"This pandemic is not just a crisis, it’s also a gift. It allows us the oxygen to notice the things we’ve been ignoring were the truly essential:– Learning and creating– Enjoying clean water, clean air, clean food, and making sure every human has that right– Forming a world that will last longer than an NFL season– Spending a lot of time with your beautiful family Point is — the stuff that truly matters is the stuff we were completely ignoring, blithely pushing it to the back of our minds as our planet is eaten for corporate profit. But now, during “life on hold” the natural world reclaims spaces. Beaches around the globe teem with millions of birds and wildlife, no longer flooded by undulating masses of fleshy apes with our frisbees, and snorkels, and beer coolers and entitlement."

“Assange and WikiLeaks revealed the American military’s war crimes, the American government’s corruption and the American corporate media’s pathetic servile flattery to the power elite... if you’re a member of our ruling class, you would view those as textbook examples of dickery.... In an evolved and fully realized society, the oligarchy would see Assange as a dangerous criminal , and the average working men and women would view him as justice personified . We would celebrate him even as the mass media told us to hope for his downfall—like a Batman or a Robin Hood... But we are not evolved and this is not Gotham City and average Americans don’t root for the truth. Many Americans cheer for Assange’s imprisonment. They believe the corporate plutocratic talking points and yearn for the days when we no longer have to hear about our country’s crimes against humanity or our bankers’ crimes against the economy.”

“You won’t see the following list of WikiLeaks’ accomplishments anywhere on your corporate airwaves—in the same way the mainstream media did not begin every report about Chelsea Manning’s trial with a rundown of the war crimes she helped reveal.... And Chelsea Manning’s most famous leak is arguably also WikiLeaks’ most famous leak, so it’ll top this list: 1) That would be the notorious Collateral Murder video, showing U.S. air crew gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians with an enthusiasm that couldn’t be matched by an eight year-old winning a five-foot-tall stuffed animal at the county fair. They murdered between 12 and 18 innocent people, two of them Reuters journalists. Zero people have been arrested for the collateral murders. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing them. 2) WikiLeaks brought us the Guantanamo Bay “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”—showing that many of the prisoners held on the U.S. military detention facility were completely innocent, and that some were hidden from Red Cross officials... Because when you’re torturing innocent people, you kinda want to do that in peace and quiet, away from prying eyes... None of the soldiers torturing innocent people at Gitmo have been arrested for it. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing it. WikiLeaks has upped the level of transparency around the world.”

“I never thought I’d be the target of an NPR attack piece. Through my twenties I even looked to NPR as an outlet full of good, progressive, thoughtful reporting – You know, the soothing voices occasionally interrupted by music no one really listens to but that sounds good between soft-spoken ivy league journalists over the age of 50. Everything about NPR subtly reinforced the idea, “Everything is fine. You’re probably a middle to upper class white person or you hope to be one day, and that’s just great. Everything is fine.”.. Then I woke up. About the time NPR was avoiding Occupy Wall Street – or when they did cover it, acting like those of us who supported it were brainless hippies without a point or at least none that would fit easily into the lives of suburbanites with two kids, one cat, and a robust retirement account. In hindsight I should’ve woken up sooner. I should’ve seen the truth about the time most NPR shows were pushing for war in Iraq, buying into the WMD lie. Or maybe I should’ve realized the truth when Kevin Klose took over as President of NPR in 1998. Klose came straight from a nice seat as director of the US Information Agency, described as “a United States agency devoted to ‘public diplomacy’ .”

“The authors of the book “The Universe Next Door” from New Scientist state, “Most hierarchical systems tend to become top-heavy, expensive and incapable of responding to change.” Our current America fits all of these characteristics and then some. The American empire is exceedingly top heavy, expensive, and incapable of responding to change. In fact, the Democratic establishment have spent billions in these primaries to make absolutely sure they do not allow the change Bernie Sanders represents to infiltrate the system. Much like a massive battleship or Chris Christie, the American empire takes an overwhelmingly long time to change course even slightly. The current inertia is just too great. When you end up with a top-heavy, expensive hierarchy that can’t adapt, it creates a lot of tension. Back to NewScientist – “The resulting tension may be released through partial collapse. …Collapse, say some, is the creative destruction that allows new structures to emerge.”... Well, I have news for you. We are definitely in the middle of a partial collapse. For Christ’s sake – Kentucky Fried Chicken is closed! KFC would stay open during a nuclear meltdown while charging extra for the green-tinted mashed potatoes. During this partial collapse, new structures could emerge if we break out of our antiquated thought prisons. Right now is not about nations or fences or political parties. It’s about you, and me, and our neighbors, and our friends, and our shared humanity.”

“The corporations that are screwing up your life, tainting your water, polluting your air, buying up your favorite coffee shop and turning it into a gas station, sucking your tax dollars up through subsidies, and all the while paying their employees a warm can of farts per hour—those corporations are the same ones creating the climate catastrophe. In fact, The Guardian reported that just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These include Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chinese and Russian coal, Chevron, BP, CNPC, ConocoPhillips, Gazprom, Lukoil, Total, Petrobas and many others. One hundred incredibly rich yet morally bankrupt companies.... The Carbon Majors Report revealed that more than half of all industrial emissions over the past 30 years were put out by just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. Twenty-five companies are killing us, smothering us, stealing our futures while choking us...The 100 corporations actively suffocating us in a blanket of global warming emissions are the same ones that run our government. They have wrapped their tentacles around our politicians, the regulatory agencies and the criminal justice system. It’s now one big, incestuous, money-obsessed pile of X-rated nastiness—and you and I are not part of it. We are the cannon fodder, the collateral damage, the chum. Until we stop these corporations, the expiration date of the human race is set in stone.”

“Our government has known for years that the war in Afghanistan is a jaw-dropping disaster... How do we know they knew? The Washington Post actually just published some impressive reporting, taking a step back from its lust for pro-war propaganda... The Post unearthed a trove of thousands of internal government documents that expose the catastrophic war. “ reveals that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable,” the paper reported. Let me translate The Washington Post’s fancy-pants language: U.S. officials didn’t “fail to tell the truth”; they f---ing lied. The phrase “failed to tell the truth” oozes around the brain’s neural pathways, strategically dodging the anger receptors.”