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
  • Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Guest Editorials— By Andre Damon, wsws.org The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report Monday showing that electronics giant Apple Inc. uses offshore tax shelters to avoid taxes on the majority of its income and cheated the US government out of $9 billion in 2012 alone. That same day, a tornado leveled the town [...]

  • Rise Up or Die

    Rise Up or Die

     By Chris Hedges Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.”We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion [...]

  • Obama’s Orwellian rhetoric

    Obama’s Orwellian rhetoric, Congo war crimes, Jailed for silence, DOJ assault on Fox Source: RT.com On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin and political commentator Sam Sacks go over the Orwellian rhetoric in Obama’s latest foreign policy speech. Abby highlights a recent UN investigation bringing to light crimes against humanity committed by a [...]

  • Dr. Noam Chomsky breaks the set on war, imperialism and propaganda

    RT’s Abby Martin interviews Noam Chomsky on current issues stemming from pseudo-democratic governance in the United States. On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to philosopher, linguist, professor, political critic and author of over 100 books Dr. Noam Chomsky about the Boston bombings, US terror inflicted abroad, drones, Obama’s rebranding of Bush [...]

  • OpEds: The entire globe is a battlefield for Pentagon

    OpEds: The entire globe is a battlefield for Pentagon

    By Pepe Escobar, RT.com  Forget it; the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is not becoming more “democratic” – or even transparent. US President Barack Obama now pledges to transfer the responsibility of the shadow ‘Drone Wars’ from the CIA to the Pentagon – so the US Congress is able to monitor it.  Did you like this? Share [...]

  • Why Corporate Media Focuses on Benghazi Instead of Guatemalan Genocide

    Why Corporate Media Focuses on Benghazi Instead of Guatemalan Genocide

    AlterNet [1] / By Sean McElwee [2] Last week two important stories about U.S. foreign policy broke. First, the White House released some 100 pages of e-mails confirming a dastardly scandal: rather than call the Benghazi attack a “terrorist act,” President Obama, in a Nixonian power grab, called it an, “act of terror.” Did you like this? Share it:

  • Religious Barbarians

    Religious Barbarians

    From Tbilisi to Worchester by CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI (With report & VIDEO by PressTV, see addendum below) It was humanity at its best.  Showing compassion for the quick and the dead.  The quick made news in Tbilisi, Georgia.  The dead made news in Worcester, Massachusetts. Did you like this? Share it:

  • The Strange Trial of Ríos Montt

    The Strange Trial of Ríos Montt

    Despite Annulment, Genocide Trial a Breakthrough for Justice and Truth by LUZ MENDEZ The sentence of 80 years in prison against former de facto president Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during Guatemala’s armed conflict, emitted on May 10, 2013, was annulled by the Constitutional Court ten days later. The court’s [...]

Chomsky: The media syntax as propaganda trap

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, IMPERIALISM  Comments Off
Apr 302012
 

Editor’s Note: Counterpunch just ran a terrific interview with Noam Chomsky conducted by the capable radio/TV host Laura Flanders (who happens to be kin to Alex Cockburn, a founding editor of that site.)  The talk ranged over many issues, OWS, Anarchism, Labor, Racism, Corporate Power and the Class War. Since the years have not blunted Chomsky’s intellect one whit, the exchange was as usual highly illuminating. Below we reproduce some excerpts focusing on the race war and the role of the mainstream media as a huge hurdle to democratic progress. You can read the whole article here.—PG

_________________________________

LF: Trayvon Martin. Can you talk for a few minutes about the role of racism and racial violence in what we’ve been talking about?  Some people think of fighting racism as separate from working on economic issues. 

NC: Well you know, there clearly is a serious race problem in the country. Just take a look at what’s happening to African American communities. For example wealth, wealth in African American communities is almost zero. The history is striking. You take a look at the history of African Americans in the US. There’s been about thirty years of relative freedom. There was a decade after the Civil War and before north/south compact essentially recriminalized black life. During the Second World War there was a need for free labor so there was a freeing up of the labor force. Blacks benefitted from it. It lasted for about twenty years, the big growth period in the ‘50s and ‘60s, so a black man could get a job in an auto plant and buy a house and send his kids to college and kind of enter into the world but by the 70s it was over. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
 Posted by at 8:45 pm

Ending the “War on Drugs”

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CONSERVATIVES & REACTION, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, IDIOTS, POLICE & REPRESSION  Comments Off
Apr 302012
 

The war on drugs is the price the American nation pays to priggishness and conservatism. 


The ferocity of the drug war in Mexico makes the US mafia violence look like kindergarten play.  

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH
Crosspost with: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13445 

On April 8, 2012, our esteemed Editor/Publisher at BuzzFlash@Truthout, my good friend Mark Karlin, published a column entitled “The US War on Drug Cartels in Mexico Is a Deadly Failure” (1). In his column he noted that: “Approximately 50,000 or more Mexicans have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a so-called war on drug cartels. (In a recent appearance in Toronto, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed 150,000 people have died in the drug war in Mexico, but the timeline Panetta was referring to was unclear, as was the origin of the figure he cited.).” Mark went on to say: “Here is the US policy in a nutshell: we pay Mexicans to kill Mexicans, and this slaughter has no effect on drug shipments or prices.” Nor on the use of those drugs in the United States, which has generally not significantly changed over the 40-plus years of the “War” (2). Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
 Posted by at 7:15 pm

The final word: Revisiting Moore’s Sicko

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS  1 Response »
Apr 302012
 

Sicko
A documentary on US-style healthcare by Michael Moore 

Editors’ Note:  When SiCKO exploded on the US screens in 2007—the first film to treat engagingly and accessibly the issue of healthcare in the United States—it caused something of a sensation. The film was a powerful and rare indictment and useful primer about the obscenities of the US healthcare system, dominated by the logic of profit from top to bottom. In eloquent terms it held up a mirror to the appalling corruption of the political class and media (to be expected in a plutocracy) and the image was far from pretty.

While the film was applauded in many progressive venues for its undeniable value (we ran several pieces defending the film and Moore), it was also lambasted or questioned by the whores that pass for impartial expert opinion in this nation, not to mention the bad-faith legions, the professional ignoramuses, and the libertarian zealots on the right, all actively or passively committed to the idea of privatism at any cost. In such quarters Moore was described as something of a frothing-at-the-mouth Leninist (the same ridiculous voices describe Obama as a dangerous leftist these days), which we only wish were true, since Moore—well meaning but perennially naive about the reality of class politics— typifies in many ways the embarrassing limits of liberal thinking when it comes to social solutions.  From that perspective, Gowans’ review stands out for balance and comprehensiveness, and above all, it remains painfully relevant.  So-called “Obamacare” has hardly alleviated the problems discussed in the film, and the healthcare monster is yet to be slain. We hope this piece can serve as a useful refresher on an issue we continue to face in this great battle of political liberation.—P. Greanville Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
 Posted by at 6:53 pm

Is Gene Sharp Superman?

 ANNOTATED NEWS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, DEBATING POINTS, IMPERIALISM, PROPAGANDA  Comments Off
Apr 302012
 

The quietly—but highly—influential Gene Sharp. A new patron saint for the “nonviolent” anti-imperialist left, but is he as closely allied to the US intelligence services as many on the left believe?  Steve Gowans, whose opinion we respect, tends to think not.

By Stephen Gowans, Editor, What’s Left
Thank you, Steve.

Samuel P. Jacobs’ Valentine’s Day article in The Daily Beast has a catchy title: “Gene Sharp, the 83 year old who toppled Egypt.” Sharp is a scholar who has spent much of his life developing ideas on how to overthrow authoritarian governments using nonviolence.

While Jacobs’ title is eye-catching, it’s also nonsense. Attributing the toppling of Mubarak to Sharp is like attributing the toppling of the Tsar to Karl Marx. Sure, their ideas may have inspired some of the people who sought the downfall of tyrants, but the connection stops there. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
 Posted by at 3:27 pm

US and allies ramp up plans for military intervention in Syria

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA, SYRIA  Comments Off
Apr 302012
 

 
The “face” of Syrian opposition.  For chief consumption in the West. The US propaganda book calls for “character assassination” of the intended target prior to physical elimination (in this case military assault, as in Libya, Iraq, etc.).

By Chris Marsden, WSWS.ORG
Thank you, WSWS.ORG

Accusations that the Syrian government is either wholly or mainly responsible for breaches of the United Nations’ ceasefire are meant to provide a pretext for military intervention by the imperialist powers and their proxies.

The US and European media, meanwhile, is acting as a barely concealed propaganda instrument tasked with preparing public opinion for the latest criminal adventure in the Middle East—a war for regime change in Syria to follow those waged in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:

OpEds: The downfall of Bo Xilai in China

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CHINA  Comments Off
Apr 302012
 

By John Chan, WSWS.ORG
Thank you, WSWS. 

 

The dramatic downfall of Bo Xilai (above), a former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central committee and politburo member, is a sharp expression of the deepening political and economic crisis in China.

Bo was stripped of his post as party secretary in Chongqing last month, then arrested. He faces serious corruption charges and could face the death penalty over the alleged murders of his wife’s British business partner Neil Heywood and at least two policemen who refused to cover it up. Until the allegations emerged, Bo had been considered a candidate for the CCP’s top body—the Politburo Standing Committee—in the leadership change due later this year. Continue reading »

Did you like this? Share it:
 Older Entries