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 [...]
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 [...]
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
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 [...]
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:
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 [...]
CBS media turd Scott Pelley pontificates about US journalism
The Problem With Journalism? Scott Pelley Blames the Internet By Peter Hart, FAIR When big-time reporters decide to try their hands at media criticism, the results are usually disappointing–but they can also be quite revealing. So when a video of CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley started to making the rounds, the headlines associated with it piqued my interest. Over [...]
Sticking a Thumb to the Wind
Yesterday, I hitch-hiked to the gym.
If I tell that to any of my friends, they look at me like I’m crazy.
Yet if I had said the same thing 40 years ago, it would have been like saying, “I just drove over to the store” or “I just had lunch.” No one would have batted an eye. Continue reading »
Kate Randall, WSWS.ORG
A bipartisan proposal presented last week would replace the traditional Medicare program for seniors and the disabled with a fixed federal contribution toward the cost of coverage for each beneficiary. The plan is the latest effort to open up to privatization and destruction the most significant social program enacted in the United States after World War II.
_________
LEFT: Ron Wyden (left) conferring with Chuck Grassley. Wyden, who only recently was “standing firm” to protect Medicare has now made a deal with notorious Republican thug Paul Ryan to eviscerate the program. Wyden could be a poster boy for the treacherous “cave-in Democrats”, but he has lots of competition, beginning with the equivocating man in the White House. —Eds.
Under the plan presented by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin, Medicare recipients would be given a set amount of “premium support” to be used to purchase insurance from private companies on a federally regulated Medicare “exchange,” where traditional Medicare would also be available as an option. The plan would cap spending increases at the growth of the economy plus one percentage point and would require Congress to find ways to slash costs if this were exceeded. Continue reading »
By Patrice Greanville
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.“
__________
Be advised that this article leads to images which are extremely graphic and disturbing. These are not cosmeticized pictures of this terrible reality that now threatens to expand to yet more regions of the world. Most of the photos were captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
__________
The poetic prophesy above is not likely to come true any time soon. War has been romanticized in innumerable books and movies, and made fortunes for those who exploited the subject well. (Clint Eastwood is still at it, among others, with outings such as, Flags of Our Fathers, while movie and television tycoon Jerry Bruckheimer, of Top Gun fame, a perfect example of what a cynical cultural prostitute is all about, has willingly become a one-man propaganda ministry for the Pentagon). In most movies-at least until recently-soldiers died “beautifully”-no hideous wounds, no real gasping fear in their eyes, they even got to say a few noble words for posterity, proof of a charitable destiny that, despite assigning them death, did not deny them their fifteen seconds of fame. Continue reading »
A Counter-Productive Strategy in Afghanistan
The real blame for all this horrible killing and maiming must rest with those who engineer wars to advance the agendas of puny plutocratic minorities and their hangers-on throughout the political-media-military-industrial complex. Too bad that it is not they who pay in the flesh for such crimes, but those who are their victims, including far too many indoctrinated American soldiers.—Eds.
by SHERWOOD ROSS
Even though it has spent at least $60 billion to destroy them, the Pentagon is losing the battle to combat the Improvised Explosive Devices(IEDs), which have accounted for two out of every three U.S. casualties in Iraq and Iran. This won’t stop the Pentagon, though, from spending another $10.1 billion on them next year as it struggles to reduce the human toll the IEDs are taking in its longest-ever war.
While 10 to 15 percent of the IEDs that go off maim or kill U.S. soldiers, “The statistical likelihood of (an enemy) being killed or hurt while planting a bomb was close to zero”, writes Andrew Cockburn in the November issue of Harper’s magazine. By May, 2007, he reported, some 70,000 IEDs were planted in Iraq alone. Continue reading »
David Michael Green
There is this incredibly sick segment of the country – people who look to politics as a chance to vindicate their resentments, justify their hatreds and exonerate their stupidity – and the contest among the GOP candidates is to find the individual who can throw them the most red meat…”
If it feels to you a bit reminiscent of 1968 these days, that’s because it is.
And that’s a good thing.
It’s starting to look like 2011 was the year of Basta!, when people finally woke up and found the voice with which to say Enough! To say that it comes in the nick of time is like saying that Rick Perry could afford to study a bit harder. In fact, this development is long overdue. Continue reading »
The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, formally announced yesterday, has produced a mind-numbing deluge of articles in the international press presenting the regime in Pyongyang as irrational and crazed—a dangerous threat to stability in North East Asia, requiring the US and its allies to put their militaries on alert.
Kim Jong-il headed an oppressive Stalinist regime that represented the interests not of the North Korean working class and peasantry, but those of a privileged bureaucratic elite. However, the chief responsibility for the perennial regional tensions lies with the aggressive policies of the US, which has repeatedly sought to destabilise North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Continue reading »