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On student protests and principled defiance.

There are snipers on the roof of the school where I got my MA.

There are police beating students at the school where I got my PhD.

At each school, I studied authoritarian regimes and how they brainwash people into believing that state brutality is not only expected, but deserved.

* * *

At Indiana University, I wrote my master’s thesis on how the government of Uzbekistan invented a terrorist group, “Akromiya,” in order to justify their killing of over seven hundred protesters in the city of Andijon in May 2005.

I wrote parts of my thesis in the Indiana Memorial Union: a student center where I would drink coffee and work. A student center where there are now snipers on the roof, their weapons aimed at students on the ground.

Indiana University calls the IMU “the lifeblood of IU Bloomington”. I wonder how much lifeblood will be spilled. Matt Pierce, an Indiana state representative, warns that IU could become the next Kent State.

IU students are protesting Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. Since October 2023, the Israeli military has killed over 34,000 Palestinian civilians, about half of whom were children. Some Palestinian children died in bombings. Others were shot in the head by Israeli snipers.

Doctors in Gaza have noted the wildly disproportionate death toll, saying Israel’s focus on children is unlike anything they have seen.

“This is not a normal war,” says Canadian doctor Fozia Alvi. “The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Did Lockdowns Set a Global Revolt in Motion?

April 14, 2024

Did Lockdowns Set a Global Revolt in Motion?

“The intellectual parlor game is over. This is a real-life struggle for freedom itself. It’s resist and rebuild or doom.”

My first article on the coming backlash – admittedly wildly optimistic – went to print April 24, 2020. After 6 weeks of lockdown, I confidently predicted a political revolt, a movement against masks, a population-wide revulsion against the elites, a demand to reject “social distancing” and streaming-only life, plus widespread disgust at everything and everyone involved.

I was off by four years. I wrongly assumed back then that society was still functioning and that our elites would be responsive to the obvious flop of the whole lockdown scheme. I assumed that people were smarter than they proved to be. I also did not anticipate just how devastating the effects of lockdown would be: in terms of learning loss, economic chaos, cultural shock, and the population-wide demoralization and loss of trust.

The forces that set in motion those grim days were far more deep than I knew at the time. They involved a willing complicity from tech, media, pharma, and the administrative state at all levels of society.

There is every evidence that it was planned to be exactly what it became; not just a foolish deployment of public health powers but a “great reset” of our lives. The newfound powers of the ruling class were not given up so easily, and it took far longer for people to shake off the trauma than I had anticipated.

Is that backlash finally here? If so, it’s about time.

New literature is emerging to document it all.

The new book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy is a viciously partisan, histrionic, and gravely inaccurate account that gets nearly everything wrong but one: vast swaths of the public are fed up, not with democracy but its opposite of ruling class hegemony…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Psychological Battle for Truth – And the Power of the Farmers’ Uprising. The WEF’s “Disaster Agenda”

April 3, 2024

The Psychological Battle for Truth – And the Power of the Farmers’ Uprising. The WEF’s “Disaster Agenda”

The ‘deep state’ has no power over you. None. It can only try and make you believe it does.

And in this it is very clever, using sophisticated psychological techniques that give the impression of holding the dominant position and exercising the dominant power.

But this is a chimera; and immediately one sees it as such one manifests the authoritative position and the deep state is in check; it can only operate defensively.

This it does by putting up ever greater barriers to freedom of expression, movement and choice.

It knows it’s on the losing side, so has to pull all the tricks in the trade to make itself appear to be in control. It’s a psychological battlefield.

Edward Bernays, the founder of modern advertising, has had much to do with weaponising the powers of perception and deception. He found that you can get people to believe and do almost anything once you learn how to exploit their psyche with carefully chosen imagery and words.

Once you tap into people’s widespread subconscious attraction to the trappings of seductive consumables.

The deep state’s corporate/banker led ‘seeming’ global dominance draws on Bernays’s cunning, using advanced insights concerning how to influence the functions of different areas of the human brain.

The objective is to come up with a blanket like web of virtual signposting pointing to the direction life must go in in order to overcome some purposefully manufactured crisis. A crisis that is claimed will otherwise cook, starve or destroy people and the planet.

People in a state of funk take all this to be real, of course, and plod on with their tunnel vision acceptance of the pathological diktats of the status quo.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Revolution In Air As Brits Burn Power Bills Amid Historic Energy Crisis

October 3, 2022

Revolution In Air As Brits Burn Power Bills Amid Historic Energy Crisis

Energy prices for millions of households across the UK rose on Saturday. Soaring power bills amid the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation led to a continuation of growing discontent ahead of the dark winter.

Thousands of Brits marched in London and other metro areas this weekend in protest of being thrown into energy poverty while inflation is at forty-year highs.

There were countless videos on social media showing Brits holding signs about their dire financial situation. “Can’t afford to live,” “Freeze profit, not people,” and “Eat the Tories,” read some of the signs people held.

The protest was organized by Don’t Pay UK, an anonymous group spearheading the effort to have more than one million Brits boycott paying their power bills this winter (the movement is nearly 200,000 strong).

“Millions of us simply won’t be able to keep our heads above water and many will freeze when the weather turns cold,” a spokesman for the campaign said.

The protest coincided with the new energy price cap that took effect on Saturday, increasing the power bill average per household from £1,971 to £2,500 annually. Without this government intervention, annual bills would’ve continued skyrocketing.

New Prime Minister Liz Truss said that the government’s support for households and businesses shields them from energy hyperinflation. Meanwhile, Truss’ support is already in turmoil. Labour leads the Conservatives by a stunning 33%, according to a recent YouGov poll, up from 14% when she assumed power just three weeks ago.

However, the price cap for a typical household has doubled since last year — the massive increase has sparked discontent among Brits who are crushed by a cost-of-living crisis.

The UK Misery Index is at its worst level in three decades. We noted that Half Of UK Households Will Be In Fuel-Poverty By January last week.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Struggle For What’s Essential

May 30, 2022

President of the Pueblo Shuar Arutam of Ecuador, Josefina Tunki, during a protest along with other Shuar women. (Photo: Comunicación PSHA)

THE STRUGGLE FOR WHAT’S ESSENTIAL

Global mining companies have used the pandemic to push unwanted projects on vulnerable communities, who are fighting back — and sometimes winning.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

— Arundhati Roy, April 2020

Just over two years ago when lockdowns were being declared like dominoes around the world, there was a brief moment when the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to hold the potential for much-needed reflection. Could it lead to a reversal away from the profit-driven ecological and socio-economic dead end we’ve been propelling toward?

Arundhati Roy’s call to critical reflection was published in early April 2020. At the time, she was observing the early evidence, on one hand, of the devastating toll of the pandemic as a result of extraordinary inequality, the privatized health care system, and the rule of big business in the U.S., which continued to play out along lines of class and race.

She was also writing with horror at how the Modi government in India was enacting an untenable lockdown on a population of over a billion people without notice or planning, in a context of overlapping economic and political crises…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Climate Revolution’: Scientists Launch Global Civil Disobedience Campaign

April 5, 2022

Scientists hold sign calling for a climate revolution

Scientists hold a sign reading, “Climate Revolution Or We Will Lose Everything” at a rally. This week, scientists around the world will occupy universities to demand a “Climate Revolution” following the release of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Photo: Twitter/@ScientistRebel1)

‘Climate Revolution’: Scientists Launch Global Civil Disobedience Campaign

“Scientist Rebellion will be on the streets between April 4th and 9th, acting like our house is on fire,” said organizers. “Because it is.”

Scientists from around the world on Monday mobilized to demand a “Climate Revolution,” holding rallies and staging acts of civil disobedience with the goal of making the planetary emergency “impossible to ignore.”

With a kick-off timed to coincide with Monday’s release of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), researchers across the globe this week will participate in the Scientist Rebellion, staging strikes and occupations at universities, research institutes, and scientific journals to demand that the community speak out forcefully against continued fossil fuel emissions to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis.”

“In short, there’s no worthy reason for me to be doing this work if I’m not also pushing for climate action.”

“We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible,” said Dr. Rose Abramoff, an American climate scientist, referring to the goal set by the Paris climate agreement in 2015. “We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible.”

For scientists, Abramoff added, “it is no longer sufficient to do our research and expect others to read our publications and understand the severity and urgency of the climate crisis.”

One neuroscientist named Jonathan posted a video on social media explaining why he is taking part in the Scientist Rebellion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadian Police Arrive To “Remove” Freedom Convoy Protesters From Ambassador Bridge

February 12, 2022

Canadian Police Arrive To “Remove” Freedom Convoy Protesters From Ambassador Bridge

Following Friday’s ‘state of emergency’ declaration in Ontario, which empower police to finally clear the protesters blocking the Ambassador Bridge (of course, the Canadian government could have just rolled back the COVID restrictions that inspired the protests to begin with, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has used some truly bizarre rhetoric in its defense), Canadian police have moved in early Saturday to start making arrests and breaking the protest.

Protesters at the busiest land crossing between the US and Canada staunchly remained overnight despite the threats of violence from the Canadian government. The blockade has forced auto makers in the US to shutter production due to a shortage of parts (while some have been forced to fly parts across the border).

According to the AP, a city bus and school bus with the police arrived on scene Saturday morning, and officers got in formation to start clearing out the protesters.

A city bus and school bus arrived at the scene Saturday morning and police moved in formation toward them. But the protesters remained defiant.

Windsor police immediately warned that anyone blocking the streets could be subject to arrest and their vehicles could be seized.

The news was met earlier with defiance by protesters.

At the Ambassador Bridge, an unidentified person grabbed a microphone and addressed the crowd, asking if they wanted to stay or leave when the deadline rolled around. By a show of applause, it was agreed they would stay. “OK,” the man said. “Let’s stand tall.” The protesters responded by singing the Canadian national anthem.

Using a megaphone, one of the protesters alerted the others that police were coming for the demonstrators. Video of the situation quickly made its way online courtesy of @JackPosobiec.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why is the world protesting so much? A new study claims to have some answers.

November 10, 2021

Why is the world protesting so much? A new study claims to have some answers.

Activists wearing cutouts of world leaders’ faces outside the COP26 summit on Nov. 2 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Are we in a historic age of protest? A new study released Thursday that looked at demonstrations between 2006 and 2020 found that the number of protest movements around the world had more than tripled in less than 15 years. Every region saw an increase, the study found, with some of the largest protest movements ever recorded — including the farmers’ protests that began in 2020 in India, the 2019 protests against President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests since 2013.

Titled “World Protests: A Study of Key Protest Issues in the 21st Century,” the study comes from a team of researchers with German think tank Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a nonprofit organization based at Columbia University and adds to a growing body of literature about our era of increasing protests. Looking closely at more than 900 protest movements or episodes across 101 countries and territories, the authors came to the conclusion that we are living through a period of history like the years around 1848, 1917 or 1968 “when large numbers of people rebelled against the way things were, demanding change.”

But why? Here, the authors highlight one particular problem: democratic failure. Their research found that a majority of the protest events they recorded — 54 percent — were prompted by a perceived failure of political systems or representation. Roughly 28 percent included demands for what the authors described as “real democracy,” the most of any demand found by the researchers. Other themes included inequality, corruption and the lack of action over climate change. But the study’s authors say policymakers do not respond adequately.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Extinction Rebellion: From the UK to Ghana and the US, Climate Activists Take Civil Disobedience World-Wide

November 22, 2018

Extinction Rebellion: From the UK to Ghana and the US, Climate Activists Take Civil Disobedience World-Wide

More than 100 people were arrested during a week of action across the UK as protesters demanded the government treat the threats posed by climate change as a crisis and take drastic steps to cut emissions to net zero by 2025.

Thousands of people joined a mass protest that blocked roads and bridges in central London, with some gluing themselves to government buildings to draw attention to what they see as climate breakdown.

This was the birth of Extinction Rebellion, a movement that calls for mass economic disruption using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to halt the destruction of the planet and its wildlife and prevent catastrophic climate change.

Around the world, environmental campaign groups and activists watched the action unfold. In London, there is a growing hope that this could be the start to a new form of international mobilisation for climate action.

‘A game changer’

From the US to Ghana and New Zealand to Western Europe, campaigners have shown enthusiastic support for Extinction Rebellion’s declaration of climate emergency.

Jamie Henn, co-founder of the campaign group 350, said watching the launch of Extinction Rebellion in London from the UShad been “incredibly exciting” and embodied “a growing sense of anger and desire for radical solutions”.

Henn said he was confident Extinction Rebellion would inspire similar non-violent direct climate actions in the US over the coming months, but whether the movement was one that could endure the test of time was yet to be seen.

Margaret Klein Salamon, founder of the US grassroot group Climate Mobilization, said she believed Extinction Rebellion is “a game changer” for the climate movement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UK scientists risk prison to urge action

November 1, 2018

UK scientists risk prison to urge action

Orangutans are among the most endangered ape species. Image by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash

A group of British scientists and their supporters is willing to risk a prison term to press governments to tackle climate change and environmental crisis.

LONDON, 31 October, 2018 − A growing number of British academics, writers and activists say they are ready to go to prison in support of their demands for action on the environment.

Scientists are not normally renowned for their political activism, and the UK is hardly a hotbed of determined and risky protest against its rulers. But, if this group of nearly 100 British scientists and their backers is right, all that may be on the brink of changing.

Today sees the launch of ExtinctionRebellion, which describes itself as an international movement using mass civil disobedience to force governments to enter World War Two-level mobilisation mode, in response to climate breakdown and ecological crisis.

The group is launching a Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government “for criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse” at the Houses of Parliament in central London.

“We need ExtinctionRebellion as part of the mosaic of responses to the extremely precarious situation we now find ourselves in”

From today it promises “repeated acts of disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience” if the government does not respond seriously to its demands, and says “there will be mass arrests.”

“Now is the time because we are out of time. There is nothing left to lose.”

The group’s demands include the declaration by the UK government of a state of emergency, action to create a zero carbon economy by 2025, and the establishment of a national assembly of “ordinary people” to decide what the zero carbon future will look like.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As the fracking protesters show, a people’s rebellion is the only way to fight climate breakdown

October 24, 2018

As the fracking protesters show, a people’s rebellion is the only way to fight climate breakdown

Our politicians, under the influence of big business, have failed us. As they take the planet to the brink, it’s time for disruptive, nonviolent disobedience

Illustration by Bill Bragg

It is hard to believe today, but the prevailing ethos among the educated elite was once public service. As the historian Tony Judt documented in Ill Fares the Land, the foremost ambition among graduates in the 1950s and 60s was, through government or the liberal professions, to serve their country. Their approach might have been patrician and often blinkered, but their intentions were mostly public and civic, not private and pecuniary.

Today, the notion of public service seems as quaint as a local post office. We expect those who govern us to grab what they can, permitting predatory banks and corporations to fleece the public realm, then collect their reward in the form of lucrative directorships. As the Edelman Corporation’s Trust Barometer survey reveals, trust worldwide has collapsed in all major institutions, and government is less trusted than any other.

As for the economic elite, as the consequences of their own greed and self-interest emerge, they seek, like the Roman oligarchs fleeing the collapse of the western empire, only to secure their survival against the indignant mob. An essay by the visionary author Douglas Rushkoff this summer, documenting his discussion with some of the world’s richest people, reveals that their most pressing concern is to find a refuge from climate breakdown, and economic and societal collapse. Should they move to New Zealand or Alaska? How will they pay their security guards once money is worthless? Could they upload their minds on to supercomputers? Survival Condo, the company turning former missile silos in Kansas into fortified bunkers, has so far sold every completed unit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Coming Collapse

July 2, 2018

The Coming Collapse

The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Faced With a Fracking Giant, This Small Town Just Legalized Civil Disobedience

May 19, 2016

Faced With a Fracking Giant, This Small Town Just Legalized Civil Disobedience

A new first-in-the-nation law will shield residents from arrest as they use direct action to stop fracking-wastewater injection wells.

A tiny community sitting on a 27-square-mile piece of Western Pennsylvania wanted to send a big message to the energy company planning to deposit toxic fracking wastewater under its neighborhoods. And its 700 residents wanted it to be perfectly legal for them to loudly object.

Grant Township had seen what happens when people nationwide take to the streets to protest bullying corporations: Arrests. Lots of them.

So Grant Township planned ahead. Two weeks ago, it passed a law that protects its residents from arrest if they protest Pennsylvania General Energy Company’s (PGE) creation of an injection well.

Residents believe this law is the first in the United States to legalize nonviolent civil disobedience against toxic wastewater injection wells. “We’re doing it to safeguard the residents and protect as many people as possible,” Township Supervisor Stacy Long said.

Long said legalizing direct action is a response to the ongoing problem of rural residents seeing their voices excluded from discussions between state governments and big corporations on issues that have local ramifications.

Like so many other people in communities dealing with fracking and its waste, residents worry the injected wastewater will leak into their drinking-water sources.

PGE wants to repurpose an existing well in Grant Township into a Class II disposal well. These wells are used to deposit toxic wastewater deep underground. The wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas drilling and can contain toxic metals, benzene, and radioactive materials, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates 180,000 Class II injection wells currently operate, injecting more than 2 billion gallons of brine a day. About 20 percent are disposal wells.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Meet Alexandra Elbakyan – The 27 Year Old Student Who Put 50 Million Stolen Research Articles Online

April 3, 2016

Meet Alexandra Elbakyan – The 27 Year Old Student Who Put 50 Million Stolen Research Articles Online

The issue of academic journals and whether or not they should be available to everyone for free online was a topic that catapulted into the national consciousness a little over three years ago with the untimely and tragic death of child prodigy Aaron Swartz.

For those of you not up to speed on that story, here’s a brief summary from the post, Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration:

Aaron ran afoul of the law due to his actions in the fall of 2010 when he downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the nonprofit online database JSTOR. While JSTOR could have pursued charges against Aaron for his activities, they decided against it. However, our Federal Government was not so kind. They decided to make an example of Aaron and charged him with multiple felonies. Charges that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Aaron was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment this past Friday, in an apparent suicide.

Many contend, and I agree with them, that the U.S. government is responsible for driving Aaron to his death by going after him as if he was a mass murderer for an act of civil dissidence.

Interestingly enough, attempts to scare others from following in his footsteps have backfired spectacularly, as the actions of 27-year old Alexandra Elbakyan of Kazakhstan demonstrate.

As reported by the Washington Post:

Alexandra Elbakyan is a highbrow pirate in hiding.

The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Activists Announce Global Campaign of Civil Disobedience to “Break Free From Fossil Fuels”

December 11, 2015

Climate Activists Announce Global Campaign of Civil Disobedience to “Break Free From Fossil Fuels”

Climate justice and environmental campaigners announced plans today at COP21 in Paris to escalate the number of non-violent civil disobedience actions against fossil fuel projects over the next year.

The groups are planning a concentrated week of global actions in May of 2016. So far, events are being planned in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. Additional countries under consideration include Ecuador, India, and the UK.

Activists also plan several peaceful actions in Paris this Saturday, despite the French government’s ban on protest in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks here.

“The science is clear: we need to keep at least 80%, if not more, of fossil fuels in the ground,” said Payal Parekh, the global managing director of 350.org. “It’s up to us to break free from fossil fuels and accelerate the shift towards a just transition to 100% renewable energy. It’s in our hands to close the ambition gap.”

“Governments aren’t getting the job done. It’s up to civil society to do it,” she concluded.

Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian activist from the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, also spoke today in Paris about the need for negotiators to talking about global warming but without stopping the dependence on ff – this is hypocrisy at best.

“A 1.5 degree ceiling does not mean anything if a complete fossil fuel freeze is not on the table. How can you achieve this while investments are still going on in the fossil fuel sector?”

He chastised the negotiations for talking about global warming action without discussing the need to end global dependence on fossil fuels . “This is hypocrisy at best,” Bassey said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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