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
  • Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

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

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

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    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

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     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 [...]

  • UK soldier killed in London in reprisal for Afghanistan and Iraq wars

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    By Robert Stevens,wsws.org The killing of drummer Lee Rigby, 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, near London’s Woolwich army barracks on Wednesday was a horrific act. Rigby was first run down by two men in a car, who then set about him with knives and a cleaver. One of the men who carried out the [...]

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    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

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    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 [...]

Freedom Rider: Don’t Vote for Democrats

 CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE, INDECENT SLIMEBALLS, Policies & Politicians  1 Response »
Apr 202011
 

By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley  |  Created 04/19/2011
Published on Black Agenda Report (http://blackagendareport.com)


Every day it becomes clearer that Democrats and Republicans are united in resisting the will and material interests of the people. “The issue of real importance to them is maintaining the empire, and that means destroying what little is left of the rights of all citizens, and empowering corporations and wealthy individuals even more.” This is the real basis for Obama’s quest for “unity across the aisles” and “reforms” that amount to surrender. But, “Social Security and Medicare don’t need reform, they need to be defended.”

“It is time to declare that votes for Democratic presidential candidates put the American people no closer to getting justice or fairness from their political system.”

The 2012 presidential campaign is already upon us, and that makes this a propitious moment to discuss America’s slide down an ever steeper slope. Next year we will be asked to decide between two major parties which differ only stylistically. One side exults in ignorance and mean spirited bigotry. The other appeals to and attracts a seemingly more intelligent crowd who would rather die than vote for someone who proclaims themselves to be part of the mean, stupid group. Continue reading »

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Obama’s Depraved Indifference

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE, LIBERAL BETRAYALS  Comments Off
Apr 202011
 

By Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

President Obama seems positively eager to dismantle the safety nets put in place in the Thirties and strengthened by a Black-led movement in the Sixties. He calls it “Winning the Future” – a future that “holds nothing but further pain and decline for Black America.” By virtually all indices, Black fortunes have plummeted under the First Black President, whose policy is to let the (chocolate) chips fall where they may.

“Where previous Democratic administrations have treated Black communities with benign neglect, Obama’s policy is best described as depraved indifference.”

Two years ago this month, BET reporter Andre Showell [9] posed a question to Barack Obama at a press conference to mark the president’s first 100 days in office. Showell noted “double-digit unemployment” among Blacks and asked Obama, “What specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what’s the timetable for us to see tangible results?” Continue reading »

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Boo! The Scary, Scary Social Security ‘Crisis’ is Back!

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, SCUMWATCH  Comments Off
Apr 202011
 

By Dave Lindorff
Note: This is a slightly revised repost of the original piece we ran on March 25th last.

Privatization would turn social security into a gamble.

Get ready kids. It’s time for more scare stories about Social Security.

The New York Times weighed in Wednesday with a dire warning that this year, six years ahead of what had been predicted only a few years ago, the Social Security system would be paying out more in benefits than it takes in from the payroll tax. The reason for this earlier-than-anticipated event is the Great Recession, the paper explained.

Well yeah. If you were 62, or 65, and you had lost your job, with no likelihood of its coming back, wouldn’t you, once your unemployment checks ran out, opt to start your retirement earlier than planned, so you’d at least have some money coming in each month? Oh, and with 10 percent of the work force currently unemployed (actually close to 21 percent if you count the people who have given up looking for a nonexistent job, and those who have taken some low-paid part-time work out of desperation), there is a lot less money being paid into the Social Security Trust Fund. So with beneficiaries rising faster than anticipated, and the total national payroll in sharp decline, of course things have gone negative for Social Security earlier than originally anticipated. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:11 pm

S & P’s Downgrade Targets Entitlements

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Apr 202011
 
By Stephen Lendman 

A previous article discussed the dirty game, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/04/republican-plan-to-end-social-security.html

It explained bipartisan support for incrementally ending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, no matter that:

• Medicaid provides essential healthcare for low-income beneficiaries, jointly funded by the states and Washington, managed at the state level.
• In contrast, Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs, funded by worker-employer payroll tax deductions. They’re contractual federal obligations to eligible recipients who qualify.  Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:00 pm

Rachel Maddow: Keeping tabs on what the GOP filth are up to

 CLASS STRUGGLE, HUMBUG CENTRAL, SCUMWATCH  Comments Off
Apr 202011
 

What did you expect? GOP quick to betray promises of small government

MSNBC's Maddow

BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

RACHEL MADDOW’s trajectory at MSNBC has been erratic, perhaps a reflection of the internal tension between two mutually contradictory drives: the desire to tell the truth while also keeping a foot firmly planted in establishment territory, a common career dilemma for media liberals such as Maddow.

Maddow’s blind spots are many and notorious, including the fact that to this day she remains more or less a loyal Democratic party booster and Obama apologist, not to mention her undeniable infatuation with things geeky, of which the US military has an ample arsenal.  The latter has made Maddow a full-fledged member of that dubious caste of war correspondents, the “transient embedded journalist”. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 4:25 pm

Cenk Uygur’s impassioned plea on social security (VIDEO)

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, Policies & Politicians  Comments Off
Apr 202011
 

MSNBC's Uygur

BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

With the departure of Keith Olbermann, whose steady trajectory leftward probably prompted his demise, the MSNBC lineup has remained wobbly in its adherence to really progressive positions.  From time to time, however, one of the surviving inmates, perhaps in a moment of optimistic disregard for the unwritten rules of corporate speech, goes on to deliver a remarkable segment wherein truth is heard, loud and clear.  And so it was with Cenk Uygur on 19 April (2011), when he tackled the issue of social security “reform”. In a few minutes, Cenk adroitly tore to pieces the tissue of lies and false assumptions framing the debate, which most of the media is still “reporting” with a straight face.

Cenk, often labelled “the Young Turk”, is no wishy washy liberal. And while some of his positions are not what one would expect from such an intelligent guy, often packing many contradictions (after all, he does remain a liberal, albeit, of the “left-liberal” variety), this time he really did a great job: he was clear, he was didactic, and he had fire in his gut. Judge for yourselves as Cenk demonstrates that all this talk about the “urgent need” to reform social security drastically is so much baloney, highway robbery by the usual crooks and criminals, and that the baloney, as usual, is peddled by the two sides of the corporacracy’s party. —P. Greanville is TGP’s Editor in Chief. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 3:23 pm
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