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Fight Economic Oppression, Target the Top One Percent
Joel S. Hirschhorn
Massive economic inequality is killing America and we the people. It has already killed American democracy. The rich have captured the political system so they could manipulate the economy and benefit unfairly. Economic freedom and opportunity are gone. Greed among the top one percent has succeeded so well that a true uprising and revolt by Americans, like that seen in Egypt, may be needed to restore America.
US society is riddled through and through with constant lies and political propaganda to keep Americans stupid and distracted. The truth is here, hidden from easy view for most citizens by an epidemic of dishonesty and irresponsibility among elected officials, corporate leaders, cowardly, corporate controlled mass media, and especially right-wing pundits, many of whom are in the top one percent. The truth, of course, is often revealed, but only in venues that relatively few people with sufficient intelligence and critical thinking skills access. Two recent articles should be required reading in every classroom and home.
Police Brutality in Honduras
by Stephen Lendman
On June 28, 2009, a coordinated State Department-Pentagon project allied with Honduran military commanders and top opposition figures ousted President Manuel Zelaya, establishing the current fascist dictatorship, supported, armed, and funded by Washington.
In fact, all Honduran officers from captains on up are trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas (SOA), popularly known as the "School of Assassins."
Established in 1946, SOA Watch calls it "a combat training school," teaching soldiers how to torture, repress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrow democratically elected governments, assassinate targeted leaders, and suppress popular resistance when it erupts.
The war on Planned Parenthood is a war on poor women
Mary Shaw
The Planned Parenthood organization is under attack from the right. With ACORN out of the way, I guess they needed to invent a new bogeyman to distract us from their failure to create all those new jobs they promised us during the 2010 campaign season.
But their war on Planned Parenthood is a threat to the health and wellbeing of low-income women everywhere. And, sadly, I don't think the GOP gives a damn about that.
Fortunately, the Republicans were not successful in their attempt to defund Planned Parenthood during the recent budget fiasco. But I don't think they'll stop trying, either at the national level or within the states.
Icelanders Vote on Predatory Bailout: Nyet
by Stephen Lendman
In his April 8 article headlined, "The Economic Crisis in Iceland: 'IMF Medicine' is not the Solution," Michael Hudson asked:
"Will Iceland Vote 'No' on April 9, or commit financial suicide," their choice being:
Reject debt bondage or "subject their economy to decades of poverty, bankruptcy and emigration of their work force."
Israel: Spoiling for Another Fight?
by Stephen Lendman
Throughout its history, Israel intimidated as a regional menace, preemptively attacking Palestinians and regional neighbors for any reason or none at all. Each time, it's claimed self-righteousness and "self-defense," what scoundrels always say.
Until his death, Edward Said passionately defended Palestinian rights. He accused Israel of turning Palestine into an isolated prison, suffocating an entire population, impoverishing and slaughtering them, blaming them for its own state terror, and creating a wasteland of destruction and human misery.
Powerful Aftershock Rocks Japan
by Stephen Lendman
Measuring 7.1 (one or more other reports said 7.4), rocked northeast Japan, causing more damage and disruption to a devastated area. It cut electricity to four million homes, disrupted power at two nuclear facilities, and according to Kyodo News:
"Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture," according to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).
Hiding From Shame, Addicted To Optimism: The tyranny of our collective comfort zones
by Phil Rockstroh
The technologies that inflicted upon the world the ongoing tragedies in both the Gulf of Mexico and Japan serve a dangerous addiction, an addiction to blind optimism, a habituation of mind that allows us to dwell within provisional comfort zones but renders vast spaces of the world into deathrealms.
After each catastrophe, there ensues a scramble to contain the damage leveled, as, concurrently, the apologist of the present system explain the anomalous nature of the event. Yet, this much should be obvious: Attempting to clean up the mess, after it occurs, as oppose to altering the way of life that incurs the damage, is analogous to an addict believing a few days in detox will serve as a solution to his addiction.
In the same way drug dealers are reliant on an addict's unwillingness to reflect on the carnage created in his life, as well as, the havoc reaped in the lives of those near him, engendered by his addiction, the small group of hyper-wealthy elites who benefit from the current system rely on collective cognitive dissidence (or, as it has been termed, the fear of fear itself) to dissuade the public at large from peering deeply into the pernicious situation.
Suppressing Truth and Promoting War: A New York Times Tradition
by Stephen Lendman
According to media scholar/critic Robert McChesney, today's corporate journalism is co-opted, corrupted, gutted, and virtually worthless as a source of real news, information and analysis.
As a result, a free and open society is at risk because fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully managed. Dissent is marginalized, and supporting wealth and power interests replace full disclosure and accurate reporting. No wonder imperial wars are called liberating one. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with lawless governments. America's under both parties certainly qualifies.
A previous article explained that for many decades, The Times has been America's closest equivalent to an official ministry of information and propaganda, masquerading as real news, commentary, analysis and opinion.
Its long history reveals a record of suppressing truth, supporting powerful interests, backing corporate predators, and endorsing imperial wars, no matter how much killing, destruction, and human misery they cause, let alone why they're waged.
Does America have a Muslim problem?
Franklin Lamb
Beirut
photo- Terry Jones
Whatever becomes of the truly pathetic “Pastor” Terry Jones and his plans to appear later this month at the largest Mosque in Michigan to condemn Islam and to generate some media attention while provoking all decent Americans and people of good will everywhere with his hate speech, will not be of much lasting import to Muslim and American relations.
Even as Jones prepares to act as grand inquisitor and plans to prosecute the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for various imagined crimes, it reminds us that when it comes to intolerance, nothing is new under the sun in our land that beckons with its Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island in New York harbor:
“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse from your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me/ I lift my lamp before the Golden Door.”
Obama Again Capitulates
by Stephen Lendman
A previous article explained his sellout to Republicans last year on extending tax cuts to America's aristocracy, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/12/obama-capitulates-to-republicans.html
It shouldn't surprise that on April 8, he repeated what's become a habit - breaking every major campaign pledge by backing reactionary Republican measures, harming working Americans most, besides governing lawlessly at home and abroad and much more, hurtling the nation dangerously far right, tipping it toward neoserfdom enforced by repressive harshness.
Last December he said:
"(W)ithout a willingness to give on both sides, there's no reason to believe (the current) stalemate won't continue well into next year....I am not willing to let that happen....it would be the wrong thing to do. As a result, we arrived at a framework for a bipartisan agreement," what, in fact, was assured well in advance of his announcement.
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