for BBC Newsnight who just returned from reporting in Greece. Democracy Now! also speaks with David Graeber, author of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." "Most revolutions in our history have been about debt," says Graeber. "It is a perennial tool by those who are powerful to make the victims of structural inequalities feel that it is somehow their fault."

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Climate: Model explains Chaos Theory (video)

Hot model explains Chaos Theory to an often jaded West with little time for science

Famine: Millions at risk in "deadly cocktail" of War, CLIMATE CHAOS, Neoliberalism

The United Nations has called an emergency meeting to discuss the Horn of Africa drought, which it says has already claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Famine was declared in two regions of Somalia on Wednesday where 3.7 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

Another 8,000,000 people need food assistance in neighboring countries including Kenya and Ethiopia. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls the situation a "catastrophic combination of conflict, high food prices, and drought" and has appealed for immediate aid.

Democracy Now! goes to Nairobi to get an update from Kiki Gbeho of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

This is followed by a follow-up discussion with Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.

This was predicted long ago by people on the ground," Parenti explains. “It’s a combination of war, climate change, and very bad policy, particularly an embrace of radical free market policies by regional governments that mean the withdrawal of support for pastoralists, the type of people you saw with their dead cattle."

"Democracy Now!" live with WikiLeaks

In one of his first public events since being held under house arrest, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in London Saturday for a conversation with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.

They discuss the impact of WikiLeaks on world politics, the release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and Cablegate -- the largest trove of classified U.S. government records in history.

“From being inside the center of the storm, I have learned not just about the structure of government, not just about how power flows in many governments around the world that we’ve dealt with, but rather how history is shaped and distorted by the media,” Assange said.

Assange also talks about his new defense team, as well as U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, the accused Army whistleblower who has been jailed for the past year.

Assange is currently under house arrest in Norfolk, outside London, pending a July 12 appeals hearing on his pending extradition to Sweden for questioning in a sexual misconduct case. He has now spent six months under house arrest, despite not being charged with a crime in any country.

• Assange was wearing an ankle monitor under his boot and Saturday’s event concluded shortly after 6:00 p.m. so he could return to his bail address by his curfew. The event was sponsored by the Frontline Club, founded in part to remember journalists killed on the front lines of war. Today we play highlights from Part I of their discussion.
• VIDEO: Kill [No] Capture: Secret Campaign to Kill Taliban
• VIDEO: Behind Taliban Lines (Afghanistan)

NSA illegally spying on American public

Episode: The Madeleine Brand Show (NPR) for June 13, 2011

“What does NSA mean?” This is a brief history of how the agency came into being and started abusing its mission.

NSA turns focus on American public, culls information
Madeleine Brand talks to The New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer about the increase in surveilance of American citizens by the "National Security Agency." Mayer has been investigating the national security apparatus for years.

For Thomas Drake, a [whistle blower and] former employee of the NSA, today was supposed to be his day in court. He was facing 10 felony charges, including violations of the Espionage Act, for passing state secrets to a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and he faced 35 years in prison.

However, last Friday he took a deal and pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a government computer. So now it's likely that he will be fined, but not face any jail time.

Drake's prosecution and the back story suggests that the NSA, which is supposed to focus on foreign threats to US security; it has turned inward and is compiling databases of information about American citizens:

• It keeps a copy of every email sent
• keeps track of every computer search
• keeps track of every bank transaction...
• So the dystopian, Orwellian "Big Brother" nightmare of telescreens watching all the time is back on schedule.

NSA used to just spy overseas, but why limit itself? (Welcome to the Police State)
Gov't overreaches on a suspected leak (Washington Post)

Rep. calls for end to War on Afghanistan

10 Years Too Long: Rep. Barbara Lee Renews Calls for End to Afghan War After Killing of Osama bin Laden

In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the 2001 resolution [belatedly] authorizing the "use of force" in Afghanistan.

Today [after the Obama administration's extrajudicial killing of Osama], she is a leading advocate for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. She is also for repealing the authorization that grants a president the authority to use force without a formal "declaration of war" issued by Congress.

“While the head of al-Qaeda is no longer around, we have to really address the root causes of terrorism and understand that we have to refocus our resources and our strategy in a way that begins to get us out of Afghanistan,” Lee says. Democracy Now! also speaks to filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his "Rethink Afghanistan" campaign and journalist Anand Gopal, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan. More

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