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 [...]

  • Benghazi: Imperialist Outpost

    Benghazi: Imperialist Outpost

    Politicized-Militarized Diplomacy by NORMAN POLLACK I am not naïve.  Embassies have been centers of intrigue, propaganda disseminators, bases for political intervention in a nation’s internal affairs, intermediaries for the promotion of markets and investments, etc., practices not confined to those representing the US, and hardly confined to recent times.  That said, Benghazi (technically, a consulate), signifies, as [...]

  • 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 [...]

BLUM’S Anti-Empire Report \ The hidden truth about the Berlin Wall and other topics

 ANNOTATED NEWS, US Foreign Policy  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

The Anti-Empire Report, July 28th, 2011
by William Blum
http://www.killinghope.org

Bill Blum

Arguing Libya
On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was “Stop Bombing Libya”. The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as “humanitarian intervention”, as they are now, was in 1999 during the 78-day bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost all Serbs. “Humanitarian intervention” is a great selling device for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States means well, that we are still “the good guys”. Continue reading »

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The must-watch TV show of the night: ‘Hot Coffee’ on HBO (VIDEO)

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ARTS & FILM  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately this film is only available on HBO, a premium channel, and still well outside many people’s budgets. Look for it, however, in DVD format, buy it used if necessary. The issues covered concern the question of so-called “frivolous lawsuits”, the astroturf “movement” for tort reform (setting limits on corporate responsibility), and jury “punitive caps”—all critical areas of law heavily interfered with and opposed by practically the entire roster of Fortune 500 companies and their allies.

By Ken Tucker
Just a quick heads-up: If you can, watch Hot Coffee on HBO (currently also available on demand). Remember the 1994 court case of the woman who was awarded $2.9 million for spilling a cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself? It even became a plot point in an episode of Seinfeld. Well, you don’t know the half of it. Continue reading »

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Sanitation alert: Reinventing the Crapper, changing habits

 ANNOTATED NEWS, HISTORY  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

Timofei Belov, Pravda.ru

When Engineer Thomas Crapper (left) marketed the Improved Ornamental Registered Flush-down Water Closet, commonly known as “The Crapper” he took his place in the hall of fame of sanitary engineering. However, he did not, in fact, invent the flush toilet – he invented the ballcock and produced quality Crappers for sale.

Many were the people over time who visited a house with an indoor toilet and were horrified at the lack of hygiene, reporting “Well, how disgusting. Mine is in an outhouse at the end of the garden”. Nowadays the flush toilet is a rudimentary past of sanitary equipment gracing bathrooms across the seven continents. Continue reading »

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NATO war crime: Libya water supply

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, Olympian-class scumbags, US Foreign Policy  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda.Ru

While the kept American press hardly makes a noise about this clear international atrocity, the pressure on Libya and its people continues.

A NATO terrorist attack has hit a water pipes factory in al-Brega, murdering six guards, this being the factory which makes pipes for the great man-made irrigation system across the desert which brings water to seventy per cent of Libyan homes, according to sources in Libya. The factory was hit after the water supply network was destroyed on Friday.

July 22 2011. A date for humanity to remember. NATO hit the Libyan water supply pipeline. It will take months to repair. Then on Saturday they hit the pipeline factory producing pipes to repair it. Continue reading »

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Michael Hudson: Mr. Obama’s Scare Tactics to Get Democrats to Vote for His Republican Wall Street Plan

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

GOP's McConnell: The perfect foil for Obama's hypocritical act. He actually asked for less than the president was insistent on giving.

You know that the debt kerfuffle is as staged as melodramatically as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”  

This is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week now, ever since the President used almost the same words in his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.
Continue reading »

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From my Moscow mausoleum: Letter to progressive Americans

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM  Comments Off
Jul 282011
 

By V. I. Ulyanov | Progreso Weekly Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Lenin: The greatest tactician the working class has ever had.

But first, I want to acknowledge that I was incorrect about my prognostication as to when a social revolution was to begin in North America. Certainly a revolution of peasants started south of the U.S. border in 1910, but not within the borders of the home of American capitalists. I was off by 94 years.

In 1917, I wrote that the United States had sunk “into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves, and suppress everything.” Those words were fairly accurate at the time, but they are even more so today. Yet there was no revolutionary situation THEN. [1]

 I never imagined in my wildest dreams that you will have to deal in the 21st century with the equivalent of the “know nothings” of the 19th century. Those who died before and after me, including Mr. Bismarck and Mr. Keynes, have known how deficit financing made it possible for capitalism to survive and flourish when confronted with so many financial cycles [as Marx and our own Russian economists, Kondriateff and Minsky, predicted].

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