April 30, 2014

Cutting off H2O to the NSA




According to OffNow.org , there are THREE steps that can be taken on a state level to make life difficult for the NSA.



1. 4th Amendment Protection Act. Our signature model legislation, the 4th Amendment Protection Act, would ban a state from taking actions which provide "material support" or assistance to warrantless federal spying programs. This includes provisioning of resources, and banning the state from using data obtained without warrant in state court.
States should pass this legislation whether they have a physical NSA facility or not, banning the warrantless data in court will have an immediate effect. And, since the NSA rarely publicizes its plans in advance, it's essential to ensure that their ability to expand with more data center facilities around the country is restricted before they get off the ground. (learn more here)



2. Electronic Data Privacy Act. For those states where legislators are not yet willing or able to get the full 4th Amendment Protection Act passed, the Electronic Data Privacy Act is a powerful first step. By banning the use of warrantless data in court, this state legislation can thwart some of the practical effects of federal spying programs. (learn more here)



3. Freedom From Location Surveillance Act. A narrow, but important first step against the growing surveillance state, the Freedom From Location Surveillance Act bans state and local law enforcement from obtaining the location information of a person's electronic device without a warrant.

The NSA is tracking the physical location of people through their cellphones. In late 2013, the Washington Post reported that NSA is "gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world." This includes location data on "tens of millions" of Americans each year -- without a warrant.

turn it off

Reset The Net

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



Fight for our Future has launched a "Reset The Net Campaign" for June 5th, 2014.

The problem, as outlined at Reset the Net, is:

"The NSA is exploiting weak links in Internet security to spy on the entire world, twisting the Internet we love into something it was never meant to be: a panopticon." It defines a solution as "We can't stop targeted hacking, but we *can* stop mass surveillance, by building proven security into the everyday Internet." 

Finally, the plan is to "First, get hundreds of sites & apps to add proven security (like SSL). Then on June 5, we'll run a splash screen *everywhere* to spread NSA-resistant privacy tools."

Shahid Buttar and Kevin Zeese examine the plan is this clip from Acronym TV (full episode here).

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer at PopularResistance.org.

atv Reset the net



Economist Dr Richard Wolff explains how Class War works

We Have A Democracy Crisis - Asher Platts


via Alex Steed, Bangor Daily News
asher_headshot

Asher Platts is a State Senate candidate in Portland, Maine. He is running as aGreen Independent, and he is also Statewide Chair of the party.

Platts also maintains a vibrant blog and video channel as the Punk Patriot, though his campaign has been occupying much of his time as of late. He is also a musician, a screen printer and a volunteer. We discussed what he calls the “democracy crisis” in Maine and the country at large, the Green Party, and why the concept of political corruption is not as simple as some people think.

Alex Steed: Just to let you know, I am recording.

Asher Platts: Oh, thank you.

AS: Yes, unlike the NSA, I will let you know about it. “I welcome the debate.”You said earlier in our conversation that you made $11,000 last year doing whatever you could, which is far below the poverty line.

AP: Yes, although the most I have ever made was working at L.L. Bean in the factory and I made $17,000 a year, so I am pretty strongly coming from working class roots. [Laughs]

AS: And maintaining those roots.

AP: Yeah, if I could make more while doing the social justice work that I do, I would love to. Having to worry about making rent constantly sucks. Some of the paid work that I have done pays very little but I have gotten to travel. Last Summer I was out working on a campaign in California. They had no money to pay me but they took care of my flight out and I got $300 for three weeks of working about 80 hours a week, but I got to see the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, which was cool.

AS: So what are you up to now? Why are you knocking on doors?

AP: I am currently running for State Senate here in Portland. I am running as a Green. I spent the first ten years of my political life as a Democratic Party activist and turn after turn through the Iraq War and the way the Democrats kept authorizing funding… And saying publicly that they don’t condone torture but after leaks it would turn out that not only did they condone it, they were complicit by not doing anything about it… Between all of that and impeachment proceedings, which the Democratic Party activist base was trying to do everything in their power to bring against the Bush Administration for war crimes and the leadership was doing everything that could be done to stop that from happening. Then from 2008 to 2010, when the party controlled the House, Senate and presidency, and here in Maine they controlled the governorship and both sections of the legislature, nothing progressive happened. In fact, here in Maine in 2009, Democrats voted for a flat tax, which is just crazy to me.

I became very disillusioned. I had believed very strongly in the idea that you stay in the Democratic Party and reform it but I had spent ten years doing that and it had only gotten worse. I had worked for Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign and I saw the immune response the party has within its various apparatuses to any progressive voices and I was just like, alright, this entire power structure has been build to prevent itself from reform. So I gave up on trying to reform an essentially broken structure and decided to work towards building a different structure entirely. The Green Party is that structure.
We are trying to build the party. We’re only 4% of the vote statewide, though it is a little bit higher in Portland. We’re not at 15% and we’re not at 30%, which is where I want to see us. I am not trying to steal away registered Democrats or anything like that. It’s not going to happen. With all of the cuts that are coming from both sides of the aisle now and with Obama going even further than Bush by having a kill list, if anybody is still a Democrat at this point—if they’re not unenrolled or identifying with another party at this point—they’re not going to change.

AS: So you’re trying to pull people who are unregistered and unaffiliated to the Green Party?

AP: So many people don’t even vote. The figures are going to change from year to year, but the number of eligible voters that don’t even bother to vote hovers around 60%. And why would they? Who do they have to vote for who represents their interests?

So now I am running for the State Senate to be someone to advocate for those people. And I am also running to win, which I want to be clear about. I ran in 2012 and I think I ran a lot more tame of a campaign. I myself had this idea that my then-opponent [State Senate President Justin Alfond] really was this super progressive guy but over the past two years—and looking over the past 6 that he has been in Augusta—he has been not LePage, but I have not really seen him advance the ball down the court. So it is great that he is sentimentally for raising the minimum wage and indexing a living wage to the cost of living and changing the tax structure so the rich are taxed more fairly, but where are the bills?

AS: With the exception of Maine People’s Alliance, which occasionally calls for occupation of the State House on particular days… and it isn’t even occupation, it is usually single day actions… Why do you think that the state party does not make more earnest attempts to rally their base more assertively and radically to ensure that their rhetorical philosophies are actually turned into laws?

AP: That is a good question, though I don’t know the answer. It is really a question for the Democratic Party leadership. My theory is that it is the same reason we see Sen. Max Baucus call for police to remove single-payer activists from Affordable Care Act hearings, which is to say that both of the parties have lots of paid staff that have to make their salaries. And the leadership places a lot of pressure on people who raise money from corporations. We have this idea that a lobbyist walks into a politician’s office and drops money on the desk and then the politician is corrupted, but it works the opposite way. They are getting pressure from their party to raise the money. They are calling the lobbyists in and asking them to do fundraisers for their parties and campaigns and they tell them, “You know, this last session I did really good for your company. Can you please do a fundraiser for me and invite all of your rich friends for me and let’s raise $100,000 in a night?” I think that’s a huge part of [why no real action is taken].

Regardless of that, there is a growing disconnect between those who are in power and those who are not. As [American Economist and Green Party member] Dr Richard Wolff said, there is an abyss between the governors and the governed. Even see this in 2008 with Barack Obama, where he had this great activist network built up through Obama for America and then they just kind of changed tack and had back-door meetings with campaigns of industry. Were he a true, insurgent progressive voice, he could have worked separate from the party like Howard Dean has done with DFA. I think that has been an effective strategy to a large extent. But I think another effective strategy is just to get out of the party.

AS: The state-wide party has had a pretty active ramp-up effort. You have the most people on the ballot since 2002. Can you talk a bit about that process?

AP: We have been trying to go around the state and register more voters into the party. That is something we have been doing for a long time, but we haven’t been doing a great job of calling people to organize locally. We have had basically no money to do anything and no paid staff, so a big key component shift for us is to use data management software to keep better track of our donors, volunteers and activists so we can do a better job of turning our personal networks into a party base.

We have a real variety of people running this year. We have farmers, recent college graduates and retired attorneys. We have one guy—Mark Diehl—in South Portland who is a retired corporate attorney and he decided that he couldn’t do it anymore because he was losing his soul. Now he is running for State Senate.

AS: What is the Green Party pushing for?

AP: We are pushing for transformational politics. It is not just a matter of getting into power in the existing structure. We want to change the structure so that it is more democratic, so that there are more opportunities for citizen participation. In Iceland, the Pirate Party was able to introduce really serious structural reforms to their democracy there in addition so some of the buzz-wordy things like crowd-sourcing the constitution. There are some serious things [happening there] that I think we should look at here in Maine. They were having all of the same sort of bi-partisan problems that we have in the United States and here in Maine. They have proportional representation in their Congress. They have a none-of-the-above option [on the ballot]. And, by the way, there was a revolution in Iceland in 2009 where the government was scrapped and we didn’t really hear about it here.

We have a fiscal crisis, but really we have a democracy crisis. There is a lack of the ability to have a real say about how decisions are made in our workplaces and government and pretty much anywhere we make choices about how the resources of society are divvied up and used. We take for granted how many of our choices are made for us by extremely wealthy people on Wall Street ahead of time. We definitely have a democracy crisis. More democracy. More civic participation. That is what is going to make change. Your vote is your interaction with the government and if we have a lack of information transferring through any system of power, corporation or government, we are going to have problems of corruption. We are going to have problems of people feeling as if they have no efficacy at all.

PHOTO CREDIT: Susan Hopkins

April 28, 2014

The Illegitimacy of the U.S. Government


Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



In this episode clip (watch the full show here) Shahid Buttar outlines why he thinks the biggest enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic enemy. Also, Kevin Zeese makes the point that the U.S. government is illegitimate.

“Every member of congress swears an oath of office to protect the constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic,” explains Buttar “and the principle enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic one with three letters. The only debate in my mind is whether it is the NSA or the FBI.”

Kevin Zeese adds: “It’s a harsh reality for the country to face. The corporate main stream media’s job is not to give us the truth but to give us the myth that we are the greatest democracy on earth, when in fact I think the democratic legitimacy of this country is disappearing. We just had Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer make that point in his dissent to the (Supreme Court) McCutcheon decision."

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer atPopularResistance.org.

Dennis Trainor, Jris a writer, filmmaker, producer, and activist. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more.  He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution.

atv abu grahib

April 25, 2014

Dropping Knowledge Like a Clumsy Librarian {#NSA edition}

Originally posted at PopularReistance.org



note This clip is an excerpt. Watch the full show here.

Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of The Bill of Rights Defense Committee drops knowledge on the NSA in his new House track The NSA vs. the USAwhile appearing on a recent episode of Acronym TV.

A sample verse:

Some people think Edward Snowden is a Traitor /
They forget everything that happened later /
Congress LIED TO by EXECUTIVE OFFICIALS /
We’re talking about CORRUPTION in the Capitol FO SHIZZLE /
Democracies FIZZLE when their people are watched /
That’s why the NSA’s got to be STOPPED

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

atv Shahid Buttar2

April 24, 2014

Full Show: Disband The NSA {aTV002}

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org

Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of The Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance sit down with host Dennis Trainor, Jr. in this episode of Acronym TV to discuss, among other things:

The Utility of the NSA | The 4th Amendment | Edward Snowden | The Espionage Act | Why the MSM treats Glenn Greenwald as a criminal | An update on Chelsea Manning | The Reset the Net Campaign | The Criminalization of Dissent | The Campaign to cut off Water to the NSA | and we ask the question: In what significant ways is President Obama different than the Straussian, noble liars that preceded him?



Also, you will want to stick around for part two of the show to see Shahid perform the lyrics for his new house track called The NSA Vs. The USA. 

Episode introduction:
The Pulitzer Prize for public service, among the most prestigious awards in journalism, was awarded to The Washington Post and Guardian U.S. for their articles based on National Security Agency documents leaked by the former government contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden released astatement, which read in part: (The Pulitzer decision) “is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public importance.”

In stark contrast to the work of vital public important is the overwhelming majority of content produced by the main stream media; one that demonizes anyone who questions the right and might of the American Empire to do whatever it deems necessary to expand its imperial reach by any means necessary.

Guests on this episode of Acronym TV with Dennis Trainor, Jr.:

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer atPopularResistance.org.
(Disclosure – Acronym TV receives partial financial support from Popular Resistance.)

Dennis Trainor, Jris a writer, filmmaker, producer, and activist. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more.  He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution. Trainor was an embedded YouTube personality/media advisor on the staff of Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and his work is regularly published on The Huffington PostTruth Out, The Real New NetworkPopular Resistance and several others.

Shahid Buttar

Coming Soon: This Planet Will No Longer Support Civilization

Originally posted at PopularResistance.org

Dr. Jill Stein on Capitalism, the most important question of the climate struggle, and just how long we have before the planet will no longer support civilization.

Days before the Earth Day to May Day Global Climate Convergence kicked off, Dr. Jill Stein talked with Dennis Trainor, Jr. of Acronym TV in a wide-ranging conversation about her hopes for the Convergence, a first response to ShowTime’s new series Years of Living Dangerously, and why the Climate Justice movement is all about jobs.

Check out these short clips below, or watch the full episode here.

Are Capitalism and Climate Justice Compatible?


The Most Important Climate Issue We Face


Coming Soon: This Planet Will No Longer Support Civilization


According the Global Climate Convergence website:

“The Global Climate Convergence is an education and direct action campaign that begins this spring, with “10 days to change course,” running from Earth Day to May Day. It builds collaboration across national borders and fronts of struggle to harness the transformative power we already possess as a thousand separate movements springing up across the planet. Earth Day-to-May Day 2014 (April 22 - May 1) will be the first in a series of expanding annual actions.

As you know, the movement for democracy and justice is sweeping the globe – from democracy revolutions to occupy protests, movements for the rights of workers, students, immigrants, women and Indigenous peoples; resistance to NSA spying, endless war, prison pipelines, tar sands, fracking, nuclear power, GMOs and more. The accelerating climate disaster – now predicted to dismantle civilization as we know it as soon as 2050 - intensifies all these struggles, and provides new urgency for collaboration and unified action. Clearly there is no time to lose.

The Convergence calls for a solution as big as the crisis barreling down on us – an emergency green economic transformation, including full employment and living wages; 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2030; universal free health care and education; food and housing security; an end to deportations and mass incarceration; economic and political democracy; demilitarization; ecosystem restoration and support for the rights of Mother Earth; and more.

These goals will only be achieved by masses of people coming together in a unified movement, which is exactly what the Convergence is working towards!”

atv dead earth

April 23, 2014

Saying ‘Hell No’ To Obamacare


Originally posted at PopularResistance.org

Recently, Dr. Margaret Flowers initiated an online petition declaring herself a consciences objector to the Affordable Care Act and asking others to send a message to President Obama that the ACA is a scam.



In this short clip (above), Dr. Flowers states:
“The most important question we should be having right now, knowing that insurgence is not protective, is do we want to continue to treat health care as a commodity and people only get what they can afford, or do we want to join the rest of the industrialized nations in the world and treat health care as a public good and create a system where people can get what they need.”

You can watch the full interview below:



Dr. Margaret Flowers (MFlowers8) is a pediatrician from Baltimore who is an organizer at PopularResistance.org, co-directs ItsOurEconomy.us and co-hosts Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio. She is adviser to the board of Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the steering committee of the Maryland Health Care is a Human Right campaign.

flowers hell no


Tags
Obamacare, Healthcare.gov, Affordable Care Act, ACA, Obama health insurance, Conscientious Objector To Obamacare, Health Insurance, health insurance industry, universal healthcare, Single payer health care, Margaret Flowers, Dr. Margaret Flowers,

April 19, 2014

Full Show: Climate Catastrophe Now + The Most Important Question About Obamacare {aTV 001}


Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



Dennis talks with Dr. Jill Stein, President of the Green Shadow Cabinet about the recently published U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment on climate change. The findings, combined with the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, paint a picture of humanity committing a collective genocide and ecocide. The end of civilization scenarios, once projected for your grandchildren’s grandchildren are now a reality for anyone ho plans to be alive in 2050.

“The IPCC has finally stepped up to the plate in saying what we are up against,” says Dr. Stein, “but they have not begin to step up to the plate, in fact they are really not qualified to say how we fix this. The IPCC is not calling for radical transformation. They have yelled, ‘fire!’ and come out with a squirt gun. What they are calling for is not what we need.”

In the second half of the show, Dennis sits down with Dr. Margret Flowers.

Recently, Dr. Flowers initiated an online petition declaring herself a consciences objector to the Affordable Care Act and asking others to send a message to President Obama that the ACA is a scam.

“The most important conversation we should be having right now in the United States is not how many people are insured,” says Dr. Flowers “knowing that insurance is not protective, it’s: do we want to continue to treat healthcare as a commodity where people only get what they can afford, or do we want to join the rest of the industrialized nations in the world and treat healthcare as a public good and create a system where people can get what they need.”


Bios:
Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) is a mother, physician, longtime teacher of internal medicine, and pioneering environmental-health advocate. She was the 2012 Green Party presidential nominee and current president of the Green Shadow Cabinet. She is also an initiator behind the Global Climate Convergence, which is an education and direct action campaign running from Mother Earth Day to May Day. It seeks to build collaboration across national borders and fronts of struggle to harness the transformative power we already possess as a thousand separate movements springing up across the planet.

Dr. Margaret Flowers (MFlowers8) is a pediatrician from Baltimore who is an organizer at PopularResistance.org, co-directs ItsOurEconomy.us and co-hosts Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio. She is adviser to the board of Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the steering committee of the Maryland Health Care is a Human Right campaign.

Dennis Trainor, Jr. 
(@DennisTrainorJr) is a writer, host and producer. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more.  He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution. Trainor was an embedded YouTube personality/media advisor on the staff of Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and his work is regularly published on The Huffington PostTruth Out, The Real New NetworkPopular Resistance and several others.

This episode of Acronym TV was filmed at The Real News Network in Baltimore, MD.

Director - Jamar Jemison

Assistant Director + Camera op - Chris DeMillo
Audio - Charles Waters
Camera- Denise Rivera, Michael Johnson
Makeup - Kelsey Johnson
Writer – Dennis Trainor, Jr. 

* Disclosure: PopularResistance.org provides partial funding for Acronym TV

ATV001

tags
Global Climate Convergence, Obamacare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Jill Stein, Dr. Jill Stein, Climate Justice movement, workers rights, Earth Day to May Day, Margaret Flowers, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Single Payer, Years of Living Dangerously, James Cameron Showtime, Dennis Trainor Jr,