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      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://medium.com/@sbonifides/a-reading-of-suzie-dawsons-freeing-julian-assange-pt-2-3a88ba5b6ab8",
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{
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "![Screen Shot 2019-06-27 at 2.12.37 PM.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQbcptrkGDxTgKLdiRqR5pMoA5Z6B1KVsAZDXyv5cdLTN/Screen%20Shot%202019-06-27%20at%202.12.37%20PM.png)\n\nIn [Part 2 of her multi-part investigative series, ‘Freeing Julian Assange’](https://contraspin.co.nz/freeing-julian-assange-part-two/), Suzie delves into where the smears come from that Wikileaks has been a tool or collaborator with both Donald Trump and the government of Russia in its release of documents damaging to the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016.\n\nThis is knotty stuff, but listen closely and you won’t have too much trouble tracking the serpentine path between U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies and those who wittingly or unwittingly cooperate with them. Here, we’re talking about folks in the global mainstream media, NGOs, think tanks, and other sectors of the elite who soberly tell us plebes what to think.\n\n<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/640173591&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true\"></iframe>\n\n\nMy reading of “Freeing Julian Assange, Pt. 1” is [here, by the way](https://soundcloud.com/guidaboni/reading-of-freeing-julian-assange-pt-1-by-suzie-dawson).\n\nAs always, thanks for listening.\n\nP.S. The response I’ve gotten from doing these recordings has been significant and vocal. It seems like folks are getting value from this effort, so I’m going to continue recording myself reading Suzie’s work, as well as recent work from other journalists and essayists that I believe will benefit from being heard aloud. Please do reach out to me in the comments section here or on Twitter (@sbonifides) if you have specific writers or outlets you’d like to hear represented. I would absolutely welcome your feedback.",
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      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://ghionjournal.com/a-reading-of-suzie-dawsons-freeing-julian-assange/",
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "![Screen Shot 2019-06-27 at 2.03.11 PM.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfT4HuKUAfZpapfAjuXwdE6ivZSDRSdCVo7bGC1HhFgyh/Screen%20Shot%202019-06-27%20at%202.03.11%20PM.png)\n\nA lot has been written and said about Julian Assange and Wikileaks during these past eight years or so, while Assange has been essentially on the run from the U.S. deep state and its complicit partners in other countries, Congress, the Executive branch, the Department of Justice and the judiciary.\n\nMost of it has been brazen propaganda in service of the powerful. But some of it has been essential—essential because of a small group of journalists, thinkers and activists who have helped us see how much the persecution of Julian Assange and Wikileaks is connected to a much larger struggle between empire and those who challenge or embarrass it.\n\nI’m talking about people like **Christine Assange, Chris Hedges, Elizabeth Lea Vos, Joe Lauria, the late Robert Parry, Craig Murray, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Ray McGovern, Vivian Kubrick, William Binney, John Kiriakou, Daniel Ellsberg, and George Galloway**, among several others.\n\nAs important as all of these figures have been to our collective understanding of the U.S. government’s drive to eliminate Assange and Wikileaks, no one has been more instrumental than **Suzie Dawson**, herself an exiled journalist and activist in flight from private and state intelligence agency persecution in her home country of New Zealand.\n\nIn addition to her years of activism, her creation of the #Unity4J across-the-world video vigils, and the deep, research-driven work she’s done with Elizabeth Lea Vos in deciphering significant swaths of the Snowden files on the NSA, she has gifted us as well with touchstone investigative journalism about Wikileaks, Assange and how (and from where) the campaign against them really operates.\n\nShe’s provided us with an extraordinary education. She’s shined some very distinct spotlights on some very terrifying things in the process, particularly starting with her 2018 opus [Being Julian Assange](https://contraspin.co.nz/beingjulianassange/).\n\nIn the last few weeks, she’s been gradually releasing her follow-up to that lengthy, necessary piece called [Freeing Julian Assange](https://contraspin.co.nz/freeing-julian-assange-part-one/). Dawson does research so far down the rabbit hole that what usually emerges are lengthy articles that require determined time and study.\n\nSince not everyone can spend the time it takes to absorb her work, I thought it might be helpful if people could listen to her latest piece in audio format, so I sat down this morning and recorded myself reading **Part 1 of “Freeing Julian Assange”**. (Update) [A reading of Part 2 is here](https://soundcloud.com/guidaboni/reading-of-freeing-julian-assange-pt-2).\n\n<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/638660745&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true\"></iframe>\n\n\nEnjoy, and thanks to Suzie Dawson for all she's contributed to our understanding of Wikileaks, Assange and the entire anti-imperial project.",
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      "body": "Right, so they know Russiagate will all come to nothing and the real vulnerabilities will remain out of view. Thanks!",
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      "body": "Probably -- the fact that Sessions made way for Mueller, and that there have been no efforts by Trump admin to end the insanity is also telling, IMHO.",
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      "body": "Elizabeth,\n\nI'm curious for your perspective on this piece of the puzzle. Do you believe that the needs of the DNC (and the intelligence agencies that largely supported Clinton's candidacy) to keep the focus away from the rigged primary are the reason why there's been no considerable press on Trump's ties to Russian oligarchs and organized crime figures?",
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      "author": "cheetah",
      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://ghionjournal.com/the-politician-who-sat-by-the-door-a-fantasy/",
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "![1_E-NEC0Qk5ui9DIrFkOOXgQ.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeNd9XthD4b4u7E8BmSP2sEq1hks5PNdUbDc1zzVeHqXz/1_E-NEC0Qk5ui9DIrFkOOXgQ.jpg)\n\n**A basic truth.** Everybody needs some kind of job in this world. It’s what you have to do to eat and keep a roof over your head (though, these days, we should shamefully admit that not everyone who works earns enough for shelter). To stay in that job you’re often forced to keep your opinions to yourself and do as you’re told. That’s life as an adult in a hierarchy and most of us swallow it in some way, shape or form.\n\nHowever, there are some occupations that impact fellow citizens in such fundamental ways that keeping your mouth shut, refraining from doing or advocating for doing “*the right thing*” has consequences that should be too difficult to live with. Think of jobs that have a direct connection to people’s health, like medicine or water quality — or their immediate physical wellbeing, like law enforcement. If you’re going to work in these types of jobs, it’s almost a prerequisite that you be ready to go against the grain when the lives of others are at stake. To put it another way, you ought to walk in the door prepared to go down swinging if it comes to that.\n\nIs that a lot to ask? Yeah, it is. To keep us from going over the edge into a fully dehumanized world, is it necessary? Yeah, I think it is.\n\n# Politics is life or death #\n\nPolitics is a prime example of an occupation that has a tangible, fundamental impact on peoples’ lives, especially the most vulnerable. Policy decisions tear families apart and kill people. It’s not hyperbole to say so. I mean it’s awfully fundamental to take away a poor person’s food stamps or put kids in cages or shutter mental health facilities or throw people out of their homes or devise and execute an extrajudicial kill list. Those things happen when a politician (aided by other politicians and bureaucrats) takes a clear action — or a clear inaction.\n\nI’ve been thinking about this a lot, lately.\n\nBecause the debate has raged within the vague contours of the American left since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grassrooted her way over top of the corporate shill Crowley to most likely take a seat in the House of Representatives this fall. **Questions are rampant**. How grassroots will she be once in office? Is she already backing off? Does she have any hope of being effective? Will they eat her alive?\n\n**Another basic truth.** One we all know if we’re being honest with ourselves. Congress is irredeemably corrupt across both political parties. Virtually all members are now fully assimilated as characters in a shitty community theater production whose ramshackle sets barely conceal a system of legalized bribery, rigged elections, national security state subservience and institutionalized contempt for other human beings. \n\nAnd current players expect new cast members to join the production without complaint or insubordination. For newbies who think they can go a different way, there are immediate precedents for them to take a look at. For instance, I’m sure it’s not lost on Ocasio-Cortez that the system has rather easily spat out honest actors like Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich (though let’s remember how he backed down to Obama on healthcare), or co-opted once impossibly brave leaders like John Lewis.\n\n# How to maneuver amidst massive corruption #\n\nOne of the best ways I know to ground myself during these disheartening days is to set aside an hour and watch a Chris Hedges or a Cornell West speech. This week Chris got the nod and he hit me with this:\n\n**“A life dedicated to resistance has to accept that a relationship with any institution is usually temporary because, sooner or later, that institution is going to demand acts of silence or obedience your conscience will not allow you to make.”**\n\n<iframe width=\"700\" height=\"393\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ycuw9Cvh6W4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n\n__________________________________________________________\n\nThose demands that Hedges mentions? They won’t hold them back while Ocasio-Cortez gets her office set up and figures out where the bathroom is. \n\nThey’re going to come at her right away. And they’ll take many forms: Flattery. False promises. Offers of mentorship. Traps. Invitations to cocktail parties where they’ll let her taste the ambrosia of power and privilege as they dangle committee assignments in front of her (for a price). Efforts to keep her “on message” when she goes on corporate media networks (she’s far too attractive and articulate for them to keep her off, but they could if she doesn’t play ball). Demands that she prove herself a loyal Democrat by hitting the fundraising circuit ASAP. Intros to slick lobbyists and PACs who claim to care about her priorities. It’s not even beyond the pale to think they’ll monitor her personal life so they can have some juicy tidbits to hang over her when they need to.\n\nIt will take enormous focus and will on her part to stay true to her mission and do right by her constituents back in Queens and the Bronx. If she falls prey to assimilation, she’ll betray her constituents’ — and achieve nothing in the process. If she refuses to be cowed, she could find herself out on her ass in two years.\n\n# The benefits of a short tenure #\n\n**This one’s not a basic truth.** Given the extreme state of corruption in Washington, becoming a pariah in the party could actually be a great option.\n\nHere’s what I mean.\n\nFirst, a quick question. Have you seen this early-70s film called [The Spook Who Sat By the Door](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BynXfREPG8)? If you haven’t, it’s B-movie perfection. All about a best-of-the-best black man who, post-civil rights, snags a spot in one of the government’s major military/spy agencies. He spends a few years getting shit on by racist colleagues and superiors. But it’s all part of his plan. He up and quits quits one day, disappears and takes all his new clandestine skills back to his city. There, he uses those skills to lead an insurrection on the white power structure. It’s satirical and political and outrageous and dead serious all at the same time.\n\n(The best part is when he and his crew capture an evil general, dose him with LSD and paint him in blackface, but I digress).\n\n<iframe width=\"700\" height=\"525\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/h3_8K1HgzMk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n\n________________________________________________________\n\nWith this film in mind, I want you to play out a slightly less outlandish fantasy with me, a little what-if scenario. Let’s say Ocasio-Cortez anticipates everything from the jump and does the following once she’s in office:\n\n· **Is nice as pie to her fellow politicians across both parties, but is a complete pain in the ass.** She speaks unguarded truth at every turn. Refuses to bend on any significant vote. Says nothing when they give her a crap committee role and makes the absolute most of it anyway. Doesn’t bother fundraising for the party. Turns away lobbyists left and right. Disobeys every order that will compromise her mission. Gets disrespected at every turn. Doesn’t have a single friend in the chamber. Oh well.\n\n· **Next. Doesn’t hold back in any media appearance she makes.** Goes full Dem Socialist on every network that will have her. Makes corporate talking heads go apoplectic. Smiles at every slanderous action they take in retaliation. Spends a greater percentage of her time talking to media she knows her constituents pay attention to. Independent media. Online media. Non-English language media. Lest we forget, mainstream media viewership is flatlining. Especially among the non-geriatric.\n\n· **Spends as much time as she can with constituents in her district.** In fact, while she’s in office she encourages them to create a non-partisan umbrella activist organization in NY that unites people across divisions. They start agitating the shit out of mayor De Blasio (and key corporations) on every issue the new group agrees on. Other Democrats complain that she’s always in NY doing lame grassroots pie-in-the-sky type stuff. Bee oh-oh aitch-oh-oh.\n\n· **In two years, sick to death of her, the DNC finds someone to run against her.** Doesn’t matter. Over the time she’s been in Congress, she’s been using her inside knowledge of the game to build a growing activist organization in NY. She has way more supporters than she did before and they love her because she’s all about her district and she’s never sold them out. She runs for reelection as a Democrat and, if she loses to the DNC-appointed shill, she ponies up and runs as an independent. If she still loses, she pivots and becomes a major force in NY as a leading activist and purveyor of third-party politics. If she wins, she becomes the first politician in ages to go her own way and not get booted.\n\nIt’s beautiful, right? I’m grinning just thinking about it. But wait a minute. Another quick question.\n\nHow likely do you think it is that she (or any principled but ambitious politician) would be willing to sabotage their own play for power to achieve the greater good? Awwww. Yeah. Uh-huh. Not bloody likely.\n\nAnd this, my friends (to borrow a phrase from the soon-to-be-late John McCain) is why some of us out here on the non-partisan left are so uneasy about fresh faces like Ocasio-Cortez. Because, in a system this corrupted, it takes movie-hero levels of integrity and ingenuity to do anything worthwhile — and most people are simply not up to it. Certainly not all by themselves.\n\n# It’s all about movements #\n\nDespite everything I’ve just written, I’m actually thrilled that corporate-resistant Democrats (and Republicans) are barely, just barely, starting to find their way into office. Why? Because of how they’ll likely respond to movements.\n\nIf you look at virtually any of the changes in this country that have genuinely benefitted the people, they’ve rarely come about because of benevolent, heroic politicians. It almost always goes back to movements that were not integrated in the official political system — and how they scared the shit out of the powers that be.\n\n## High-level examples: ##\n\n· A reconstituted labor movement, along with resurgent communist/socialist/anarchist groups, scared Franklin Roosevelt so much that he brokered a deal with the nation’s oligarchs to pass the New Deal.\n\n· A committed civil rights, black nationalist, student, free speech, consumer protection, antiwar and counterculture movement scared Lyndon Johnson so badly that he passed legislation on voting rights, civil rights, housing, poverty, car safety and nearly got him to end the Vietnam war. And they still drove him out of office!\n\n· Those same movements plus a growing environmental, soldier’s, gay rights and women’s movement scared Nixon and he started creating agencies left and right to protect the air, water and earth, endorse the Equal Rights Amendment, protect workplace safety, academic freedom, etc. Eventually, they pushed so hard Congress peed its pants and defunded the Vietnam war.\n\n· Anti-apartheid activists made life so miserable for Reagan that he had to pull his support for the South African regime, hastening its demise. Anti-interventionist movements scared Congress into pulling funding for military chicanery in Central and South America (though Reagan was able to get around it by using the CIA and Pentagon to do his dirty work).\n\n**And it wasn’t just about how presidents responded to these movements.** It was the fear these movements put in the hearts of corporate oligarchs, senators, house reps, university administrators and local politicians that made a huge difference in checking the oligarchy and improving peoples’ daily lives, even in the midst of ongoing egregious injustices that we’ve still yet to solve, may always be failing to solve.\n\nBut now money and militarism rule the day even more acutely and politicians are completely locked into it. The corporate oligarchs, their lobbyists and the deep state — that’s who keeps the politicians in line. That’s who they’re scared of.\n\nIn this moneygundeath context, what types of politicians do you think are most likely to get scared by movements? Bought-off political hacks who wouldn’t rescue a drowning baby if their masters clucked their tongues and shook their heads? Or rhetorically peace-loving, anti-corporate politicians like Ocasio-Cortez? People who are going to feel guilty about it as they gradually sell out. People who are going to want to maintain their street cred even as they shed their egalitarian skins.\n\n## This is the real inside/outside game. ##\n\nIf you’re a movement person (and, at this point there’s no way out. We all need to be movement people in whatever way we can), you want nominally anti-corporate guilt-ridden assimilators in office, because they are most likely to be frightened of who will expose their failure: and those people are to be found in movements.\n\nThat’s why you want more insurgent candidates in office. Not because they’ll save us. No one can save us. But because they give us one more foothold to save ourselves. Remember that as we head into fall election season. Fight for the insurgents now. But save your best energy for non-partisan movements so you can scare the living hell out of them (and their corporate-military masters) later. It’s the ultimate double consciousness. And it may prove key in taking down the oligarchy, which we must do if we hope to survive the climate crisis that’s already upon us.\n\n*“Don’t follow leaders. And watch the parking meters.”* — Bob Dylan\n\nThanks for reading.",
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      "body": "@@ -793,16 +793,17 @@\n ike the \n+%5B\n San Fran\n@@ -819,16 +819,58 @@\n e Troupe\n+%5D(http://www.sfmt.org/company/history.php)\n .%0A%0A%C2%B7 Pro\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"politics\",\"trump\",\"immigration\",\"media\",\"children\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmU5iEAm1whVHFxuDq7q6fvyCVGRc3QYA5m7KJQZhurgFQ/Screen%20Shot%202018-07-09%20at%2011.35.57%20AM.png\",\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/YozjHQw9j4o/0.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"http://www.sfmt.org/company/history.php\",\"http://nonprofitaf.com/2018/06/actions-we-can-take-to-end-the-inhumane-policy-of-separating-immigrant-kids-and-families/\",\"https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B\",\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/YozjHQw9j4o\",\"http://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/06/20/ice-shuts-down-its-portland-office-after-protest-camp-blocks-the-entrance/\",\"http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/06/linkedin-list-of-ice-employees-removed-by-medium-and-github.html\",\"https://ice.wikileaks.org/\",\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5845443/Twitter-explodes-GOP-jumps-Trump-Train-chairwoman-warns-embrace-Trump-agenda.html\",\"https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/07/06/moms-help-immigrant-mom-yeni-gonzalez-reunite-separated-children-zero-tolerance-eloy-nyc/758502002/\",\"https://gizmodo.com/a-virginia-restaurant-refused-to-serve-sarah-huckabee-s-1827077993\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "![Screen Shot 2018-07-09 at 11.35.57 AM.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmU5iEAm1whVHFxuDq7q6fvyCVGRc3QYA5m7KJQZhurgFQ/Screen%20Shot%202018-07-09%20at%2011.35.57%20AM.png)\n\nBack in the 60s, during the height of the antiwar movement, one of the dynamics that emerged was a confrontational and anti-authoritarian kind of humor. It was like a constant wave of laughing and pointing at political leaders who were running the war.\n\n# Some of what you’d see would be stuff like: #\n\n· Constant heckling of then-president Lyndon Johnson with chants of “Hey, Hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?”\n\n· Yippies publicizing their attempts to levitate the Pentagon using their minds.\n\n· People wearing silly but politically charged costumes during protests.\n\n· Comedic street theater by groups like the San Francisco Mime Troupe.\n\n· Protestors putting flowers in the butts of National Guardsmen’s guns.\n\n**It’s easy to look back at this piece of the movement and scoff, but it actually served an important set of purposes:**\n\n1. It made the bureaucrats propagating the war look stupid and, as a result, less powerful and scary.\n\n2. By fostering an environment of ridicule and impunity, it gave protestors courage — and it made political action not the somber demonstration of VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, but actually fucking fun (which brought more people out to the protests).\n\n3. To the powers that be, the behavior seemed irrational and it disrupted their sense of order. They started responding to it in irrational ways that further eroded their authority.\n\n4. It created an atmosphere where anything seemed possible, like a different reality was starting to peek out from behind a torn piece of the world’s fabric.\n\nAll of this became a significant contributing factor in getting LBJ to the negotiating table with the North Vietnamese and, had Nixon not illegally sent Kissinger to sabotage the peace talks in the run-up to the 1968 presidential election, the war would have ended right there.\n\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\n\n# Where do you find democracy? #\nOkay, so why am I opening a piece about ICE and family separation with all this ancient business from 50 years ago?\n\n**Here’s why.**\n\nPeople in the anti-Vietnam war movement had an instinctive understanding of where democracy really lives. Not just in the sanctioned activity of writing notes to your elected officials or giving money to organizations (don’t get me wrong, these are still valuable actions to varying degrees), but in direct action out on the street.\n\nAs all this horrifying shit regarding the treatment of fleeing refugees started unfolding last week (and, honestly, has been unfolding since the Clinton administration), I started to get Tweets and emails from some of my well-meaning friends and acquaintances with links to [well-meaning pieces like this one](http://nonprofitaf.com/2018/06/actions-we-can-take-to-end-the-inhumane-policy-of-separating-immigrant-kids-and-families/), asking me to do things like:\n\n· Support some legislation\n\n· Read an article\n\n· Donate to an organization\n\n· Write the White House and the Justice Dept.\n\n· Attend a rally featuring some politicians\n\n# Direct action is our best bet #\nYou get the idea. Again, not that these aren’t some worthy activities, but they do evidence a woeful misunderstanding of the current reality we’re living in. And that reality is that regular citizens no longer have any meaningful impact on public policy. The government has been nearly completely captured by corporate lobbyists and the national security state. Remember the study that came out four years ago by respected academics [Martin Gillens and Benjamin Page](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B) that’s been cited six ways to Sunday ever since? What else do you need (besides your lyin’ eyes) to understand that by-the-book political behavior has been rendered meaningless?\n\nIn light of our current reality— and the psychotically urgent need for our country to drastically change course — traditional solutions start to seem laughable, pathetically milquetoast, even dangerous in their illusions. And even though some perennially subservient members of Congress went down to the detention centers to see what was going on for themselves, do you honestly believe Trump backtracked on a piece (and just a piece) of his cruel policy towards refugees (I refuse to call them illegal anything) because Jeff Merkley went to Texas? Do you think he gives a SHIT about that?\n\n**Or is it more likely that he gives a shit about stuff like this?**\n\n· People loudly heckling Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and sending her out of a Mexican restaurant post-haste.\n\n<iframe width=\"700\" height=\"393\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/YozjHQw9j4o\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n\n· [Protestors blocking a detention center](http://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/06/20/ice-shuts-down-its-portland-office-after-protest-camp-blocks-the-entrance/) in Portland so ICE employees couldn’t leave, temporarily shutting the whole place down.\n\n· An artist [scraping and releasing info about ICE employees](http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/06/linkedin-list-of-ice-employees-removed-by-medium-and-github.html) to the public. Wikileaks taking it [one step further](https://ice.wikileaks.org/).\n\n· [Twitter fury coming from the right](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5845443/Twitter-explodes-GOP-jumps-Trump-Train-chairwoman-warns-embrace-Trump-agenda.html). After the chair of the Republican Party questioned peoples’ loyalty to Trump’s agenda.\n\n· People showing up in large groups to [support migrant children}. People helping immigrants [find their children](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/07/06/moms-help-immigrant-mom-yeni-gonzalez-reunite-separated-children-zero-tolerance-eloy-nyc/758502002/).\n\n· Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the latest in a long line of lying presidential press secretaries, getting [refused service at a Virginia restaurant](https://gizmodo.com/a-virginia-restaurant-refused-to-serve-sarah-huckabee-s-1827077993). Now many other administration officials are getting confronted the minute they step out in public.\n\nThese are the stirrings of a digital-age version of what we saw from movements in the 60s and, if the goal is to defund or abolish ICE, whose intrinsic strategy is to approach immigrants and asylum seekers as criminals, then we need much more of this from many more people.\n\n## Things like: ##\n\n· Pinpointing where Trump and his family make most of their money and starting to mess with his ability to earn income from his various businesses.\n\n· Doing the same for Jeff Sessions, Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller and his chief of staff John Kelly. Make their lives miserable whenever they’re in public.\n\n· Start identifying people who work for ICE and make them pariahs in their community, online and off. Stake them out like the Guilty Remnant in the Leftovers and let them know what a constant feeling of anxiety and fear is like until they quit. Starve ICE of an employee base.\n\n· Identify the members of Congress who deal with agency funding, ICE and the Dept. of Homeland Security. Find out who their corporate backers are and start shaming them publicly and disrupting their businesses.\n\n· Don’t attend rallies that feature politicians talking politician shit. Attend demonstrations or direct actions with real people from your community.\n\n· Start making the defunding of ICE a political litmus test for any candidate seeking your vote. If they’re not down with it, vocally vote independent.\n\nIf you take a look at the Portland ICE occupation, the Nielsen hecklers, and others taking similar direct action you very well may see joy on their faces. And empowerment. They’re breaking through apathy and fear. They’re having fun. And they’re doing the work that creates the societal tension more polite political actors need to be effective in a country run by unaccountable oligarchs and their bureaucratic enforcers.\n\nAll the pushback I’m seeing reminds me of a deeper truth:\n\n**That the place where democracy lives is in your ability to not simply say no, but to act NO, to make NO a verb that slices through the encrusted fabric of this world and tears it aside.**\n\nThanks for reading.",
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      "body": "Congratulations @guidaboni! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x80/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/posts.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@guidaboni) Award for the number of posts published\n\n<sub>_Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor._</sub>\n<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>\n\n\n\n**Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:**\n[SteemitBoard World Cup Contest - Russia vs Croatia](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/steemitboard-world-cup-contest-russia-vs-croatia)\n\n---\n**Participate in the [SteemitBoard World Cup Contest](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/steemitboard-world-cup-contest-collect-badges-and-win-free-sbd)!**\nCollect World Cup badges and win free SBD\nSupport the Gold Sponsors of the contest: [@good-karma](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=good-karma&approve=1) and [@lukestokes](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=lukestokes.mhth&approve=1)\n\n---\n\n> Do you like [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)? Then **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "@@ -4976,22 +4976,8 @@\n ions\n- (my emphasis)\n , yo\n@@ -8591,16 +8591,17 @@\n tate%E2%80%9D:%0A%0A\n+*\n *%E2%80%9CThis u\n@@ -8746,16 +8746,17 @@\n ainst.%E2%80%9D*\n+*\n %0A%0AAmen. \n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"politics\",\"blog\",\"media\",\"deepstate\",\"government\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmccpM5k9mWbgCjNRXryGitLMMU7mJsgxfgYwkqoni1iMk/1_46wUCbJ4jYEsypsHaFmqhw.jpg\"],\"links\":[\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone\",\"https://caitlinjohnstone.com/\",\"https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAJohnstone/\",\"https://steemit.com/@caitlinjohnstone\",\"https://www.patreon.com/caitlinjohnstone/posts\",\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-real-revolution-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump-96fe64a493ea\",\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/twelve-tips-for-making-sense-of-the-world-43348077cf80\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
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      "author": "cheetah",
      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://epeak.in/2018/06/12/independent-media-is-messing-with-the-deep-states-mask/",
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      "author": "guidaboni",
      "body": "It's really kind of fascinating.\n\n![1_46wUCbJ4jYEsypsHaFmqhw.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmccpM5k9mWbgCjNRXryGitLMMU7mJsgxfgYwkqoni1iMk/1_46wUCbJ4jYEsypsHaFmqhw.jpg)\n\nOver the past two years, in the wake of the fraudulent Democratic presidential primary and the subsequent loss of Hilary Clinton to a racist shady real estate developer political novice TV game show host, **it’s become remarkably common to see corporate media across the political spectrum openly discussing “the deep state”.** Normally, this is something that would have been confined to certain corners of the Internet, not-that-well-known books and documentaries, cold war obsessives, assassination researchers, etc.\n\nWhether the media outlet in question speaks of the deep state with reverence or vitriol (or straight-up denial of its existence) is almost immaterial to the larger issue: They’ve never really talked about it as an entity before. They don’t want to talk about it. They’ve been forced to talk about it! And why have they been forced to talk about it? Well, this is where things become speculative, but it’s not too difficult to imagine that information about the machinations of the deep state — revealed through naked documents releases and analysis by Edward Snowden, Wikileaks and, increasingly, a cross-section of Internet-driven independent media that lies outside of corporate control — has had an abiding impact on public conversation. And that this public conversation, made much more visible by social media and website commenting tools, has become a bit too loud to ignore.\n\n# Indy media is driving the conversation #\nFor people who aren’t super familiar with the history of the U.S. government’s transformation into the national security state after WWII, you’d think the media would, if they’re going to talk about it, at least explain what the deep state is. But they don’t. They either launch right into the diatribe of the day or go with “some crazy people think the deep state is….” or, better yet, “some crazy people think there is a deep state”, which essentially absolves them (falsely) of responsibility for fact-based research and reporting about the issue.\n\nBut not unlike the way in which independently produced newspapers, magazines and pamphlets (powered in part by a change in accessible technology, the mimeograph machine) pulled a portion of the American public away from establishment media during the 60s and early 70s, today we have trained and untrained journalists creating online newspapers, blogs, videos, films and podcasts. And an increasing number of citizens are tuning the fuck in.\n\n# Let’s talk about Caitlin #\nOne of several independent journalists who’ve been gaining traction during this strange, terrifying, exhilarating period is the Australian essayist and poet, [Caitlin Johnstone](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone). She’s been on fire for nearly two years, pulling in thousands of readers (and, of course, many detractors) with her decidedly irreverent, provocative, matter-of-fact, non-ideological (though she’s a proud lefty, humanist socialist) and devastating prose. A great case study on how an indy journalist can gain an audience these days, she publishes her work semi-simultaneously on her own [website](https://caitlinjohnstone.com/), Medium, [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAJohnstone/) and right here on [Steemit](https://steemit.com/@caitlinjohnstone) and makes a living from Paypal and [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/caitlinjohnstone/posts) donations.\n\nBack on May 30th, she published a piece about [the similarities and differences between Q’Anon followers and Russiagaters](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-real-revolution-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump-96fe64a493ea).\n\nIn that piece, she offered up the most succinct, reasonable and understandable definition of the deep state I’ve seen to date, explaining that it is simply the:\n\n***“…loose nonpartisan collaboration between corporatist plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies which remains in place while America’s official elected government officials come and go.”***\n\nShe goes on to say that:\n\n***“That politically influential plutocrats and secretive government agencies exist is not disputable, nor is it disputable that they collaborate with one another to advance their own agendas, nor is it disputable that this collaboration more or less ignores national and partisan boundary lines whenever it’s convenient to do so…***\n\n***This unelected permanent government is the real seat of power in the United States, and it is therefore the thing that any real revolution is directed against….”***\n\nThe she hits you with her killer metaphor:\n\n***“…You don’t punch at shadows if you want to win a fight. When you see the shadow of someone coming up behind you with a knife, you don’t attack the shadow, you turn and face the threat. Donald Trump is merely a shadow of the ominous dark forces he serves. If you judge him by his actions (my emphasis), you will see a man being puppeted by the same deep state that used Obama, and used Bush before him. The same actions are playing out through the bodies of different men. The stories about why they do these same actions over and over change with each president, but the actions are always the same.”***\n\nWham! This really hits home because I suspect that many Americans have had this uneasy feeling for decades that despite their trying, through all the approved channels of our system of government, nothing seems to get better for non-rich people. Politicians make promises but wars never stop. Social services never get better. Wages never go up. Corporations do whatever they want. Criminals who are wealthy and connected never go to jail. Strings must be getting pulled for everything to stay so stubbornly the same. But who’s pulling them? Where are they? Dylan understood this feeling way back in the early 60s when he wrote Masters of War:\n\n*“You put a gun in my hand, and you hide from my eyes. And you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly…”*\n\n# But back to the corporate media #\nHere’s one of the areas where the issue of corporate media and the deep state really connect. Remember those influential plutocrats she mentions in her definition of the deep state? Also, remember that a mere 6 companies control 90% of the media in the U.S.? Guess who runs these mega media corporations? You got it, plutocrats. And, by their stations in life and the scale of their operations, media plutocrats naturally come into contact with people from the upper levels of deep state-affiliated government agencies like the NSA, CIA, Pentagon and DHS. And these are the groups of people who think they simply know better about what America should do and how it should be. So they collaborate.\n\nFor the plutocrat, collaborating with these agencies is good for business. Just ask Jeff Bezos, who now gets to be two kinds of plutocrat at once: a titan of tech as head of Amazon (with the CIA as one of his lucrative clients) and a media mogul as owner of the Washington Post (and its longstanding affiliations with the CIA and deep state viewpoints). And deep state agencies win as well, because they gain access to mass-audience media outlets they can count on to foster narratives about the world that keep citizens from poking their noses too far into what plutocrats and deep state power players believe should not concern them.\n\n# This is why indy media is driving corporate media nuts #\nThe deep state does its work behind the scenes. That’s where they can be the most effective. They’re not camera hogs. They leave it to the politicians and the talking heads and the celebrities to run interference and distract the public (an important function) — while they get down to the serious business of trying to run the world.\n\nWhistleblowers and independent media are starting to disturb the peace, the quiet, the shimmering mirage the deep state relies on to do its thing. They’re pulling people away from the talking heads and the blue TV screen light. Having a writer like Caitlin Johnstone laying things out in such a simple and evocative way is extremely valuable — not for the deep state, not for corporate media which desperately needs citizens to pay attention to its babble—but for citizens. And she’s just the tip of the iceberg of what more and more people are tuning into.\n\nJust imagine what your own political outlook and activity might be if you fully absorb what Caity’s saying, which is consistent with Chris Hedges and his Sheldon Wolin-inspired analysis of “the anonymity of the corporate state”:\n\n*“This unelected permanent government is the real seat of power in the U.S., and it is therefore the thing that any real revolution is directed against.”*\n\nAmen. Say it again. Amen. Say it again. Amen. Say it again.\n\nP.S. Caitlin also [published an essay](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/twelve-tips-for-making-sense-of-the-world-43348077cf80) that I think is a great companion to what I’m on about. Check it out.",
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      "body": "![Screen Shot 2018-07-05 at 10.31.11 AM.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYzRcSV44mj2eTb2FGxcnueQiYonsL66ET798KNfaKYtD/Screen%20Shot%202018-07-05%20at%2010.31.11%20AM.png)\n\nIt’s interesting. When I make the attempt to examine how my own psyche works, one of the things I consistently find is how much works of art across various disciplines (painting, poetry, photography, fiction, comics, picture books, cinema, music) impact the way I see cultural and political issues.\n\nCase in point. The other day, I was reflecting on the films of Richard Linklater. If you’re not a crate-digging film nut, you may be familiar with some of his more popular stuff like *School of Rock, Dazed and Confused* or the much celebrated *Boyhood*. I love those films but the ones I was pondering were his philosophical “idea” movies like *Slacker, Waking Life* and the *Before Sunrise* series. One of the things you see in these films, regardless of the story, is characters exploring ideas with one another, usually in conversation.\n\nIn all of these movies, Linklater does a remarkable job of signaling that, as human beings, there is little we know for certain and it may be possible that shitloads of things, even contradictory things, are true at the same time. What’s really interesting about these films is that, instead of leaving you with a sense of futility or despair at the absence of definitive truth, what you walk away with is a kind of delight in being able to play with and connect different ideas. And the other thing that fires my imagination about the films is that, as the audience, we’re invited to identify and care about people who are both heroic seekers and very small and ordinary at the same time. As tiny mortal beings full of incredible potential in a vast, mysterious universe that will eventually swallow us, that’s all of us too.\n\nAnd why was I reflecting on all this? I had to think about that because I didn’t know. Then I realized it was because I was getting ready to watch the recently filmed debate about political correctness put on by the Munk Debates organization in Toronto. To get myself in the right headspace to remain open to the various points of view that would be articulated (and so I could credibly write about it), Linklater’s films were reminding me to hold ideas lightly (with humility) while still taking them seriously.\n\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\n\n# So, what about political correctness? #\nI was at a small left-leaning liberal arts college during the first big wave of political correctness in the early 90s. It was a strange thing to be in the middle of because the dynamic had this way of cancelling itself out by simultaneously bringing up important issues and then shutting down discussion when participants unfamiliar with the norms of radical marginalized discourse tried to engage. I would sum the whole thing up as a hopeful bummer. A missed opportunity for people to understand one another.\n\nGiven the missed opportunities, I thought this had the potential to be a really illuminating debate. On the side positing that political correctness represents progress were two Americans, professor Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown and journalist Michelle Goldberg. On the side advocating that political correctness does not rep progress was the enormously popular (and, in some quarters, enormously reviled) Canadian psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson, along with British actor and activist Stephen Fry.\n\nWhat was amazing was how quickly the whole thing fell apart and disintegrated into acrimony, personal attacks, name-calling and tangents. Again, a hopeful bummer. With so many issues influencing a new kind of political correctness that has been reaching beyond its usual residence on college campuses — the entry of the #MeToo movement into the workplace, an increased interest in socialism and anti-capitalist politics among the young, the continued struggle of black Americans to be treated justly and equally, immigrant rights in the face of imprisonment and deportation, fights over the tearing down of old statues, the newfound visibility of transgender people, struggles over what constitutes hate speech (and on and on) — you’d think the ground would have been exceptionally fertile for a fruitful debate on whether or not political correctness has been helping or hindering progress in the West. After all, many of these are life-or-death issues.\n\n# I noticed a couple of areas where the participants blew it from the outset: #\n\n1. No one provided a definition of what the fuck political correctness is, how it gets expressed or what its goal happens to be. Michelle Goldberg only went so far as to call it a slippery concept. Stephen Fry spent time lamenting that the debate was not covering the assigned topic (but did little to pull things back on track).\n\n2. No one provided a viewpoint on what the group considered to be societal progress. This is kind of astonishing given that we’ve got countries like the U.S. and the U.K. seeing their middle classes get decimated, poverty, homelessness and addiction rise, demagogues gain power, climate change, pollution and disease continue to wreak havoc, etc. That shit ain’t progress, by any stretch of the imagination. But no discussion of that.\n\n3. The debate was positioned as left versus right. This kind of setup might seem pro forma, but I actually saw it as a huge foundational problem that, more than anything, wrecked the positive potential of the debate.\n\n# It’s this left/right dichotomy that I’d like to dig into #\n\nIt’s perfectly legitimate to organize a debate around a question with the construction of opposing sides. That’s a traditional way of putting together a debate and not very controversial. What was disheartening, though, was the way in which the two sides immediately started framing things as left vs. right and ascribing ideologies to one another. Not only did this obscure their ability to honestly debate the issue of political correctness, but it also meant that the opponents couldn’t see one another clearly.\n\n## A few examples: ##\n\nIf you take even a cursory look at Michael Eric Dyson’s work and public dialogue over the past several years it becomes very difficult to see him as a man of the left. Perhaps earlier in his career when he was closer to his mentor Cornell West, but as he began to spend more and more energy defending the neoliberal policies of Obama and then, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Hilary Clinton, Dyson emerged as yet another academic courtier to power. What remains of the American left after the cultural and political fallout of the 60s and early 70s will tend to lean on a nonpartisan and systemic critique of power, as well as a focus on social movements. That’s simply not where Dyson’s head is at, despite his ability to articulate how the many manifestations of racism disfigure American life. He’s a Democrat. And today’s Democratic party fears and loathes the actual left.\n\nGoldberg is a mainstream journalist writing for mainstream publications. There’s nothing in her background or work to suggest she’s part of the left in the U.S. She’s a partisan Democrat, a Russiagater and fairly anathema to systemic critiques of power. Guys like Chris Hedges or Glenn Ford would make mincemeat out of her and Dyson.\n\nBut Jordan Peterson, who I think offered one of the better structuring ideas of the debate by highlighting the tension between group and individual identity as endemic to political correctness, couldn’t resist casting Dyson and Goldberg as part of THE LEFT. Then, instead of assailing the notion that political correctness (undefined as it remained) is helping society progress, he went after them as his conception of the THE LEFT. Swinging fists at phantoms.\n\nThis misperception led to somewhat off-topic arguments about critical theory, deconstructionism, tyranny and genocide.\n\nDyson and Goldberg did similar things to Peterson, casting him as a part of the retrograde right they felt obliged to attack. In doing so, they failed to actually see Jordan Peterson who, if you take a more dispassionate look at his work, is simply not classifiable as a right-wing ideologue (though many on the right have latched onto aspects of his analysis). As a result, they placed him in a role for which he didn’t audition, as an ignorant, privileged, racist, sexist white man. While some of this may be true about Peterson—and he has, with his characteristic passion and sincerity, said some silly things about men and women in the workplace (which, given his long time in academia, he knows little about) and many other issues as well—his core ideas are multidisciplinary and not immediately political. He’s a self-avowed non-ideological Jungian who is genuinely terrified at the prospect of societal collapse and global nuclear war. Additionally, his intense and broad study of Christianity should have greatly interested the minister Dyson, but no dice.\n\nAnd Fry? Well Fry they essentially ignored. And, **despite that, he asked one of the most pertinent questions of the debate: that being, whether or not political correctness, as a method for societal change, has been effective.**\n\nThis is not an idle question. Particularly in the U.S., we’ve got a society that’s increasingly polarized and, not unlike the 60s, in danger of tearing itself apart. Even if you hold the view that a huge portion of the society has deep-seated attitudes that make a decent, just and sustainable world impossible (which I do), the question remains: How do you change that?\n\nOne of the ideas they had in the 60s was to stand in front of Army induction centers and scream at the poor fucks we were being sent off to die in Vietnam. This certainly wasn’t the antiwar movement’s shining moment of tactical brilliance in change-making (thankfully, they had other brighter moments). All it did was piss off working class people and make them dig deeper into the views they already had. So what about the tactics of Twitter swarming, shaming, shouting, labeling and the like? The effectiveness of these methods for producing societal change is genuinely worth debating. But that debate never happened. And another great opportunity zoomed on by.\n\nDid the debaters hold their ideas lightly and with humility? Well, perhaps that was too much to ask from a debate predicated on winners and losers (Peterson and Fry won, incidentally).\n\n## But, from a tactical perspective, let me leave you with this imagined scenario: ##\n\nA far right commentator is invited to speak at a large university. Most students don’t support this person’s views, in fact are virulently opposed to them. Many campus groups meet in advance of the speech. What should we do? Mass rallies? Coordinated shout-downs? Block the airport? Groups meet for days about it. Finally, the big night arrives. Campus officials are shitting their pants at the potential conflict. As the far right person takes the stage, hundreds of students file silently into the lecture hall. Each wears a simple white tee shirt with one word scrawled on the front: LOVE. The person delivers their speech. The students in the tee shirts, who far outnumber the students without them, listen in complete and utter silence. No yelling. No heckling. No clapping. When the speech is over, each student rises and files silently out of the lecture hall. A note is handed up to the speaker. They open it. It says: “Come dance with us tonight.”\n\nPerplexed, the speaker leaves the lecture hall through a back door. When they get outside they find a massive gathering of people. There’s a drum circle, saxophones, singers. Everyone’s dancing and beckoning the speaker into the party. There are young men and women from all walks of life. The speaker joins them. They dance all night. Eventually, campus security has to shut the party down because it’s unauthorized.\n\nThe speaker remembers this night for the rest of their life and, ever since, finds it a little more difficult to hate people. Just a little.\n\nCheck out the debate and see what you think:\n\n<iframe width=\"700\" height=\"393\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/GxYimeaoea0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n\n\nAs always, thanks for reading.",
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