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

    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 [...]

  • Disconnect: Soaring Markets/Troubled Economies

    Disconnect: Soaring Markets/Troubled Economies

    by Stephen Lendman Capitalism has succeeded in capturing governments around the world. Forget everything you learned about markets, economics and finance. Perhaps Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and other noted figures were wrong.  Central banks run today’s world. Major ones matter most. Money printing madness controls everything. Love doesn’t make the world go round. [...]

  • Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect's Stated Motives?

    Can America Come to Terms with Boston Bombing Suspect’s Stated Motives?

    Consortium News [1] / By Ray McGovern [2] Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev’s note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the [...]

  • 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 [...]

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 »

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 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 »

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 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 »

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 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 »

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 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 »

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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 »

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