Blogosphere
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest
Margaret Kimberley: Leftists don’t act as they should because they are still tied to the Democrats, who are devoted to crushing them as a political force. ... The damage done by decades of corporatist allegiance continues. Anyone who questioned bank bailouts, falling wages or privatized public education was labeled unrealistic at best, and a spoiler at worst. ... Obviously many people who want a better and more just country do not really believe that they can bring about the changes they want to see. ... There must be a commitment to wholesale change from top to bottom. The failed state must be taken on without hesitation or apology and dependence on the electoral system must end...
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Jan 20, 2021, 3:34pm
Blogosphere
Time for Biden to end the Forever Wars and bring Iran in from the Cold
Juan Cole: the Biden team has a lot of diplomacy before it. Turkey is a problem. Israel-Palestine is the mother of all problems ... Iran and the Arab world: 1. Biden needs to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran ... 2. Under Biden, the U.S. should get its remaining 2,500 troops out of Iraq. ... 3. The US needs to end its involvement in the Saudi-UAE war on Yemen. ... 4. For the love of God, get out of Syria and stay out. ... 5. The US has substantial influence in the region and should not be afraid to use it for good. It should stop short of military entanglements, is all. ... Biden should start saying “no.”...
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Jan 20, 2021, 3:15pm
Blogosphere
Trump may be on trial, but the system that produced him will be acquitted
JONATHAN COOK: Trump is not the enemy. That target is far too small and limited. The class he belongs to is our enemy, as is the system of privilege he has spent the past four years upholding. ... There is a way out of the dead-end culture war that pits one tribe against the other. It is to formulate an alternative, popular politics based on class struggle – the 99 per cent against the 1 per cent. .... We need a functioning political system that reflects popular priorities, like Medicare For All, a dignified minimum wage and free college...
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Jan 17, 2021, 12:49pm
Blogosphere
Netflix’s ‘The Social Dilemma’ Tells Only Half the Story
Jonathan Cook: According to “The Social Dilemma,” we are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon,” with our societies standing on the brink of collapse. ... social media is a global experiment in altering our psychology and social interactions ... “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception – that is the product.” That is also how these corporations make their money, by “changing what you do, what you think, who you are.” ... Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on...
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Jan 14, 2021, 2:29pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Capitol Riot Brings U.S. Foreign Policy Home
Margaret Kimberley: There needs to be soul searching and truth telling about invasions, interventions, coups and sanctions that are far more destructive than the Trump lovers could ever be. ... Many of the people and institutions now bemoaning the state of the republic have given Trump and his predecessors the green light to subvert democracy around the world. ... Let us remember that Donald Trump has waged war using economic sanctions against Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua and other countries. ... Not only do presidents undo democracy around the world, but they are supported in these efforts by corporate media and the political duopoly...
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Jan 13, 2021, 11:11am
Blogosphere
FYI Trump’s Latest Yemen Move Is Far Worse Than The Capitol Riot
Caitlin Johnstone: The US State Department has officially announced its intention to designate Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group ... will make it more difficult to provide aid to a population that is already being brutalized by the worst mass atrocity in the entire world ... a Saudi-led atrocity which could not occur without the help of the western power alliance. ... The United Nations conservatively estimates that some 233,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war ... mostly from what it calls “indirect causes” ... disease and starvation. ... the result of the Saudi coalition’s use of blockades and its deliberate targeting of farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites...
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Jan 12, 2021, 11:40am
Blogosphere
In An Insane World, Revolution Is The Moderate Position
Caitlin Johnstone: It should not be considered radical or extremist to want a society that is ruled by the many for the benefit of the many instead of one that is run by the few for the benefit of the few. ... It is very normal, sane and healthy to want a world where everyone has what they need to live, where everyone is free to do, say and think whatever they like as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else, and where nobody is being murdered by powerful governments.... To live a revolutionary life, you should insist on the normality and mundaneness of your own position. Sanity should not be special and unusual, and we should not participate in the delusion that it is...
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Dec 7, 2020, 12:34pm
Blogosphere
We Are The Terrorists
Caitlin Johnstone: the US and its allies have been helping Saudi Arabia deliberately kill children and other civilians on mass scale in order to achieve a political goal. ... Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and every other nation which has facilitated the horrific mass atrocity in Yemen–this tight globe-spanning power alliance is a terrorist organization the likes of which the world has never seen before. ... The United Nations conservatively estimates that some 233,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war between the Houthis and the US-backed Saudi-led coalition...
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Dec 4, 2020, 2:42pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Israel and the U.S. Assassinate Peace
Margaret Kimberley: The United States and Israel have once again shown themselves to be the world’s foremost criminal organization. The assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrazideh is just the latest act carried out by two nations that behave like international mobsters. ... There are seven more weeks to go before the January 20, 2021 inauguration and that is plenty of time for Trump and Netanyahu to make mischief. Iranian scientists, Palestinians and anyone else seen as an obstacle to Israel getting its way will be in grave danger....
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Dec 2, 2020, 11:16am
Blogosphere
The planet cannot begin to heal until we rip the mask off the West’s war machine
Jonathan Cook: Making political sense of the world can be tricky unless one understands the role of the state in capitalist societies. The state is not primarily there to represent voters or uphold democratic rights and values; it is a vehicle for facilitating and legitimating the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. ... Societies at home must deal with the externalised costs of industries ranging from tobacco and alcohol to chemicals and vehicles. Societies abroad must deal with the costs of the bombs deployed by our “defence” industries. ... And future generations will have to deal with the lethal costs incurred by corporations that for decades have been allowed largely unregulated to pump out their waste products into every corner of the globe...
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Nov 27, 2020, 3:04pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Censorship in the Biden Era
Margaret Kimberley: The corporate media have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear. ... The danger of fascism won’t leave Washington with Donald Trump ... there is another danger coming from sectors of the Democratic Party. Their goal is to censor any points of view that undermine their neoliberal and imperialist narratives. ... Bill Russo , deputy communications director for the Joe Biden campaign, publicly demanded that Facebook censor more often than it already does. ... They readily silence individuals and pages that question the establishment narrative. Black people risk being kicked off entirely if they utter any words white people may find offensive...
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Nov 25, 2020, 12:00pm
Blogosphere
Water Is Life
Eleanor Goldfield: And although the 2016 fight against “the black snake,” the Dakota Access Pipeline, is past, the actions, the words and the fight continue to echo today. ... Anyone who has followed fracking will have seen the images and reports of flammable water ... these horrors are only the end result of a process that uses astronomical amounts of water in order to frantically pull oil and gas from hard-to-reach nooks and crannies beneath our feet ... “fracking operators used an average of 14 million gallons of water per well, with the maximum amount reaching 39 million gallons for a single well. ... we can not have capitalism and a livable future. We can not have a system that holds profit above water – above life...
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Nov 23, 2020, 2:54pm
Blogosphere
New York Times Job Listing Shows How Western Propaganda Operates
Caitlin Johnstone: The predominant reason mainstream news reporters say things that aren’t true is because in order to be hired by mainstream news outlets, you need to jack your mind into a power-serving worldview that is not based in truth. ... In order to get a job at the New York Times, you need to demonstrate that you subscribe to the mainstream oligarchic imperialist worldview which forms the entirety of western mass media output. ... The fast and easy way to get rich and famous has always been to promote the interests of the powerful. ... The most propagandized people on earth are those who are responsible for promulgating propaganda...
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Nov 21, 2020, 11:06am
Blogosphere
Biden will fail to bring back ‘normal’ politics.
JONATHAN COOK: The reality, far too troubling for most liberals to admit, is that Trump proved popular because a lot of the problems he identified were true, even if he raised them in bad faith himself and had no intention of doing anything meaningful to fix them. ... The neoliberal “normal” isn’t coming back because the economic circumstances that generated it – the post-war boom of seemingly endless growth – have disappeared. ... The ability of the technocratic class to manage growth – wealth accumulation for the rich, tempered by a little “trickle down” to stop the masses rising up – is coming to an end. ... We are now in the age of political populism – a natural response to burgeoning inequality...
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Nov 21, 2020, 10:49am
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Real Trump Coup
Margaret Kimberley: Trump puts whiteness first and that means he will always have support and Republican leaders know it. ... The people undermining democracy are the establishment figures who gerrymander districts, the military industrial complex which buys off both parties, and the prosecutors who always find a way to keep black people behind bars. ... If that party (Democrats) were half as inclusive and as helpful to working people as it claims, there would never have been a Trump presidency at all. ... There is no coup, just the corruption we are told to accept. ...
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Nov 18, 2020, 12:47pm
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