Occupy Wall Street Year Two

It's been a long, long two years since OWS started up in the heart of the financial district in NYC. The ripple effects of this movement are too diverse and too numbered to fully catalog in a short podcast.  Instead we take a look at the arithmetic of protests attendance.  The corporate media dismisses protests and movements (like the coverage of OWS Year One) when they say the numbers are too low, but what do these numbers actually represent?  At what point are the assemble more powerful than the elected?  This episode ends with a reading of the Declaration of Occupation. [Click to Listen]

We Are Being Monitored (Rebroadcast)

This episode was released on January 25th, 2013:
In December 2012 the FBI confirmed what longtime activists knew, that the corporate state and the intelligence community are in bed together.  Now it is time to take a look at who is doing the domestic spying on not just OWS , but activists and citizens all over this country.  An article over at Defense News and a video report from This Week in Defense News reveal that the CIA has its own venture capital firm (In-Q-Tel) to get in with social media companies and Twitter sells a product call "the full Twitter firehose" to the intelligence community and to private multinational companies.  What does the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, OICI, I&A, INR, INSCOM, Boeing, Northrop Grummand, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin do with all this information? [Click to Listen]

Corporations Are Psychopaths

If Corporations are people, then what kind of a person are they?  On this episode we take a look at the Exxon Mobile Pipeline 'Pegasus' that burst in Arkansas at the end of March.  How did this "person" know as Exxon Mobile deal with the situation? [Click to Listen]

The Powell Memo

In August of 1971, Lewis F. Powell Jr. was about to be sworn in as an Associate Supreme Court Justice after previously turning down the same offer from President Nixon in 1969.  Before being sworn in, he wrote a memo entitled, "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" (to become known as 'The Powell Memo') to Eugene B. Syndor Jr. at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The memo called upon Corporate America to aggressively shape politics, media, education and the court system of this country.  Over 40 years later, almost everything Powell wrote about has happened. [Click to Listen]

Anti Civ vs. Center for Industrial Progress

In the debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline there are the voices of reason (the activists) and insanity (the corporate shills).  In this episode we take a look at the philosophies of two groups who represent these two sides; Anarcho-Primitivism and and the Center for Industrial Progress. [Click to Listen]

How to Manufacture News Stories

In November of 2012, the University of California at Irvine and Slate.com teamed up to conduct and then publish the findings of a very telling social experiment...how do we (human beings) remember news stories?  Over 5,000 people participated in the study and the results provide quite an insight as to how news stories can be manufactured, presented and accepted as true. [Click to Listen]

CoIntelPro Tactics

Rebroadcast: A look at the tactics used by the FBI's COunter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO) against activist groups in the United States (with some readings from Dan Berger's book: Outlaws in America).  The program officially ended in 1971, but the tactics are clearly still being practiced today against Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement in general. [Click to Listen]

The Coming Cyber War

Continuing down the Corporate Security State rabbit hole of public information, we take a look at some on the record statements from both government officials and private security contractors.  This week we check in with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Booz Allen Hamilton Vice Chairman (and former head of the NSA) Mick McConnell.  They both say the Cyber War is coming any day. [Click to Listen]

The Flow of Information

From push notifications, corporate news channel tickers, billboards, newspaper headlines, blog titles, Facebook updates and twitter posts - the depth of our information diet is getting smaller and less diverse.  In this episode we take a look at alternative ways to expand the mind with in depth information.  From concerts and films to just plain old up all night passionate conversations with friends and family, there is no need to limit ourselves when it comes to the amount and type of information we are putting in our brains. [Click to Listen]

OWS and Libraries

The Peoples Library was started within days of the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park.  As OWS spread throughout the country and the world, so did the ideas of the Peoples Library, with most encampments hosting a version of this free access to information.  In this episode we take a look at how a traditional library (the San Diego County Library) teamed up with Housing Opportunities Collaborative to offer free foreclosure clinics, one of the central focal points of the Occupy Movement.

We Are Being Monitored

In December 2012 the FBI confirmed what longtime activists knew, that the corporate state and the intelligence community are in bed together.  Now it is time to take a look at who is doing the domestic spying on not just OWS , but activists and citizens all over this country.  An article over at Defense News and a video report from This Week in Defense News reveal that the CIA has its own venture capital firm (In-Q-Tel) to get in with social media companies and Twitter sells a product call "the full Twitter firehose" to the intelligence community and to private multinational companies.  What does the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, OICI, I&A, INR, INSCOM, Boeing, Northrop Grummand, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin do with all this information? [Click to Listen]

The Corporate Police State

Just before Christmas, the FBI finally granted a Freedom of Information Act request by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on the role of the FBI in monitoring, infiltrating and spying on Occupy Wall Street protests.  Although heavily redacted, there are some interesting pieces of information contained in the documents.  Among them, the role of the Domestic Security Alliance Council, a group started by the FBI that "facilitates information sharing and cooperation between the FBI and over 200 of the largest American companies, which altogether account for over one third of the gross domestic product of the United States".  Yes, corporations are working hand in hand with the police state. [Click to Listen]

Goodbye Dennis!

Thanks to politically motivated redistricting, Congressman Dennis Kucinich is no longer in Washington.  On today's show we say a quick goodbye to the vegan representative who tried to; impeach a sitting president (Bush), impeach a sitting vice president (Cheney), keep space from being weaponized, repeal the PATRIOT Act, create a Department of Peace, nationalize the Federal Reserve, legislate against factory farms and end all foreign occupations.  He was also a vocal supporter of Occupy Wall Street and visited Occupy Cleveland. [Click to Listen]

Banking Scandals of 2012

A look at some of the major banking scandals of 2012.  Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclay's, Nomura, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Knight Capital, ING, Capital One, Peregrine Financial Group and LIBOR are all discussed. [Click to Listen]

Banks and Drugs II

Do you need any more reasons to be pissed off at banks, part 2?  Previously, we discussed their decades long cozy relationship with drug cartels and the CIA?  The Golden Triangle, Iran-Contra Affair, Mena, Arkansas, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela National Guard, etc.
This time we take a look at the recent "settlement" for the third largest bank in the world and their decades long relationship with Mexican and Columbian drug cartels. 
 [Click to Listen]

Police Violence in Cleveland

After a quick discussion of the role of the national corporate media in shaping our day to day reality of the world around us, we get into the horrific story of 13 Cleveland Police officers shooting 137 rounds at two unarmed citizens after a 20+ minutes car chase - killing both of them. [Click to Listen]

Cooper Union Occupation

Students are taking matters into their own hands at Cooper Union in NYC.  12 students are occupying the "clock tower" in order to keep the tuition free and oust the current president of the university. [Click to Listen]

F**k Keystone XL Pipeline

As I type this, there are activists sitting in tress stands in Texas trying the best to hold off construction on the Keystone XL pipeline.  Keep up with their actions at the Tar Sands Blockade website.  Also, we take a look at their 10 reasons to oppose the pipeline. [Click to Listen]

Cleveland 5 Update

Three of the five people arrested in Cleveland this past spring find out how long they will be spending in jail.  The presiding judge in this case keeps a relatively cool head in the face of the US Attorney's office pushing for upwards of 30 years for some of the defendants.  "It doesn't make any sense whatsoever," the judges said in an interview.  He went on to call the tough sentencing sought by the prosecution as "grotesque". [Click to Listen]

Banks and Drugs

Do you need any more reasons to be pissed off at banks?  How about their decades long cozy relationship with drug cartels and the CIA?  The Golden Triangle, Iran-Contra Affair, Mena, Arkansas, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela National Guard (to name just a few from a Wikipedia page). [Click to Listen]