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
  • 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 [...]

  • Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect's Stated Motives?

    Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect’s Stated Motives?

    Consortium News [1] / By Ray McGovern [2] Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev’s note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the [...]

  • A new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    A new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    By David Walsh, wsws.org Directed by Baz Luhrmann, co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald “It’s not all rubbish,” cried Amory passionately. “This is the first time in my life I’ve argued Socialism. It’s the only panacea I know. I’m restless. My whole generation is restless. I’m sick [...]

  • Obama’s New Appointments Prove that He Will Continue to Lick Wall Street’s Boots In His Second Term

    Obama’s New Appointments Prove that He Will Continue to Lick Wall Street’s Boots In His Second Term

    by WashingtonsBlog Puts Fox In Charge of the Henhouse … Again The party line is that Obama’s new pick for SEC boss – Mary Jo White – will be tough on Wall Street. For example, the Wall Street Journal writes: Obama Taps Ex-Prosecutor Mary Jo White, Portending Increased Policing of Wall Street In reality, this is putting the [...]

  • Pole dancing for the faint-hearted

    Let the Real Housewives try this for a change. Did you like this? Share it:

  • IRS Scandal Headlines: More Than Meets the Eye

    IRS Scandal Headlines: More Than Meets the Eye

    by Stephen Lendman More than targeting political enemies is involved. More on than below. The practice is longstanding. Republican and Democrat administrations use the IRS abusively.  During the Coolidge administration, Republican Senator James Couzens investigated the IRS’ predecessor – the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).  Did you like this? Share it:

  • Putin v. Obama et al

    Putin v. Obama et al

    by Stephen Lendman On May 16, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Russia Raises Stakes in Syria,” saying: Russia “sent a dozen or more warships to patrol waters near its naval base in Syria, a buildup that US and European officials see as a newly aggressive stance meant partly to warn the West and Israel not to intervene [...]

Obama Campaign Hires Keystone XL Pipeline Lobbyist

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Oct 252011
 

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet

Johnson: A willing tool of a corrupt system Now an Obama campaign advisor.

 Politico reported this morning that Obama re-election campaign had just hired Broderick Johnson as a senior advisor. Mike Allen writes: 

Broderick Johnson, a Washington lawyer and the husband of NPR Michele Norris, is joining President Barack Obama reelection campaign as a senior adviser and member of the senior staff to help provide “an ear to the ground,” Obama for America officials said Monday.

 Johnson, a partner at Bryan Cave, the St. Louis-based law firm, worked on the Clinton White House legislative affairs team and then went to K Street as a lobbyist for AT&T and BellSouth and most recently served as chairman of Bryan Cave lobbying arm, Bryan Cave Strategies. He has been a registered lobbyist for clients such as Anheuser Busch Companies, Comcast Corp., FedEx Corp., and Microsoft as recently as 2010. At the beginning of this year, Bryan Cave terminated all of his involvement with lobbying clients. Continue reading »

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Mass killings, arbitrary detention under new Libyan regime

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Oct 252011
 

By Patrick O’Connor, Political Analyst, WSWS, a socialist organization

US-based Human Rights Watch yesterday revealed it had evidence of a massacre of 53 people carried out by anti-Gaddafi fighters in the devastated Libyan city of Sirte. The bodies, some with their hands bound behind their backs before being shot about a week ago, were discovered in Hotel Mahari, in Sirte’s District 2.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted: “The bloodstains on the grass directly below the bodies, bullet holes visible in the ground, and the spent cartridges of AK-47 and FN-1 rifles scattered around the site strongly suggest that some, if not all of the people, were shot and killed in the location where they were discovered.” Continue reading »

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Professor Cole gloats over Gaddafi’s murder

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Oct 252011
 

By Bill Van Auken, Senior Analyst, WSWS, a socialist organization

The lynching of Gaddafi by the rebels—from the start denounced by impartial observers as brutal in their treatment of enemies, real and imagined—has been toasted by Hillary Clinton and others in officialdom. Juan Cole must surely be proud of his work.

The eight-month US-NATO war against Libya, culminating in the barbaric siege of the Mediterranean coastal city of Sirte and the hideous lynching of the country’s deposed ruler, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has been backed from its outset by a number of political parties around the world that call themselves “left” and an upper-middle-class socio-political milieu that forms their key constituency. Continue reading »

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Allocating the budget: The time has arrived to democratize our taxes

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Oct 252011
 

Change Washington’s Priorities? Here’s How!

Armando Gutierrez, Ph.D.

The Occupy America movement taps into a fundamental American grievance: the irrelevancy of most Americans to the political process. Policies are enacted that affect each of us in profound ways and we have no say. Our tax dollars are scattered hither and yon, often with zero accountability, and we are invisible, barely an afterthought, if that.

Here are some fundamental facts. Every year about 136 million Americans file federal income taxes. We send some $1.2 trillion to the treasury. Congress using its discretionary budget authority allocates that money. Put simply, Congress uses its discretion to divvy up over a trillion dollars as it sees fit.  Continue reading »

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Rachel Maddow: Smooth stenographer to power or independent journalist? (VIDEO)

 ANNOTATED NEWS, HUMBUG CENTRAL, IMPERIALISM, VIDEOS  Comments Off
Oct 252011
 

Rachel Maddow interviews US United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice.
(MSNBC, 10.24.11)

Patrice Greanville

LAST NIGHT RACHEL MADDOW —one of the lionesses of the liberal press—furnished a textbook example of what it means to practice pseudo journalism, to serve as a shill for an virulent global capitalism bent on restoring colonialist relations around the world.  

Maddow is certainly not original in this role; she has hundreds, if not thousands of colleagues who also perform valuable propaganda work for the American hegemon. Indeed, the record of the American media—and in far too many cases, the Western press in general—is rich with instances of abject collusion with power.  The most revolting example on recent memory was 2003, when the corporate media literally rolled over to accommodate and amplify the profusion of lies dished out by the Bush regime to justify war against Iraq, making American journalists little more than stenographers to power.  

WATCH VIDEO BELOW Continue reading »

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