One the latest Media Roots Radio, Abby and Robbie Martin talk about the insane, cringeworthy pageantry of the RNC and DNC and behind-the-scenes dissent, Abby’s story about being unlawfully arrested and manhandled by Philly PD, and the absurd hype that Putin is directly behind the hack on the DNC.

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This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs. Please mark that you are donating for the radio so we can split the costs.

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Follow @FluorescentGrey | @AbbyMartin

Journalist Mark Ames is the founder of The Exile, Exiled Online and regular contributor to Pando Daily. In Russia, he worked on the satirical, hard hitting paper The Exile with journalist Matt Taibbi from the late 90s until it was shut down by Moscow’s media censorship arm in 2008.

Ames’ history with The Exile begins with him fleeing the US at the start of the Clinton years, and heading to Russia at the end of 1993. Living in the post-Soviet Union era, he describes Moscow as being “the capital of a collapsed Empire”.

Little voices existed at the time that were speaking out about Russia being plundered blind with the assistance of the international community, specifically The United States. During the country’s neoliberal firesale, there were several assassinations of journalists and political figures, the average Russian male life expectancy went from 68 to 56, and suicide rates skyrocketed.

Despite all the horrors that transpired, the Yeltsin administration was portrayed as being fun, and jolly, and mainstream foreign reviews of his presidency were intensely positive because he posed no threat to US interests. Quite the contrast to how the Putin administration is viewed today through Western lens. 

Robbie Martin of Media Roots speaks to Mark about his experience in Russia, the oft-ignored legacy of the corrupt Boris Yeltsin years after the fall of the USSR, the neoliberal pillaging of the country, and complexities of the current information war.

If you want to directly download the podcast, click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display.

This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs.

Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.

Follow @FluorescentGrey | @MarkAmexExiled

In light of the Paris attacks there has been a rise in anti-Muslim animus as well as a deluge of propaganda and myth-making by the establishment media. Not only has inciteful political rhetoric been rationalized, but the hysteria has pushed many into calling for infringements on civil rights for American Muslims. 

In the United States fear mongering about terrorism has become theatrical, reaching such a degree that the shooting in San Bernardino is being framed as an organized ISIS plot instead of conventional US gun violence, despite the FBI admitting that they have found no connection to a foreign terrorist organization. 

The cartoonishly fascist nature of Donald Trump’s politics may essentially force voters into joining the Hillary Clinton camp due to a mess of demoralization, orientalist panic, and the entertainment-laced agitprop being spread by news outlets. And still there exists a troubling reality, that Donald Trump’s alarming rhetoric—including his calls for Muslims to wear forms of identification documenting their religion and banning Muslim immigrants entirely—is acceptable by large swaths of Americans. It reveals that anti-Muslim bigotry, which is being aided by a new Cold War push and the lack of a diverse press, is taking a more dramatic turn.

Join Abby and Robbie Martin on Media Roots Radio as they parse through the overwhelming disinformation regarding what many have branded “the second biggest terrorist attack since 9/11”, as well as the formulaic and hysterical response that has become emblematic following such tragedies.

If you want to directly download the podcast, click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display.

This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs.

Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.

Follow @FluorescentGrey | @AbbyMartin

Earlier this year, a US drone strike killed two innocent hostages, one American and one Italian citizen near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The incident spurred outrage across the media, resulting in Obama having to apologize for the grave error.

If only one could expect the same apology for the thousands of drone victims across the Muslim World since the advent of the War on Terror, most of whose names were never so much as uttered by those who sealed their deaths.

In today’s globalized world almost everything is interconnected. When it comes to war, conflicts are often interlocked in disturbing ways. For example, every death by way of drone wouldn’t be possible without turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide from resource wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC.

While people rightly demand that “Black Lives Matter” in America, black lives have been forgotten in the Congo, where nearly six million people have died just in the last fifteen years.

Media Roots Radio is joined by Kambale Musavuli, Spokesperson for Friends of the Congo, to talk about how Congo’s resource curse feeds the military industrial complex and why anti-drone activists need to organize with the Congolese to disrupt cobalt extraction.

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Kambale came on Breaking the Set to discuss the cobalt connection to the civil war in the Congo, and Media Roots covered this issue in depth. He also visited BTS during the last Africa Summit to break down backlash against US military policy in the continent.

How the US Military Took Over the African Continent

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Many DRC soldiers are trained and equipped in the United States. Breaking the Set expands upon a UN report bringing to light crimes against humanity committed by a US-trained Congolese battalion.

US Sponsors Rape in the Congo

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This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs.

Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.

Follow Abby @abbymartin & @kambale.

http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/