Women Protest Equality Issues Sacramento

                                                             Photos by Alex Arnold
Today women gathered to protest the over 900 anti women bills that have been passed this year alone. Bills dismissing equal pay laws and defunding domestic violence programs. Laws passed this year make it illegal in some states for privately purchased insurance policies to include contraceptive coverage in their plans. Others make it harder for women to have access to abortions. A wide range of issues brought these women together  early on this beautiful California day, check out the shots below.  Photos by Alex Arnold

Ron Paul Visits Chico

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul finished his visit to California today with a town hall meeting in Berkeley where he spoke and addressed the issues facing the nation. Dr. Paul's visit to California at Chico state university late tuesday evening drew a crowd of more than 6000 individuals. Everyone says that Ron Paul events draw the most passionate of followers and there was no shortage of that at this event. Ron Paul delivered a fiery talk touching on issues such as the erosion of civil liberties in the last 10 years, the immorality of undeclared wars as well as the weakening of the dollar by the practices of the federal reserve.

 Photographs by Alex Arnold

Occupy Marches on Big Banks

Remember remember the fifth of November... I know I will. November 5th 2011, also known as bank transfer day. A day calling on all people fed up with bogus charges and sick of their banks betting on wall street with important things like their mortgages could in an act of protest remove their money and instead open accounts with local not for profit credit unions. Much of the anger with occupy wall street is directed at the big for profit banks with their predatory loan practices, derivative trading, and too big to fail status.  The peoples underground joined occupy sacramento on their march to the big banks in our city. We marched on the banisters occupying outside the big banks wells fargo and bank of america. Wells fargo locked their doors and changed the hours on their sign as a large rally gathered strength outside their doors screaming slogans like “They got bailed out! We got sold out!” Here are some photos from the days events.

Leaked City Group Memo

It is common knowledge that in 2005 citygroup accidently leaked an internal memo to it's uber rich investors. The memo defines America as a plutonomy, which means rule by the rich. The memo doesn’t just mention it in passing but rather the memo clearly lays out and proves its claim that the individual American consumer doesn’t have any power to change the markets since the wealth is controlled by so few. Read the memo for yourself at the link below. Make copys, e-mail it, stand outside citygroup and hand it to their customers. Occupy!

Occupy Wallstreet

The rain wasn't enough to stop Beckley's Occupy wall street movement. They have been there outside a bank of America for days and it doesn't look like there going anytime soon :) Remember the civil rights movement started with just a few kids sitting in a diner. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X didn't come around till later.

The Electoral College

“The Electoral College”. What is it? Now, in order for me to explain this, you will have to try to remember all the way back to the last election. Remember what you saw on the news channels? Remember the slick red and blue graphic of America replacing the weather map and some media personality pointing to it telling you who was winning the presidential election based on how many blue vs. red states there were? Now remember- there were two numbers being counted almost every time you saw numbers being counted. One said “popular vote”, a term representing the vote of every single voter in the whole of America. This vote is the one that gives us warm and patriot feelings while we were casting it on election day at our local polling places. You know- the one that earns you a cool little sticker after. The other number we saw said “electoral college vote”, Which represents a complex number of electoral votes that each state has. This is the number that really matters.  This is the number that decides elections.  The electoral college is the political mechanism by which we elect our president in this country. Each state elects so called “electors” to cast votes for a candidate running for president. Each state is given a certain number of these electoral votes based on the population of that state. In total there are only 538 electoral votes cast. Electoral votes are the votes the presidential candidates are really campaigning for. The way each state elects their electors is different from state to state. However, most are elected by the different political parties at their party conventions. The tricky part about these electors is that there is not really anything stopping them from going rogue and not voting the way the people in there district voted. If this happens we will have what I like to call a “George Bush”.  A situation where the guy who got less votes wins office. In fact situations like back in 2000 when America voted for Al Gore but we got George Bush do happen. Not often, but they do happen. Like in 1824, 1876 and 1888, and now again in 2000! On these rare occasions when electors do vote against the vote of the people there never seems to be any accountability for the electors, they just seem to slip behind the scenes.



It’s an American tradition older than the SUV or Nato. The founding fathers created and institutionalized this system, and we have been using it ever since. However, the founding fathers did have three other ideas on the table while they figured out how to elect the president, and one was to have a popular vote.  Why did they settle on this extreme example of representative democracy known as the electoral college instead of a direct popular vote? At the time, it was seen as unmanageable to conduct such a vast project as well many of the founding fathers subscribed to political philosophies that political parties are "evil" so they wanted a way to check their power. We also have to remember that most people were disenfranchised. Out of those who could vote, most were not educated, so it was feared that a dictator could rise to power. These are all fine reasons to choose a system like the electoral college over the popular vote in their day, but we have to remember that we live in a brave new world, people! It’s the future our founding fathers couldn’t imagine. Complete with great and easy ways to count votes! In fact we can all watch the number of our votes go up on our very own magic picture boxes (T.V.s) It’s the information age and people are equipped with computers and search engines! We have mandatory public education from K-12 and a government class that is required by every citizen before they pass high school! If that doesn’t produce informed voters, I don’t know what else we can really do. This domestic policy also harms our foreign policy. When we contest to controversial elections in the world, foreign leaders like Russia’s Putin and Iran’s Ahmadinejad accuse America of being the ones with fraudulent elections. And who can really blame them?



We are taught to love this country from an early age, through daily chants to a flag, bright colors and fictitious stories about somebody jerking off under an apple tree, or not jerking off under an apple tree, I can’t remember which. I didn’t learn about the electoral college until I took a political science class in college. Most people have no clue what it is and are pissed off when they learn about it. It’s sad how many battles we are losing in this war of ideologies. Aren’t we all sick of giving our enemies such blatant reasons to hate us, and continue terrorizing us? Why can’t we just be the country that we teach our children that we are? Why can’t we the people elect our president? Why was it that in WWII we could resist torturing prisoners of war for information, but now we can’t? The electoral college is outdated and dangerous. Instead of Gore ushering us all into a new world of Greenpeace we, the freest country on Earth, got Bush- a president that we did not elect (the first time). Now we are broke and fighting three wars. I think we're all sick of seeing future presidents of the United States in some hick town pandering to who the fuck knows because the electoral college gives that ignorant son of a bitch more voting power than the rest of us.

Wiki Leaks Jullian Assange

Let’s start this whole thing out with a little current event action. Recently it has been alleged
that Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old former intelligence analyst, stole a butt load (250,000)
of dispatches from U.S. embassies around the world. Some dating all the way back to the
1960s. For all those who don't know the term cable or dispatch is just a fancy way of saying
secret messages. Supposedly he did it by stealing the files on a flash drive from his post
near Baghdad while pretending to listen to ladynGa Ga. (Classic Move) The diplomatic dispatches
were given to Wiki leaks who gave them to newspapers including the New York Times and for
the Deutsch folks, Der Spiegel. Lots of info on foreign leaders and American wars were
leaked, however no top secret information was included.

So, yesterday I watched Wolf Blitzer in his little situation room. He had the fire in his eyes while
he chewed out some nice type politician, asking who was to blame and how by the beard of Zeus
this could happen. Ol Wolfie was out for blood. I found it interesting that Mr. Blitzer was asking
a politician what was in the cables and who was to blame for letting them out instead of doing
a celebratory dance seeing as he is a member of that good ‘ol fashion muck ruckin
American mainstream media. He should be having a field day relaying a new transparent look
into world politics! Finally! A check on all the bullshit that has been shoveled into our ear canals
by greasy politicians all these years! But Wolf seemed a little too stressed about the stability of our
far reaching military industrial complex and what this means for our two and a half maybe
three meaningless wars! He also expressed concerns about whether our puppet regimes in the
global south (Iraq and Afghanistan) could weather the storm. I also find it interesting- who is on
the other side of this debate? Daniel Ellsberg a former military analysis for the Rand Corporation.
The same Ellsberg who released the “Pentagon Papers”. The ones which helped end Vietnam and
who today is seen as a hero. Ellsberg admires Manning and views him as a patriot and a hero. Don’t
let the mainstream media trick you into getting mad at the fact that you know a whole hell of a
lot more about your government’s doings- especially in such a controversial time.

I also find it overly convenient that Interpol issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange,
the leader of Wiki leaks. The charges are for sex and molestation in Sweden and were filed by two
once consensual sexual partners. The case was dismissed but has recently been called back by a
higher prosecutor. See people? See how vast and how far the reach of your Empire has expanded? We should all be getting wet for a chance to take a peek into the black pit of secrets that is the American role in global society, both militarily and politically.