Nader, a tireless crusader for an America that might one day live up to its promise.

Who Will Confront the Unprecedented and Unconstitutional Concentration of Executive Power?

BY RALPH NADER

The rogue regime of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — so widely condemned for its unconstitutional, criminal Iraq war, its spying on Americans illegally, its repeated illegal torture practices, its arrests and imprisonment of thousands in this country without charges and its
pathological secrecy and corporate corruption — still has not felt the heat of the 800,000 practicing lawyers and their many bar organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

The Iranian President at the United Nations.

COMMENTARY By Jerry Mazza /•\ Online Journal Associate Editor | Dateline: Sep 26, 2007 // Fraternal crosspost

The Ahmadinejad visit to New York provided the media and its associated political class with yet another feeding frenzy to exercise their well developed talent for high-handed hypocrisy. Obviously it helps when the target is long preceded by and shrouded in obstinate ignorance and consequent confusion in a culture where history is only of peripheral interest, and where vociferous Zionism has a de facto chokehold on almost all critical institutions—from Congress to the media, and certainly academia. It also doesn’t help matters much that the Iranian leader—like most US imperial targets—is scarcely adept at juggling the symbols of American propaganda, and is often quite skilled at shooting himself in the foot. Like many smaller-power leaders who stand in defiance to probably the most hypocritical empire on record, they do not seem to fully understand the importance of communicating clearly and forthrightly with the US public above and through the curtain of thick distortions certain to be deployed by the corporate media and professional politicians (two sides of the same coin). And therein they miss fine opportunities to neutralize at least some of the poison being continuously spread around by these agents of imperial propaganda as they character assassinate the leaders and cultures marked for eventual physical attacks. It’s high time these leaders made an effort to understand and master this very special but essential language that could—up to a point—lessen the probabilities of such an attack.—Eds.

Read the rest of this entry »

Giuliani—as phoney as a man in drag.

BY BILL CURRY | Dateline: September 24, 2007 The Huffington Post

Rudy Giuliani is slipping, if not quite sliding away. In early polls he led Hillary Clinton and every Democrat and was pulling away from the Republican pack, having benefited much from John McCain’s gracious decision to set himself on fire.

Back then the smart money–and it’s a wonder they still call it that– fretted that Hillary was ‘unelectable’. Today she beats Rudy in every poll. Among Republicans he’s again in a dead heat, this time with B-list TV celebrity Fred Thompson. Read the rest of this entry »

A creature of the system, a “mechanic” who knows how to work the machine, Bill Clinton has made a career of phoney populism all his life. He has successfully fooled a great may people while remaining sturdily on the center-right, what Beltway insiders like to call “the Third Way.” Unfortunately, fronting for a decomposing but still murderous capitalism is not the way to cure what ails America.

By David Nasaw
Dateline: Sunday, September 23, 2007 [Reproduced under Sec 17, US Code]
This piece suggested by and in simulpost at makingthemaccountable.com

“Giving,” Bill Clinton’s folksy first-person tour of worthy causes and the good people who support them, is so relentlessly upbeat that only the most churlish professor would say a discouraging word about the book. But the former president is so intent on celebrating 21st-century philanthropy — and highlighting his and Hillary’s role in promoting “the explosion of private citizens doing public good” — that he blithely ignores a hard reality: Philanthropy and democracy don’t get along nearly as seamlessly as “Giving” would have us believe. Read the rest of this entry »

As a disciple of Ayn Rand, Greenspan shares her notion that selfish pursuits are morally salutary.
BY MIKE WHITNEY Dateline: Wed Sep 19, 2007

SIMULPOSTED AT
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18411.htm

Alan Greenspan’s appearance on 60 Minutes was preceded with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding. The public relations blitz dragged out for a whole week.

What profound truisms would the elusive former-fed master divulge to the News Magazine’s withered-coquette, Leslie Stahl? Would he produce his crystal ball and forecast America’s blurry economic future in mangled Fed-speak? Or would he focus on the startling gyrations in the stock market and the “frothy” conditions in the slumping housing market? The suspense was nearly unbearable. Read the rest of this entry »

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
By Patrick Martin
17 September 2007

When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion. Read the rest of this entry »

EDITORS’ PREAMBLE: Boyish and all-American-looking GOP language whore Frank Luntz has perverted further (a feat in itself!) the sordid and utterly immoral “art” of political p.r. The raves he receives by fellow establishment whores like Time Magazine are eloquent commentary on how “American civilization” operates in corporate terms. On his own website, he touts his horn thusly:

“Frank Luntz is one of the most honored communication professionals in America today. “Time Magazine” named him one of “50 of America’s most promising leaders aged 40 and under” and he is the “hottest pollster” in America according to the “Boston Globe.” Frank was named one of the four “Top Research Minds” by Business Week and was the winner of the coveted Washington Post “Crystal Ball” award for being the most accurate pundit in 1992. Public Television’s Bill Moyers had this to say about Frank: “He’s a magician with a gift for the politics of words and what words best connect with the hearts and minds of the public.” Said comedian Al Franken: ” Asking Frank Luntz if he understands public opinion is like asking Julia Childs if she knows how to make a soufflé.” 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 »

Don’t be misled by all that pomp and circumstance and ivy…like all centers of plutocratic power Harvard is often an accomplice in imperial projects…if not the actual incubator.

BY TOM HAYDEN
DATELINE: THE NATION 9.14.07

Should a human rights center at the nation’s most prestigious university be collaborating with the top US general in Iraq in designing the counter-insurgency doctrine behind the current military surge? Read the rest of this entry »

BY ANTHONY SANCHEZ Dateline: April 26, 2007

IMPORTANT RELATED MATERIAL: Joshua Wolf (born June 8, 1982) is an American video blogger, freelance journalist and filmmaker[1] who was jailed by a Federal district court on August 1, 2006 for refusing to turn over a collection of videotapes he recorded during a July 2005 demonstration in San Francisco, California. Wolf, a video activist who reported on numerous protest and progressive events, videotaped an anti-G8 anarchist protest in San Francisco on July 8, 2005 in which the protesters wore masks to hide their identities. Later that same night, and over the next few days, Wolf posted edited clips of his video to a local activist news website, Bay Area Indymedia (Indybay)…Wolf’s videotape is the only known source material from the protest to have been sought by subpoena after refusal to turn it over. [7] Read the rest of this entry »