BY STEVEN BEST

A “downed” cow dragged to slaughter. Transportation to the slaughterhouse is just the culmination of her awful fate. “Downers” are animals who have been severely injured or become ill in the process of being raised “for food.”

Other “downers”—this time a couple of hogs, one of which cannot stand at all, also waiting to be taken to the abattoir. How much suffering must transpire before humans start paying real attention to our species’ atrocious tyranny over fellow creatures? Although many will surely deny it, including quite a few on the Left, it’s clear that human supremacist attitudes easily qualify as the earliest and least recognized form for fascism. Factory farms, by treating living, breathing animals as mere cogs in an ruthless industrial profit machine, are one of its most obscene manifestations. How long are we going to allow this to go on?

“Animal liberation may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements than a serious objective.” —Peter Singer

“Animal liberation is the ultimate freedom movement, the `final frontier.’” —Robin Webb, British ALF Press Officer

Introduction: Framing the Unframed Issue

It seems lost on most of the global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist Left that there is a new liberation movement on the planet – animal liberation – that is of immense ethical and political significance. But because animal liberation challenges the anthropocentric, speciesist, and humanist dogmas that are so deeply entrenched in socialist and anarchist thinking and traditions, Leftists are more likely to mock than engage it. Read the rest of this entry »

BY CHARLEY REESE

Many Jews oppose Zionism, including some belonging to highly orthodox religious groups, such as Neturei Karta, who are well noted for their valor in protesting Israeli policies.

One of the myths created by the Israeli lobby is that Jews around the world are unanimous in their support of Israel, regardless of what it does. That’s not true and never has been true. Read the rest of this entry »

BY PETER CHAMBERLIN

We the People have “freedom of the press,” but we do not have a free press.

We have a right to speak out and to assemble, but we don’t know what to say, or where to say it. The Internet is opening a path for us to change these deficiencies.

The Internet will replace the mainstream media, if the First Amendment survives the ceaseless assault being waged upon the Constitution in the name of facilitating the “war on terror.” The overlooked ideology of the Internet is an extremely patriotic American nationalism, driving a free market of truth, mixed-in with freely expressed opinions and ideas. The Internet is the only source of actual “news,” in our land of the corporate media. Read the rest of this entry »

BY MICHAEL D. RECTENWALD

Originally published by The Rec Report / Citizens for Legitimate Government

Only a small minority in the United States maintains an unwavering faith in the administration of George W. Bush. Most of the country has finally discovered Bush and his ilk are liars, thieves, incompetent hacks, and mercenary madmen. Only a few true believers remain. These few are reflected in the unwavering statistical minority of 30%-33%, who still support Bush, and apparently will support Bush, no matter what he does. This remnant, or as Steven Colbert called them, “the backwash,” will never sway. Like the Christian martyrs of old, they will go to their deaths swearing allegiance to their master. One might wonder who this faithful remnant is, and just where its members might be found. Well, a narrow and vociferous margin can be found screeching on Freerepublic.com. There, they are apparently alive, but judging from what they hold to be ‘reality,’ not so well. Read the rest of this entry »

BY STEPHEN LENDMAN
This man and his cabal know the Iraq War is not about installing democracy but robbing this country at gunpoint of its petroleum riches. Rarely have astonishing hypocrisy and wholesale murder worked hand in hand with such degree of impunity.

Congress is back from its July 4 break and with it more bluster and political posturing on changing course to keep things the same, including everything
not working in place. It’s the same old scheme, back again, to fool enough of the people all the time and most all of them long enough to move on to the next
change of course mission shift starting the whole cycle over again. Even the blind can see the hopelessness of staying the course in Iraq. Aside from its lawlessness and immorality, pushing on with a failed effort qualifies as a classic
definition of insanity: continuing the same failed policies, expecting different results. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumsfeld and Cheney (seen in 1975 with Pres. Ford) have been part of the “permanent government” for a long time. Their criminal and disgraceful imprint on the American republic and the world will be a hard record to match.
BY SHAYNE NELSON

On the 10th of September, 2001, the day before 9-11, The U.S. government calmly annouced that it had stolen $23,000 from every US Household.

One has to wonder if 9-11 was scheduled to cover up the news on 9-10, when Rumsfield cooly announced that the Pentagon had somehow lost 2.3 trillion dollars. Rummy didn’t address how that could happen, nor why, nor who might be responsible. He accented the word ‘trillion’ as if he were proud of it. Read the rest of this entry »

BY PHIL ROCKSTROH Dateline: July 12th, 2007

At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has loosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted due to the fact that he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as “the mission” doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

BY PAUL KRUGMAN | Dateline: July 09, 2007

Paul Krugman discusses how the “medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics” to prevent Americans from making health care available to all:

EDITORS’ NOTE: Cyrano was founded to expose and correct the misinformation and topical omissions pouring out of the corporate media, and, back in 1982, when Cyrano appeared, it was The New York Times, the dean of the American press, that provided some of the classical and most skillful examples. This continues to be the case, although the most sensational examples naturally come from the Rupert Murdoch-dominated media, and lately from CNN itself. We reproduce here Krugman’s column to underscore the fact that the establishment is breaking ranks over the health issue, as powerful sectors of capital—especially manufacturing (i.e., autos) and most of their small business popular base are unhappy with an status quo that has long benefited financial institutions (insurance) at the expense of the other sectors. It is that crack in the establishment’s unity that explains the appearance of progressive arguments such as Krugman’s.

Another possibility for Krugman’s relatively outspoken article is the radicalizing effect of any quality radical action. When you see how warmly a piece of cinema such as SiCKO is received, it prompts the timid to come out from behind the usual mealy-mouthed flim-flam. [Webster’s definition: Mealy-mouthed—Using soft words; not straightforward; plausible; affectedly or timidly delicate of speech; speaking deviously; unwilling to tell the truth in plain language. Opposite of frank or blunt.]

The lesson is important: both courage and fear are contagious. American social activists need to start shedding the crippling fears they have carried for far too many years.

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming. Read the rest of this entry »

BY PAUL KRUGMAN | Dateline: July 06, 2007

Paul Krugman looks at who has sacrificed for the Iraq war:

On this Fourth of July, President Bush … called for “more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.” Unfortunately, … nobody asked the obvious question: “What sacrifices have you and your friends made, Mr. President?”…

You see, the Iraq war, although Mr. Bush insists that it’s part of a Global War on Terror™, a fight to the death between good and evil, isn’t like America’s other great wars — wars in which the wealthy shared the financial burden through higher taxes and many members of the elite fought for their country. Read the rest of this entry »

The woman who would be king..er, president beaming the fake “excited to see you” professional pol look.
The Anti-Empire Report BY WILLIAM BLUM | Dateline: July 9, 2007
www.killinghope.org

Neocons, theocons, Demcons, excons, and future cons
Who do you think said this on June 20? a) Rudy Giuliani; b) Hillary Clinton; c) George Bush; d) Mitt Romney;
or e) Barack Obama?

“The American military has done its job. Look what they accomplished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections. They gave the Iraqi government the chance to begin to demonstrate that it understood its responsibilities to make the hard political decisions necessary to give the people of Iraq a better future. So the American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions which are important for their own people.”[1]

Right, it was the woman who wants to be president because … because she wants to be president … because she thinks it would be nice to be president … no other reason, no burning cause, no heartfelt desire for basic change in American society or to make a better world … she just thinks it would be nice, even great, to be president. And keep the American Empire in business, its routine generating of horror and misery being no problem; she wouldn’t want to be known as the president that hastened the decline of the empire. Read the rest of this entry »