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

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

    The controversies over the IRS and especially the AP phone records appear to have long-lasting effects By Glenn Greenwald,  guardian.co.uk  Barack Obama Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ’s attack on AP’s news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record [...]

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

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

    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

    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 [...]

  • The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    Our Economic System is Driving Climate Change by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN The ancient Greeks attributed weather to the god Zeus; today we can safely attribute it to industrial capitalism and its voracious consumption of fossil fuels. The carnage left by a tornado in Oklahoma yesterday is just the latest in our economic system’s daunting body count. [...]

  • Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    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

    Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte – Part One

    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 [...]

  • PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary "Citizen Koch" To Appease Koch Brothers

    PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary “Citizen Koch” To Appease Koch Brothers

    By Brendan Fischer, PRWatch | Report “Citizen Koch,” a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in “public” television and raises [...]

  • Why Obama Will Walk Away Unscathed by the Current Political Scandals

    Why Obama Will Walk Away Unscathed by the Current Political Scandals

    by Pascal Robert, Black Agenda Report Don’t worry about Barack Obama. He’s far too useful to the rulers of America to be derailed by scandal, or even a combination of scandals. “Obama’s neoliberal government giveaways to private corporations and mercenary foreign policy already make him too valuable to the guardians of American empire to have [...]

Issues & Alibis: Find The Cost Of Freedom

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS  Comments Off
May 122011
 

OpEds

By Ernest Stewart

Global warming is real, and getting realer all the time. But a lot of things have to happen before humanity can act.

 

 

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down
Find The Cost Of Freedom ~~~ Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” ~~~ Mark 8:36-37 KJV

“I didn’t think it was possible for cheerleading to look any less appealing to me — but, thank you, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for proving me wrong,” ~~~ Tracy Clark-Flory.

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” ~~~ Albert Einstein

Well, if you believe Obamahood, we got the mastermind behind 9/11, and it wasn’t George Tenet! No, Barry pegs CIA henchman Osama bin Laden as the culprit. I say, six of one, half dozen of the other! Continue reading »

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Regulator to Join Comcast After OK of NBC Deal

 ALERTS, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
May 122011
 
By JOELLE TESSLER AP Technology Writer
5/11/2011, 9:58 PM
Federal Communications Commission member to join Comcast after approval of NBC takeover deal
WITH AN ACTION ALERT MEMO (see bottom of article)

Meredith Baker

 

A top telecommunications regulator who voted to approve Comcast Corp.’s takeover of NBCUniversal in January is leaving to join the company as a lobbyist.

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republicans on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, will become senior vice president of government affairs for NBCUniversal.

Comcast said it did not begin discussions with Baker about a possible job until after the transaction had closed. Baker will leave the FCC on June 3, less than a month before her term was set to expire. She joined the agency in July 2009. Continue reading »

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Hillary Blasts China on “Human Rights”

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CHINA  Comments Off
May 122011
 

Now That’s Chutzpah!

By MIKE WHITNEY | May 11, 2011

Clinton: Unlimited gall.

Is there anything more irritating than listening to US officials blabber about “human rights”?

Here’s Hillary Clinton bashing China for their “deplorable” human rights record, and meanwhile Bradley Manning sits naked and freezing in a 6′ by 8′ cinderblock cell in some far-flung American gulag waiting to get fingernails yanked out.

And that’s just for starters. What about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and the myriad other dungeons, concentration camps and black sites the US has scattered across the planet. The United States is the biggest human rights abuser in the world today. Clinton’s in no position to be giving other people lectures. Continue reading »

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Beijing cancels debate on 1911 revolution

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CHINA  Comments Off
May 122011
 

OpEds

By John Chan | 12 May 2011
The World Socialist Web Site (Trotskyst interpretation)

Idealized version of Mao's Long March, when the Chinese Communist Party militants and army escaped the claws of the bourgeois forces and set up quarters in a remote area of China. Revolutions are complex phenomena, affected by many factors, both internal and external, and no single reasons can account for their evolution, nor predict the final outcome. However, that's no argument to discard all revolution from human affairs.

The Beijing branch of the Communist Youth League last month abruptly cancelled a debate originally planned to open on April 9 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1911 revolution—an upheaval that set in motion the downfall of the Manchu dynasty and three decades of political turmoil, revolutions and counter-revolutions.

The debate on the 1911 revolution was to have involved 16 universities in Beijing and Tianjin that were historically hotbeds for democratic and revolutionary ideas. Amid rising social tensions, the Chinese regime is fearful that any serious discussion of the country’s tumultuous past could help trigger a popular revolt today.  Continue reading »

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Libyan Rebels Killing Civilians in Benghazi

 ANNOTATED NEWS, Obama, The Middle East  Comments Off
May 122011
 

By Stephen Lendman

The Kingfish himself would be envious of the demagogic smoothness of Barack Obama.

In London, at a June 1999 anti-Yugoslavia war rally, Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter scathed US and UK leaders, saying:

“Let us face the truth….(N)either Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile….to consolidate….American domination of Europe.” Continue reading »

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Obama Health Law Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies

 ANNOTATED NEWS, Liberaloids & Radical Centrists, Obama  Comments Off
May 122011
 

The Massachusetts’ “universal insurance” law is being hailed by many Democrats as a triumph, the model for Obama’s own national reform, but its vaunted success is an illusion.

By Steffie Woolhandler M.D. and David Himmelstein M.D.

When President Obama kicked off his health reform push, he highlighted our research finding that 2 million Americans suffer medical bankruptcy each year, promising to end this disgrace. Our latest figures warn that his reform won’t stanch the flow of medical debtors.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed by Congress in March 2010 was modeled after Massachusetts’ 2006 health reform plan – a plan that’s now been up and running for more than three years. So Massachusetts offers a preview of what to expect when the ACA is fully implemented in 2014. Continue reading »

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