At the Drive In

I’ve put this off long enough.  I’ve enjoyed the fruits and sweetness of a brief entanglement with bliss and despair long enough.  It is time that I get down to business, call a spade a spade and then pick up my spade and put it to its intended use.  I am done with my creature comforts and of protecting what has yet to be taken, as if what has already been taken has not been egregious enough.

Perhaps I should qualify the comforts I enjoy today, at the edge of this springboard, by mentioning where this journey began for me.

“National Security” versus “Food Insecurity”: One in Seven Hungry in America as Obama Prepares for Syrian War

By Rady Ananda
Global Research

The number of starving US citizens during Obama’s terms in office is a whopping one in seven, worse than the global average of one in eight. As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents.

Hunger Games: Republicrats seek $20 billion cut to Food Stamps

They required the entire nation but themselves to buy ObamaCare, and they still get all their profit shares, and they have their wars, ecocide and population reduction, and they got their bailouts, but for us?  Starve. ~Ed.

A Socialist Worker Editorial

UNEMPLOYMENT IS stubbornly high, and many people are still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. So what’s Congress’ plan to get people back to work? Here’s their grand idea: Make the unemployed go hungry to really motivate them to find a job. [emphasis added]

On June 20, by a margin of 234 to 195, the House defeated the proposed farm bill that emerged from the House Agriculture Subcommittee. The bill, which sets agriculture policy as well as spending on nutrition assistance, would cut $20.1 billion over 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps.

A new center of the resistance in Greece

Supporters of the ERT workers’ occupation rally outside the headquarters in Athens (Panos Petrou)

By Panos Petrou
Socialist Worker

The resistance to austerity and social crisis in Greece has united behind a workers’ occupation of the state TV and radio station ERT after the government — for the first time since Greece was ruled by a military junta–tried to shut down the broadcaster. For more than a week, thousands of people have gathered on the grounds of the ERT headquarters to defend the occupiers from an assault by riot police.

There is a War on Ordinary People and Feminists are Needed at the Front

By John Pilger
Global Research

As editor of the Daily Mail in 1970s and 80s, David English invented a newspaper for those urgently seeking membership of the English middle classes. Whether his readers ever achieved their ambitions was beside the point; their prejudices and illusions were reflected, often brilliantly. Women were central to his project. The Mail became “their” paper, boasting a new “media feminism” that subtly divided men and women into opposing camps and added a dash of moral panic.

This is now standard media practice. “Most weeks some lovely, caring berks tell me I am a man-hating witch,” wrote Suzanne Moore recently in the Guardian, “so let’s get it out there. Sometimes I am. The acceptable kind of suck-it-up feminism (I love men really!) is hard to sustain after yet more abuse stories… Do I think all men are rapists? No. Do I think all women can be raped. Yes?”

Measuring Up As Men

By Volaar

“I call on men and boys everywhere to take a stand against the mistreatment of girls and women. It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.”  — Desmond Tutu, November, 2012

Not three months prior to Tutu’s statement, two teenage boys brutally assaulted, humiliated and traumatized a sixteen year old girl who was inebriated past the point of being able to take care of herself, let alone call for help from others.

To this very day, the victim’s family and the victim continue to receive death threats and threats of bodily harm from the victim’s teenage peers in the Ohio town of Steubenville, population under 19,000.

Rivero: All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars

Commentary by Chris Pratt
Questions of Conscience

Twelve trillion US dollars in banker bailouts, billions more in quantitative easing that now will continue monthly. Constant war and military interventions, yet people keep voting Republican or Democrat as if this is the answer. Our sons and daughters are being sacrificed. FOR WHAT? For freedom and democracy? Do you really think so?

The film below is well-researched and less than 45 minutes long. If you review it on its factual merits versus the propaganda that has been drilled into your head since birth, perhaps an awakening will occur.

Portland occupiers block foreclosure eviction

Another Portland Homeowner Stands Strong Against Modern Redlining

By Pete Shaw
Portland Occupier

July 28, 2012

Story and Photos by Pete Shaw

When the clock ticks past midnight into Saturday July 28th the Multnomah County Sheriff will be able to enforce an eviction notice issued by the Circuit Court of Multnomah County on the house of Annette Steele of 4022 NE 14th Avenue. But Steele, her family, her friends, and her neighbors are not planning on her going anywhere.

May the Fourth Be With You

By Volaar

I first began my journey to understand Kent State as a result of a woman who confided in me regarding her husband’s wartime PTSD. She was at that time working with Alan Canfora on his life-long project to bring the Kent State Massacre back into the national spotlight. For Alan and his friends who were either maimed, wounded like him, or slaughtered, justice has yet to be served for the heinous offenses of May 4, 1970.

Jew or Genital?

A Story in Three Pieces

By Volaar

 I should have suspected that the future would not be anything like it had been promised to us in 1977.  During a compulsory sex education course one of our football coaches had the indubitable privilege of referring to our nether regions as, “gentiles.” 

The Obama-nation

By Volaar

The “Honorable Michael B. Mukasey?”  At this juncture I could express shock, disbelief and horror at such a thought after reading former FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley’s article available via Information Clearinghouse and also at the Huffington Post.  But I won’t.

Rowley takes exception that such a relic from the Bush Administration could be called upon by any academic institution, let alone one involved in the training of professional attorneys, to speak on the subject of ethics and the implementation of unethical, often illegal, policies.

Fast, Furious and Outrageous

By Volaar

Wayne Madsen has learned from his contacts within the Beltway intelligence community that Jared Lee Loughner is an “MK-ULTRA” programmed assassin and that US District Judge John Roll and Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords were targetted for assassination.  The reason for the decision to target Judge Roll and Congresswoman Giffords has to do with their knowledge

Noam Chomsky Addresses Occupy Boston

On Oct. 22, Chomsky said the Occupy movement is unprecedented… and points out the two greatest threats to the human species: nuclear war and ecocide.

Occupiers vs. Empire

By YaBasta

50 Ways to Leave Your Banker

By Kimberly Thorpe
Mother Jones

At last count, Steven Katz owed $80,000 on his six credit cards, and he has no intention of paying any of it off. In fact, he’d like to show you how to be like him—a “credit terrorist” in open revolt against the banking system. (Image by Christoff Hitz)

Katz is the founder of Debtorboards.com (“Sue Your Creditor and Win!”), a five-year-old online forum where he’s collected countless tricks and tactics for evading and repelling persistent creditors. He’s written how-tos on shielding your assets from seizure, luring collection agencies into expensive lawsuits, and frustrating private investigators looking for debtors on the run.

Occupy London wins over church; scares Canary Wharf

By COTO Report

When St Paul’s Cathedral threatened litigation against occupiers, it drew bad publicity and backed down. But Canary Wharf Plc., the business and commercial estate that is private property and home to the European headquarters of many of the world’s biggest banks including Barclays, HSBC, Citigroup and Credit Suisse, won a court injunction to keep all protesters off its property.

Greece run by financial terrorists

By Max Keiser

Global stock markets have plunged over Greece’s shock announcement that it would hold a referendum on an EU bailout deal. The decision has raised fears that a rejection of the unpopular EU agreement will renew risks of a Greek default and might even force the country to leave the eurozone.

The Logical Outcome of the Occupy Movement

By Timothy V. Gatto
LiberalPro

Hopefully many of you are realizing exactly what options remain. If we can’t change American politics through the ballot box, what alternative is left?

When the media asks people in the Occupy Movement what it is they want, the answer given by those that understand what the movement is all about, give their reasons for being there but add that they are not speaking for the movement, only for themselves. This is the purest form of democracy. Claiming to represent anyone else besides you is the correct way to respond. Most of us have many of the same goals, but it would be presumptuous to say that anyone represents the movement.

One thing has become abundantly clear, and this is probably the most important part of the movement; most of the 99%’ers are not asking the United States government to do a thing.

Rioting Across America – The Great Depression

The US in the 1930s:

November 2: General Strike In Oakland

By Farooque Chowdhury
Countercurrents.org

Oakland is going to observe a general strike on November 2. The strike will be “against the growing gap between the rich and everybody else,” said the website of Occupy Oakland. “The whole world is watching Oakland,” OO said in a statement. “Let’s show [the world] what is possible.” The OO announced on its website that it is planning a march to the Port of Oakland, the US’ fifth busiest, to “shut it down.” New agency reported that tens of thousands of people are expected to participate in the general strike. It was also reported that organized labor will extend support. These are signs of growing discontent.

The decision for city-wide general strike was passed by Occupy Oakland General Assembly by a 96.9% majority. The OO has urged other groups nationwide to organize similar events.