BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL Dateline: July 21, 2007

Alienation and dissociation reinforce each other to create a cycle of social powerlessness. In The Hidden Injuries of Class, a worker ponders this dilemma.

“The more a person is on the receiving end of orders, the more the person’s got to think he or she is really somewhere else in order to keep up self-respect. And yet it’s at work that you’re supposed to ‘make something’ of yourself, so if you’re not really there, how are you going to make something of yourself?” Read the rest of this entry »

The poisoner in chief, for an already repugnantly poisoned nation.
By Black Agenda report (BAR) editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Dateline: Wednesday, 03 October 2007

A famous old English song is titled, “The World Turned Upside Down.” Such appears to be the insane vantage point through which the Bush regime, and many ordinary citizens, view reality: in reverse. U.S. media and politicians behave as if they are already at war with Iran, a nation that has been brutalized over generations by Americans, but whose president spoke of world peace and an end to “dark plots” during his visit to this country. Deafened and blinded by arrogant, ignorant, unthinking hatred, Americans responded with venom in quantities toxic to all rational thought. The Poisoner-in-Chief, George Bush, has made great strides in turning much of the nation into a Cuckoo’s Nest. Read the rest of this entry »

BHL, a man of strong opinions and a very high opinion of himself.

BY BERNARD HENRI-LEVY

[from the February 27, 2006 issue of The Nation]
REPUBLISHED AS A PUBLIC SERVICE

Editorial Caveat: Who is this diagnostician for the American Left?: In French and US establishment journals, Bernard-Henri Levy, or BHL, as he is commonly known, is one of the best-acclaimed “philosophes” and authors in France today. But when it comes to Henri-Levy, surely probably one of the great “poseurs” and leftist apostates on the world stage, such accolades are to be taken with a huge lump of salt. Indeed, a new biography by French journalists Jade Lindgaard and Xavier de la Porte is the first in a series of seven acerbic critiques of BHL to be released in the coming years and marks an unprecedented attack on the high-profile academic. Read the rest of this entry »

Are Warren Buffet and his ilk— “enlightened” capitalists or merely shrewd self-serving plutocrats, and does it really make a difference?

BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL
Dateline: September 17, 2007 CROSSPOST AT AUTHOR’S BLOGSITE: SUSAN’S BLOG

AMERICA IS DEEPLY DIVIDED. For one thing, most Americans want an end to the war against Iraq and some form of universal health care, while the ruling class is committed to the war and to sacrificing social services to pay for it. Read the rest of this entry »

The beneath-contempt supreme turncoat and opportunist Zionist warmonger Lieberman. This kind of scum tipifies the DLC.
ANNALS OF SPINELESSNESS
A. Alexander, May 20th, 2007
By the \ Opinion Piece

By mid-2006 it looked like the DC Democrats had learned their lesson. It appeared they had finally realized that the Democratic Leadership Council’s (DLC’s) political playbook, was little more than the perfect recipe for becoming an irrelevant political party. During the last election cycle the once spine-challenged DLC smitten Republican wannabe DC Democrats, had actually embraced their base and began confronting the GOP’s failed anti-working class policies. The result was electoral victory. Read the rest of this entry »

Moore speaking on health issues before sympathetic congresspeople.
C O N T R O V E R S Y

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko (2007) has attracted its fair share of critics among the liberaloid guardians of the status quo, and, naturally, rabidly negative and mendacious reviews from the right. But a film of this importance, that has managed to touch off a desperately needed debate about the nature of the “health care” system in the US, and the grasping values underscoring it, has also elicited criticism from the left. In this series of posts we cover the more compelling arguments.

EXHIBIT 1
IN PRAISE OF “SICKO” BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DIES?

By Carolyn Baker
Dateline: Sunday, 12 August 2007

It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in “Bowling For Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 911″ in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and “Sicko” was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding memos sent by management throughout the Blue Cross system warning employees of the possible side-effects of “Sicko” on their company’s image. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Moore and former Sen. Geo. McGovern

C O N T R O V E R S Y

BY DAVID WALSH \ Dateline 7 July 2007 | Originally at WSWS

Sicko, written and directed by Michael Moore (2007)

NOTE: Please search for other articles on this same subject on Cyrano’s Journal’s archives.

Sicko is documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s critique of the American health care system. Despite the director’s undoubted sincerity and flair for showmanship, it’s a terribly limited work, weaker than Fahrenheit 9/11, his 2004 response to the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Read the rest of this entry »

C O N T R O V E R S Y
The blogosphere is abuzz with news that Markos Moulitsas, the Daily Kos’ founder and owner, and outspoken Democratic Party would-be kingmaker was/is a CIA operative… Compounding the wound is Moulitsas’ own admission that “he would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.” That’s an awfully odd opinion for a man helming one of the nation’s largest “progressive” blogs. Is there any substance to the claims? Read the rest of this entry »

BY SHEILA SAMPLES

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”~~George Orwell

Recently, Nova M Radio’s Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more “rage fatigue” than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it’s more an inability to “focus” on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis. Read the rest of this entry »

BY JASON MILLER
Sculpture: “The Id” by TJ Dixon and James Nelson
Dateline: 6/24/07
NOTE TO OUR READERS: We will be most grateful if you also pay attention to our special note at the end of this feature. Thank you. —The Editors.

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.–Sigmund Freud

Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants. Read the rest of this entry »