Duty to Warn

As the founder of an animal rights organization you would think that nothing would surprise me, but last year a disgusting cruelty was brought to my attention called “Crush Videos.” Crush videos are one of the sickest atrocities to happen to animals and its all for human pleasure. The description of these videos is sure to shock anyone with a drop of humanity or even half of a heart. A woman is heard talking like a dominatrix to a tiny kitten, puppy, hamster, rat, guinea pig, bird or even a monkey and rather than whipping, chaining, burning, and hurting a man, she burns the animals with cigarettes, near drowns them, lights them on fire, drives nails through their tiny bodies and then places them on the floor.

While the twisted minds that are watching are about to hit their sexual peak, the woman crushes the animal with her stiletto high heel and in some cases her bare feet. This fetish should not only be deeply disturbing to animal rights activist, but to you as well. Your next door neighbor could be enjoying these twisted videos or even making them and then giving you and your children a friendly, “Hello”.

This week 24 years ago, untold quantities of lethal radiation began pouring into the atmosphere from the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl Unit 4. Nearly a million people have died because of it.

And on this horrific anniversary we have now seen the stumble of a very bad climate bill. The events are directly related.

Chernobyl's death toll has been bitterly debated.

But after nearly a quarter-century of industry denial, the New York Academy of Sciences has published, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, the definitive catalog and analysis. Drawing on some 5,000 studies, three Russian scientists have placed the ultimate death toll at 985,000.

UPPORTERS REFUSE TO ACCEPT A “NO” FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ON CIVIL RIGHTS INVESTIGATION OF CASE OF DEATH ROW PRISONER, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL;
CITE “CONSPIRACY” TO DENY HIS RIGHTS; REPORT STRONG INTERNATIONAL AND US SUPPORT FOR CONTINUED CAMPAIGN IN THE FACE OF DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE STONEWALLING
For the second time in five months, supporters of Pennsylvania death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will march on the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on Monday, April 26.

There are good reasons why the tea partyers are mad; however, their solutions are equally mad.

The movement is being joined by independents, republicans, and democrats who have come to believe their government has failed them and that neither political party is doing anything to fix it. This is true; however, all of us are being manipulated by the big corporations and the wealthy elite, who use their corporate-owned, mainstream media to mislead the people into acting against their own interests.

The corporations and wealthy elite have been highly successful in using their money to seize control of the government and the media to spread their lies, most recently in the debate about health care.

Too much awareness is a tough burden to carry. I got an email the other day from a reader who opened up the deep, confusing paradox of being a citizen of the American empire.
“I read that 51 percent of our Federal taxes go to feed the war machine. The fear of the IRS overwhelms the shame I feel, for paying those dollars that go to kill people. Mixing all of the emotions: hypocrisy, shame, guilt, fear, anger, all together equal for me a sense of futility and hopelessness.

“I cannot even point the finger at the biggest killers, when I know that I am part of the problem and am too scared to do anything about it. How can I judge them, when I have blood on my hands also?”

It just so happens this email arrived the same day I sat and talked for an hour with Paul Rogat Loeb, author of the recently updated and re-released Soul of a Citizen, the definitive book on social and political activism — on stepping out of safety and beyond our fear and anger, indeed, beyond all the emotions listed above, and giving public meaning to one’s life.

James Gilligan published a book 13 years ago called "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic," in which he diagnosed the root cause of violence as deep shame and humiliation, a desperate need for respect and status (and, fundamentally love and care) so intense that only killing (oneself and/or others) could ease the pain -- or, rather, the lack of feeling. When a person becomes so ashamed of his needs (and of being ashamed), Gilligan writes, and when he sees no nonviolent solutions, and when he lacks the ability to feel love or guilt or fear, the result can be violence.

The choice to engage in violence is not a rational one, and often involves magical thinking, as Gilligan explains by analyzing the meaning of crimes in which murderers have mutilated their victims' bodies or their own.

This is a grim story about the care and feeding of a Blue Dog.
Right now, Congresswoman Jane Harman is facing a serious primary challenge from a genuine progressive, Marcy Winograd, in Southern California’s 36th congressional district.
Last Saturday afternoon (April 17), I sat on stage with both candidates and other panelists at a forum during the California Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. The room was filled with several hundred progressive delegates.

Harman has been refusing to debate her opponent, but she couldn’t stay away from the forum that afternoon. The entire convention would be voting the next day on whether to withhold endorsement of her for re-election.

The incumbent is a member of the center-right caucus of House Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition. In sharp contrast, she chose not to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus. When I asked why, Harman dodged the question.

The Climate Bill is due on Earth Day. By all accounts it will be a nuclear bomb.

It will be the ultimate challenge of the global grassroots green movement to transform it into something that can actually save the planet.

For the atomic power industry, the bill will cap a decade-long $640-million-plus virtual cleansing of its radioactive image.

It will have the Obama Administration and Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) embracing very substantial taxpayer subsidies for building new nuclear plants.

Ditto new offshore drilling and "clean coal." The markers have been laid for a greenwashed business-as-usual approach toward pretending to deal with global climate change and the life-threatening pollution in which our corporate power structure is drowning us. All without actually threatening certain corporate profits.

Jack Herrer is dead, God rest his soul, this is a terrible loss to all of us. May he rest in peace, Amen. He died Thursday, at age 70. He had been suffering from complications following a recent stroke, and had collapsed backstage from a heart attack following a speech calling for decriminalization in September.

Jack was the author of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", a scholarly work that taught many of us about the history of cannabis and the origins of the so-called "War On Drugs", and is widely considered as "MUST" reading for hemp activist's in the English-language speaking world. His spouse, Jeanie has said that funeral arrangements will be announced shortly. I praise this man and will openly mourn his passing. He taught me so very very much, and deserves a hero's burial.

Sincerely Yours In Revolutionary Struggle, (Thank you George Jackson!) and FREE THE WEED!!!
Chris "The Anarchist" Ryan, (Yippie)

One faction of the Tea Party will gather on the mall in Washington, D.C., this week on Tax Day. They will rail against big government, intrusive regulations, taxes and spending.

On Monday, people across the country observed a moment of silence for the tragic loss of 29 lives at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va. The nation's worst mining disaster in over four decades took place at a mine that had been cited for literally hundreds of violations over the last year, including many serious ones.

Will we ever learn? Mining is an inherently dangerous occupation. According to the United Mine Workers of America, in the last century more than 100,000 miners were killed due to mine disasters. More than 100,000 died from black lung disease by breathing coal dust. Even today, a coal miner dies every six hours from black lung disease, and these numbers are rising again.