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
Apr 252011
 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE
Morals & Society
EDITORIAL, April 2011

Is there no the ethical limit to what humans can do to helpless animals?

Evaristti and unwitting "partner" in art.

BY MERRITT CLIFTON, Animal People Magazine

CHILEAN SHOCK ARTIST Marco Evaristti won global notoriety in February 2000 with an exhibit at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, Denmark,  consisting of 10 blenders containing live goldfish. Visitors were invited to puree a goldfish.

Friends of Animals/Denmark,  not affiliated with the U.S. organization Friends of Animals,  won an injunction ordering that the electricity supply to the blenders should be cut off.  When two goldfish were pureed anyhow,  FoA/Denmark pursued criminal charges against Evaristti and museum director Peter Meyer.  The case against Meyer went to court in May 2003.  Meyer was acquitted,  but even in Denmark,  whose national identity is intertwined with commercial fishing,  whale massacres in the Faroe Islands,  and the Copenhagen fur trade,  public opinion clearly rejected the notion of pulverizing live fish as “art.”

Evaristti,  however,  took the show on the road.  On April 20,  2006 the blenders and goldfish arrived in Dornbirn,  Austria. That night four animal advocates broke into the art gallery,  smashed the blenders,  and took the fish. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 11:38 pm
Apr 252011
 

By Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet [VIDEO]
Posted on April 25, 2011

Americans United for Change wants Republicans who pushed for Paul Ryan\’s plan to end Medicare to “pay a price.” So they\’re targeting Ryan with a massive ad buy, aiming to unsettle him at home as well as running at other congressmen\’s districts: Steve King of Iowa, Chip Cravaack (R-MN) and Sean Duffy (R-WI). These television ads are being used in combination with an even more wide-spread robo-call asking listeners to call their congressperson and ask him/her to “keep their hands of medicare, medicaid, and social security.”h/t TPM Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:04 pm
Apr 252011
 

April 22, 2011 

By Wendell Potter

Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare would accelerate a trend started several years ago by corporate CEOs and their political allies to shift ever-increasing amounts of risk from Big Business and the government to workers and retirees.

If enacted, the Ryan plan would represent a windfall of unprecedented proportions for insurance corporations and other businesses. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 4:51 pm
Apr 252011
 

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet

Posted on April 18, 2011, Printed on April 25, 2011

Can anyone remember life before Ask Your Doctor ads on TV?

All you knew about prescription drugs were creepy ads in a JAMA at the doctor’s office with a lot of fine print. Even if you knew the name of a drug, you’d never ask your doctor for it because that would be self-diagnosing and cheeky for a patient. Flash forward to the late 1990s when direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, drug Web sites and online drug sales came on board, and self-diagnosing and demanding pills has become medicine-as-usual for the doctor/patient encounter. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 4:34 pm
Apr 252011
 

John Chambers, CISCO's big honcho.

AT NO TIME has the American corporate executive wielded more power and privilege than in the last 40 years. And with that power, now dominated by the finance boys, the corporate class and its plutocratic masters have completely corrupted and torn to pieces the last vestiges of democratic representation in the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 4:24 pm
Apr 252011
 

By Antonia Darder, Truthout | Sunday 24 April 2011

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. – Frederick Douglass, 1857

As the uprisings are spreading around the world and in the United States, there are many who feel fear, reticence and intense skittishness about what is transpiring. Yet, this anxiety, rather than surprising, is well cultivated by the contemporary hegemonic forces that govern our lives. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 3:06 pm