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 [...]

The Carbon Credit Hoax

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, HUMBUG CENTRAL, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, Olympian-class scumbags, POLITICAL ECONOMY  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

System Gaming the Planet
by ROB URIE

To rightwingers, the iconic Friedrich Hayek was the European counterpart of Milton Friedman. His extreme libertarian ideas about economics—which garnered him a Nobel price—were equally nefarious to the vast majority of people and the environment. Like Friedman, he remained a firm apologist for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet till the bitter end.

Rarely can a single story encapsulate so much of what is wrong with the economic system at work in the West as the one that follows. According to the New York Times (link), a group of industrial gas companies in India gamed the ‘carbon credit’ system to (1) increase the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted while (2) earning large ‘profits’ they wouldn’t otherwise have earned and in so doing (3) bought political influence to keep the practice going while (4) driving the price of their highly polluting product down so that (5) less polluting products couldn’t compete and (5) more of their highly polluting product was used. The purported intent of carbon credits is the exact opposite of all of this.

The basic story is that companies in India (and China) were producing a coolant gas that also produced a highly polluting waste by-product. Both the coolant and the by-product are potent greenhouse gases. Carbon credits were offered to induce the companies to destroy the by-product rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. But by paying the companies to both produce the gas and to destroy the waste the good capitalists running them quickly saw that the more gas and waste they produced the more money they made. In fact, it seems that the companies produced to the maximum limit of the carbon credits being offered, far more than they were previously producing, and then went home for the year.

The people running these companies knew that they were producing dangerous greenhouse gases and that their gain was the world’s loss. They were receiving carbon credits because their products were polluting. But what was economically rational to them, what maximized profits and paychecks, was to produce a much greater quantity of these products, and with them greenhouse gases, than they otherwise would have. They also understood that in a sane world they would be sent to prison for this behavior, or maybe even shot. So they took their ‘profits’ and bought political influence to see that this didn’t happen. The Koch Brothers couldn’t have done it any better. Continue reading »

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In the Grip of the Bourgeois Press

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CULTURE & CRITICISM, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA, SCUMWATCH, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

All on the Wrong Side, From Fox News to the New York Times
by ANDREW LEVINE

Diane Sawyer is typical of the “visible media aristocracy” faithfully delivering the message and spin desired by the ruling circles (they’re all millionaires themselves which makes them naturally friendly to their economic betters). The real power, however, rests with the media owners and the top executives, editors, and producers.

Bourgeois press?  Nobody says “bourgeois” anymore; it’s so pre-1989 (or 1981 or mid-70s).  Another problem is that, decades ago, the word suffered from Stalinist and then Maoist overuse.  It designated any object of animosity, and therefore became essentially meaningless.

Nowadays, most media critics are too historically illiterate, and too tied into the political culture of the moment, to raise that objection; it is enough for them that the term seems hopelessly dated.  “Press” seems archaic too; it suggests print media, a species said to be on its way to extinction.

However we do hear a lot about “mainstream media.”  The term is now so mainstream that even Sarah Palin picked up on it, though only to exercise her wit.  “Lamestream media” doesn’t exactly make sense — not much she says does — but we get the general idea.  Not  bad either for somebody who couldn’t even name a newspaper she read when Katie Couric, the lamestream media’s girl next door, fixed her in her withering gaze.

We also hear about “corporate media.”  That term has the advantage of calling attention to how concentrated ownership of media outlets has become and to the connection between our media and the corporations that dominate the American (and world) economy.  It also forces us to focus on an issue that might otherwise pass unnoticed: the interests media serve.

Still, in at least one respect, “mainstream media” is better; it speaks to how media deal with challenges to the status quo.  Media validate and therefore legitimize; what they do not validate they cast into the margins, outside the mainstream.

What is marginalized is still out there; anybody can still say or write pretty much anything they want.  But if their views are not validated, then, regardless of their merits, they have little chance of being taken seriously in the “marketplace of ideas.”

Continue reading »

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Blum’s Anti-Empire Report [August 10th, 2012]

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE CRIMES, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IMPERIALISM, INDECENT SLIMEBALLS, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA, SAVING THE PLANET  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

The Anti-Empire Report
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

The perennial dangers of “Islamic terrorism” are created by the government itself. This is beyond Orwell; it’s the deliberate mating of manufactured ignorance among the masses and ruling class cynicism.

The United States and its comrade-in-arms, Al Qaeda. And other tales of an empire gone mad.

Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s … Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s … Libya 2011 … Syria 2012 … In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. 1

What does this tell us about the United States’ “War On Terrorism”? Continue reading »

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The Pentagon Pathology

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, IMPERIALISM, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX, US Foreign Policy, US Military  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

A CounterPunch Special Report on Military Spending
The Pentagon Pathology
by GABRIEL KOLKO


US Air Force
The allocation of money within the American military system is reflected in which weapons are chosen—and why.  What is at stake are rivalries among military branches, which have influence and connections with arms producers, the Congress, and the entire complex matrix of factors that determine who wins and loses in the Pentagon budget process.  The United States has, by far, the largest military budget of any nation on earth but it also loses wars, cannot procure everything the military services dream up, and ultimately it too must choose between weapons at the expense of the priorities and demands of other services.

In plain English, if the Air Force gets an ultra-modern aircraft which may cost many billions, even trillions, and takes years to iron out the technology (and may ultimately even never operate) there will be less money for the Army and Navy to attain its dreams—or visa versa. Continue reading »

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OpEds: The CIA proxy war in Syria and the pro-imperialist “left”

 ANNOTATED NEWS, Political Vermin, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA, SCUMWATCH, STEALTHY OPS, SYRIA, The Middle East  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

By Alex Lantier, WSWS.ORG

Unsavory types, like this fellow supplied by Blackwater to fight against Gaddafi, are now a major component in the volatile mix complicating the Syrian situation. Their Godfathers are in Washington, London, Paris and Ankara.

Reports that US intelligence is giving covert assistance to “rebel” militias in Syria mark the latest stage in an escalating US campaign for an out-and-out takeover of the country.

Yesterday, as videos emerged showing Syrian “rebels” carrying out mass executions of soldiers captured in Aleppo, it was reported that US President Barack Obama had signed an order earlier this year authorizing US intelligence to aid anti-Assad forces. Washington is also helping to distribute weapons and money donated by its right-wing Middle East allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Continue reading »

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New York Times Style Debates

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, COUPS & CIVIL WAR, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IMPERIALISM  Comments Off
Aug 102012
 

By Stephen Lendman
The Orwellian “Free Press” continues its contortions 

Socrates: No need to apply to the New York Times

French moralist/essayist Joseph Joubert (1754 – 1824) said it’s “better to debate a question without settling it than settle a question without debating it.” 

He wasn’t alone. Debating is an ancient tradition. Socrates and Plato debated political, social, and other issues. The Socratic method involves opposing sides asking and answering questions.  Ideas are freely aired. Beliefs are challenged. Truths are sought. Critical thinking is stimulated. Opinions are formed. Conclusions are reached through free and open dialogue and discussion.

Debates should involve opposing sides given full opportunity to air views and challenge those of others. New York Times editors changed the rules.

Views contradicting state policy are prohibited. Constraints prevent truth and full disclosure. Public thinking and perceptions are manipulated and controlled.

News and views are filtered. Acceptable residue only is reported. Dissent is marginalized. Government and corporate interests alone matter. Groupthink is sought. It manufactures consent and conformity despite contrary facts proving other conclusions.

Continue reading »

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