Dirty Wars Nominated for Best Documentary Oscar

War is a dirty thing. It always has been and it will continue to be. The fact alone that all wars are fought because of greed or hate is inherently a terrible thing. So, to talk about covert warfare as if it were a shocking and wrong is almost silly, yet here we are.

Amy Goodman on Independent News

I recently attended the Los Angeles Green Festival, an event showcasing eco-friendly concepts from sustainable food to hemp clothing to electric cars.

As a blogger/journalist, the highlight of the event for me was a talk by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! about her new book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, a collection of  weekly column pieces co-authored with Denis Moynihan. As you may know from my Ladybud article on Pacifica Radio, I believe independent reporting is a must, and once again Goodman backed up my belief with eloquence.

Goodman began her lecture with a bang, explaining her honest belief that people who care about social issues like climate change, wealth disparity, and a broken prison system “are not a fringed minority, not even a silent majority. But a silenced majority.” According to Goodman, this silencing is coming from the corporate media, and control over media must taken back by the public.

Million Mask March

On November 5th, the hacktivist group Anonymous called for an international day of action to protest, well whatever you want. Thousands, if not a million people around the world marched, protested and spread their messages of equality, freedom, and honesty. Here in Los Angeles, we marched for a variety of reasons, while the most vocal of the group being to end the Federal Reserve.

REVIEW: Unmanned: America's Drone Wars

Drone Home - Illustration by John Gomes

How many stories have you heard about drone warfare? And I don't mean stories on the news or government counts of successful strikes, but stories from victims?

Unmanned: America's Drone Wars takes a hard look at drone warfare through the eyes of its victims, a compelling one hour film which gives faces to the families affected by US drones. Director Robert Greenwald shows interviews from family members and predominate figures within Pakistan, who explain what drone strikes have done to their communities.

The film begins with a US veteran describing how modern drone technology can read the licence plate on a car. He explains how when he was recruited to the army, to help pay off his college debt, the recruiter told him he would be just like Q in a James Bond film. He was told, "we kill people and break things." Some of these operators don't even need to leave US soil when controlling drones because the army has a large facility in Nevada where soldiers can kill people across the globe.

Edward Snowden: Why You Should Know His Name

Sunday, June 9th the Guardian posted yet another article on the ongoing exposure of the overwhelming National Security Administration’s (NSA) PRISM program. This time it was not just a piece about the NSA, but about the whistleblower behind the leak, Edward Snowden.

[Originally published in Ladybud Magazine here: Edward Snowden: Why You Should Know His Name]

Snowden is a 29-year-old infrastructure analyst who, until recently, worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a contracting company providing the NSA with intelligence. He was exposed to a multitude of information that allowed him to piece together what the NSA was doing in regards to the surveillance of the American people, claiming he could wiretap even the President with access to a personal email address, and with his accumulating knowledge began to feel uncomfortable with what he concluded to be the NSA’s abuse of power.