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The Lies on Afghanistan
Matthew Hoh: There has never been progress by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, unless you are asking the U.S. military contractors or the Afghan drug barons ... the reconstruction program in Afghanistan has proven to be a failure and its supposed achievements shown to be virtually non-existent, as documented by multiple investigations ... we can be assured the lies about American progress in Afghanistan will continue, the lies about America’s commitment to human rights and democratic values will continue, the profits of the military companies and drug barons will also continue, and of course the suffering of the Afghan people will surely continue...
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Aug 21, 2017, 2:17pm
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America Asleep
John Steppling: The recent attack in Charlottsville hardly stands out as in any way unique in American history. ... The story of U.S. racism and colonial plunder, of a settler mentality and the reality of Manifest Destiny and genocide is simply erased. In its place is the fairy tale of white American goodness that I and millions of others were taught in school. Charlottsville is thus not a result of Trump, of his personality, of his friends such as Steve Bannon. It is part of a deep current in the collective psyche of the U.S. ... There has never been a time when America was good. There was goodness in America, certainly in culture, in art and even in certain movements for social justice....
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Aug 18, 2017, 2:17pm
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Discovering Racism and then Discovering It Anew
Dave Lindorff: I remember back in the ‘50s, when I was probably about 8 or 9 years of age, that we drove down to Greensboro to visit my grandparents. ... When we had crossed over into Virginia ... I headed for the men’s room, but was caught up short by the sight of two fountains along the wall, with signs saying “whites” and “coloreds.” I asked my dad what that meant, and he explained to his wide-eyed son. ... The idea of people with different skin color having to drink from different water fountains seemed bizarre to me, and I remember going to the colored fountain, more out of curiosity than rebelliousness, because I wanted to see if the water was different...
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Aug 17, 2017, 10:21am
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The subversive power of joy
Janey Stephenson: The unexpected, spontaneous and pleasantly disruptive nature of collective celebration is one of the great equalisers of social and political struggle. ... When you hear the words ‘anti fascist rally,’ what do you visualize? ... What about young women and non-binary people gleefully dancing to grime music that’s blasting out of portable speakers? Well, that’s precisely what a recent anti-fascist rally in south London looked like. ... “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution” as Emma Goldman, the Russian feminist anarchist, once famously said. We’d do well to take her words literally. Movement builds movements...
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Aug 11, 2017, 3:30pm
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Innocence Is Irrelevant
Emily Yoffe, The Atlantic: This is the age of the plea bargain. Most people adjudicated in the criminal-justice system today waive the right to a trial and the host of protections that go along with one, including the right to appeal. Instead, they plead guilty. The vast majority of felony convictions are now the result of plea bargains—some 94 percent at the state level, and some 97 percent at the federal level. Estimates for misdemeanor convictions run even higher. These are astonishing statistics, and they reveal a stark new truth about the American criminal-justice system: Very few cases go to trial...
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Aug 10, 2017, 11:09am
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WikiLeaks Reveals 'Dumbo': A CIA Tool to Hack PC Cameras and Microphones
The whistleblower organization published everything in the Field Guide to the User’s Manual of the CIA's hacking system. ... “Dumbo can identify, control and manipulate monitoring and detection systems on a target computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system. It identifies installed devices like webcams and microphones, either locally or connected by wireless (Bluetooth, WiFi) or wired network,” WikiLeaks stated in a press release Thursday. ... Windows users are not the only potential victims of CIA probes. Other agency projects such as Imperial will breach almost any technology’s high security with trojans and untraceable stealth tactics, releasing sensitive information to unknown parties...
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Aug 5, 2017, 3:45pm
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Dallas Mayor During JFK Assassination Was CIA Asset
Earle Cabell, who had been elected mayor of Dallas in May 1961, oversaw arrangements for Kennedy’s trip and motorcade, which took him through Dealey Plaza, a route that violated almost all standard rules for presidential safety — and where normal safeguards, such as sealing windows and placing sharpshooters, were ignored. ... This is of interest to researchers into the assassination, who have been collecting evidence of CIA ties to a host of individuals who figure in the events of 11/22/63...
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Aug 3, 2017, 4:17pm
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Privacy: J. Edgar’s Not the Hoover You Need to Worry About Any More
Thomas Knapp: Is your vacuum cleaner spying on you? Hamza Shaban of the Washington Post reports that iRobot, maker of the “autonomous” Roomba vacuum, may eventually sell the internal maps of your home the device builds to facilitate its work to the makers of other “smart home” devices. ... In the latest phase of our frenzied technological advancement, it’s clear that yes, our gadgets do collect and use more and more information about us, and that that information progressively ramifies across more, bigger, and more integrated networks ... Watch yourself. And never forget that your stuff is watching you too...
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Jul 31, 2017, 11:52am
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The Past 5 GOP Presidents Have Used Fraud and Treason to Steer Themselves to Electoral Victory
Thom Hartmann: Since Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency in 1961, six different Republicans have occupied the Oval Office. ... And every single one of them - from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump - have been illegitimate - ascending to the highest office in the land not through small-D democratic elections - but instead through fraud and treason. ... (And today’s GOP-controlled Congress is arguably just as corrupt and illegitimate, acting almost entirely within the boundaries set by an organized group of billionaires.) ... And this doesn’t even begin to tell the story of how the Republican majority in the senate represents 36 million fewer Americans than do the Democrats. Or how in most elections in past decades, Democrats have gotten more votes for the House of Representatives, but Republicans have controlled it because of gerrymandering...
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Jul 29, 2017, 2:21pm
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How Toxic Waste Sites Run by the Pentagon Are Poisoning Americans
A detailed new report by ProPublica reveals how the U.S. military continues to engage in unsafe methods to destroy hazardous waste at sites across the country, and how this practice is harming nearby communities. The story, which is “the first in a series examining the Pentagon’s oversight of thousands of toxic sites on American soil,” exposes how “outdoor burning and detonation is still the military’s leading method for dealing with munitions and the associated hazardous waste.” ... Federal records identify nearly 200 sites that have been or are still being used to open-burn hazardous explosives across the country. Some blow up aging stockpile bombs in open fields...
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Jul 21, 2017, 3:25pm
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What is Our Experience of our Flawed Democracy?
Robert J. Gould: Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit dropped its score for the U.S. from 8.05 to 7.98 (Above 8 is a full democracy; below 8 is a flawed democracy). Not much of a change, and according to the report, no fault of the current President, as the rating has been “teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years.” Like other flawed democracies (France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and India), we have “weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture, and low levels of political participation, according to the EIU.”...
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Jul 18, 2017, 10:49am
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Nuclear Weapons: Barbaric Tools of Death
Graham Peebles: The existence of nuclear weapons is an ugly symbol of the violent consciousness that plagues humanity. Despite tremendous technological advancements, developments in health care and wonders of creative expression, little of note has changed in humanity’s collective consciousness: Tribalism, idealism and selfish desire persist, negative tendencies that under the pervasive socio-economic systems are exacerbated and encouraged. ... Sustainable security is not created through threats and the cultivation of fear, but by building relationships, cooperating and establishing trust...
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Jul 8, 2017, 12:46pm
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Waving From the Rooftops
John Steppling: One can find, without much effort, a laundry list of callous and sadistic comments and opinions from politicians in the U.S. and U.K. today. Opinions, though, that are ratified by many in society. The people who have voted for one or another of these ghouls. ... Interestingly, 76% of Americans think addicts should be a medical problem and not a criminal one. However, compassion is NOT a business opportunity, ergo compassion is not part of the lexicon of the ruling class. ... How many videos are there now of extreme and gratuitous police violence against defenseless civilians? ... Every crises serves as an opportunity for the redistribution of wealth. And increasingly crises are manufactured...
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Jul 3, 2017, 12:58pm
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The Power of Truth, Love, and Justice Now - A 21st Century Conversation with Frederick Douglass
Bruce Campbell: The first thing one notices about the Narrative is Frederick Douglass’s voice. “He’s such a great writer, Dad,” my son repeatedly enthused over the course of our readings together. Douglass’s eloquence and clarity were astounding, he explained, because he had been enslaved from birth through young adulthood. “That he can write like that, when he wasn’t supposed to, after all they did to him ...” "It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor."...
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Jul 1, 2017, 11:49am
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The Poverty State of Mind and the State’s Obligations to the Poor
Ezra Rosser: The hurdles facing a poor person are real, even with the right mindset, and one misstep, illness, or setback can make it nearly impossible to escape poverty. ... Even if this negative characterization of the poor is true and poverty is “a state of mind,” does that mean that the poor should not have their basic needs, and those of their children, met? Does it mean that we should tolerate the fact that even if they work full time, some people cannot afford decent housing? ... We as a country and as a people can afford to attack poverty and alleviate the suffering of the poor...
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Jun 24, 2017, 11:55am
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