Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

John Kiriakou the 48 year old American former CIA analyst and case officer, the first official within the U.S. government to confirm the use of water boarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, which he described as torture has been profiled by Peter Van Buren for TomDispatch in an article titled ‘The Persecution of John Kiriakou – Torture and the Myth of Never Again’. Van Buren states “The one man in the whole archipelago of America’s secret horrors facing prosecution is former CIA agent John Kiriakou. Of the untold numbers of men and women involved in the whole nightmare show of those years, only one may go to jail. And of course, he didn’t torture anyone. The charges against Kiriakou allege that in answering questions from reporters about suspicions that the CIA tortured detainees in its custody, he violated the Espionage Act, once an obscure World War I-era law that aimed at punishing Americans who gave aid to the enemy. It was passed in 1917 and has been the subject of much judicial and Congressional doubt ever since. Kiriakou is one of six government whistleblowers who have been charged under the Act by the Obama administration. From 1917 until Obama came into office, only three people had ever charged in this way. The Obama Justice Department claims the former CIA officer “disclosed classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities.”

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Mattea Kramer the American senior research analyst at the National Priorities Project has published an article on TomDispatch titled ‘Four spending myths that could wreck our world’ urging US lawmakers need to set aside budget initiatives based on fear and fantasy, and fund more domestic programmes. Kramer states “We’re at the edge of the cliff of deficit disaster! National security spending is being, or will soon be, slashed to the bone! Obamacare will sink the ship of state! Each of these claims has grabbed national attention in a big way, sucking up years’ worth of precious TV airtime. That’s a serious bummer, since each of them is a spending myth of the first order. Myth one: Today’s deficits have taken us to a historically unprecedented, economically catastrophic place. Myth two: Military and other national security spending have already taken their lumps and future budget-cutting efforts will have to take aim at domestic programmes instead. Myth three: Government health-insurance programmes are more costly than private insurance. Myth four: The Affordable Care Act – “Obamacare” – will bankrupt the federal government while levying the biggest tax in US history.  …If lawmakers skipped the myth-making and began putting the United States’ resources into a series of domestic investments that would spur the economy now, their acts would yield dividends for years to come. That means pushing education and job training, plus a host of job-creation measures, to the top of the priority list, and setting aside initiatives based on fear and fantasy.”

Inspired by Tom Dispatch ow.ly/cEFCb image source Twitter ow.ly/cEGSW

Michael T. Klare the American Professor of Peace and World Security Studies has published an article on TomDispatch questioning if Barack Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney, highlighting four ways he is pursuing Cheney’s geopolitics of global energy. In the article Klare states “As details of his administration’s global war against terrorists, insurgents, and hostile warlords have become more widely known — a war that involves a mélange of drone attacks, covert operations, and presidentially selected assassinations — President Obama has been compared to President George W. Bush in his appetite for military action. …When it comes to international energy politics, however, it is not Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been providing the role model for the president.  …it is possible to reconstruct the geopolitical blueprint that Cheney followed …a blueprint that President Obama, eerily enough, now appears to be implementing, despite the many risks involved.1. Promote domestic oil and gas production at any cost to reduce America’s dependence on unfriendly foreign suppliers… 2. Keep control over the oil flow from the Persian Gulf … in order to retain an “economic stranglehold” over other major oil importers. 3. Dominate the sea lanes of Asia, so as to control the flow of oil and other raw materials to America’s potential economic rivals, China and Japan. 4. Promote energy “diversification” in Europe, especially through increased reliance on oil and natural gas supplies from the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea basin… This four-part geopolitical blueprint, relentlessly pursued by Cheney while vice president, is now being implemented in every respect by President Obama.”

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He's really the Einstein of nonviolence (March 24th 2012)

Jonathan Edward Schell the 68 year old US author in an interview with Andy Kroll for Tomdispatch tackled the question of what exactly is nonviolent action? Schell stated “…I was led to see that there were forms of nonviolent action that could unravel and topple the most violent forms of government ever conceived — namely, the totalitarian. This went entirely against the conventional wisdom of political science, which taught that force is the ultima ratio, the final arbiter; that if you had superior weaponry and superior military power you were the winner… So I asked myself what exactly is nonviolent action? What is popular protest? How does it work? …a peaceful protest led by Mohandas Gandhi at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa, on September 11, 1906. It’s rare that you can date a social invention to a particular day and meeting, but I think you can in this case.  Gandhi called himself an experimenter in truth. He’s really the Einstein of nonviolence.…before the Occupy movement here… We didn’t know how to drop a bucket into our own hearts and come up with the necessary will to do the things that needed to be done.”

Inspired by Andrew Kroll http://ow.ly/9AXSQ image source David Shankbone http://ow.ly/9AYzV

Fracking has greenhouse footprint larger than coal (February 11th)

Ellen Cantarow the US peace and climate change activist claims a minor revolution is occurring in the US as anti-fracking develops its own Occupy movement, “a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history”. Cantarow released an article on TomDispatch.com stating “At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal… Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale. Up comes the methane – along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States.”

Inspired Ellen Cantarow http://ow.ly/8TlDz by image source http://ow.ly/8SzzN