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 [...]

  • The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    Our Economic System is Driving Climate Change by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN The ancient Greeks attributed weather to the god Zeus; today we can safely attribute it to industrial capitalism and its voracious consumption of fossil fuels. The carnage left by a tornado in Oklahoma yesterday is just the latest in our economic system’s daunting body count. [...]

  • Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    By Barry Grey and Nick Barrickman, wsws.org Twenty-seven-year-old Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning while being interrogated by police and intelligence officials in an Orlando, Florida, apartment. Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, was reportedly being questioned by a Federal Bureau of [...]

  • Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte - Part One

    Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte – Part One

    PART ONE OF FOUR Editor’s Note: The core truth about Napoleon is still a matter of debate. Napoleon, opportunist or usurping though he may appear to a modern Marxian obswerver, not to mention Anglo-American mainstream historians tainted with Francophobic hatred and contempt for the French and their revolution, was also seen as a threat by [...]

  • 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 [...]

When You Play the Plutocrats’ Game, They Win: On Civility and Half Measures

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Aug 262011
 

By Kristine Mattis

One of the Democrats in the recall elections said in an interview that she did not like the recent changes in Wisconsin government, because things had become so divisive and people could not compromise. Given the current state of affairs, I would say that compromise is not in order. When it comes to balancing a budget by hampering or eliminating all of the social safety nets for the poor in order to enhance incentives for corporate interests, a legislator who seeks a balanced “compromise” on these unequal terms is not a legislator that any citizen needs…”

Mattis

LIKE MANY WISCONSINITES, I am feeling rather dejected after the disappointing August 9th recall elections. But unlike most of my brothers and sisters, my disappointment stems not so much from the outcome, but from the adherence to propriety and to a faith in inherently corrupt and unjust systems. Continue reading »

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The rape of Libya

 ANNOTATED NEWS, MEDIA SCUM, US Foreign Policy, US Military  Comments Off
Aug 262011
 

By Bill Van Auken, Senior Analyst, WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization

As usual, the US/Western media played a crucial proopaganda role, “assassinating” the character of the Libyan leadership so as to whitewash and conceal the true objectives of the “humanitarian mission.”—Eds

Five days after “rebels” entered Tripoli, under the cover of NATO bombing and led by foreign special forces, the abject criminality of imperialism’s takeover of Libya is becoming increasingly evident.

 

Fighting continues to rage throughout the Libyan capital, whose two million residents have been made hostages of the armed gangs and Western special forces troops that have seized control of the city’s streets. Continue reading »

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Orange Jumpsuits/Double Standards

 ANNOTATED NEWS, EU.Britain  Comments Off
Aug 262011
 
August 25, 2011By Robert ParryIn Great Britain, convicted looters are being dressed in orange jumpsuits and made to clean up areas damaged by recent riots. The law-and-order crowd on both sides of the Atlantic cheers this “riot payback scheme,” even when applied to offenders who only grabbed some bottled water or received a stolen pair of running shorts from a friend. 

After all, the phrase “zero tolerance” was made for moments when the poor and the powerless break the rules.

By contrast, these same British authorities will take no action against officials from the former government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined with President George W. Bush’s team in making a bloody mess out of Iraq in clear violation of international law. Continue reading »
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THE GUGA HUNT: When will this world be free of “respectable cruelties”?

 ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Aug 262011
 

Editor’s Note: It’s usually one of the telltale signs of a conservative character—the natural reverence for tradition.

Problem is, most traditions are bad, often disgusting historical anachronisms, respectable cruelties whose only value is to please the most backward or powerful sections of the populace, regrettably in many cases, the vast majority.  Thus, it’s no accident that the most backward regions of the world are still firmly ruled by tradition, places where profound inequality is accepted as normal and immutable, and where women are still treated as chattel, and gay people subject to macabre persecution. Yet the so-called “advanced, developed world” (especially the United States), while thinking itself different and superior, still carries quite a baggage in this regard, notably the mental rot of dominionistic religion, the undeserved respect for nobility and its myriad accoutrements, and a host of other reactionary, cowardly, and unexamined values and beliefs that should bring shame to any culture but which remain in place because those who should wash away such practices—especially the media and political leaders— do not dare risk losing political popularity. Continue reading »

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