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”
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, [...]
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
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
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
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
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
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 [...]
By Ryan Tate, Editor, Gawker
Editor’s Note: We don’t want to act like an oaf and begrudge Steve Jobs, now departed, his place in history and culture. Apple has always been an innovative firm, and its drive for designs and systems which are as user friendly as esthetically pleasing is to be applauded. Much of that drive came from Jobs, although, not as much as he himself would have liked to make us believe. Continue reading »
ARCHIVES: Articles you should have read the first time around, but missed.
By David Swanson
AFGHANISTAN-US-UNREST-MARINES-ANNIVERSARY” by WBUR on flickr| A US Marine from Fox Company 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines wears a mask that
reads kill as he sets out from his base in Farah Province
I RECENTLY SAT DOWN for 90 minutes to speak with six Afghan judges, all of them women, and an English-Dari interpreter, a man. They spoke to me as individuals. They aren’t preparing any investigations or indictments. The relevance of their being judges is that they know the law. They’ve studied international law, and they were visiting the United States to learn about our legal and political systems. They believe the United States is guilty of war crimes.
I was the one who raised the subject. I pointed to Italian convictions of CIA agents for kidnapping, Spanish investigations of U.S. officials for torture, etc., and asked what these judges’ views were on international law violations, universal jurisdiction, and what appear to be clear crimes committed by the United States in Afghanistan. Continue reading »
Editorial Cartoon by Milt Priggee
The truth hurts, but those are the facts, ma’am.
By ALAN BAVLEY, The Kansas City Star
Send this article to your nearest Obamabot, neatly packaged and with a pink ribbon, with sincere compliments from us.—Eds
Patient advocacy groups are protesting the government’s shutdown of public access to data on malpractice and disciplinary actions involving thousands of doctors nationwide.
The National Practitioner Data Bank maintains confidential records that state medical boards, hospitals and insurance plans use in granting licenses or staff privileges to doctors. Continue reading »
Archives: Articles you should have read the first time around, but missed. (First published February 2010)
By Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, Ret.
THE LANDSLIDE ELECTION of Barack Obama and its euphoric aftermath were, I believe, widely misinterpreted, especially by Washington Democrats. It was not just a rejection of the Republican Party, nor merely of Cheney/Bush neo-conservatism (though these were certainly involved). No, the Obama phenomenon reflected the widespread desire of the American people for “Real Change” … for Change they could believe in – just what Obama promised. It reflected not just a desire for a change in party (they could have had that with Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden), but a yearning for a fundamental change in how government does business and (I contend) whom government serves. In short, it reflected the hope that Obama would truly serve the needs of the people and not the moneyed elite. Some of us still harbor faint hope that President Obama will yet turn out to be that kind of President – a populist President who brings about “Real Change”, not the “chump change” we’ve seen so far. Continue reading »
Citizen’s Dispatch—
By John Iacovelli, Scribillare
LAST NIGHT I ATTENDED ONE OF THE MANY MEETINGS taking place in nearly nine hundred cities around the U.S. to spread the Occupy Wall Street movement beyond New York. Our meeting was in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, outside the main public library. It was the first meeting of the Ft. Lauderdale group. About two hundred people attended, at least half, I think, under thirty years old.
The first order of business was to read the Declaration of Occupation of New York City, by the Wall Street group. This is a list of grievances, mostly economic in nature, against corporations, and calls to people around the world to exercise their power against similar grievances. That call states “Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.” Continue reading »
