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 [...]
Wikileaks released this video of a helicopter crew slaughtering civilians and two Reuters cameramen in Baghdad
By Dave Lindorff, ThisCantbehappening!
During the Vietnam War, which US forces fought from 1960 through 1974, and which cost the lives of several million Southeast Asians and 58,000 Americans, eight American journalists died. Not one of them was killed by American fire. Continue reading »
As World Bank Warns Globe Could be Cooked by 2060, Media Yawns
by DAVE LINDORFF
Run a google search of “World Bank” and “climate change” and you’ll discover that this month the World Bank released a major study predicting a global “cataclysm” if world-wide temperatures increase by a predicted four degrees celsius (that’s roughly 8 degrees Fahrenheit). Continue reading »
By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet
An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won’t Hear from Hollywood)
The president was a complicated man whose advocacy of railroads birthed a network of monopolies.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Over this Thanksgiving week, you may find yourself in a movie theater watching Steven Spielberg’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln and the battle to pass the 13th Amerndment, which abolished slavery once and for all. There’s much to be said for Lincoln: marvelous acting, less mythologizing than usual, and a fascinating window into raucous realpolitik. Spielberg’s film stands several cuts above any movie depiction of the Lincoln presidency you’re likely to see. Continue reading »
We hope that out of these semi-spontaneous struggles the people of Egypt will eventually throw off the yoke of the native bourgeoisie and other local elites associated with international imperialism. Not to mention the deadweight of fanatical backward religiosity. For victory to happen, they will need a far better organized movement than the current waves of brave protesters, a party with a conscious and clear strategy to hold fast and prevail in what will doubtless be a very long and difficult struggle, against plenty of enemies within and without.
This is how insidious systemic propaganda operates. Hiding its hideous face behind the visage of angels.
US soldiers in Afghanistan: conditioned by propaganda, precious few figure out the true motives for which they are fighting.
Using people who, in their misguided but honest support for what they regard as noble causes, end up serving the goals of a monstrous system devoid of any true morality. In this context, the capitalist media, the grand ideological whore of the system, is happy to constantly sing the praises of the troops, men and women who, as heroes, according to the media, are out there exposing their lives to “keep us safe and free.” But we must ask: who are these “us”? America’s military adventures and crimes are certainly NOT keeping me or my fellow Americans safe. So who are the soldiers protecting? “Us” or “them”—the plutocracy? It all depends on who is the real “us” in this seemingly innocent and practically never challenged assertion.
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