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
  • Rise Up or Die

    Rise Up or Die

     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 U.S. Left and Media Politics

    The U.S. Left and Media Politics

    Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review, a fraternal organization American democracy is in deep trouble. Cynicism and distrust of the political system, fueled at least in part by imposed ignorance, have grown steadily in recent years. There are several reasons for this, but few as important as the condition of our media. Many Americans, especially those [...]

  • The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda

    JOHN PILGER: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading [...]

  • Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

    MADISON, WI — DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details [...]

  • Chronicles of Inequality [TOO MUCH, 20 May 2013)

    Chronicles of Inequality [TOO MUCH, 20 May 2013)

    May 20, 2013 THIS WEEK Oh, please, spare us any more pious declarations. After a week of “IRS scandal,” we simply can’t bear another bogus claim that we’re witnessing one of the “most shameful abuses of government power in 20th-century American history.”We’re witnessing no such thing. Let’s be clear about what’s really happened: An understaffed and overburdened IRS office [...]

  • America: A Modern-Day Sparta

    America: A Modern-Day Sparta

    BY STEPHEN LENDMAN  Permanent war is longstanding policy. America deplores peace. Throughout its history, it’s waged war annually at home and/or abroad. Today it does so globally.  Giving peace a chance is loathed. Direct or proxy wars rage in multiple countries. Did you like this? Share it:

  • The decomposition of American democracy

    The decomposition of American democracy

    BY TOM CARTER, WSWS.ORG  On Thursday, Assistant Defense Secretary Michael Sheehan told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the war on terror would continue at least another 10 or 20 years. Alluding to last month’s lockdown of Boston, he said the president and the military would continue to assert “wartime” powers, unchecked by Congress or [...]

  • Connecticut May Let Students Opt Out of Dissection

    Connecticut May Let Students Opt Out of Dissection

    by Alicia Graef Connecticut students who have a conscientious objection to dissection may soon have the right to opt out if lawmakers pass An Act Concerning Dissection Choice. Students have come forward to express their discomfort and objections to learning about the study of life by wasting the lives of innocent animals. Some are met with [...]

The American Way

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, COUPS & CIVIL WAR, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IMPERIALISM, IRAN, ISRAEL, SCUMWATCH, SYRIA  Comments Off
Aug 162012
 

By Stephen Lendman

America’s way is imperial global ravaging.

Anne-Marie Slaughter: the ultimate establishmentarian, loaded with Ivy League degrees and academic honors, but essentially a deranged warmongering imperialist. A war criminal. She naturally apes the rants of McCain, Lieberman and that other tower of irresponsible excrement, Lindsey Graham.

Past and present leaders reveal the soul of their nations. Arguably America never had one. Current domestic and foreign policies provide convincing evidence.  Past and present leaders reveal the soul of their nations. Arguably America never had one. Current domestic and foreign policies provide convincing evidence.

Police state harshness targets defenders of right over wrong everywhere. National resources go for militarism, belligerence, and making super-rich elites richer. Corporations are licensed to steal, exploit, and plunder. Continue reading »

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The ultimate target is Russia: Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

 BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CITIZEN TOOLS, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, CULTURE & CRITICISM, DECADENCE, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IMPERIALISM  2 Responses »
Aug 162012
 

By Paul Craig Roberts

US Congress: an assembly not only of fools but of arrogant criminals.

The morons who rule the American sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the American “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.  Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid Americans. It has no power except what its American protector provides. Yet, despite Israel’s insignificance, it rules Washington.

When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel’s criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto. Continue reading »

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Ecuador to Washington and Britain: Go to Hell

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, IMPERIALISM, LatinAm-ECUADOR, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA, STEALTHY OPS, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX, US Foreign Policy  Comments Off
Aug 162012
 

By Stephen Lendman

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño speaks during a press conference in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. Patiño told that Ecuador received a written threat Wednesday from Britain that “it could assault our embassy” if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was not handed over.

Editor’s Note: We perfectly understand our colleague’s doubts and reservations regarding Julian Assange’s dealings with major Western media—all tainted and complicit in imperial crimes by definition. However, in his defense, we think that he thought his information, even if heavily redacted, was going to prove an embarrasment to the empire and its chief criminals—and it did. Otherwise, as it happens with so much radical communication that never reaches the “validation” of mass distribution via the mainstream (corporate) media structure, much of his revelations would have remained an incipient phenomenon, at best.—P. Greanville

For around two months, Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy after requesting political asylum.  Sweden wants him extradited on spurious charges. They include unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape.  Allegedly it’s for having nonconsensual condomless sex. A honey trap snared him.

Sex charges are bogus. Sweden represents Washington’s interests. Obama officials wants him extradited to stand trial for whistleblowing. They want him put away and silenced. Sweden’s playing willing co-conspirator. So is Britain. Continue reading »

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Brutal repression of Mapuche—Chile’s native people—continues [Spanish] /Represión de Mapuches se agudiza

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE, CONSERVATIVES & REACTION, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, GREAT HYPOCRISY, LatinAm-CHILE, TGP en Español  1 Response »
Aug 162012
 

Miércoles 4 de agosto 2010
Los excesos de la Ley Antiterrorista
Por Loreto Soto, RADIO.UCHILE.CL
[This is an archival report on a conflict that has not been resolved. Read the addendum, too for an account in English of the same topic.]

Excessive police violence is standard in any demonstration by Chilean indigenous people. Chile is also applying an “anti-terrorism” law that cynically exceeds all warranted procedures under the normal penal code in order to silence, not crimes, but legitimate social conflict and the protests of a badly-oppressed minority.

Testigos sin rostro, largos periodos de prisión preventiva sin derecho a beneficios y condenas el doble de duras que las de la justicia ordinaria, son algunas de las restricciones que consagra la Ley Antiterrorista que es aplicada en la mayoría de las causas mapuche. Los expertos coinciden en que la invocación de esta ley para este tipo casos es una exageración y que sólo se utilizan para silenciar una protesta social.

Una de las principales demandas de los presos políticos mapuche que está en huelga de hambre hace ya tres semanas en las cárceles del sur del país, es que no se les aplique la Ley Antiterrorista en los procesos judiciales relacionados con sus reivindicaciones históricas.

Esta legislación, entre otras cosas, establece penas mucho más duras para los mismos delitos tipificados en el Código Penal. Y es que cualquier acción que tenga apellido de “terrorista”, automáticamente recibe un trato diferente porque, de acuerdo a la definición de Naciones Unidas, un acto terrorista es equivalente a un crimen de guerra en periodo de paz.

Pero además hace que los procedimientos judiciales sean mucho más complejos para los acusados, ya que “establece una serie de restricciones a las garantías del debido proceso”, indica el abogado experto en asuntos indígenas del Observatorio Ciudadano, José Aylwin.

De hecho, si una persona es procesada bajo esta legislación, se puede mantener el secreto de investigación por largos periodos. También permite la protección de los testigos, lo que da dado lugar a la utilización de testigos sin rostros que difícilmente pueden ser interrogados por la defensa, y admite la intercepción de las comunicaciones del imputado. Pero además, la ley Antiterrorista dificulta enormemente la aplicación de medidas cautelares distintas de la prisión preventiva, por lo que las personas procesadas son privados de libertad por mucho tiempo. Continue reading »

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Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE CRIMES, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES  Comments Off
Aug 162012
 
Eric Holder. If it weren’t for his boss, who surpasses him, he’d be the biggest
careerist wimp today in the American government.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

I’ve been on deadline in the past week or so, so I haven’t had a chance to weigh in on Eric Holder’s predictable decision to not pursue criminal charges against Goldman, Sachs for any of the activities in the report prepared by Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn two years ago.

Last year I spent a lot of time and energy jabbering and gesticulating in public about what seemed to me the most obviously prosecutable offenses detailed in the report – the seemingly blatant perjury before congress of Lloyd Blankfein and other Goldman executives, and the almost comically long list of frauds committed by the company in its desperate effort to unload its crappy “cats and dogs” mortgage-backed inventory. Continue reading »

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Goldman Sachs Free to Keep Stealing

 ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE CRIMES, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES  Comments Off
Aug 162012
 

By Stephen Lendman

Goldman-Sachs’s HQ on Wall Street, New York City.

Goldman again got off scot-free. On August 9, the Justice Department dropped criminal fraud charges. Evidence the equivalent of enough firepower to sink a carrier battle group was buried and forgotten. More on what happened below.

Black’s Law Dictionary says:

“Fraud consists of some deceitful practice or willful device, resorted to with intent to deprive another of his right, or in some manner to do him an injury.”

It includes “all acts, omissions, and concealments which involve a breach of legal or equitable duty, trust, or confidence justly reposed, and are injurious to another, or by which an undue and unconscientious advantage is taken of another.” Continue reading »

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