Protect dolphins from slaughter ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, ANNOTATED NEWS Comments Off Oct 112011 BY IRA FISCHER WWW.IRAFISCHER.COM Autumn marks the start of the dolphin hunting season off the coast of Japan. Whalers, equipped with dragnets, harpoons and machetes, set out to sea in a “drive hunt” for dolphins. Once a pod is spotted, the hunters surround the dolphins with their boats and bang on metal poles that panic these acoustically sensitive animals. The hunters then force the disoriented dolphins toward shore where they are pinned against the coastline by nets. Once entrapped, they are kept at bay for inspection by agents of the marine mammal exhibition industry, which pays tens of thousands of dollars each for “show” dolphins. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Decline of the American Left ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, Steven Jonas Comments Off Oct 112011 By Steven Jonas, Senior Editor Oct. 11, 2011 In The New York Times “Sunday Review” of Sept. 25, 2011, Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent magazine, published an article entitled “Whatever Happened to the American Left?” It is drawn from a new book of his entitled American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. In the article (full disclosure: I have not read the book, only the review that appeared in The Times Sunday Book Review on Sept. 18) Mr. Kazin attributed the aforementioned decline to a number of factors. They included: unlike the (relatively) powerful left of the 1930s, the modern left, unlike the modern Right, has not been germinating for very long; in the 1970s they started leaving traditional “left” issues such as “class justice” for such things as rights for minorities and women; the failed promises of the Democratic Party, post pre-Viet Nam Lyndon Johnson; dependence on “politicians;” and “not reconnecting with ordinary Americans.” So, you see, the “decline of the US left” is all the left’s fault. <<< IMAGE: The legendary Big Bill Haywood, head of the I.W.W., was one of the earliest combative union leaders in the US. His kind has not been seen for almost 100 years, but the sorry state of American trade unions is not so much a product of their own flaws, as the inevitable result of an all-out never-ending assault on workers by private capital using all the forces and tools of the state, which they naturally control. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Social Justice Protests Head Everywhere ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR Comments Off Oct 112011 By Stephen Lendman Lying to keep wars going is old stuff. General William Westmoreland told Congress and the US public that progress was being made. On Meet the Press on November 19, 1967, he regurgitated the lie, saying he felt confident “within two years or less….we will be able to phase-down the level of our military effort.” Ordinary people across the Middle East, Europe and America are fed up and want long denied social justice. Londoners are enraged about growing social pain, government in the pockets of monied interests, and endless imperial wars they want ended – NOW! On October 8, The London Guardian headlined, “Stop the War Coalition demo in London marks 10th anniversary of Afghan war,” saying: Protesters read aloud names of fallen UK soldiers, sacrificing their lives for war profiteer gains. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
BOOKS—WM. HATHAWAY: The Real War Heroes ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, CONTROVERSY, IMPERIALISM Comments Off Oct 112011 The Real War HeroesFrom the book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War By William T. Hathaway With annotations by Patrice Greanville Now living in Germany, I can see how important it is to resist such things in their early stages. In the 1930s many Germans were afraid to oppose their government as it became increasingly vicious, hoping it wouldn’t get too bad, hoping they’d be spared, hoping it would end soon, but then bitterly regretted their passivity after it was too late…” Image: JOHN WAYNE’s controversial opus, The Green Berets, presented the Army’s elite troops as fighting for freedom and democracy against the evil communists in all corners of the earth. Shot in splendid color, its storyline was in old fashioned black & white. Ironically, for all his bluster on screen, the Duke, like Reagan, never served in the US armed forces except as a peripheral propaganda asset. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Herman Cain roasted by Lawrence O’Donnell ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS Comments Off Oct 112011 Herman Cain defended controversial remarks on “brainwashing” in an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. (10.6.11) YOU‘RE ’DISTORTING’ WHAT I SAID: HERMAN CAIN BATTLES LAWRENCE O’DONNELL ON MSNBC Editor’s Note: It takes an abject Republican reactionary like Herman Cain to say the right thing for the wrong reasons: that far too many Black Americans are still dazzled by Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency, and remain unquestioningly in a “Democratic party trap”. This is true enough, considering how shamelessly Barack Obama has betrayed the African American people, a position repeatedly advanced by none other than the editors of Black Agenda report, the most respected source of Black radical analysis on contemporary events. But going back to Cain: what would he rather have Black Americans do? Deliver themselves to the tender mercies of the contemptible Republicans, the standing horroshow that makes even a degenerate, treacherous, and totally corporate-owned Democratic party “look good”? It’s that old Lesser Evil trap, again, but the likes of Cain, a successful entrepreneur with all the sensibility of a self-made man, can’t seem to see that dilemma, of which his disgraceful party is a key player. ± Patrice Greanville Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
