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
  • Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Guest Editorials— By Andre Damon, wsws.org The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report Monday showing that electronics giant Apple Inc. uses offshore tax shelters to avoid taxes on the majority of its income and cheated the US government out of $9 billion in 2012 alone. That same day, a tornado leveled the town [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • OpEds—Capitalism: "Horror Without End"

    OpEds—Capitalism: “Horror Without End”

    by John Peterson, Socialist Appeal The stream of distressing news seems to flow endlessly: School shootings from Colorado to Connecticut. Factory collapses and explosions from Bangladesh to Texas. Terrorist attacks from Pakistan to Boston. Crumbling infrastructure from Mexico City to Minneapolis. Kidnappings and torture from Ciudad Juarez to Cleveland. War and civil war from Syria [...]

  • How Medea Benjamin got to heckle Obama

    How Medea Benjamin got to heckle Obama

    Speeches given in front of ‘vetted” sycophantic audiences, behind closed doors. A glorified photo-op perfectly apt for a manipulated democracy.  Did you like this? Share it:

  • Obama’s Orwellian rhetoric

    Obama’s Orwellian rhetoric, Congo war crimes, Jailed for silence, DOJ assault on Fox Source: RT.com On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin and political commentator Sam Sacks go over the Orwellian rhetoric in Obama’s latest foreign policy speech. Abby highlights a recent UN investigation bringing to light crimes against humanity committed by a [...]

  • Dr. Noam Chomsky breaks the set on war, imperialism and propaganda

    RT’s Abby Martin interviews Noam Chomsky on current issues stemming from pseudo-democratic governance in the United States. On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to philosopher, linguist, professor, political critic and author of over 100 books Dr. Noam Chomsky about the Boston bombings, US terror inflicted abroad, drones, Obama’s rebranding of Bush [...]

  • OpEds: The entire globe is a battlefield for Pentagon

    OpEds: The entire globe is a battlefield for Pentagon

    By Pepe Escobar, RT.com  Forget it; the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is not becoming more “democratic” – or even transparent. US President Barack Obama now pledges to transfer the responsibility of the shadow ‘Drone Wars’ from the CIA to the Pentagon – so the US Congress is able to monitor it.  Did you like this? Share [...]

  • Why Corporate Media Focuses on Benghazi Instead of Guatemalan Genocide

    Why Corporate Media Focuses on Benghazi Instead of Guatemalan Genocide

    AlterNet [1] / By Sean McElwee [2] Last week two important stories about U.S. foreign policy broke. First, the White House released some 100 pages of e-mails confirming a dastardly scandal: rather than call the Benghazi attack a “terrorist act,” President Obama, in a Nixonian power grab, called it an, “act of terror.” Did you like this? Share it:

Spain’s Enormous, Inspiring Protests Are Rooted in Restoring Democracy and Decent Life in an Era of Turbocapitalism

 ANNOTATED NEWS, EU.Spain, HISTORY  Comments Off
May 262011
 

Practically unreported by the American media—
The Spanish protest movement is providing a new example to other nations in Europe

By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times
Posted on May 26, 2011

“No one expects the #spanishrevolution.” That’s one of the signs in Madrid’s iconic – and occupied – Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.

“I was in Paris in May ’68 and I’m very emotional. I’m 72 years old.” That’s one of the signs in Barcelona’s iconic – and occupied – Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in. Continue reading »

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ARCHIVES: Michael Parenti Talk – The U.S. War on Yugoslavia

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM  Comments Off
May 262011
 

ARCHIVES: Materials you should have read, watched or listened to but missed when first published

Ratko Mladic being arraigned before a magistrate in Belgrade to supposedly decide his extradition to the International Court to be tried for war crimes.

Editor’s Note: This is a repost of a prior publication prompted by the celebratory cackle of the corporate media upon the apprehension of the putative war criminal Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb commander  accused of brutal massacres during the Yugoslavian civil war in the 1990s. Parenti’s lecture reminds us that the reality behind the frothings of the American media about Serbia, duly echoed by its class allies and accomplices across the planet, are largely a hypocritical tissue of self-serving lies, and that while Mladic—”the most wanted war criminal in Europe” as the official billing went—may not be a cuddly guy, OK, I’ll grant you that, but America itself, along with Britain and other imperial powers have criminals in their employ, serving the goals of their respective plutocracies, that would make Mladic’s deeds ludicrously trivial by comparison. —Addison dePitt Continue reading »

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Republicans lose House seat in special election

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, Obama, Olympian-class scumbags, Policies & Politicians  1 Response »
May 262011
 

Don’t break out the champagne just yet, it’s still (filthy) business as usual.
The celebratory rhetoric (amplified by the libmedia) is entirely bogus, since the congressional Democrats supported huge cuts in Medicare last year, as part of the Obama health care program, an issue that was used against them by the Republicans in their 2010 election rout. Today, both big business parties support cuts that would effectively destroy this critical entitlement program, while seeking to disguise their real intentions from the voters with demagogic declarations of their determination to “preserve and protect” Medicare.-*

By Patrick Martin, WSWS.ORG
26 May 2011

Jane L. Corwin: The typical GOP candidate—blond, country club set, pretty, and with deep pockets of her own (fortune est. at $150 MM or more). According to her website, "challenging the status quo."

The Republican Party lost a seat in the US House of Representatives from western New York state it has held for more than four decades, in a special election May 24 that turned largely on plans to phase out the Medicare program and put the elderly in the clutches of private insurers.

Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin by 47 percent to 43 percent, with independent multi-millionaire Jack Davis receiving 9 percent and a Green Party candidate 1 percent. Some 25 percent of registered voters went to the polls, only half the number who voted in 2010, but high for a special election.

Continue reading »

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A discussion with film historian Joseph McBride about Steven Spielberg: A Biography—Part 2

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ARTS & FILM  1 Response »
May 262011
 

By David Walsh , arts & film critic for the World Socialist Web Site
With a bonus feature: Special letter in response to the exchange

5 May 2011 | PART ONE

Spielberg

Steven Spielberg: A Biography, Second Edition, by Joseph McBride, originally published 1997, University Press of Mississippi, second edition 2011

I recently spoke to film historian Joseph McBride about the second edition of his critical study and biography of American film director Steven Spielberg, published by the University Press of Mississippi. Part 1, with an introduction, was posted May 4. The following is the second and concluding part.

* * * * *

David Walsh: Let’s get into somewhat more controversial or problematic issues, so to speak. You write in a number of places about Steven Spielberg’s concern for the “common man.” My response to that is, yes and no. I don’t believe he’s treated the problems of ordinary Americans in a serious fashion. Continue reading »

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A discussion with film historian Joseph McBride on Steven Spielberg: A Biography―Part 1

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ARTS & FILM  1 Response »
May 262011
 

By David Walsh , arts & film critic for the World Socialist Web Site

4 May 2011  | PART TWO

S. Spielberg

Steven Spielberg: A Biography, Second Edition, by Joseph McBride, originally published 1997, University Press of Mississippi, second edition 2011

I RECENTLY SPOKE to film historian Joseph McBride about the second edition of his critical study and biography of American film director Steven Spielberg, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Spielberg is one of the most prominent American filmmakers of the past several decades, responsible for some of the greatest commercial successes in movie history―Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park and others―as well as works more highly regarded for their artistic merit and social insight, including The Sugarland Express, Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can and Munich. The Color Purple and Amistad, although both seriously flawed, in my view, were ambitious efforts. Continue reading »

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ARCHIVES: Conservative ‘Sleeper Agents’ in Hollywood? The Right Wing’s New War for Culture

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ARTS & FILM, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, Political Vermin  Comments Off
May 262011
 

ARCHIVES: Articles you should have read but missed

By Daniel Denvir, AlterNet

“You looking for Hollywood? Come on in!”

Hollywood has always made rightwing films, and although "liberal" movies sometimes zeroed in on specific issues (race, anti-semitism, war, etc.) they rarely dared to criticize capitalism itself, or the inevitable abuses stemming from excessive wealth.

I walked into a small but packed room at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for a primer on entering show business stage right. It was the panel’s second year at the annual convention, and the young people gathered were planning to skip the D.C. internships and look for jobs in film, music and television.

The movement is shifting away from the outright opposition to popular culture that defined the culture wars of the 1990s. They have embraced a two-pronged strategy to get their message out: making their own films and music, and using Tea Party or church networks to distribute them; and working inside the mainstream entertainment industry to release films and other products with movement themes into the mass market.

The prospect of political action and personal fame proves alluring for a generation where online celebrity meshes easily with real-world political power. A young man canvassed the room–“who does video?”–saying that he helps young videographers plug into local campaigns as he passed out his business card. Young men discussed their Twitter feeds, and two others tried to understand Obama through the prism of Star Wars. Continue reading »

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