MEDIA ROOTS – United Front Against Austerity (UFAA) is a grassroots coalition with the bold initiative and hopefully the tenacity to inspire a generation increasingly strapped with debt and a diminishing political voice. Lead by such notables as author Webster G. Tarpley, an initial conference is scheduled tomorrow in New York City and will feature input from other activists such as Cindy Sheehan.

The event is sure to invoke a desperately needed review from where previous recent social movements have left off. The assembly intends to build on the advances that have already occurred in Wisconsin with insightful decisions, specific demands, and mobilized action. It will be streamed live and mechanisms are in place for online participants to also share their voice.

Dr. Tarpley, a lifelong historical philosopher, drafted an opinion piece earlier this week on how the establishment political parties (Republicans and Democrats) are succeeding in demeaning the vast majority of the American electorate – the middle and lower classes.

“There is today a consensus between Wall Street and Washington that draconian austerity must be imposed in the United States. This will be the case no matter whether Obama or Romney wins the upcoming election,” predicts the author of George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, a 1992 publication about the senior past president. Dr. Tarpley continues, “the financiers of lower Manhattan are thus ignoring the evidence offered by these other countries showing that austerity policies reduce employment, lower production, cause severe mass privation, introduce powerful elements of chaos into society, and actually increase the government budget deficits in future years — meaning that austerity fails even in its own terms.”

Because it is already ensured that virtually nothing will change upon the outcome of this year’s presidential election, this coalition is wasting no time to act. After all, effective social movements are not established overnight and time may actually be even more limited than the dwindling value of today’s dollar.

For more information on the UFAA conference, be sure to check out againstausterity.org and tune in to the live feed starting Saturday, October 27 at noon Eastern.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Image provided by United Front Against Austerity.

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PRESS TV – Observers have noted that Obama and Biden, in their three debates held so far with their Republican rivals, have never mentioned the traditional Democratic Party platform planks of raising the minimum wage; preserving the funding of the food stamp program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program of the US Department Of Agriculture) which keeps some 50 million Americans alive; maintaining and extending unemployment insurance payments to the jobless; or making it easier for trade unions to organize. 

This failure by Obama and Biden to even mention these concerns of lower middle class working people and the working poor does not represent astute politics. On the one hand, it is true that the Democratic Party has almost entirely lost its earlier base of support among white male workers. But the Democratic Party still has a sizable constituency of working women, often single mothers, who have no college education. These are the so-called “waitress moms,” for whom the economic issues are very important. But the Democratic Party ignores them, since promises of this type might get in the way of delivering the austerity demanded by Wall Street. 

To read Dr. Tarpley’s article in its entirety, check out Republicans, Democrats attacking Americans in bipartisan push for austerity at PressTV.ir.

MEDIA ROOTS – Standing for “truth, justice, and the American way” just took a giant leap into the twenty-first century with Clark Kent leaving the Daily Planet newspaper. In next week’s issue, to be released by DC Comics, Clark is expected to stand up in front of staff and mourn how mainstream “journalism has given way to entertainment,” according to the comic’s writer Scott Lobdell. He continues to explain how the superhero’s alter ego will now “start speaking an unvarnished truth” possibly by creating an independent outlet similar to that of Drudge Report.

This could be a huge, albeit indirect, opportunity to support independent news outlets such as Media Roots. Or it could be just another way for the establishment to mislead the public into thinking comic books will become a new frontier for reliable information. A current example of how the corporate entertainment industry poses as a source for reliable news is The Daily Show, whose host is one of the twenty most influential media personalities now influencing this year’s presidential election.

Clark’s decision is still worthy of note in that a fictional superhero is acting on a crisis that is affecting the citizenry every day. This is not the first time in recent history that Superman has stood up for contemporary political issues. Just last year, he threatened to renounce his U.S. citizenship before the United Nations because of he was tired of his “actions being construed as instruments of U.S. policy.” While he didn’t actually renounce, the episode created heated discussion among both supporters and dissenters of America’s modern role in the global community.

The depth of Clark Kent’s future investigations will ultimately underscore this impact on modern society. Will he highlight the numerous questions that still surround 9/11 or feature Obama’s current war on investigative journalists? Possibly he will investigate the role hedge funds have played in the still-occurring financial collapse. Only time will tell, hopefully before it’s too late.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Image provided by Flickr user istolethetv.

MEDIA ROOTS – On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin highlights Matt Heineman as a hero for removing partisanship from the healthcare debate in America with his documentary Escape Fire. Abby then calls out Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers for attempting to bring back a CISPA-esque cyber-legislation.

RT’s Capital Account, Lauren Lyster, discusses the austerity protests across Europe, and Alexa O-brien, plaintiff and activist against the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, speaks out about her personal experience fighting the government against unlawful detention.

BTS wraps up the show by taking a look at who Alfred Nobel was and highlights a few of the most controversial Americans to have received the coveted Nobel Peace prize.

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Nobel Mass Murder Club, Congress to Rethink CISPA, US Healthcare Sucks, Riots in Greece, NDAA Plaintiff Speaks Out.

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Tune in from 6-6:30 or 9-9:30 EST M-F on your local cable station

OR watch live @http://www.RT.com/usa

OR SUBSCRIBE to the official YouTube channel @http://www.youtube.com/BreakingTheSet

LIKE Breaking The Set @http://fb.me/BreakingTheSet

FOLLOW Abby Martin @http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

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MEDIA ROOTS – This set is dedicated to people working to gain happiness in their lives. Hopefully those who suffer from anxiety, stress and trauma will gain peace of mind through trying times. 

Love,

ATOP, Akkad the Orphic Priest

All the featured music on the mix can be found through searching discogs.com or by emailing me: [email protected].

Track Listing:

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MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Ellsberg is now advising voters in swing states to vote for President Obama in next month’s election. The unquestionable patriot that leaked the Pentagon Papers is thus often credited with initiating the end of the war in Vietnam. Mr. Ellsberg has since helped organize several major antiwar demonstrations thus it seems peculiar for him to support an administration directly responsible for hundreds of drone assassinations, the continued operation of unlawful military detention centers, pardoning known torturers, and prosecuting whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning.

“I don’t ‘support Obama.’” Ellsberg clarified in an opinion article last Thursday. “I oppose the current Republican Party.” Echoing the recent words of Professor Noam Chomsky, he adds, “if I were a person in a swing state, I’d vote against Romney/Ryan, which means voting for Obama because there’s no other choice.” While this may have been sound advice of yesteryear, today this is simply forfeiture to the modern political duopoly funded by nearly identical corporate entities.

Ellsberg then continues to preach that “the only way for progressives and Democrats to block Romney from office, at this date, is to persuade enough people in swing states to vote for Obama.” While also ironic, this statement is alienating to all progressives who do not consider themselves Democrat. For instance, the majority of those whom continue to support Dr. Ron Paul would likely consider themselves progressives for the congressman’s continued stance against undeclared wars and the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank. And as President Obama continues to escalate Bush-era policy, it is puzzling to understand how his administration could be considered progressive in the first place.

To further discourage third-party voters, Ellsberg specifically calls out those in swing states that might be considering a vote for anyone but Obama or Romney. He considers it absurd for anyone residing in these states to think that there’s no difference between the two primary candidates and that this line of thinking is “crazily divorced from present reality.” A third-party vote in a swing state, he contends, is “complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan.” Ellsberg neglects to recognize that third-party votes in these very battleground states would actually underscore America’s current appetite for new political leadership in this country.

Sometimes things must get worse before they can get better.

The Ellsberg article closes with a reference to one of America’s greatest resisters, Henry David Thoreau. While voting is itself an action, engagement in the electoral process – from private discussion to public outreach – is ultimately of more influence. So when Mr. Ellsberg could have used his influence to publicly support the third-party candidate that he’s voting for, he instead published an item that merely continues to feed into the establishment’s two-party system for continued war, continued unlawful detentions, and continued criminal conduct.

If Governor Romney does end up switching titles, perhaps then America will witness the antiwar movement awaken from its current slumber or, at least, an Occupy Wall Street renaissance. Possibly then those whom already see through the two-party charade could start to make an impression on yesterday’s thinkers while inspiring tomorrow’s leaders. But what is certain is that only when the two-party paradigm is shattered will America witness the dawn of a new political landscape.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Image by Flickr user jonathan mcintosh.