Pages: << 1 ... 1318 1319 1320 1321 1322 1323 1324 1325 1326 1327 1328 >>
The Triumph of Ignorance: How Morons Succeed in U.S. Politics
George Monbiot
Obama has a lot to offer, but until our education system is fixed or religious fundamentalism withers, anti-intellectuals will flaunt their ignorance.
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the United States come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?
Like most people on this side of the Atlantic, I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The United States has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
Palestinian Kristallnacht
Jonathan Cook
Mohammed Arabi, 84, a survivor of the Kafr
Qassem massacre, stands by the graves of the
47 villagers killed by Israeli police in 1956.
Message of Kafr Qassem massacre lives on for Palestinians. In a conflict that has produced more than its share of suffering and tragedy, the name of Kafr Qassem lives on in infamy more than half a century after Israeli police gunned down 47 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in the village.
This week Kafr Qassem's inhabitants, joined by a handful of Israeli Jewish sympathizers, commemorated the anniversary of the deaths 52 years ago by marching to the cemetery where the victims were laid to rest.
They did so as the local media revisited the events, publishing testimonies from two former senior police officers who recalled the order from their commander to shoot all civilians breaking a last-minute curfew imposed on the village, which lies just inside Israel's borders.
Beware the twin towers of electronic election theft
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
Obama supporters are exuding a potentially fatal air of confidence and expectation. Intoxicated by favorable polls and a gusher of campaign spending, many are, in John McCain’s phrase, “measuring the drapes in the White House.”
It is a classic error, made lethal by the Democratic Party’s ongoing unwillingness to face the realities of electronic election theft.
In fact, the twin towers of pre-election disenfranchisement and rigged electronic vote counts make an Obama victory at best an even call, no matter how far ahead he may seem in the polls.
As reported by Bradblog, Greg Palast, Robert F. Kennedy, Mark Crispin Miller and others, the Republicans are waging all-out war to purge hundreds of thousands of Democrats from the voter rolls. The now familiar attacks on ACORN are a smokescreen to cover highly effective state-by-state assaults on computerized registration lists. These lists are often privatized and run by Republican-connected companies like Triad in Ohio.
The diplomacy of lying
John Pilger
[+] Obama’s job is to present a benign, even progressive face that will revive America’s democratic pretensions, internationally and domestically, while ensuring nothing of substance changes.
![[+]](http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2007/obama_portrait/barack_obama_01.jpg){kind=link}
In 1992, Mark Higson, the Foreign Office official responsible for Iraq, appeared before the Scott inquiry into the scandal of arms sold illegally to Saddam Hussein. He described a “culture of lying” at the heart of British foreign policymaking. I asked him how frequently ministers and officials lied to parliament.
“It’s systemic,” he said. “The draft letters I wrote for various ministers were saying that nothing had changed, the embargo on the sale of arms to Iraq was the same.”
“Was that true?” I asked.
“No, it wasn’t true.”
“And your superiors knew it wasn’t true?”
“Yes.”
“So how much truth did the public get?”
“The public got as much truth as we could squeeze out, given that we told downright lies.”
Workers, Unite! Demand that you be paid in Gold Bullion!
Len Hart
Put 'supply side' nonsense to the test! Demand that you be paid in gold bullion. If right wing ideology and theories were correct, your bosses should not have a problem with it. They will not accede to your demands because they know that right wing economics is pure bullshit!
The right wing made a big mistake when it tried to tar Obama with a canard, accusing him of advocating Marxism by 'spreading the wealth around'. But it has been the GOP since Ronald Reagan's improvident tax cut which 'spread the wealth around' upward to the top one percent of the population. That increasingly tiny elite has since 'spread the wealth around' among their various investments, none of which create wealth.
YOUR NEW PRESIDENT, ZBIG BROTHER
Alan Stang
As I write, little more than a week remains before E-Day, on which most Americans will vote. Nerves are being fearfully wracked. Even people who are usually somnolent say they can’t take the stress. There is a real danger that, unaddressed, the frustration of choosing between a Communist illegal alien raised by a Communist sex pervert and a POW traitor who is a Soviet front man could lead to an epidemic of Acid Reflux Disease or even an outbreak of Restless Leg Syndrome.
The purpose of this modest piece is to reassure you. Stop tormenting yourself. Further self-flagellation is pointless. Your next President has already been selected. Didn’t you know? Sure, go ahead and vote if you like, if you have nothing else to do, if you don’t mind standing in long lines between Obamatron morons and McCrud zombies, but enjoy the reassurance of knowing that the powers above Ponzi Paulson and Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Co. have already made their choice.
Christian Zionism: Terror in Jesus' Name
Yoginder Sikand
Represented by literally hundreds of small denominations and churches today, particularly in America, Christian Zionism is today a formidable force and a major actor in global politics. Christian Zionism comes in various shades, but the core of its message is total, unflinching support to the state of Israel and the Zionist imperialist project.
Christian Zionists today exercise an enormous clout in the Bush administration. Bush, too, may himself be characterised in some sense as a Christian Zionist, for his policies in the Middle East and elsewhere clearly reflect or tally with the Christian Zionist agenda.
War, conquest and imperialist domination, based on a fanatic insistence on the absolute truth of Christianity and the racial superiority of the Jews lie at the very heart of Christian Zionism.
A Tale of TWO Terrorists
Whisleblower
Brooklyn is teeming with terrorists - but you'll never hear about it in the mainstream media. Why? -Because they're 'good' terrorists.
"[They're] not your problem - Palestinians are your problem."
"I have a business," Goldberg said, somewhat embarrassed . . . "I rent out inflatables that kids jump on -- moon bouncers.
Fortunately it's seasonal work. I'm busy in the spring and summer and then in the winter I'm free to be a Jewish terrorist."
Goldberg was being sarcastic . . . Kahane's followers [believe] that they are wrongly persecuted as "terrorists" for their simple devotion to Torah and Israel, while the true "terrorists" -- the indigenous Palestinians -- are allowed to cling to what they say is God-willed Jewish land.
Is that clear, boys and girls?
Election 2008: Who decides, the people or the programmers?
Ernest Partridge
In another week, more than 100 million American citizens will go to the polls to choose their next president. -Or so most of those citizens believe, along with all of the corporate media and, of course, the candidates.
But might it be possible that the decision next Tuesday lies, not with those 100-plus million voters, but instead with a few dozen programmers who write the secret software for the voting machines that will record some 30 percent of the votes, and also for the computers that compile (i.e., collect and report) 80 percent of the "official election returns? The very idea is too horrible to contemplate, and so it is not contemplated; not by the media, not by most of the public, and not by the Democratic Party.
A presidential selection by anonymous programmers is not contemplated, much less discussed and publicized, in the face of compelling evidence that the 2004 presidential election, along with numerous congressional elections during the past decade, were in fact stolen.
Targeting Dissent: The San Francisco Eight
Stephen Lendman
Throughout much of American history, dissent was never tolerated if thought to threaten entrenched interests. Especially in times of war, economic crisis, or social stress. During the great Red Scare from 1917 - 1920. Under the 1917 Espionage Act that barred mailing materials advocating insurrectionist or forcible resistance, and the 1918 Sedition Act that banned criticism of the government and ongoing war effort. Later targeting those on the left by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Smith Act, and during the age of Joe McCarthy. Post-9/11, anti-war activists, Latino immigrants, and Muslim Americans viciously targeted. The San Francisco Eight as well.
Former Black Panthers. On January 23, 2007, arrested in early morning raids in California, New York and Florida. Charged with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer and various conspiracy acts from 1968 - 1973. A racist frame following decades of harassment and a ruthless vendetta against the Black Panther Party.
<< 1 ... 1318 1319 1320 1321 1322 1323 1324 1325 1326 1327 1328 >>
