Media treat Afghan killings as PR problem for occupation ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA Comments Off Mar 122012 FAIR Media Advisory | Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim StatusMedia treat killings as PR problem for occupation A U.S. soldier guides a Taliban militant, part of a group of a hundred Afghan Talibans, as he hands over his weapons as part of the Afghan government’s reconciliation and reintegration program in Laghman province. (Reuters) Parwiz / Reuters____ The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children, in southern Afghanistan early Sunday morning was treated by many media outlets primarily as a PR challenge for continued war and occupation of that country. “Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation’s leaders, especially for President Barack Obama,” explained an Associated Press analysis piece (3/12/12). Reuters (3/12/12) called it “the latest American public relations disaster in Afghanistan.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
I Don’t Want To See Their Faces; I Don’t Want To Hear Them Scream ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR, The Middle East Comments Off Mar 122012 by Christopher Cooper Afghans congregate in front of the house where a US soldier assassinated several civilians. The whole thing is regrettable, really. Shocking, truth to tell. And so sad, I’m sure, for those people, those blanket-wearing, beard-growing, false-god-worshiping, probably-related-to-terrorists, citizens of Afghanistan whose wives and children and babies were gunned down in their beds, shot, murdered, slaughtered, and then burned by one of America’s finest Sunday morning. But hey, what are ya gonna do? These things happen. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
OpEds: Why should Occupy target the 1%?(1) ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE Comments Off Mar 122012 “To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible” (Plato). By Joost van Steenis Ah..the long-suffering rich! With some quotes I illustrate the special place of the 1%, their selfishness, the 99% hardly exists. They seem hostile aliens that enslave the 99%. The 1% live in a separated, exclusive and privileged world where the 99% are not allowed to come. To get a Humane World we must creatively disturb the world of the 1% and make it uninhabitable. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Improbable Rise of the New Far Right in Europe ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, AUDIO, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, FASCISM Comments Off Mar 122012 Fascistoid Le Pen stands for president, Griffin can’t get elected Europe’s far right Jean Marie Le Pen, head of France’s Front National Originally: September 2011 | Le Monde Diplomatique In this month’s podcast for Le Monde diplomatique, George Miller talks to journalist and author K. Biswas about the fortunes of Europe’s far-right populist parties, many of which have entered mainstream politics in ways unthinkable a decade ago. They discuss the role of the media and of leadership in their fortunes, and how to interpret July’s tragic events in Norway in the context of far-right politics. Listen to it: CLICK HERE Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
OpEds: “We unhappy few” ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, HISTORY Comments Off Mar 122012 50 years since the Port Huron statement We unhappy few by Alexander Cockburn The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held their first convention in the summer of 1962, in Port Huron in the American mid-West, an hour’s drive north of Detroit. They were the cutting edge of radical organising — in the battles against racial discrimination, particularly in the South, in the protests against the Vietnam war, and more generally in the aim of the young then to break the shackles of the cold war consensus that had paralysed independent thought and spread fear of McCarthyite purges through what remained of the organised left in America, in the labour movement, the churches and the universities. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Exposing the Kony 2012 scam (I) [With special Video] ANNOTATED NEWS, COMMENTARIAT, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IMPERIALISM, INDECENT SLIMEBALLS Comments Off Mar 122012 Editor’s Note: This is the first item we run on the virulent (and ludicrous) liberaloid scam going down by the name of “KONY 2012″, an audacious maneuver to sell intervention abroad behind the veil of “humanitarianism and justice”, and currently being spread via YouTube and similar social media. So far, supposedly tens of millions have seen the video (the promoters deliberately targeted a young demographic), and many more heard about it thanks to the mainstream media’s enthusiastic endorsement. Despite its “success” the video has detonated its share of highly articulate critics. (The video we present below is precisely one such example.) This quick response is rather notable (and encouraging). In far too many cases the real left has been slow to respond to such naked stabs at influencing public opinion on matters of foreign policy. Another difference is that till now the drumbeat to war—picking up on cues from the political class— has usually originated within the subservient media. In this case, we see an “outsourcing” of such fabrications, with a third party playing the critical role of “discoverer”of the outrage needing rectification. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Greek agony ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, EU.Greece Comments Off Mar 122012 “The European Union must be replaced by the United Socialist States of Europe.” By Peter Schwarz, WSWS.ORGThank you, WSWS. It’s clear that the Greek people will not take the outcome of the banker negotiations lying down. In his novel 1984, George Orwell coined the term “Newspeak” for an ideologically charged language that stands reality on its head. The word “haircut” as applied to the write-down of Greek government debt should be added to the vocabulary of Newspeak. What is publicly presented as the financial markets’ “sacrifice,” a “waiver” by private creditors, giving up over half of the value of their Greek bonds, is in fact a financial gift to the banks. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Obama hails jobs report despite nearly 13 million unemployed ANNOTATED NEWS, POLITICAL ECONOMY Comments Off Mar 122012 By Patrick Martin, WSWS.ORG, a socialist organizationThank you, WSWS. Many proclamations of economic recovery from high pulpits are simply self-serving statements to fool the masses. In the case of Obama, the “recovery” talk is yet one more attempt at manipulating public opinion in an election year. The Obama administration hailed the February jobs report, released by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Friday morning, although the 227,000 net new jobs made only a slight dent in the army of nearly 13 million unemployed in America, including 5.5 million unemployed for more than six months. At this rate of net job creation, and with 125,000 people entering the job market each month, it would require 130 months—nearly 11 years—to put all those currently unemployed back to work. That is without taking into account future economic shocks from the US and world financial system. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
