The Greanville Journal

Mumbai slum, not the worst, by far.
A Tomdispatch Interview with Mike Davis (Part 2)

Mike Davis interviewed by Tom Engelhardt | May 12, 2006
TomDispatch

Victorian England under a triumphant laissez-faire…Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – fruit and ‘sweetstuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one – filth everywhere – a gutter before the houses, and a drain behind – clothes drying, and slops emptying from the windows; … men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing.

Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839 on St Giles Rookery

TD: It occurs to me that, in Baghdad, the Bush administration has managed to create a weird version of the urban world you describe in Planet of Slums. There’s the walled imperial Green Zone in the center of the city with its Starbucks and, outside it, the disintegrating capital as well as the vast slum of Sadr City — and the only exchange between the two is the missile-armed helicopters going one way and the car bombs heading the other. [Read more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, Book Reviews by Greanville
1 Comment »

Dateline: 11 Jul 2007
At a distance, with their military-style helmets and flak jackets, many journalists now look like the combatants they are supposedly covering.

World Press Freedom in the Eyes & Ears of the Beholder
by Trish Schuh May 26, 2007

UNITED NATIONS- On the 14th Anniversary of World Press Freedom Day celebrated in May, UNESCO hosted an event for journalists called “Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity.” Under Article 1 of its Constitution, UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. [Read more →]

Tags: The Contemptible Media, Establishment Whores, Mediocrats by Greanville
1 Comment »

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 more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, CJO'S OpEds, Corporadoes, Establishment Whores by Greanville
No Comments »

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 more →]

Tags: State Crimes, CJO'S OpEds, Corporadoes, Establishment Whores by Greanville
No Comments »

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 more →]

Tags: Zionist Footprints, State Crimes, Toxic Culture, CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media, Obstinate History by Greanville
1 Comment »

Besides the obvious facts that they can be the product of amateur terrorists, men alienated from the so-called values of the West by the constant murder and thievery practiced by the Anglo-British alliance with some European support throughout the Arab world, there’s also plenty of reason to suspect agents provocateurs or foul play in all these recent “terror incidents.” The plutocratic corporatocracy has a lot to gain by stampeding the populace into accepting a rapid erosion of their constitutional rights in return for “security.” It’s the oldest racket in town: the protection racket. These days, it’s apparently run in all continents by the world’s premier governments.—Eds.

FIRST VIEW:
BY JOEL SKOUSEN
Editor - World Affairs Brief
© 2007 All Rights Reserved | 7-7-7

A huge case of media hysteria was the only serious consequence of the London/Scottish would-be car bombs. Upon close analysis none of these “car bombs” would have done anything except burn up a car. That’s it–no explosions, no deaths, and no big plot. One difference though: As compared to other recent plots, riddled with government informers and agent provocateurs, these wanna-be terrorists seem to be of the amateur variety. [Read more →]

Tags: Zionist Footprints, State Crimes, Europe Matters, Toxic Culture, Corporadoes, The Contemptible Media, Imperial Policy by Greanville
1 Comment »

BY SHEILA SAMPLES
REPUBLISHED AS PART OF OUR CLASSIC ESSAYS SERIES.

James Inhofe, GOP senator for the benighted state of Oklahoma, former real estate developer, climate change denier extraordinaire, typifies the repugnant combination of profound ignorance, jingoism, corruption, and fanaticism that characterizes so much of the political class in America today. With corporats like these around who needs Bin Laden to do us in?

The more I look at the chaotic mess George W. Bush is making in every blessed corner of the world, the more I am inclined to take a closer look at the God in whose name he claims to be making it.

Just who IS this God that chats up brazen hypocrites and zealots in our midst — whipping them into a frenzy of pharisaic attempts to strangle democracy at home and abroad? This awesome creature is on a murderous rampage in the Middle East, Africa, South America and — as Donald Rumsfeld would say — east, west, north and south somewhat. Armed and jackbooted, Bush’s flinty-hearted Diety bears no resemblance to the compassionate and forgiving God in whom Christians have put their faith for more than two millenia. [Read more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, CJO'S OpEds, Imperial Policy by Greanville
No Comments »

BY SHEILA SAMPLES

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”~~George Orwell

Recently, Nova M Radio’s Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more “rage fatigue” than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it’s more an inability to “focus” on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis. [Read more →]

Tags: Toxic Culture, Pathetic Idioten, CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media, The Left & Pseudo Left, Imperial Policy by Greanville
1 Comment »

BY GABRIEL ASH ||\ • Dateline: June 27, 2007

Part I

The boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s Apartheid scored an important victory recently when the British University and College Union (UCU) decided to circulate “the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches for information and discussion” and “encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.” The UCU resolution is in fact quite moderate. Nevertheless, it raised the profile of the campaign and elicited a round of shrill, wall-to-wall condemnations, from newspapers, foundations, politicians and governments. Shockingly, not a single media mogul (or any mogul, for that matter) is in favor of the boycott! [Read more →]

Tags: Middle East, Europe Matters, Controversy, Toxic Culture, CJO'S OpEds, Imperial Policy by Greanville
30 Comments »

Disbelieving Michael Moore interviews British physician.

BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
COMMENT AND OPINION BY THE EDITOR

Well, judging from what we are beginning to see, it didn’t take too long for the mainstream media to regain its footing, atone for its earlier honest hoorays for Moore’s film, and figure an angle from which it might preserve the remnants of its tattered honor while still fulfilling the dirty job its corporate masters demanded it to do, which was to badmouth Michael Moore’s brave documentary, SiCKO, into complete ineffectiveness. The spectacle makes me sick.

Just a few days ago CNN’s Anderson Cooper offered on his program 360 a glimpse of the subtle and not so subtle maneuvers being frantically worked out by the elites as they scramble to repair the huge breach on their disinformation wall created by Moore’s near irrefutable expose of the American healthcare system, an industry whose cynicism and callousness should have been exposed by the “professional media” in the same manner eons ago. [Read more →]

Tags: CJO'S OpEds, The Contemptible Media, Establishment Whores, Mediocrats by Greanville
9 Comments »