Here is a round up with a few noteworthy developments and articles and an absurdity or two. This week Peter B Collins and I will be recording interviews with two special guests. It is going to be lively, interesting and I think rather controversial. Stay tuned.

The Conditional Antiwar Movement- Party Based AntiWar-ism

The following article is based on a new study showing that the antiwar movement in the US demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success. The findings are complementary (unfortunately) to my previous post on partisan & biased media reports. Ignorant & blinded partisanship in action: atrocious wars and major presidential abuses are all okay if committed by X Party, but awful and impeachable offenses if exercised by Y party.

Did Obama’s Election mean the End of the Anti-War Movement? 
By Bernie DeGroat, Spero News

As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan,” said Heaney, U-M assistant professor of organizational studies and political science. “The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity.

“Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.”

Heaney and Rojas analyzed the demobilization of the antiwar movement by using surveys of 5,400 demonstrators at 27 protests mostly in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago and San Francisco from January 2007 to December 2009. The surveys asked questions on basic demographics, partisan affiliations, organizational affiliations, reasons for attending the events, histories of political participation, and attitudes toward the movement, war and the political system.

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A New Memo Reveals: FBI Had Mole Inside ABC News- Why the surprise?!

A recently declassified FBI memo reveals that a senior ABC News journalist acted (and performed) as a confidential informant to the bureau in the 1990s. I know this is significant, but shocking? That’s what I don’t understand. Do you?

Memo Suggests FBI Had Mole Inside ABC News in 1990s 
By John Solomon & Aeron Mehta

A once-classified FBI memo reveals that the bureau treated a senior ABC News journalist as a potential confidential informant in the 1990s, pumping the reporter to ascertain the source of a sensational but uncorroborated tip that the network had obtained during its early coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The journalist, whose name is not disclosed in the document labeled “secret,� not only cooperated but provided the identity of a confidential source, according to the FBI memo — a possible breach of journalistic ethics if he or she did not have the source’s permission.

The ABC employee was even assigned a number in the FBI’s informant database, indicating he or she was still being vetted for suitability as a snitch after providing “highly accurate and reliable information in the past� and then revealing information the network had obtained in the hours just after the 1995 terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh.

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More on Biased-Partisan Media & Double Standards

On Friday I published a brief commentary on the Lefts’ Hypocrisy when it comes to investigative reporting on the Obama administration’s atrocities nationally and internationally. Considering the level of controversy accompanied by lots of snarls, spits and insults, it must have struck a chord with ‘some people.’ Suddenly, these people forget my 7-year long battle during the Bush administration-the gag orders I received, polygraphs, being fired, secrecy…you name it. I used to be, back in the Bush days, their heroine, their respected whistleblower. Obama administration comes in, I see what goes on, I write about it and voice my opinion against the same atrocities, and suddenly I become the …hmmmmm, I am not going to use their x-rated and colorful adjectives. If I remember correctly, it started with this piece I wrote during the early Obama days: Two Sides of the Same Coin … Heads-Heads. No worries; I won’t be easily deterred. Here is another commentary on the Left’s double standards when it comes to ‘their’ president of wars-abuses: Read more È

Isn’t it good to see a joint focus on macro issues and real diseases? Even better, to see micro differences and lame sideshows put aside for the badly needed greater good? What do ‘you’ think?

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I go on line and check out the major newspaper headlines, and to my delight there is a TSA related headline or two in every one. In the last few days two in every three e-mails I’ve received (and I receive hundreds a day) carry TSA related heads up or action items in their subject lines. The blogosphere has been simmering with the same outrageous issue. Yet the entire thing gives me pause. A long one. The pattern, the order, the intensity, the lingo, the reaction…all remind me of something or some things. It is a bit, maybe more than a bit, like a sense of déjà vu. The feeling that we’ve been here; more than once, actually many times. Make that too many times. I keep thinking of a yoyo. In fact, I can’t get the image of a yoyo out of my head. I am asking myself, and you, the following question: Are we Americans exhibiting yoyo-like and short-lived reactions? In short-lived jerky motions?

Let’s step back for a second and take a look at this consistent pattern:

NSA illegal wiretapping of American citizens is exposed. We, some of us, are outraged. We can’t stop reading about it. We write about, talk about it, and blog about it nonstop. For a while. The media waits a little, then takes the cue, decides to ride the same wave, however selectively and reluctantly. For a while. The Congress follows the fashion. They are into fashion. They wear this particular fashion like a Halloween costume, over the top of their usual long-term clothing, with every intention of shedding it off at the end of the parade, as soon as it is announced out-of-fashion.

Within a few weeks the media goes back to ‘normal,’ and acts as if ‘it’ never happened, or, it happened but no longer carries newsworthiness since ‘it’ has become another ordinary fact of life to live with and forget it is even there. The Congress likes to remain fashionable. When the media stops, the costume is out-of-fashion; to be discarded. Their usual clothing underneath are ‘classics,’ politically that is, the kind that never go out of fashion, politically, that is. So they go back to the good old classics until the next fashion trend breaks in the news. During this phase, we the people gradually stop reading, talking, writing, and blogging about ‘it.’ We are exhausted from over-excitement. Frankly, we are bored with the topic. For weeks we all had run in the same direction; fast and furious. Everyone within our circle had covered the same ‘topic,’ and the topic started getting too familiar, too common, too ordinary, too tedious and too massive to go against. All in a very short time, but nonetheless. Read more È

So I haven’t been writing; pouring out pages and pages of words; analyzing a bit of a sick foreign policy issue here and a handful of plentiful corruption stories there, or marveling at the rapid uncontested descent toward the ever-approaching ‘police state,’…

I am going to blame it partly on a hectic life in the fast lane, but only ‘partly.’ Here is the major reason for the absence of my ‘many-word’ postings:

I am tired; so very tired. I am tired of reading and listening to all these nicely written, well-argued, soundly reasoned, and sadly, factual words written and spoken by good natured preppy boys and girls. There are so many scandals, too may wrongs, and lots to fight. Unfortunately we still don’t have the majority, as is almost always the case whenever and wherever things get to be so wrong and awful; our good ole notion of the ‘irate minority.’ Yet, we this ‘irate minority’ is a decent size. The problem is, at least to me, that almost the entire membership of our current irate minority has assumed one title, and one title only: educators. Activism has been narrowed and reduced to one line of activity – producing words: writing-blogs, alternative means of communication, and, talking. Words, words, many words; pretty words, good words, big words, intellectually enriched words, academically induced words, mumbo words, jumbo words…words words everywhere.

They are all talking, writing; some are busy talking and writing simultaneously. There seems to be not enough words, or enough time to use all the needed words to cover the obscene cost of  our wars (cost in lives, cost to taxpayers, cost to morale, cost to our standing around the world, cost to…), to cover the assault on our civil liberties (from enhanced pat down of our crotches by TSA to the illegal monitoring of our every form of communication…), to cover the violations of human rights (from torture to illegal detentions to assassination squads…), to cover the daily corruption scandals (from our multi-billion-dollar private war industry to our very own elected officials)…

You may say ‘but that’s a good thing. We need to educate and inform more people in order to change the sorry state of things…’ You’d be right, except for this major reality factor: all these pretty words are written for and or spoken to the same audience circle – which includes the same large irate minority who happen to spend all their time writing and speaking them.  And, that my friend, is why we are where we are. Well, at least in my opinion.

To bring about needed change(s) we need Agents of Change. You see, it is plural: Agents. Of course we need the educators: writers, speakers, reporters/journalists…We also need organizers. We need leaders. We need participant funders. We need uniters- sure, I made up this word, but it makes sense: we need people who are good at uniting the decent. Without people fulfilling these roles, we’ll be stuck here, in this exact same situation, or most likely even worse.

Okay, back to me being tired; make it exhausted. I am surrounded with good friends and acquaintances who have been talking and writing, and of course, reading and listening to other comrade talkers and writers. Most of them are great people, and I like them. A few of them are less likable due to their own doings – disposition-intellectual snubs – but nonetheless, they mostly make sense in their writing-talking presentations. So I’ve been reading their work, one after another, and, I’ve been listening to them. I find many of their analyses, whether on civil liberties or foreign policy or whatever, to be sound, right on target, or at least interesting and worth considering. But every time I am exposed to their audience-readers, I keep seeing the same people: the already-knowledgeable vigilant small group of sods – which includes colleagues who also write-speak similar words. And, that circle of audience ain’t growing. Neither is the dynamic moving towards, getting translated to any action, or anything even resembling any action. And, we are where we are; in a place worse than it was a year ago, and far worse than where it was three years before that.

Hmmmmm. I still have plenty to say on this subject, but doing that means more words, and that my friend, is going to totally defeat the purpose of this ‘side note.’ Will the cure for my current revolt against and exhaustion of words be by throwing myself into another round of word-swamp, or, by turning the word faucet off, except for a drip here or there? I guess time will tell.

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John Young provides us with a brief overview of the history, purpose and mission of his well-known website Cryptome.Org. He talks about the recent controversy involving Microsoft Corporation’s attempted legal action against Cryptome, and the temporary shutdown of the site by the ISP Network Solutions. He speaks to the importance of the free flow of information and challenging the governments’ self-serving secrecy as prerequisites for an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy, the importance of whistleblowers and anonymous disclosures, the existence of various trap websites, impostors and false flag operators to manipulate information, trick whistleblowers, and or plant specific propaganda, and more.

John Young is a New York based architect and online archivist who owns and operates Cryptome.Org, a website that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance. In February 2010, the ISP Network Solutions shut down Mr. Young’s website after he posted a document summarizing Microsoft’s dealings with law enforcement agencies. Shortly after initiating legal action to suppress a document on how to subpoena online user data Microsoft withdrew the complaint, and the website was restored.

Here is our guest John Young unplugged!

Interview with John Young [ 58:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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