The Patriot Act’s New Clothes

June 8, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

DO YOU PREFER “FREEDOM” OR “PATRIOTISM”?

Last week we focused our attention upon the expiration of the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, or Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, and all of the corporate and government shenanigans associated with it. We know our communications are being recorded and stored in the name of “National Security” – a blanket term that’s used when powerful agencies and companies engage in blatantly illegal behavior. But that’s all over now because the so-called Patriot Act expired on Sunday night, right?

Well, no, not exactly.

There’s a lot of hubbub in the media patting Rand Paul on the back for his vow to force the expiration of the unconstitutional legislation plaguing America since the autumn of 2001. There’s a suspicious celebration of this new USA Freedom Act. And there’s a pesky weed sprouting up yet again in America’s minds that our national spy networks use of corrupt overreach is a problem that can somehow be solved politically.

But let’s get real about what’s actually happened here. Rand Paul might have gummed up the works for a minute, but the so-called Patriot Act’s expiration on Monday morning changes absolutely nothing.

First of all, as we mentioned last week, NSA dragnet surveillance programs did not begin in 2001 with the creation of the Patriot Act. George W. Bush may have institutionalized surveillance in the minds of Americans as acceptable by assuring them it would “keep them safe,” but Anglo-American spy agencies were recording every communication with ECHELON, MINARET, SHAMROCK, COINTELPRO, CHAOS, and countless other operations in the decades prior, that birthed what we know of today as Signals Intelligence or SIGINT.

Secondly, the NSA never needed the Patriot Act to conduct their unconstitutional surveillance on Americans in the first place. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the chief architects of the Patriot Act, never intended for it to be used in the way that intelligence, spy and surveillance agencies and their associated contractors have. These agencies instituted a secret interpretation of the wording of the act to legally justify their illegal actions.

Third, the sudden passage of the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday immediately followed the expiration of the USA Patriot Act, which stinks of the tried-and-true methods of psychological manipulations employed by the public relations industry in the past – give the people a fake solution so that they’ll go back to sleep. What they’ve done is effectively replaced a red apple for a green apple, which is decidedly a red herring that everyone should be well aware of. Just like the Patriot Act, the Freedom Act’s name derives from a comically over-thought acronym that stands for the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring” Act.

Civil liberties advocates are hailing it as a great step forward from the dark days of the Patriot Act, celebrating the first reform of surveillance laws in well over a decade.Don’t believe the hype, though. The Freedom Act is nothing more than a new Patriot Act 2.0. It will perpetuate the same behavior from the intelligence community and the corporations that own it.

As Sonali Kolhatkar pointed out this week, “Activist groups like Demand Progress, Credo and Fight for the Future have unanimously declared that, ‘The USA Freedom Act is a mass surveillance bill dressed up as a reform bill, and its passage will authorize unconstitutional surveillance practices’.”

Sunday night the EFF posted on their website, “Don’t Worry, the Government Still Has Plenty of Surveillance Power If Section 215 Sunsets.” The long journey to stop surveillance has only just begun.

BBC News even admits that key parts of the Patriot Act are retained in the Freedom Act.

DOUBLETHINK

With all of this doublespeak its no wonder so many of us have become apathetic about the political process. The confusion is anything but accidental. The system is deliberately structured to make us bewildered. Just as the language of Wall Street is so confusing you’d have to be crazy to bother learning its dogmatic lexicon, the architecture of our political process intentionally baffles and frustrates the common people into complete indifference. For ordinary citizens who realize these things but don’t quite comprehend the extent of the issue or what should be done, the recent surveillance debate has been nothing short of confounding.

For one thing the vast majority of us are struggling every day just to make ends meet, so we don’t have much time or energy to pay attention to current events, the finer points of one bill versus another, or the congressional procedures involved in the passage of legislation. And even for those who do have the time and the will to take a look, its dry, boring, intimidating, draining, confusing, and at the end of the day seemingly irrelevant. If we internalize the learned helplessness that this Empire has instilled into us with miseducation, the psychology of advertising, and near-total control of mainstream propaganda, what’s to stop the average person from tossing their hands up in disgust while declaring, “Who cares? There’s nothing I can do about it anyway!” And who can blame them?

For one thing we read in the newspapers in the lead up to the Patriot Act’s expiration that the Senate failed to pass the new Freedom Act. But then just a few days later all the headlines proclaimed just the opposite – that the Senate passed the Freedom Act.

Just to clear the air, this piece of legislation was introduced in the Senate as S.1123 on May 12th but failed to pass. Then it was introduced in the House as H.R.2048 and passed the House on May 13^th before the Senate passed the House version of the bill on June 2nd and it was signed into law by the President on the same day. So Sunday’s heated Senate session that failed to produce an eleventh-hour extension could be construed as a contrived distraction since they immediately turned around to pass a revised version of the Freedom Act on Tuesday anyway, which is in essence nothing more than a carefully revised Patriot Act.

You’ve probably noticed over the years that these laws are always labeled with emotionally evocative titles, like “The Milk For Cute Babies and Kittens Act.” Who could possibly be against that? In this case, Congress might as well have wasted our time debating whether it is nobler to choose between “Patriotism” or “Freedom.” Retired NSA whistleblower Kirk Wiebe who spent 36 years in the intelligence community, admits that the names of these bills “are designed to elicit emotion with words like Patriot Act and Freedom Act. It’s all psychological manipulation.”

Wiebe summarized the kind of aversion we need to adopt in our thinking on this issue, saying, “We have a variety of organizations that constitute a huge intelligence police apparatus, and it’s being turned against the American people under the explanation that ‘We need to protect you.’ My goodness, that is used by every tyrannical government in history!”

Rand Paul pointed out the major weakness in the Freedom Act is that the records of many millions of phone calls would no longer go to the NSA, where such data has been stored in the past. Instead they will now remain with the phone companies. Intelligence agencies could retrieve the records only with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which operates in secret. “We may be replacing one form of bulk collecting with another,” Paul told the Senate on Sunday.

Rand Paul’s message was on point, but since he’s going to run for president next year, the likelihood that his stance was nothing more than a distracting bit of political rig’a’ma’roll is a possibility that becomes more probable the more you think about it. Even if his message was genuine, the vast majority of the other representatives are bought and paid for – just look at their campaign financiers for proof of this assertion. Whomever has the money gets the election, and we know who provides the money in this system.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation – who have expressed optimism about the Freedom Act – admit that it doesn’t go nearly far enough because now we’re entrusting the corporations to follow the law, which they probably won’t. And this isn’t just about one agency or another since the powerful all work together. More than 70% of NSA’s employees are privately contracted by agencies like Booz Allen Hamilton, the firm that Edward Snowden used to work for.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper this week, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, said of the new law, “The USA Freedom Act is hardly any better than the Patriot Act, as it still violates a lot of our constitutional rights.”

The only freedom the so-called Freedom Act will provide, is the freedom for Corporations and Intelligence agencies to justify unconstitutional surveillance on everyone with the same legal loopholes provided to them by their secret interpretations of the new statutes. Sure, their lawyers will have to scramble for a few months to write up the specifics of how exactly they’re going to defend their position in front of Congress should that ever happen again, but when was the last time these agencies followed the laws as written?

Legally speaking, NSA has always denied the extent of their surveillance, and when push ever comes to shove can hide behind a technicality that allows the to share data with other members within the Five Eyes Alliance. They might be forbidden from collecting data on Americans, but Britain’s equivalent of the NSA called the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ can collect on Americans and then share that data with NSA or FBI.

And the persecution of whistleblowers is likely to continue under the USA Freedom Act. In fact it’s rather likely that whistleblowers will be oppressed even more tyrannically now that Snowden has stepped forward.

The NSA has been violating written laws for decades and has defended such violations quite vociferously. Disregarding constitutional rights is exactly how the NSA got to this point. The government never got a warrant for any invasion of privacy they now take for granted as standard procedure. And a recent Federal court ruling found that the Patriot Act didn’t authorize the degree of intrusive dragnets in which the government has been engaged. So now the same people who got us into this mess have passed an act with the word “FREEDOM” in it in place of the word “PATRIOT” and we’re really naïve enough to think things are going to change? – that they’re just going to say, “Oh well, I guess we have to follow the law now,” and give up control just like that?

Get Real!

I HATE TO BURST YOUR BUBBLE, BUT THEY’RE STILL LISTENING

In an article entitled “Dear NSA: This Call Will Not Be Recorded, Eugene Robinson writes:

“I made a phone call at 12:01 a.m. Monday, and it felt good. For the first time in years, the number I dialed on my iPhone was not captured and stored in a massive government database. Since it was an inconvenient hour, I called my office phone, knowing it would go to voicemail. But I wanted to make the point that an important principle was again being honored: Unless I’m suspected of some involvement with terrorism, it’s none of the National Security Agency’s business whom I talk to. Or when. Or why. … When the relevant parts of the Patriot Act expired, the NSA lost its legal authorization to track the usage of my phone—and yours.”

Robinson would be correct if bulk surveillance collection had actually ended at midnight on Monday, but it didn’t. There’s actually a six-month grace period before any substantive changes will be made, and that’s a best-case scenario. In fact, the Obama administration intends to use part of a law banning the bulk collection of US phone records to temporarily restart the bulk collection of US phone records.

US officials contend they will ask a secret surveillance court to revive the program – deemed illegal by a federal appeals court – all in the name of “transitioning” the domestic surveillance effort to the telephone companies that generate the so-called “call detail records” the government seeks to access.

The unconventional and unexpected legal circumstance depends on a section of the USA Freedom Act, which Obama signed into law on Tuesday, that provides a six-month grace period to prepare the surveillance and legal bureaucracies for a world in which the National Security Agency is no longer the repository of bulk US phone metadata. The Freedom Act’s ban of mass surveillance reads that it “shall take effect on the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act”. During that time, the act’s ban on bulk collection will not yet take effect, and they weren’t shut down as of Sunday night.

There is no on/off toggle switch for these intelligence programs within the houses of Congress, and this supposed shut down hasn’t had any more effect on the NSA than the budgetary shutdown of our National Parks could have prevented rivers from flowing or trees from growing within the Parks. The Patriot Act’s 215 provision may have expired on Sunday night, but the government is arguing that it “needs to restart the program in order to end it,” which provides a nice preview of what the future holds – an endless list of excuses but no real changes.

But Robinson continues:

“Assuming the agency obeys the law, the balance between liberty and security has been sensibly rebalanced.”

This last sentence really hits the nail squarely on the head, because we would be rather gullible to assume the agency has any intention of obeying the laws as they are written – or more importantly, as the public would interpret them. Because remember, statutes are not written in English – they’re written in Legalese, which is a different language used by courts and banks to exploit the people, and it’s a language that requires a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary and one hell-of-a-lot of patience to understand properly.

All this adds up to a lot of possible loopholes, the biggest one being the Freedom Act’s reliance on the phone companies, which are part of a web of telecommunication companies, Internet providers, tech companies and others on the information superhighway that work hand-in-hand with the federal government. Most importantly, we won’t know how the secretive FISA court will regulate the process. As the Electric Frontier Foundation stated, the journey to bring the national security apparatus under control has just begun.

There’s still much to be done. If the American people start to organize there is still time to make the necessary steps to salvage what’s left of our Constitutional Republic. As long as we’re reforming surveillance laws, we can focus our attention on the next series of sunsets. For example, certain provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act are scheduled to sunset in 2017, including Section 702, one of the main legal authorities the government relies on to engage in mass surveillance of people’s online communications. There’s also Executive Order 12333, which provides carte blanche for NSA’s worldwide dragnet, and the obsession with classification that prevents accountability, transparency and oversight all in the name of “National Security.”

UNITY THROUGH FEAR

Let’s get real about the justifications behind the so-called PATRIOT Act. The whole issue of government surveillance was mainstreamed by 9/11, which has been used to justify crimes too numerous to articulate. History’s rhyme scheme again knocks loudly in the form of something Adolf Hitler once said, that “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Anti-war activists protesting the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as journalists reporting on the illegal activities of NSA and JSOC have all been denounced as villains, granting authorities the vindication to search the communications records of anyone suspected of being a “terrorist.” Just look at the more than 1.5 million names the government has added to its Terrorist Watch List in the past five years. They even charged Reverend Billy with terrorism in 2013 for singing songs in a bank. The “T” word is being thrown around so loosely that its beginning to lose its meaning, as it no longer signifies a genuine threat, but instead indicates anyone who opposes the status quo however peacefully, including activists, journalists and whistleblowers.

September 11^th scared the bejesus out of the entire country and this abomination was pushed as an anti-terrorism measure, but it should be clear by now that it was never about the existential threat of “terrorism,” (a threat that our secret military programs have themselves deliberately created) and it wasn’t that it was written hastily in response the 9/11 event. NeoConservative bureaucrats have clearly had such an assault on civil liberties and the US Constitution prepared in the 1990s and further published their plans in the Project for a New American Century a year prior to 9/11, admitting that the new level of imperial mobilization and resource exploitation they desired to further concentrate wealth and power would be difficult to exact, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” Not long afterward, late one afternoon, the 1100 page Patriot Act was swiftly dropped on Congress who were expected to vote on it the very next day. Its obviously doubtful at best that anyone was able to even read it. But the point is that the bill was prepared in advance and ready to go when the timing was convenient. It was a preexisting conspiracy, just as were the plans to invade Afghanistan, drafted months ahead of 9/11.

But in all the debate surrounding the so-called Patriot Act, the intelligence community has never been able to claim a single fruitful investigation of terrorism that originated with phone data. Instead, analysts have delved into the haystack to corroborate and expand upon information obtained by other means such as interrogating prisoners, coercing people to become informants, and examining seized documents.

If the job of the intelligence network is to prevent terrorism, when has the government actually stopped terrorist acts over the last 14 years, after 9/11 justified the expansion of these surveillance programs? As we stated last week, there is no evidence that this massive domestic surveillance program rolled up a single terrorist plot, but plenty of evidence that it was misused. This is a point so important it needs to be repeated again and again – after all, the slogan, “We Shall Never Forget,” is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

We shall never forget the report by the Justice Department’s inspector general who stated that the FBI “did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders.”

The phone dragnet has never found a terrorist. The only incident that intelligence agencies say they used it for was finding a guy who sent $8,500 to Somalian militant rebel group al-Shabab, and this dude was trying to fight back against the Kenyan invasion of Somalia, which has nothing to do with the security of America whatsoever.

Contrary to popular belief, several instances of terrorism such as the Boston Marathon bombing were known in advance by the top officials and allowed to happen. Because rather than harming terrorists, the government consistently works to harm us.

On the same day the USA Freedom Act was passed, the Associated Press released a shocking investigative report on FBI surveillance. According to the report, “[t]he FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology–all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government.” For years, reports of suspicious-looking planes flying over neighborhoods fueled fears of government surveillance, including during recent protests in Baltimore after the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. The Associated Press report confirms those fears. And AP investigators have found that the use of these surveillance aircraft is so astonishingly widespread that “In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country.”

We also now know that NSA’s surveillance is shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency, which uses it to prosecute drug dealers but routinely lies to judges about how the case developed. Looking over the numbers its easy to see that the Patriot Act has almost never been used for terrorism cases but more for drug busts and a crack down of civil groups practicing their right to dissent. In many of these cases the illegal actions of the NSA is causing unjust incrimination of citizens not defying state law. While it might be hard for those on the straight-and-narrow to sympathize here, whenever law enforcement acts unconstitutionally and illegally, it harms us all. And its easy for most of us to say, “Well that’s no problem for me – after all, I’m not a drug dealer and I don’t March Against Monsanto, so this doesn’t affect me at all.” But let’s allow CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou to be the first to pop that bubble when he says, “Wake up America – you’re next.” If the routine military raids on organic farms or methodical murder of unarmed black men in urban areas, or the IRS’s targeting of political adversaries isn’t a warning to this effect, I don’t know what is.

HAS ANYTHING CHANGED?

So how does the Freedom Act differ from the Patriot Act?

Not much.

The most significant change is that call records will now remain with the phone companies, at least in theory and on paper. But they are still recording the content of every call, every email, and every communication, and the NSA will probably need only the most minuscule thread to be granted access.

As Juan Cole pointed out this week, “The spy network will likely be only slightly inconvenienced by
the expiration of the misnamed “PATRIOT Act.”

So does it make any difference whatsoever if phone records are held by the telecom companies instead of the government? After all, the corporate monolith has successfully gained control over our government institutions by buying them. Government used to regulate corporate power, and the media used to regulate government power. But now these systems of checks and balances have mutated into the corporate-owned hegemony we see before us. And we would do well to remember that the definition of Fascism is the merging of corporate and government forces.

Warrantless and general searches through people’s papers without probable cause was one of the sparks that set off the first American Revolution. The Fourth Amendment was enacted to ensure that the abuses that occurred under the crown would not continue in our Constitutional Republic. In 2001 the PATRIOT Act abrogated the Fourth Amendment, which used to say:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Section 213 of the unconstitutional Patriot Act allowed “sneak and peak” searches, where law enforcement did not even tell the suspect that his or her premises were being searched. Only half-of-a-percent of searches (0.5%) conducted with these secret warrants actually involved terrorism. Mostly they have been used in the “war on drugs,” which we know is more about keeping the poor impoverished and imprisoned, as well as an attempt by liquor and pharmaceutical companies to eliminate the competition posed by marijuana and other ancient, unregulated medicines.

Our fourth amendment was crafted to make general warrants illegal. Even British courts under the monarchy in the 18th century pushed back against the crown’s assertion of a right to snoop into someone’s papers with no probable cause and no specific warrant. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both laid claim to a power that even the monarchical King George III never did, and Americans kicked King George III off this continent for being too nosy.

History may not repeat, but it does rhyme. The Patriot Act was all-too reminiscent of the British Sedition Act and eve more recently, the German Enabling Act.

German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin pointed out that George Bush used Iraq to distract the American public from his failed domestic policies, reminding her audience, “That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that.”

Hitler came to power legally; that the Nazi party were elected democratically in a time of great national turmoil and crisis; that they were funded and ultimately ushered into power by wealthy industrialists looking for government favors.

History teaches us that it is shockingly easy to separate reasonable and intelligent people from their rights. A legally elected leader and party can easily manipulate national events to whip up fear, crucify scapegoats, gag dissenters, and convince the masses that their liberties must be suspended (temporarily, of course) in the name of restoring order, “for your protection.”

When the shooting started at Lexington Green in 1775, those calling themselves patriots were those who refused to yield their rights to an increasingly oppressive government. According to John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act, the modern “Patriot” is someone who kneels down in fear, and hands over all inherent rights to the government. But John Ashcroft and George W. Bush were and are just another chapter in the continuity of a regime that hijacked this country a long time ago.

After America placed her faith in Barack Obama, she was shocked to find his demeanor a carbon-copy facsimile of previous administrations, making the reign of Obama the biggest disappointment since George Lucas’ Star Wars Prequels. If the Freedom Act is the Patriot Act 2.0, Barack Obama is certainly George W. Bush’s upgrade.

As an individual, Obama has demonstrated disinterest in acknowledging the Fourth Amendment. PBS Frontline recently revealed that NSA didn’t even bother to read Obama into its massive domestic surveillance program until 2010, two years into his first term, and that when they did, he just sat nodding complacent approval. It’s led some to wonder if he has been blackmailed in some way, but the reality is much simpler that that. The truth is that the human being named Barack Obama cannot suspend domestic spying programs, any more than he can institute mandatory GMO labeling or end America’s global war and bring the troops home, because organizations far more powerful who have been at this for far longer than he has brought those things into existence and are not about to relinquish on their investment of domination. Furthermore, if the spy agencies have any dirt on any politician, they can ruin them, which is yet another reason why surveillance is fundamentally corrosive to democracy and a menace that leaves the door to fascism wide open.

AT LEAST WE’RE HAVING THE CONVERSATION FINALLY

Juan Cole emphasized this week that the present conversation taking steps toward restoring liberty in this country would not have occurred without the revelations provided by Edward Snowden that publicized just how out of control the National Security Agency is, disclosing how executive orders are used to authorize absolutely outrageous warrantless snooping into the affairs of millions. Even senators like Ron Wyden of Oregon, who knew what the US government was doing in secret, could not openly blow the whistle because they would be instantly arrested.

Snowden scarified a relatively luxurious life to do what he did, and has since been charged with accusations that become more silly the more you think about them, because its obvious that he has put no one’s safety in danger, except the mafioso criminals at the top of the pyramid. Those criminals scrambled to charge him with “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and giving such material to an unauthorized person. Federal officials relied on a World War I-era Espionage Act from 1917 for the charges; an favorite of the Obama administration that has indicted seven whistleblowers in just a few short years. Compare that with the three Espionage Act indictments in the previous century. Ed would face an absolutely draconian prison sentence if he ever chose to give up his Russian exile, so it’s rather unlikely he’ll ever get to see his family again unless the cancerous tumors infecting the military-industrial complex metastasizing throughout every one of our social institutions is uprooted and restored with something more sane.

Snowden’s dramatic change of heart no-doubt came as a surprise to NSA. Ed’s mother works for the federal court system, and his father and grandfather were officers in the Coast Guard officers. In fact, his grandfather was present at the Pentagon when it was hit on 9/11. And his own military experience illustrates someone who believed the commercials about “Be All You Can Be.” Ed trained in the U.S. Army Special Forces for four months. After he broke both of his legs in training, his exceptional computer skills landed him a security guard job in top CIA technical posts before he ended up working for NSA as a private contractor. His concern for the civil liberties of Americans became a greater concern that his superior’s refused to acknowledge that NSA spying programs were blatantly unconstitutional. And the rest is history, but by now it should become more apparent why the intelligence community considers veterans a grave threat to quote “National Security.” In this case, National Security is code to signify that if the American people found out the truth there would be revolution before tomorrow morning, and it would be led by our best and brightest – the veterans who come home from our illegal war zones with a different perspective than they did as naïve recruits, thirsty for blood from the brainwashing of war culture, the celebration of war in films, the glorification of violence in Call of Duty, Halo and Medal of Honor, and the puerile proclamation of war on anything that makes the society uncomfortable, from the war on cancer to the war on drugs to the war on poverty and beyond. Veterans have seen the truth with their own eyes, but this society rarely wants to hear what they have to say because their story is counter to the narrative of our propagandists at the Public Relations firms who make us feel fuzzy about imperialistic genocide done in the name of Christ and wrapped in the American Flag.

Kirk Wiebe recently remarked that, “We are truly witnessing—and I mean it in the most serious sense—the ascension of the police state. Some people call it ‘fascism.’”

With the passage of the Freedom Act, NSA and FISA might not change their tune, but on the bright side they are slightly more transparent and legally accountable than they were a week ago. Will this moment be marked by history as a turning point or just another accommodation to placate the masses back into thoughtless complacency?

Our rights and liberties are nowhere near what they were prior to 9/11, but it seems as though we’re at least playing with the idea of taking a step in the right direction. Surveillance powers will always be abused to intimidate, harass, and to subvert social movements and their leaders. Rather than discussing the details of how much we would like to curb the government’s all-seeing eyes, we would do well to question the legitimacy of these programs and push back as hard as possible against their dubious and unfounded claims to protect us. But are Americans capable of peering deep enough into the looking-glass to see past the propaganda of those who seek to preserve their power at our expense?

What we have now is momentum, which is difficult to acquire. Now that we have it, we must keep it going, and push it in the right direction. Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war. Organized, politically-savvy, articulate, and educated activists strike fear into the black heart of the oligarchy. Let us keep this going.

Gabrielle Lafayette is a journalist, writer, and executive producer for the Outer Limits Radio Show.
Catch the cloudcast at mixcloud.com/outerlimitsradioshow
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Contact the research team at outerlimitsradioshow@fastmail.fm

Surveillance Doesn’t Keep You Safe

June 1, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

THE PANOPTICON HAS YOU

The Patriot act is on course to expire Monday, June 1^st. Thus opening the floodgates to a torrent of activity, from the creation and failure of the USA Freedom Act, as well as a ten-and-a-half hour filibuster by Senator Rand Paul in addition to hundreds of columns and speeches. Then on Friday, May 29th more than 10,000 websites prevented congressional offices from accessing them to protest the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act’s expiration would be the sunset on that infamous Section 215 which has technically enabled the U.S. government to weasel their way into a secret interpretation of the wording of that clause to legally spy on all Americans. Unless Washington renews it before its scheduled expiration on Monday, government officials attempting to whitewash state-sponsored crimes won’t be able to hide behind the wording of that legal-loophole anymore.

Meanwhile federal law enforcement officials continue to persuade through fear mongering, warning that the expiration of the Patriot Act would significantly diminish their ability to fight this existential threat they commonly refer to as “terrorism.” Attorneys with the ACLU assert that FBI already has all the tools it needs, accusing intelligence officials and some in Congress of “scaremongering” in order to incite prospective need for the Patriot Act.

In a recent Reddit Q/A, Edward Snowden pointed out the fallacy of the argument that we need NSA to keep us safe. Supporters of mass surveillance insist that it’s the only thing to keep us safe, repeating that mantra over and over to anyone who will listen. But that’s an allegation, not a fact, and it turns out there’s actually no evidence at all to support that claim. In fact, a White House review with unrestricted access to classified information found that not only is mass surveillance illegal, it has never made a concrete difference in even one terrorism investigation.

If mass surveillance really kept anybody safe, the intelligence community would have prevented 9_11 instead of enabling it; they would have prevented the Boston Marathon Bombing; they would have prevented the Charlie Hebdo incident; they would have prevented the Naval Yard shooting – and the list goes on an on. The truth is actually just the opposite – impending danger is cited to justify the perpetual growth of the Empire, as well as the on-going evisceration of our civil liberties.

Privacy cannot be reconciled with Security, but that again is probably the wrong conversation to have because we’re not talking about privacy, a word that often stirs up feelings of resentment by its potentially pompous nature that hints toward naivety. The point is, what we used to refer to as Liberty we now substitute with the word privacy, thus altering the perimeters of the entire debate. Because Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

If you really think deeply about it, there is no such thing as security. More people die of peanut allergies than from terrorism. And if the state was really in the business of keeping people safe, why are so many Americans shot to death by law enforcement for no reason? If the state was really in the business of “keeping you safe,” wouldn’t they do something about the million Americans who die annually from cigarette smoking and heart disease?They tell us we need them to keep us safe in the language of a strong patriarch all the while playing on programmed insecurities and a sense of learned helplessness that they themselves has instilled. And they repeat those words so many times that we begin to believe them, and trade our sovereignty for the promise of a guarantee. Their rhetoric is that of a heroic-father figure, reluctantly searching through his daughter’s dresser for signs of drug abuse, when they’re more like the 13-year-old spying on his sister in the shower and stalking her on dates in vein efforts to get her in trouble with her parents.

From The “Patriot” Act To The “Freedom” Act

So privacy advocates celebrated the House’s overwhelming passage of the USA Freedom Act, otherwise known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act, expressed as the necessary reform to end the bulk data collection of US citizens. The bill would have ended bulk data collection, prevented government overreach by limiting how data is collected, changed national security letter gag orders, and reformed the FISA court – that is the top-secret court modeled under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Critics of the Freedom Act asserted that it would merely adjust and codify the government’s practice of bulk telephone data collection instead of actually putting an end to it. The slew of other spying authorities utilized by NSA were not addressed in the bill. Congressmen Ted Lieu explained that the nation might be better served by simply allowing the Patriot Act to flounder, rather than dividing focus on creating additional legislation.

So after passing through the House, the Freedom Act died in the Senate. Now the Senate is scheduled to reconvene on Sunday, May 31, at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, mere hours before Section 215’s’ expiration. In spite of the House of Representatives rejection of short-term reauthorization of the Patriot Act, it appears that McConnell is going to bully his way into a last-minute extension of the program. In any event, if Section 215 of the Patriot Act dies at midnight on June 1st, it’s dead for good, along with two other key provisions.

Presidential hopeful Rand Paul made quite a bit of noise this week with his marathon filibuster on the Senate floor Wednesday night that lasted nearly 10-and-a-half hours. “There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” Paul warned. “That time is now.”

But aside from the potential of scoring political points for presidential hopefuls ahead of the 2016 election, its hard to say whether this debate will inspire the Government to follow the law as written. Now, pro-NSA bureaucrats are always quick to point out that the NSA is not violating any laws with its surveillance practices. However, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that NSA surveillance practices were “likely unconstitutional” even going so far as to refer to them as “almost Orwellian.” The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight board have also confirmed that NSA practices are illegal.

It leads one to wonder then, if the Freedom Act had make it through the Senate, would we witness any substantive changes? Even if the bill was capable of actually altering the law, when was the last time we read about NSA concerning itself with following the laws of this land? The NSA has been violating written laws for decades and has defended such violations at all costs. After all, disregarding constitutional rights is exactly how the NSA got to this point.

Legal compliance is not in the DNA of NSA any more that telling the truth is. We’re told that they’re not collecting the content of our Emails and phone calls, that they’re only collecting the metadata, which is a blatant lie. As former NSA official William Binney points out, they wouldn’t have been able to retroactively seek out the alleged culprits of the Boston Marathon bombing if they were only collecting metadata. Furthermore the collection of content is the primary reason for the new massive NSA data center in the Utah desert, which would not be necessary if they were only collecting metadata. And if preventing violence was really their M.O., their budgets would not have been able to swell the way they have.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be fooled by the circus of political posturing currently underway. As we can see looking back over the decades, NSA surveillance is likely to prevail one way or another.

Besides, the only reason NSA reform is even being considered is because Snowden leaked classified documents that exposed NSA spying programs in detail. However, that does not mean we should sit idly by and let Congress reinstate the Patriot Act; it wouldn’t be in our best interest to give the political pony-show the impression that people are not paying attention. We have the truth at our fingertips and the will to investigate the true legality of our government spying on its own citizenry.

Snowden rocked the political world and remains in the limelight as journalists continue publishing information sourced from a treasure trove of top-secret documents he took from NSA. But this whistle was blown repeatedly before anybody became aware of Snowden’s name. It’s just that other whistle-blowers who could not produce such explicit hard evidence have been ignored. Daniel Ellsburg, J. Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, William Binney and Thomas Drake are just some of the more well-known NSA personnel who went public before Snowden did. And because these men were heavily persecuted and ignored despite going through the so-called “legal” channels of exposing criminal activity and government overreach, Snowden realized that if he was going to expose his revelations by a similar route, he would have ended up as a political prisoner like Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond.

Addressing an audience at Stanford University via video chat on Friday, 15 May 2015, Edward Snowden admitted that:

“If I had taken [the NSA] documents to congress, I would’ve gone to jail.”

But here is the problem with the whole Snowden conversation – it isn’t about Snowden. Every minute we spend discussing whether he’s a hero or a villain we’re massively missing the point.

Of all of the hubbub surrounding this subject, perhaps the most tragic is the character assassination of whistle-blowers. As John Oliver recently illustrated, many Americans have no idea who Edward Snowden is, and of those who do, many of them have completely inaccurate information. But the debate is not about Snowden, first of all because it’s about what he revealed, but also because he is not the only whistle-blower to shed light on what the NSA are doing. But these other whistle-blowers are now getting much deserved attention because of Snowden, so its nearly impossible to have a conversation about this subject without bringing his name into the fold. As long as we’re actually discussing the issues and not the man, it probably doesn’t matter because the importance of this discussion cannot be understated. As Ed brilliantly articulated this month, “The Internet goes into our homes and also into the confines of our mind. That’s where we confide in friends, that’s where we express ourselves, that’s where we develop our thoughts. It’s where we decide what we believe in and who we want to be.”

They say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. But dragnet surveillance isn’t insidious because it might keep harmful activity at bay. It’s insidious because it changes everybody’s behavior, it stifles inquiry, it limits discussions, it gives rise to the concept of thought-crime, and it prevents sources from reaching out to journalists for fear of the possibility of adverse consequences. And because mass surveillance of one form or another has always been employed by every totalitarian regime in history, its one of the early warning signs of fascism.

Sow Seeds of Justice

May 25, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 27: Activists protest against agricultural biotech company Monsanto outside the White House on March 27, 2013 in Washington, DC. Monsanto, which engineers genetically modified seeds, recently benefited from a section buried in the latest budget bill that allows the agribusiness giant to plant genetically-modified crops without judicial review to determine whether or not their crops are safe. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

2015 MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO

Of all of the things we could say about Monsanto and GMOs, I feel that the real bone of contention is very simple to understand – why are GMOs exempt from labeling? In seeking to answer this question, I wanted to do more than just complain about it in an eloquent way as per my usual routine, but to understand the problem in its entirety and express what this meditation has ultimately led me to conclude. The simplicity of the question seems like it would lend itself to a simple answer, “Why don’t we label GMOs?” This rabbit hole, as I am sure you are all very aware, is contaminated with intense propaganda, which is now becoming popularized by our most beloved celebrity scientists. For example, Niel DeGrasse Tyson was asked recently for his perspective on GMOs by a French journalist. I was expecting him to say something funny, but instead I found his response even more disappointing than the return of the Twinkie. In what I consider a radical departure from the scientific method, and a rejection of his formerly level-headed self, Tyson arrogantly berated the journalist with a wide range of extraordinarily strange ideas that have come to engender all of the stereotypes associated with the GMO debate.

Here’s what Neil DeGrasse Tyson has to say about GMO foods:

“I’m amazed at how much objection Genetically Modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of the fear factor that exists at every new emergent science where people don’t fully understand it or don’t fully embrace it’s consequences and therefore reject it. What most people don’t know, but they should, is that practically every food you buy in a store, for consumption by humans, is genetically modified food. There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows… You list all the fruit and all the vegetables and ask yourself, “Is there a wild counterpart to this?” If there is it’s not as large, it’s not as sweet, it’s not as juicy and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods – the vegetables and animals – that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called ‘Artificial Selection.’ That’s how we genetically modified them. So now we can do it in a lab and all the sudden you’re going to complain? If you’re the ‘complainer type,’ go back and eat the apples that grow wild – you know some of them they’re [this big] and they’re tart – they’re not sweet like red delicious apples. We manufactured those. That’s a genetic modification… So we’re creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs. I don’t have a problem with that because we’ve been doing that for tens-of-thousands-of years. So chill out.”

Obviously many of Tyson’s assertions range from mildly irritating to blatantly ignorant, but his claim that humans have been engaged in genetic modification for thousands of years is the supreme fallacy here. How can anyone say there is no difference between Genetic Modification and Artificial Selection? I’m sure I don’t have to inform this audience that the difference is rather huge, but I feel nevertheless obligated to articulate our collective annoyance.

As anyone who was exposed to high-school science classes will remember from working out Punnett Squares, influencing the ratios of dominant and recessive genes is what we refer to as Artificial Selection. But here is the critical difference between Artificial Selection and Genetic Modification: You can’t alter tomatoes with Arctic fish genes, with the aim of producing frost-resistant produce, by means of cross pollination because fish don’t produce pollen. You cannot implant the genes of a spider into those of a goat through Artificial Selection, because spiders cannot breed with goats. No matter how hard you try, there is no way to persuade corn stalks to excrete toxic pesticides by means of Artificial Selection. In fact, the cross pollination pioneered by the likes of Gregor Mendel could not possibly ever create corn hybrids containing human genes to feed spermicide to the third world with the goal of sterilizing entire populations as Syngenta have done. And I’m sure it would come as news to Mendel that his methods were capable of producing potatoes that glow in the dark when they require water, because this too is not possible through artificial selection. One is natural, the other is not.

Shooting microscopic flakes of gold and employing E-coli to penetrate healthy cell walls to implant foreign genetic material is as far removed from artificial selection as consent is from coercion. Nevertheless, the dogmatic scientific priesthood insists that these two methods are synonymous, and this delusion is not merely the dismissive opinion of one arrogant television star; this is the accepted world-view of the orthodox scientific community at large. It is taught every day to students at universities throughout this nation, including students here at our very own University of Montana. It’s also the world-view espoused by influential publications like MIT’s Technology Review.

Speaking of which, in January of last year [2014], the cover story for MIT’s Technology Review magazine read, “Buy Fresh, Buy GMO: Population Growth and climate change will make it harder to feed the world. We need to overcome our fears of genetically modified food.”

We need to overcome our fears? If this is really about ‘fear’ then MIT might just as well run with an article concerned with how we need to overcome our fear of Nuclear Weapons – or how we need to overcome our fears of DDT – or how we need to overcome our fear of Agent Orange, because these inventions all have one thing in common – Monsanto peddled them, effected millions of lives with them, and always swore they were safe. And they always had a study to prove it, because Monsanto has bad-science, down to a science.

And the first sentence of that headline, brings us to the next popular myth: “Population Growth and climate change will make it harder to feed the world.” The claim that “we need GMOs to feed the world” is effective propaganda because it appeals to our collective sense of food anxiety, as well as our recognition of starving peoples. 1 in 7 human beings on planet Earth right now are not getting enough to eat, which means of course that over a billion humans are starving to death at this moment. This public debate mischaracterizes the problem because it ignores the causes of it and focuses only on the symptoms. The idea of alleviating worldwide starvation with GMOs only holds together so long as the biotechs can play on the public’s ignorance of the truth – that there is already enough food to feed everyone – every man, woman and child on the planet twice over – they just can’t afford it. There’s a big difference between a food shortage, and worldwide economic austerity. The difference between the two is as large as the gulf that exists between Artificial Selection and Genetic Modification. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded.

But The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already has all of the answers. As Rupert Sheldrake puts it, “For more than two hundred years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex machines, minds are nothing but brain activity and nature is purposeless. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper called this stance “promissory materialism” because it depends on issuing promissory notes for discoveries not yet made.” [Sheldrake, 9]

In this case, the discovery that has yet to be made is that GMOs are safe. Monsanto claims that the public must prove that their products are dangerous. Shouldn’t Monsanto have to prove to the public that their products are safe? That’s what drug companies have to do. That’s what cosmetic companies have to do. That’s even what car companies have to do. The only industry that is not required to prove their products are safe is the weapons industry, because their products are designed to be the opposite of safe. And as the advent of Agent orange and the Hydrogen bomb illustrate, that’s exactly what Monsanto is – a weapons manufacturer.

I find it interesting that in over a century of creating death, Monsanto has never changed their name. When Blackwater got themselves into hot water, they changed their name to XE services, and changed it again to Academi, and that mercenary organization is only 18 years old. Monsanto was founded in 1901, and has never felt the need to hide from their toxic reputation by changing their name. This is proof enough for me that they’re not dependent on a strong image to remain powerful.

Of equal interest regarding Monsanto’s century-long reign of terror is our society’s memory lapse concerning their history. Every time Monsanto comes out with a new invention, they declare that it is completely safe, and repeat that lie until the truth becomes impossible to ignore, at which point they play damage control.

To control the public debate they categorize this movement as anti-science. They denounce legitimate scientific studies that illustrate the dangers of their inventions as, “junk science.” And my personal favorite, they say concerns about GMOs are nothing but a “conspiracy theory” – a phrase that is commonly tossed around explicitly to silence those who speak the truth.

The scientific priesthood may label gatherings like this as “anti-science,” and FOX News may declare us to be nothing more than a bunch of tin-foil-hat-wearing-conspiracy-kooks. That’s fine, but I challenge the these powers to answer me this:

-If GMOs are safe, why aren’t we labeling them?

-If GMOs are innocuous, why are mandatory labeling initiatives like those of 64 other countries resisted with multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns?

-If GMOs are harmless, why do the Biotech companies file huge lawsuits against communities, cities, and even entire states who push for such referendums?

-If GMOs are wholesome, why are they forbidden in most of Europe?

-If GMOs are benign, why does China turn away entire shipments that may be contaminated with them?

-If GMOs are nontoxic, and Monsanto is such a benevolent entity, then why are whistle blowers persecuted so extensively?

Even Norman Braksick, president of Monsanto subsidiary Asgrow Seed Company, was quoted in the Kansas City star on 7 March 1994 saying, “If you put a label on genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” That’s coming from an insider. But whenever information like this comes to light, the scientific clergy smiles arrogantly with the pretentious condescension only they can deliver, pats the “complainer types” impatiently on the head, and assures laypersons that if they ever expect to speak intelligently about this subject, they’ll need a deeper understanding of chemistry, physics, and statistics.

I recognize that scientists are basically the same as everyone else – one of my closest friends works as a chemist. Even scientists who have chosen to work for corporations like Monsanto are still human beings and thus ultimately deserve the same basic dignity and respect all humans should be afforded. I just wish more of them would get on the right side of history. There comes a time when denial and complacency are no longer suitable excuses for engaging in blatantly unethical behavior, no matter how unconscious it may be, no matter how small any individual role may seem, no matter how justified it is believed to be. It was not very long ago that the Nuremburg trials affirmed that simply following orders is not an acceptable excuse for crimes against humanity. If that comparison seems extreme, let’s turn our attention to the 300,000 Indian farmers who have committed suicide as a direct result of Monsanto’s copyright shenanigans – declaring seed as intellectual property.

This is perhaps the most insidious genocide of which I am aware, because it doesn’t kill will death camps – it kills with austerity. This is why Ghandi recognized that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. The genocide we’re witnessing is a system that sets you up to fail and mocks you when you don’t succeed. It makes millions feel as though suicide is not only an option – it’s a given.

This in part is why I reject the claim that Genetic Modification of our food supply without our consent is somehow comparable to “playing God.” Let us make no mistake about this – Monsanto is not playing God. Monsanto is playing Satan. There’s a big difference. Genetic Modification as conducted in a laboratory is quite literally the rape of nature, and please pardon the expression because I am very aware of the power of that word, especially since Krakauer’s recent visit [to Missoula]. I use it deliberately because pollination is the plant’s natural sexual function that produces genetic variation in subsequent generations. Disrupting the delicate dance that nature has entrusted to the honey bees with this distortion that actually requires a gun to inject foreign genetic material, is nothing short of the literal rape of nature.

Beyond that, the menace of compulsory consumption of something that has known health impacts – health impacts which are rigorously suppressed by the corporate monolith – is nothing less than a crime against humanity. Phenomena such as leaky gut syndrome, the astonishing proliferation of bizarre food allergies, inflammatory diseases, as well as infertility and yes, cancerous tumors, are just some of the problems linked to Monsanto’s toxic products.

I feel it necessary to remind the scientific community, that it is not anti-science to question established beliefs, but central to the discipline of science itself. At the creative heart of science is a spirit of open-minded inquiry. Ideally, science is a process, not a position or a belief system. [Sheldrake, 25] To the employees of Monsanto I ask: how long do you need go down this road before you see where it leads? More than 22,000 people work for Monsanto, and I’m absolutely certain that the vast majority of them have no idea what the corporation’s agenda is at the top of the Monsanto pyramid. After all, 130,000 people were involved in the Manhattan Project, and most of them never really understood what it was they were working on. But word is getting out and today is proof of that. Therefore there should be strong social pressure on our best and brightest to not work for Monsanto. And those already working for Monsanto who have a conscience would do well to take a hint from Thoreau and abandon their post: If the conscientious Monsanto employee who recognizes the crime currently at foot asks, “But what shall I do?” the answer is, “If you really wish to do any thing, resign your office.”

MAKING AN OFFER WE CAN’T REFUSE

Science isn’t the only tool Monsanto employs. Does anyone here remember a bill pushed through Washington back in 2009 called the Food Safety Modernization Act or HR 875? The stated goal of 875 was to ban organic farming or even private back-yard gardening. Thankfully this bill failed, but as long as the present power structure remains in place, we can expect more bills like it.

And that’s just the start of it.

You may recall the SWAT-style paramilitary raid on California-based Rawsome foods back in 2011 coordinated by 9 different agencies resulting in the arrest of Healthy Family Farms owner Sharon Palmer who was charged with nine counts of criminal conspiracy and thirteen counts of operating without a license.

Or how about the August 2013 SWAT raid on an organic farm in Arlington, Texas that resulted in the seizure of 17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants, as well as native grasses and sunflowers.

Authorities regularly employ a number of ridiculous excuses to justify these draconian measures, claiming that the grass in the front yard was too tall, or that the bushes were growing too close to the street, or that piles of chopped wood were not properly stacked, to explain such bizarre behavior, as if an unkempt lawn is reason enough to terrorize residents with military force. Though many excuses are employed to legitimize these actions, it is simple enough to see what is really happening.

We’re not on the road to the theatre of the absurd – we’re sitting in the front row.

If present trends continue, I strongly expect to see headline’s in FOX News declaring that Amish farmers possess pitchforks and other deadly weapons of mass destruction. CNN will declare that the inevitable economic threat of decentralizing our food system cannot be overstated. The US State Department will warn that if more people are allowed to discover the benefits of organic foods, they may get addicted to other natural health foods and harder street vitamins. It will not only become mandatory to consume GMOs, but organic produce will be scheduled alongside heroin and cannabis, and the illegal possession of organic produce will be punished severely. They’ll declare organic as a gateway food, proclaiming that foodies are healthy hooligans hopped-up on ‘hazardous organics.’ Frenzied headlines on MSNBS will alert the nation that black markets are popping up everywhere; that some nefarious food cooperatives operate as private clubs or highly questionable barter systems; that normal citizens growing food for neighborly trade may face felony charges of possession of organic foods with intent to distribute. Dateline NBC will run a special on mobster food syndicates that operate outside of the reach of the corporate-run government entirely. Our television screens will glow with the figure of a familiar news anchor announcing that, “operating in the bright sun- lit streets of communities across the nation, a shadowy world of mercenary farmers-markets continues to grow out of control, peddling unapproved food stuffs using illegal currencies exchanged in elaborately orchestrated racketeering rings.” They’ll complain that the wooden coins exchanged at farmers markets are not only counterfeit, but make tax revenues difficult to extort from the population.

They will encourage the masses to embrace the fanaticism of learned-helplessness that Big Brother knows best – that citizens aren’t smart enough to make proper health choices – to reinforce the lie that Michael Taylor’s FDA protects us from our neighbor’s chicken eggs that are actually laid by birds that eat bugs and worms. They’ll run advertisements that ask us, “Do you actually want your eggs coming from worms instead of FDA approved genetically modified chicken feed? Worm eggs are just gross, aren’t they? And organic crops are grown where we bury our dead – in the germ-ridden dirt of the Earth.”

At that point it won’t be long before they do what they always do when it becomes clear they’re losing the debate, and have exhausted all other alternatives, and use the dreaded “T” word. Given our recent history, I don’t think it is unreasonable to anticipate the possibility that organic farmers, food activists and holistic medicine practitioners may be labeled as potential terrorist threats. There have already aims by some intrepid politicians to categorize boycotts as an act of terrorism. I wonder how they’ll announce an All Points Bulletin for GMO activists. Perhaps they’ll be “considered to be armed with information, and extremely healthy.”

Exacerbated by our limited political energy by virtue of the fact that most of us work full-time or beyond to make ends meet and therefore do not have time to properly research the lies of green-washing campaigns claiming that GM crops are the only way to feed the world, millions of educated, well-meaning people continue to recapitulate the popular myths hypnotically repeated in every form of mainstream media running through our society. I don’t blame them. I used to be one of them. None of us entered this society with an innate knowledge of corporate chicanery, and all of us were individually shocked when we came to grips with the inescapable obviousness of the truth. Though it may test our patience well beyond our previously conceived limits, it’s up to those who understand the truth to transform this mass ignorance as gently as possible, keeping in mind that denial is not contemptible – it is simply the first stage of grief.

But let us not confuse compassion with complacency, or liken acceptance to apathy. Non-violent protesting is not synonymous with inaction, any more than ignorance is bliss. We cannot have peace without justice. Our civilization cannot afford to tolerate Monsanto’s crimes against humanity any further. Let’s remember that Monsanto has unfathomable political and financial power, and if we expect our intentions to make a difference, then words must be supplemented with actions. If the world’s peoples are serious about alleviating this problem, reform will entail far more drastic action than merely boycotting GMO-laden products. Keep this conversation going. You can ask restaurants where their ingredients are sourced from, and make similar inquiries with grocers. You have the power to vote with your wallet and demand non-GMO options. Some have chosen to express their outrage by placing the skull-and-cross-corn stickers on products containing GMOs, and Europe’s courageous example lays the tracks for the United States to become a GMO-Free-Zone.

GMO free zones could lead to the eventual outlawing of Monsanto’s toxic products, and eventually the outright liquidation of the entire Monsanto Corporation. But given their present financial and political dominance, that could take a long time to come to fruition. So in the meantime the mandatory labeling of GMOs is a first step worthy of taking. We don’t even need to make them stop producing GMOs yet, but food corporations that peddle Monsanto’s toxic products should be forced to at least label them at a bare minimum.

If they complain that labeling will effect their profits, you can point out to them that we label cigarettes as carcinogenic and people still buy them and smoke them. The difference between GMOs and cigarettes I feel, is that Monsanto has not yet figured out how to make their frankenfoods addictive.

Those who stand against Monsanto must learn to organize as effectively as those who manage Monsanto. To do that, this movement would do well to keep in mind, that no populist movement in history has ever overcome societal evils by asking politely or calling their representatives in congress. If we go home today patting ourselves on the back for doing a good thing and waiting until the 2016 March Against Monsanto to think about this issue again, defeat is a likely probability for this movement.

The gears of big business are not going to stop. These corporations cannot be reasoned with, for the language of corporations is money. It is apparent at this point that introducing the concept of ethics to the ownership class may be an exercise in futility. They do not speak our tongue, and therefore, for there to be any effective communication, the only way to get a clear message through to them is to effect their profits.

In the analogy of sport, getting into fist fights on the field does not win the game. This is not a game, but like the scoreboard that determines the outcome of a game, success will mean dramatically effecting Monsanto’s bottom line as well as that of corporations like them.

If Montana is to ever become a GMO Free Zone, our communities will have to write their own legislation and rigorously enforce whatever restrictions the people enact. Unfortunately, as with any other significant social movement in history, I sincerely doubt that change is possible unless a few thousand people are willing to get arrested. I’m not encouraging anyone to break the law, but as we have seen, you don’t have to be breaking any laws for the corporate monolith’s goons to come after you.

If the problem is properly understood, American society will ultimately have to make a choice between what is easy and what is right. Those in the media entrusted with the duty of acting as society’s eyes and ears will have to choose between what will make them popular and what is right. And our law enforcers have perhaps the most difficult job of all, for it is they who ultimately must decide for themselves whether what is legal outweighs what is right. As Martin Luther King said, “We must never forget that everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal.” In that way, our enforcers will have to ask themselves one very important question – Is there anything the politicians could enact into Law that you wouldn’t enforce? Is there any order that you would refuse to carry out, or will you do absolutely anything your bosses tell you to? Are you capable of disobeying immoral orders?

When I learned that Montana riverbeds are still being sprayed with DDT, I wondered how long this had been going on for. When I learned that Missoula’s Parks and Recreation department uses Roundup in all of our parks I wondered where the public outrage was. When I heard that Monsanto had an experimental GMO wheat operation in Great Falls, I wondered why Montanans had allowed it, or at least burned those fields when it became too late to stop it. But at least the conversation is happening on a mass scale, creating a momentum that will eventually become a tidal wave since more people will eventually open their eyes to what is happening as it becomes more difficult to ignore and deny.

Rallies like the March Against Monsanto are absolutely essential to get this message circulating to more people. I don’t think the significance of the annual march can be overstated. This conversation is happening everywhere on this planet right now, and I guarantee you that makes the executives at Monsanto very nervous. No doubt they’re going to hold meetings and brainstorm how they can make the annual March against Monsanto illegal. But it’s too late. The cat is out of the bag, and they’re gambling themselves into a bottomless abyss that will catch up to them eventually.

[1] Sheldrake, Rupert. Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery. New York: Deepak Chopra, 2012. Print.

What Would Malcolm Say If He Were Here Today?

May 19, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROTHER MALCOLM

Racism. It’s as alive today as it ever was. We like to pretend it isn’t. After all – America has a black president now. So how are we supposed to juxtapose that with the blatant racism of America’s law enforcement agencies? As Ferguson, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and countless other examples have thoroughly demonstrated, the battle for equality that gained so much momentum during the 1960’s is far from finished. Yes, the civil rights movement made racism socially unacceptable, but racism did not disappear. It is still a problem rampant enough that we read about its consequences on a monthly if not daily basis; and that’s if we’re not first-hand feeling its effects.

If racism is really behind us, would we be reading in our newspapers about the murder of unarmed black men throughout the country? If racism was really behind us, would we have ever even heard the names of Tony Robinson, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Eric Garner or Walter Scott? I suppose the fact that we do know these names is a step in the right direction. However for every Tony, Freddie, Michael, Eric, and Walter, there are hundreds if not thousands of cases that we never hear about. We only hear about any particular case when the circumstances make it impossible to ignore.

If the Civil Rights Movement had really put an end to racism in this country, we wouldn’t have ever read about Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray or Tony Robinson because they wouldn’t have been unjustly murdered by the hands of law enforcement officers. In many ways the problem is worse now than it ever was. It certainly effects more people. There are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850. Our situation today is not that different than it was seventy years ago. The problem is the same. Only the methods and circumstances are different.

I’m not justifying the chaos that took place in Baltimore or the buildings that have been burned in Ferguson, but if we’re going to take any steps toward a real solution, we need to understand the problem, and that includes empathizing with those effected. To denounce the riots in Baltimore as mere mindless violence is to shame the oppressed for reacting to their oppression. Martin Luther King said that a “riot is the language of the unheard.” We cannot judge an inner-city riot if we’ve never experienced police brutality for ourselves, any more than a man can understand the labors of childbirth. We can’t understand anyone until we’ve walked a mile in their shoes.

For those who think that remedial, piece-meal reform is and has been gradually alleviating this issue, allow me to clearly illustrate how these gradual reformations fail to address the underlying causes, addressing only the external symptoms. When plantation slavery was abolished in the 19^th Century, African Americans were on their own. Plantation owners cut their workers loose and wished them luck in a world that was as racist as ever. Now they had to earn a wage in an atmosphere where few were willing to hire them. Some former slaves observed that they were now worse off now because they were starving and they couldn’t find paid work to survive on the outside.

In exactly the same way, Martin Luther King observed, a black man can now sit at the same lunch counter as a white man, but what if he doesn’t have the money to buy lunch due to poverty, or worse, if he can’t even read the menu because he never got a proper education?

So how do we address the superiority complex intertwined within American white privilege that leads to these recurring situations? Martin Luther King was integral to the creation of the Voting Rights Act as well as the Civil Rights Act, but how were oppressed minorities to react when these laws were not observed or enforced by racist America? This realization inevitably gave rise to the reaction of more militant civil rights organizations who understood that they would be decimated if they were unable to defend themselves from physical violence. And there’s one figure now considered synonymous with that particular narrative.

This coming Tuesday is the birthday of a figure just as influential as Martin Luther King, whose story is central to the Civil Rights Movement and ongoing struggle for racial equality today. The 19^th of May would be the 90^th birthday of Malcolm X, and in lieu of this upcoming observance I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, “What might Brother Malcolm say about the present condition of America if he were alive today?” “What would Malcolm have to say about the Baltimore riots?” “How would Malcolm react to the murder of Freddie Gray?” It turns out there are very definite answers to those questions, because the violence in Baltimore as well as Ferguson and beyond reconfirm much of what Malcolm preached during the early 1960’s.

As an era, the 1960’s was a period of tremendous social change. It tossed off the shackles of religious dogmatism, it gave birth to the civil rights movement, it witnessed bold rejections, or at least an end to the illusions, of the system of capitalism; it was a period of increasing self-awareness through the medium of psychedelia, the foundations of western Buddhist practice, the beginnings of a concerted environmental movement, the birth of the notion of sustainability, a popular refusal to tolerate or participate in military imperialism, a metamorphosis of musical expression, and indeed a reformation of the human being’s perception of the self on a massive scale. In fact there was so much change that transpired so quickly away from age-old accepted cultural norms, that the pendulum swung hard in reaction to it. That swinging pendulum unfortunately resulted in the assassination of most of the prominent leadership of the 1960’s. Over the course of about five years, the best, brightest and most influential agents of change were torn from our story forever. John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X were all brutally assassinated within about five years. But while the modus operandi of many journalists is to follow the “if it bleeds it leads” mentality, I believe we can learn a great deal more about our collective story by attempting to understand who these figures were, and how they changed as their stories played out, instead of just focusing on the circumstances of their ends or the most radical aspects of their beginnings.

Malcolm’s life was especially complicated. I don’t think I’ve ever studied a figure as controversial. But as the times changed so did the man. A thief turned inmate turned toward Islam during his incarceration, particularly a small sect known as the Nation of Islam led by a man known as Eijah Muhammad. Malcolm became the appointed spokesman of the Nation of Islam until President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963, whereupon Malcolm made public statements deemed careless and unwise. The Nation of Islam had grown exponentially during Malcolm’s reign as spokesman, but the Islamic Creed enforced by Elijah Muhammad was quite distinct from the religious reality of the greater Muslim world. His irrefutable faith in the doctrines of Islam thus inspired him to travel to Mecca for a pilgrimage, and Malcolm saw for the first time in his life that Islam was much more diverse than the Islamic dogma he had been taught back home. He was surprised to see human beings of all colors worshiping together in harmony and returned to America with a refreshed perspective.

Because this is an extremely oversimplified outline of the life and times of one of America’s most controversial historical figures, we’ll be exploring the nuances of his story, his words, his journey and his growth in more detail over the next four hours, as examined by those who knew him best, and those who have studied his story in greater depth.

While doing research for this project we came upon an article written by John McWhorter in March of 2010 entitled, “Malcolm X and Nine Other People I’d Like To Erase From History” that appeared in The New Republic This headline in many ways demonstrates the complexity of the problem that Malcolm sought to alleviate, and the fact that said problem is still with us. Whether we like Malcolm or what he did is frankly, irrelevant. The fact that some wish to erase him from history actually makes his memory, all the more important to respect, bear witness to, and discuss. We may disagree with his methods and words, but he observed a problem plaguing our society that few were willing to talk about and had the courage to live his life in response to it. What he did upset the power structure so much that he was assassinated for doing so.

When I reflect on Malcolm’s untimely end I can’t help but wonder, if neither Malcolm X nor Dr. King had been assassinated, would Ferguson or Baltimore have played out the way they have? Ideally these travesties never would have happened. But they did happen, and we’d best resolve this issue now, whether it pleases us to do so or not. The more we ignore it – the more we pretend it isn’t happening – the more we act as though the situation will somehow miraculously cure itself – the worse it will become.

I don’t hold any illusions that my scribblings here are going to change the circumstances we see before us. But I can choose to honor the upcoming birthday of a man who stood against injustice, prejudice, and fanaticism; a man whose father was murdered by the Klan; a man who witnessed crimes we cannot even imagine; a man who gave dignity to those who had none; a man who sought truth as his foundation. His message remains an integral part of the human psyche – the urge to stand against injustice in a manner very distinct from Martin Luther King: “By any means necessary.”

To deny Malcolm’s story would be to gloss over our real history with what we would like to see rather than what actually happened. If we choose to shy away from Malcolm’s message, we’re planting our heads in the sand and denying a facet of human nature that is within us all and inflicted upon us all whether we like it or not.

To understand Malcolm X does not mean we fly in the face of Martin King’s commitment to non-violence. Quite the contrary. It elevates it, by illustrating how difficult non-violence is to realize. A segment of the population may never accept that non-violent activism can lead to measurable changes, and that perspective has to be recognized, because if it isn’t the actions of militants will be difficult to ignore, and as King understood, those actions will prove detrimental to the cause.

But then again, I can’t help but reflect on how detrimental the militant violence perpetuated by the upper echelons throughout human history has been to the possible development of a truly diverse, sustainable and enlightened human culture.

Malcolm’s words are as relevant today as they were in the early 1960’s. In fact probably more so because, as Baltimore and Ferguson demonstrate, absolutely nothing has changed.

WHAT WOULD MALCOLM SAY ABOUT THE FREDDIE GRAY SITUATION IN BALTIMORE?

This rare 1965 interview in which Malcolm X was included in our broadcast. Because of it’s uncanny relevance to the ‘riots’ in Baltimore over the police killing of 25-year-old Afro-American Freddie Gray, we’re including it here as an answer to the question, “What would Malcolm say if he were her today?” It stands as direct proof that nothing has changed in the fifty-years since he spoke the following words. Here is the entire transcript:

INTERVIEWER: This question of violence has become more and more important especially as the summer’s progressed. It seems that the summers are equivalent with violence in many of the cities. There have been many complaints among many people that some of the violence is not necessarily directed at Civil Rights – at Human Rights – but is more an excuse by some people for a vandalism type-

MALCOLM: That analysis itself is an excuse by the society itself for its own failure to have eliminated the negative conditions that exist in black communities. When you find the criminal conditions that exist in the black community and have existed for so long, it’s only natural to expect the degree of frustration to mount in those communities to such degree that an explosion is inevitable. And in these explosions one doesn’t plan to be polite or to direct his exploding energy in any one direction. This is something to expect. Any explosion that’s a sociological explosion or an explosion that stems from social conditions that are criminal, you don’t expect everybody in that area to explode intelligently and legally and lawfully and politely. You have all types of elements in that community.

INTERVIEWER: This is one of the major problems is that there are many explosions going on. What I’m wondering is if it would not be easier to prevent the explosion than try to pick up all the pieces after it happened.

MALCOLM: It would be more intelligent to prevent the explosion rather than to pick up the pieces after it happens. But again you’re dealing with a power structure that consists primarily of politicians. And instead of trying to remove the causes of the explosion, they deal with the conditions, so to speak, and leave the causes there. When the black community becomes explosive they get some big Negro leader and send him in to quiet the community down. They never remove the causes that create the conditions. But they have these little century-old methods that always have failed in instances like this.

INTERVIEWER: Would you say that the work being done now in the south by people that are from some of the other civil rights organizations like SNCC and CORE and the NAACP, towards voter registration, towards education of these people, is this at all useful? Does this fit into your idea –

MALCOLM: Education is first. Voter restoration is second.

INTERVIEWER: But you do see there this–

MALCOLM: Oh yes. Education is the first step toward solving any problem that exists anywhere on this Earth, which involves people who are oppressed. As a rule the oppressed people lack education and this has effected their ability to cope with their problem themselves. And their inability to cope with their own problem places them at the mercy of someone else who’s supposed to come up with a solution for the problem but who can’t without a conflict of interest. It’s only when the masses of people can approach their own problem that their problem will be solved. If you react to defend yourself, I don’t call your reaction violence. And all I say in this context of violence is that our people never will initiate acts of aggression indiscriminately against whites. But I do say that the black man in this country, if he’s attacked, he should strike back. Yes. I say that even if it costs him his life. He should strike back. He should at no time, no matter what the odds are, let someone come and issue a beating upon him when he’s doing nothing other than seeking his rights as a human being. No. He should fight back if it costs him his life. And if he has to take life in fighting back, he shouldn’t even hesitate to do so. If someone is trying to take his life, he shouldn’t hesitate to take the lives of those Klan-like elements that are trying to take his life. No. I don’t see it.

INTERVIEWER: There’s a difference I see in looking at defending your own life, which I’m certain most people, most rational people most places in the world would not object to – to defending your life against someone that’s trying to take it. What I was thinking more in terms of is these large-scale riots versus picketing that now seems to be spreading over much of the country. This type of violence where it’s a destructive violence. It’s a violence that true enough may have been spurred on by things that have been done by them, but yet it’s not really defending themselves in this matter. They’re using violence to gain their means now.

MALCOLM: Well if you’ll notice, instead of striking at the humans who inflict this brutality upon them, they strike at buildings; property. This has been the pattern. I was in Africa during all of the riots last summer and many of the Africans asked me the question, “Why do they tear-up their own neighborhood?” And I pointed out that it isn’t their own neighborhood. They don’t own the homes that they live in. The homes are owned by white landlords who live some place else – they call them slumlords. The stores in the community are owned by white merchants who live someplace else. Usually all of these absentee landlords and absentee merchants are the considered liberals you know. They contribute to the NAACP and things of that sort, but they also play a major role in the community exploitation. And when the black community erupts, it looks upon this outsider as nothing but an exploiter. He doesn’t own the house in the community to contribute good housing to the community. He doesn’t own the store in the black community to contribute a higher quality merchandise at a cheaper price. Almost the entire existence of these outsiders is wrapped up in the image of exploitation. And the policeman in the black community is not looked upon by the black citizen as someone who is there protect their interests. They look upon him as someone who’s in the black community to protect the stores of the white merchant, or to protect the houses of the white landlord. He’s looked upon almost as an enemy army. Proof of which he’s the one in uniform who’s used against the people of the community when they’re trying to seek redress to just grievances, or when they’re trying to enforce rights which the courts have said that they have. So that the pattern in the past has been not to strike back at the policeman who crushes their skull with his club or whose dog tears the flesh from their limbs. They haven’t struck back at him. But their tendency has been to strike at the property of the outsider that’s in the neighborhood. And then the power structure interprets that as thievery and vandalism and things of that sort because they haven’t yet analyzed the motive of the man who’s involved in that. And their refusal to analyze it makes them miss the boat. It’s not vandalism. It’s not a few criminals who are taking advantage of a situation. No. It is the reaction; the explosion; the frustration that is experienced by people who feel that for too long they have been held down by a system who gives them nothing but promises that never materialize no matter whose mouth the promise is made from.

INTERVIEWER: Do you see the Organization for Afro-American Unity as a possible means to reach the international level, that will solve some of the problems on the international level, before the violence erupts; before the explosion occurs?

MALCOLM: Well let me say this first. I’m not interested in violence. See when whites approach the problem they approach it to avoid violence. This is the wrong approach. This is the wrong objective. This is the wrong motive. If a problem is criminal it should be approached to eliminate the criminal aspects of it. Violence having nothing to do with it, or the threat of violence having nothing to do with it. But when you help a man who’s been criminally mistreated just to keep him from exploding violently, it’s the wrong motive. This is what I have been trying to make the white citizen see. Anything that we do is not to avoid violence. What we do is to correct a problem that has existed too long. Now if it takes more violence to correct it, we’re not even afraid of that. If if can be done peacefully, then we’re hopeful of that. But violence, or the threat of violence, or the fear of violence [in] no way enters into our plan of operation at all. But the Organization of Afro-American Unity has a two pronged attack. Number one, to link our problem with the world struggle and get allies toward solving our problem at the world level by making our problem a world problem; a human problem. That’s the external approach; the international approach. At a national level it’s our intention to became actively involved with all other groups who are a genuinely trying to come up with programs designed to solve the problem. Whereas the political aspect is concerned, voter registration is good as long as its coupled with voter education. We think that our people should be educated into the knowledge of the science of politics so that once they’re ready to they won’t be exploitable by crooked politicians. So that we go along with voter registration but we also believe in voter education. We also believe that in areas of this country where students are sent in to help black people get registered, we feel that units should be sent along with them to protect them from the organized attacks of the Ku Klux Klan that these units should be qualified, capable and equipped to retaliate and speak the same kind of language that the Klan speaks so that they will communicate and understand one another. And any area of program that is genuinely designed to bring immediate results for the masses, not a hand picked few, then we go along with that.

INTERVIEWER: One final question then. Do you foresee the day when the white man and the black man, when all races all over the world can live together in peace?

MALCOLM: When humanity looks upon itself not as black men, white men, brown men, red men and yellow men but as human beings, then they will sit down and live together in peace. Not when they look upon themselves as Americans or Europeans or Asians or Africans, then they can sit down and live with each other in peace.

You Don’t Make History By Asking Permission

May 5, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

We Are Not Your Slaves!

While many school-aged children today think that May Day is about Springtime, this important day in history is concerned with more than leaving flowers on neighbouring porches, as much fun as that is.

While we might celebrate Labour Day in early September, May Day is meant to observe a far more important benchmark for worker’s rights. If we live in a free country, then equality, safe working environments, shorter work days, living wages, pensions and benefits should be part of what it means to live in a free and open society. After all, how can we call this a free country if we have the freedom to speak out about political injustices but cannot speak out at work for fear of being fired? They don’t take away our right to vote for protesting, so why can we lose our right to earn an income for simply asking the wrong questions of our employers?

Why have we always limited our ideas about a democratic society to the political sphere, while excluding it from the economic sphere? In the words of Economics Professor Richard Wolff, “After all, the place we spend most of our creative lives, 9-5 Monday through Friday, is the place where we work. And if we’re not going to have democracy there, how much of it could we have anywhere else?”

Eighty years ago Franklin D. Roosevelt granted American workers higher wages, a 40-hour work week, collective bargaining rights, unemployment, and many other hard-won benefits in the New Deal of the 1930’s. And while that momentous victory is often credited to FDR, we forget that the New Deal was not the brainchild of the establishment, but the result of thousands of coordinated strikes by labour unions and workers standing up to Corporate exploitation. Every one of the rights and freedoms we take for granted today were not simply handed over by the ownership class – our grandparents fought tooth and nail, and many died, to secure those rights.

But half a century prior to the New Deal, the true roots of the movement for which May Day is now celebrated were established. While little concern for safety existed in most factories in the early 20^th Century, it was even worse in the late 19^th century, when relative pay was pitifully low, benefits were non-existent and the work day was often 10 to 12 hours, six days a week.

In early America, labour unions were actually outlawed, and considered illegal conspiracies creating restraints to “free trade.” Sound familiar? That changed in 1842, the Hunt case ruling legitimized collective bargaining as legal, granting workers the ability to unionize. At first, these unions were concentrated in small, weak, isolated companies. Starvation wages remained the norm for the majority of America’s work force, who worked as many as 12 hours a day, seven days a week. But as the 1873 financial panic created further economic chaos on top of worsening economic conditions for labour following the Civil War, American workers became increasingly militant.

Then, the National Railroad Strike of 1877 that paralyzed the entire country proved that organizational structure was not necessarily paramount to the establishment of collective bargaining forums; it had not been led or organized by any labour union. Instead, the strike grew spontaneously and organically from the Railroad workers themselves. President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered State and Federal troops to crush the strike, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 strikers in skirmishes across the country. This prompted workers of all industries to organize, first with the Knights of Labour, who had assembled more than 700,000 strikers by the 1880’s, then with the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions, which would later change its name to the American Federation of Labour (AFL).

In 1882, the American Federation of Labour called for an all-out campaign of nationwide protest actions to push into law the enforcement of an eight-hour working day, and that national campaign was set to start on 1 May 1884, whereupon huge rallies and protest marches were held in every major city in the United States. The largest May Day demonstration took place in the leading industrial city of the US – Chicago, Illinois, which would become the primary arena for labour strikes and center stage for worker’s rights in the decades to come. Over 80,000 of the city’s workers marched up Michigan Avenue with signs that read, “8 Hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will!”

Two years later Chicago was again the stage for the May Day strikes of 1886, when the workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company began a strike in the hope of gaining a shorter work day. On 3 May, police were used to protect strikebreakers and a scuffle broke out, resulting in one person’s death and the injury of several others. But this skirmish was just a warm-up. Nobody could foresee what would take place on the following day.

On 4 May, a large rally was planned by anarchist leaders to protest police brutality. Sound familiar? A crowd of 20,000 demonstrators was anticipated at Haymarket Square, where area farmers traditionally sold their produce. Rain and unseasonable cold kept the numbers down to between 1,500 to 2,000 and the gathering was peaceful until one police official, in contravention of the mayor’s instructions, sent units into the crowd to force it to disperse. At that juncture, a pipe bomb was thrown into the police ranks. The explosion took the lives of seven policemen and injured more than 60 others causing the police to fire into the crowds of workers, killing four.

A period of panic and overreaction followed in Chicago as hundreds of workers were detained. Many protesters were beaten during interrogations to obtain contrived confessions. In the end, eight anarchists were put on trial and seven were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Four were hanged in November 1887, one committed suicide and three were later pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld.

Thus transpired the violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago we know of today as the Haymarket Riot, which became a symbol of the international struggle for workers’ rights. It has been associated with May Day since its designation as International Workers’ Day by the Second International Labour Federation in 1889.

Five years later, the origins for our September-based Labour Day were cast when another awful confrontation, again in Chicago, saw federal Marshals and the Army kill 30 striking Pullman Railroad strikers in 1894, putting an end to the Pullman walkout strikes, whereupon Congress as well as President Grover Cleveland quickly passed and signed legislation for the holiday we know of today as Labour Day. That history is likewise rarely taught in schools.

Not long afterword, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were established in Chicago, in 1905, by members of the socialist-led Western Federation of Miners and other groups opposed to what they saw as “class collaboration” by a co-opted American Federation of Labour (AFL). The driving force behind the IWW was William D. Haywood, the leader of the Western Federation of Miners, which had established a reputation for work stoppages in Colorado mines. Joining Haywood at the launch of the IWW, which he described as the “first continental congress of the working class,” were Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party, and Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labour Party. Also present was “angel of the miners” Mother Jones, as well as Lucy Parsons, whose husband had been executed in the Haymarket riot.

Then in early 1914, Henry Ford’s Detroit-based automobile company broke ground in labour policies and made history. Against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labour unrest (sound familiar?), Ford announced that the company would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours. This same policy would be adopted for female workers two years later in 1916. The news shocked many in the industry–at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made–but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford’s workers.

COMMON SENSE

This concept is simple enough to grasp, even in our consumer-capitalist-monetary system; if your workers don’t have money, they won’t be able to buy your products. But all economic systems seem to work best when units of exchange are in motion, and tend to stagnate, deteriorate and collapse when units of exchange are hoarded. Indeed as we repeatedly sow the seeds of corporate greed, business who seek to emulate Ford’s common-sense example are berated for acting like “socialists.” For example, Dan Price – the CEO of a Seattle-based company – announced last month he would pay all of his employees a minimum annual salary of $70,000, lowering his own pay to the same from his previous multi-million dollar annual earnings. This follows Seattle city-council woman Kshama Sawant‘s successful campaign to establish a Seattle minimum wage of $15.

Despite the elite’s efforts to quash this wave of Seattle-inspired equality, protests are mounting worldwide against economic austerity. As anti-austerity protests coalesce in Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Argentina, many Americans are beginning to remember the true meaning of May Day. Yesterday thousands rallied in the streets of downtown Los Angeles for May Day marching for worker and immigrant rights with an emphasis on pushing for that $15/hour minimum wage. 3,000 miles away on the opposite end of the continent thousands of New Yorkers marched for “black lives matter” and “no justice no peace,” merging the Freddie Gray movement with May Day’s 124-year crusade for workers’ rights, likewise calling for a minimum wage hike to $15, as well as an end to tax loopholes for America’s wealthiest tycoons.

And Pope Francis declared this past Wednesday that men and women who perform the same job should be paid equally, denouncing gender-based income disparities a “pure scandal.” The Pope asked:

“Why is it expected that women must earn less than men? They have the same rights. The disparity is a pure scandal… To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Everything our grandparents fought to secure has been under continuous attack, and the more things change the more they seem to stay the same.

History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme; the prohibition of collective bargaining in the 19^th Century in the name of free trade mirrors our contemporary woes with NAFTA, the WTO, and the present trade deal to end all trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) coupled with the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP). The merciless crackdown on the popular majority by police, Marshals and even the military is repeating again before our eyes in the streets of Maryland, where the National Guard have been deployed and a 10 pm to 5 am curfew remains in effect following citizen outrage stemming not only from the Freddie Gray murder by Baltimore authorities, but the observation of 110 other police murders in the area in the past four years. Finally, the call for a $15 per hour wage across the country as inspired by Seattle, Washington closely mirrors Henry Ford’s revitalization of economic prosperity one hundred years ago.

Since the 1970’s wages have remained the same forcing Americans to work more jobs with longer hours while simultaneously borrowing loans at ever-increasing rates of interest just to make ends meet. Automation has given birth to the phenomena of “Technological Unemployment,” jobs are now outsourced to 3^rd world sweatshops as well as prisons, while immigration coupled with mothers entering America’s workforce have further exacerbated declining standards for employees seeking their slice of the American Dream. But none of that would be a problem if the ownership class weren’t so obsessed with their addictions to greed and power.

This is perhaps why George Carlin famously declared that we’d have to be asleep to believe in the American Dream, because it is a pyramid scheme. Despite our many decades of enjoying the benefits of what worldwide exploitation of other cultures and countries has to offer, surmounting global austerity ensures more and more that the last vestiges of the west’s Middle Class will now feel the full weight of our own system’s oppression. Now that it’s our turn to experience the horrors of inequality, the exploitation we’ve allowed to happen the world over, while conveniently ignoring the outright enslavement of people who toil over slave-made Wal-Mart products on our behalf, the situation doesn’t seem so trivial anymore.

When Will The Weed Be Freed?

April 19, 2015 by Gabrielle Lafayette

REEFER SADNESS

With the ongoing legalization of medical marijuana across the country, coupled with a continued effort to secure decriminalization, and even legalization, for recreational use in a handful of states, this year’s 4/20 celebration is widely anticipated to be the largest ever seen. Colorado and Washington successfully enacted laws to tax and regulate the burgeoning recreational application. Meanwhile Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia are enacting laws to make possession of small amounts legal. But the growing trend of recreational legalization by the states exists in a state of legal limbo, perched precariously between the issue of States’ Rights, and the US Constitution’s “Supremacy Clause.” The Supremacy clause states that federal law always takes precedence when state and federal statutes are in conflict, and this is exactly what states like Nebraska and Oklahoma are citing amid their attempts to quash Colorado’s growing recreational pot industry before the US Supreme Court.

The issue of whether individual states have the legal precedent to set their own drug policies as opposed to the apparent higher authority of federal restrictions becomes even more clouded in Washington DC, where voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to allow the legal possession of up to two ounces within the city, and for residents to grow up to six plants in their homes. In an attempt to block the democratically approved measure, congress continues to work tirelessly to deny Americans their human right to alter their own consciousness and medicate responsibly. Attached within an unrelated Trillion-dollar federal appropriation bill, congress hastily attempted to prohibit the municipality of Washington DC from ever legalizing cannabis; the attached provision would not allow funding to be allocated from the budget to ‘enact’ the legalization referendum that voters passed. In fact, the future of DC’s pot legalization will be determined by the court’s interpretation of that very word: “enact.” However, since the DC pot legalization already took effect by the time this bill was passed, and since the legalization initiative did not set up any regulation or taxation programs, there is literally nothing to “enact.” Nevertheless, congressmen opposed to cannabis legalization are working hard to twist the loopholes within the legalese to retroactively squash the voice of the voters. But if anyone in DC government discuss the details of taxing or regulating the marijuana industry while they’re on the clock at work, they could actually face jail time since such discussions would technically violate the congressional marijuana order.

Adding fuel to the fire is an ongoing protest taking currently place around the clock in Washington DC, where a group of protesters have chained themselves to a 42-foot tall “liberty pole” on the capital mall. The protest, culminating at 4:20 PM on April 20th, was initiated at 4:20 AM on April 15^th, tax day, explicitly to call attention to the fact that DC residents are being subjected to what they consider an instance of taxation without representation. That ancient rallying cry from the good old days of the American Revolution is such an important part of the Washington DC identity that the slogan “No Taxation Without Representation” actually appears on DC vehicle license plates. But the liberty pole protesters are eager to point out that despite their cooperation with federal taxes, they do not have voting representatives either in the House nor the Senate. Their heavy invocation of the 4/20 movement in their protest implies that congress’s attempts to snuff the DC pot law is an unfair and uninvited federal overreach into the lives of everyday citizens.

While Colorado and Washington state have introduced, taxed, and regulated cannabis for recreational purposes, Alaska and Oregon are the latest states to be found waiting in the wings. Both states are in the process of passing voter-referendums similar to that of Washington DC allowing citizens to possess and grow cannabis for personal use, but still forbidding its sale and public consumption.

Interestingly, since these laws explicitly allow donations of marijuana – not the sale of it – DC was host last month to the largest weed seed give-away in history. People lined up for blocks for a chance to receive free packets of their very own marijuana seeds given away at a local DC bar and restaurant. Since the sale or purchase of pot or seeds is still illegal in DC, it was the only chance most citizens had to obtain the seeds needed to start their own legal home-based gardens. Because of the immense turnout at the give-away, it is broadly believed that a great deal of the recipients were not actually DC residents, but had come from nearby Virginia and Maryland, where pot is still unequivocally illegal. As an unintended side-effect of congress’s attempted restrictions, DC police were legally forbidden from tracking or even monitoring the recipients of the free weed seed extravaganza in any way.

In a city where DEA and secret service agents are at the center of controversy for multiple drunk-driving and prostitution scandals, congress has unwittingly passed a law that provides a smoke-screen for a burgeoning gray-market of marijuana trade and barter in the greater DC area.

BRINGING IT HOME

So now that we’re aware of the situation in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia, we turn our attention inward. Where does Montana stand on legal cannabis reform? In Montana, possession a single joint can still land you in jail for six months; possession of two ounces can result in a sentence of up to five years. Montana voters, however, successfully pushed the legalization of medical marijuana in 2004. Despite our intrepid legislators meeting five times since 2004 to discuss this issue, they have continuously failed to enact a workable regulatory system. Then in 2011 the legislature attempted to such down all cannabis businesses with their “repeal in disguise,” alongside coordinated paramilitary raids on marijuana facilities in 13 cities across the state in March of the same year.

Cannabis persecution presents an easy answer for law enforcement officers seeking to make themselves look good to their superiors. Montana chalked up more than 1,500 arrests and citations for marijuana-related offenses in 2012, 95% of which were for possession. At the same time, our law enforcement agencies were unable to solve 91% of all burglaries, including home invasions. Also at the same time, our law enforcement agencies failed to solve more than 85% of all motor vehicle thefts.

Our law enforcement agencies could choose to focus on actual crimes – that is, cases that involve an injured party – but instead arrest thousands of adults for possession of a substance unanimously recognized as being safer than alcohol. They couldn’t close the books on most burglaries, but somehow endeavour to protect us from ourselves, denying our human right to alter our own consciousness – to imbibe a medicine as prolific as it is beautiful – a medicine that is older than human civilization.

Meanwhile, our marijuana DUI law remains in effect. According to the Marijuana Policy Project:

“Montana’s unscientific DUI law remains in effect, which makes it a crime for a driver to have five or more nanograms per milliliter of THC (ng/mL) in his or her bloodstream, whether or not the person is actually impaired. Without a doubt, people should not drive while impaired. However, medical marijuana patients may have that level of THC in their blood long after any impairment has worn off. This law is bad for medical marijuana patients because it does not reflect on their ability to drive safely.”

Why is this collective cultural psychosis allowed to continue? Why do we tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do about this aside from electing the right representative? Why do most Americans continue following stupid orders and unjust laws in the lunacy of the modern American police state? How does America conserve her whimsical assumption that it’s not a drug if it was prescribed by a doctor? How have we allowed the madness of the Nixon administration to reverberate into the present moment? Why do we fear what will happen if our children – God forbid – experience beautiful adventures in consciousness, or live their own lives responsibly? Why must we feel so obligated to protect our children from exhilaration? Why must we protect our children from euphoria? -from growing up? -from being capable of living their lives when they grow up? How does the crazy myth of the gateway theory continue perpetuate? Why do we forever maintain the folly that misery and suffering are not only normal, but desirable? Why must we continue to demonize anything that feels good, embracing all that makes us feel miserable? Why must we prevent our neighbours from benefiting from a world that expresses love and empathy instead of fear and malice? Why does America preserve the mentality that euphoria is, in fact, a negative side effect? How is what you do with your mind any of my business? How is what I do with my mind any of your business? Why do we prolong invasive probation and parole racketeering schemes for the sake of state profits? How can law enforcement possibly justify throwing innocent souls into corrals in the name of protecting communities that they, the enforcers, are completely disconnected from? Why have we begun to label drug offenders as terrorists? Why does it seem that many politicians simply won’t rest until all of our sons and daughters thoroughly understand the hammer blows of totalitarianism? Why can’t so many citizens acknowledge that breaking stupid laws is why we revere revolutionaries of yesteryear? Why do we collectively exalt those who enforce these stupid laws as benevolent heroes? Why is America building up her police forces into domestic para-military Gestapo armies? What does a police force need a tank for? Why must the accused prove their innocence without any assets to pay for their defense in rigged court rooms? Why does the government commemorate itself as the victim in these victim-less cases that bear no injured party whatsoever? And above all else, why does America seem so hell-bent on preventing the common people from thinking, pondering, or ever even questioning this insanity that we have codified as the established tradition of the ‘sane society?’
We know these policies are absurd. We know these laws are ridiculous. The police know it too. So why is it allowed to continue? Because every year thousands of medical doctors alongside members of the Anti-Smoking Inquisition spend billions of dollars perpetuating what has unquestionably become the most misleading though successful social engineering scam in history. With the encouragement of most western governments, corporate lobbyists pursue smokers with a fanatical zeal that completely overshadows America’s ridiculous alcohol prohibition.  And much of the mainstream media toes that corporate line, spewing fear-mongering and sensationalism. Not long ago our media was boldly claiming that cannabis use permanently lowered IQ, a finding that marijuana prohibitionists and anti-drug bureaucrats were happy to repeat ad nauseam.

Because drug offenders become labourers in our prisons. Because marijuana reform threatens the monolith of the pharmaceutical industry. Because cannabis legalization threatens the job security of police unions. Because the drug war justifies the inhuman violence that takes place each day in this country. Because the drug war provides the perfect opportunity to rationalize state-sponsored terror.

GET REAL

As larger and larger waves of Americans awaken from the lies of the D.A.R.E. program, Nancy Regan’s “just say no” campaign, and vociferous slough of absurdest public service announcements intended to justify the continued persecution of individuals who imbibe cannabis, an increasing number of public figures are beginning to realize they’re getting left behind.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the mainstream media’s go-to medical correspondent, was himself ardently opposed to marijuana use until he actually got around to researching it and then changed his tune dramatically, hosting three hour-long documentaries and calling for a “weed revolution.” It’s unclear whether his 180 is a result of actually conducting the research, or if he simply realized that if he didn’t admit to what the rest of the country already knows, no one would take him seriously ever again.

But it is nevertheless profound what happens when we base our decisions on facts and information as apportioned from research, instead of blindly acquiescing to scare tactics, propaganda and lies. Such endeavours seem to have a tendency of leading us toward the truth.

This post was composed by Outer Limits gumshoe Myron Gagarin and producer Gabrielle Lafayette
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