Comedian Joe Rogan’s unfiltered podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) features a variety of awesome guests whose topics range from ancient civilizations to the police state.

I always love joining Joe while in LA, and recently got to discuss with him everything from Islam to the need for a new economic model.

Many fucks are said, so if you’re offended by swearing please skip the broadcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience with Abby Martin

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To download this podcast go here. Check out the last podcast I did with Joe focusing on Israel’s war on Gaza and the Drug War.

Some of my favorite topics to hear Joe and his guests wax philosophy about are space and consciousness, so I invited him on Breaking the Set to talk string theory, invisible aliens and collective DMT dreams.

 Joe Rogan on Breaking the Set

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While in Cali I also stopped by Bonoboville to speak to Dr. Susan Block, a sex therapist specializing in the philosophy of ethical hedonism. On her weekly radio show, we discussed everything from US hegemony to ecosexuality.

For a sweet write-up about the interview and an audio file to download it, go here.

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Abby Martin | @AbbyMartin

One human family living on one organism. Yet man is embroiled in a war against himself.

Unfortunately this blatant truth hasn’t yet been realized by the vast majority of humans living on earth.

The wars against ISIS, Russia, and now laughably Venezuela are dominating headlines in the latest front of the information war, but a far more deadly battle is being carried out against the organism we all share.

We face the most severe environmental crises in history with deforestation at a rate of 36 football fields per minute, floating trash islands the size of Texas in the Pacific, and half the world’s species being wiped out in the last 40 years as a result of habitat loss and pollution. In just the last 30 years, climate change has already caused a tripling of natural disasters, with scientists predicting an irreparable tipping point around year 2020, the same year Obama pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 17%.

But how can climate change solutions be taken seriously without a massive overhaul of the agricultural industry and complete termination of the military industrial complex? The Pentagon is the largest polluting institution in the world and is exempt from all international climate treaties.

The climate change disinformation campaign has gotten to the point of such absurdity, that Florida’s State Environmental Protection Department has banned the use of the terms climate change and sustainability in all emails and reports. It’s an issue that should supersede politics. But a corporate controlled press run by oil and gas won’t dare undermine its sponsors.

Of course the establishment showcases an alternate reality. Media hysteria abounds about missing planes and Iran’s non existent nukes, yet there’s an eerie calm about the issues that most impact us, and what we can do to fix them. The population remains dumbed down, complacent and willfully blind.

Maybe the CEOs, lobbyists and politicians are shortsighted because they’re building their own elysium and don’t give a fuck if we all die, but the majority of them are inevitably just changing deck chairs on the Titanic – and they know it.

Deep down everyone knows the truth. Every last vestige of this precious planet is being pillaged without consequence. Endless consumption and unfettered capitalism cannot and will not last. And every empire falls. That’s just a matter of time.

The system blatantly protects the bottom line and resists all substantial change with military force and police aggression to keep the old guard. The elites at the helm will never capitulate their security for the good of humanity.

Once a system doesn’t work for 99.9% of the people, it might be time for a new one.

Abby Martin at Zeitgeist Day 2015 in Berlin

I’m more than happy to be a part of an annual event that showcases a different future than the dark path humanity is bulldozing down. So thank fuck for Peter Joseph’s not only incredible three part Zeitgeist documentary series, but also for his follow up work with Culture in Decline – all of which dismantle the toxic conventional wisdom that strangles our mental development.

Seeing the power of video to shatter religious, political and economic dogma inspired the hell out of me. But I was also moved by the trajectory of the series, which first deconstructed systems of control and then presented an entirely new realm of possibilities.

I used to be an anti-war organizer. But once I saw the media selling the Iraq war I realized something was very systemically wrong, and it crossed all party lines. Media became my number one battle, because if you don’t have a platform to tell your story then no one will hear it.

I started Media Roots as a hub for censored information and it grew into a multimedia citizen journalism project, which eventually brought me to RT and Breaking the Set. It was a dream job to attack power on an international platform, but I decided I want to be meeting the people behind the stories and telling them independent from any state or corporate entity.

I don’t just want to react to the mainstream media’s circle jerk of fuckery.

Bush lackey Karl Rove once brazenly told New York Times reporter Ron Suskind in 2004 “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality… judiciously as you will… we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you – all of you – will be left to just study what we do.”

Unfortunately, Rove’s right. Reality is dictated by an out-of-touch war mongering elite that doesn’t apply to the reality we live every day. But it’s only able to sustain on fear and war. And there’s nothing that terrifies the establishment more than a populace not living in fear.

People are rightly disillusioned after being called crazy for wanting more than two parties or questioning ludicrous paradoxical foreign policy. They also want sustainable energy.

Clearly I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone here claims to. But a resource based economy is one of the most thought provoking and groundbreaking solutions I’ve seen to the crisis of civilization we face.

We don’t have to wait for anyone but ourselves to start implementing the ideals either, because we are all agents of change and vessels of truth that can push our communities towards seismic sustainable shifts in the way we live right now.

Other countries already have a different approach. I recently had the chance to visit Cuba, and not only does the country have an organics renaissance, but there aren’t commercials telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are, or corporate chains eviscerating local culture.

But most spectacularly is Cuba’s medical internationalism. Cuba sent the world’s largest contingent of medical professionals to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to fight the ebola epidemic, and has healthcare workers operating in 66 countries. The country also has a medical school that trains international students to become doctors for free.

Of course, this wasn’t out of pure altruism, the long imposed embargo on Cuba forced it to become self sufficient and fiercely community oriented. The country is far from perfect, but the obvious takeaway remains the tremendous amount of good that can be done with such little resources. If that’s what an economically crippled nation can achieve, what can the richest one in the world do?

If people came first.

Every government that has tried to incorporate different economic models gets systematically undermined with regime change attempts. USAID is still spending $20 million dollars a year in Cuba to undermine the government despite the normalization process. 56 years after the Cold War, and the US government still can’t let a small socialist nation live in peace.

In socialist Venezuela, Obama just announced the country poses and quote “extraordinary threat” to national security and that he has quote “deep concerns” about its human rights abuses. Meanwhile America’s biggest ally Saudi Arabia summarily carries out beheadings and public floggings to bloggers who criticize the king.

Clearly these issues are deep rooted and deeply interconnected. This is about hegemony, and the clutches of capitalism won’t give up easily. The system can’t afford alternatives, and we’ve seen how far it will go, with no remorse. It’s a machine that runs on death and destruction, having institutionalized structural violence that kills millions of our brothers and sisters every day.

No one has to go without water in the streets of Detroit, or freeze to death in bombed out Gaza, because we have the resources to provide everyone. Would you let your mother or brother starve on the streets? No, because we belong to the commons and the commons belongs to us.

The revolution of values is the extension of empathy, understanding, compassion and humility – globally. Which means shattering the illusion of me as separate from you or us as separate from the dirt underneath our concrete jungle. It comes with expanding consciousness and media literacy. And most importantly, it’s about building alternatives ourselves. That’s why I believe that this movement is unstoppable and the ideas it’s spawned will create our reality of a sustainable future.

Because if we don’t, we’ll just become casualties in the war being waged against us and every living thing on this planet.

On this pale blue dot.

As Carl Sagan said, “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

Written by Abby Martin | @AbbyMartin

Photo by NASA

Journalist, filmmaker, and activist, Danny Schechter, “The News Dissector,” died on March 19, 2015 at 72 years old.

Schechter was a true pioneer of progressive independent journalism. He had a long career with ABC and CNN before unplugging from the mainstream to produce judicious films and write hard hitting books. He was a free press champion and fierce anti-apartheid activist who will be missed dearly by the millions of lives he touched.

Unplug the Signal Campaign’s Roeland Eider chose to release this never-before-published 2011 interview with Schechter for Media Roots.

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MR: There is a sentiment among Americans, and older generations in particular, that the only news that can be trusted comes from major media sources on television and in print. As an independent journalist, how do you fight this battle for legitimacy?

Danny Schechter: I began fighting it by infiltrating it, becoming a producer at CNN, ABC and CNBC. I wanted to learn the techniques and understand the culture inside big media. I tried to bring the strengths of the system into my work as an impendent producer. There is a reason that folks tend to watch TV. It has to do with its mastery of production techniques, story telling and ways to appeal to the audience coupled with extensive marketing and promotion. As other entertainment choices become more expensive–live sports, theater, movies, TV appears a more affordable option. I know you are mostly interested in news and the fact is that there are now so many more choices, on line and off. I have been involved on line since l986, producing the Media channel since l999 as part of an effort of offering other narratives and critical ideas. I am also an author and independent documentary producer so use those formats too often within the context of journalism.

MR: What are your thoughts on today’s television journalists and news anchors? Can you comment on the trend of these individuals filling news segments with their personal opinions rather than objectively reporting significant news?

Danny Schechter: The notion of total objectivity has been discredited but remains the fiction that an industry uses to suggest its neutrality even when it makes clear choices in what stories to report and which to ignore, omission being as important as commission here. News anchors become the personalities they use to sell their wares–it is more about selling than telling—but other networks which are popular like Al Jazeera are not as wedded to the celebrity anchor, preferring to let what is news, drive the discourse.

MR: Many people, if they have not heard about it on the nightly news, don’t care to learn other information. Do you find it hard to communicate information that is never addressed on television?

Danny Schechter: First, nightly newscast has a smaller and smaller audience and skews older–just look at all the ads for certain pharmaceutical products. But that does not mean people are necessarily being exposed to more in-depth treatments. With Tweets and face book, we are as much as a headline hit parade country as we always was.

Yes, It is more difficult to be ahead of the news pack because what you do often lack for reinforcement and validation from other sources and outlets. We live in a media environment. Can it be done–yes–but with great difficulty.

MR: Should we be concerned that on many occasions’ public relations firms are providing the nightly news instead of journalists?

Danny Schechter: 70% of media school grads go into PR because those firms have jobs and pay better than news outlets. Of course, we should be concerned when sources are not transparent and spin substitute for journalism. Its not just the pr firms—because governments and corporations –and advocacy groups–play a big role.

MR: What do you feel has been the most significant change within the field of journalism over the past 10 years?

Danny Schechter: Rise of digital journalism, citizen journalism, and even public information advocates like WikiLeaks.

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Interview conducted by Roeland Eider 

US government officials are calling to overhaul the state funded media apparatus and focus on counter-propaganda against hostile nations, according to a report seen by Reuters.

The study was written by two former Western state funded news employees, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) governor and Radio France Europe/Radio Liberty vice president, who declared the US is losing the information war to its adversaries. Despite its annual $730 million budget, the BBG is asking Congress for an additional $15 million to combat Russian media specifically.

It’s not just BBG media outlets pumping up anti-Russian rhetoric – the entire Western establishment has resurrected the Cold War hysteria. Corporate media has become a disaster porn factory, terrorizing people with constant fearmongering about ISIS and Russia.

RT was created to put out the Russian perspective to the world, one of many viewpoints necessary to form opinions about global affairs. People watch foreign backed stations because they know the value in another side to the story, and they’re smart enough to navigate around obvious state biases.

What US officials don’t seem to grasp is that Russian media’s success is only due to the abysmal failure of American media to provide citizens with real news.

I joined RT because it gave me the space to critique empire, corporatism and militarism while providing a crucial platform to whistleblowers and activists. People want unfettered, raw truth about issues that most impact their lives, and Breaking the Set helped fill that void.

I never produced a pro-Russian story and stayed true to my moral compass by speaking out against Putin’s policies several times. Yet people still diminish my three years of paradigm challenging content on the network as mere “Russian propaganda”.

When in Berlin, I joined Jasmin Kosubek on RT Deutsch’s Der Fehlende Part to talk about RT vs. MSM media wars.

Abby Martin on RT vs MSM Propaganda Wars

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Watch the interview in German here. Check out all full episodes and segment breakdowns of Breaking the Set here.

The media propaganda double standard is being reinforced everywhere. At Colombia Journalism School, there’s a student program called “RT Watch” that’s “keeping an eye” on the Russian backed station. And while the project clearly exists to mock and undermine the network, I was happy that one of the students interviewed me and published it in full on their website.

It’s easy to ride the wave of ridicule, but until the establishment turns a critical eye at its own media cesspool, it will never be able to comprehend why Russia is winning the information war.

Abby Martin | @AbbyMartin

Photo by Wikimedia Commons