We have said it before: If hot air could be used as a viable energy source, Tom Friedman alone could solve the world crisis. The billionaire pundit’s arrogance often matches his ignorance—and is there any point in asking why the NYTimes poo-bahs keep him under contract?
By Steve Jonas / Dateline: Tue, 10/16/2007 -
Tom Friedman has been wrong before about the major issues of our time. He supported “globalization” and apparently still does, even though this is finally being revealed to be not at all about “free trade” (e.g., U.S. sugar), as some observers have known for quite some time. Rather it is about the free export of capital to places where it can make a lot more profit for its owners than it could in the U.S. Tom Friedman originally supported the War on Iraq, even though he wasn’t sure about WMD. And now Tom Friedman is wrong on Gore (for the most part) and on Bush. Continue reading ‘Dr. J.’s Commentary: Tom Friedman: Wrong. Again.’
Britches in the arms of an ALF member, with stitches removed. This stump macaque became famous when animal liberation “terrorists” raided the lab where she was being subjected to frivolous experimentation, and found her eyes had been sewn shut as a form of early maternal and sensorial deprivation. (See below) As a critical part of the establishment complex, a lot of universities work hand in glove with corporations, the military and other institutions in projects that the public would readily disallow if properly informed.
BY WILL POTTER // Dateline: “Green is the New Red: How the Bush Administration Is Using Terror Laws to Prosecute Nonviolent Environmental Activists,” Counterpunch, May 04, 2006.
A version of this article was also published by Earth First Journal and Green is the new red blog
• Reproduced here with comments from Green is New Red blog
The Red Scare was less about evidence than really great PR. Joseph McCarthy and crew flacked one word so relentlessly, so virulently, that it became a political albatross to hang around anyone’s neck. The true meaning of the word fell by the wayside: communism became a fluid brand to slap on the enemy of the hour. Continue reading ‘SMOULDERING ISSUES: Green Is The New Red’
photo: ranson-polizzotti
By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
Out of the School Yard and into the Boardroom: The New American Bully, On Film, In Life // A Compleat Guide to Harassment from Unexpected Quarters
All over the world, and most especially, in corporate America, a terrible war is being waged, one that seems so unlikely and preposterous. It is woman against woman, and it is a systematic and conscious marginalizing of smart, talented, women of all looks, race and shape who face a daily work-place assault by the least likely of oppressors- their female supervisor - one who subjects her underlings to such extreme and inappropriate behavior that if a man did it (and with today’s laws, he wouldn’t, not if he were smart anyway), would be facing a sexual harassment suit faster than you could say “Anita Hill.” Bullying is now recognized by the American Medical Association (AMA) as a serious public health problem. Continue reading ‘The Ways and Whys of Female-to-Female Bullying’
By Jim Booth with editorial comment by Les Blough (AxisofLogic.com)
Dateline: Aug 9, 2007 \ This article first appeared in AXIS OF LOGIC, a fraternal site.
Editor’s Comment: The following article provides another example of the deepening pathology behind the wars in the Middle East. I personally come from an immediate family of “born again christians” who are intent on war to hasten the arrival of Christ in the second coming and armaggedon. Christian Zionism in support of the State of Israel is the centerpiece of their ideology. With grandchildren proudly serving in the U.S. military, my radical christian family members support recruitment of young men and women for training to kill other human beings - all in the name of Jesus. This aggressive christian force is embedded in racism, killing, imperialism and colonization. In my visit to my boyhood home for my mother’s funeral last March, a bumper sticker on a family member’s car read: “Have a good education? Thank a teacher. Got it in English? Thank a soldier”. With recrutiment numbers down, the Pentagon rewards these pro-war christians with a program designed to proselytize soldiers in the field and to provide them with religious motivation to fight and kill.
—Les Blough, Editor, Axis of Logic
Continue reading ‘Military proselytizing, a Baldwin brother, and apocalypse by design…’
By Sam Pizzigati, Special to CorpWatch
June 26th, 2007
cartoon by Khalil Bendib
Peter Rose, a Seattle-based corporate chief executive offficer, took home $4.7 million last year. He thinks that’s quite enough.
“There’s only so much crap you can buy,” he told his hometown newspaper.
His colleagues in corporate America seem not to agree. Continue reading ‘Soaring Executive Pay Attacked by Shareholder Activists’
Like most global corporate media conglomerates, TIME-Warner (which includes CNN) is unrelenting in its promotion of war and idealization of military duty. A new Nuremberg should one day include media barons and their top hirelings as defendants for high crimes against humanity.
BY JOHN STEPPLING // DIALOGUES FROM VOXPOP
Editor’s Note: Our special blog on culture and politics — and countless other topics— VOXPOP uses a dialog format between its co-editors, Guy Zimmerman and John Steppling, both playwrights. This is just one of many excerpts from what is truly a unique public epistolary.
Guy—
The entire MoveOn.org ad spectacle was a perfect example of both the trivializing of American politics, and of the seemingly endless adoration this society has for the military. It was also yet another blow to free speech. The erosion of the first amendment (and the second, and the….) is now at critical mass. Is there any free speech anymore? Well, only in a prescribed fashion, in limited less than public ways. The mantra of this worship of authority and militarism is “support the troops”. I will say again, no, I don’t support the goddamn troops. I feel compassion for those young men and women foolish enough (and economically coerced enough) to join up, but I don’t support them. Continue reading ‘The Worship practice of our new Mortuary Cult’
Considering what a repugnantly amoral opportunist Chris Matthews is, he got off easy with Jon Stewart, who remains a voice for serious morality camouflaged in comedy. Stewart is to be commended for not being afraid to tackle these systemic topics. But being, after all, a corporate media figure, his is indeed a highwire act and the men behind the curtain, the top corporadoes, could easily tire of his jabs at the system and suddenly pull the rug from under him.
BY GREG MITCHELL
If you have ever bemoaned the turn Matthews — a former newspaperman — has taken in recent years, you have to check out what happened on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday night. Matthews called it “the worst interview ever.”
(October 03, 2007) — You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when TV gasbag Chris Matthews was a respectable hard news reporter. He worked in Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Examiner from 1987 to around 2000, and also wrote columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and others. But if you have ever bemoaned the turn his career took as an interviewer/talk show host – or if you just hate the inside-the-beltway mentality of many of our leading press and TV pundits – then you would have loved Jon Stewart’s dismantling of Matthews on “The Daily Show” last night (Oct. 2, 2007). Continue reading ‘Jon Stewart Dismantles Chris Matthews’
Marva group of Jewish-American adolescents playing soldiers, and receiving a dangerous bath of Zionist chauvinism and the “correctness” of violence to solve political issues.
BY CHRIS HEDGES
CROSSPOST: http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20071001_israels_toy_soldiers/ ||| Posted on Oct 1, 2007
If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace. Continue reading ‘Israel’s Toy Soldiers’
Vacant-brained Fred Thompson and his GOPer trophy wife. One of the most baffling things about evil is that it often assumes attractive packages.
BY MATT TAIBBI | Dateline: Sep 24 2007
I can say exactly when I first knew that Fred Dalton Thompson is dangerous. It is 12:07 p.m. on Sunday, September 9th, in Manchester, New Hampshire, just outside a restaurant called Chez Vachon. Thompson has just served up another mumbling, noncommittal tour through a packed diner of breakfasting locals, sitting glumly through the requisite this-sure-is-great-coffee shot. Then, once the needed photos are banked, the lumbering B-list character actor — who plays a video called “The Hunt for Red November” at every campaign stop and sells buttons that, in an unsettlingly McLuhanian twist, pimp him as the “Law and Order candidate” — tries to make a quick beeline back to his bus. But a cheeky local TV reporter shouts at him before he can reach the door. Continue reading ‘Fred Thompson: Desperate Republicans Cheer for a Reagan Wannabe’
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.
Continue reading ‘The lessons of Ahmadinejad at Columbia’
