The Greanville Post —Vol. VII- 2013

Something to think about—(put cursor over scroller to stop it)

We're engaged in a protracted mass communications battle, a contest of propagandas, Their object is to prop up the system's legitimacy; ours precisely the opposite. The core of a system's illegitimacy is nothing more nor less than its easily demonstrable Orwellian nature. If it claims to be a democracy it must be a plutocracy; if it proclaims to defend the safety of its population, it actively endangers it; if it struts around loudly shouting its allegiance to freedom and the rule of law, it is in actuality a cynical hidden dictatorship; If it brags about its "free press", then you know for sure that it is an abject, servile tool of the power elites. Of course the most infamous contradiction is that when this hypocritical scum kneel before the altar of peace they are actively engaged in making war. On and on. Always the opposite of what it claims. In America, especially, anyone awake can see that readily. But unfortunately the majority are still asleep.—Sean Lenihan •••The cowardice and duplicity of Congress, above all, the Democrats, and the subservience of the media, exhibited in their response to the exposure of the NSA spying programs, encourage the military and intelligence agencies to go even further in their drive toward dictatorship. Mark Udall, the Democratic senator presented as the most “outspoken” critic of the spying programs, began his interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program by pledging his support to the “war on terror” and denouncing leaks of classified information.—Barry Grey••••From Athens to Paris to Brazil, there is growing realization that politics as usual just won’t cut it anymore. We will always lose if we play by their rules rather than invent new forms of struggle, new social movements, and new sensibilities. The defense of the earth requires immediate and decisive action: logging roads need to be blocked, driftnets need to be cut, and cages need to be emptied. But these are piecemeal and reactive measures, and in addition to these tactics, radical movements and alliances must be built that unites struggles on behalf of humanity, nonhuman animals, and the earth in a politics of total liberation. Resistance is the oxygen of the future. Live to resist, resist to live.—Steve Best••••For 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.

Keystone XL Activists Labeled Possible Eco-Terrorists
Green Scare Continues by STEVE HORN Documents recently obtained by Bold Nebraska [1] show that TransCanada – owner of the hotly-contested Keystone XL (KXL) [2] tar sands pipeline – has colluded with an FBI/DHS Fusion Center in Nebraska [3], labeling non-violent activists as possible candidates for “terrorism” charges and other serious criminal charges. Did you like this? Share it:
Gangsta Government
Awake and Take Back Your Republic! by WILLIAM O’CONNOR “I’ll let you have the $10,000 for three points. That’s only because I know you.” I’m listening to Tony yak, my Shylock. Yak, yak has earned the moniker. He never gives his mouth a rest. Yak’s giving me the loan at street price: $30 for every [...]
Edward Snowden Had a Breaking Point, Where He Decided to Risk It All to Fix This Country — What’s Yours?
By Kevin Zeese [2], Margaret Flowers [3] When Edward Snowden [4] reached his breaking point, the world saw the truth about the vast extent of spying by the NSA on Americans and people around the world. In an act of conscience, Snowden released secret information, saying “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their [...]
Spying, Control and Murder Under the Imperial Presidency
Surveillance and the Corporate State by ROB URIE With all of the fear mongering the subject has received in recent decades, Americans have in fact had remarkably little to fear directly from ‘terrorism.’ While actual attacks have been spectacular—they were designed to garner attention, they are both rare and far less dangerous than opportunistic politicians [...]
The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning
By Chris Hedges FORT MEADE, Md.—The military trial of Bradley Manning is a judicial lynching. The government has effectively muzzled the defense team. The Army private first class is not permitted to argue that he had a moral and legal obligation under international law to make public the war crimes he uncovered. The documents that [...]
Edward Snowden: Profile in Courage
Whistleblowing in the Name of the Constitution by CHRISTOPHER H. PYLE Edward Snowden may go down inhistory as one of this nation’s most important whistleblowers. He is certainly one of the bravest. The 29-year-old former technical assistant to the CIA and employee of a defense intelligence contractor has admitted to disclosing top secret documents about [...]
Camping Out: Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful”
From our archives— Camping Out: Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful” Kurt Jacobsen [from New Politics, vol. 7, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 27, Summer 1999] KURT JACOBSEN is a research associate in political science at the University of Chicago and reviews films for the London Guardian. Prefatory note: As a movie buff I was baffled and [...]
Memorable quotes from Snowden interview
Free citizen Dennis Leahy, affiliated with Facebook’s group Edward Snowden Supporters, to which I also subscribe, is making the following material available. Share as widely as you can.—Sean Lenihan Here is a listing of 27 quotes, pulled from the Edward Snowden interview: #1 “The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting [...]

Putting Pundits to Shame: Protesters Know Exactly What They’re Fighting For

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Oct 052011

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

The stupid oligarchy and their henchmen at all levels finally pushed the people too far, and now they may have awakened it past their usual containment walls. The message as Jim Hightower explains it, is that “the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess more net worth today than the bottom 90 percent of us combined. Worse, these privileged few and their political henchmen have structured a new economic ‘normal’ of long-term joblessness, low wages, no benefits or worker rights, miserly public services, and a steadily widening chasm between the rich and the rest of us.” We must restore sanity to this nation.—Eds

It should come as a surprise to nobody that the corporate media’s early coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has featured an abundance of hippie-punching but very little about the substantive issues driving thousands of Americans to take over the streets of cities across the country.

As I approached the 30 or so activists who have been camped out for weeks in front of the Federal Reserve Building as part of OccupySF – a protest smaller than those in New York, Boston or Los Angeles – I’d been primed by news stories heaping scorn on these ostensibly confused, foul-smelling rebels-without-a-cause, but what I encountered was very different. Continue reading »

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Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA

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Oct 052011

“Democracy Now?”

By JOHN WALSH

Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”

Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself. Continue reading »

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“I’m mad as hell and I’m NOT gonna take it anymore!!” (VIDEO)

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Oct 052011

ART SOMETIMES CAN BE SAVAGELY ACCURATE IN ITS PREDICTIONS, and so it is with the movie classic Network, and its epic “prophet of the airwaves,” UBS’ anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch), who’s exploited ruthlessly by the corporate suits while having a nervous breakdown. But here’s the kick: Howard Beale’s “insanity” is saner than all the smooth spin dished out by the prostituted voices emanating from the system. It is a parable that finally has come true. —PG
VIDEO FOLLOWS BELOW Continue reading »

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REFLECTIONS ON CAPITALIST CULTURE AND THE SYSTEMATIC MORONIZATION OF AMERICAN PUBLICS

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Oct 052011

ARTICLES YOU SHOULD HAVE READ THE FIRST TIME AROUND,
BUT DIDN’T

DONALD LAZERE, CYRANO’S JOURNAL

The PRE-EMINENT IMPORTANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY OF IDEOLOGY AS A means of political control was emphasized early in the century by Georg Lukacs in History and Class Consciousness, where he analyzed the false consciousness imposed by capitalist ideology on the working class that caused them to accept beliefs that are against their own self-interest, and by Antonio Gramsci in his formulation of “ideological hegemony” whereby the interests of the capitalist class are made to appear to all other segments of society as the natural, immutable order of the world. Continue reading »

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The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian

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Oct 052011

A Thought Police for the Internet Age
The Guardian includes some fine reporting and occasionally insightful commentary. Possibly because it is farther from the heart of empire, it is able to provide a partial antidote to the craven coverage of the corporate-owned media in the US.

By JONATHAN COOK

There could be no better proof of the revolution – care of the internet – occurring in the accessibility of information and informed commentary than the reaction of our mainstream, corporate media.

For the first time, Western publics – or at least those who can afford a computer – have a way to bypass the gatekeepers of our democracies. Data our leaders once kept tightly under wraps can now be easily searched for, as can the analyses of those not paid to turn a blind eye to the constant and compelling evidence of Western hypocrisy. Wikileaks, in particular, has rapidly eroded the traditional hierarchical systems of information dissemination.

The media – at least the supposedly leftwing component of it – should be cheering on this revolution, if not directly enabling it. And yet, mostly they are trying to co-opt, tame or subvert it. Indeed, progressive broadcasters and writers increasingly use their platforms in the mainstream to discredit and ridicule the harbingers of the new age.

A good case study is the Guardian, considered the most leftwing newspaper in Britain and rapidly acquiring cult status in the United States, where many readers tend to assume they are getting access through its pages to unvarnished truth and the full range of critical thinking on the left. Continue reading »

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GOP Debaters Needn’t Worry: Obama’s No Socialist

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Oct 052011

The spectacle of a bunch of babbling idiots with a mean-spirited agenda (except for a clever operator, Romney) duly represents the state of politics in America as it faithfully reflects the class power of the oligarchs. Rick Perry, while not much worse than the rest, is only missing the drooling from his lips to certify him as a moron. —Eds.

>From The Nation, John Nichols:

John Nicholson September 23, 2011 – 1:09am ET

Asked whether Barack Obama was a socialist — as Texas Governor Rick Perry, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have all agreed is most certainly — former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tried to talk his way around the most predictable question of Thursday night’s Fox News/Google debate.

But he more or less “went there.”

“What President Obama is, is a big-spending liberal,” Romney replied. “He takes his political inspiration from Europe and from the socialist democrats in Europe. Guess what? Europe isn’t working in Europe. It’s not going to work here.”

A few minutes later, Gingrich went all in, decrying “Obama’s socialist policies.”

So there you have it. Obama’s a socialist, right? Wrong. Continue reading »

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URI AVNERY: Mutiny on the Titanic

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Oct 052011

The Crucial Question

By URI AVNERY

Here is a story that has never been told before:

When the Titanic was well out into the Atlantic, its crew mutinied. They demanded higher wages, less cramped quarters, better food. They assembled on the lower decks and refused to budge from there. A few old hands from the engine room tried to extend the scope of the protest. They claimed that the captain was grossly incompetent, that the officers were nincompoops and that the voyage was bound to end in disaster.

But the leaders of the protest resisted. “Let’s not go beyond our practical demands,” they said. “The course of the ship is none of our business. Whatever some of us may think about the captain and the officers on the bridge, we must not mix matters. That would only split the protest.” Continue reading »

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Masters of the Big Lie

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Oct 052011

The War on Regulations

By RALPH NADER

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. “Job-killing regulations,” exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall Street-licking side-kick Eric Candor and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. Continue reading »

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Occupy Wall Street Ends Capitalism’s Alibi

ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, TACTICS & STRATEGIES 1 Response »

Oct 052011

Published on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims

By Richard Wolff

Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants of the status quo over-reacted and that failed to end it – indeed, it fueled the fire. And millions looking on said, “Wow!” And now, ever more people are organizing local, parallel demonstrations – from Boston to San Francisco and many places between. Continue reading »

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Many topics to choose from

There’s violence and there’s violence

Revolutionary Violence vs Institutionalized Violence

"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves..." —Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution.

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