perspective \•/ BY ANDREW FEINSTEIN
Dateline: 07/27/2007 Denverpost.com
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protesters carry signs and shout slogans calling for the suspension of Atlanta Falcons football player Michael Vick, outside the NFL’s headquarters in New York, Friday, July 20, 2007. Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday for his alleged involvement with dogfighting. (AP / Bebeto Matthews)
Like most of you, I was appalled when reading the ghastly details of the indictment against Michael Vick, which accused the Atlanta Falcons quarterback of violating federal laws against dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls for combat and conducting this illegal enterprise across state lines. Continue reading ‘Vick and Dick: What the Falcons QB may have in common with America’s VP’
BY CHIP BERLET
Originally at The Public Eye - Vol. 18, No. 3
Introduction
John Calvin (Jean Cauvin), the main architect of one of protestantism’s most severe sects, and moral inspiration for New England’s Puritans. The curious thing is that while Calvinism, in general, provided a big legitimacy boost to capitalism, the Puritans hewed to a doctrine that had much more in common with old Catholic doctrine in regard to commerce.
Why are increased sentences and the severe punishment of those convicted of crimes so popular and prevalent in U.S. culture? Since the late 1970s our society has accepted increasingly rigid and vengeful ways of punishing those convicted of crimes. Behind this trend is the momentum of 250 years of a strain of religious philosophies brought to our shores by Pilgrims, Puritans, and other colonial settlers influenced by a Protestant theology called Calvinism. Today, many ideas, concepts, and frames of reference in modern American society are legacies of the history of Protestantism as it divided and morphed through Calvinism, revivalist evangelicalism, and fundamentalism. Even people who see themselves as secular and not religious often unconsciously adopt many of these historic cultural legacies while thinking of their ideas as simply common sense. Continue reading ‘Calvinism, Capitalism, Conversion, and Incarceration’
PAUL HARRIS, New York Correspondent Dateline: The Observer (U>K>)| Sunday July 22, 2007
Henry Kravis, Jewish-American financier of legendary fame for his LBO sleight-of-hands, and loyal Bush/GOP supporter. The cesspoool of high finance has rarely produced an specimen as disgusting as Kravis, and all his millions can’t hide that simple fact. He more or less personifies the mores of the American plutocracy. Unfortunately, he’s got plenty of playmayes and imitators
The American Dream of riches for all is turning into a nightmare of inequality. But a backlash is brewing, reports Paul Harris in New York.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Be sure to read our companion article by Michael Parenti, “The Rich are Our of Sight,” right on this journal.
On the surface, Mark Cain works for a time-share company. Members pay a one-off sum to join and an annual fee. They then get to book holiday time in various destinations around the globe. But Solstice clients are not ordinary people. They are America’s super-rich and a brief glance at its operations reveal the vast and still widening gulf between them and the rest of America. Continue reading ‘Welcome to Richistan, USA’
BY MICHAEL PARENTI (Originally published in December 2002)
Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen is rich, very rich, and he’s not afraid to show it. Just like fellow softcom billionaire Larry Ellison’s boat, “Rising Sun”, which boasts a 452 ft displacement, at 416 ft long (approx. 1.5 city blocks), ‘The Octopus’ is one of the world’s largest yachts (it’s more like a cruise liner) and cost a whopping $200 million. [The Octopus] has a permanent crew of 60, including several former Navy Seals. It has two helicopters, seven boats, a 10 man submarine and a remote controlled vehicle for crawling on the Ocean floor. The submarine has the capacity to sleep eight for up to two weeks underwater.
On average, owners must spend a minimum of 10 percent of the purchase price every year to keep these yachts in good working condition and cover crew salaries. Therefore “Octopus” which cost Allen US$200 million requires a US$20 million annual budget.
Continue reading ‘The Super Rich Are Out of Sight’
BY CHALMERS JOHNSON [Tomdispatch.com]
Posted on May 17, 2007, Printed on July 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51975/
In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem. Continue reading ‘Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?’
BY RALPH R. ACAMPORA
July 22, 2007
The story many Long Islanders have followed during the past few weeks of an escaped steer on the North Fork whose notoriety landed him a refuge away from the abattoir gets more perplexing the more you think about it. From a strictly agribusiness point of view, of course, the fugitive livestock presented only the problem of recapturing an ornery investment before its due harvest. Bad cow - get back into the pen. Continue reading ‘The steer who escaped into our conscience’
BY EZRA KLEIN | Dateline: July 19, 2007
Poster for Jacques Tati’s Hulot, the hero of VACANCES DE M. HULOT, who at one time epitomized the French idiosyncratic vacationer | Originally posted at THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
How come Americans don’t take a month off every summer, even though we’d like to? Blame it on individualism.
The most astonishing revelations in Michael Moore’s Sicko have nothing to do with healthcare. They’re about vacation time. French vacation time, to be precise. Continue reading ‘Why We Don’t Vacation Like the French’
BY JOHN STEPPLING
Dateline: July 2007
Inpolite, infantile question: With so many American supermen of Scots-Irish ancestry, I don’t understand how the Irish don’t control the world already…
“There is an underscoring of collective anxiety in this film, everyone, from ordinary citizen to wonk- defense specialist, all seem nervous….even before anything jumps off. It is portraying a culture of deep almost bottomless anxiety…”
I have this three-week break before I go to Norway, and my girlfriend is already there, and school is over, so I have a lot of time on my hands……which is my excuse for going to see Die Hard 4 yesterday. Now, on the heels of your very good post on Arts and Entertainment, and our dissection of the pathogenics of *24*, I think a quick glance at the Bruce Willis franchise is in order. Continue reading ‘Die Stupid’
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. Continue reading ‘The Delusions of the Last Rightwing Remnant: Freerepublic.com’
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. Continue reading ‘What Lies Beneath: Privileged Grotesques, Ordinary Monsters and the Iraqi Deathscape.’
