Things to consider—

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way. —Stephen LendmanFor over a century now US ambassadors have acted as fifth columns in the nations they are embedded in, their role chiefly to foster corporate and plutocratic power and coordinate machinations against any truly pro-democratic government.•••••"The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life...." —Randy Shields
  • The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

    The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

    The controversies over the IRS and especially the AP phone records appear to have long-lasting effects By Glenn Greenwald,  guardian.co.uk  Barack Obama Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ’s attack on AP’s news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record [...]

  • Argentina’s General Videla and the “war on terror”

    Argentina’s General Videla and the “war on terror”

    By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla died May 17 at the age of 87 as the result of injuries suffered from a fall in a prison shower. He was remembered as the head of a savage military dictatorship that between 1976 and 1983 murdered and “disappeared” some 30,000 Argentine workers, socialist militants, [...]

  • Rise Up or Die

    Rise Up or Die

     By Chris Hedges Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.”We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion [...]

  • The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    Our Economic System is Driving Climate Change by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN The ancient Greeks attributed weather to the god Zeus; today we can safely attribute it to industrial capitalism and its voracious consumption of fossil fuels. The carnage left by a tornado in Oklahoma yesterday is just the latest in our economic system’s daunting body count. [...]

  • Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    By Barry Grey and Nick Barrickman, wsws.org Twenty-seven-year-old Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning while being interrogated by police and intelligence officials in an Orlando, Florida, apartment. Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, was reportedly being questioned by a Federal Bureau of [...]

  • Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte - Part One

    Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte – Part One

    PART ONE OF FOUR Editor’s Note: The core truth about Napoleon is still a matter of debate. Napoleon, opportunist or usurping though he may appear to a modern Marxian obswerver, not to mention Anglo-American mainstream historians tainted with Francophobic hatred and contempt for the French and their revolution, was also seen as a threat by [...]

  • PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary "Citizen Koch" To Appease Koch Brothers

    PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary “Citizen Koch” To Appease Koch Brothers

    By Brendan Fischer, PRWatch | Report “Citizen Koch,” a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in “public” television and raises [...]

  • Why Obama Will Walk Away Unscathed by the Current Political Scandals

    Why Obama Will Walk Away Unscathed by the Current Political Scandals

    by Pascal Robert, Black Agenda Report Don’t worry about Barack Obama. He’s far too useful to the rulers of America to be derailed by scandal, or even a combination of scandals. “Obama’s neoliberal government giveaways to private corporations and mercenary foreign policy already make him too valuable to the guardians of American empire to have [...]

Obama proposes trillions in spending cuts

 CLASS STRUGGLE, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, SCUMWATCH  Comments Off
Apr 142011
 

By Patrick Martin, WSWS>ORG
14 April 2011

President Barack Obama outlined plans Wednesday for slashing $4 trillion from the federal budget deficit over the next 12 years, the bulk of it by cutting domestic social spending, particularly in the area of health care.

His speech at George Washington University in the US capital demonstrates the consensus in the American ruling elite for a frontal assault on social programs upon which tens of millions of working people, children and retirees depend. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 7:02 pm

Egyptian junta steps up violence as protests and strikes continue

 CLASS STRUGGLE, The Middle East  Comments Off
Apr 142011
 

By the World Socialist Website correspondent

14 April 2011

On Tuesday, the Egyptian military once again stormed Tahrir Square and violently dispersed a peaceful sit-in by demonstrators. At 17:00, the military drove onto the square with armoured vehicles, forcing protesters from the centre, and then occupied the area with heavily armed soldiers.

Personnel carriers advance on Tahir Square

The military then proceeded to hunt down demonstrators and activists who had fled into downtown Cairo, carrying out numerous arrests. Among the special forces used in the attack was the notorious Unit 777, an “anti-terrorist” unit that regularly exercises with US units such as the Delta Force. The special forces stormed houses in downtown Cairo and combed cafes for protesters and activists.

The military had already begun to brutally clear demonstrators from Tahrir Square on Saturday morning, employing stun guns, batons and also live ammunition. Eye witnesses told the World Socialist Web Site that soldiers had fired directly at protesters and seven people had been killed. One of the victims was a young officer who had sided with protesters during mass protests on Friday. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:40 pm

Bachmann: Obama Committed to ‘Class Warfare’

 CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Apr 142011
 

The kettle calling the pot black

Rethuglican Bachmann: The devil gives them looks so they can better fool the masses.

From time to time we seek to remind our readers how scandalously (and cynically) distorted is the flow of communications that passes for news and commentary among rightwingers. Below a classic example peddled by NewsMax.com. Founded by Christopher W. Ruddy and based in West Palm Beach, Florida, NewsMax Media operates the news website Newsmax.com, publishes Newsmax Magazine, as well as a host of health and financial newsletters.  As might be expected, NewsMax is a hugely successful operation, with deep pockets backing it up from the start. Ruddy started Newsmax.com on September 16, 1998, supported by a group of political reactionaries, including the family of the late Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Casey. Later, Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy’s former employer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and a supporter of “conservative causes”, invested in the fledging company.[2] Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:23 pm

Interstates And States of Grief (w. VIDEO}

 CLASS STRUGGLE, KULTURKAMPF, VIDEOS  Comments Off
Apr 142011
 

By Phil Rockstroh

(Art by Angie Rockstroh)

I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, at present, among the scent of pine trees and the reek of southern denial. The moribund economy has thwarted the city’s manic drive to silence its resentful ghosts by means of constant motion … Below the lilting southern accents here, one detects rage … Not simply the ubiquitous hate-speak on right-wing talk radio. But an animus bred by truth-deferred … that southern pride is a lie of the mind — a blown banner … foisted skyward to distract the minds of my fellow southerners from the ground level truths of a system rigged to enrich the privileged few and keep the many working for their benefit. (How do you think they filled the ranks of the Confederate Army to kill and die for the rights of rich men to own slaves.) Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 12:42 pm

Rebuilding the Left in a Time of Crisis

 CLASS STRUGGLE  1 Response »
Apr 142011
 

The   B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 492 

April 14, 2011

Leo Panitch

Leo Panitch is a political economist and theorist based at York University, Toronto, and is co-editor of Socialist Register. His most recent book is In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives (with Greg Albo and Sam Gindin). Leo spoke to New Left Project‘s (NLP) Edward Lewis about the long crisis of the left and his ideas for a reinvigorated anti-capitalist strategy. The discussion focuses on the labour movement, class and identity politics, proposal for a new kind of political party as well as some of the immediate questions faced by the left at the present juncture. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 12:17 pm

Medicare for All Is the Solution

 GOVERNMENT CRIMES, HEADLINERS, HEALTH & MEDICINE  Comments Off
Apr 142011
 

Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution

Editor’s Note:  We’re happy to reproduce here Prof. Reich’s arguments in favor of “Medicare for All”, the “Duh!” option for any civilized nation, that is, universal, publicly administrated and guaranteed health care.  Articles like these can serve to give good ammo to those who are trying to fight the good fight, convince the confused, and counter the constant pro-business propaganda that envelops all social discourse in the United States. Liberals, however, and the public in general, should not forget that the President and his advisers hardly lack the intelligence, ideas, or facts to know damn well what the correct option is.  Their wrong-headed, often criminal, choices in public policy are not dictated by ignorance but by lack of political will, or, as is the case with Obama, was the case with George Bush 2, and was true for practically every individual who got elected to the top job in the nation for generations, by simply serving the interests of a puny constituency that owns them: the nation’s plutocracy. —P. Greanville

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog

13 April 11

I hope when he tells America how he aims to tame future budget deficits the President doesn’t accept conventional Washington wisdom that the biggest problem in the federal budget is Medicare (and its poor cousin Medicaid).

Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 11:03 am
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