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 [...]

  • Should the US bomb Syria?

    Should the US bomb Syria?

    By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left There is no compelling evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebel forces which seek its overthrow, and for purely military reasons, it’s highly unlikely that they have been used. Simply put, the Syrian army can kill more rebels with missiles, tanks and heavy artillery, even [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • CBS media turd Scott Pelley pontificates about US journalism

    CBS media turd Scott Pelley pontificates about US journalism

    The Problem With Journalism? Scott Pelley Blames the Internet By Peter Hart, FAIR When big-time reporters decide to try their hands at media criticism, the results are usually disappointing–but they can also be quite revealing.  So when a video of CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley started to making the rounds, the headlines associated with it piqued my interest. Over [...]

Is Homophobia Curable?

 ANNOTATED NEWS, POLEMICS, RELIGIOSITY & SUPERSTITION  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH


Homophobia can be defined as hatred and fear of homosexuals on the basis of who they are, and the nature of their sexuality and sexual practices. Given the attention paid to the matter in the relevant texts, both homosexuality and homophobia have existed in the human species at least since Biblical times, and very likely for much longer than that. It is certainly the case that homophobia is to be found in the texts underlying each of the Abrahamic religions. (I am not familiar with its place, if any, in the major non-Abrahamic religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.) For most of its history it has indeed had a religious basis. It was only in the 20th century that it became politicized. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 5:18 pm

World’s Richest Man Calls For Increasing Retirement Age To 70

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE, POLITICAL ECONOMY  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 
By Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress

Slim: Mexican via Lebanon. Like most capitalist magnates he does not see human beings, only “resources” and “commodities” to be exploited.

Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who with a fortune of $65 billion is the world’s richest man, believes that struggling countries need to raise their retirement age to 70 in order to help fix their finances:

Countries should have people work until they are older to reflect longer life expectancy rates, Slim reportedly said…Slim added the current retirement age was established “when jobs were more physical and people died at 60, but now we live until 85 or 90.”

El Universal reported one of the world’s savviest businessmen as saying: “We live in the knowledge society, so knowledge and experience should be valued. This is why a person’s work life could be increased.” Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 4:50 pm

The Latest Generation Wages War On Terror

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

By Mickey Z.

Photo credit: Mickey Z. /  Mickey Z. — World News Trust

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.” –Noam Chomsky

After 9/11, the 1% launched a perpetual “war on terror”… and you know what? Maybe a war on terror is precisely what we need.

No, I’m not declaring public allegiance to the current jihad against a tactic (which is really a war against terror not perpetrated by the United States or its allies). Instead, I’m thinking of another meaning entirely. Author Don Lutz has written that terror is “what one feels when being kidnapped or raped.” He goes on to list other terrifying examples:

“Terror is what poor people worldwide feel when approached by uniformed, armed men; what animals feel in research laboratories; what people feel when their families are faced with starvation; what a child feels when an adult starts to hit; what millions of families feel when they hear planes overhead; what fish feel when hooked in the mouth; what people feel under threat of having loved ones tortured or killed; what forest dwellers feel when the loggers come in to clear-cut; what people feel when they are threatened with invasion; and what animals feel at slaughterhouses.” Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 3:18 pm

‘Shades Of Grey’- Rethinking The Houla Massacre

 ANNOTATED NEWS, IMPERIALISM, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

June 13, 2012

In our recent alert, The Houla Massacre, we noted how virtually all UK corporate media instantly found, not just the Syrian government, but its leader Bashar Assad, wholly responsible for the brutal massacre of 108 people, including 49 children.

While initial accounts blamed Syrian government forces for mass death by shelling the UN quickly reported that shelling was responsible for fewer than 20 of the deaths. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 10:04 am

More US military suicides than combat deaths in 2012

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANTIWAR, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, BETTER HUMANITY, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

By David Brown, WSWS.ORG
Thank you, WSWS.ORG

The mantra of the Obama administration and Democrat and Republican politicians about “supporting the troops,” is nothing but rank hypocrisy. The population at large, and veterans and soldiers in particular, should view Obama’s efforts to rehabilitate the Vietnam War in his Memorial Day speech as a dangerous warning.

Marine Maj. John Ruocco, pictured here with his family, was all smiles the day he returned from Iraq. In the three months afterward, though, he felt numb and depressed, lost weight, and suffered from insomnia and nightmares. He grew distracted and withdrawn. The morning after he promised his wife, Kim, he'd get help, the 40-year-old pilot based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., hanged himself in 2005. Kim Ruocco now directs suicide-prevention programs for the military-support organization Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. PHOTO: AP Photo/Ruocco Family

Among US forces on active duty, the suicide rate this year is the highest since the invasion of Afghanistan a decade ago, according to the Associated Press. In the first 155 days of this year, 154 active-duty troops took their own lives, an increase of 18 percent over the same period last year. At the rate of one suicide a day, fifty percent more US soldiers have taken their own lives this year than have been died in combat in Afghanistan. 

Every branch of the American military that sees combat is reporting a higher level of suicides than at the same point in 2009. The military suicide rate for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars previously peaked that year, but leveled off in 2010 and 2011, so the Pentagon had projected “only” 136.2 suicides by this point in 2012. 

In both absolute and relative terms, the US Army has the highest rate of suicide of any branch. While the Army makes up only 38 percent of the total military personnel, more than half the total of suicides, 80, have occurred there. Army suicides peaked at 160 in 2009 but at the current rate will reach 188 this year. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:47 am

OpEds: Imperialism and the Houla massacre

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

Alex Lantier, WSWS.ORG
14 June 2012

Investigations of the May 25 massacre in Houla, Syria have shattered the lies Washington and its allies are using to justify their escalating military intervention in Syria.

Responsibility for the deaths of 108 people massacred in Houla lies not with the Syrian army, but with the Syrian “rebel” forces the US is arming against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German daily. The newspaper reported that the Syrian guerilla groups functioned as Sunni sectarian death squads, wiping out much of Houla’s Shiite Muslim minority. Its sources were not drawn from the Assad regime, but from the Syrian opposition itself, as well as from French religious groups in Syria. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 3:11 am
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