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
  • 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 [...]

  • Red State Hypocrites: Inhofe and Coburn

    Red State Hypocrites: Inhofe and Coburn

    Salon [1] / By Joan Walsh [2] Just a week ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe suggested that President Obama might be impeached over the Benghazi non-scandal. Now, Inhofe must watch as Obama declares Inhofe’s state a disaster area and promises Oklahomans “all the resources they need at their disposal.” Did you like this? Share it:

  • The Shame of the Fourth Estate

    The Shame of the Fourth Estate

    From our archives: articles you should have read when they first appeared but missed.  The mainstream media’s long-time kid-glove treatment of Andrew Breitbart led directly to the unjustified ouster of Shirley Sherrod. By Charles Kaiser  [Originally: July 26, 2010 ] This piece was first published by the Hillman Foundation. Let me make this utterly clear: What you [...]

  • Michel Chossudovsky: Time for a counterpropaganda front

    Michel Chossudovsky: Time for a counterpropaganda front

    Editor’s Note: The Western left, and the American left in particular, have been scandalously myopic and inadequate in organizing against the corporate media.  The goal from the start should have been to neutralize the effects of the corporate media, since without that the great battles to win over the American majorities would be impossible.  This [...]

  • What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels

    What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels

    By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left The idea that the uprising against the Syrian government is inspired by a grassroots movement thirsting for a pluralist, democratic state is a fiction. The opposition’s chief elements are Islamists who seek to establish a Sunni-dominated Islamic state in place of a Syrian government they revile for being secular and [...]

  • ARCHIVES: The U.S. Left and Media Politics

    ARCHIVES: The U.S. Left and Media Politics

    Articles of compelling importance you should have read but missed the first time around.  Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review, a fraternal organization ••• American democracy is in deep trouble. Cynicism and distrust of the political system, fueled at least in part by imposed ignorance, have grown steadily in recent years. There are several reasons for [...]

  • The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    JOHN PILGER: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading [...]

  • Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    MADISON, WI — DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details [...]

Annie Mae Aquash – a Hard Life, a Harder Death

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CITIZEN TOOLS  Comments Off
Jul 132011
 
By Al Osorio
“I’m Indian all the way, and always will be. I’m not going to stop fighting until I die, and I hope I’m a good example of a human being and of my tribe.” – Anna Mae Aquash•“They’re a conquered nation, and when you’re conquered, the people you’re conquered by dictate your future.”- Norman Zigrossi, FBI Special-Agent in Charge, Rapid City, SD

•

On a cold February morning in 1976 a rancher telephoned the Pine Ridge tribal police to report his discovery of a dead body at the bottom of an embankment. Within twenty minutes BIA police arrived on the scene, followed by an FBI agent just over an hour later. Only when an ambulance arrived to transport the body to Indian Health Services in Pine Ridge and he heard the dead body referred to as “her” did the rancher realize he’d discovered the body of a woman.Oddly for a time and a place and a culture where the occasional dead body was not a rare occurrence, three more FBI agents arrived to view the autopsy. Odder still was the pathologist missing the bullet lodged in the back of the dead woman’s skull, a bullet which both the resident doctor and nurse on duty at the hospital had observed when the fresh out of medical school doctor pronounced her dead on arrival. The FBI agent’s insistence on removal of the dead woman’s hands for fingerprinting in Washington was almost in keeping with the strangeness of the scenario. It was also an intolerable affront to the dignity of the victim. Continue reading »
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Freedom Rider: Rupert Murdoch and Media Corruption

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CITIZEN TOOLS, MEDIA SCUM  Comments Off
Jul 132011
 
 By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The bottomless cesspool that was Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloid News of the World is gone, but the ruthless corporate politics of its master still hold sway in the U.S. and Britain. Murdoch is the great vampire of media corruption and consolidation on both sides of the Atlantic. But he is not a solitary villain. “Murdoch was not the only media beneficiary when the FCC allowed him and others to consolidate their power and influence.” All corporate media are truth thieves.

“Murdoch felt he had nothing to fear from politicians and that he was probably right to be so unconcerned.”

If it can be said that there is one lord of world wide corporate media, that person is Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s News Corporation reigns supreme in television and print media in his native Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Continue reading »

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Obama’s “Big Deal”: Wallowing with Pigs in Search of a Grand Center-Right Coalition

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Jul 132011
 

By BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The real Obama is a cold, cynical bastard. He is not a wimp, but rather, has plenty of spine to face down and brow-beat the remaining defenders of the social safety net in his own Democratic Party, who have always been the most immediate dangers to his grand center-right coalition.

Barack Obama is salivating at the prospect of concluding his Big Deal with the Republicans, the one that will move the center robustly – even transformatively – to the Right, where this president really lives. The debt-limit deadline is Obama’s big chance to panic a significant part of the Democratic Party into joining in the rape of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “When the debt-limit showdown arrives, pray for gridlock, which would at least mean there is still resistance to Republican extortion.” Continue reading »

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The Sheeple Chronicles: (I) Eternal Phone Scams (w. VIDEO)

 ALERTS, ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, VIDEOS  2 Responses »
Jul 132011
 

Patrice Greanville, Chief Diarist

THE PHONE CRAMMING SCAM has been going on for decades.  The government knows it, the police agencies know it, the media know it (but seldom mention it; this is a rarity) and the politicians know it. And, believe it or not, even many Americans have heard about it, and not an inconsiderable number have been affected by it.

In a real democracy, this is what we might expect:

• The FBI (we’re talking easily documentable Federal crimes here) and prosecuting machinery would have been all over the place putting these filthy bastards out of business and in jail, where they richly deserve to be.  If even the NBC crew had little trouble locating some of the actual perps (in Florida, where else?) and tracing the thread all the way up to the BIG UNTOUCHABLES (the Fortune 500 enablers and accomplices who knowingly rip off their customers to the tune of hundreds of millions every year, I’m talking about companies like Verizon, ATT, and so on), it would have been extremely easy for the authorities to straighten out the mess and send a strong message to the would-be crooks across the nation (at all levels), that this kind of nonsense would not be permitted any longer. Continue reading »

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Journeys in Kossakland

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CITIZEN TOOLS  1 Response »
Jul 132011
 

 Eclecta, Or, Dogmatism.

By Doug Tarnopol on Tuesday, 12 July 2011 at 21:06

Moulitsas

‎”Whenever I find myself doubting what the president is doing, I’m always reassured by recalling how many previous times I have had those doubts only to be shown by the end that his strategy was brilliant and successful, achieving the best possible results given the situation.”–Eclectablog at DailyKos. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/12/993754/-Lawrence-ODonnell:-What-you-are-seeing-is-the-most-masterful-rope-a-dope-ever-seen-by-a-president

See also: http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/chapter-01.html

Chapter 1. How Eclecta Was Wrought Up from Grandiloquence Facile, and How He Gave Offense

In the country of America, on a website of the most liberal Baron Markos Moulitsas, wrote a naif whom “Hope,” and perhaps an MBA, [1] had endowed with a most obtuse disposition. His posts were the true index of his mind. He had clouded judgment joined to a most eclectic “pragmatism”; and hence, I presume, he had taken his nom de plume, Eclecta. [2] A servant of the President, he was detected as being a scion of the Baron’s sister-in-arms, Arianna Huffington; and that Dear Lady refused to pay, because he could only produce a score of blog postings [3], cross-posting monetization [3,4] having been lost through the vagaries of crowdsourced “citizen journalism.” Continue reading »

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