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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
  • Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby versus Prince Harry and his polo-playing American friends

    Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby versus Prince Harry and his polo-playing American friends

    By David Walsh, wsws.org “Prince Harry rounded off his hugely successful week-long tour of the U.S. today very much in his comfort zone – playing polo. … He was greeted by club founder Peter Brandt [sic] and his model wife, Stephanie Seymour. Brandt, 65, – whose wife is 44 – is an American industrialist and [...]

  • Should the US bomb Syria?

    Should the US bomb Syria?

    By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left There is no compelling evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebel forces which seek its overthrow, and for purely military reasons, it’s highly unlikely that they have been used. Simply put, the Syrian army can kill more rebels with missiles, tanks and heavy artillery, even [...]

  • Why America May Be the Last Empire

    Why America May Be the Last Empire

    TomDispatch [1] / By Tom Engelhardt [2] To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [3]. It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia.  Its nuclear arsenal held 45,000 warheads [4], and its military had five million [5] troops [...]

  • The Real I.R.S. Scandal

    The Real I.R.S. Scandal

    OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS By SHEILA KRUMHOLZ and ROBERT WEINBERGER [Note we reproduce this NYT's piece here for reasons of compelling public service.—Eds] WASHINGTON Hieronymus ROOM FOR DEBATE The I.R.S. is in the hot seat for scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax exemption. But do all 501(c)(4)’s need a second look? NEWS that employees at the Internal Revenue Service targeted [...]

  • OpEds—War and Pain: Nothing New Under the Sun

    OpEds—War and Pain: Nothing New Under the Sun

     By Gaither Stewart The world goes round and round and human beings say and do the same things again and again. So that it seems there is truly nothing new under the sun. Man’s perplexing unchanging behavior and the ways of the world have again led me back to the ancient Greeks, just to take [...]

  • Can Working from the Inside Change the Democratic Party?

    Can Working from the Inside Change the Democratic Party?

    by Ron Ridenour Occupy Wall Street’s dynamic grass roots movement is quiescent and may or may not return. Its respite or demise is due to a combination of deliberate and apparently nationally directed police violence and federal, state and local government spying, as well as to its own lack of political direction. It remains a political [...]

  • Classic Essays: Hail the Reds

    Classic Essays: Hail the Reds

    What’s Left: Hail the Reds By Stephen Gowans www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/reds.html Over the seven decades of its existence, and despite having to spend so much time preparing, fighting, and recovering from wars, the Soviet Union managed to create one of the great achievements of human history: a great industrial society that eliminated most of the inequalities of [...]

  • Obama's Contempt for Venezuelan Democracy

    Obama’s Contempt for Venezuelan Democracy

       by Stephen Lendman It’s no surprise. He exceeds the worst of George Bush. He abhors democratic values. He defiles rule of law principles. He governs by diktat authority. He’s waging war on humanity. He targets all independent states. He wants puppet pro-US regimes replacing them. Did you like this? Share it:

DOSSIER: What private insurers are doing to us

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM  Comments Off
May 072011
 

Since I walked away as head of communications at a top health insurance company in May of 2008, I’ve worked tirelessly as an outspoken critic of corporate PR and the distortion and fear manufactured by America’s health insurance industry. It is a PR juggernaut that is bankrolled by millions of dollars, rivaling lobbying budgets and underwriting many “non-partisan” and “grassroots” organizations…”

Insurance Industry Up To Its Old Tricks

May 6th, 2011

Potter: From industry shill to tribune of the people.

Wendell Potter seems to be the only guy out there who understands what the Insurance industry is doing with the Health Care Reforms. He also seems to be the only guy who understands what the Republicans are trying to do to our health care system. I am sure there are others, but Potter seems to be the go to guy if you want the low down on the dirty business of health care lobbying. He should know, he was a PR man for the industry for a long time. Then he got religion, or maybe a decent offer, and joined the other side. It is a good thing too, the President is doing a crappy job explaining what he is doing with health care legislation. It seems that this industry, as with almost all industry, the controlling interests at the top are doing a pretty good job of blocking reform legislation and miss-informing the public as to what is really going on. Continue reading »

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The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

 American "Way of Life", ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE  2 Responses »
May 072011
 

The DeVos clan represents a natural marriage of raw capitalism and crude calvinism,  with reactionism the inevitable product. Their Amway subculture is one of open worshipping of wealth and materialism, the whole brew well larded with ample amounts of jingoism—toxic by any standard of comprehension. —Eds

By Rachel Tabachnick, AlterNet
Posted on May 7, 2011

Amway's Dick DeVos. Prominent in Michigan Republican circles for decades, and rabid supporter of freemarketism.

Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But “school choice,” as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system. Continue reading »

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3/ Why you can’t (and shouldn’t) trust liberals: LAWRENCE O’DONNELL

 ANNOTATED NEWS, Liberaloids & Radical Centrists, MEDIA SCUM  3 Responses »
May 072011
 

Stenographers to power series—
THE MSNBC CORRAL & THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

Lawrence O'Donnell

THE OBSESSIVELY REPORTED attack on Osama’s compound has unleashed  a torrent of systemic apologetics and red-white-and-blue jingoism throughout the media and political commentariat.  At MSNBC, long viewed as a bastion of liberal opinion, the inmates have been busy milking the event for its maximum ideological value, and the channel has been positively bristling with chauvinist nonsense and sycophancy, with its stable of celebrity hosts practically in a hot scramble to sing the loudest praise to Obama and the Democrats.  One of the most irritating—but to be expected—feature of liberal commentary is that these people no sooner finish a good argument castigating their opponents than they say something that almost completely erases the good they have accumulated. With one hand they giveth, and with the other they taketh away. In sum, it’s a confusing yo-yo of both attacking some awful symptom of the system while propping up the selfsame system in the next breath. Below, we analyze another example of this persistent Beltway fever. —P. Greanville Continue reading »

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The Assassination of bin Laden: Its Use and Abuse

 ANNOTATED NEWS, IMPERIALISM  Comments Off
May 072011
 

Ideas have a life of their own. Martyrdom usually strengthens them.”

James Petras

Bin Laden with his close associate al Sawahiri. His death will probably have no major effect on al-Qaeda, but may reinvigorate the grassroots. Non-al Qaeda anti-imperialist organizations will fight on following their own agendas.

The assassination of bin Laden has been celebrated as a great strategic victory by the White House, the European capitals and all the major mass media outlets throughout the world. The killing has served as a major propaganda tool to enhance the standing of the US military in the eyes of the domestic public and to serve as a warning to overseas adversaries.

Contrary to this immense propaganda campaign and despite whatever symbolic value the killing may have in the eyes of his executioners, there is no evidence that the death will have any impact on the deteriorating military and political position of the US in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa or elsewhere. Continue reading »

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Tony Kushner Denied Honors Over Palestine

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
May 072011
 

LAURA FLANDERS |  May 5, 2011

Flanders

This week, the news hit that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, perhaps best known for his Angels in America, was being blocked from receiving an honorary degree from the City University of New York because of his views on Israel.

Kushner, who also has an honorary degree from Brandeis University, told Salon’s Justin Elliott that this was an “unprecedented and pretty ugly experience.”

Continue reading »

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7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration

 ANNOTATED NEWS, The Middle East  Comments Off
May 072011
 

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 5, 2011, Printed on May 6, 2011

SEALs raid Osama's compound.

The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that’s par for the course: “the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.” Continue reading »

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Rejoice Not…

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR  Comments Off
May 072011
 

Uri Avnery /  May 7, 2011

“REJOICE NOT when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad  when he stumbleth, / Lest the Lord see [it], and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him”.

Avraham Stern, leader of the "Stern Gang", classified by the British colonial power as a "terrorist organization" was tracked down and shot dead by the British. His death did not prevent his Zionist ideology to go forward, eventually getting the British to leave Palestine.

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST beautiful passages in the Bible (Proverbs 24:17-18), and indeed in the Hebrew language. It is beautiful in other languages , too, though no translation comes close to the beauty of the original. Of course, it is natural to be glad when one’s enemy is defeated, and the thirst for revenge is a human trait. But gloating – schadenfreude – is something different altogether. An ugly thing. Continue reading »

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2/ Why you can’t (and shouldn’t) trust liberals—>Ed Schultz: “Dems tough!”

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR  2 Responses »
May 072011
 

Stenographers to power series—

THE MSNBC CORRAL & THE PUTATIVE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
The attack on Osama’s compound uncorks a torrent of systemic apologetics and red-white-and-blue jingoism
From Chris Matthews to Ed Schultz, and passing through Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, the channel is positively bristling with chauvinist nonsense and sycophancy, with its leading liberal stars practically in a hot scramble to sing the loudest praise to Obama and the Democrats.

MAY 3 ED SCHULTZ: “Dems Tough: They Got the Job Done”
MSNBC’s NOISY BUT ULTIMATELY TOOTHLESS BULLDOG OF THE CENTER SHOWS HOW TO CANCEL GOOD WORK WITH REVOLTING, OBTUSE SUBMISSION TO THE STATUS QUO.
In this segment, aired on May 3d, Schultz, in his best starched cheerleading outfit goes out of his way to proclaim that Democrats are as macho, warlike and capable of imperial warmaking and international criminality as the Republicans, hardly news, and hardly an honor, but in Schultz’ book apparently something worth crowing about. Unfortunately, Schultz is scarcely alone. Almost the totality of liberals in the corridors of power and media perches are busily thumping their chest and waving the flag, proving that the establishment’s jingo disease is fully bipartisan and always was. — P. Greanville

A pathetic display.

Take a look.
(PS: Sorry about the brief 15-second spot; couldn’t take it out.) Continue reading »

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