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
  • 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 [...]

  • Disconnect: Soaring Markets/Troubled Economies

    Disconnect: Soaring Markets/Troubled Economies

    by Stephen Lendman Capitalism has succeeded in capturing governments around the world. Forget everything you learned about markets, economics and finance. Perhaps Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and other noted figures were wrong.  Central banks run today’s world. Major ones matter most. Money printing madness controls everything. Love doesn’t make the world go round. [...]

  • Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect's Stated Motives?

    Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect’s Stated Motives?

    Consortium News [1] / By Ray McGovern [2] Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev’s note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the [...]

  • A new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    A new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    By David Walsh, wsws.org Directed by Baz Luhrmann, co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald “It’s not all rubbish,” cried Amory passionately. “This is the first time in my life I’ve argued Socialism. It’s the only panacea I know. I’m restless. My whole generation is restless. I’m sick [...]

  • Obama’s New Appointments Prove that He Will Continue to Lick Wall Street’s Boots In His Second Term

    Obama’s New Appointments Prove that He Will Continue to Lick Wall Street’s Boots In His Second Term

    by WashingtonsBlog Puts Fox In Charge of the Henhouse … Again The party line is that Obama’s new pick for SEC boss – Mary Jo White – will be tough on Wall Street. For example, the Wall Street Journal writes: Obama Taps Ex-Prosecutor Mary Jo White, Portending Increased Policing of Wall Street In reality, this is putting the [...]

  • Pole dancing for the faint-hearted

    Let the Real Housewives try this for a change. Did you like this? Share it:

  • IRS Scandal Headlines: More Than Meets the Eye

    IRS Scandal Headlines: More Than Meets the Eye

    by Stephen Lendman More than targeting political enemies is involved. More on than below. The practice is longstanding. Republican and Democrat administrations use the IRS abusively.  During the Coolidge administration, Republican Senator James Couzens investigated the IRS’ predecessor – the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).  Did you like this? Share it:

  • Putin v. Obama et al

    Putin v. Obama et al

    by Stephen Lendman On May 16, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Russia Raises Stakes in Syria,” saying: Russia “sent a dozen or more warships to patrol waters near its naval base in Syria, a buildup that US and European officials see as a newly aggressive stance meant partly to warn the West and Israel not to intervene [...]

Time to retire the US as world cop?

 ANNOTATED NEWS, IMPERIALISM, MEDIA SCUM, US Foreign Policy  2 Responses »
Jun 242011
 
The myth that the US is a force for good in the world is contradicted by even a cursory examination of our actual foreign policy. Except for our participation on the “decent side” of WW II, against the fascists, all of our armed interventions have been for the benefit of global corporate power or to keep socialist and leftist ideas of government from gaining a foothold in the open marketplace of ideas—Eds
BY CLINT HULSEY
An editorial in the Boston Globe* (supposedly a “liberal” newspaper) asserted that “There is no realistic alternative to America as the world’s policeman.”  The writer goes on to openly ridicule public opinion, and the founding fathers. Its usually not a good idea to start an article like that, but is the Globe right? Does the United States need to be the “world’s policeman”? I think that without much opposition, I can assert that the United States is currently the world’s policeman. The United States spends more on its military than all the other countries in the world combined. The United States has military personnel in more countries than any other country. So given that the United States is the “cop on the beat”, is it a good cop? Continue reading »
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Is Obama embracing unconstitutional powers?

 ANNOTATED NEWS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, Obama  Comments Off
Jun 242011
 

A recent Hill article on Libya reveals the administration’s disturbing disdain for checks on presidential authority

Thursday’s Hill newspaper story on the White House’s new Libya War is one for the history books. It is probably the most concise summation of two of the most powerful post-9/11 tropes in our politics.

First and foremost, as my Salon.com colleague Glenn Greenwald deftly shows, it exemplifies the unprincipled, hyper-partisan nature of our public policy discourse, to the point where on the gravest matters of war and peace, professional politicians and activists are thrilled to use the same jeremiads they previously criticized once it is in their momentary self-interest to do so. Continue reading »

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Why Recent Bad Economic News Means It’s Time for Working Less

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS  Comments Off
Jun 242011
 

Juliet Schor
The economic news of the last few weeks has not been encouraging. In Europe, the various national debt crises remain unresolved, with a continued monopoly of banker-friendly austerity programs, and their predictable consequences of rising unemployment and stagnation. Debtor countries are being forced into the same financial orthodoxies that prolonged the depression of the 1920s and 30s, so we shouldn’t be surprised at the failures they will bring. More recession may also be the future of the countries enforcing these once-discredited policies, as weak demand across the region represses consumer demand, investor confidence, and government spending. Continue reading »

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ARCHIVES: On “The Issue Of Character” And Empire

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Jun 242011
 

Articles you should have read the first time around but didn’t

The United States continues to be the world’s only modern nation riven by the tensions between a rancid puritanism and a  juvenile fixation on sexual matters.

By Phil Rockstroh

The sordid scandal surrounding Rep. Weiner's images characterizes the frivolous and hypocritical puritanism still beating in the heart of America.

Late last month, poet, musician, and self-termed “bluesologist,” Gil Scott-Heron exited the hologram and returned to the source…to begin chanting, eternity will not be televised.

In an earlier era, Stephen Spender feted the following tribute to those who fell resisting Francisco Franco’s fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. His lines of verse serve as an apt epitaph to all those souls who devoted their art and labor to the ceaseless struggle against the perennially risen, death-besotted forces of coercive power: “The names of those who in their lives fought for life,/Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center./Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,/And left the vivid air signed with their honor.” Continue reading »

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