MEDIA LIES

ERIC ARNOW—The US, having genocided the Native Americans and stolen half of Mexico asserted that Mexico had attacked US troops along the US Mexico Border when in fact it was a fake provocation. Even Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau called that casus belli bullshit back in the day.So in 1898, the Empire was on the prowl again. It coveted Cuba and the Philippines, which were owned by the Spanish Empire. The Empire needed another war. So William Randolph Hearst sent a photographer to Havana…..”You supply the photographs and I’ll supply to war”. He said that in response the photographer who reported there was no there there. Nothing to report.

PHIL BUTLER—The latest wrongful and ignorant rampage against Putin concerns his “alleged” wealth. Hours after the Kremlin released the Russian leader’s salary and net worth statistics, the ravaging liberal order wolves howled in pain about expensive wristwatches Putin owns. This Quartz story is typical. According to the “geniuses” of western economic, Putin is worth in between $70 and $200 billion dollars. He is also the 21st Century version of the Wizard of Oz for his ability to totally hide the vastest horde of wealth ever accumulated by a single person (Sarcasm a must).

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Humanity’s predicament is the same. I often hear revolutionary-minded thinkers voicing frustration at the mainstream public for choosing to stay within this transparently abusive dynamic instead of rising up and forcing change, and yes, it is self-evident that the citizenry could easily use its vastly superior numbers to do that if it collectively chose to. The door is right there. It’s not even locked.

ALAN MACLEOD—Due to the implementation of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s, inequality between the classes in Venezuela greatly increased, and poverty rose rapidly. This led to profound social dislocation, particularly after the 1989 Caracazo, when the government ordered a military crackdown on working-class protesters from the barrios, resulting in the massacre of thousands. The event, and the economic crisis of the 1990s, led to the breakdown of the traditional social order and to the election of a former military officer and political outsider, Hugo Chavez, as president in 1998.Chavez, who came from a poor family, campaigned on the promise of a new Constitution. It was implemented the next year and contained new rights for indigenous groups, the poor and women, among others.