IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

BBC News correspondent Orla Guerin got more than she bargained for when her questioning of President Aliyev about the supposed lack of media freedom in his country ended up with him grilling her on Julian Assange’s imprisonment. Guerin’s interview with Aliyev on Monday took an unexpected turn when the journalist alleged that the Azerbaijani people lacked access to non-state-sanctioned media and could not enjoy their human rights to the fullest, As evidence, she cited “many independent sources,” but did not name them. 

Scathing exposé of Maddow’s tedious lies. “She’s a puke and a liar,” says Jimmy, and we agree. But she’s a presstitute, an obscenely well paid phony first and above all hired by powerful plutocratic forces that dominate both Fox and MSNBC, as all corporate media —”left” and “right”— sell the same message, just different packaging. 

Rania Khalek and Anya Parampil pay tribute to their friend Kevin Zeese, a long time organizer and anti-war activist in DC.

JEFF MULLEN—This document is meant to explain and show the weaknesses in basic Libertarian Ideology. It is not intended to show one how to convince a Libertarian that s/he is wrong–Libertarianism requires a belief in magic (the magic of the “Free Market”), and nothing can convince a believer that there is no such thing as magic–rather, it is meant to give one the tools to show those considering Libertarian Ideology how it is wrong, and to prevent others from falling into the Libertarian trap. Libertarians are VERY good at using good-sounding words to make bad things seem preferable. This will help a skeptic to cut through it, and describe Libertarian memes more accurately than the Libertarians themselves.

LORENZO—Noam Chomsky is, as anyone reading this knows, a linguist, MIT professor, and the English-speaking world’s foremost radical dissident intellectual. Chomsky’s work in this latter capacity is so well-documented that it’s not necessary to recapitulate too much—however, a few choice high notes include decades of criticism of US foreign policy, some decent commentary on then-President-elect Barack Obama at a time nearly all of the Western commentariat had turned into a deranged Borg-like collective, and producing the second comprehensive study of corporate constraints on the media along with Edward Herman. As co-author of Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky provided a model illuminating the “political economy of the mass media,” and from this research came a great deal of very useful and incisive media criticism on issues like how concision and sound-bites help the status quo and why a journalist can be both genuine and compromised. Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model purports to show how five corporate filters enable the mass media’s owners to ensure that their interests are expressed. In this way, according to the two, democracies manufacture consent through seamlessly delivered propaganda, the way totalitarian societies do so by coercion and force.