By David Swanson

The new book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler is a terrific survey of direct action strategies, bringing out many of the strengths and weaknesses of activist efforts to effect major change in the United States and around the world since well before the twenty-first century. It should be taught in every level of our schools.

This book makes the case that disruptive mass movements are responsible for more positive social change than is the ordinary legislative "endgame" that follows. The authors examine the problem of well-meaning activist institutions becoming too well established and shying away from the most effective tools available. Picking apart an ideological dispute between institution-building campaigns of slow progress and unpredictable, immeasurable mass protest, the Englers find value in both and advocate for a hybrid approach exemplified by Otpor, the movement that overthrew Milosevic.

Bernie Sanders' common sense proposals for dealing with universal health care, college tuition, restoring the infrastructure, confronting poverty and more have encountered predictable scorn from "fiscally responsible" corporatists.

They all scream about the "deficit spending" and tax hikes that might be required to pay for these vital programs. From predictable right-wing corporatists to Hillary Clinton ("free stuff! free stuff!" she mocks) to fictional "left-leaning economists" invented by the New York Times, numerous voices scorn Bernie’s agenda because his proposals "cost too much."

Scaring People Out of Their Wits Over Pseudo-Pandemics (Swine Flu, Avian Flu, SARS, Ebola and now Zika)

“Why Aren’t Public Health Organizations Like CIDRAP Warning Pregnant Women to Abstain from Aluminum or Mercury-containing Vaccines?”

A few days ago, I emailed out what I consider overwhelming evidence that debunks the Zika Virus/Microcephaly thesis (that is fast becoming “conventional wisdom”) that we have all been bombarded with over the past month. The email was in the form of an open letter, with documentation, primarily addressed to one of the leading thought leaders in epidemiology in America over the past generation, Dr Michael Osterholm.

For at least the last four decades now I feel like I’ve been living in Beached America: a nation that has lost its values, even as it writhes in violent agitation, inflicting its military on the vulnerable regions of the planet.

It does so in the name of those lost values . . . democracy, freedom, equality. These are just dead words at this point, public relations blather, silently followed by a sigh: yada, yada, yada. Then we send in the drones.

This is the behavior of a nation that is spiritually beached. Ideas that could open up the future have long been gagged, mocked and marginalized, locked in a closet somewhere. No way can they be allowed to have political influence. Thanks, mainstream media.

Your new movie, Where to Invade Next, is very powerful, your best so far for certain.

Get well.

Fast.

We need you.

You've packed a great many issues into this film, with visuals, with personalities, with entertainment. If people will watch this, they'll learn what many of us have struggled to tell them and more, as there was plenty that I learned as well.

I must assume that when U.S. audiences watch scenes that dramatically clash with their world yet seem humane and reasonable they'll be brought to the point of thinking.