Day: November 1, 2017

Another Million Video Views

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Another Sanders team video, another million viewers. They’re now 4 for 4 in the videos in which I’m included. All at over a million views, and the total pushing six million. This one was inspired by my piece on the Mars family. I’m loving this: You know what's really scary? Millionaires and billionaires using their … Read more

1st Annual Conference on Gender-based Violence at UA

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“From Betsy DeVos’s rescinding of Obama-era campus sexual assault guidelines to increasing public outcry against sexual harassment and assault, there couldn’t be a more poignant moment to discuss the most complex issues surrounding gender-based violence. At the First Annual Conference on Gender-Based Violence, we will:

-​Learn practical tools for building and participating in survivor-driven programming, activism, and advocacy
-Engage in conversation on eradicating cycles of violence and misogynistic culture
-Gain insight into how to effectively support those most vulnerable to gender-based violence

The conference will be held on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 and SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, at the University of Arizona Student Union. UA faculty, staff, and students, Tucson community leaders and activists, and health and legal advocates will come together to address complex issues surrounding the epidemic of gender-based violence and marginalized populations.

Workshops, keynotes, performances, and panel discussions will focus on how to build survivor-driven, intersectional activism and programs aimed at providing the best possible care to survivors while radically uprooting the social and cultural attitudes that recreate cycles of violence.

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The conservative media entertainment complex spoils for a constitutional crisis

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I have previously explained how the conservative media entertainment complex and the Trump administration are amplifying “active measures” (propaganda) practiced by the Russians. The conservative media entertainment complex is an ancillary to Russian ‘active measures’ propaganda.

There has been a coordinated effort between our Twitter-troll-in-chief and Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and GOPropaganda network FAUX News (aka Trump TV) in recent weeks to fabricate a fantastical alternate universe reality in which “President Hillary Clinton” colluded with the Russians and she and James Comey and Robert Mueller all must be prosecuted — for something. This is best exemplified by Trump’s Minister of GOPropganda at Trump TV, Sean Hannity, and Trump’s close friend “judge”Jeanine Pirro. See, The Fox News-Murdoch effect: Mueller must resign! Or be fired!, and The GOP strategy on the Russia scandal: ‘No puppet. You’re the puppet.’

While most observers argue this is an attempt to distract, divert and to mislead the public from the Russia investigation (it is), Greg Sargent explains that it is much more nefarious than this. Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork for a Saturday Night Massacre:

Let’s be clear on what’s happening in our politics right now. President Trump and his media allies are currently creating a vast, multi-tentacled, largely-fictional alternate media reality that casts large swaths of our government as irredeemably corrupt — with the explicitly declared purpose of laying the rationale for Trump to pardon his close associates or shut down the Russia probe, should he deem either necessary.

We often hear that Trump and his allies are trying to “distract” from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s intensifying investigation. That’s true, but this characterization inadequately casts this in terms ordinarily applied to conventional politics. Instead, Trump’s trafficking in this stuff should be seen as another sign of his fundamental unfitness to serve as president. Similar efforts by his media allies [e.g., Stepehen Bannon at Breitbart] should be labeled as a deliberate effort to goad Trump into sliding into full-blown authoritarianism, and to provide the air cover for him if he does do so.

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