ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Media Hits & Misses August 10, 2017

Evidence Of Google Blacklisting Assault On Left & Progressive Sites Continues To Grow

  By Andre Damon World Socialist Web Site (8/8/17) A growing number of leading left-wing websites have confirmed that their search traffic from Google has plunged in recent months, adding to evidence that Google, under the cover of a fraudulent campaign against fake news, is implementing a program of systematic and widespread censorship. Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April. The Real News , a nonprofit video news and documentary service, has had its search traffic fall by 37 percent. Another site,…

ALL ARTICLES, Weasel Walker August 10, 2017

John Nichols: Walker’s Crony Capitalism And His ‘Over-The-Top’ Bad Deal

  By John Nichols The Cap Times (8/6/17) If Scott Walker were a fiscal conservative, he would be ashamed of himself. But Walker is not a fiscal conservative. And he has no shame, as Wisconsinites who know how their tax dollars are spent are rapidly discovering. Walker, who has claimed over the years that the state is too impoverished to adequately fund public education, public services and roads, has suddenly determined that Wisconsin has an extra $3 billion to hand off to a controversial multinational corporation that is famous for making big promises to nations and states and then failing…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Mike McCabe for Gov August 10, 2017

Mike McCabe: Democrats Will Win Again When. . .

  By Mike McCabe Blue Jean nation (8/7/17) Over the course of my 57 years, I’ve never seen a time when our public institutions were more disrespected and distrusted. And with good reason. I’ve also never seen a time when government was less responsive to regular people. Over and over, our government is put to work for a privileged few, the wealthy and well-connected. People notice this. They realize their own voices aren’t being heard and their own interests are not being served. That’s a sure recipe for disrespect and distrust of public institutions. These conditions are especially poisonous to…

ALL ARTICLES, Randy Bryce August 10, 2017

Randy Bryce: The Ironworker Challenging Paul Ryan Sees Path To Victory Through Working People

By Daniel Marans The HuffPost (8/6/17) WASHINGTON ― Ironworker Randy Bryce recently got to talking politics with a man he met at his job site. They were working together on building a two-story parking lot for a Veterans Affairs hospital in Milwaukee, and it sounded like the guy had voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Bryce, then-politics coordinator for his union, Iron Workers Local 8, is a committed progressive Democrat. And the man with whom he was conversing surprised him. Rather than express enthusiasm for Trump, the fellow threw up his hands in frustration, wondering why there weren’t more ordinary…

ALL ARTICLES, M. Taylor Columns, Russia Monitor August 10, 2017

WDRT Interview: ‘Commoner Call’ Editor Mark Taylor & Contributing Columnist Dan Peak Talk Politics & Current Events

WDRT (7/22/17) The Commoner Call editor and web site’s “Russia Monitor” columnist Dan Peak have a wide-ranging conversation about a variety of political and current events topics on the appropriately named “Conversations” WDRT 91.9 weekly broadcast. WDRT is a local community based and supported alternative radio station, and located on Main Street in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Link to 59-Minute Audio  

ALL ARTICLES August 10, 2017

Last Call From Allepo: She Rang Me As Bombs Fell… Then She Vanished

  By Mike Thomson BBC Magazine  (8/3/17) Late last year, the BBC’s Mike Thomson received a desperate call from a bomb shelter in the Syrian city of Aleppo. It came from head teacher and mother of three Om Mudar, who pleaded for help getting her terrified family out of the rebel-held part of the city. When Thomson was unable to make contact again, he feared the worst – but, as he explains here, months later a text message arrived that revealed Om’s fate. “The worse thing is the night, it’s so long,” Om tells me, speaking after an especially heavy…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, Health Care August 10, 2017

Litmus Test: Medicare For All Supporters Demanding Dems To ‘Make Your Stand’

Time’s up, Dems! By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (8/8/17) As popular support for single-payer continues to grow and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) prepares to introduce Medicare for All legislation, the Establishment wing of the Democratic Party is reportedly “alarmed” by the shifting dynamics and fearful “of primary election challenges” if they don’t support Sanders’s proposal. “Democrats who don’t get behind it could find themselves on the wrong side of the most energetic wing of the party,” Politico reported Monday. Political organizers and supporters of Sanders are already speaking out about how lawmakers’ responses could impact upcoming elections. “Any Democrat worth their salt that doesn’t unequivocally…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism August 10, 2017

Trump’s Continued Silence On Minn. Mosque Attack ‘An Outrage,’ Says Rep. Ellison

  By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (8/9/17) President Donald Trump’s continued silence following the recent bombing of a mosque in a Minneapolis suburb “is an outrage,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said Wednesday. The explosion at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn., took place Saturday morning. While no one was injured after an explosive was thrown through the window of the imman’s office, Mohamed Omar, the center’s executive director, said Sunday: “We feel like it’s much deeper and scarier than like something random,” adding, “It’s so scary.” Gov. Mark Dayton, for his part, called the attack “an act of terrorism,” and said the damage done to “this sacred site…

ALL ARTICLES August 10, 2017

‘Look Behind The Curtain’ – Documents Reveal Monsanto Behavior Pushing Risky RoundUp Herbicide

  By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (8/2/17) A trove of Monsanto’s internal records released on Tuesday raises serious concerns about  company efforts to influence media reports and scientific research related to risks posed by is popular weedkiller, Roundup. As the New York Times reported: Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes‘s website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment. A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella,…

ALL ARTICLES, Trumpenstan August 7, 2017

Nothing Is Sacred: Trump’s White House Now Targeting The Statue Of Liberty

  By Finton O’Toole The Guardian (8/3/17) The surest mark of regime change is when they start attacking the statues. Americans appreciate this as well as anyone – hence the carefully stage-manged toppling of Saddam Hussein in Firdos square in Baghdad in 2003. Stephen Miller, one of the key ideologues of the Trump regime, surely knew what he was doing when he took a symbolic axe to the Statue of Liberty in a heated argument with CNN’s Jim Acosta over the president’s proposals to drastically limit legal immigration. In fairness, Miller did not attack the statue itself. A horde of boat-trip owners and Liberty…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, FEATURE August 7, 2017

The Lesson Of The Oak Creek Massacre: Hate Lost

The Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. To learn more: sikhtempleofwisconsin.com   By Christopher Mathias The HuffPost (8/5/17) OAK CREEK, Wis. — On a tragic day at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin five years ago, the doors were unlocked, as they often were. Today, visitors and congregants must buzz to get inside. Still, all are welcome and encouraged to set up a visit to the temple, including people who aren’t Sikh. There’s a box of head coverings ― square cloths in a variety of colors and designs, including the Stars and Stripes ― for visitors to wear. Delicious and freshly cooked food…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, Deep State, FEATURE, Police State America, Surveillance State August 7, 2017

Whither Our Future: Orwell Or Huxley? It May Well Be That Huxley Was Right

  Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:   “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us….

ALL ARTICLES August 7, 2017

Amid Trump’s Chilling War On Media, Press Freedom Groups Expose Threats To US Journalists And Flow Of Info To Americans

TheCommonerCall.org   By Julia Conley Common Dreams (8/2/17) The Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are among more than 20 groups partnering to introduce a new website which tracks threats to press freedom in the United States. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker launched Wednesday to gather data on arrests of journalists, physical attacks on reporters, equipment searches and seizures, prosecutions of the legal spreading of information (recently denounced as “leaks” by the Trump administration), and other threats to the free press. So far in 2017, the site has tracked 19 arrests of journalists; 12 equipment searches and seizures; 11…

ALL ARTICLES August 7, 2017

State Dept. Weighs Eliminating Democracy Promotion As Goal

  By Max Greenwood The Hill (8/1/17) The State Department is considering eliminating the promotion of democracy from its mission statement as part of an effort to overhaul the agency, according to a Washington Post columnist. According to an email sent to State Department employees on Friday and obtained by the Post’s Josh Rogin, statements on the agency’s mission, purpose and ambition do not contain language regarding the promotion of democracy. The statements are being circulated among agency employees for comment and could be changed, according to Rogin, who writes about foreign policy and national security. The department’s current mission statement clearly lays out its…

ALL ARTICLES, FEATURE, Weasel Walker August 7, 2017

$3 Billion Foxconn Corporate Welfare Bill Includes $10M Giveaway For Walker & GOP Pal Fiserv

  Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (8/2/17) A bill that would provide $3 billion in state giveaways for Foxconn to locate a manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin also includes millions in tax breaks for a big campaign contributor to Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The bill, which is expected to be considered by the legislature this month, includes $10 million in tax breaks intended to keep Fiserv, a Brookfield-based company that makes products for banks and credit unions, from relocating its headquarters to another state. The company is considering sites around Milwaukee, but has not ruled out locating its new headquarters outside Wisconsin. Fiserv is a…

ALL ARTICLES August 7, 2017

With FCC Now At Full Staffing, Net Neutrality Is Once More Under Threat

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (8/4/17) The Senate on Thursday confirmed two nominees for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, and Brendan Carr, a Republican—bringing the agency back to full staff and sparking fears among Open Internet activists and lawmakers that net neutrality will soon be under threat once more. As Politico reports, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai now “has the votes he needs to roll back” the 2015 Open Internet Order, which prevents large telecommunications companies from controlling online content and requires that all traffic be treated equally. He also has an ally in Carr, who was a lawyer for large telecom companies. Activists and Democratic lawmakers…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, M. Taylor Columns, Russia Monitor, Trumpenstan August 7, 2017

Russia Monitor: The Explosive Magnitsky Testimony You Probably Missed

      By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/7/17) It’s predictable and, to a certain extent, understandable that congressional republicans and diehard Trump fans dismiss the growing Russia investigation as some kind of Clinton-excusing witch hunt. Despite an ever growing, constantly evolving list of witnesses, secret meetings, Trump/Russia business ties and embarrassing ‘coincidences’, the Trumpsters wave it all away as simply democratic party sour grapes. Partisanship is a kind opaque blinkered view of reality that, to a certain extent – even if morally wrong – is understandable. What is not understandable is the number of lefties I have…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, FEATURE August 7, 2017

This Billionaire Mega-Donor Gets It: The Democrats Need To Push Progressive Agenda

Time’s awasting, Dems!   By  Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/17/17) As Democrats scramble to form a coherent and inspiring message for the 2018 congressional elections in the face of a historically unpopular president, billionaire Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer argued in a recent interview that they should look no further than the platform of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). While he acknowledged it is “much too early to be talking about 2020,” Steyer nonetheless insisted that Sanders’s ambitious ideas for tackling the various crises facing the United States and the world—from climate change to staggering inequality to a dysfunctional healthcare system—offer the Democrats a blueprint for victory. “When people say Bernie is…

ALL ARTICLES August 3, 2017

What Should Democrats Do Now? Follow Paul Ryan’s Mustachioed Ironworker Challenger’s Message

  By Ross Barkin The Guardian (7/31/17) Randy Bryce naturally seemed a little out of place when I met him in New York last week. He was visiting, like many aspiring politicians do, to raise cash. An ironworker from Wisconsin, he is middle America personified – a man who works with his hands and has a drooping moustache. His collar is quite blue. “The message is just a really simple one,” Bryce told me, sipping coffee in a small, crowded diner a block from Madison Square Garden. “It’s ‘I didn’t invent lighting, I didn’t invent the internet’ but just a simple…

ALL ARTICLES, Media Hits & Misses August 3, 2017

Full Transcript Of Wall Street Journal Interview With Trump Leaked

  By Josh Dawsey & Hadas Gold Politico (8/1/17) President Donald Trump called his son-in-law a “good boy” while thanking Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker for a positive editorial about Jared Kushner and said the leader of the Boy Scouts told him his jamboree speech was “the greatest speech ever made to them.” The comments, made to The Wall Street Journal and obtained in a transcript by POLITICO, show Trump holding forth at length with Baker and engaging in a familiar back and forth. Baker, according to the transcript, asked many of the questions and took the lead byline…

ALL ARTICLES August 3, 2017

Thousands Died In Opioid Crisis While Trump Commission Needlessly Dawdled

  By David Dayen The Intercept (8/1/17) THE PRESIDENT’S COMMISSION on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis called on President Trump Monday [7/31] to declare a public health emergency over the epidemic of overdose deaths nationwide. This urgency came in an interim report by the commission that was itself more than a month late. Per Trump’s executive order establishing the commission, interim recommendations were due June 27, with a final report October 1. The bipartisan commission, led by Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, delayed the report twice before finally issuing it July 31. On a conference call, Christie cited 8,000 public comments as the “driver…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, M. Taylor Columns, Rethuglicans, Surveillance State, War State America August 3, 2017

Mark Shields: When The Chickenhawks Flock They Are Clucking About Only Putting Your Kid At Risk

  “It is just a helluva a lot easier to talk tough when it isn’t your son, or your daughter who’s in harms way.”   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/3/17) In doing some other research I stumbled across a few comments by PBS commentator Mark Shields during a conversation with David Brooks of the New York Times and moderator Jeff Greenfield during the midst of the 2016 campaign that are worth noting. Shields is one of the old lions of the media and his comments at the very tail end of the broadcast are well worth considering…

ALL ARTICLES August 3, 2017

Trump’s New Wall Street-Bred FBI Director: “A good example of state capture by the banking lobby.”

  Democracy Now! (8/2/17) The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Christopher Wray as the next director of the FBI, but in an unprecedented move, five senators voted against his nomination. Before yesterday, only one senator had ever voted against an FBI nominee. In addition, three senators abstained from the vote. Senator Ron Wyden, who voted against Wray’s confirmation, said he did so because of Wray’s position on government surveillance. “In his public and private statements, Chris Wray failed to oppose government backdoors into Americans’ personal devices, or to acknowledge the facts about encryption. That it isn’t about liberty versus security, it’s about more security…

ALL ARTICLES, Police State America August 3, 2017

VIDEO: Tennessee Deputies Tortured 19-Year-Old Inmate With Tasers While He Was Strapped Helplessly To A Chair

“I’ll keep on doing it until I run out of batteries!” – Cheatham County Torturer (Editor’s Note: History shows over and over again that the weapons and cruelty of empire are always brought home to subdue and destroy the citizens who protest their impoverishment for empire. What happens to one of us can happen to all, and not just in Cheat-ham County, Tennessee. – Mark L. Taylor) By Bob Brigham The Raw Story (8/1/17) Three Cheatham County Sheriff’s deputies have been placed on administrative leave after multiple videos emerged showing the officers using tasers to torture an 18-year-old inmate. “Jordan…

ALL ARTICLES, FEATURE, M. Taylor Columns, Media Hits & Misses August 3, 2017

Internet Freeze Out Begins: New Google Algorithm Restricts Access To Left-Wing, Progressive Web Sites

By Andre Damon and Niles Niemuth World Socialist Web Site (7/27/17) In the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing “fake news,” the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly. On April 25, 2017, Google announced that it had implemented changes to its search service to make it harder for users to access what it called “low-quality” information such as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.” The company said in a blog post that the central purpose of the change to its search algorithm…

ALL ARTICLES August 3, 2017

Freak Out & Carry On: From The Mooch To Orville Babcock: Why Presidential Advisers Matter

  By Katharine Brewer Freak Out & Carry On (7/27/17) This week on Freak Out And Carry On, Ron Suskind and Heather Cox Richardson speak with Olivier Knox, Chief Washington Correspondent for Yahoo! News. They look at presidential advisers, past and present, and how they have influenced politics and policy. From President Ulysses S. Grant’s loyalty to his secretary, Orville Babcock, to the rise of Anthony Scaramucci in the Trump White House, advisers and aides have shaped presidencies, for better and for worse. Excerpts Ron Suskind: Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump when Trump needed it desperately….

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism, FEATURE August 3, 2017

As American Injustice Climbs: States Conspire To Break & Muzzle Dissent

TheCommonerCall.org   By Chip Gibbons Jacobin (7/20/17) On January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump assumed the presidency after his surprise victory months before, many were anxious about what lay ahead. Throughout his campaign the reality TV star turned presidential contender had repeatedly shown his deep-seated authoritarian tendencies. Before, during, and after Trump was sworn in, on the streets of Washington DC, authoritarianism was on full display. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) deployed flash grenades, tear gas, and “stingers” against protesters. Early in the day the MPD engaged in kettling, an intimidation tactic in which police pen in everyone in a…

ALL ARTICLES, History They Don't Want You To Know August 3, 2017

Cautionary Lesson: How The Nazis Destroyed The First Gay Rights Movement

  By John Broich The Conversation (7/4/17) Very recently, Germany’s Cabinet approved a bill that will expunge the convictions of tens of thousands of German men for “homosexual acts” under that country’s anti-gay law known as “Paragraph 175.” That law dates back to 1871, when modern Germany’s first legal code was created. It was repealed in 1994. But there was a serious movement to repeal the law in 1929 as part of a wider LGBTQ rights movement. That was just before the Nazis came to power, magnified the anti-gay law, then sought to annihilate gay and transgender Europeans. The story of how…

ALL ARTICLES, Health Care July 31, 2017

It’s Time For The Compassionate Adults In This Nation To Talk Seriously About Medicare For All

A system designed to fail. By Dr. Carol Paris Common Dreams (7/28/17) Hundreds of people slept overnight in cars, or camped for days in a field. They told storiesof yanking out their own teeth with pliers, of reusing insulin syringes until they broke in their arm, of chronic pain so debilitating they could hardly care for their own children. At daybreak, they lined up for several more hours outside a white tent, waiting for their chance to visit a doctor. For many, this was the first health care provider they’ve seen in years. Is this a place torn by war, famine…

ALL ARTICLES July 31, 2017

Timidity & Resistance To Bold Change: The Democrats’ New ‘Better Deal’ Agenda Is Everything That’s Wrong With The Party

  By Miles Kampf-Lassin In These Times (7/27/17) The story of the Democratic Party in 2017 has been one of timidity and stubborn resistance to real change. In the immediate aftermath of the party’s preferred candidate facing a humiliating defeat in last year’s presidential election, questions swirled over what direction the party would take to respond to the new political reality. With Democrats at their weakest position in decades, having lost over 1,000 seats in states and Congress over the previous eight years, it appeared that a drastic shift in how the party operated was in store. And the party…

ALL ARTICLES, Democrats, FEATURE, History They Don't Want You To Know July 31, 2017

VIDEO: Thomas Frank Lays Out How The Democrats From Bill Clinton On Handed America Over To The Republicans

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (7/31/17) Thomas Frank gives a free-wheeling talk on the recent history and current state of the Democratic Party. He also has a good conversation with the audience that really gives an understanding of how the bumbling democrats keep missing the message and, through that, continue their losing ways. The interview was from the middle of the 2016 election tornado before the primaries sealed America’s fate. If the democratic party is ever going to return to power the lessons Frank outlines must not only be learned but acted on in a way to…

ALL ARTICLES, Resist! July 31, 2017

The Real Heroes: For Defeat Of Senate Health Hit Job, Thank Disability Rights Activists, Not John McCain

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/28/17) Following the Senate’s vote on Friday that dealt a crushing blow to the GOP’s hopes of repealing Obamacare, major media outlets, Democratic lawmakers, and high-profile pundits singled out Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) vote against the so-called “skinny repeal” measure as the decisive factor in its downfall. But many are objecting strongly to this narrative: It is disability rights activists across the country who deserve credit, commentators argued, not a lone senator. “If you want to thank someone” for Trumpcare’s demise, wrote freelance journalist Paul Blest, “thank ADAPT and…constituents who raised hell about this. Don’t praise power.” “Folks praising Murkowski, Collins,…

ALL ARTICLES, Russia Monitor July 31, 2017

Russia Monitor: A Never-Ending Blizzard Of Syllables & New Russiagate Leads

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (7/31/17) Dear Fellow Readers, Initially, Russiagate, was hard to write about. Who is Sergei Magnitsky, or Yury Chaika? Who the heck is Natalia Veselnitskaya – or as Sen Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says, Natalia “Agent XYZ” after struggling to pronounce her name at the beginning of the Thursday Senate judiciary committee meeting. More importantly, who cares? It was hard to connect dots with such broad territory, timing and blizzard of syllables. I knew enough to know that ‘adoptions of Russian orphans’ was synonymous with the Magnitsky Act, which are sanctions against Russia. I knew the sanctions…

ALL ARTICLES July 31, 2017

Reality Asserts Itself – Chris Hedges: “The Tinder Is There – Something’s Coming”

“The formal mechanisms of power don’t work. We’ve undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion and it’s over. They won…. Our only hope left is to build mass movements of dissent that can wrest power back from this rapacious corporate elite that quite literally will kill us.” The Commoner Call (7/6/17) “How do you make the power elite frightened of you?” Chris Hedges poses – and answers – the question at the 21-minute mark in part two of the video. We had better learn the lesson and learn it soon. Link to 29-Minute Video Link to the Reality Asserts Itself…

ALL ARTICLES, Resist! July 31, 2017

Organizing Beyond Our Circle For Resistance

  By Jessie Mannisto Democratic Left / Democratic Socialists of America (7/19/17) We live in a strange new political world, with a bigot in the White House on one hand and a swelling of the democratic socialist ranks on the other. How do we chart a path forward? One way is to learn from experienced leaders on the left, many of whom are putting their experiences out there as books. One of those leaders is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose Our Revolution is half recap of his run for the White House and half treatise on the issues he championed during…

ALL ARTICLES, American Fascism July 31, 2017

Author Joshua Green On The “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump & The Storming Of The Presidency”

  Democracy Now! (7/26/17) We turn now to look at the man many credit with helping Donald Trump become president: Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News. During the early days of the Trump presidency, many suggested Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, was pulling many of the strings in the Oval Office. We speak to journalist Joshua Green about how Bannon took his hard-right nationalist politics from the fringes of the Republican Party all the way to the White House. Green has been closely following Bannon’s career for years. In October 2015—before Bannon joined Trump’s campaign—Green dubbed Bannon the “Most…

ALL ARTICLES, Climate Change, Resist! July 31, 2017

Meet The Two Young Catholic Workers Who Secretly Sabotaged The Dakota Access Pipeline To Halt Construction

  Democracy Now! (7/28/17) Two Iowa-based Catholic Worker activists revealed they secretly carried out multiple acts of sabotage and arson in order to stop construction of the controversial $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. We speak with Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya about how they set fire to heavy machinery being used to construct the pipeline. They say their actions were inspired by the anti-nuclear Plowshares Movement which used nonviolent direct action to target nuclear warheads and military installations. Link to Story and 21-Minute Video

ALL ARTICLES, CIA, FEATURE, History They Don't Want You To Know July 31, 2017

The ‘Devil’s Chessboard’ – Allen Dulles, The CIA & The Rise Of The Secret Corporate State

  (Editor’s Note: David Talbot’s book on the role of the CIA in transforming our government into a branch office of Wall Street interests is an important book. This article will lead you to excerpts. I recommend the book highly to Commoner Call readers. – Mark L. Taylor) By Russ Baker WhoWhatWhy (7/26/17) Exactly 70 years ago today [7/26/17], President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Sixteen years later — just one month after the Kennedy assassination…

ALL ARTICLES July 31, 2017

A Commoner Writes: Give Us More Than The Typical Left vs Right Stuff

  I am sure it is no small task to compile this document every time.  But for me, and perhaps for others, it appears more often than not to be a compilation of the typical left vs. right stuff I can get from the usual sources from both sides of the political coin.  I urge you to look beyond these typical sources and also find presentations from places like The socialist party, James Corbett, Boiling Frog Post, the world of monetary reform, the P2P community, those whose work is genuinely that of restoration of The Commons, alternative communal structures like the…