A Theory of Chronic Pain

A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain

By Denis G. Rancourt

We like to nurture a species self-image where we are radically different from ants and bees. The idea goes like this. Ants and bees are automatons completely governed by chemical and physical signals and each individual in the colony has its place which determines its physical body characteristics, adapted to the function of its class.

CA Prosecutor Says People Have a Right to Self Defence in Unlawful Police Brutality

By Freedom Watch

Judge Napolitano interviews Tony Rackauckas, Orange County District Attorney in the brutal slaying of  Kelly Thomas. Two officers have been charged in his murder.

Two Fullerton police officers charged in homeless man’s death

Fullerton cops Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli charged in Kelly Thomas murder. Booking photos from Orange County District Attorney's Office

By Abby Sewell, Richard Winton and Scott Gold
Los Angeles Times

Orange County prosecutors charged two veteran Fullerton police officers in the death of a mentally ill homeless man, accusing them of a callous cascade of violence against Kelly Thomas as he begged for his life.

Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas on Wednesday said what began as routine questioning by police devolved into a “beating at the hands of an angry police officer,” with other officers eventually joining in. He stressed that Thomas did not provoke the attack and that all of his movements were purely defensive.

Four stages to a ‘Big Brother’ government

By Forbidden Knowledge TV

In 1985, ex-KGB agent, Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, explained the tactics of “ideological subversion,” the job of slowly changing the perception of a target group, in four stages. He said that all four stages would happen in the US if
“the schmucks” were allowed to destabilize the economy, to do away with free-market competition and to install a “Big Brother” government.

WikiLeaks: The emperor wears no clothes

Now WikiLeaks has laid bare the lies and collusion, we pledge to not just witness but actively participate in its fight for democracy

By John Pilger, et al.
Open Letter posted at The Guardian

We are writing this statement in support of democracy.

Since Sunday, 28 November, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from around the world (the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) have been publishing redacted versions of leaked US diplomatic cables in an ongoing story that has become known as “Cablegate”. The identity of the original leaker is – as yet – unconfirmed.

This is not the first leak of confidential documentation that exposes governmental lies – and it won’t be the last. Secret information has long been used by elites to build and maintain power over huge populations of citizens, workers, armed forces and others. But when the secrets of the elite are revealed, the power they represent can be confronted and reversed.

The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order

The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 1

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:

“For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.” [1]

Journey of a Citizen

BUZZ THIS!

By Robert C. Koehler

Too much awareness is a tough burden to carry. I got an email the other day from a reader who opened up the deep, confusing paradox of being a citizen of the American empire.

“I read that 51 percent of our Federal taxes go to feed the war machine. The fear of the IRS overwhelms the shame I feel, for paying those dollars that go to kill people. Mixing all of the emotions: hypocrisy, shame, guilt, fear, anger, all together equal for me a sense of futility and hopelessness.

“I cannot even point the finger at the biggest killers, when I know that I am part of the problem and am too scared to do anything about it. How can I judge them, when I have blood on my hands also?”

It just so happens this email arrived the same day I sat and talked for an hour with Paul Rogat Loeb, author of the recently updated and re-released Soul of a Citizen, the definitive book on social and political activism — on stepping out of safety and beyond our fear and anger, indeed, beyond all the emotions listed above, and giving public meaning to one’s life.

Michael Moore Slowly Awakening to the Awful Truth?

By Deb JerseyG
Coalition of the Obvious

It seems he has drawn the curtain back just a bit to expose the fake left/right paradigm that is our political system.  He still hasn’t reached COTO status yet but it’s starting to look like maybe Mike isn’t a shill for the dem establishment after all.  Time will tell. ~jg

“The Green They Steal, The Greed They Wear …” a St. Patrick’s Day lament by Michael Moore

COTO Report Goes Down Under: An Interview with Maxwell Igan

By Megan ‘Verb’ Kargher

On behalf of COTO Report, I am pleased to present this 68-minute interview with documentary filmmaker, musician and non-violent non-compliance expert, Max Igan.

Radical Women on International Women’s Day

By Margaret Viggiani
Radical Women

Happy International Women’s Day!

One hundred years ago, at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference, participants from 17 countries voted unanimously to create a day to honor the struggles of workingclass women. International Women’s Day was born, and it’s been celebrated in countries across the globe ever since.

What did the Supreme Court just do to our democracy?

By FreeSpeechForPeople.org

On January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are entitled to spend unlimited funds in our elections.

The First Amendment was never intended to protect corporations.

This cannot stand. Sign up to protest this decision and protect our democracy! Free speech is for people — not corporations.

Fuck SCOTUS and Corporate Rule: Let’s Amend the Constitution

By Alliance for Democracy

Sign the Petition to Amend the Consitution

Alliance for Democracy joins the national cry of outrage over the U.S. Supreme Court opinion allowing unlimited corporate money for political campaigns and affirming the rights of corporations as “persons.”

Today’s Supreme Court opinion in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, a campaign finance law case, opens the floodgates to allow unlimited corporate spending to influence state and federal elections and further entrenches corporate power in our nation.  This 5-4 decision overturns previous Court decisions that limited corporate money in politics. In lifting the previous federal ban on corporate “independent expenditures,” the court has overridden laws in 22 states banning “independent expenditures” by corporations and unions.

Corporatism vs Populism: Golinger on Venezuela and Obama

Interview of Eva Golinger on the US military buildup in Latin America, universal healthcare in Venezuala, education, judicial corruption, and the difference between trade agreements that benefit a few multinational corporations and those that benefit a nation’s populace; plus more.

By Mike Whitney

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama Is Preparing for War in South America; Interview with Eva Golinger

Freedom Rider: Health Care Deceit

By Margaret Kimberley

The health care fiasco has bared the cowardly underbelly of the Democratic Party, which is putty in the hands of President Obama and his co-conspirators in the insurance industry. The conclusion is inescapable: Barack Obama and the majority of the Democrats never had any intention of bringing reform to health care.

Senator Sanders and Michael Moore

In this week’s video, director Michael Moore asks Sen. Bernie Sanders “what is wrong with American capitalism these days?

Sen. Sanders makes a poignant appearance in Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, highlighting, as he does in this episode, precisely the deficiencies of the current political and economic climate and the way the American public is getting screwed in the process.

The End of Capital and the Future of Work

By Kostas Lambos, PhD

In recent years there has been much discussion about a certain end: Some speak of the “end of history”1, others mention the “end of work”2, while the dark powerful hubs of obscurantism present the “end of the world” in the form of eschatological prophecies by charlatans or Hollywood-style creations by certain “future predictors”.

Work, either in the form of food collection activity, or in the form of classical music creation and scientific research in the field of astrophysics and molecular biology, constituted –and still constitutes- the basic element of organized social co-existence and at the same time the sole power for development, setting in effect the measure for any civilization.  

The Tossed Shoe Award

By Robert C. Koehler

“Businesses exist to serve the general welfare. Profit is the means, not the end. It is the reward a business receives for serving the general welfare. When a business fails to serve the general welfare, it forfeits its right to exist.”

Do Adam Smith’s famously forgotten words of caution for capitalists apply to journalism? Is this why, when I go to the newsstand these days, I see my city’s two great newspapers sitting there like twin anorexics, panhandling (I mean pandering) for quarters?

John Pilger: Empire, Obama and America’s Last Taboo

Speech given July 5, 2009
At Socialism 2009, San Francisco
Haymarket Books, International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker
“Building a New Left for a New Era”
Sponsored by Center for Economic Research and Social Change.

Transcribed by Rady Ananda (with subtitles, links and graphics added)

Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies

By Marjorie Cohn

Doris ‘Dobby’ Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant victories for labor and political activists.

Latin America: Social Movements in Times of Economic Crises

By Prof. James Petras

The most striking aspect of the prolonged and deepening world recession/depression is the relative and absolute passivity of the working and middle class in the face of massive job losses, big cuts in wages, health care and pension payments and mounting housing foreclosures. Never in the history of the 20-21st Century has an economic crisis caused so much loss to so many workers, employees, small businesses, farmers and professionals with so little large-scale public protest.

To explore some tentative hypotheses of why there is little organized protest, we need to examine the historical-structural antecedents to the world economic depression.