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 [...]

The killing of Osama bin Laden: Obama’s “historic moment”

 CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, IMPERIALISM, MEDIA SCUM  Comments Off
May 042011
 

By David North |  4 May 2011

OF ALL THE IMAGES  that have emerged from the morally unclean events of Sunday night, the most politically significant and, one has reason to believe, enduring will prove to be the official photograph, released by the White House, of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other high officials of the United States government seated together in the situation room as they witnessed the killing of Osama bin Laden and several other human beings, including one woman. Continue reading »

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OpEd: Obama’s Killing Spree

 ANNOTATED NEWS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES  Comments Off
May 042011
 

Freedom Rider: Obama’s Killing Spree

By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Created 05/04/2011

Obama receiving standing ovation after Osama raid.

OBAMA is certainly living the thug life, an international gangster without parallel. What is to lesser humans a planet is, to Obama, a spherical theater of war, a free-fire zone. With two more notches in his gun, the First Black President is ensuring that Black Americans will be viewed as just another brand of ugly, violent Americans set loose on the world. And “the Peace Prize winner will once again give a lofty, well written speech about why it makes no sense to be peaceful.” Continue reading »

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Osama, Obama and Bush: Apt Comparisons, Missed Opportunities

 ANNOTATED NEWS, Obama, Policies & Politicians  Comments Off
May 042011
 

by Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Illustration by Leon Kuhn.  More of his work at http://www.leonkuhn.org.uk/ [8]

This weekend the White House announced the extrajudicial killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the secret disposal of his body at sea. Are we any safer now? And would it be any different if George W. Bush were making the same announcement four years ago?

Who says there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats in the White House? Imagine for a moment that the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death had come four years earlier, while George W. Bush was still president. Continue reading »

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OpEd: American Savagery

 ANNOTATED NEWS, HEADLINERS  2 Responses »
May 042011
 

From Gitmo to the Assassination of Bin Laden

American Savagery

By MIKE WHITNEY | May 4, 2011

What does the assassination of Osama Bin Laden have in common with Guantanamo Bay?

They’re both intended to send a message that the United States has sunk deeper into savagery and abandoned any commitment to conventional norms of behavior. That’s the message, and we hear it “loud and clear”.

We don’t need our Harvard-educated president to crow about his latest gangland “hit” to know that America has turned into a moral swamp. That’s obvious in every area of policy, foreign and domestic. It’s just that certain incidents draw more attention than others, like when a drone incinerates a home full of women and children in the Pakistani outback or when F-16s reduce a city of 300,000 (Falluja) to rubble leaving behind a legacy of birth defects, cancer and grinding poverty. These are the real “headline grabbers”, like shrugging off the sovereign rights of an ally, invading their airspace, and deploying special ops to conduct a Rambo-style massacre in a civilian section of town. Continue reading »

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OpEd: The Osama story a tissue of lies

 ANNOTATED NEWS, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE  Comments Off
May 042011
 

Media Lies and Misinformation on Bin Laden –
Our colleague Stephen Lendman remains unimpressed by the barrage of
communiqués laying out the official version of events

Osama: Rumor and hearsay underscores his passing through contemporary history

BY STEPHEN LENDMAN

Corporate media manipulators love a big story they can hype, distort and falsify to attract large audiences, unaware they’re getting managed news, not truth.  Moreover, the bigger the event, the worse the reporting, and no matter how often they’re fooled, madding crowds rely on proved unreliable sources like US cable and broadcast TV, as well as corporate broadsheets and popular magazines publishing rubbish not fit to print. Continue reading »

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The 10 key myths about Osama bin Laden

 Afghanistan.Pakistan, ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR  Comments Off
May 042011
 

Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan during the war with Russia – though some say he never exposed himself to danger. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

Editor's Note: As is inevitable with a figure as complex and mysterious as Osama
bin Laden, deeply embedded in the truth about the "War on Terror", and the  9/11 attacks,
all sorts of notions circulate as to his true nature, doings, and
impact on contemporary events. This is likely to continue for an indefinite time.
The  author of this piece, Jason Burke, seems to differ profoundly from some of most widely
accepted versions of Osama's life.
The reasons for this he outlines below, albeit without much subtantiation.
However, given his  status as well-regarded British journalist, we think it's editorially worthwhile
to publish his viewpoint and let our readers 
ponder the question as more facts begin to emerge. Continue reading »
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