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
  • 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 [...]

  • Red State Hypocrites: Inhofe and Coburn

    Red State Hypocrites: Inhofe and Coburn

    Salon [1] / By Joan Walsh [2] Just a week ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe suggested that President Obama might be impeached over the Benghazi non-scandal. Now, Inhofe must watch as Obama declares Inhofe’s state a disaster area and promises Oklahomans “all the resources they need at their disposal.” Did you like this? Share it:

  • The Shame of the Fourth Estate

    The Shame of the Fourth Estate

    From our archives: articles you should have read when they first appeared but missed.  The mainstream media’s long-time kid-glove treatment of Andrew Breitbart led directly to the unjustified ouster of Shirley Sherrod. By Charles Kaiser  [Originally: July 26, 2010 ] This piece was first published by the Hillman Foundation. Let me make this utterly clear: What you [...]

  • Michel Chossudovsky: Time for a counterpropaganda front

    Michel Chossudovsky: Time for a counterpropaganda front

    Editor’s Note: The Western left, and the American left in particular, have been scandalously myopic and inadequate in organizing against the corporate media.  The goal from the start should have been to neutralize the effects of the corporate media, since without that the great battles to win over the American majorities would be impossible.  This [...]

  • What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels

    What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels

    By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left The idea that the uprising against the Syrian government is inspired by a grassroots movement thirsting for a pluralist, democratic state is a fiction. The opposition’s chief elements are Islamists who seek to establish a Sunni-dominated Islamic state in place of a Syrian government they revile for being secular and [...]

  • ARCHIVES: The U.S. Left and Media Politics

    ARCHIVES: The U.S. Left and Media Politics

    Articles of compelling importance you should have read but missed the first time around.  Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review, a fraternal organization ••• American democracy is in deep trouble. Cynicism and distrust of the political system, fueled at least in part by imposed ignorance, have grown steadily in recent years. There are several reasons for [...]

  • The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    JOHN PILGER: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading [...]

  • Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    MADISON, WI — DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details [...]

France Télécom employee immolates himself

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Apr 292011
 

By Antoine Lerougetel and Alex Lantier
29 April 2011

Remi L's colleagues at France-Telecom stage a brief work stoppage in his memory.

On April 26 Rémi L, a France Télécom (FT) worker aged 57 and a father of four, burned himself to death in the parking lot of his former workplace in Mérignac, near Bordeaux, on April 26. According to the Stress Observatory set up by FT unions, his death brings to 60 the total of suicides of FT workers since 2008.

About 300 of Rémi L’s colleagues, with his wife and children, gathered outside the regional head office of France Télécom in Bordeaux and held a minute’s silence for him. His family told Brigitte Audy, the regional director of France Télécom, that she was not welcome there.  Continue reading »

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The Public Overwhelmingly Wants It: Why Is Taxing the Rich So Hard?

 CLASS STRUGGLE, Policies & Politicians  Comments Off
Apr 292011
 

By Alyssa Battistoni, AlterNet
Posted on April 29, 2011

When even the New York Times, the supposed bleeding heart of the liberal media, is asking whether it’s more “perilous politically” to accept tax increases for 3 percent of households or benefit cuts for everyone, you’d assume that even Americans who aren’t rich are opposed to raising taxes on those who are. But you’d be wrong: nearly three-quarters of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. So why is raising taxes on the wealthy so hard—or why do we think it is? Continue reading »

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Activists claim purge of Facebook pages

 CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE, MEDIA SCUM  Comments Off
Apr 292011
 

Protest groups claim Facebook has taken down dozens of pages in a purge of activists’ accounts
One more reminder that social change activists can never truly trust corporations

Demonstrators from the UK Uncut group outside Topshop, on Oxford Street, central London, during a demonstration against alleged tax avoidance by Arcadia group owner Sir Philip Green Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Activists are claiming that dozens of politically linked Facebook accounts have been removed or suspended by the company in the last 12 hours.

The list of suspended pages include those for the anti cuts group UK Uncut, and pages that were created by students during last December’s university occupations.

A list posted on the UCL occupation blog site says the Goldsmiths Fights Back, Slade Occupation, Open Brikbeck, and Tower Hamlet Greens pages as no longer functioning. Continue reading »

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Race is the Trump Card

 CLASS STRUGGLE, THE COLOR LINE  3 Responses »
Apr 292011
 

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH
Crosspost with: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12646  | 04/28/2011

For many Southerners, the "Lost Cause" was a noble cause. The Old South may have technically lost the war but its values have very much survived and proliferated in modern America.

NOT SO LONG AGO in a land not at all far away part of it was ruled by a tiny oligarchy of very wealthy large landowners.  They made their wealth in part off the backs of unpaid farm laborers for whom they provided nothing more than minimal food and shelter, in part by trading in those laborers as property, and in part off the backs of another group of (much smaller) landowners/small farmers, who were generally poor, although definitely better off than the aforementioned unpaid laborers.  Actually, the latter two groups had much in common.  They worked hard, got nothing (in the case of the first) and precious little (in the case of the second) for their labors.  They were both dominated and exploited by the oligarchy.  One would have thought, in fact, that the two groups of laborers might actually join forces and struggle to improve their respective states in life. Continue reading »

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HBO’s Mildred Pierce: A Depression-era drama aimed at a contemporary audience

 ARTS & FILM, CLASS STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Apr 292011
 

By Joanne Laurier
29 April 2011

Directed and written by Todd Haynes; co-written by Jon Raymond; based on the novel by James M. Cain

1945 poster for Crawford's Mildred Pierce.

The HBO five-part miniseries Mildred Pierce, directed by independent filmmaker Todd Haynes and based on the 1941 novel by American author James M. Cain (1892-1977), is a serious and commendable effort, a highly uncommon attempt—in our day—to root people’s lives and psychology in a realistic economic and social context. One can only hope Haynes’s drama heralds the return of deeper and more probing examinations of social life to American filmmaking and television. Continue reading »

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The royal wedding and the myth of national unity

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE  1 Response »
Apr 292011
 

By Julie Hyland, WSWS
29 April 2011

Aneurin Bevan: Firebrand socialist and orator who is regarded as the father of the National Health Service. The age of real reformers is long past in Britain, for decades immersed in the swamp of Toryism and social democratic sellouts.

Events such as the royal wedding, the Telegraph’s Matthew d’Ancona opined, “drop a dauntingly heavy payload of political symbols, messages about the social fabric, hierarchy, class, manners and our collective optimism: where we are as a nation, in other words.”

So where, exactly, is Britain today?

One thing can be established—a royal wedding is a sure indicator of hard times, at least for the broad mass of the population not invited to the ceremony but expected to foot the bill. Continue reading »

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