Weird Catastrophe by Kody Cava

The movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta is gearing up for another mass action to halt construction in the Weelaunee Forest. This episode is an in-depth look at where the movement stands, what it can expect going forward, and what it can learn from movements of the past.

This episode is a deep appreciation of Garth Hudson and his work with The Band as their main keyboardist and horn player. I’m really proud of this piece. I had a lot of fun making the video for it and I think the audio/visual elements really add something nice to the written word. If you like it too, tell a friend? Enjoy!

The latest explosion of violence in Palestine and Israel is yet another in a long line of atrocities in the region. Who authored the violence? So long as the system of apartheid is imposed by Israel upon the Palestinians, there will be no peace.

This is an in-depth look at how the liberal NPR (National Public Radio) serves the dominant structures of neoliberalism and capitalism all while claiming that it is objective, balanced, and fair.

The following is a video and audio version of the article, “The Terror That Goes Around Comes Around,” published on October 12th, 2022. You can watch the video on the players below or you can listen to an audio-only version on the player above.

This is an in-depth look at why and how the U.S. has funded jihadists throughout the world and how these policies have come back to haunt the West.

You can also watch the video on Rumble here.

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This is an in-depth look at recent political self-immolations carried out by climate activists such as Wynn Bruce and David Buckel and how these immolations are related to antiwar demonstrators like Alice Herz and Norman Morrison. As the climate crisis worsens, we can expect to see more such acts of self-destruction.

I sat down with Dr. Jack Mitchell, the very first producer of NPR’s flagship news program All Things Considered. Mitchell wrote a book about the history of American Public Radio called Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio. He gives insight to how NPR has changed over the years, who listens to their programming, what NPR’s news and analysis is lacking in, and why the outlet has become a mainstream institution.

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The following is a video and audio version of the article, “As Western Media Again Becomes A Cheerleader For War, Bias in the Press Mirrors Imperial Ideology,” published on Mar. 11th, 2022. You can watch the video on the players below or you can listen to an audio-only version on the player above.

Just in case Youtube decides to censor the video, as has been happening, here’s a link to where the video can be watched on Rumble:

https://rumble.com/v11xgey-how-western-media-fuels-the-war-in-ukraine.html

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The following is a video and audio version of the article, “Nancy Pelosi Is Running For Her 19th Term In Congress - Her Challenger, Shahid Buttar, Has Something To Say About That” published on Feb. 28, 2022. Click the previous hyperlink to read the original article, or watch the video on the player below. You can also listen to an audio-only version on the player above.

To watch the full interview with Shahid Buttar, go here:

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Today, I am releasing an interview that I conducted with congressional candidate, civil rights activist, and constitutional lawyer Shahid Buttar.

Buttar is running against Nancy Pelosi this year for her seat in the House of Representatives and to represent San Francisco. In the 2020 general election, his campaign received around 81,000 votes, which is more votes than any challenger of Pelosi has ever received since she’s been in office.

Buttar is making the case that Pelosi has been a corporate Democrat, she helped facilitate Trump’s and Obama’s worst actions as presidents, and that, given the existential threat of the impending climate catastrophe and the current pandemic, Pelosi must be defeated in November.

I think the interview is interesting for anyone who wants to gain some insight into the problems with Nancy Pelosi’s policies and her leadership of the Democratic Party in the House, and why, as Shahid Buttar puts it, corporate corruption “continues to race our species off a climate cliff and into an authoritarian abyss.”

Interview Transcript:

Kody Cava: Hello everyone, today I'm going to be sharing an interview that I did with constitutional lawyer and activist, Shahid Buttar. He is running against Nancy Pelosi this year for her seat in the house of representatives and to represent San Francisco. And before we get into the interview, I just wanted to give a bit of context about Shahid Buttar himself and his previous campaign in 2020 to unseat Pelosi, as well as some background on Pelosi herself.

I told some friends of mine that I had interviewed Nancy Pelosi's challenger and I got some revealing differing responses from people. One person said “Thank God.” He was happy that someone was challenging Pelosi. Another person asked a good faith question, “What's wrong with Nancy Pelosi?

So I want to start with some context on Pelosi. In this 2022 election she will be running for her 19th term in congress and she has already served 36 years in congress and if elected again it will be 38 years. She will be turning 82 years old this March and in her time as a Democratic Party leader, she has raised close to a billion dollars for the Democratic Party. And in that same time she has also been hostile to student debt cancellation:

Nancy Pelosi: Suppose your family was not, your child just decided they want to, at this time, not want to go to college, but you're paying taxes to forgive somebody else's obligations, you may not be happy about that.

KC: She has been dismissive of Medicare For All:

NP: But I am not a supporter of Medicare For All, however, it is very popular in my district. But I didn't want to be, uh, I myself think the path to Med-, health care for all Americans is a path down the road of the Affordable Care Act.

Ady Barkan: If the sponsors of the bill want a floor vote in this congress, when will you give them the opportunity that you were requesting back then?

NP: I bring bills to the floor when they advance the cause of the legislation. So I cannot put my members on the spot where it is not helpful in their districts to do this if it's not what they actually believe. They believe the Affordable Care Act is the path to go. And I'm not going to be able to bring a bill to the floor that has 156 votes. I'm just not going to do that. And, uh, that's interesting. But it's not, um, we, I always want to show how strong we are rather than how, how, how lacking we are in having the actual vote. Yeah, just so we're having this honest conversation.

AB: Madam Speaker, the ACA was always supposed to be a starting place for universal health care, not an end point.

NP: That's right. That's right.

KC: She says there that Medicare For All is popular in her district and yet she doesn't support it. She says that she doesn't want to bring a Medicare For All bill to the floor for a vote because she doesn't want to reveal which Democrats wouldn't vote for it and then therefore make them vulnerable to their constituents. She would rather protect the interests of insurance companies then reveal a divided Democratic Party over an issue that is popular amongst American voters.

Pelosi has also been criticized for being deferential and openly supportive of huge military spending as well as the United States’ warrantless domestic spying apparatus.

Abby Martin: Abby Martin, with the Empire Files. Speaker Pelosi, you just presided over a large increase in the Pentagon budget. This Pentagon budget is already massive. The Pentagon is a larger polluter than 140 countries combined. How can we seriously talk about net zero if there is this bipartisan consensus to constantly expand this large contributor to climate change, which is exempt from these conferences? Military is exempt from climate talks.

NP: National security advisors all tell us that the climate crisis is a national security matter. It is of course a health matter for our children, the water they drink, the air they breathe, etc. It is a jobs issue, between clean, good clean technologies being the future of our workforce and the training for all of that. It is a national security issue because of the all of the conditions that climate crisis produces. I won't go into all of them but they are cause for migration, conflict over habitat and resources, and again a security challenge globally. And then the fourth, of course, the moral issue that we need to pass on this planet, future generations in a responsible way. Now, recognizing what you said, we recognize that as well. And a big user of fuel, there have been many initiatives over time, more successful, with more technology to convert from fossil fuel to other sources of fuel to run the military. Because it would make the biggest difference. Transportation, defense, these are two of the biggest, uh, that can make the biggest difference in all of that. And that is something we're very, very focused on. As I say, the Defense Department sees this systemically, that we have to stop it as a national security issue and one way to do that is to stop our dependence on fossil fuels which exacerbate the climate crisis.

KC: She says there that the military understands the threat of climate change, meaning they recognize that catastrophic climate change which they are contributing to will lead to massive disruption, forced immigration, millions of refugees, violence and competition over lack of basic resources, and the military will respond in the only way it knows how which is through force, control, surveillance, and death. And she calls that security. She then gives some vague answer about how we're going to be transitioning the military from fossil fuel to some other kind of fuel. Presumably our Bradley tanks will be solar powered and our bomber planes will have extension cords trailing behind them. She really is an incredibly compelling speaker.

In regards to surveillance specifically, in 2013 after whistleblower Edward Snowden brought forth revelations that the NSA is using a global surveillance system to intercept, collect, and store vast amounts of personal electronic communications, this led to sustained outcry from the public and then support in congress for resting away surveillance authorities from the NSA. Pelosi was opposed to these calls for reform and aggressively whipped democrats away from a bipartisan bill that would have clawed back the NSA surveillance powers.

She did this again in 2018 under the Trump administration, a president who she claims poses a unique threat to democracy. In congress, an amendment was presented by Justin Amash, a Republican, that would have required the FBI to attain a warrant before accessing information that the NSA has collected on people. And Pelosi stood on the House floor and offered a defense of the Trump endorsed bill without that reform amendment that would extend the FBI the power to spy on Americans without warrants. In the process, she denounced the minimal warrant safeguards favored by many in her own party.

NP: But th…