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For a while there, I was a real star. High up in my class at West Point, tough combat deployments in two wars, a slew of glowing evaluations, even a teaching assignment back at the military academy. I inhabited a universe most only dream of: praised, patted and highly respected by everyone in my life system and viewed as a brave American soldier. It’s a safe, sensible spot. For most, that’s enough. Too bad it was all bunk. Absurdity incarnate.

The truth is, I fought for next to nothing, for a country that, in recent conflicts, has made the world a deadlier, more chaotic place. Even back in 2011—or even 2006, for that matter—I was just smart and just sensitive enough to know that, to feel it viscerally.

Still, the decision to publicly dissent is a tough one. It’s by no means easy. Easy would be to go on playing hero and accepting adulation while staying between the lines. Play it safe, stick to your own, make everyone proud. That’s easy, intellectually immature—the new American way.

When you take the journey of dissent, you lose friends, alienate family, confuse confidants and become a lonely voice in your professional world. I’ve spent years sitting in military classrooms from West Point to Fort Knox to Fort Leavenworth as the odd man, the outlier, the confusing character in the corner. It’s like leaving the church, becoming an atheist, all while still living in the monastery. Still, the truth is that the military is more accommodating than one might suspect. I wrote a critical book, published some skeptical articles, but it’s not as though anyone ever outright threatened me. The pressure is different, more subtle: veiled warnings from superiors, cautious advice from mentors.

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan Sep 06, 2018

On Nov. 8, 2016, Crystal Mason, an African-American mother of three, went to the polls and voted. Hers was a provisional ballot, however, as she hadn’t been to her polling place near Fort Worth, Texas, for several years. She had been in prison for tax-related offenses, and was under federal supervised release. “I went to the local church, where I went before I went to prison, to vote,” she said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “When they looked on the roster, they realized my name wasn’t there … when I got ready to walk away, they stopped me and they told me, ‘Hey, you can fill out a provisional ballot. … If you’re at the right location, it will count. And if you’re not, it won’t.’ I didn’t see any harm with that. So the lady sat me down and helped me out with it.”

What Crystal didn’t know was that in Texas, you can’t vote while on parole or supervised release. What happened next is hard to believe. She was charged with voter fraud, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. On top of that shock, a federal judge ruled that because she violated the terms of her supervised release — for voting in Texas — she must spend an additional 10 months in federal prison, on top of the five-year state sentence that she is appealing.

“There is absolutely no reason Crystal should have been prosecuted,” Kim Cole, Mason’s attorney, said on “Democracy Now!” “She was not aware that she was not eligible to vote.” Provisional ballots exist precisely for people who are uncertain about their eligibility to vote. They allow a person to vote — provisionally — until election officials can check, after election day, whether the voter was eligible or not. If not, the ballot is not counted. It’s that simple.

...Compare Crystal Mason’s case with that of Terri Lynn Rote, a white woman in Iowa who was convicted of voter fraud for trying to vote for President Donald Trump twice. Rote was sentenced to two years’ probation and fined $750.

John Bolton has never made a secret of his burning desire to stoke a war between the United States and Iran. But Bolton is not the only one on Donald Trump’s national security team who dreams of such a military confrontation. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has joined with Bolton in recent months to prepare a case for possible war with Iran.

The tactics used by Pompeo and Bolton bear a strong resemblance to those pursued by Dick Cheney when he pushed for an attack on Iran from 2004 to 2007. Like Cheney, Pompeo and Bolton have sought to generate a phony crisis over Iranian “proxies” in Iraq, and have created the equivalent of a myth of an Iranian covert nuclear weapons program by conjuring up a nonexistent Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat.

When the plan for unprecedented economic sanctions on Iran was unveiled in May 2018, along with Trump’s announcement that he was pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal—the administration denied that its objective was regime change. As Pompeo put it, Trump was “ready, willing and able to negotiate a new deal.”

The Trump White House has taken advantage of Trump’s diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to sell the idea that he’s willing to negotiate a new relationship with Iran. In July, Trump said of the Iranians, “[A]t some point, they’re going to say ‘let’s make a deal.’ ”

But the demands on Iran that accompany the administration’s pressure campaign belie the notion that its objective is to reach a new agreement. The key demands outlined by Pompeo on May 21, 2018, are clearly based on the policy agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s an agenda for regime change and war, not a new deal with Iran.

By Jeffrey Bowers / The Vimeo Blog November 6, 2018

What does United States of America stand for nowadays if political division is at an all time high? Is it still the land of the free if America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world? Are we still the home of the brave if we refuse to stand up to injustice, because it would compromise our pocketbook? This disconnection from reality is the definition of psychosis. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author, and activist Chris Hedges, has made it his life’s work to highlight this inequity and combat the complacency of the consumerist culture. In a 2010 essay published on Adbusters, Hedges caught the eye of filmmaker Amanda Zackem, when he succinctly spelled out the problems with totalitarian capitalism and corporate power. Those ideas deeply resonated with Zackem and caused her to reach out to Hedges about bringing his essay into the cinematic realm in order to expose them to a larger audience. This week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “American Psychosis,” is the result of that process and their attempt to make people think more deeply about the world we’re living in.

[Continue reading]

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams Sep 06, 2018

Moving closer to the kind of full-scale revolt progressives have been urgently demanding from Democrats throughout Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Thursday defied Senate rules by unilaterally releasing documents that had been deemed “committee confidential” and hidden from the public.

“As I’ve been saying from the beginning, this process has been a sham,” Booker said in a statement after releasing documents related to Kavanaugh’s views on racial profiling. “The fact that tens of thousands of documents revealing a Supreme Court nominee’s views on key issues were deemed committee confidential and not available to the public reflects the absurdity of this process.”

“The public has a right to access documents about a Supreme Court nominee’s views on issues that are profoundly important, such as race and the law,” Booker added. “This process has demonstrated an unprecedented level of secrecy and opaqueness that undermines the Senate’s constitutional duty to advice and consent.”

...At around the same time Booker released the racial profiling documents—a move that comes on the final day of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings—Hirono joined her colleague in disregarding Senate rules by uploading screenshots of documents Republicans “don’t want you to see—because they show that Judge Kavanaugh wrongly believes that Native Hawaiian programs are constitutionally questionable.”

“I defy anyone reading this to be able to conclude that it should be deemed confidential in any way, shape, or form,” Hirono added.

By Robert Reich October 2, 2017

Announcement: Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States

Oh sure, he has the title and he has the bully pulpit—from which he’s bullying everyone from NBA players to people protesting white supremacists to DACA kids.

But he’s not actively governing the United States. That work is happening elsewhere—in Congress, the courts, the Fed, the career civil service, lobbyists, and in the states. Or it’s not happening at all.

It’s not just that Trump lost the epic battle to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump never understood the Affordable Care Act to begin with, and played no part in developing Republican alternatives.

The budget Trump submitted to Congress in March was dead on arrival. House Republicans ignored Trump’s request for $54 billion in cuts to departments and agencies and decided instead to cut non-defense spending by just $5 billion, and explode the defense budget.

The 9-page tax plan congressional Republicans and Trump unveiled last week only vaguely resembles Trump’s original tax proposal from April, and all the important decisions have been left to the tax-writing committees of Congress.

Trump’s relations with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have become so strained they have no interest in looping him into policies before they have to.

Meanwhile, Trump has run out of Obama executive orders he can declare void. Major regulations, such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, can’t just be repealed. They have to go through a legal process that could take years.

Trump doesn’t seem to be aware of this. He told a cheering crowd in Alabama recently that he had ended the Clean Power Plan by executive order. “Did you see what I did to that? Boom, gone.”

Nope. The EPA will soon reveal its strategy for reversing the Plan, but whatever it is, environmental groups are almost certain to appeal it in the courts. Big businesses and utilities, fearing that the courts may rule against the administration, are lobbying the EPA to come up with a replacement rather than try to eliminate the Plan altogether.

Although General John Kelly has reduced White House chaos somewhat, the firings and shakeups are unremitting.

Trump’s Cabinet secretaries don’t seem to have a clue. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos still wants to spend taxpayer money on for-profit schools and colleges that cheat their students. Won’t happen. The EPA’s Scott Pruitt is trying to strip the agency of scientists. Another brainless scheme.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin still has no idea how to deal with Congress. He tried to persuade Republican House members to support Trump’s budget deal with the Democrats by asking them to do it “for me.”

Health and Human Service Secretary Tom Price wasn’t fired for his ethical breaches. If ethics were the criteria, most of the Trump administration would be gone. Price broke Trump’s cardinal rule, which was never to get bad headlines for Trump.

Top echelons of departments and agencies are still empty. Trump has said “in many cases, we don’t want to fill those jobs,” which means decisions are being made by career civil servants and industry lobbyists.

By the start of September, more than a third of the leadership positions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were still vacant. Not a good way to begin hurricane season. Puerto Rico, anyone?

As of mid-September, out of 599 key government positions that require Senate confirmation, Trump had made only 159 nominations, according to The Washington Post. Trump had yet to submit nominations for 320 positions.

Trump’s political clout is waning among Republicans. He couldn’t even get his pick elected to a Senate primary in Alabama, a state bulging with Trump voters.

Business leaders have deserted him over his remarks over Charlottesville. NFL owners have turned on him over his remarks about players. Tom Brady, who once called Trump “a good friend,” now calls him “divisive” and “wrong.”

Don’t get me wrong. Trump is still a dangerous showman and conman – tweeting condemnations of critics and ranting before friendly crowds at his never-ending campaign rallies. He continues to fuel bigotry and meanness. He has reduced America’s standing in the world. His outbursts could start a nuclear war.

Noam Chomsky: The U.S. Declares Itself to Be the World’s Leading Terror State and Is Proud of It