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

barbarahav

The Broken Link Between OWS and a Murder

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, CULTURE & CRITICISM, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, INDECENT SLIMEBALLS, MEDIA TURDS, PUTRID CORPOMEDIA  Comments Off
Jul 172012
 

By Jim Naureckas, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
THANK YOU, FAIR 

 

“OWS MURDER LINK.”

That’s how the New York Post’s front page (7/11/12)  announced a report that DNA from a 2004 crime scene had supposedly been matched with DNA from a chain used to hold open a subway gate in an Occupy Wall Street protest. Inside, under the headline “OWS Link to ’04 Gal Slay,” the paper had 37 paragraphs on the story, along with three large photographs with a caption asserting that “DNA from a March Occupy protest (above) has been linked to the murder” of Juilliard student Sarah Fox. Continue reading »

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GUEST EDITORIAL: Seeking an end to animal sacrifice

 ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, ANNOTATED NEWS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGIOSITY & SUPERSTITION  2 Responses »
Jul 172012
 

By Merritt Clifton, Kim Bartlett
Animal People Online
Note: This article ran as an editorial feature in the June 2012 issue of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Editor’s Note: Camel sacrificed during a religious festivity in a backward region of Iran. Photo (undated) was sent to activists in the West by “Jaleh”, an Iranian animal activist. He explained, “I take the opportunity to send you some photos taken by my friends during (Aid Ghorban) in my country. I am not going out of my apartment in such days to avoid being faced with the wild people killing innocent animals in these ways. The most disgusting is sacrificing the camels. They thrust to the hilt a sharp knife or dagger in the major blood vessel of the poor creatures so that all blood pumps out from his body. Then they cut the head and the testes. I am [also] sending you some photos relevant to sacrifices of camels, sheep and cows.” [Courtesy: All-creatures.org] Iran, of course, is not alone in this. Wherever superstition and backward people exist there’s a chance that. besides all the other ways in which animals are exploited and tortured, they will also be used in ritual sacrifices. It happens in India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, and it happens right here, in the USA.—P.G.

Among all the many uses and abuses of animals which persist for a cultural pretext, animal sacrifice is perhaps the most widely practiced,  in a variety of different forms and contexts,  and the most difficult to address in an effective manner,  leading to fewer animals being killed–or ideally,  none.    

The difficulty of stopping animal sacrifice occurs in part because the perspective of people who practice animal sacrifice tends to be almost incomprehensible to those who oppose it.  Opponents are sometimes many generations and often oceans away from any ancestors who ever sacrificed animals.  Killing animals to be eaten at traditional holidays remains as ubiquitous as the slaughter of turkeys at the U.S. Thanksgiving.  Yet,  from the perspective of people who believe in a just and merciful god, which includes about 85% of humanity according to recent global surveys of religious belief,  the theology of practitioners of overt animal sacrifice might seem to many to be blasphemous.   

What sort of god would demand that animals be killed?  Even the priests of the Spanish Inquisition,  who accompanied the conquistadors to the New World and “converted” Native Americans to Catholicism through genocidal use of sword and flame,  theorized that animal and human sacrifices were so self-evidently evil that the gods of the practitioners of such sacrifices must be diabolical.   

From a secular perspective,  animal sacrifice is relatively easily recognized as a set of rituals which permit the practitioners to kill and eat animals without guilt–whereas,  in other societies,  killing and eating animals is rationalized by arguments which draw exaggerated distinctions between the sentience of animals and humans.  Secular observers may notice that seasonal sacrificial occasions tend to coincide with the needs of herding cultures to cull surplus male animals after the spring birthing season and to thin the numbers of animals they must feed through the winter.  The efforts of priests to perpetuate animal sacrifice as a method of obtaining meat,  or of controlling the distribution of meat in some manner,  is seemingly obvious.   Continue reading »

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The Future of the Planet? Get Over It

 ALERTS, ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, SAVING THE PLANET  Comments Off
Jul 132012
 

By Peter Hart, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)

You would think–or maybe hope–that journalists who have to appear alongside climate change deniers would find it a bit awkward. It used to be that media were faulted for creating false “balance” in coverage of climate change–quoting reality-based scientists in roughly equal measure with non-scientists who either don’t think there’s a problem or don’t think human activity has anything to do with it. (See our addendum with story on “balance”.)

That doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem anymore (though it made a comeback after “Climategate”). But ABC has a built-in climate problem: The network’s Sunday morning show regularly includes right-wing climate denier George Will, which means his marginal viewpoint on a massively important story–the fate of the planet– has a seat at the table whenever climate change comes up (which isn’t often). Continue reading »

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Hatfields & McCoys & Democrats & Republicans

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Jul 132012
 

Media & history, corporate style—

Johnse & Dennis

By Charles M. Young, thiscantbehappening.net

The History Channel mini-series “Hatfields & McCoys” reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven.” Both productions showed a lot of violence in all its fascination while making it squalid, absurd, arbitrary and devastating to the victims and everyone around the victims. Both productions take as their theme men creating theaters of heroism for themselves out of their own hatred and sense of honor. Both productions show the theaters crumbling in the end as the violence becomes too stupid and meaningless even for the prime agents to continue. Continue reading »

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It’s Complicated

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, REVOLUTION, ROTTEN CULTURE  1 Response »
Jul 072012
 

By Timothy V. Gatto, Countercurrents.org

There is a stir in the air. Something is changing but I don’t think that anyone can actually put their finger on it. People are just tired, tired and disgusted. They don’t seem to believe anyone or anything anymore. The trustful population of a sleeping nation is starting to realize that their trust was put into the wrong hands.

It’s about time. What’s so sad about this situation is that people don’t want to wake up. They would rather close their eyes and dream on. Reality sucks, but sooner or later it comes around to bite you. The bankers, the politician and the media have become dangerous. People have had so much taken from them in the last few decades, remaining asleep is no longer an option. The people have lost their homes, their savings and most importantly, their freedom. Continue reading »

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Too Much: Inequality Monitor [July 2, 2012]

 ANNOTATED NEWS, CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE, POLITICAL ECONOMY  1 Response »
Jul 072012
 

Should we rent or should we buy? Middle-income families ask themselves that question all the time. But these days so do the fabulously rich. The rise of “the increasingly itinerant global rich,” notes CNBC analyst Robert Frank, has sent the demand for luxury rentals to record heights. How high do these heights go? In hot spots like Manhattan, Miami, and Beverly Hills, units renting for $100,000 per month now raise few luxury realtor eyebrows. New York currently hosts at least seven $100,000 publicly listed rentals. Some run higher into the six figures. One apartment that composer Cole Porter called home in the 1930s comes with five bedrooms and twice-daily maid service. Only $150,000 at the monthly rate . . .

Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of the Nissan autoworks since 2001, has become the highest-paid corporate exec in Japan. Ghosn last week announced that he took home $12.38 million in 2011, an enormous windfall by Japanese standards. Ghosn’s top competitor, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, only earned $1.7 million last year. Ghosn’s Nissan paycheck in 2011 totaled more than the entire combined pay that went to the top 21 executives at Sony. But Ghosn apparently feels underpaid. His top U.S. automaker rival, Ford’s Alan Mulally, pulled in over twice his pay, $29.5 million, and nine other U.S. CEOs grabbed over $30 million in 2011. Japan, says Ghosn, is “going to have to make more investments in executive compensation” to remain “competitive” in world markets . . .

If stuffing CEO pockets made economies more “competitive,” then the most competitive nation on Earth ought to be the United States, home to the world’s most highly compensated CEOs. But a new report from the OECD, the economic research agency for developed nations, says the United States is “stagnating” on the innovation front and “slowly slipping down the global rankings” for coming up with “valuable new products or processes.” The OECD study, released last week, rates the U.S. capacity to innovate as no better than “average.” Where the United States remains distinctly above average: its level of economic inequality. That level, says the OECD, “has continuously increased over the last four decades.” High-income Americans, the OECD urges, should pay more in taxes.

Quote of the Week

“Apple is rapidly becoming the symbol of what’s wrong with our economy: a highly profitable enterprise where all the gains go to those at the top and the vast majority, including those with college degrees, struggle to get by.”
Larry Mishel, Working Economics, June 25, 2012

Too Much
THIS WEEK  July 2, 2012

In July 1776, only about 2.5 million souls lived within the confines of the newly independent 13 American colonies, about the population of today’s Denver area.

But a great deal more than population size, of course, separates all of us from the generation of 1776 we fete this week. We live, for instance, in one of the world’s most unequal nations. They didn’t.

This week in Too Much we explore the egalitarian back story to the original red, white, and blue. Our contemporary fans of grand fortune always do their best to blur this story. The rest of us can’t afford to let them.

So this Fourth of July holiday week, why not share this issue of Too Much with a friend who could use a little hidden history. Too Much, by the way, will be going on a little holiday break the next two weeks. We’ll be returning later this month. In the mewantime, keep cool — and stay committed! Continue reading »
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