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

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 [...]
Red State Hypocrites: Inhofe and Coburn
Salon [1] / By Joan Walsh [2] Just a week ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe suggested that President Obama might be impeached over the Benghazi non-scandal. Now, Inhofe must watch as Obama declares Inhofe’s state a disaster area and promises Oklahomans “all the resources they need at their disposal.” Did you like this? Share it:
The Shame of the Fourth Estate
From our archives: articles you should have read when they first appeared but missed. The mainstream media’s long-time kid-glove treatment of Andrew Breitbart led directly to the unjustified ouster of Shirley Sherrod. By Charles Kaiser [Originally: July 26, 2010 ] This piece was first published by the Hillman Foundation. Let me make this utterly clear: What you [...]
Michel Chossudovsky: Time for a counterpropaganda front
Editor’s Note: The Western left, and the American left in particular, have been scandalously myopic and inadequate in organizing against the corporate media. The goal from the start should have been to neutralize the effects of the corporate media, since without that the great battles to win over the American majorities would be impossible. This [...]
What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels
By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left The idea that the uprising against the Syrian government is inspired by a grassroots movement thirsting for a pluralist, democratic state is a fiction. The opposition’s chief elements are Islamists who seek to establish a Sunni-dominated Islamic state in place of a Syrian government they revile for being secular and [...]
ARCHIVES: The U.S. Left and Media Politics
Articles of compelling importance you should have read but missed the first time around. Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review, a fraternal organization ••• American democracy is in deep trouble. Cynicism and distrust of the political system, fueled at least in part by imposed ignorance, have grown steadily in recent years. There are several reasons for [...]
The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda
JOHN PILGER: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading [...]
Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide
MADISON, WI — DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details [...]

The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives’ Favorite — And Most Dangerous — Fiction

ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CONSERVATIVES & REACTION Comments Off

Apr 272012

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet

The self-made myth is one of the most cherished foundation stones of the conservative theology. Nurtured by Horatio Alger and generations of beloved boys’ stories, It sits at the deep black heart of the entire right-wing worldview, where it provides the essential justification for a great many other common right-wing beliefs. It feeds the accusation that government is evil because it only exists to redistribute wealth from society’s producers (self-made, of course) and its parasites (who refuse to work). It justifies conservative rage against progressives, who are seen as wanting to use government to forcibly take away what belongs to the righteous wealthy. It’s piously invoked by hedge fund managers and oil billionaires, who think that being required to reinvest any of their wealth back into the public society that made it possible is “punishing success.” It’s the foundational belief on which all of Ayn Rand’s novels stand. Continue reading »

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Rising above the duality of our politics

ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS Comments Off

Apr 272012

Source: Primitive Times
Thank you, Primitive Times

Once you’ve become radicalized, it’s always amusing and enlightening to encounter the various stimuli which, in your pre-radicalized days, would have elicited a far different response. This happened to me last week when I was setting up a new email account for my Mom and came across a slew of fundraising emails from the DCCC. Though the messages were authored by a wide variety of familiar names – Biden, Pelosi, Reid and the like – they all contained the same general structure, which went something like this:

Dear Voter/Donor-

Did you hear this? Republicans just released a new attack ad saying Democrats sacrifice kittens. KITTENS!

Oh, and get this – Republicans sacrifice kittens. KITTENS!

We’ve gotta respond. The first quarterly FEC deadline of 2012 is in just 48 hours. Send us money now, and let’s send them a clear message that says we won’t stand for their lies, nor their kitten sacrificing. And if you act in the next 2 hours, we’ll triple the donation! Continue reading »

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BOOKS: Keep On Rockin’

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Apr 272012

Keep On Rockin’

From the Book

RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway

RADICAL PEACE is a collection of reports from peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. An American exchange student in one of my courses here in Germany contributed the following essay.

Jason was my boy-friend for a while in high school. It wasn’t a match made in heaven. Looking back, I think the main thing we had in common was that I wanted a boy-friend and he wanted a girl-friend. Other than that there wasn’t much between us, as we discovered whenever we tried to talk about anything. I broke up with him when he asked me to go rabbit hunting with him. We stayed friends, though, probably because since it was obvious we could never be a real couple, neither of us had hard feelings. Continue reading »

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ARCHIVES: A portrait of America in decline

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Apr 272012

Reposted due to reader request.

By Patrick Martin, WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization.
Thank you, WSWS.ORG.

Originally published 31 October 2011

A series of reports over the past ten days—on poverty, wages, income inequality and social mobility—have painted a portrait of America starkly at odds with the official mythology of the United States as the land of unlimited economic opportunity, the country with the world’s highest standard of living.

The World Socialist Web Site has naturally drawn attention to these reports, but Marxist critics and opponents of American capitalism did not collect this data. On the contrary, the figures come from US government agencies like the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration, the Bureau of the Census and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Continue reading »

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A Nation of Morons

ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, DECADENCE, GREAT HYPOCRISY Comments Off

Apr 272012

by Stephen Lendman

Widespread public ignorance keeps major abuses out of public consciousness and concern enough to demand political Washington address them responsibly.

Jefferson called an educated citizenry “a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Madison warned that “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or, perhaps both.”

Jack Kennedy said “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”

In 1748, Montesquieu said “The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.” Continue reading »

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Pepe Escobar: A Full Spectrum Confrontation World?

ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, IMPERIALISM, US Foreign Policy Comments Off

Apr 272012

By Tom Engelhardt

Camden, NJ: In a country with a widening wealth inequality, millions of Americans remain consigned to living lives in sordid poverty.

Last December, a super-secret RQ-170 Sentinel, part of a far-reaching program of CIA drone surveillance over Iran, went down (or was shot down, or computer-jacked and hacked down) and was recovered intact by the Iranian military. This week, an Iranian general proudly announced that his country’s experts had accessed the plane’s computer.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here. Continue reading »

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Older Entries

Many topics to choose from

There’s violence and there’s violence

Revolutionary Violence vs Institutionalized Violence

"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves..." —Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution.

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