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

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    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 [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • CBS media turd Scott Pelley pontificates about US journalism

    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 [...]

Liberal Whores

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, LIBERAL BETRAYALS  Comments Off
Mar 072012
 

by BAR editor and senior consultant Margaret Kimberley

Eric Holder: A pathetic careerist and a disgrace to his office.
“Due process and judicial process are not one and the same.”

__

Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder “asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist.” Liberals love the guy.

“They are people of easy virtue, they don’t really have any principles and they sell themselves pretty cheaply.”

If liberals are good for anything, it is being outraged about all the wrong things. If one were to measure the amount of media debate in the past week, the conclusion might be that a law student being called a slut was the worst thing happening in the nation and the world. Liberals can’t be bothered to protest against war, even if they did so during the Bush administration, or indefinite detention, or targeted killings, or drone strikes, or the destruction of Libya or Somalia. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 6:36 pm

DOGMAN (A short story)

 BOOK NOTES  Comments Off
Mar 072012
 

    By Gaither Stewart                                                                                                                       

At first, people of the town didn’t notice that every day there were fewer stray dogs creeping sociably under their feet while they took the sun on the benches at el Jardín. The growing absence of the rangy brown dogs – short- haired mongrels, their ribs leaping from their undersides, habitually scratching for nourishment at the food stalls around the square or wandering single file up and down the steep back streets – didn’t register on anyone.     

If town people had even thought of them, they would have concluded that the dogs had lazily retreated to cool interiors behind the town’s thick stonewalls. Even at 7000 feet, the June days that year were unusually hot and sultry. For weather was indeed a factor in that summer’s bizarre events. Ceiling fans turned all night in luxury villas on the hills as well as in stone houses sprawling haphazardly in the lower town. Mosquitoes were rampant. During the torrid days cactuses in the parks and on the surrounding hills stood still and mesquite trees shimmered brown and tan. Under the everlasting skies the mountains stood silent. Something indefinable had changed. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:33 pm

There is no proper Left in American politics – even Obama is more Right-wing than Cameron

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, DEBATING POINTS  Comments Off
Mar 072012
 

By US politics Last updated: March 7th, 2012
The Daily Telegraph

Editor’s Note: This is the view from across the pond, by W.  Ellis, a British commentator (with the conservative roadsheet The Daily Telegraph (1) ), himself probably a liberal. (The tip is the sarcasm he uses to define Trotsky, who, whatever a leftist may think of him, is a historical person of note.) This article confirms our oft-repeated assertion that in Europe, as well as in most of the world, American centrists are correctly seen for what they are: hard conservatives or worse, and that the US political spectrum is ludicrously narrow, with the entire left amputated.  A veritable rump marketplace of ideas. In sum, a disgrace. —PG


Note that Dave is on the Left (Photo: PA)

I want you to imagine a twelve-inch ruler, like the ones those of us of a certain age used to pack in our schoolbags. On the far left, just above the “1,” picture Trotsky and his band of crazies; on the far right, at “12,” Hitler and Genghis Khan.

Where on this scale would you place David Cameron? I’d put him at the seven-inch mark, a little to the right of Clement Attlee but definitely to the left of Tony Blair. This measured approach recognises distinctions down to a tenth of an inch, allowing Ed Miliband to sit fractionally to the left of the Prime Minister and just to the right of Nick Clegg.

Now picture a similar ruler used to define United States politics. A very different, and quite frightening, picture emerges. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 3:07 pm