2026-01-21
Some really great articles from Black Agenda Report.
2026-01-19
On this of all days, let's remember that this US Empire's greatest threat is a majority that knows the facts and reality.
So in this regard, it's films like this that are dangerous to them.
https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/19/surveilled-slandered-and-targeted-the-fbis-crusade-against-mlk/
Surveilled, Slandered, and Targeted: The FBI’s Crusade Against MLK
Posted by Joshua Scheer
Republished From the Archives
Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, official tributes reduce a radical critic of empire, capitalism, and militarism into a safely packaged icon — while quietly ignoring the brutal reality of how the U.S. government treated him in real time. Martin Luther King Jr. was not merely monitored by the FBI; he was hunted, harassed, and psychologically terrorized by a federal agency determined to silence a man whose moral authority threatened entrenched power. In this republished interview, acclaimed filmmaker Sam Pollard exposes the depth of the FBI’s crusade against King — a campaign far darker than most Americans are ever taught. Revisiting this history is not an exercise in nostalgia, but a necessary confrontation with how the state responds when demands for justice move from rhetoric to action.
Highlights of the Interview
1. The FBI’s Campaign to Destroy Martin Luther King Jr.
- Sam Pollard details the FBI’s systematic effort to first discredit King politically, then destroy him personally when the political smear failed.
- J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with King is framed as an extension of white supremacist ideology embedded in American institutions.
- William Sullivan’s role as Hoover’s enforcer shows how deeply the Bureau committed itself to neutralizing King as a threat.
2. The Cold War as a Weapon Against the Civil Rights Movement
- The FBI used alleged Communist ties — particularly King’s relationship with Stanley Levison — as a pretext for surveillance.
- Robert Scheer challenges the narrative by noting that Communists historically played a positive role in civil rights organizing, making the smear even more cynical.
- Pollard underscores the hypocrisy of a government claiming to defend freedom while targeting its most effective freedom movement.
3. The FBI’s Personal Surveillance and Blackmail Campaign
- The Bureau wiretapped King’s associates and discovered details of his personal life, which they weaponized.
- The infamous suicide‑baiting letter — sent to King along with an audio tape — is discussed as a chilling example of state‑sponsored psychological warfare.
- Pollard emphasizes the media’s restraint at the time, which prevented the FBI’s personal smears from gaining traction.
4. Presidential Complicity: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Machinery of Surveillance
- Scheer highlights the irony that JFK, who had his own well‑documented private life, approved Hoover’s surveillance of King.
- Robert Kennedy’s role as Attorney General is explored — he authorized the wiretaps despite later becoming a critic of such abuses.
- Lyndon Johnson’s break with King after the Vietnam War speech is framed as a turning point that left King exposed.
5. King’s Moral Break with the U.S. Government
- The Riverside Church speech — “My government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” — is presented as King’s most radical and dangerous act.
- Scheer recounts Ramparts’ role in publishing the images of napalmed Vietnamese children that helped push King to speak out.
- Pollard acknowledges King’s isolation after the speech: abandoned by allies, attacked by the press, and targeted by the state.
6. The Unanswered Question: How Was King Assassinated Under 24/7 Surveillance?
- Scheer presses the central mystery: How could the most surveilled man in America be killed without the FBI knowing?
- Pollard admits the official story doesn’t add up and suggests future document releases may reveal more.
- The film raises doubts about the reliability of FBI files, especially handwritten notes alleging misconduct.
7. Infiltration of the Civil Rights Movement
- Pollard confirms that FBI informants were embedded inside King’s inner circle — including one man who sat at a desk next to King and is still alive today.
- Scheer connects this to modern movements, noting that infiltration continues in Black Lives Matter and other activist spaces.
- Pollard frames this as a structural pattern of American policing, not a historical anomaly.
8. The Larger Theme: America’s Enduring Racial Hypocrisy
- Pollard argues Hoover embodied white America — not an aberration but a reflection of national attitudes.
- Scheer situates racism as a 400‑year project used to divide working‑class people and maintain elite power.
- The interview ties past to present, showing how surveillance, repression, and racial control remain central to U.S. governance.
9. The Film’s Achievement
- Pollard’s documentary dismantles the FBI myth by juxtaposing Hollywood’s heroic FBI imagery with the Bureau’s real behavior.
- Scheer praises the film’s courage for refusing to sanitize King or the government — instead presenting a complex, uncomfortable truth.
- The documentary is positioned as essential viewing for understanding both the past and the modern surveillance state.
As what's going on in Iran - the US is at it again.
2026-01-17
Nice comeback win by the Habs.
Blowing a lead, twice!
And yet, coming back in the clutch in the 3rd period, then winning it in overtime.
Nice.
Asset Liability Debt Derivative Investment Network - aka Aladdin.
Wow, it's videos like this that make me realize that despite my years on this planet, I still have much to learn.
Hmm I wonder...
2026-01-14
When it comes to living in the West, we as people are certainly #1 at being the most propagandized.
And as Caitlin explains, the best and most effective propaganda works when the victims are completely unaware.
A reminder once again of who Martin Luther King jr really was.
A critic of the US Empire.
And a victim of it, because he believed we as a species could to better.
Knowledge and consciousness are terrains of struggle. To depoliticize empire is to normalize it. Dr. King concluded his Vietnam speech by identifying with the victims of empire: “I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam… the barefoot peasants of our world” (King, 1967). This identification was not symbolic but political. It grounded King’s ethics in solidarity with the colonized, the exploited, and the excluded.
Contemporary radicals face a similar task. People(s)-Centered Human Rights offers a framework that reclaims human rights from state-centric, liberal, and imperial interpretations and recenters them on collective dignity, sovereignty, material survival, and self-determination. It allows movements to defend life without legitimizing empire, to oppose repression without endorsing intervention, and to build unity across the Global South and within oppressed communities in the North.
Such a framework restores the connection King insisted upon between morality and power, and between justice and structure. In a world where empire increasingly disguises itself as humanitarianism and war as protection, People(s)-Centered Human Rights provides a language for resistance that is ethical, political, and internationalist.
2026-01-13
Quote of the day - 01-13-2026.
"This represents what we at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research have identified as “hyper-imperialism”, a dangerous and decadent stage of imperialism. Facing the erosion of its economic and political dominance and the rise of alternative centers of power (mainly in Asia) US imperialism increasingly relies on its uncontested military strength. "
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2026/01/13/the-kidnapping-of-venezuelas-sovereignty/
The kidnapping of Venezuela’s sovereignty
The US has essentially declared that sovereignty itself for any nation that refuses subordination to US imperialism, holds no weight.
Let that sink in.
2026-01-11
LIke the Izzy Stradlin song goes, "You Ain't The First".
https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-kidnapping-foreign-leaders-history/290630/
From Noriega to Maduro: The Long US History of Kidnapping Foreign Leaders
The real questions for us are -
- How long will it be, before they come for you?
- When will we as a species make it stop?
- Are we already too late?
What do I mean by that last one?
Deadly heatwaves will intensify for 1,000 years after net zero
Deadly hotter and longer heatwaves, which worsen in severity the longer it takes to reach net zero carbon emissions, will become the norm. New climate research, published last month in Environmental Research: Climate, challenges the general belief that after net zero conditionswill begin to improve for future generations.
The researchers used climate modelling and supercomputers to understand how heatwaves will respond over the next 1,000 years, after the world reaches net zero carbon emissions. They found:
“Heatwaves are systematically hotter, longer and more frequent the longer net zero is delayed and reach their highest values when net zero is delayed until 2060. Moreover, most regional trends show no decline over the entire 1000 years of each simulation, indicating that heatwaves do not start to revert to preindustrial conditions. Some regions even display significantly increasing millennial-scale trends when net zero occurs by 2050 or later. Furthermore, the longer net zero is delayed, the more occurrences of historically rare and extreme heatwave events.”
2026-01-10
ICE=IOF
Different continent, same violence.
America, America, this is you.
Renee Good and Ahmad Rajabi died because paramilitary authoritarian forces decided they did not deserve to live, and because the entire legal and political structure exists specifically to ensure those agents never face meaningful consequences for murder.
The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice only when we bend it ourselves. Thus, we must resist. Resistance means refusing to accept any of this as normal or inevitable or just the way things work. It means protesting to demand prosecution of the agent who killed Renee Good under Minnesota state law. It means organizing to defund and ultimately abolish ICE entirely, because an agency with a $170 billion budget that terrorizes communities cannot be reformed into something humane.
And it means understanding that Palestinian liberation is, in fact, tied to all of us. And, as Palestinians have taught the world, we must take freedom into our own hands. From Minneapolis to Palestine, occupation must be dismantled completely and entirely, or it will keep killing and keep expanding until none of us are safe from it.
We support you Delcy, and understand your reluctance.
Frankly, I'd be reluctant too to take on the role, after one's President was quite literally kidnapped by a foreign country.
2026-01-07
Another way to describe this endgame play by the US Empire - the age of impunity.
This impunity combines the worst traits of its 20th-century progenitors: racism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism, Zionism, aggression, and genocide with the terrible 21st-century technologies of surveillance, silencing, and murder.
Yes, they understand.
The African reactions converge around several key demands:
- The US invasion of Venezuela is widely seen as a gross violation of international law and sovereignty.
- The kidnapping of President Maduro is described as state terrorism and an unprecedented escalation.
- Many African actors link the attack to resource imperialism, particularly Venezuela’s oil wealth.
- There is deep concern that global institutions, especially the UN, risk irrelevance if such actions go unchallenged.
- The assault is viewed as part of a broader pattern of imperial violence, from Palestine to Africa and Latin America.
For much of Africa, this solidarity is crucial because Venezuela’s fate is not a distant Latin American issue, but a warning of how imperial power continues to operate against any people who attempt an independent path in defense of their resources and sovereignty.
One thing to point about the kidnapping of Maduro by the US Empire.
It was very expensive, and they killed a lot of people, and their 'legal case' is nonsense.
But ... it isn't random. It's something the US Empire has been pursuing for a long time.
And, behind it all, are very large corporations anxious to benefit.
For example -> https://blackagendareport.com/corporations-invested-lawsuits-venezuela-invasion
Originally published in The Lever.
Just weeks before the American military operation in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. energy giant Halliburton filed an unusual lawsuit in international court claiming the Venezuelan government owed them damages for U.S. sanctions against the country.
2026-01-04
As if 2026 won't get rougher ...
... so begins an uncertain (and unpleasant) time at work.
Bad enough the politics.And naturally I'm too far down the foodchain to be in any decision-making capacity about what's being delivered, and specifically when.
The worst part is being bossed around by others, especially those who aren't actually the work. Of course they say they represent other teams, but I already know that. It's the way such small-minded people love maximizing their authority and stepping on people like me.
But as I said previously - my goal is to stay focused on my work, and not take things to personally. This means keeping my emotions in check and not losing my shit; regardless of whether one of these people is making/intending to make it personal.
2026-01-03
The endgame for the US Empire begins - the attack on Venezuela.
Lesson for the all other humans - this is what being ruled by psychopaths and criminals are like.
Imagine this happening to you - if you can, then realize that this is how it's been for as long as it has existed.
If we are to survive, we have to first understand the US for the threat to the globe that it represents. Only then can we then dismantle its systems and replace them with ones that can save ourselves from extinction.