MEDIA ROOTS — In John Cusack’s 2008 movie, War, Inc., an outrageous pop star, singing and dancing, is situated in the middle of all this chaos and criminogenic environment, addled with occupying corporations, zealous military forces, and war-torn absurdity. Giving real-life meaning to the War, Inc. pop star, real-life pop star Katy Perry seems to be fearlessly treading the boundaries of mindless military propaganda. Or is Katy Perry innocently just havin’ a good time?
In Katy Perry’s dramatic new video for her corporate record label—the same label Radiohead is on, by the way—Capitol under EMI under Citigroup—her character has an epiphany when she sees a bumper sticker on a bulletin board:
“All women are created equal But then some become Marines”
I suppose any artist daring enough to flirt with military imagery must either be an incredibly courageous artistic genius or a misguided tool. If numbers say anything, Katy Perry’s “Part of Me” video already has over 39 million views. But, clearly, that military joke isn’t funny anymore. And Naomi Wolf, who has done her fair share of dirt on behalf of women’s rights and human rights, wasn’t laughing either. Even boycotts are being called against Katy Perry.
“When you shine in the public eye, my dear Please remember these nights…”
Messina
***
READER SUPPORTED — Who knew that an opinion about pop music video could get Fox News so worked up? Recently, I wrote that I was appalled by Katy Perry’s new video for the No 1 hit song, “Part of Me”. In it, the narrative has the singer discover a boyfriend’s infidelity; she responds to this by cutting her hair and – heading for basic training to become a Marine.
The creepy parts of the video, in my mind, are many: girl power is represented as what Perry accomplishes in the rigors of basic training. Feminine impulses toward romantic revenge are depicted as rightly channeled into getting armed and being shipped to some mystery Afghanistan-like set overseas, locked and loaded. Trade in your bad boyfriend for a hot AK-47!
The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton – in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc – is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.
There is something else about the video: it feels … like an ad; specifically, a focus-grouped, consumer-tested ad to attract more women to join the Marines. Real artistic productions, whether bad or good, are messier, quirkier, more subjective. I am familiar with the way political ads get researched and filmed (it was part of what I advised on in my time as a political consultant), and this looks like a political ad put together by DC PR insiders – like, say, the Pentagon communications team – after expensive market research has been done. In political advertising, every single image and message is focus group tested. I would bet that someone did some research on the hypothetical of a marriage or relationship breakup as a catalyst for women’s military enlistment, given an economy in which the military offers low-income women some of the few options for advancement in a context in which a breadwinner may have decamped.
So I wrote that I felt that this was a piece of “war propaganda” and that, if Perry had received money or message guidance directly from the military to make the video, she should disclose that information. It might be inferred from the fact that she filmed at the USMC’s California base, Camp Pendleton, that this would have contributed at least several tens of thousand of dollars in support – in the form of free sets, use of equipment, personnel time and, possibly, food and housing; it takes a lot of people a fair amount of time to make such a video. Now, to be fair, while journalists are expected to disclose any such conflicts, I have absolutely no evidence of any such transaction, and artists are subject to no such expectation. (Albeit, this would be a subsidy that you, the taxpayer, have underwritten.)
MEDIA ROOTS — When you’re Julian Assange, you just can’t do right. The USA’s establishment has got it in for him now. Doubtless, they’d like to grab him like Bradley Manning. Assange says he’ll be called a traitor for interviewing radicals. Journalist Glenn Greenwald says the attacks on Assange and RT reveal as much about the critics:
“The real cause of American media hostility toward RT is the same as what causes it to hate Assange: the reporting it does reflects poorly on the U.S. Government, the ultimate sin in the eyes of our ‘adversarial’ press corps.”
“In other words, like Assange, [at RT] they engage in real adversarial journalism with regard to American political power. And they are thus scorned and ridiculed by those who pretend to do that but never actually do.”
Messina
***
SALON — A new news show hosted by Julian Assange debuted yesterday on RT, the global media outlet funded by the Russian government and carried by several of America’s largest cable providers. His first show was devoted to an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (video below), who has not given a television interview since 2006. The combination of Assange and a Russian-owned TV network has triggered a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures, attacks that found their purest expression in this New York Times review yesterday of Assange’s new program by Alessandra Stanly.
Much is revealed by these media attacks on Assange and RT — not about Assange or RT but about their media critics. We yet again find, for instance, the revealing paradox that nothing prompts media scorn more than bringing about unauthorized transparency for the U.S. government. As a result, it’s worth examining a few passages from Stanley’s analysis. It begins this way:
“When Anderson Cooper began a syndicated talk show, his first guest was the grieving father of Amy Winehouse.”
“Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, unveiled a new talk show on Tuesday with his own version of a sensational get: the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
That contrast — between one of America’s Most Serious Journalists and Assange — speaks volumes already about who is interested in actual journalism and who is not. Then we have this, a trite little point, impressed by its own cleverness, found at the center of almost all of these sneering pieces on Assange’s new program:
“Mr. Assange says the theme of his half-hour show on RT is ‘the world tomorrow.’ But there is something almost atavistic about the outlet he chose. RT, first known as Russia Today, is an English-language news network created by the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin in 2005 to promote the Kremlin line abroad. (It also broadcasts in Spanish and Arabic.) It’s like the Voice of America, only with more money and a zesty anti-American slant. A few correspondents can sound at times like Boris and Natasha of ‘Rocky & Bullwinkle’ fame. Basically, it’s an improbable platform for a man who poses as a radical left-wing whistleblower and free-speech frondeur battling the superpowers that be.”
Let’s examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?
Also, while it’s certainly true that the coverage of RT is at times overly deferential to the Russian government, that media outlet never mindlessly disseminated government propaganda to help to start a falsehood-fueled devastating war, the way that Alessandra Stanley’s employer (along with most leading American media outlets) did. When it comes to destruction brought about by uncritical media fealty to government propaganda, RT — as the Russia expert Mark Adomanis documented when American media figures began attacking RT – is far behind virtually all of the corporate employers of its American media critics.
MEDIA ROOTS — “In this same
dream I had a girl waiting for me down the hall. I wanted to go out and see her
but the nurse wouldn’t let me so after trying to fight my way out and failing I
called the MP’s who promptly arrested them. After that I found out that they
were going to beat me up so I tried to make friends with the one who appeared
to be the leader. It must have worked because I don’t remember a beating.” —unknown male soldier volunteer at Edgewood
1963, dose: IM 7.0 ug/kg
When the movie Jacob’s Ladder came out in 1990, many people were probably
not aware that it was loosely based on 1968 military experiments conducted in
lab and field exercises at the Edgewood Arsenal proving ground in Maryland.
Even though Jacob’s Ladder ends with a brief description of
3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ) and its effects, Adrian Lyne, the film’s director, has denied
the powerful and dangerous hallucinogenic compound was
ever used on human test subjects. However, there is evidence to
suggest otherwise. In a recent lawsuit
against the U.S. government, a
document showing BZ’s solubility in human blood has been uncovered.
A
lawsuit was filed last week by eight U.S. military veterans against, virtually,
every branch of the Defense Department, including Veterans Affairs and even Attorney
General Eric Holder. The veterans were
guinea pigs in a massive military-funded and controlled human drug experiment program,
which shows that, among other drugs like Mescaline, LSD, and amphetamines, they
also subjected people to a drug which lasts 80 hours and creates a fever-like
dream of reality, better described as a waking, walking nightmare called BZ.
At least one other account exists apart from the one excerpted above from an
unknown soldier at Edgewood Arsenal as well as another from a military scientist, Dr. James Moore, who was
accidentally exposed trying to synthesize the compound. In Dr. Moore’s
instance, he administered himself with acridine, as an antidote for BZ’s effects. In the unknown soldier’s case he had over three days of waking nightmares,
imagining fights with hospital staff and MPs, and having hour-long
imaginary conversations with an ex-girlfriend about her surprise pregnancy
announcement. Beyond this, Media Roots
has been unable to locate additional verified first-hand accounts.
BZ was modeled after atropine, an active chemical found in Datura. Indigenous North and South Americans have used Datura and other similar plants which contain atropine (e.g., Belladona, Brugmansia) in ancient spiritual rituals up until the present day. Besides psilocybin, and n,n-DMT, atropine-containing
medicinal plants are proliferated globally around the world’s ecosystem more
than any other hallucinogenic psychoactive drug. Unlike DMT and psilocybin, Datura never caught
on recreationally because of its dangerous and unpredictable nature. In the wild, Datura plants (or pretty much any
plant containing the active ingredient) contain huge differences in potency,
making it almost impossible to give someone an accurately measured or safe dose
of the plant extract. Even administering
a pure chemical ‘psychedelic’ dosage of atropine can lead to heart failure or
stroke.
This didn’t stop the US government during the height of its drug
experimentation days from trying to harness its power and re-tool the active
chemical in Datura into a powerful weaponized gas to be used on the U.S.
military battlefields.
It’s not hard to guess what the effects were like beyond the trip reports we
have based on its similarity to a Datura. On Erowid.org’s
Datura ‘effects’ section, they list delirium capable of bringing about
auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. This waking dream-like state can lead to
unconscious violent behavior much like a drunken ‘black-out.’ It’s also reported
uncommonly large doses can cause hallucinations lasting for two to three days. This mirrors available data regarding the
duration of BZ’s effects.
If the U.S. government in 1968 was willing to go as far as attempt to
weaponize, which essentially means aerosolizing it or making it airborne, a
more concentrated form of the world’s most terrifying and unpleasant
hallucinogen, who can say whether or not they also toyed with doing the same to
another more recently discovered hallucinogen, Salvinorin A? The effects of
Salvinorin A are just as unpredictable as Datura but far shorter lasting. We know that in the late ‘90s the Russian
government attempted to use a gaseous form of Fentanyl, one of the most
powerful opiates—more powerful than oxycontin, heroin or morphine—to diffuse a
hostage crisis. The end result was the
tragic, accidental deaths of many of the hostages, by overdose.
The effects of what BZ would do to a group of armed soldiers would be
completely unpredictable and most likely dangerous—what’s depicted in the film Jacob’s
Ladder would be a worst-case scenario. No
one really knows the extent to which—or in what situations or environments—the U.S.
government actually tested hallucinogenic drugs on its soldiers, which is part of
the reason why similar lawsuits in the past have been dismissed. Only in the
last decade has the military declassified enough information that these Guinea
pig soldiers have been
allowed to tell their health-care providers what took place at Edgewood Arsenal.
It’s unfortunate that, since they volunteered, the U.S. government can pass
off responsibility. But these
experiments were done at a time when the general public had no idea what these
hallucinogens did, making informed consent unlikely.
Ethically, it would be hard to make the case that
these soldiers knew what the consequences would be to their physical and mental
healths.
Written by Robbie Martin, co-host of Media Roots Radio
***
UPDATED
NEWS — There were no warnings about side effects or potential long-term
health risks, according to Wray’s deposition. Although he wasn’t forced to take the drugs,
he was “given an option of not taking the test, but with innuendos — with the
option of bad punishment if we did not participate,” he says in the deposition
transcript…..Of all the events that took place during Wray’s time at Edgewood,
Kathryn says one disturbing memory he told her about that stuck with him for
more than three decades:
Wray and eight others were taken to a
clinic room and told to lie on cots, where they were hooked up to IVs and left
alone, Kathryn says. Within 5 minutes he was so high he could not find his
legs, he told her. “Then he said it felt like the bed was floating off of the
floor — and then the pain hit.” He described it as a “terrible, terrible headache,
so bad he could not open his eyes, so bad he was just screaming in pain,”
making him throw up several times. A man in a nearby bunk was “trying to claw
his own eyes out” — until Wray and another volunteer managed to get out of
their bunks, crawl over to the panicking man and stop him, he told her.
“And while all of this going on, there
was a nurse standing in the corner — she was taking notes. She made no attempt
to aid this gentleman,” says Kathryn. For days afterward, he was “completely
disoriented and terrified the pain would begin again,” Kathryn says.
MEDIA ROOTS —Americans currently suffer from one of history’s most successful propaganda campaigns. We are often distracted, numbed and herded into behaviors, thought patterns and policies that don’t serve our own interests, much less the interests of an endangered democracy.
Too often we are unconsciously manipulated by advertising ploys. As a result, Americans succumb to the mundane: to mindlessly consume while paying attention to reality television. Little do we realize how we are being controlled and steered away from actively participating in our democracy.
Occupy Wall Street fights for the freedom that many of us are too apathetic to protect as we occupy our couches in front of our TV sets. However, there are cracks appearing in the foundation beneath The Powers That Be, and if we are to seize this as an opportunity to better humanity, it will require adapting to an entirely new mindset. First, however, we must seek to fully understand how we got here.
Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform gives an excellent analysis to some of the complex issues plaguing American society, culture, and politics.
MR
***
The Burning Platform — The erroneous notion that Americans have a choice between two political parties that offer distinct and clear opposing policies addressing the major issues facing our country is still perpetuated by politicians and the corporate media. It is untrue, as we have seen the Obama administration employ the same repressive methods instituted by the Bush administration. Military spending rises. Wars of choice proliferate and grow. Obamacare is virtually identical to a plan created by the leading GOP presidential nominee. Further restrictions, regulations and laws are put forth to keep the masses controlled, sedated and fearful. The governing elite and their propagators of misinformation are again formulating a false storyline to convince the easily fooled ignorant public that a sovereign country 7,500 miles from our shores is actually a threat to their lives. While our government has already committed acts of war against Iran (sanctions, assassinations, cyber warfare, and using drones to spy), the public is being worked into a bloodthirsty frenzy of nationalism. Bipartisanship worked so well with Iraq. How could it possibly go wrong with Iran?
In the last six months cracks have begun appearing in the fascist façade masquerading as a democratic republic. The rise of the Occupy Movement, increasing pain and discontent among the middle class, a small but vocal irate minority utilizing the internet to organize, inform and spread knowledge, and the growing support among the liberty minded for Ron Paul’s candidacy are the opening salvos in a coming revolution. The volleys being traded between the forces of the American aristocratic elite and the leading forces of this revolution are only the opening shots on par with Bunker Hill. The oligarchs have won the initial skirmishes with the Occupy Movement through their control of superior mercenary fire power and ability to falsify the message and nature of the protestors. The corporate mass media propaganda machine convinced an apathetic, non critical thinking public the protestors were nothing but dirty, lazy, college students looking for government handouts organized and led by George Soros. Journalist Robert Fisk reveals the true nature of the protests and rage:
“And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against “governments”. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of “experts” from America’s top universities and “think tanks”, who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalization rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people’s wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.” – Robert Fisk, Bankers are the Dictators of the West
The mounting desperation of the oligarchs is palpable. They have circled the wagons as one of their leaders – Jon Corzine – was caught stealing $1.2 billion directly from the accounts of his customers after making reckless bets that went wrong and bankrupted his firm. The Department of Homeland Security coordinated brutality unleashed upon peaceful protestors in cities across America opened the eyes of more people to the approach of an increasingly oppressive state. The media lapdogs have come out in force with an organized smear campaign designed to derail the presidential campaign of Ron Paul, the only candidate talking about real change and a real downsizing of the American empire. Ron Paul’s platform of liberty, freedom, non-interventionism, sound money, and a government not controlled by bankers and corporate interests is anathema to the ruling elite of both parties. A vote for one of the hand selected candidates offered by the moneyed interests is simply a vote for the special interest status quo. As our economic system becomes more saturated with debt by the day a tipping point approaches.
MEDIA ROOTS – The upcoming G8 and NATO Summits to be held in tandem in Chicago this year between May 19 – 21, will greatly influence the direction the United States is headed in, as well as determine Americans’ democratic fortunes for generations to come. Chicago will be the first city other than Washington D.C. to host a NATO summit, and it will be the first time in 30 years that any city has hosted the events together.
As socioeconomic pressure mounts and political ineptitude grows, the fate of America hangs in the balance. The Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWSM) may be at a lull, but its state of hibernation shouldn’t be mistaken for an end to populist activism. Economic conditions have not improved and U.S. citizens are becoming increasingly fearful, anxious, and desperate. Come spring, protesters will likely start pouring into cities once again to demonstrate their dissatisfaction.
The phrase “The Global Crossroads” stands prominently atop the Chicago G8/NATO homepage. Are the global elite aware of just how significant this theme is for the “99%”? The world has yet to see the conclusion of last year’s fierce spurt of democratic action when civil unrest and political activism engulfed wide swaths of the globe, and the temporary quiet could be compared as simply a two minute break in between rounds during a champion title fight. Instead of countries in the Arab Spring having the light shed on their revolutionary processes, the United States could very well find itself on the world’s center stage this year.
Throughout the Arab Spring phenomenon, President Obama admonished countries like Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Libya for not protecting the civil rights of their respective citizenry and denounced every foreign leader for unleashing iron fisted tactics of repression on their own people that frequently resulted in bloodshed. Although the United States purports to uphold these very lofty democratic protections and ideals that legitimate the moral superiority to forcefully export democracy abroad, the world began to see through this façade while observing the heavy handed police state repression against OWS protesters.
Lt. John Pike, a.k.a. ‘The Pepper Spray Cop,’ became a notorious global icon of excessive police force against dissent in the U.S. Unfortunately, last year’s events at UC Davis, NYC, and Oakland may have only been pre-game warm ups. The G8/NATO Summit will put the Americas to the test, as the showdown sets up between the people’s desire to preserve and exercise their Constitutional rights versus the elites’ desire to squash them. Just as in 1968, the whole world will be watching.
Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, who branded the 1968 Democratic National Convention a day in infamy for the American psyche, is also responsible for bringing phrases like “storm troopers” and “Gestapo tactics” into the popular vernacular when referencing the police response to large rallies. Up until 1968, the Chicago DNC riots held the distinction of being arguably the worst acts of police brutality during the 20th century. For its time, the show of police force that Daley summoned was akin to a tyrannical regime. The book Battleground Chicago details the assembled forces of the Chicago police:
“The usual police contingent of 6,000 officers on the streets grew to 11,900 on twelve-hour shifts, up from the usual eight. The city requested the mobilization of 5,649 Illinois National Guardsmen, with an additional 5,000 on alert, bolstered by up to 1,000 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers and military intelligence officers. Waiting for signs of trouble in the suburbs would be 6,000 army troops, including members of the elite 101st Airborne Division. The men were to be equipped with bazookas and flamethrowers.”
Although some of the protesters did antagonize the police by swearing and throwing small projectiles at them, the heavy handed police response and irresponsible conduct that resulted was completely unprecedented. Police indiscriminately beat protesters with nightsticks, sprayed them with tear gas, and trampled on people’s civil rights.
On the night of August 28, 1968, the hysteria exploded into a culmination of the infamous Hilton Hotel riots. On orders from Mayor Daley, the police were told “to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.” They rushed the crowds of protesters and unleashed a brutal onslaught of epic proportions, crushing skulls and leaving pools of blood in their wake. The mayhem unfolded in front of TV cameras as the whole world watched. Curiously, in the wake of the violent standstill, public opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans supported Daley’s tactics.
USA vs. DEMOCRACY – Chicago, Illinois 1968
Despite it being a global beacon of free speech, the United States doesn’t encourage a culture of dissent and protest, and it has a long history of quelling its political activism with violence. Look no further than the union busting efforts of the Pinkertons in the 19th century. From the first day we can say the word “flag,” we’re ingrained with nationalistic propaganda that the United States is an infallible and just entity, and the only option given to us as children is to toe the establishment line.
Furthermore, differences exist between the mindsets of populations in the U.S. and Europe. Europe has a much more mature history of political unrest and revolution. They have learned the difficult lessons we have yet to learn and as a result, European governments fear their people, whereas in the United States, people fear their government. How much will the people fear Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago police force come May?
For years, observers, such as economist Richard Wolff, have pointed out the stark contrast between the political diversity in European parliaments, with socialist, democratic-socialist, Greens, and other third-parties. So, when economic meltdown occurs and austerity measures start to kick in to ‘bail out’ the banks, or siphon the people’s resources away, Europeans are more astute and well-informed to mount their resistance. Whereas, in the US, prior to Wisconsin and Occupy, the two-party system kept everybody praying for the next election or the next saviour candidate. Perhaps, this election year will be different with the Occupy Movement largely shunning the Wall Street Democrat Party’s overtures.
The anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, one of the coordinators of OWS, put out a call to action to gather 50,000 protesters to descend on Chicago the weekend of the G8/NATO summit. According to their website:
“This time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights.”
Unfortunately, Emanuel appears to be fervently following the lineage of Richard J. Daley by ‘rahmming through,’ if you will, a slew of draconian measures that will severely put the brakes on First Amendment rights. Approved by the Chicago City Council in January, the new measures have affectionately come to be known as the “Sit Down and Shut Up” ordinances, already an ominous sign that points to tensions ratcheting up. Evidently, Emanuel and other Chicago politicians have not learned history’s valuable lessons.
Some of the new “Sit Down and Shut Up” ordinances are: increased fines for civil disobedience (now $200-$1000 up from $25-$500), inclusion of passive resistance as a form of resisting arrest, the power to “deputize officers,” and requirement of $1 million in liability insurance for any large parade or protest, with each contingent needing to register one week in advance with the City. Perhaps, the City of Chicago hopes that the increased fines will offset the enormous security costs of the event.
The total costs of the summit won’t be known until weeks after its completion. However, the security cost is coming into focus. To begin with, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $54 million grant to Chicago. The grant might only cover the basics, as there is an expectation that the host committee must additionally raise “between $45 million and $60 million in outside funds for supplemental security costs, delegation social events and related matters.” The urgency for further financial backing may be fraying Emanuel’s nerves. He will need sufficient funding to not only cover potential property damage but also to feed and house out-of-town cops. Emanuel might look to corporate pockets for the extra millions needed, but is there a risk of the tab eventually being picked up by taxpayers? He would be well-served to not drop the bill on the back of the “99%.”
Perhaps, Emanuel’s moniker of “Mayor 1%,” will be the new historical mark he’ll leave in the wake of the summit. He’s well on his way, after receiving $4.9 million from the financial services industry for his mayoral campaign war chest. This financial windfall continues his history as a beneficiary of the FIRE (financial, insurance, real estate) sector. During his tenure as a member of the House of Representatives he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America, among others. There will clearly be a conflict of interest between his “99%” constituency and his “1%” vested interests come May, if it’s not already evident.
On the homepage of the G8/NATO summit, Mayor Emanuel states:
“Chicago is a magnet for those that think big. There’s no better place for leaders to find solutions to the world’s biggest challenges than right here in the President’s hometown.”
Ironically, the real leaders, the ones who aren’t ideologically bankrupt or suffer from a lack of imagination, will be out in the streets and not in convention halls, fancy hotels or behind velvet ropes. Come spring, the protesters will endeavor to water the seeds of democracy and grow organic ideals of freedom. The powers that be will try to stop this new generation of leaders with their battalions of paramilitary storm troopers, their LRADs, ADSs, and armored vehicles.
Chicago’s broad shoulders will be burdened, not only in terms of the city’s legacy, but in relation to the “global crossroads.” How can America’s ‘Windy City’ still blow hot air about being exceptional, democratic, and free if those in power are viciously cracking down on its citizens who dare to exercise their Constitutionally-protected rights to free speech?
Democracy is not a right, it’s a privilege, and in order to maintain our rights healthy and strong, to prevent them from atrophying, they must be exercised. The simultaneous G8 and NATO summits in Chicago will set the stage for what could be a very rambunctious summer and a scalding hot Republican National Convention in Tampa. Despite whatever ordinances are passed, the people on the streets will not sit down and shut up. The smallest indignity, like the one that occurred to Mohamed Bouazizi, has proven capable of catalyzing massive, widespread tilling of moribund lands, yearning for democratic change. On December 17, 2010, Tunisian authorities confiscated Bouazizi’s fruits and vegetables and reportedly slapped him, leading him to commit self-immolation outside the governor’s office. The first domino of the Arab Spring had fallen. The American domino wavers, the disgruntled and angry masses will continue to fight for America, as their rights become eradicated, as their unions become busted and their public services privatized.
But will U.S. liberals and progressives line up to rationalise another four years of Obama-style US imperialism and domestic repression? Without a radical and critical electoral analysis, protest movements render themselves supplicant, enabling an unresponsive Democrat Party to continue to handily take its constituency for granted and leave them organising another four years of protests to bemoan business as usual.
Polish activist Rosa Luxemburg once wisely said “those who do not move do not notice their chains.” So, will the chains come off or will Chicago succumb to the second pity? The stakes are high. So high that Chicago, and the fabled “city on a hill” might just come tumbling down.
MEDIA ROOTS — In John Cusack’s 2008 movie, War, Inc., an outrageous pop star, singing and dancing, is situated in the middle of all this chaos and criminogenic environment, addled with occupying corporations, zealous military forces, and war-torn absurdity. Giving real-life meaning to the War, Inc. pop star, real-life pop star Katy Perry seems to be fearlessly treading the boundaries of mindless military propaganda. Or is Katy Perry innocently just havin’ a good time?
MEDIA ROOTS — When you’re Julian Assange, you just can’t do right. The USA’s establishment has got it in for him now. Doubtless, they’d like to grab him like Bradley Manning. Assange 
MEDIA ROOTS — “In this same
dream I had a girl waiting for me down the hall. I wanted to go out and see her
but the nurse wouldn’t let me so after trying to fight my way out and failing I
called the MP’s who promptly arrested them. After that I found out that they
were going to beat me up so I tried to make friends with the one who appeared
to be the leader. It must have worked because I don’t remember a beating.” —unknown male soldier volunteer at Edgewood
1963, dose: IM 7.0 ug/kg 
MEDIA ROOTS — Americans currently suffer from one of history’s most successful propaganda campaigns. We are often distracted, numbed and herded into behaviors, thought patterns and policies that don’t serve our own interests, much less the interests of an endangered democracy.
MEDIA ROOTS – The upcoming G8 and NATO Summits to be held in tandem in Chicago this year between May 19 – 21, will greatly influence the direction the United States is headed in, as well as determine Americans’ democratic fortunes for generations to come. Chicago will be the first city other than Washington D.C. to host a NATO summit, and it will be the first time in 30 years that any city has hosted the events together. 