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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
  • Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby versus Prince Harry and his polo-playing American friends

    Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby versus Prince Harry and his polo-playing American friends

    By David Walsh, wsws.org “Prince Harry rounded off his hugely successful week-long tour of the U.S. today very much in his comfort zone – playing polo. … He was greeted by club founder Peter Brandt [sic] and his model wife, Stephanie Seymour. Brandt, 65, – whose wife is 44 – is an American industrialist and [...]

  • Should the US bomb Syria?

    Should the US bomb Syria?

    By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left There is no compelling evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebel forces which seek its overthrow, and for purely military reasons, it’s highly unlikely that they have been used. Simply put, the Syrian army can kill more rebels with missiles, tanks and heavy artillery, even [...]

  • Why America May Be the Last Empire

    Why America May Be the Last Empire

    TomDispatch [1] / By Tom Engelhardt [2] To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [3]. It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia.  Its nuclear arsenal held 45,000 warheads [4], and its military had five million [5] troops [...]

  • The Real I.R.S. Scandal

    The Real I.R.S. Scandal

    OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS By SHEILA KRUMHOLZ and ROBERT WEINBERGER [Note we reproduce this NYT's piece here for reasons of compelling public service.—Eds] WASHINGTON Hieronymus ROOM FOR DEBATE The I.R.S. is in the hot seat for scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax exemption. But do all 501(c)(4)’s need a second look? NEWS that employees at the Internal Revenue Service targeted [...]

  • OpEds—War and Pain: Nothing New Under the Sun

    OpEds—War and Pain: Nothing New Under the Sun

     By Gaither Stewart The world goes round and round and human beings say and do the same things again and again. So that it seems there is truly nothing new under the sun. Man’s perplexing unchanging behavior and the ways of the world have again led me back to the ancient Greeks, just to take [...]

  • Can Working from the Inside Change the Democratic Party?

    Can Working from the Inside Change the Democratic Party?

    by Ron Ridenour Occupy Wall Street’s dynamic grass roots movement is quiescent and may or may not return. Its respite or demise is due to a combination of deliberate and apparently nationally directed police violence and federal, state and local government spying, as well as to its own lack of political direction. It remains a political [...]

  • Classic Essays: Hail the Reds

    Classic Essays: Hail the Reds

    What’s Left: Hail the Reds By Stephen Gowans www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/reds.html Over the seven decades of its existence, and despite having to spend so much time preparing, fighting, and recovering from wars, the Soviet Union managed to create one of the great achievements of human history: a great industrial society that eliminated most of the inequalities of [...]

  • Obama's Contempt for Venezuelan Democracy

    Obama’s Contempt for Venezuelan Democracy

       by Stephen Lendman It’s no surprise. He exceeds the worst of George Bush. He abhors democratic values. He defiles rule of law principles. He governs by diktat authority. He’s waging war on humanity. He targets all independent states. He wants puppet pro-US regimes replacing them. Did you like this? Share it:

Hillary Clinton: “We came, we saw, he died.”

 ANNOTATED NEWS, IMPERIALISM  Comments Off
Oct 232011
 

THE BLOODY AND CYNICAL INTERVENTION in Libya to reestablish a relationship of colonialism in Africa—not to mention grab at gunpoint the enormous oil deposits in that region and elsewhere— is permitting glimpses behind the hypocritical mask worn by the sanctimonious leaders of the “Free World.”  Here’s Clinton and Cameron gloating on the occasion of Gaddafi’s lynching. The Clinton clip is especially jarring, showing the actual face of American liberalism: comfortably ensconced in the folds of the capitalist system, insulated from real harm by many layers of power, this upper-middle-class matron, acting as if she was at some cocktail party, and surrounded by sycophants, is happy to be filling the imperial script.  It’s quite obvious Clinton—after all formally a high US government official— does not mind at all the sordid death of someone Washington thought expendable.  It says something about Democrats who continue to revere the Clintons as some sort of progressive duo, and the true nature of the American government. 

 Courtesy RT.

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“What Did We Actually Do Right?” On the Unexpected Success and Spread of Occupy Wall Street

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS, TACTICS & STRATEGIES  Comments Off
Oct 232011
 

By David Graeber, Naked Capitalism 

Editor’s Note:  David DeGraw of Amped Status is widely credited as the originator of “We are the 99%.” The piece below represents one viewpoint of the origins and successes of Occupy Wall Street. 

Just a few months ago, I wrote a piece for Adbusters that started with a conversation I’d had with an Egyptian activist friend named Dina: 

All these years,” she said, “we’ve been organizing marches, rallies… And if only 45 people show up, you’re depressed, if you get 300, you’re happy. Then one day, 200,000 people show up. And you’re incredulous: on some level, even though you didn’t realize it, you’d given up thinking that you could actually win.   

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads across America, and even the world, I am suddenly beginning to understand a little of how she felt. Continue reading »

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Have Corporate Media Warmed to Occupy Wall Street?

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, MEDIA SCUM, MEDIA TURDS  Comments Off
Oct 232011
 

SOURCE— Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

MEDIA COVERAGE of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests started out exactly as one might expect. There was little coverage at first (FAIR Action Alert, 9/23/11), and as it expanded, much of it consisted of snide dismissals of demonstrators’ ignorance, hygiene and so on.

But then something happened. Following incidents of police abuse, including the unprovoked pepper-spraying of several demonstrators on September 24, media coverage began to pick up (FAIR Activism Update, 9/29/11). NPR executive editor Dick Meyer explained that the protests were not covered early on because they “did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective.” But within a day or so, NPR was covering the protests, as was the rest of the media. Continue reading »

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