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 [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • Obama's War on Free Expression

    Obama’s War on Free Expression

    by Stephen Lendman It’s the most fundamental right. Without it all others are endangered. Obama’s waging war to destroy it. He’s done so throughout his tenure.  He targeted AP. He did so unjustifiably. A previous article discussed it. Did you like this? Share it:

  • The Jesuit Pope – Who is Francis and who he pretends to be

    The Jesuit Pope – Who is Francis and who he pretends to be

    Written by Esquerda Marxista editorial board Wednesday, 15 May 2013 The election of Pope Francis marks a turn in the prolonged crisis of the Catholic Church. It is important for revolutionaries to understand the reasons for the ongoing struggle within the Church. Far from moving to the left, Francis is trying to entrench the Church in [...]

  • Apple CEO defends multi-billion-dollar tax dodge

    Apple CEO defends multi-billion-dollar tax dodge

    By Andre Damon, wsws.org   Apple CEO Tim Cook used his appearance Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—called to investigate Apple’s evasion of billions of dollars in taxes—to call for a sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate. The senators on the committee, Democratic and Republican alike, agreed with Cook [...]

ARCHIVES: Numbers Racket: Why the Democratic Party is a Corporate Lickspittle and Cannot Be the People’s Party

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CITIZEN TOOLS, Obama, Policies & Politicians  Comments Off
Jun 012011
 

Originally posted Thu, 05/12/2011 |  By Dave Lindorff
This Can’t Be Happening

A new Gallup Poll conducted for USA Today earlier this week reports that a majority of Americans (52%) say that they would prefer a third party instead of the two parties, Republican and Democrat, that have dominated American politics for nearly two centuries.

The poll shows that one third of Democrats say there’s a need for a new political party, while 52% of Republicans say the same thing. Meanwhile, 68% of independents say they have no use for either Democrats or Republicans and would prefer another option (no surprise there–that’s why they are not registered with either of the two major parties). Continue reading »

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DAVE LINDORFF: On the Death of Soren, a Favorite Cat

 HEADLINERS  2 Responses »
Jun 012011
 

May 27 – 29, 2011

Soren

Editor’s Note: Having lost three feline companions in the last two years—Puntito, Sombra, and animalito—creatures who kept me going during the worst and longest drought in my life—two decades characterized by frequent financial distress, illness, and isolation—I can fully relate to Dave Lindorff’s pain upon the sudden loss of his feline “child”, Soren.  The deepest bonds do not recognize species boundaries, so the death of a cat, a dog, a parrot, a horse, or any other animal we get to share our lives with (an intersection that invariably enriches us immeasurably) can diminish us as much as the passing of a human companion.

animalito, Puntito, and shy Sombra, disputing the cramped real estate on my office chair.

If this sounds weird to you, I’m sorry.  I can’t explain it any better.  The nonspeciesist love of animals is something you either feel in your heart or you don’t.  And while there are a million reasons that validate it, from the moral benefits of simple compassion to the salvation of our planet’s environment, it’s not an intellectual thing at all. Maybe it’s the innocence, playfulness and authenticity of animals that moves us. Or their legendary capacity for what seems to us like unconditional love. Or perhaps it’s their poignant helplessness in a world so utterly dominated by humans. I guess it’s all part of the mystery of animals. Whatever it is, it’s very real.  That’s why their departure, especially when untimely, when their personalities have become as well known and endearing to us as those of a human infant, can be such a shattering event. It’s ironic that in whimsical death, of all things, animals remind us of our own vulnerability to fate, and therefore our undeniable kinship with other beings. —P. Greanville

Continue reading »

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FILM & TELEVISION—HBO’s Too Big to Fail: Propaganda aimed at the US population

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ARTS & FILM, CLASS STRUGGLE  1 Response »
Jun 012011
 

By Charles Bogle , WSWS.ORG
1 June 2011


Directed by Curtis Hanson, written by Peter Gould and Andrew Ross Sorkin.  From a book by Andrew Ross Sorkin

In an interview, the Wall Street Journal asked Paula Weinstein, executive producer of HBO’s Too Big to Fail, about the problem she faced in creating a suspenseful drama about the 2008 financial crisis that “wasn’t too esoteric” for a general audience.

Too Big to Fail

Her reply indicates some of the problems with this production: “Everyone in the country suffered from it [the financial crisis], so we treated it like a thriller, like it was a regular movie.” Continue reading »

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In Blow to Big Polluters, Judge Halts California’s Cap and Trade Program

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ENVIRONMENTAL STRUGGLES  Comments Off
Jun 012011
 

When all is said and done, market-based solutions like “cap & trade” to the environmental problems created by capitalism are simply an elaborate  scam, but don’t expect the whoremedia to ever alert you to that simple truth. One of the things that cap & trade does, for example, is sweep under the rug the growth of pollution around the world, and the refusal of industry and governments to seek alternative production models.—Eds.

By Jeff Conant, AlterNet
Posted on May 31, 2011

Image used by the Washington Post “to illustrate” cap & trade, in effect endorsing it.

San Francisco’s Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) announced today that it received the judge’s writ in its lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The writ gives the green light to most of the policies advanced under AB32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, but puts a permanent hold on cap and trade.

“Judge Ernest Goldsmith of the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that CARB violated CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act) when, among other things, it failed to properly consider alternatives to a ‘cap and trade’ program in its Scoping Plan to implement AB 32,” CRPE’s statement says. “The Court’s Writ, issued Friday, enjoins, or stops, all implementation and actions in furtherance of cap and trade until CARB completes a lawfully adequate CEQA review.” Continue reading »

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The conspiracy against Medicare

 American "Way of Life", ANNOTATED NEWS, HEALTH & MEDICINE  Comments Off
Jun 012011
 

PATRICK MARTIN, WSWS.ORG |  1 June 2011

ANNALS OF FRAUDULENT DEMOCRACY—
The recent election in New York’s 26th District confirms what has been amply demonstrated in opinion polls: that the overwhelming majority of the population, including a majority of Republicans, opposes cuts to Medicare. However, this mass sentiment has no impact on the actual course of government policy.  In the week since the election, the American political establishment has thrown its weight behind an effort to put the genie back in the bottle and reinforce the political consensus in Washington that the Medicare program is unaffordable and must be dismantled to prevent national bankruptcy.

ONE WEEK AGO, on Tuesday, May 24, voters in the 26th Congressional District of New York cast ballots in a special election that, unusually for American bourgeois politics, was actually focused on a significant issue of public policy—whether the Medicare program, which underwrites health care for the vast majority of Americans aged 65 and over, should be phased out and replaced by private insurance.

The Republican candidate to fill the vacancy in New York, Jane Corwin, said she supported the plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan to end Medicare. The Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, campaigned almost exclusively on her opposition to the Ryan plan and won by a comfortable margin. This was as close to a referendum on the future of Medicare as the unrepresentative American political system can provide. Continue reading »

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As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Jun 012011
 

By GARDINER HARRIS |  May 30, 2011
The New York Times

AUGUSTA, Me. — With Republicans in complete control of Maine’s state government for the first time since 1962, State Senator Lois A. Snowe-Mello offered a bill in February to limit doctors’ liability that she was sure the powerful doctors’ lobby would cheer. Instead, it asked her to shelve the measure.

“It was like a slap in the face,” said Ms. Snowe-Mello, who describes herself as a conservative Republican. “The doctors in this state are increasingly going left.” Continue reading »

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