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

GREANVILLEPOST

The Rise of the Asshole

 AMERICAN STUDIES, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CULTURE & CRITICISM  Comments Off
Jan 112013
 

The Chronicle Review
December 17, 2012
By Evan R. Goldstein

A Social Offender for Our Times

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IStock Photo iStock
“What are you working on?” is academe’s standard conversation starter, and for the past five years Geoffrey Nunberg has had a nonstandard response: “a book on assholes.”

“You get giggles,” says the linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, “or you get, ‘You must have a lot of time on your hands’—the idea being that a word that vulgar and simple can’t possibly be worth writing about.” Scholars have tended to regard the book as a jeu d’esprit, not a serious undertaking. Their reaction intrigued Nunberg: “When people say a word is beneath consideration, it’s a sign that there’s a lot going on.” Continue reading »

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Tactics: do international boycots really help animals?

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, CULTURE & CRITICISM, DEBATING POINTS, TACTICS & STRATEGIES  Comments Off
Jan 092013
 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2012:

Editorial feature:
Why boycotts are not the answer to cruelty called “culture”
BY KIM BARTLETT & MERRITT CLIFTON
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Animal People at this writing has received a barrage of e-mails from both irate individual activists and several international online activist networks soliciting a boycott of Spain over the torture-killings of “fire bulls” at village fiestas.

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There are few less defensible public practices involving animals than the ancient and widespread custom of attaching a flammable material to the horns of a bull,  setting it alight,  and then further tormenting the bull as he strives to escape the fire. Continue reading »
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ANIMALS: Why Indoor Cats Live Much Longer

 ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM  Comments Off
Jan 092013
 

SECONDARY POISONING: Cats who hunt mice and birds run the risk of becoming victims themselves

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(Adapted from version originally published in May 1987.)
By Merritt Clifton, Editor in Chief, ANIMAL PEOPLE

Secondary poisoning could kill your cat. I know because it killed two of mine.

Secondary poisoning occurs when an animal eats another animal who was crippled by pesticides. All cats who hunt run the risk of secondary poisoning.

Rural and semi-rural cats were more vulnerable than urban cats, back when field crops were sprayed more heavily with more deadly pesticides, and before lawn sprays for home use came into vogue, but these days suburban cats may be at equal risk.

In general, the more concentrated the pesticide that the cat may encounter through a prey species, the greater the danger. The cats are most risk are probably those living anywhere that neighbors perceive a rat or pigeon problem, and put out lethal baits which will typically kill any rodent or bird within a matter of minutes.

Any cat can become a victim. Continue reading »
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Controversial: Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained

 AMERICAN STUDIES, ARTS & FILM, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS  3 Responses »
Jan 092013
 

Editor’s Note: We expect to file other reviews for this film. While Walsh, as usual, is terrifically spot on in regard to several areas, incisive and unforgiving to the sins and follies of a distinct layer of the population still very much wallowing in false consciousness, in some areas we differ in interpretation, a discussion we will leave for another article. —PG
•••
By David Walsh, wsws.org
5 January 2013

djangoUnchained

Django Unchained
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
As we have noted before in regard to Quentin Tarantino, even an unserious act (or film) can have serious consequences. The writer-director’s new work, Django Unchained, treats the truth with contempt in its depiction of America’s past. In presenting slavery, at least by implication, as the nation’s original sin and racism as somehow bound up with the character of its people, Tarantino also aligns himself with numerous “left” cultural critics who have been made extremely uncomfortable and unhappy by Steven Spielberg’s-Tony Kushner’s Lincoln.
Continue reading »

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OpEds: Shootemania

 AMERICAN STUDIES, CULTURE & CRITICISM, HUMOR  Comments Off
Jan 092013
 
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MIKE INGLES

“There’s no shootings,” she said. “We never have anything like this.”

That’s my neighborhood she’s talking about. According to the Columbus Dispatch, here’s what happened: A man was driving into his brother’s driveway; inside the car was his 2-year-old son. A bad guy came out of nowhere, brandishing a gun, and put the gun to the driver’s head and told the driver to give him the money. The good guy, also had a gun and pulled it out. The bad guy started running away, turned and fired at the good guy—but missed. Continue reading »

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The world economy 2013: Illusions and reality

 AMERICAN STUDIES, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE CRIMES, CORPORATE CRIMINALITY, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES  Comments Off
Jan 092013
 

By Nick Beams, wsws.org

wall-street-Richardfuld


Lehman’s Richard Fulk.

When the economic history of the recent period is written, it may well be that the year 2012 is regarded as having been almost as important as 2008.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers four-and-a-half years ago was the trigger that set in motion the breakdown of the global capitalist system. But the past year has made its own mark. It has seen the destruction of a series of fictions assiduously promoted by the spokesmen of the ruling elites in the wake of the onset of the global financial crisis.

First of all, it has exposed the claim that the world economy would somehow right itself through the operations of the business cycle, and that the “magic of the market” would come to the rescue. But well into the fifth year of the global breakdown, the financial system is being sustained only by the activities of the world’s major central banks, which are providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the major banks and finance houses through various forms of “quantitative easing”—a euphemism for printing money.

Continue reading »

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