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
Sep 092011
 
The case for cutting meat consumption has never been more compelling. Yet we remain stubbornly addicted to big protein hits in animal form. Could that be about to change?
by Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian (U.K.), Saturday 10 September 2011
 
A woman looks through the window of a butchers shop
Food inflation is one factor influencing people to eat less meat. Photograph: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON/REUTERS

IF YOU SHARE the typical British appetite, you will have worked your way through more than 1.5kg of meat this week as part of your annual 80kg quota of flesh-eating. That leaves you behind your typical American counterpart – working his or her way to 125kg a year – but still near the top of the international league of carnivores. Continue reading »

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Sep 092011
 

On July 12, 2011, the Center for Biological Diversity struck a historic legal settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, requiring the agency to make initial or final decisions on whether to add hundreds of imperiled plants and animals to the endangered species list by 2018. The Endangered Species Act is America’s strongest environmental law and surest way to save species threatened with extinction. Continue reading »

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Sep 092011
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ON HIS program last night (9.8.11), Keith Olbermann (Current TV) exposed the stealthy connection between New Jersey’s Republican Governor, Chris Christie, and the notorious sociopathic plutocrats, the Koch brothers. This is of course scarcely new. Scott Walker (Wisconsin’s Governor) was also found to be quite ready to take the brothers’ counsel whose agenda is foul to man, beast and nature, across the board. Watch the video below. Continue reading »

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Sep 092011
 

Joseph Nevins, NACLA
Border Wars

September 7, 2011

John Randolph, a musician and migrant rights activist, is hardly a recognizable name in discussions on matters of immigration and boundary enforcement in the United States, but he should be. This is due to a combination of his 26 years as an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol and, later, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as his present-day willingness to challenge the conventions of mainstream debate and to expose the futility and inhumanity of the status quo. 

Last week, Randolph authored a rather startling piece  for the Huffington Post in which he speaks of how, during his many years as a federal agent, he hunted and caught “many people.” The vast majority of them, he writes, “were good, hard working” individuals. This, and the violence and injury that he saw, eventually led him “to wonder why immigrants had to be chased like animals, and why I was being paid to chase them.”

He now understands the U.S.-Mexico boundary as functioning “to keep the good people from both sides from joining together, from knowing each other, and from prospering,” and sees efforts to interdict drugs and migrants as destined to fail. Continue reading »

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Sep 092011
 

ALL FROM FAIR—Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Thank you, FAIR 

Jonathan Chait’s Not-So-Magical Thinking

09/07/2011 by Peter Hart

Chait: A self-described "liberal hawk".

As progressive criticism of the Obama administration has intensified,  the critics of the critics have stepped forward to defend the White House. Much of the case comes down to saying that Obama’s lefty critics don’t know how the game is played in Washington.

Jonathan Chait from the New Republic had a New York Times Magazine piece this weekend (9/4/11) taking issue with Obama critics like Glenn Greenwald, accusing them of “magical thinking” about the power of the presidency. As the argument goes, Congress can stop what the White House wants to do, so you can’t blame Obama for not winning more progressive victories.

I am fairly certain that people like Greenwald or Paul Krugman know how Congress works. Their criticism of Obama is more substantive–that the policies he advocates aren’t very good even before one factors in what Eric Cantor or John Boehner are going to say about them. Continue reading »

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Sep 092011
 

OBAMA & JOBS After playing a big role in the American economic debacle now afflicting most Americans, and through his betrayals and unleadership, Obama and his accomplices now propose a “jobs program” that serves as a smokescreen to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block. It’s nothing less than balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest and weakest sectors of the population.—Eds. 

WATCH VIDEO BELOW Continue reading »

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