Chris Hedges is a Public Menace

August 29, 2017

By Matt Sedillo

If 500 Nazis are allowed to march unharassed, 10,000 will march the following the month. Whether Nazis, Confederates, Minutemen, Christian Crusaders, whatever particular strand of white supremacy or combined strands of hate brings the hatemonger to the party they must be confronted immediately.

The self deputizing, vigilante, already quasi-death squads must be confronted. They must be forced to crawl back to their basements and hotel rooms. The threat is real, so must the resistance be. If we are to transform society more work than this need be done. If we are to prevent self deputizing death squads from roaming the street they must fear public gathering. There is no way around this and there is no reason to think of this work as mutually exclusive.

Liberalism by definition is counterrevolutionary. In times of crisis it calls for the pacification of struggle and the return to normalcy. It posits that both right wing calls for ethnic cleansing and the resistance to that as equally menacing to the liberal order of society.

Liberalism is an ideology and practice not a state of being. Anyone can express “both sides ideology”, even eugenicist fascists like Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not a liberal by any means, but his infamous “many sides, many sides” response to the White Supremacist violence of Charlotsville was a textbook liberal response and increasingly is undiscernible from many prominent liberals particularly those posing as “leftists.”

The liberal onslaught of false equivalencies and its war cry of “both sides” is an ideology of death. In times of absolute crisis liberalism it is a death cult most often practiced by those not directly targeted by whatever platform of mass vigilantism is gaining momentum. When practiced by those who are directly targeted by fascist vigilante ideology, be it in White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, Christian Supremacy, American Exceptionalism, to name a few, or various other combinations of hate platforms, liberalism often takes on even greater levels cult like devotion to its cry of “both sides.” The notions that all sides have their point, that all sides know suffering and that all sides can be redeemed becomes the central focus of the liberal argument rather than defense of a given community or even a given self. In times of absolute crisis liberalism is death cult regardless of who is expressing it.

A favorite talking point of the liberal is the common economic pain and social alienation of fascists. The pain of fascist vigilantes is irrelevant to the conversation concerning the threat of fascist vigilante culture and organization.

Chris Hedges recently wrote in the opening paragraph to his latest article attacking Antifa that,

“Behind the rhetoric of the “alt-right” about white nativism and protecting American traditions, history and Christian values is the lust for violence. Behind the rhetoric of antifa, the Black Bloc and the so-called “alt-left” about capitalism, racism, state repression and corporate power is the same lust for violence.”

This is a bizarre statement that makes one wonder is Chris Hedges arguing that there is some kind of peaceful way to go about the organization of “white nativisim” or a non violent way to go about “protecting American traditions, history and Christian values” and if there were it would be respectable. His characterization of the so called “alt-left” is equally absurd. The term “alt-right” was possibly coined but definitely popularized by hipster eugenicist and ethnic cleanser Richard Spencer to obscure the fact that he was calling for ethnic cleansing. The term “alt-left” is a creation of the very same white supremacist politics that produced Richard Spencer and is now being promoted both by the Ultra White and their liberal enablers to create false equivelancies.

Throughout his article Chris Hedges reaches across the oceans of space and time to make further false equivalencies between right wing death squads of central america and leftist revolutionaries, the Yugoslavian government and CIA sponsored literal Neo Nazis, Argentine fascist generals and leftist revolutionaries, and finally to the actual Nazis as led by Adolf Hitler and the communist resistance to Nazism. In short Chris Hedges gave “many sides, many sides” presentation of much of the 20th century in order to attack the idea of revolution from below.

In Chris Hedges presentation Donald Trump is seen as “a narcissistic kleptocrat, con artist and pathological liar.” He is correct in this. But this is not the basis of his appeal. Donald Trump’s appeal lies not in his casual realtionship with facts, or his vainglorious public persona and certainly not in his personal corruption. The appeal of Donald Trump is his call for a wall on the southern border with the demand that Mexicans pay for the wall. Donald Trump demands that Mexico pays for what they have done to White America. Donald Trump’s legion of vigilantes feast on the promise of vengeance and of putting Mexicans in their place. Mexico will pay and for more than just a wall. Donald Trump’s appeal lies in the fact that he calls MS13 and by fascist extension all Salvadorans “animals.” Donald Trump’s appeal legion of white supremacist vigilantes feast on the promise of this as well. Donald Trump’s appeal is that he calls for a ban on Muslims. That the middle east an area of the world peopled by so many of the victims of US imperialism shall also pay for what they have done to the US appeals to Trump’s Christian Crusader base. Donald Trump’s appeal lies in calling Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization and in calling Black protesters “thugs.” Donald Trump’s appeal is based on the demand that Black protest must be silenced and punished for having offended White America. The Donald Trump appeal is based on false victim narratives of fascists who are calling for ethnic cleansing.

Chris Hedges is light on specifics when it comes to the content of their cry. Chris Hedges will not address the content. Only throw his hands up in typical liberal fashion in defense of the “grand republic.” Hedges is likely aware that in times of absolute crisis neither side has use of liberals.

False equivalencies spread confusion. Confusion strengthens the fascists. Liberalism is a death cult. Chris Hedges is a public menace.

[The Southwest Political Report was founded by Irene Sanchez and Matt Sedillo. Two Chican@s who were born in and grew up on the Eastside of Los Angeles and call Southern California home.]

Aug 22

2017

newWKOGadnim

Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

FLASHBACK | (1982) Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”

BlackPast.org

Audre Lorde, 1934–1992 | Robert Alexander/Getty Images

In February, 1982, Audre Lorde delivered the address, “Learning from the 60s” as part of the celebration of the Malcolm X weekend at Harvard University. Her presentation appears below.

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MALCOLM X is a distinct shape in a very pivotal period of my life. I stand here now – Black, Lesbian, Feminist – an inheritor of Malcolm and in his tradition, doing my work, and the ghost of his voice through my mouth asks each one of you here tonight: Are you doing yours?

There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living. I’m not going to pretend that the moment I first saw or heard Malcolm X he became my shining prince, because it wouldn’t be true. In February 1965 I was raising two children and a husband in a three-room flat on 149th Street in Harlem. I had read about Malcolm X and the Black Muslims. I became more interested in Malcolm X after he left the Nation of Islam, when he was silenced by Elijah Muhammad for his comment, after Kennedy’s assassination, to the effect that the chickens had come home to roost. Before this I had not given much thought to the Nation of Islam because of their attitude toward women as well as because of their non-activist stance. I’d read Malcolm’s autobiography, and I liked his style, and I thought he looked a lot like my father’s people, but I was one of the ones who didn’t really hear Malcolm’s voice until it was amplified by death.

I had been guilty of what many of us are still guilty of – letting the media, and I don’t mean only the white media – define the bearers of those messages most important to our lives.

When I read Malcolm X with careful attention, I found a man much closer to the complexities of real change than anything I had read before. Much of what I say here tonight was born from his words.

In the last year of his life, Malcolm X added a breadth to his essential vision that would have brought him, had he lived, into inevitable confrontation with the question of difference as a creative and necessary force for change. For as Malcolm X progressed from a position of resistance to, and analysis of, the racial status quo, to more active considerations of organizing for change, he began to reassess some of his earlier positions. One of the most basic Black survival skills is the ability to change, to metabolize experience, good or ill, into something that is useful, lasting, effective. Four hundred years of survival as an endangered species has taught most of us that if we intend to live, we had better become fast learners. Malcolm knew this. We do not have to live the same mistakes over again if we can look at them, learn from them, and build upon them.

Before he was killed, Malcolm had altered and broadened his opinions concerning the role of women in society and the revolution. He was beginning to speak with increasing respect of the connection between himself and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose policies of nonviolence appeared to be so opposite to his own. And he began to examine the societal conditions under which alliances and coalitions must indeed occur.

He had also begun to discuss those scars of oppression which lead us to war against ourselves in each other rather than against our enemies.

As Black people, if there is one thing we can learn from the 60s, it is how infinitely complex any move for liberation must be. For we must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have been forced to take into ourselves. Through examining the combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those closest to us who mirrored our own impotence.

We were poised for attack, not always in the most effective places. When we disagreed with one another about the solution to a particular problem, we were often far more vicious to each other than to the originators of our common problem. Historically, difference has been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness. In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline tor living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity – Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized chocolate milk. Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures. Our persistence in examining the tensions within diversity encourages growth toward our common goal. So often we either ignore the past or romanticize it, render the reason for unity useless or mythic. We forget that the necessary ingredient needed to make the past work for the future is our energy in the present, metabolizing one into the other. Continuity does not happen automatically, nor is it a passive process.

The 60s were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. They were vital years of awakening, of pride, and of error. The civil rights and Black power movements rekindled possibilities for disenfranchised groups within this nation. Even though we fought common enemies, at times the lure of individual solutions made us careless of each other. Sometimes we could not bear the face of each other’s differences because of what we feared those differences might say about ourselves. As if everybody can’t eventually be too Black, too white, too man, too woman. But any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve. The answer to cold is heat, the answer to hunger is food. But there is no simple monolithic solution to racism, to sexism, to homophobia. There is only the conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them, wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the same disease. By seeing who the we is, we learn to use our energies with greater precision against our enemies rather than against ourselves.

In the 60s, white america – racist and liberal alike – was more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the nonviolent, and Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power movement was prone. The existence of Black lesbian and gay people was not even allowed to cross the public consciousness of Black america. We know in the 1980s, from documents gained through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI and CIA used our intolerance of difference to foment confusion and tragedy in segment after segment of Black communities of the 60s. Black was beautiful, but still suspect, and too often our forums for debate became stages for playing who’s-Blacker-than-who Or who’s-poorer-than-who games, ones in which there can be no winners.

The 60s for me was a time of promise and excitement, but the 60s was also a time of isolation and frustration from within. It often felt like I was working and raising my children in a vacuum, and that it was my own fault – if I was only Blacker, things would be fine. It was a time of much wasted energy, and I was often in a lot of pain. Either I denied or chose between various aspects of my identity, or my work and my Blackness would be unacceptable. As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match somebody else’s norm. I learned that not only couldn’t I succeed at that game, but the energy needed for that masquerade would be lost to my work. And there were babies to raise, students to teach. The Vietnam War was escalating, our cities were burning, more and more of our school kids were nodding out in the halls, junk was overtaking our streets. We needed articulate power, not conformity. There were other strong Black workers whose visions were racked and silenced upon some imagined grid of narrow Blackness. Nor were Black women immune. At a national meeting of Black women.for political action, a young civil rights activist who had been beaten and imprisoned in Mississippi only a few years before, was trashed and silenced as suspect because of her white husband. Some of us made it and some of us were lost to the struggle. It was a time of great hope and great expectation; it was also a time of great waste. That is history. We do not need to repeat these mistakes in the 80s.

The raw energy of Black determination released in the 60s powered changes in Black awareness and self-concepts and expectations. This energy is still being felt in movements for change among women, other peoples of Color, gays, the handicapped – among all the disenfranchised peoples of this society. That is a legacy of the 60s to ourselves and to others. But we must recognize that many of our high expectations of rapid revolutionary change did not in fact occur. And many of the gains that did are even now being dismantled. This is not a reason for despair, nor for rejection of the importance of those years. But we must face with clarity and insight the lessons to be learned from the oversimplification of any struggle for self-awareness and liberation, or we will not rally the force we need to face the multidimensional threats to our survival in the 80s.

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective.

We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother’s, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding.

We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves.

We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth.

Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the read we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators?

We are women trying to knit a future in a country where an Equal Rights Amendment was defeated as subversive legislation. We are Lesbians and gay men who, as the most obvious target of the New Right, are threatened with castration, imprisonment, and death in the streets. And we know that our erasure only paves the way for erasure of other people of Color, of the old, of the poor, of all of those who do not fit that mythic dehumanizing norm.

Can we really still afford to be fighting each other?

We are Black people living in a time when the consciousness of our intended slaughter is all around us. People of Color are increasingly expendable, our government’s policy both here and abroad. We are functioning under a government ready to repeat in EI Salvador and Nicaragua the tragedy of Vietnam, a government which stands on the wrong side of every single battle for liberation taking place upon this globe; a government which has invaded and conquered (as I edit this piece) the fifty-three square mile sovereign state of Grenada, under the pretext that her 110,000 people pose a threat to the U.S. Our papers are filled with supposed concern for human rights in white communist Poland while we sanction by acceptance and military supply the systematic genocide of apartheid in South Africa, of murder and torture in Haiti and EI Salvador. American advisory teams bolster repressive governments across Central and South America, and in Haiti, while advisory is only a code name preceding military aid.

Decisions to cut aid for the terminally ill, for the elderly, for dependent children, for food stamps, even school lunches, are being made by men with full stomachs who live in comfortable houses with two cars and umpteen tax shelters. None of them go hungry to bed at night. Recently, it was suggested that senior citizens be hired to work in atomic plants because they are close to the end of their lives anyway.

Can anyone of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual? Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of anyone particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class?

Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect.

We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable. We know what it is to be lied to. The 60s should teach us how important it is not to lie to ourselves. Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event, or something that happens around us rather than inside of us. Not to believe that freedom can belong to anyone group of us without the others also being free. How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to ourselves, or to define our sources of power to us.

There is no Black person here who can afford to wait to be led into positive action for survival. Each one of us must look clearly and closely at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life and decide where action and energy is needed and where it can be effective. Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose. For while we wait for another Malcolm, another Martin, another charismatic Black leader to validate our struggles, old Black people are freezing to death in tenements, Black children are being brutalized and slaughtered in the streets, or lobotomized by television, and the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line is higher today than in 1963.

And if we wait to put our future into the hands of some new messiah, what will happen when those leaders are shot, or discredited, or tried for murder, or called homosexual, or otherwise disempowered? Do we put our future on hold? What is that internalized and self-destructive barrier that keeps us from moving, that keeps us from coming together?

We who are Black are at an extraordinary point of choice within our lives. To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming. It means doing the unromantic and tedious work necessary to forge meaningful coalitions, and it means recognizing which coalitions are possible and which coalitions are not. It means knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step. It means fighting despair.

And in the university, that is certainly no easy task, for each one of you by virtue of your being here will be deluged by opportunities to misname yourselves, to forget who you are, to forget where your real interests lie. Make no mistake, you will be courted; and nothing neutralizes creativity quicker than tokenism, that false sense of security fed by a myth of individual solutions. To paraphrase Malcolm – a Black woman attorney driving a Mercedes through Avenue Z in Brooklyn is still a “nigger bitch,” two words which never seem to go out of style.

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.

If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed only against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough. In order to be whole, we must recognize the despair oppression plants within each of us – that thin persistent voice that says our efforts are useless, it will never change, so why bother, accept it. And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction that lives and flourishes like a poison inside of us, unexamined until it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other. But we can put our finger down upon that loathing buried deep within each one of us and see who it encourages us to despise, and we can lessen its potency by the knowledge of our real connectedness, arcing across our differences.

Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies’ work by destroying each other.

What does it mean when an angry Black ballplayer – this happened in Illinois – curses a white heckler but pulls a knife on a Black one? What better way is there to police the streets of a minority community than to turn one generation against the other?

Referring to Black lesbians and gay men, the student president at Howard University says, on the occasion of a Gay Student Charter on campus, “The Black community has nothing to do with such filth – we will have to abandon these people.” [italics mine] Abandon? Often without noticing, we absorb the racist belief that Black people are fitting targets for everybody’s anger. We are closest to each other, and it is easier to vent fury upon each other than upon our enemies.

Of course, the young man at Howard was historically incorrect. As part of the Black community, he has a lot to do with “us.” Some of our finest writers, organizers, artists and scholars in the 60s as well as today, have been lesbian and gay, and history will bear me out.

Over and over again in the 60s I was asked to justify my existence and my work, because I was a woman, because I was a Lesbian, because I was not a separatist, because some piece of me was not acceptable. Not because of my work but because of my identity. I had to learn to hold on to all the parts of me that served me, in spite of the pressure to express only one to the exclusion of all others. And I don’t know what I’d say face to face with that young man at Howard University who says I’m filth because I identify women as my primary source of energy and support, except to say that it is my energy and the energy of other women very much like me which has contributed to his being where he is at this point. But I think he would not say it to my face because name-calling is always easiest when it is removed, academic. The move to render the presence of lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation and weakness in the Black community.

In academic circles, as elsewhere, there is a kind of name-calling increasingly being used to keep young Black women in line. Often as soon as any young Black woman begins to recognize that she is oppressed as a woman as well as a Black, she is called a lesbian no matter how she identifies herself sexually. “What do you mean you don’t want to make coffee take notes wash dishes go to bed with me, you a lesbian or something?” And at the threat of such a dreaded taint, all too often she falls meekly into. line, however covertly. But the word lesbian is only threatening to those Black women who are intimidated by their sexuality, or who allow themselves to be defined by it and from outside themselves. Black women in struggle from our own perspective, speaking up for ourselves, sharing close ties with one another politically and emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. We are Black women who seek our own definitions, recognizing diversity among ourselves with respect. We have been around within our communities for a very long time, and we have played pivotal parts in the survival of those communities: from Hat Shep Sut through Harriet Tubman to Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer to Lorraine Hansberry to your Aunt Maydine to some of you who sit before me now.

In the 60s Black people wasted a lot of our substance fighting each other. We cannot afford to do that in the 80s, when Washington, D.C. has the highest infant mortality rate of any U.S. city, 60 percent of the Black community under twenty is unemployed and more are becoming unemployable, lynchings are on the increase, and less than half the registered Black voters voted in the last election.

How are you practicing what you preach – whatever you preach, and who exactly is listening? As Malcolm stressed, we are not responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our own liberation. It is not going to be easy, but we have what we have learned and what we have been given that is useful. We have the power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the piace where they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and sun, and our children. Malcolm X does not live in the dry texts of his words as we read them; he lives in the energy we generate and use to move along the visions we share with him. We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means to be a part of history.

Sources:

Audre, Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 134-144.

Jul 19

2017

newWKOGadnim

Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering

Age of Apathy Behavioural Change Social Engineering

Wanderer, Wondering Wonders of the Wonderful

Nature Bats Last

July 1, 2017

by Serena Marie Raphael

Image: Pretty & Putrid on Tumblr

I have a lot of beliefs and I live by none of ’em. That’s just the way I am. They’re just my beliefs. I just like believing them. I like that part. They’re my little “believies.” They make me feel good about who I am. But if they get in the way of a thing I want, or I want to jack off or something, I fuckin’ do that.
~ Louis CK

Iset myself a creative-writing challenge, one just as senseless and mismatching as this culture. I wanted to exercise my mind, in a society promoting mediocrity. A place where nothing is well thought-out and we do whatever the fuck we want. Believies be damned. We’ve had commercial environmentalism since my grandparents, all the beliefs in the world made absolutely no difference. We lived by none of them. We grew the way we wanted and got off on the human prosperity because of it. The hippies traded me in for a few dollars more.

I’ll craft my emotions around the lies my culture taught me, to the “dictionary word of the day”.Divagate
1: to wander; stray.
2: to digress in speech.
E: I divagate without discipline–my mind runs all over …

Further reading, I learn its late 16th century Latin divagat- ‘wandered about’. When I think of the two together, I see the wrong turns, missed signs, poor judgment our morals digressed to accommodate mutated ideals. The wandering, aimless steps we take in pursuit of an endless walk to nowhere important. The stray wishful thinking fools, floating down the dreamer’s drool with no awareness of the cliffs edge. As we plummet over, now hurtling to the rocky, jagged floor below. Impact is imminent. There will be blood.

We’re the lost Western youth of Imperial civilisation. We’ve been abused, monetised, sacrificed, jailed, left for dead as economic road kill. I see once wild animals balancing on balls for applause, whipped into cultural submission for the industrial cause.

Afraid of the consequences, wandering outside the lines terrifies us. They keep us under spot light, obsessively searching for youth willing to test the electric fence. Keeping us dumb, or we will learn how to turn a door latch with our posable thumbs. Civilised expectations, the mental barricade from physical freedom. Revolutionary organisations with merchandise made by factory slaves in far away, imaginary lands where iPhones grow on trees.

Try to run, they will see you. Try to think, they will hear you. They will kill you. We’ve seen it happen to our elders. We’ve witnessed social executions of professors who dare to teach us our radical capacity as anarchists .

They dangle “hope snares”, traps perfectly set for catching frustrated and questioning youth. They set them up at indoctrinating facilities such as universities. Glossy print, celebrity endorsements and feel good bubbly words as the tasty bait.

They corral the strays in green graffiti pens. Force-feeding them bullshit. Fattening them up, milking them of spirit, money and energy.

How well they did, too! Impressive puppet masters.

We have all the environemtal™ organisations spouting the economically modified rhetoric, yet they dillusionally promote mining for solar panels as solutions to a predicament. I’ll repeat, predicament. They have beliefs of planetary conservation, while advocating for the very set of living arrangements driving two hundred species to extinction per day.

I now question everything I’ve ever learnt, and I’m continuously let down by my educators and mentors. They are self centred and drunk on personal importance and usually overdosing on arrogance once they’re told more than once they’re right. My culture led me so far away from mother. I miss her, I want to know her before I die.

Edward Abbey wrote, “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”.

A teacher had done the once-assumed impossible, taught me. Finding a way to leave civilisations talons. It’s inside, it’s with love and living. I will venture out into her wild, her free, her nowhere.

Where I will find myself lost in her majesty. My queen.

Divagating back to the wild, wandering my own trail, venturing as wild as I can possibly go. I want to feel the blood in my feet leak out through my nails, my boots to shred the skin away from my heals. Rain to soak me to my marrow, clothes to bleach under the sun. Salty air to dread my hair, cold nights to bite my toes. The bugs to play on my back and hitch a ride with me, the gumnuts to break my fall. A mosquitoes symphony as the birds sing the chorus line. Until I collapse from exhaustion, I walk on. I want her to punish me. I want her to teach me by subjecting me to all the torture she’s suffered.

Can I take it? Could I withstand the abuse my species has given her? Is not fair. Should I be accepted by her?

Will she see my being as one of her oppressors, will she see me as her threat or see my wander as my attempt at finding way through the nightmare that is civilisation. Divagate my madness with wandering wonderful.

I cringe at the idea she sees me as one of them, I never meant to be. I do what I can to stay alive. In my captive cage, I educate myself.

I ask questions. I stay open-minded and crack the windows.

Now, I divagate with excellence rather than privileged mindlessness.

Wandering fantastically with love and compassion until the end.

[Serena Marie Raphael is a 25-year-old Veterinary Nurse inhabiting Western Australia: life-long anarchist, radical ponderer, critical thinker, student of life and wilderness.]

Jul 19

2017

newWKOGadnim

Pacifism as Pathology

Not in Front of the Children. Liberal Mediations of the Apocalypse

July 19, 2017

by Chris Shaw

Image: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) – Tumblr

Text of a presentation given at the Mediating Climate Change conference held in Leeds
3-5th July 2017

Scientific and economic perspectives define the climate change debate. They give credibility to, and are in turn legitimated by, the global climate targets policy regime. The targets regime has, for 20 years or so, operated under the claim that climate change would not be a problem until the planet had warmed by an average of 2°C. That framework has given space and succor for a range of strategies and narratives which equate 2°C of warming with solving climate change.

2°C doesn’t equate to solving climate change but the pretence that it does, and the widespread use of the argument that science has defined 2°C as the dangerous limit (it hasn’t) provide liberal western democracies with the conceptual framework for understanding what sort of problem climate change is.

The liberal mediations element of the title of this presentation refers to the liberal desire to do away with climate change, but in every other respect maintain the existing order. The liberal is as horrified by an eco-socialist response to climate change as it is traumatised by a Trump vision of climate policy. The targets regime represents the liberal political territory designed to keep both those nightmare scenarios at bay. 2°C of warming means the end of coral reefs and I cannot imagine what that means for humanity’s future. But liberal politics would see that as a more acceptable price than anything that interfered with capitalist economics and imperialist foreign policy.

The ‘not in front of the children’ part of the title refers to the growing orthodoxy in climate
change communication that it is

a. best not to talk about the impacts of climate change (doom and gloom) and
b. Ideally it is best not to mention climate change at all, and instead talk about green energy, health etc

Let us briefly turn to WG Sebald writing about the bourgeois desire for order as revealed in the almanacs of 19th century Germany. Here Sebald remarks – apropos the peaceful agrarian visions we are familiar with from 18th century English pastoral landscapes, where peace would reign if people were content with the fruits of their own hard labour – that the educated middle class is wont to articulate its discomfort at the rapid spread of the economy of goods and capital it had itself created and which was now proliferating year on year – and here we may substitute goods and capital for acidifying oceans and Siberian methane bombs.

Or we may reflect on why it is only the middle classes who worry about the apocalypse, an issue which troubled Boris Groys who turned to Derrida for an answer and concluded that the working class have no investment in the middle class future, and all the middle classes fear is the destruction of the libraries, galleries, museums and opera houses whose very existence gives legitimacy and life to their culture.

So where did it all begin and what we going to do about it? Well, those are both intimately interdependent issues.

Mark Greif, in The Age of the Crisis of Man describes the founding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a world institution entirely devoted to a universalist view of human nature, and the stimulation of a single and universal culture (2015:85). The first Director General, Julian Huxley was a fan of eugenics and so perhaps it is not surprising that this universal human was not imagined to be an African Bushman, an Australian aborigine or even a Chinese peasant but was instead imagined to be the sort of person one might find wandering the halls of UNESCO and other United Nations buildings.

And once you have this vision of the ideal universal human in place it is not too difficult to start imagining a single dangerous limit to climate change that this individual would find acceptable and the social sciences can work with as part of what has been called ‘the over riding liberal vanity of rational improvement.’

So I am suggesting the targets regime is a political device and a technology of power designed to perpetuate the interests of the liberal bourgeois. We may want to consider doing away with them or at the very least open up the debate about where to next, given the failure of the targets regime. Let me list those failures;

2°C is too much warming to prevent dangerous climate change
It is not a construct or framework which has motivated politicians to act on climate change
It is not rooted in any meaningful and engaging vision of humanity’s future, so if a powerful nation doesn’t want to play it can just throw it in the bin
It means nothing to the vast mass of humanity, which has little or no knowledge of the targets existence, purpose or meaning

Ah well, we have the 1.5°C target some of you might say. Seeing as warming won’t be limited to 2°C then changing the target to 1.5°C, in terms of human welfare, is irrelevant. What should be happening is not an elite discussion of what, if anything should replace the 2°C target but rather, who should decide what if anything replaces the 2°C target.

Conversations

Marshall Berman, tracing the emergence of the Enlightenment and Modernity, tells us of details from Montesquieu’s novel The Persian Letters (1721). Persian immigrants to Paris find, while walking the streets, that women come over to talk to them. The Persians assume the women must be whores, but the women tell them they just want to talk, and there is this new thing, invented by women but bringing both women together, called ‘conversation.’ Later on the Persians learn about the salons and have wonderful conversations there. Or we can look to the account offered by Kristin Ross in Communal Luxury, which demonstrates the importance of talking in generating the movement that created the Paris Commune. The examples of the role of conversation in social progress are legion.

Scotland has the world’s most ambitious climate targets, and wanted a nation wide conversation to build awareness of the radical changes being undertaken. Results of what we found in researching and designing model is

Lesson 1- There is very little scepticism among the public about the fact that the climate is changing. Everyone who participated in these workshops accepted the reality of climate change.

Lesson 2- Ordinary members of the public know enough about climate change to talk about what they want done about it. Though many participants expressed doubts about their knowledge of the subject, when it came down to it they had plenty to say about what changes they want to see happen.

Lesson 3- You don’t need to be a climate expert to have a conversation about climate change. People were able to talk about the challenges climate change poses for Scotland without needing a primer in the science of climate change.

Lesson 4- People really enjoyed taking part in the conversations. They said they never had the chance to talk about these issues in their day to day life, and valued having their opinions listened to.

The take home message for politicians is clear – if you bring members of the public together in an informal setting to talk about climate change, if you approach the topic starting from where people already are in terms of their values, their hopes and their concerns, if you step back and let participants talk to each other, and if you avoid turning the discussion into a lecture about the science of climate change, people will become engaged, will participate and will enjoy having the chance to talk about this topic.

[Download the paper: Not_in_front_of_the_children]

[Chris Shaw is a Senior Researcher with Climate Outreach, a Visiting Faculty member of the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex and an Associate of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He specialises in generating impact for climate policy related research, working at the interface of theory and practice. His expertise is primarily focused on building participatory dialogues between researchers, stakeholders, policy actors and the public.]

Mar 08

2017

newWKOGadnim

Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

International Working Women’s Day Resistance

WATCH: More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters: The Revolutionary Life of Lucy Parsons

March 7, 2017

An experimental animated short from Indie Grits alum (and 2014 Helen Hill award winner) Kelly Gallagher:

“In these difficult times, I find myself turning to a woefully underappreciated and under-studied woman named Lucy Parsons.

Parsons was an organizer first and foremost, and she led an inspiring life of revolutionary struggle and solidarity. As a woman of color who was married to a famous white male anarchist, she is often unfairly and frustratingly overlooked in many labor histories. Born in the early 1850s, Parsons moved to Chicago as an adult, where her politics radicalized as she witnessed the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Parsons began writing for several socialist and anarchist publications while supporting her family as a dressmaker, while also organizing garment workers across Chicago. Parsons would go on to become one of the most powerful voices in the labor movement, helping to found the legendary Industrial Workers of the World. She spent her entire life fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised.

I made this short animated-documentary, as a celebration for and appreciation of Lucy Parsons—but mostly I made it because if we are to find a way forward out of the mess that is coming our way, we will need to actively seek out revolutionary heroes who struggled before us. Those who risked their lives for struggle every day—those who fought tirelessly against the ruling class and the rule of capital.” [Source: The Nation]

Mar 03

2017

newWKOGadnim

Foundations, Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

charity Foundations Philanthropy

NEW BOOK RELEASE: Under the Mask of Philanthropy

March 3, 2017

“Superb and unsurpassed.” — Christian Parenti

“Michael Barker’s historically grounded critique of those most pernicious of political forces, the philanthropic foundations, is superb and unsurpassed. Everyone who is serious about a rebuilt Left that can win should read this book. As Barker shows masterfully the foundations exist to confuse, deflect, and channel away the wrath of the people. By muddying the intellectual waters foundations have been as damaging as police spies and company thugs. They operate by the logic Machiavelli explained, ‘you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not save you if the people hate you…’ Thus the foundations defend capitalism by placating, ameliorating, confusing, and fomenting division.”— Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

Barker’s much anticipated book draws rave reviews:

“At a time when philanthropy is being upheld as a panacea for inequality, Barker’s erudite and compelling book offers a vital corrective to the belief that voluntary gifts from the mega-rich can resolve the very global inequities which their business practices often perpetuate.” — Linsey McGoey, author of No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

“In Under the Mask of Philanthropy, Michael Barker has produced one of the most comprehensive and important books on the politics of capitalist philanthropy. This is a must read for anyone engaged in social movements, academia, and/or the foundation world.”—Daniel Faber, author of Capitalizing on Environmental Justice: The Polluter-Industrial Complex in the Age of Globalization

“One of the most impressive and thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. Under the Mask of Philanthropy addresses an important but often neglected topic — how the ruling class coopts working class struggles for justice and equality in ways that perpetuate the concentration of power and privilege. Barker’s magisterial command of historical and contemporary sources, coupled with his brilliant analysis, have resulted in a truly fascinating book in which even the most informed readers will find much to learn. At a time when so many are yearning for social change, this book is urgently recommended.”— Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit

“Under the Mask of Philanthropy is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how power functions in the modern world. Michael Barker is an activist-scholar who practises what he preaches. In this ground-breaking book, he illustrates the way in which the rich and powerful — and crucially, the system itself — systematically co-opt progressive movements and set the parameters of discourse. In essence, anything that seriously begins to threaten global capitalism is either marginalised or else co-opted and ‘decaffeinated’ by philanthropy. One surely would expect no less. Many people in what used to be known as, ‘The Third World’ have known this for many decades. But Barker presents meticulously researched evidence to prove it. This book will not be required reading for the often well-intentioned, yet sadly deluded, recipients of funding from the liberal foundations it critiques, but on their, and our, road to Hell, it damn well should be. A Chaucer for the political pilgrim.”— Suhayl Saadi, author of Psychoraag

“This highly readable and fascinating book recounts in painstaking detail how elite charity has been used for more than a century as both material and ideological means of maintaining the hegemony of capitalism. Happily, though, he reminds us that philanthropy is also a mark of popular resistance: the rich make a show of giving away some of their enormous wealth precisely to prevent us from deciding to seize all of it. As the capitalist system stumbles from crisis to crisis and its political legitimacy visibly wanes, Under the Mask of Philanthropy is a timely demolition of one of its most important remaining sources of credibility: the idea that Gates, Buffett, Soros and the rest of the rich can be counted upon to help find sensible, technocratic solutions to the problems they have created themselves. In reality, Barker argues persuasively, real change requires that grassroots activists and radical intellectuals should steadfastly refuse to be co-opted by even the most apparently liberal foundations.” —Harry Browne, author of The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power)

“The dominant view of charity is that it is an expression of human compassion, if not a solution for poverty. Socialists tend to view the practice with a more skeptical eye: when undertaken by rich people, it is at best a salve to a guilty conscience and at worst a means of replacing justice with noblesse oblige. In the 20th century and beyond, charitable institutions have become powerful tools of social control in their own right. Whether funding the eugenics movement, promoting research to undermine radical labor unions, or working with the CIA to control and brutalize foreign populations, philanthropy has taken on a role that is anything but benevolent. In his vital new work Under the Mask of Philanthropy, Michael Barker charts these machinations in detail. A clear pattern emerges of philanthropic foundations attempting to undermine, co-opt and destroy movements for positive social and political change. A must-read book.” — Scott Noble, filmmaker, Psywar: The Real Battlefield is the Mind

“Barker provides a sweeping, well-documented, excellent read. Anyone who wants to understand why progressive social movements have been so ineffective and often crushed, failing to win the fundamental radical reforms needed, will learn from it. In short, Barker’s research and writing is essential to effective, radical economic and environmental change in the 21st century.”— John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry

“Michael Barker’s book is an historical treatment of and significant contribution to the understanding of the increasingly central role of ideology and state legitimation in a world dominated by the US empire. The ongoing brutal accumulation of wealth and dispossession of billions of people, by a transnational class of American and allied plutocrats, is masked by false representations of ‘philanthropy’ that disguise the super-exploitation of workers for the status, power, and prestige of the billionaire class.” — Gerald Sussman, author ofBranding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe

“Under the Mask of Philanthropy is a far reaching and precise class critique of liberal cultural imperialist and capitalist rule. Barker’s historical analysis synthesizes the best of the contemporary literature and proceeds to applying rigorous class analysis to the existing world. A book which is must reading for students, and workers.” — James Petras, author of Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador

“Under the Mask of Philanthropy is a searing critique of the policies, practices, and ideologies of philanthropic foundations. Barker’s masterful work will serve as a model for radical scholarship in this field.” —Peter Seybold, contributor to Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad

Michael Barker is a Unison rep and support worker at a Leicester school. In 2015 he stood as the prospective TUSC parliamentary candidate for Leicester East where he challenged Labour incumbent Keith Vaz. In his spare time Michael writes about local and international issues for a variety of publications. He is a member of the Socialist Party.

His previous books are Fighting For Our Future: Ongoing Struggles Against Big Business and New Labour (2016) and Letters to Mercury: The Socialist Fightback in Leicester (2015).

Michael writes in a personal capacity.

Under the Mask of Philanthropy can be purchased online here https://www.amazon.com/Under-Mask-Phillanthropy-Michael-Barker/dp/1543208126

Mar 01

2017

newWKOGadnim

Avaaz, MoveOn.org, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering

Avaaz CANVAS Community Action Program (CAP) Democratic Party Goldman Sachs. J Street LIFT MoveOn.org Open Society Foundation Otpor Teach for America

Why it is Time to Move On from MoveOn.org and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Black Agenda Report

February 21, 2017

by Danny Haiphong

The revolution will not be subsidized — but well-funded facsimiles of “movements” dominate the political landscape of the U.S. “Left.” MoveOn.org “prides itself for exposing the corporate ties of the Republicans but is perfectly content with the corporate ties of the Democratic Party.” And Black Lives Matter “drew significant interest from a consortium of non-profits after receiving millions from the Ford Foundation and Google in 2015 and 2016.”

The non-profit industrial complex has become an omnipresent feature of US society. Soon after college, it became increasingly clear to me that non-profits made up the majority of employment and activist opportunities for college-educated youth. My first employment opportunity came within the private non-profit LIFT, which partnered with a number of monopoly corporations to provide social service assistance on a volunteer basis. Like Teach for America, LIFT utilized college volunteers with little to no training and gave post-graduate students AmeriCorps stipends to supervise volunteers in place of professional social workers. After three months of grueling hours and little pay, it was time to leave LIFT and try something new.The next stop was a Community Action Program (CAP). CAP agencies have their roots in the first wave of non-profits as legal entities in the United States. They sprouted from federal funds administered by the War on Poverty programs of the Lyndon Johnson era. These agencies provided essential anti-poverty services and were often run by community members themselves. However, the purpose behind CAP agencies was far from benevolent. Johnson and his ruling class masters sought to subvert and break the independent character of the Black liberation and anti-imperialist movements of the period by turning “tax-eaters” (Black Americans) into “tax-payers.” The underlying motivation of non-profits to turn revolutionary movements into lucrative career opportunities has existed since their inception.

This is not to say that non-profits have not gone through significant changes since the War on Poverty. In the last forty years of neo-liberal capitalist crisis, CAP agencies have become nearly non-existent due to a shortage of federal funds. Housing programs have suffered chronic underfunding as a result of consistent reductions in the size of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), beginning in the Reagan era. HUD was stripped of 77 percent of its budget authority from 1978-1983. The CAP agency that I worked for eventually shut its doors due to a default in a private bank loan in 2014. The loan was taken out to keep the agency viable in the midst of dwindling federal and state funds. Hundreds of homeless individuals and families lost vital housing assistance and thousands more lost access to emergency transportation, food, and legal services.

The demise of CAP agencies stems from the shift in federal responsibilities to the private non-profit sector as part of the US capitalist state’s drive to maximize the profits of the ruling class in the neo-liberal era. This can be seen in the massive scab labor force produced by Teach for America, bankrolled by Goldman Sachs. It is also apparent in the correlation between the increase of non-profits in the arena of homelessness and the reduction of available public housing units in cities across the country. Non-profits give corporate donors an avenue to receive additional tax-free privileges with an added public relations boost. Much of the money donated is returned two-fold through tax breaks and further speculation in the housing, education, and healthcare sectors increasingly made possible by an environment of privatization.

Non-profits have also been deployed by their ruling class funders to privatize social movements. An array of tax-exempt organizations has arisen to channel popular resistance into acceptable means of protest. During Occupy Wall Street, the non-governmental organization (NGO) CANVAS took center stage at many of the New York City rallies. The Black Lives Matter movement drew significant interest from a consortium of non-profits after receiving millions from the Ford Foundation and Google in 2015 and 2016. These interventions have blunted the messaging and activities of organizations sucked into the non-profit industry while leaving genuine activists without the resources to sustain consistent political activity.

The influence of the non-profit industrial complex is evident in the protests against President Donald Trump. The non-profit MoveOn.org has taken on a leadership role in the protests. This author attended a local sanctuary city rally where every sign carried by protesters possessed the “MoveOn.org” label. It is clear that the folks at MoveOn.Org have been playing a key role in the resistance against Trump. But who is behind the MoveOn.org brand and whose interests does the organization serve?

A cursory look into the organization’s finances indicates that MoveOn.org is a loyal servant of the Democratic Party. The organization’s finances from 2015 include large donations of over 250,000 from the organization “J Street” and billionaire Cari Tuna. J Street is a Zionist organization dedicated to developing liberal acceptance to the settler occupation of Palestine among college students. Tuna’s fortunes derive from her marital partnership with co-founder of Facebook Dustin Moskovitz. Tuna spends most of her time as a “philanthropist.” Her donations include a hefty 20 million dollars to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, which was distributed among a consortium of Clinton affiliated PACs. In addition, MoveOn.org is also financed by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Soros, despite the conspiratorial machinations regarding his political influence, is well-known around the world as a sponsor of “color revolutions” dedicated to the overthrow of governments that resist the penetration of US monopoly capitalism.

Non-profits are ultimately bound by the interests of their funders. MoveOn.org is no different. The organization’s Democratic Party funding sources have one goal and one goal only: to regain Democratic Party control of all three branches of governance in Washington. First, they hope to remove Trump in order to credit the organization with a temporary, albeit symbolic, victory for the Democrats. The next step is to win control of Congress in 2018. The interests of those supplying funds to non-profits like MoveOn.org are not aligned with the interests of oppressed and working people regardless of how the organization is advertised.

In fact, because big corporate donors control the terms and conditions of “social movement” non-profits, any social movements led by these institutions represent a threat to the independent political power of exploited and oppressed people. MoveOn.org’s mission to transfer power back to the Democratic Party is a familiar act, one that is repeated whenever the Republican Party regains Presidential and Congressional control of the state. Their big corporate donors possess zero interest in stopping the bipartisan crimes carried out by Washington. No petitions have been filed by the folks at MoveOn.org for reparations to nations, such as Libya and Syria, which were completely destroyed by the Democratic Party. MoveOn.org prides itself for exposing the corporate ties of the Republicans but is perfectly content with the corporate ties of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is the party of Wall Street and war. Obama’s two-term Presidency clarified the Democratic Party’s commitment to US imperialism. MoveOn.org had nothing to say about Wall Street’s cumbersome donations to the Obama campaign or how the Democratic Party facilitated the largest wealth transfer to the 1 percent in US history. MoveOn.org didn’t condemn Obama’s war on whistle blowers nor did it advocate for single payer healthcare when the Democratic Party held majorities in Congress. Neither Obama’s “Grand Bargain” to cut Social Security and Medicare nor his national assault on public education compelled MoveOn.org to take any action against its Democratic Party sugar daddies.

The case of the non-profit MoveOn.org provides an in-depth look into the broader function of non-profit industrial complex. While some individual non-profits administer vital services to the poor and working class, the non-profit industrial complex as a whole possesses a parasitic agenda. That agenda is to break the independent character of working class mobilization and organization, not develop it. Non-profits do this by turning resistance into a career opportunity managed and funded by the 1 percent. The development of an independent, working class-centered movement will require a mass rejection of non-profit funds and structures. Let us remember this as MoveOn.org continues to mobilize its base against the increasingly unstable Trump Administration.

[Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990(at)gmail.com]

Further Reading:

Inducing Consent: MoveOn.org

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II

Jan 27

2017

newWKOGadnim

Pacifism as Pathology, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

colonization indigenous resistance liberation Warrior Societies

Faceless

Ancestral Pride

January 18, 2017

(L-R) Mohawk Warriors- “Wizard” smokes through his mask, “Boltpin”. Wizard knew how to get media attention. They pulled up in a golf cart, and Wizard took out a knife, began cutting a hole in the vicinity of his own mouth, and then proceeded to smoke a small cigar through it. Kanehsatake (Oka, Quebec) Media op. Aug. 29, 1990.
Photo © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com ’90

What I know on the subject of why I mask up. There are many times when people are at “political” actions or see pics/footage of direct actions pertaining to Indigenous Land Defence or any kind of resistance to the government or corporations and we are masked up. There is always people who take it upon themselves to question you as if they are the grand arbiter of how you can or cannot participate in resistance. They have the gall to ask in the most rude ways “why do you mask up” “are you ashamed of yourselves?” “our ancestors never wore masks” “if your doing nothing wrong why hide” and all of the usual ignorant comments meant to shame or be derisive to Warriors. Despite this being none of their business and the fact that no one has to explain themselves to anyone on the reasons why they are engaging in combatting colonialism, oppression, resource extraction et al; the way they do, they still feel entitled enough to feel owed an explanation. The infuriating part is that when you take the time to explain why people mask up they are deliberately obtuse because its not really the mask they have a problem with, its what you are doing in terms of resistance. Those of us who wear masks are not ashamed in any way shape or form, wearing a mask signals our intent, it does not mean we are afraid quite the opposite. The mask is our true face, the face of a Warrior who is fully awake and aware and knows what they are doing is more than their ego or personal gain, the mask shows that we are committed to our actions, we are aware of the utmost seriousness of our inherent duty to protect the sacred, to protect our children, and their future.

I can only speak for myself but I think this is a sentiment that may be shared by my Resistance Fam. I mask up because when I am on the frontlines not only do I need to protect myself from chemical warfare, I need to protect myself and my family from recognition because of the fascist police state we live in that absolutely revels in its corrupt justice system that’s riddled with racism, they will make you a prisoner of war just for upholding your sacred and inherent right to protect your land and water. The jails have too many of our people and we cannot afford for any more of our people to be incarcerated and part of the industrial prison complex being made a modern day slave. Statistics show that Indigenous People make up a large majority of the population in prisons.

More importantly in my mind masking up is an act of love for Mother Earth, it is a way of showing her your deep respect for the honor of protecting her and her body. When your pledge yourself to be a Warrior for Mother Earths Army you leave your identity and your ego behind. You are faceless, nameless and need no glory attached to your battle deeds, after all when you are a Warrior your not in it for selfies or recognition, or you shouldn’t be. The whole reason for fighting is to protect your land and water and your very Mother, you are fighting for the future of your people not to be recognized and have your ass kissed when people see you, that kind of hubris has no place on the frontlines or in Warrior Societies. The duty you are undertaking as a Protector you are ensuring the continuity of your culture, traditions, and your very way of life as a member of your Nation, when you are fighting colonialism, oppression, racism, neocolonialism, resource extraction, the illegal government, and sometimes your own corrupt people it behooves you to show a united front with your warrior brothers and sisters who stand beside you, what better way to do that than to show the world and your enemy that you are all one, connected in a way they will never understand. On the frontline, wherever it may be you are literally facing racists, racist police, and other agencies that’s only agenda is to continue genocide and protect corporations who want to ruin our planet for their greed, in order to safeguard yourself and your comrades masking up is protection for you all.

Indigenous Resistance is not about personal identity, from my experience those who want to be the face of the resistance or always in the spotlight are usually involved in a passive form of resistance attached to NGO’s and they are usually making some sort of pay check or compensation for being a “spokesnative” and delivering a narrative that is safe and well within the parameters of acceptable civil disobedience or social justice if you will. They mean well but they are still heavily invested in the status quo, and maintaining good relationships with the colonizers. The difference between these types of Natives and those of us who have dedicated our lives to abolishing colonialism and its avails is that we know we are all one Warrior, we are not looking to maintain relationships with the people who run colonial institutions of any kind because we know they do not respect us or our tactics, nor do we want to be fake with people who think they can further us because in reality we know they do not subscribe to fully decolonizing and are only involved in the age old game of power and control. When we mask up we are looking out for each other and the bigger picture, we are a collective voice and body with the same goal. Our identities are inconsequential to the end result that we are aiming for: The total liberation of our people and our lands.

Building a culture and community of resistance is not an easy task and there will always be negative people that will question anything you do from masking up, to taking action, to how we create economic viability. These types of people will even try to throw the law at you in an attempt to mask their own fear of what a changing world looks like. The anti mask laws that have been passed in KKKanada in June of 2013 carry a 10 year sentence if found guilty, all of this is a tactic and an attempt to prevent us from doing our work as warriors and creating safe sovereign spaces for us all to exist in free from the ever present surveillance from the illegal military occupation commonly known as Canaduh. They can make all the “laws” they want to control us but WE ARE NOT AFRAID of the governments and its citizens attempts to further oppress and suppress us as the true Indigenous People of the lands, we have never surrendered nor have we ceded our rights as Nations. Despite their best attempts to eradicate us off of the face of the earth, control us through residential schools, or break us down with the Indian Act and its racist policies we are not only still here, we are thriving and fighting back. We are prayers made flesh.

We mask up to be free, we mask up to be our most authentic selves, we mask up to protect ourselves, we mask up to protect our loved ones, we mask up for love and out of respect for each other and Mother Earth, we mask up to honor our ancestors, our ancestors wore masks and war paint and so shall we. The mask is not to be feared it is to be revered.

In Love and Rage

Ancestral Pride
Red Warrior Society

For More Info:
https://www.facebook.com/peoplesmediaproject/videos/952058141589924/
https://www.facebook.com/RedWarriorCamp/videos/1772993369619282/
https://www.facebook.com/Westcoastwomenwarriors/videos/591453384390050/

Jan 04

2017

newWKOGadnim

Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Pacifism as Pathology, Social Engineering

Co-optation Direct Action Resistance Squamish Five The Liberalization of the Left

WATCH: Direct Action: Ann Hansen and the Squamish Five

Thirty-five years ago, in 1982, the financialization and pacification of “movements” was already well underway. The Squamish Five was a group that resisted this co-optation.

The Fifth Estate: “From 2002 our profile of the Squamish Five. Direct Action, or the Squamish Five as dubbed by the media, was a group of self-proclaimed ‘urban guerillas,’ active in the 1980s. These activists were not motivated by any political ideology but rather had become frustrated with traditional methods of activism which they saw as inefficient and futile. The group was implicated in a series of spectacular bombings which made them both wanted outlaws and symbols of protest. Their first target was B.C. Hydro, which had come under fire for spraying pesticides. Second, they bombed Litton Systems, a manufacturer of American cruise missile components. Unfortunately, this operation went horribly wrong; bombs went off before all employees could be evacuated. Ten employees were injured, some seriously. Third, the group bombed Red Hot Video, a pornographic video store which carried overly violent films. Eventually, the group was captured by police in a dramatic confrontation and all were sent to jail. Their sentences varied from six years to life, although all were out of prison by the early 1990s. Twenty years later, Ann Hansen, perhaps the toughest and most committed of them all, reflects on the decisions they made and the consequences that arose.”

Further reading & free download: Direct action: memoirs of an urban guerrilla – Ann Hansen

“From its origins in the Canadian anarchist and counter-cultural milieu of the late 70s/early 80s; to going underground into a clandestine life of arms drills, explosive practice, stealing cars, and (failed) armored car heists; to the massive reaction and surveillance of a State that felt (understandably) very much under attack; to the subsequent “trial by media” of those involved—this is very real, incredible revolutionary “true-crime” tale of unrepentant action.

Four hundred, eighty pages of fast-paced narrative are topped off with Communiqués issued for all the actions and Ann Hansen’s “Statement To The Court Before Sentencing.”

A triumph of storytelling, history, and a very real debate about movement tactics, goals, and vision.

“Hansen’s story is an intense, articulate rendering of her motivations and desire to be part of an effective revolutionary force for social justice.”

Review via AK Press

http://libcom.org/library/direct-action-memoirs-urban-guerrilla

Dec 14

2016

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Greenpeace, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Indigenous Environmental Network, Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Pacifism as Pathology, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz], Sierra Club, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

350.org Anthropocentrism Avaaz Behavioural Change Coloured Devolutions Flood Wall Street Militarism Mosaic Solar Other98 Purpose Social Engineering Standing Rock Storytelling Technology The Bishnoi The New Economy The Other 98

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 6 | Conclusion]

Wrong Kind of Green

December 14, 2016

Part six of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar

Standing Rock Investigative Report Series [Further Reading]: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Addendum

To conclude the series, Cory Morningstar wraps up her deep and thorough analysis of the detour and smokescreens the current and carefully engineered, “clean energy revolution” has traversed. The mass movement meant to corral “millennials” and well-intentioned citizens to get in step with the 21st century is not meant to end the reliance on fossil fuel, only to transform the package. Profits are still reaped but at who’s expense? Manufactured activism thrives at the NGO, corporate and individual level in order to sustain the wolves in sheep clothing who are the Executive Directors, Hedge Fund managers, Philanthropists and private Investors….all profiteers in one sense or another. Corporate warfare is being waged via the most gentle form of soft power. The non-profit industrial complex is the clearinghouse for the distribution of these soft power mechanisms. Collectively, Western society has been conditioned to believe that anthropocentrism is environmentalism and anthropocentrists are environmental activists. It is quite possible that this may be one of the best examples of successful social engineering to date, as financed by the world’s most powerful oligarchs.

Coloured Devolutions

Environmentalism is dead. Today we bear witness to 21^st century anthropocentrism. The goal is no longer to protect nature and all living things. In stark contrast, the goal is to now propel technology at the expense of nature and all living things. A “clean energy revolution”, at the expense of what little remains of nature and non-human life, for the gratification of human desires. In this sense western societies have collectively devolved to the most contemptible depths imaginable. Yet, as a conditioned society, few notice. As always, youth are targeted and groomed, the sacrificial lambs for continued capitalism. [Further reading: From Stable to Starr-The Making of North American Climate Heroes]#HerdingSheep

Wear blue. Wear red. Wear yellow. Photos-ops. Branding. Playful gimmicks for the bored, privileged masses. Those with the highest social metrics receive the most funding. It’s a race. A race to the bottom.

Flood Wall Street marketing: Wear blue. #Other98

Climate March Delhi India, September 2014. Wear blue.

Standing Rock marketing. Wear blue. #Other98

Wear Red: Red Lines for Climate Actions Manual, COP21, Paris. [No matter what action you do, please also share your action on social media so the rest of the world can see it. Take a photo or video and post on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook (if it’s on Facebook, please make sure it’s public) and then use make sure you add #D12 or #redlines. You can also send an email to socialmedia@350.org”][Source]

COP21. The above photograph appears in an article titled “Indigenous Peoples Take Lead at D12 Day of Action in Paris – Official response to COP21 agreement”. 350.org’s “red” campaign is interwoven into the statement. [Source] The reality is that Indigenous Peoples are used as photo-ops by NGOs to advance an elite and patriarchal agenda that only propels further Indigenous genocide.

“The process of influencing a mass audience to respond reflexively to induced prompts — like marching in parades or flooding financial districts wearing the color blue — requires looking beyond the civil society fad of I-pad revolution, and examining modern social “movements” as cults. Icons like Klein are as interchangeable as Hollywood starlets, but mass hypnosis of social activists by Wall Street titans using foundation-funded NGO is a troubling development.”— HIJACKING THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT, April 25, 2016

The Bishnoi: Eco Warriors Since the 15th Century (India) – In 1730, 363 Bishnoi men, women and children gave their lives to protect trees from being lumbered to build Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur’s new palace.

Solar Technology | Marketing in 21^st century anthropocentrism

To prevent the king’s men from cutting down their forest, Bishnoi men, women and children gathered around the trees and hugged them.

Wind turbine technology | Marketing in 21^st century anthropocentrism

This tragic event, known as the Khejarli Massacre, is also the first recorded event of the Chipko movement (hugging trees to prevent destruction, or just to love them) in history… long before the 1970s. [Source] Today we chop trees down for “green” biomass, solar and wind projects.

The new environmentalism created by the NPIC. Climate March Delhi India, September 2014. Wear yellow.

Avaaz climate campaign

The above image captures the dreams and aspirations of 21^st century anthropocentrism: solar, wind, wealth. Nature is virtually non-existent in the “climate factory” poster. It floats in the background as an afterthought.

Above: 350.org style guide: “Focus on people. Whenever possible, use visuals to emphasize that climate is a real, tangible human problem – not an abstract ecological issue.”

Collectively, Western society has been conditioned to believe that anthropocentrism is environmentalism and anthropocentrists are environmental activists. It is quite possible that this may be one of the best examples of successful social engineering to date, as financed by the world’s most powerful oligarchs.

Storytelling has always served as an integral, influential and dynamic component of human development and evolution. Today our stories are being scripted by those in power and used as subtly persuasive but powerful weapons – against ourselves. Whereas in the past environmentalism was the fight to protect nature and non-human life, today’s anthropocentrism serves to protect first world privilege, human life (Anglo) – at the EXPENSE of nature and non-human life (as well as non-Anglo human life). Today storytelling is a key component of behavioural change experts, marketing executives and NGOs who employ effective storytelling to sell us anything they wish, inclusive of death and war. [SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire] Yet, in this sense, we could categorize these soft-power “movements” as those that fall in the category of “colour revolutions”.

CONCLUSION: Manufactured Activism & Rebranding Control of Dissent

Militarism and Genocide in Exchange for the Maintaining of Privilege – An Agreed Upon Alibi

Collectively, American citizens have been most tolerant of a buildup of fascism and militarism over the past years and decades. Providing this is carried out in a somewhat covert manner with a charismatic veneer (The Obama administration/democrats) it is not only acceptable, but has resulted in a pro-war “left” that has cheered on (or been silent on) illegal invasions, occupations and coups throughout the middle east and global south. However when the same blatant racism, classism and fascism is carried out by an openly fascist leader (who lacks the political correctness that the imperial-liberal left demands) the same imperial-liberal left brigade cries a river of crocodile tears.

In this same way, American citizens have been most tolerant of the Bakken genocide that feeds their oil addiction and ensures their highly consumptive lifestyle, and most importantly, ensures their privilege remains intact. This is an unspoken known. How many Americans actually recoiled at the words of Madeline Albright “we think the price is worth it” in response to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children? The ugly truth is, we are willing to participate, to stay silent, provided we are guaranteed the right to pretend otherwise. As just one example consider the ongoing and endless Congo holocaust to service our tech desires. The response is silence. Collectively it is understood and agreed upon that “we think the price is worth it.” We want our technology. New cell phones, computers, renewable energies, electric cars. Like the Obama charisma that created a veneer of fabricated innocence and American exceptionalism, giving imperial-left liberals full license to ignore the millions that have suffered and died under his murderous administration, the NODAPL gives license to imperial-left liberals to appropriate a similar alibi. We can brand ourselves as moral citizens standing in unity with Indigenous nations, all while we maintain and propel a system that promises further genocide to Indigenous people in the Bakken and throughout the globe.

Win! Credit: Solar Mosaic and US Department of Defense | “The US military knows better than anyone the importance of energy independence,” Mosaic president Billy Parish was quoted in a company press release. “Mosaic is pleased to offer more Americans the opportunity to tangibly support this by investing in rooftop solar energy for military families. As a father, I’m working everyday to create a secure home, nation, and planet for my children.” [Source]

Once again, the NPIC is succeeding at sanitizing a critical discussion that should be centered on Indigenous peoples and an ongoing Indigenous genocide due to colonization, assimilation and industrialization (which NGOs will only further via global campaigns for “clean” energy). Instead of focusing on these issues as well the key issue of sovereignty, the NPIC works to ensure the masses focus on a singular pipeline, a subterfuge to marginalize and reframe all systemic issues. We focus on the transportation method of oil (in this case, again, a pipeline) rather than what is the driving force of oil itself. What we do not touch upon and what is never discussed is the question of who benefits – at the expense of what groups and nations of people are sacrificed. Nor does non-human life enter the discussion, let alone the thought-process whatsoever. This is due to the fact the environmental movement that materialized decades ago is now obsolete. Via the conditioning of our societies and the non-profit industrial complex who work at the bequest of their elite financiers, cultivated “activists” are in truth anthropocentrists. Manufactured “activism” today must be re-defined as full blown anthropocentrism en masse. Today’s 21^st century “activism” (anthropocentrism), has nothing to do with the protection of nature, of Earth, or her non-human inhabitants. Further, this “green” anthropocentrism, born of European-American ideologies shaped, molded, and nurtured by elite power structures, is an anthropocentrism that believes in, and caters to white supremacy, even if this belief is subconscious or subtle (aversive racism).

Today’s 21^st century anthropocentrism is given more credence when barely an eyebrow is raised by the fact that NGOs now partner with and aid militarism [October 14, 2016: A Cynical Environmentalism: Protecting Nature to Prepare for War] and even produce terrorist factions under the guise of humanitarian assistance. One key question is this: why do we remain blind to the fact that NGOs who push for a new global infrastructure of “clean” energy are financed to further advance imperialism?

October 14, 2016 from the article: A Cynical Environmentalism: Protecting Nature to Prepare for War:

“Altendorf was speaking on September 5 in Honolulu, Hawaii, at a panel discussion hosted by the US State Department entitled “Department of Defense Conservation: A Good News Story.” The event was held at the US Pavilion of the World Conservation Congress (WCC), a gathering organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This year’s WCC, attended by over 10,000 conservationists, scientists, government leaders, NGOs and members of civil society from 192 countries, also included representatives of the Army, Navy and Air Force who were eager to talk about caring for the natural world.” — A Cynical Environmentalism: Protecting Nature to Prepare for War, October 14, 2016

“By rebranding itself as a guardian of nature, the military improves its own public image and achieves a veneer of unassailability while bolstering its primary mission, which is, of course, the ability to wage war. In reality, war’s brutal and merciless goal of domination and control is the furthest thing imaginable from nurturing or preservation.” [Source]

Remix: : “By rebranding itself as a guardian of Indigenous sovereignty, the non-profit industrial complex improves its own public image and achieves a veneer of unassailability while bolstering its primary mission, which is, of course, the ability to protect current power structures. In reality, the oligarchies merciless goal of domination and control is the furthest thing imaginable from nurturing or preservation.”

+++

Revolution doesn’t always come in the form of a gun nor does enslavement always come by way of man. The 21st century version of colonialism has found a new weapon in NGOs.

The last word goes to Assata Shakur: “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who oppressing them.”

Epilogue

The Army Corps Of Engineers having announced a pause in the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline has prompted 350.org’s Bill McKibben to declare a “a smashing victory” for Indigenous activists, “one that shows what nonviolent unity can accomplish.” This sentence alone, which further romanticizes “nonviolent direct action” (the key talking point of the entire campaign), prompts critical questions deserving of critical analysis.

On the surface, this appears to be a victory for Indigenous sovereignty (albeit if only temporary). However, a rerouting of the final segment of this particular pipeline (87% completed) is not a victory to the Earth in any way, shape or form. The chair of the Standing Rock tribe was clear in his statement that the rerouting of the pipeline was all that was required to make the situation go away (Oct 28, 2016: “Reroute this pipeline, and this will all go away.”) So why did NGOs – that have never shown any meaningful interest in the welfare or land rights of Indigenous peoples nor their sovereignty, worm their way into this particular Indigenous struggle?

Many questions arise. Was this decision made simply to completely disperse the growing crowds that took many months to mobilize, in order to commence construction at a later date with no remaining resistance? Will the application simply be resubmitted in a few weeks time to be approved under the Trump administration? Will the protest be utilized to stall the pipeline, protecting the interests of Warren Buffett’s BNSF (crude via rail)? A few thing are certain. One: In a global economy close to stall speed, amidst a world swimming in excess oil, there is no urgency for the completion of this pipeline. Two: Warren Buffett’s BNSF profits are already taking a hit. The completion of the Dakota Access (like KXL) would further impact BNSF profits in a slowing economy. Three: Buffett has funneled well over 30 million dollars through his family’s foundation (NoVo) into the Tides Foundation which then disperses the funds amongst selected NGOs carrying out anti-pipeline campaigns.

Regardless, elite powers including the Clinton Global Initiative, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and the Bush Foundation have a new billion dollar model for rolling out the third industrial revolution under the guise of “clean energy”. The tribes are key. A model for the continued pillaging of the planet, under a protective, if not scared, Indigenous veneer. The capitalists have finally found a use for the Indigenous nations. Continued patriarchy and imperialism repackaged as matriarchal self-reliance. Reflect upon the fact that 90 trillion dollars are required to build the “new economy” infrastructure. The fact that this very industrialization (from 1740 to today) has brought us to the precipice of our own extinction is altogether lost. The race for what little remains of our ruthlessly plundered planet accelerates.

We have entered the 21^st century where social engineering via behavioural change expertise has become paramount in shaping whole societies to the desires of global hegemony. Corporate warfare is being waged via the most gentle form of soft power. The non-profit industrial complex is the clearinghouse for the distribution of these soft power mechanisms. The Standing Rock protests have undoubtedly served as an experiment in the study of manipulation, conformity, obedience, assimilation and neocolonialism. Consider the organizing surrounding the Standing Rock protest has been referred to as “a template” for the future by 350.org executive director May Boeve.

This is not to suggest that this campaign was engineered (or co-opted) from inception exclusively for experimental/observational purposes (although this too is possible). Rather, it is more probable, that once underway it was recognized as a prime opportunity for the NGOs (extensions of elite power) that comprise the non-profit industrial complex, to apply, test and observe methods of manipulation and exploitation following their initial engagement. Although this hypothesis may sound implausible to some, the fact that the NPIC has begun its foray into training programs across the globe, makes such speculation both sound and rational.

Can citizens of other cultures, in other countries, many/most of non-Anglo descent, be coerced to disregard and ultimately disband their own traditions, customs, beliefs, by their own will, in exchange for American ideologies? To achieve this, without force, surely is a most effective method. What better way to observe the successes and failures of such a mission than Standing Rock. A separate and distinct culture, right here on (stolen) American soil.

Akin to the global contagion of both Christianity and Catholicism, can a global belief in “the new economy” as constructed and desired by elite powers also be pounded into the masses? Can the masses be conditioned to live and breathe this ideology like are we breathe – without notice? Can a pathology of pacifism be reconstructed as sacrosanct – where non-obedience to the pacifist dogma would be paramount to the seven deadly sins?

This is sought occupation, not physical, but of hearts and minds. Which will undoubtedly prove far more powerful than physical occupation of lands and citizens via force. Obedience and subservience are in fact the pathway to the “new economy”. This series has attempted to give readers a glimpse into how this is to be achieved and for what purpose.

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 1]

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 2]

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 3]

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 4]

Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 5]

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Coloured Devolutions

CONCLUSION: Manufactured Activism & Rebranding Control of Dissent

Epilogue