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’
Milton Friedman, best known for his free-market fundamentalism, and accordingly eulogized when not downright canonized by establishment apologists, was a shameless enemy of the people. Blessed with the kind of obscenely long life that apparently befits all scoundrels (dead at 94; Reagan at 84; Ed Bernays, 104) this contemptible mystifier of social science and intellectual prostitute for the plutocracy lived long enough to preside over criminal applications of his fraudulent “economic science”, most notably in Chile, where his vulturish “Chicago Boys” created a model of capitalist “development” with the usual lopsided traits of a nation deeply divided in terms of wealth distribution and political power, with the poor, of course, bearing the brunt of Friedman’s “free society.”
BY STEVEN LENDMAN
Dateline: Thursday, October 04, 2007
AN ERA ENDED on November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. A torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss with the same tribute it credulously used when Ronald Reagan died saying “few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom.” Economist and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called him a hero and “The Great Liberator” in a New York Times op-ed; the UK Financial Times called him “the last of the great economists;” Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada’s National Post, mourned the “free markets” loss of “their last lion;” and Business Week magazine noted the “Death of a Giant” and praised his doctrine that “the best thing government can do is supply the economy with the money it needs and stand aside.” Continue reading ‘“Capitalism and Freedom” Unmasked’
Aznar and Bush, two men who should answer before a new Nuremberg court for deliberate crimes against humanity, beginning with the launching of unprovoked wars. Bush, Cheney, and their criminal neocons are still at it, of course, now plotting some pretext to attack Iran.
BY PHIL ROCKSTROH
“We must become the change we want to see.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“In any case, I hate all Iranians.”
–Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve. Continue reading ‘A Q and A For The People Of A Forsaken Republic: Addressing the origins of the Who’s-Your-Daddy Nation’
“Don’t wait up for me, darling.” Bush patting one of his European concubines in crime.
By Bill Van Auken | 29 September 2007
A solidarity post with World Socialist Web Site
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE FEBRUARY 2003 discussions between US President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar published Wednesday by Spain’s largest daily, El Pais, provides fresh documentary confirmation of what is already a widely known historical fact. That is: the Bush administration was determined to wage a war of aggression to conquer Iraq and was not about to allow international law or compromise settlements to interfere with its long-planned invasion. Continue reading ‘The Bush-Aznar tapes: glimpse of a gangster preparing for war’
Few contemporary American politicians incarnate the false promise of liberalism as well as Democrat Hillary Clinton (along with husband Bill, the master opportunist “triangulator.”) If Hillary were to gain the White House, the Clintons would constitute another dynasty in presidential politics, and although rabidly denounced by the insane and hypocritical US rightwing punditocracy as wild leftists, in international terms they barely merit the label of mild “centrists.”
BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL
Dateline: September 17, 2007 CROSSPOST AT AUTHOR’S BLOGSITE: SUSAN’S BLOG
Part I (September 17) discussed the deepening conflict between the rulers and the ruled and the disagreements within the elite on how to address the nation’s problems. Part II (below) compares liberal efforts to preserve the system with socialist efforts to replace it. Continue reading ‘America in Crisis, Part II: The Liberal Challenge and the Prospects for Socialism’
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. Continue reading ‘America in Crisis, Part I: Class Conflict’
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. Continue reading ‘We Can’t Rely on the Kindness of Billionaires’
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. Continue reading ‘A deafening silence on report of one million Iraqis killed under US occupation’
The Caudillo in winter, fading into history with all honors and total impunity. Certainly persona most grata in Washington.
BY VICENTE NAVARRO; September 15-16, 2007
According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration), who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator died, to 1978, when the first democratically elected government was installed, the U.S. government actively supported the development of democracy in Spain. Continue reading ‘How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain’s Transition to Democracy’
Petraeus—A military man for one season. Career over constitutional duty.
BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO,
Dateline: September 14, 2007
Savior of the surge has big political ambitions
For months, we heard nothing but a constant refrain: wait for Petraeus! That’s what they told us, Republicans and Democrats alike. Rather than face the ire of their largely antiwar constituents, Congress demurred and waited for the military messiah to show up with his much-anticipated report – even though they all knew what he would say. It gave both parties breathing room, and permitted the Democrats to criticize without taking any actions, while allowing the Republicans to go into a significantly less critical holding pattern, albeit with the promise of a “GOP revolt” to come if Petraeus failed to please. Continue reading ‘Petraeus: GOP Man on Horseback?’
