Saying that Activism is fragmented and lacks cohesion is an understatement. Despite plenty of engaged citizens, Activism is conflicted, competitive, and feels erratic. Of course, it's easier to keep blaming the 1% for everything.

In 2014, a renowned and awarded U.S. journalist said this about U.S. activism:

After worked hard in the anti-war movement in the US between 2002-2010, and having had direct involvement with several of the leading entities (names omitted), I’ve come to believe that the U.S. has become so fractured physically, psychologically, spiritually, intellectually, psychically, that there’s no way to have a coherent movement of any kind at this point."

 It takes courage to say that the problem lies in our own team, the 99%.

Indeed, it takes courage to shake up the complacency of traditional activism and tell organizations that their methods to organize are redundant, outdated, ultimately inefficient. It takes courage to say that there's no peace, because the biggest war, the most devastating conflict lies in our conflicted nature, and that Martin Luther King's call to "organize as efficiently as those who love war," remains unanswered. But if you consider the pattern of growth of Facebook pages, communities, organizations, petitions' sites and independent media, what transpires is competition. That's synonym with division, not unity. What wins is the affirmation of the self, not the bridging of differences, or the search for the glue that binds us into one collective mind.

As Howard Zinn's quote in the above image implies, repeace has been challenging the complacency of thousands of organizations, because it's time to stop blaming the 1% for lying, for being corrupted, oppressive and manipulative. That's what they do! It's time to look at our team and find a key to cohesion, able to transcend our conflicted individuality.

in Politics, Psychology | November 30th, 2016.

There's a political disconnect in the United States. We have two political parties, each now living in its own reality and working with its own set of facts. The common ground between them? Next to none.

How to explain this disconnect? Maybe the answer lies in the theory of “cognitive closure”–a theory first worked out by social psychologist Arie Kruglanski back in 1989.

“People’s politics are driven by their psychological needs,” Kruglanski explains in the short documentary above. “People who are anxious because of the uncertainty that surrounds them are going to be attracted to messages that offer certainty.”

He sips a soda, then continues, “The need for closure is the need for certainty, to have clear cut knowledge. You feel that you need to stop processing too much information, to stop listening to a variety of viewpoints, and zero in on what appears to be, to you, the truth.” “The need for closure tricks your mind to believe you have the truth, even though you haven’t examined the evidence very carefully.” And that, unfortunately, can be very dangerous.

A week after election results, we share a few thoughts by a friend who holds accountable the false progressives who have created plenty of violence before and after the elections. The truth is always hard to swallow. If this challenges some self proclaimed Liberals, then there must be a lot of truth in these words. It's okay to be angry, to understand where that anger comes from, to transform it in action by exposing the people who need to be confronted.

Quoted:

--"I'm angry at Hillary supporters. You treated us like s*it during the primaries. You were abusive, condescending, demeaning, and really ugly to Sanders supporters. You worked hard to delegitimize claims that the DNC wasn't running a fair primary process - what was glaringly obvious to many was dismissed as conspiracy theory. Yet every single thing we suspected turned out to be true - and then some. Meanwhile, in my own case, despite maintaining a civil and respectful approach during the primary, I was almost daily called really nasty names. Like "b*tch," "idiot," "AH," "c*nt," "child," "basement dweller," "loser," and more.

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have just released a massive amount of documents showing the true US foreign policy during the cold war. It it can be found information about the secret bombing of Cambodia, death squads sent to south america as well as targeted assassinations including of leaders they didn't like.

Politics in the USA are treated like Sports, and many of you fall for it, proving that, for the most part, you only trust only those, who have the inherent power of being sports/political runners, to be heard and save you. No matter what Alice Walker said, you appear to believe that your voice doesn't matter. You keep throwing all your hopes on a political "savior."

Bernie Sanders and Dr. Jill Stein are "vehicles" you throw your last hopes for change on. When Bernie Sanders ran as a Democrat, you threw all your hopes on him, because you knew that Jill Stein isn't even allowed in the debates, as usual.

Now that your hopes are gone, and you are faced with utter despair, with what you knew all along to be an oligarch owned system, you jump on the Jill Stein wagon. Chris Hedges told you so!

Engineers at Yale have just come up with a simple yet amazing way to utilize energy from low-temperature heat waste.

Power plants consume loads of energy and, in turn, produce alarming amounts of waste and pollution. While environmentalists typically focus on renewable energy methods so that no waste is produced to begin with, converting those byproducts into something useful is an equally sustainable practice.

Yale engineers recently revolutionized the sustainable biofuel industry by figuring out how to “capture” low-temperature heat waste, before it becomes “waste,” according to Yale’s website. 

Spartacus, the Roman gladiator, appears to be the first known revolutionary who revolted against his owners and the Roman Republic. His and his peers’ struggle for freedom is called “war” (Third Servile War)

The first time humans fought for an invisible ideal like freedom was because of chains. Today we have (theoretically) evolved past that point. We agree that freedom is more complex, and “freedoms” are many, depending on how we look at it.

Is it important to define our invisible ideals correctly, adapt them to changed circumstances? Why?

The West violates international law by plunging the world into chaos, Russia’s onetime envoy to Rome wrote in an article carried by an Italian magazine.

“Those who accuse Russia of annexing Crimea are destroying the rules of peaceful coexistence countries stuck to even during the Cold War era,” Felix Stanevsky wrote in his think piece, titled “Who breaks international law? Russia and wars of the West”, that appeared in the July 2, 2015 issue of Limes magazine.

West ill at Ease as Russia Still Retains Its Global Power Status

Stanevsky mentioned the wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq and the breakup of Libya as examples of Washington’s aggressive policy.

By meddling in the internal affairs of Syria, European and North American countries also resorted to the use of force instead of trying to seek diplomatic solutions to regional problems as called for by international law, thus making war part of everyday Western reality, Stanevsky noted.

The United States has used military force ten times over the past 25 years, and it does not look like this practice is going to end anytime soon, the ex-envoy wrote, adding that examples of Western noncompliance with internationally-recognized norms of peaceful coexistence are too many to ignore.

“Given all these breaches of international law that have been going on for so long, who can really believe all these Western accusations against Russia regarding Crimea and Donbass?”