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’
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’
BY LISA FAGER
Dateline: Wednesday, 03 October 2007
There can be no doubt that much Hip Hop product is pathological. But whose product is it? Industry activist Lisa Fager went to Capitol Hill to school lawmakers on the real purveyors of audio and video mayhem: the music and communications corporations that control the destructive content that saturates the market. Pathology is not limited to musical product; it oozes into the public discourse in the form of racist speech and images that defame the powerless - all for the sake of corporate profit margins. Under relentless media consolidation, music playlists have become uniform indicators of massive payola - “an organized corporate crime.”
Continue reading ‘From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images’
“We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century. Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multinational corporations and friendly nations from all over the globe.”
Blackwater corporate website
“I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world.”
Gary Jackson, president of Blackwater USA
“Blackwater . right now has contracts that [Gary Jackson] says are so secret that he is not able to tell one branch of the Feds that he’s working for a different branch of the Feds.. Much of the interview I had with them was couched in this — this almost cowboy-like secrecy. They were very proud of being on these top secret missions.”
Barry Yeoman, author of “Soldiers of Good Fortune,” on Democracy Now
Continue reading ‘The State Dept.’s Murderous Guardians’
Nader, controversial, especially to the “Anybody But Bush” crowd who continue to scapegoat him as the main factor that “lost” the election in 2000, despite a huge amount of evidence that Gore ran a lackluster campaign and finally the election was stolen, is still a powerful reminder of how far this republic has to travel before it begins to live up to its own image.
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. Continue reading ‘Where Are the Lawyers of America?’
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’
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’
BY STEPHEN LENDMAN Dateline 8-29-7
Peter Coors (standing), scion to family of reactionary tycoons that has distinguished itself for its antilabor practices and support for the most extreme rightwing politicians in the land. He ran for a seat as Colorado’s senator, but lost to Dem Ken Salazar
See Part I at https://bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=241 on this same site.
This article was written to assess the state of working America in the run-up to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened following decades of government and business duplicity to crush it.
Part I reviewed the labor movement’s rise in the 19th century and subsequent decline post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged, but Senate Republicans killed it. Continue reading ‘The War On Working Americans: Part II’
Moore speaking on health issues before sympathetic congresspeople.
C O N T R O V E R S Y
Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko (2007) has attracted its fair share of critics among the liberaloid guardians of the status quo, and, naturally, rabidly negative and mendacious reviews from the right. But a film of this importance, that has managed to touch off a desperately needed debate about the nature of the “health care” system in the US, and the grasping values underscoring it, has also elicited criticism from the left. In this series of posts we cover the more compelling arguments.
EXHIBIT 1
IN PRAISE OF “SICKO” BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DIES?
By Carolyn Baker
Dateline: Sunday, 12 August 2007
It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in “Bowling For Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 911″ in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and “Sicko” was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding memos sent by management throughout the Blue Cross system warning employees of the possible side-effects of “Sicko” on their company’s image. Continue reading ‘The SiCKO Controversy : Views From the Left’
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’
