The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties
The controversies over the IRS and especially the AP phone records appear to have long-lasting effects By Glenn Greenwald, guardian.co.uk Barack Obama Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ’s attack on AP’s news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record [...]
Argentina’s General Videla and the “war on terror”
By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla died May 17 at the age of 87 as the result of injuries suffered from a fall in a prison shower. He was remembered as the head of a savage military dictatorship that between 1976 and 1983 murdered and “disappeared” some 30,000 Argentine workers, socialist militants, [...]
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 [...]
The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters
Our Economic System is Driving Climate Change by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN The ancient Greeks attributed weather to the god Zeus; today we can safely attribute it to industrial capitalism and its voracious consumption of fossil fuels. The carnage left by a tornado in Oklahoma yesterday is just the latest in our economic system’s daunting body count. [...]
Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI
By Barry Grey and Nick Barrickman, wsws.org Twenty-seven-year-old Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning while being interrogated by police and intelligence officials in an Orlando, Florida, apartment. Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, was reportedly being questioned by a Federal Bureau of [...]
Classical Essays: The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte – Part One
PART ONE OF FOUR Editor’s Note: The core truth about Napoleon is still a matter of debate. Napoleon, opportunist or usurping though he may appear to a modern Marxian obswerver, not to mention Anglo-American mainstream historians tainted with Francophobic hatred and contempt for the French and their revolution, was also seen as a threat by [...]
PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary “Citizen Koch” To Appease Koch Brothers
By Brendan Fischer, PRWatch | Report “Citizen Koch,” a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in “public” television and raises [...]
Why Obama Will Walk Away Unscathed by the Current Political Scandals
by Pascal Robert, Black Agenda Report Don’t worry about Barack Obama. He’s far too useful to the rulers of America to be derailed by scandal, or even a combination of scandals. “Obama’s neoliberal government giveaways to private corporations and mercenary foreign policy already make him too valuable to the guardians of American empire to have [...]
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When Europeans resist corporate austerity measures, they are struggling to avoid “being forced to live like most Americans, at the total mercy of the rich.” The U.S. safety net hardly exists. The “American way of life” is a state of profound insecurity and social disconnectedness. Continue reading »
by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford
The liberal reformers are once again talking about tinkering with Wall Street’s economic and political stranglehold on society. “The reformist debate accepts the inevitability of private capital as the engine of economic – and, therefore, social – development.” The truth is, Wall Street needs derivatives to generate the “windfalls and mega-scores to keep the decaying system going.” But, does society need Wall Street? Hell no! Continue reading »
The president’s announcement favoring the right of same sex couples to marry is long overdue and better than nothing. But it doesn’t make him a fearless warrior for human rights, any more than Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize makes him Mahatma Gandhi. Continue reading »
by Jerome Roos on May 11, 2012
ROAR MAGAZINE
The global day of action on May 12 will mark the resurgence of our resistance. But what is the way forward for our movement in these times of crisis?
This is the transcript of a presentation given at the OVNI 2012 festival in the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona on May 11, 2012.
It’s amazing to be here in Barcelona – home to one of the most inspiring revolutionary episodes in European history and today once again a hotbed of popular resistance against market fundamentalism and a false democracy. Before I start, I would like to thank the OVNI organization and Carlos Delclós — a lecturer at Pompeu Fabra, an active member of the movement here in Barcelona, and a contributor to ROARMAG.org — for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today, on the eve of the global day of action of May 12. Continue reading »
Is there a technological solution to global warming?Geoengineering holds out the promise of artificially reversing recent climate trends, but it entails enormous risks.
Late in the afternoon on April 2, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano on the Philippine island of Luzon, began to rumble with a series of the powerful steam explosions that typically precede an eruption. Pinatubo had been dormant for more than four centuries, and in the volcanological world the mountain had become little more than a footnote. The tremors continued in a steady crescendo for the next two months, until June 15th, when the mountain exploded with enough force to expel molten lava at the speed of six hundred miles an hour. The lava flooded a two-hundred-and-fifty-square-mile area, requiring the evacuation of two hundred thousand people. Continue reading »
By Patrick Martin, WSWS.ORG
The scoundrel Mitt Romney. Set to run against Obama—a similar scoundrel who "denounces" but also defends and takes money from the Wall Street social criminals.
With a display of cynicism that is hard to top, the Obama reelection campaign on Monday launched a public attack on Republican Mitt Romney’s role as a job-destroying asset stripper at Bain Capital, the same day that Obama raised more than $2 million from equally rapacious private equity sharks at a reception in New York City.
The Obama campaign released a two-minute advertisement that will run in five closely contested states—Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia—beginning Wednesday. It focuses on Bain Capital’s 1993 purchase and eventual closure of a steel mill in Kansas City, Missouri. Continue reading »