The European Situation: SYRIZA’s program ACTIVISTS & HEROES, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, EU.Greece, Foreign Beat, PLUTOCRATS 4 Responses » May 272012 Gaither StewartDISPATCH FROM ROME The daily bulletin of Italy’s Communist Refoundation Party published today the apparently official program of the Greek coalition of the left, Syriza. Without further comment, I translate here the 40 points of the Syriza program. Editor’s Note: I have bolded the programmatic points that in my view merit the denomination of truly radical. On balance, this is a radical template for the reshuffling of society. American Occupy, pay attention.—PG Audit of the public debt and renegotiation of interest due and suspension of payments until the economy has revived and growth and employment return. Demand the European Union to change the role of the European Central Bank so that it finances States and programs of public investment. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Prisoner of LOTE ACTIVISTS & HEROES, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CLASS STRUGGLE, TELEVISION, VIDEOS Comments Off May 262012 Maher: Still afraid of letting go of an illusion? By Patrice Greanville LOTE, acronym, Lesser of Two Evils LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE OF BILL MAHER’S HBO comedy show (see below), Real Time with Bill Maher (5.25.12) packed a nice, perhaps encouraging surprise. At the closing of the show, apparently irritated by the Right’s nonstop drumbeat of insane—often cynical—claims that Obama was a dangerous leftist, a foaming-at-the-mouth radical, a stealthy socialist bent on imposing tyrannical antibusiness laws, and an agenda that would make Obama one of the most revolutionary presidents in the history of the United States, Bill finally came out and started dissing Obama for his total lack of semblance to the Right’s description of the man. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Who’s Behind The Right’s Latest Anti-Environment Video? ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS Comments Off May 252012 The rightwing propaganda machine never sleeps. The report below courtesy of Media MattersApril 27, 2012 11:08 am ET Ryan Houck: slick hack for corporate agendas. Fox News and other conservative media have promoted a video that suggests environmental regulations will cause “America to fail.” But the video, created by a conservative group with a history of ethical problems, makes many misleading claims including denying global warming. Ref: See this video— Pathetic Rightwing Propaganda Video Created By Conservative Group With History Of Campaign Finance Violations Free Market America Is A Joint Project Of Americans For Limited Government And Citizens For Lower Taxes. According to the website behind the video, Free Market America is a “project of Americans for Limited Government and Citizens For Lower Taxes And A Stronger Economy.” The narrator of the video, Ryan Houck, headed Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy. [FreeMarketAmerica.org, accessed 4/26/12] [The Hill, 4/25/12] Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Ghost of George Orwell at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, IMPERIALISM Comments Off May 252012 By Gary Brumback Pakistanis hold up a burning mock drone aircraft during a May rally against drone attacks in Peshawar. In 2009, the Brookings Institution estimated that unmanned drone attacks were killing about 10 civilians for every 1 insurgent in Pakistan. K. Pervez/Reuters Murder: an intentional killing. Surrogate murder: An intentional drone killing. A difference between Mafia hit men and U.S. drone strikes is that hit men have no Orwellian defense that makes “lies sound truthful and murder respectable—.” [www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language] People at the White House and its West Wing are always trotting out Orwellian defenses. Orwell’s ghost walks the corridors of the White House coaching its propagandists. One of them, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser was in prime Orwellian form when he gave a speech April 30 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. [http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy.] He droned on and on about how efficacious, ethical, legal, and wise are the administration’s deadly drone strikes on foreign soil. Such chutzpah! But it fools and frightens the American people, just as Orwell said it would. So let’s take a look at the claims and counter the counter chief. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
QUEBEC STRIFE: The system’s rot is showing everywhere ACTIVISTS & HEROES, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, POLICE & REPRESSION Comments Off May 242012 The Quebec student strike:Police begin to apply draconian Bill 78By Keith Jones, WSWS.ORG, a socialist publicationThank you, WSWS.ORG. 24 May 2012 Well over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal on Tuesday to mark the 100th day of the student strike Well over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal on Tuesday to mark the 100th day of the student strikeQuebec authorities have begun to make use of the sweeping repressive powers contained in Bill 78—the emergency legislation the provincial Liberal government rushed through the National Assembly late last week to suppress the province-wide student strike. On Tuesday evening, just hours after 150,000 people had demonstrated in Montreal to mark the 100th day of the strike and denounce Bill 78, police invoked the new law to declare a nighttime student protest illegal. In addition to criminalizing the student strike, Bill 78 makes all demonstrations in Canada’s second most populous province—irrespective of their cause—illegal, unless organizers have submitted to police more than eight hours in advance the protest route and duration and undertaken to abide by any changes demanded by the police. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The pseudo-left unmasked in Greece ACTIVISTS & HEROES, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM 2 Responses » May 242012 A. Tsipras Editor’s Note: A few days back our European correspondent, Gaither Stewart, filed a report, All Eyes on Greece, updating our readers on the situation in Greece, stressing the emergence of what promises to be authentic left parties, especially SYRIZA. While Gaither was not quite prepared to endorse these new formations as genuine and capable of moving the nation out of the capitalist swamp in which the international plutocracy put it, he harbored some hope that something good might come out of the developments. The author of the current piece, Alex Lantier, harbors no such illusions. Read his arguments and decide if his pessimism is warranted. —PG By Alex Lantier, WSWS.ORG It has taken only a few days since the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) became the front-runner in Greece’s June 17 elections for the bankruptcy of its politics to become clear. Millions of workers are expected to vote against Greece’s major parties, the social democratic PASOK and the right-wing New Democracy (ND), in order to register their opposition to the economic disaster created by the so-called bailouts these parties negotiated with the European Union (EU). Greece’s economy has shrunk by more than 20 percent since 2009, the greatest collapse since the Nazi occupation of the country during World War II.Workers want to take back the wages and social services the EU has stolen from them and destroy the bankers’ dictatorship overseen by the “troika”—the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank (ECB). Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Time Profiles a World Class Thug CONTROVERSY, ISRAEL, The Middle East, Zionist Occupation Comments Off May 242012 by Stephen Lendman Time magazine’s May 28 cover features “King Bibi: He’s conquered Israel. But will Netanyahu make peace – or war?” Managing editor Richard Stengel titled his profile “Bibi’s Choice.” Readers got him sanitized, not accurately presented. Omitted was what they most need to know Time included, America’s scoundrel media feature managed news and information. Truth and full disclosure are excluded and prohibited. Netanyahu heads Israel’s worst ever government. Bipartisan MKs are racist, hardline rogues. What little opposition exists is weak-kneed. Most go along to get along. Netanyahu exceeds the worst of Ariel Sharon and previous hardline leaders. He’s an embarrassment to democratic governance. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Mitt Romney’s Issues (that He Doesn’t Want Discussed) ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE Comments Off May 242012 Editor’s Note: While this article castigates Romney, deservedly, it should not be implied that the editors of this publication endorse nor are they prepared to support Barack Obama’s candidacy. It is published as “broad education” about the fraudulence of options in the American political system.—PG STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH In the upcoming Presidential election, Mitt Romney faces a serious problem: there are three major issues that relate directly to him — and he wants to discuss none of them. First is his record in the one elective office he has held, Governor of Massachusetts. He does not want to discuss that because his major achievement was — ohmygosh – creating the template for the Affordable Care Act. Ooops! He likely also doesn’t want to discuss it because by the end of his first term his popularity in the state had fallen so low that he decided not to seek re-election. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Reshaping the Truth: Pragmatists and Propagandists in America ACTIVISTS & HEROES, CLASS STRUGGLE, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA Comments Off May 232012 Third in our mass communications series— We found this classic essay by the Australian scholar of propaganda Alex Carey on fanonite.org a fine site edited by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad. Alex Carey died in 1988, and Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent was dedicated to his life. Carey was formerly a lecturer in the Psychology of International Relations at the University of New South Wales. One of his most important books was Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty. Meanjin Quarterly, 35 (4), 1976, pp. 370-378. BY ALEX CAREY At the end of World War II the United States of America enjoyed a pre-eminence in power, prestige and world-wide moral regard that is perhaps unprecedented in the history of human societies. Now, a mere thirty years later, American prestige and moral authority have, for ten years, suffered an almost ceaseless sequence of damaging revelations. Cumulatively these revelations have produced an immense gulf between the claims expressed in popular images and official rhetoric and the increasingly visible and increasingly ugly reality behind the images and rhetoric. Hence the new euphemism for telling lies and being found out — the credibility gap. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Packaged Consciousness ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CITIZEN TOOLS, PROPAGANDA, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA Comments Off May 232012 Second in our special communications series—Introduction by Patrice Greanville The lore of laissez-faire capitalism has given rise to many self-serving myths, and nowhere have they found a more hospitable soil than in America. The reasons for this are many, and probably deserve a separate article, but suffice it to say here that the upshot has been a dismal state of comprehension of contemporary realities. And here’s precisely the rub. For the backward political consciousness and naivete of the American nation is today’s main obstacle to the construction of a more just and humane social order. WITH WHAT IS PROBABLY the lowest political consciousness in the industrialized world, Americans live the paradox of being media-rich and information poor. Major clues to this bizarre situation can be found in the national mythologies and techniques of miscommunication favored by the U.S. media. While no nation can claim today to be fully exempt from the ravages of false political consciousness or sheer historical confusion, in some nations the publics are more deluded than in others, and the myths sustaining the whole edifice of lies far more difficult to detect and expose. Sad to say, such is the case in the United States. As we write these lines, this deeply-ingrained popular ignorance, so often deliberately cultivated by those in power, has finally translated itself in the postwar late-industrial period into a major engine for constant war, and a threat to all living things on this planet. How did such a grotesque situation arise in the United States? What are the major ideological pathways routinely utilized by the system for the dissemination of outrageous falsehoods, or, when the case recommends it, subtle distortions? How is this system maintained? Some of the answers may be found below. Herbert I. Schiller, professor emeritus of communication at the University of California, San Diego, who documented key shortcomings in the new information economy before anyone called it that, died Jan 29, 2000 in La Jolla, California. Schiller warned of two major trends in his prolific writings and speeches: the private takeover of public space and public institutions at home, and U.S. corporate dominance of cultural life abroad, particularly in developing nations. His eight books and hundreds of articles made him a key figure in both communication research and in the public debate over the role of the media in modern society. He was a frequent and much sought-after contributor to leading journals of opinion, including The Nation and Le Monde Diplomatique, and a firm supporter of Cyrano’s Journal. Given his importance to the formation of true journalists, Schiller should be required reading in all J-schools in America, but, of course, he isn’t. Note: The above introduction was penned expressly for Cyrano’s Journal‘s premiere issue, Fall of 1982. If anything, the situation is worse today than thirty years ago. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
