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 [...]
By Patrice Greanville, The Greanville Post
Utter contempt is amply justified when it comes to those who knowingly lie in the service of war and global imperialism. In this regard, the leading players in the Western media–from owners to top executives and leading editors and figures on camera, especially in America, deserve to be hauled before a Nuremberg-class tribunal for crimes against humanity, right along with the other warmongers in government and the Congress. Continue reading »
Syrian protesters. Courtesy of ABC News.
Editor’s Note: Utter contempt is amply justified when it comes to those who knowingly lie in the service of global imperialism. In this regard, the leading players in the Western media, especially in America, deserve to be hauled before a Nuremberg-class tribunal for crimes against humanity, right along with the other warmongers in government and the Congress. Meanwhile, let us remember that the process of indoctrination for young journalists, of fitting into the propaganda machine, of doing things “as professional journalists do”— starts with the nation’s “Journalism Schools”— ever more interested in having their graduates join the existing scandalously manipulative apparatus of misinformation than in resisting it.—PG
by Stephen Lendman
When America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. Journalism is the first casualty. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure.
Cheerleading propaganda is relentless. Readers and viewers are betrayed. Imperial wars are called liberating ones. Separating fact from fiction is challenging. Only replacing independent regimes with pro-Western puppet ones matters. Media scoundrels support it. Blood on their hands doesn’t deter them. Steady income eases conscience pangs. Soul selling pays well. Continue reading »
