Pages: << 1 ... 1049 1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 1059 ... 1327 >>
By Timothy V. Gatto
The mood in America couldn’t be darker. I’ve noticed that many articles that bemoan the current state of affairs, i.e.; the corporate control of the two major political parties and the media, the outsourcing of American jobs overseas, the waste fraud and abuse of government and the unbridled military spending in support of major military adventures overseas that cannot be justified by logic, just to name a few, are accompanied by a persistent comment. Many readers of these articles have a comment that basically says “I know what problems we face, why aren’t you suggesting solutions?
I can understand why many political writers hesitate to put their views on what they think would offer solutions to the problems Americans face. I believe that many writers feel that it is more important for the people to understand what is happening than to offer their opinions on how to solve these issues.
I too felt this way until recently. I now believe that the majority of people that will read this article truly understand what is happening. In fact, I briefly stopped writing about what I see happening across America because I felt that I was “preaching to the choir”. I found myself writing about the same things over and over again. The details may have changed, but the basic underlying causes of these problems like corporate control of the government and the mainstream media were still the same. Since 2004 I have written hundreds of articles that all expressed the same opinion. I now find myself reluctant to sit down and write another piece about it, after all, how many different ways can you tell the same old story?
James Petras
Introduction
The first casualty of state terror is the corruption of language, the invention of euphemisms, where words mean their opposite and slogans cover great crimes: There is no longer a world consensus that condemns crimes against humanity. This is because mass murder and assassinations secure investor ‘confidence’, because Indians are dispossessed so the mines can be exploited; oil workers disappear so the petroleum will flow; and the international financial press praises the success of el Presidente for “pacifying the country”.
When narco-presidents are embraced by the leaders of North America and Europe, it is evident that criminals have become respectable the respectable have become criminals.
Franklin Lamb, Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut
In Lebanon this month, like spring flowers, proposals to give Palestinians the right to work are bursting out all over...
This year, the Merry Month of May in Lebanon includes Labor day, the May 15 anniversary of the Nakba, the month long Lebanese municipal elections and the May 5 elevation of Lebanon to the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council.
Yet, for most Palestinians wiling away their lives in Lebanon’s 12 fetid refugee camps and 27 gatherings, May will pass anything but Merry. The festive Labor day and month long elections, held in the 26 municipalities in Lebanon, with the participation of more than 650 glad-handing -vote seeking candidates extolling the Lebanese virtue of working to provide for one’s family, constitute a cruel joke for Palestinian refugees denied the right to work.
BY GILAD ATZMON
The London Palestinian Film Festival opened this year with Elia Suleiman’s latest feature “The Time that Remains” (105min), a monumental reflective and poetic take on Palestine since 1948.
To a certain extent Suleiman’s latest film reminded me of Ramzy Baroud’s book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. Both works chart a personal and devastating expedition into hopelessness. Both accounts are saturated with repeated failures and betrayals, both Baroud and Suleiman are courageous enough to criticise their collective narrative and yet, both pepper their story with some staggering wit, hope and humour. They make you smile just when you are about to sob.
By Jim Kirwan
It is one thing to declare war upon poor or struggling nations to improve the bottom-lines of the Plutocracy that runs the world at the moment: But it is something else entirely to attack the DNA of the this tiny blue planet at its molten core; especially when such a death blow cannot then be stopped by the puny efforts of those that chose to attack the very forces of nature that give all of us the lives we are trying to live today.
What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico is about to open a direct link to the molten core of the planet that we may not be able to control; much as the fallen being above, having become paralyzed by his obsession with the weight of his excessive dreams, now finds himself starring down into the unknown abyss of his own creation-the world may soon find itself nearly powerless before the primeval forces that we have allowed BP to disturb in the unholy name of private-profits over the survivability of this planet.
By Sheila Samples
"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car."~~Garrison Keiler
Do you ever wonder what Jesus would say about the sadistic cesspool that is swirling throughout the Catholic disfunctional structure at tsunami speed? Unfortunately, since the New York Times drew attention to the issue in March, the answer to that is getting buried deeper each day under fresh accusations of child molestation, counter accusations, denials and sordid attempts at justification.
By Tim Buchholz
The United States, in an effort to be “as transparent as we can be” in the words of Hilary Clinton, recently announced it has 5,113 in its nuclear stockpile, and thousands more retired warheads awaiting the junk-pile. President Obama recently signed a new agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called The New START Treaty that will reduce current American and Russian stockpiles to 1550. So I started thinking, “What happens to all that uranium after the bombs are dismantled?”
by Stephen Lendman
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI - stoptorture.org) calls "torture and ill treatment of any kind....incompatible with" moral democratic values. It "advocates for all persons" in Israel and Occupied Palestine to protect them from abusive treatment of all kinds.
In June 2008, its report titled, "No Defense: Soldier Violence against Palestinian Detainees" is just as relevant today, perhaps more so given Israel's intensified violence and abuse in Gaza and the West Bank in the past year.
Ellen Brown
As if attacks from paparazzi and star-crazed fans weren’t enough, Hollywood stars may soon have a literal price put on their heads by investors in the Cantor Exchange, a real-money trading platform where people can bet on the gross profits of upcoming movies. Sales of The Dark Knight skyrocketed after Heath Ledger died unexpectedly, and so did sales after the deaths of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Will greed-driven investors now be laying in wait for the stars of movies they have bet on?
Dr Andrew Glikson
The mothballing of Australia’s CPRS (www.theage.com), a scheme at best symbolic in nature, heralds the success of the massive anti-climate science disinformation campaign waged on the pages of the conservative media. Other sections of the media, including the ABC, maintain a “balance”. Where 2+2=4, and if the party in George Orwell’s 1984 decrees "2+2=5", the media’s “balanced” approach suggests "2+2=4.5"
<< 1 ... 1049 1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 1059 ... 1327 >>