Blogosphere

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Syria and Press Propaganda
Margaret Kimberley: It is difficult for Americans to find out what is happening in their country and around the world. That is because corporate media outlets have nearly complete control over what they see and hear and because those interests are closely allied with the state. The promise of the internet, the hoped for level playing field for communication and information gathering, is also under corporate control. It is now part of a well coordinated censorship effort ... The lies which allowed the United States, France and Britain to attack Syria are presented without contradiction. ... The close relationship between the deep state, the corporate media, and the establishment elite at home and abroad continues without hindrance... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 18, 2018, 4:32pm

Blogosphere
Comey did it to himself & Us, by gutting Privacy, Encryption, & 4th Amendment
Juan Cole: Comey has been a central figure in the gutting of the fourth amendment of the Constitution and in attempts to make sure the FBI and the rest of the US government can break your encryption and spy on you illegally. It is true that Comey did not want to go as far in that direction as former vice president Dick Cheney, but he wanted to go so far as nevertheless to make the constitution meaningless and to make Americans vulnerable to hacking. ... Comey condemned Edward Snowden for his revelations about illegal government collection of Americans’ data from telephone calls. Even that was misdirection because Snowden’s more important revelation was that the NSA has individual-level tools to monitor emails... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 16, 2018, 12:10pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Yaser Murtaja and Marie Colvin
Margaret Kimberley: Yaser Murtaja was a Palestinian journalist acting in his professional capacity when he was murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He was covering the second Great Return March in Gaza and was clearly identified as press when an Israeli sniper fired a fatal shot. ... Marie Colvin was covering the Syrian war in 2012 for the British newspaper The Sunday Times. She was killed when the Syrian army shelled the building where she and others were embedded with the Free Syrian Army, a group committed to regime change. The court filing claims that the Syrian government tracked Colvin’s movement and assassinated her. ... “War propaganda is the order of the day in the ongoing effort to continue war in Syria.”... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 11, 2018, 3:23pm

Blogosphere
Signs of the .000001%'s Desperation
To understand current events, one must understand the interplay of politics and economics. One or the other will not do. The reason is simple: neither political nor economic events and actions are conducted in a vacuum; instead, they are generated and continually renewed according to very specific objectives by a very specific power apparatus. ... the entire core of the global economy is controlled by no more than 147 publicly-owned parent companies. We can only speculate on the structure above these 147 organizations, which are, in turn, controlled by closely-held and privately-held holding companies, but the likely number is less than 20. We call this the Anglo-Euro-American banking cartel and its corporations. ... Since 9-11, every nation destroyed by the cartel (Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya) controlled its own central bank and currency. Now, there are only five sovereign nations left--Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan--the official "enemies list." ... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 8, 2018, 11:47am

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Israeli Meddling and Palestinian Death
Margaret Kimberley: On March 30, 2018 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) committed cold-blooded murder in Gaza. Thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched peacefully to protest the occupation and declare their right to return to their homeland. The Great Return March was met with gunfire and 18 people died. ... It is quite open and understood by everyone that obedience to Zionism is a necessity in political life. Any politician who questions Israeli policy is at immediate risk of being defeated by a well-funded opponent. The media also collude and ensure silence on this subject, which is one of the most open secrets in American life. ... Israel would not exist at all without U.S. support. But its supporters have turned the dependency upside down... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 6, 2018, 12:59pm

Blogosphere
Three Countries show how Near a 100% Green Grid is
Juan Cole: In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. ... Scotland, with over 5 million people, got 68.1 percent of its electricity from renewables last year. ... Scotland is now perhaps the world leader in renewables, and has innovated recently in offshore, in-the-sea wind turbines. ... Costa Rica, a country of nearly 5 million, ran on renewables for 300 days of the past year. It has hydro and geothermal as well as having put in a lot of wind turbines... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 6, 2018, 12:44pm

Blogosphere
Shooting Protesters in Cold Blood: How Israel became a Typical Middle Eastern Dictatorship
Juan Cole: The Israeli army snipers who were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters last Friday at the Gaza border, killing 17 outright and wounding hundreds of others, were acting according to the contemporary script of Middle Eastern dictators. ... The Israeli army initially admitted in a tweet that the tactic was premeditated and precise, but then deleted the tweet ... Randomly shooting into a crowd, killing a few people but wounding many others, has the advantage for the regime of creating uncertainty and fear. ... Of 535 members of Congress, exactly one, Bernie Sanders, has condemned the massacre. ... It may be objected that Israel is not a dictatorship like that of Yemen or Syria. But for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, that is precisely what it is... [ Visit Website ]
Apr 2, 2018, 3:10pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Stephan House, Draylen Mason, Stephon Clark: Terror Victims
Margaret Kimberley: “Business should not go on as usual when the police act as the 21st century slave patrol.” ... Clark was a 22-year old black man living in Sacramento, California, the father of two small children. He was in the backyard of the home he shared with his family, a place he had every right to be. But the over policing of black neighborhoods means that home is no safe haven. ... While allegedly chasing a petty thief the cops encountered Clark and killed him with 20 bullets. They turned off their body cameras, questioned Clark’s grandmother, and said nothing about killing him right outside her door. ... The top down acceptance of terrorism when committed by those in uniform trickles down to the entire society... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 28, 2018, 4:15pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Vladimir Putin and War Propaganda
Margaret Kimberley: Vladimir Putin is blamed for everything that goes awry in Europe and the United States. In the United Kingdom his country was even blamed for bad weather as tabloid headlines screamed about icy Russian winds. The Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory are said to be the result of Putin’s interference, even though the machinations of American oligarch Robert Mercer are most responsible for both outcomes. ... “Lies about the Russian government are war propaganda and they are meant to get public support for military action against Russia and its allies.” ... The United States, not Russia, poses the greatest threat to peace and life on the planet... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 21, 2018, 2:29pm

Blogosphere
Happiness Index: From Immigrants to Health, how Trump & GOP are making America Sad
Juan Cole: The World Happiness Index is out this year, and the United States is ranked only 18 for the years 2015-2017– lower than Iceland or Costa Rica, and not much ahead of places with real problems like Mexico and Brazil. ... The Trump administration in particular and right wing politicians in general completely misunderstand what makes people happy, or perhaps they do not care ... Right wing politicians and Trump in particular, in contrast, take delight in screwing people over. ... When the Republican Party complains of regulation, they are complaining that the government is preventing rich people from making more money in ways that might harm people’s health... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 15, 2018, 12:41pm

Blogosphere
Pompeo, Big Oil and the attack on Iran Deal
Juan Cole: All you need to know about Mike Pompeo, the four-term congressman from Kansas who is actually from California, is that most of his life he has been in business with the Koch brothers. His appointment as Secretary of State puts a seal on Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accords. ... Charles and David Koch, the notorious billionaires gnawing like termites at the foundations of American democracy, are all about petroleum. ... They fund phony climate denialism with a Potemkin village of foundations and expert frauds, to make sure oil keeps its value for as long as possible (even at the cost of visiting catastrophes on our children and grandchildren, since burning oil is causing catastrophic global heating)... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 14, 2018, 2:42pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Talking to North Korea
Margaret Kimberley: “Kim’s country may be punished by sanctions but he has a measure of security he would not have had if he had not persevered in his goal.” ... Foreign leaders who won’t do as Washington demands are always vilified and demonized. The invective proves little. ... Democrats are no better than Republicans in this regard. They always conclude that only the United States and its friends have rights. Everyone else should happily accede to their demands or else be threatened with destruction. ... Nuclear proliferation is a serious issue but the United States is a big part of the problem. Its ally Israel has an unacknowledged arsenal yet demands no other country in the region acquire what it has... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 14, 2018, 2:32pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Black Panther Movie: A Black Face in a High Place
Margaret Kimberley: The desire to see a black face in a high place is a legacy of slavery and the century of Jim Crow segregation that followed. The psychological impact of America’s apartheid is enduring, and unlikely to end without true revolutionary change. ... it is not surprising that the recently released Black Panther film has been such a huge commercial success and emotional touchstone. But the story line is problematic for politically conscious people. Among other things, a CIA agent is depicted as being an ally to an African nation. That plot point alone is questionable. ... There is no such thing as just entertainment ... It is quite political but the politics won’t be good if that fact isn’t acknowledged... [ Visit Website ]
Mar 7, 2018, 3:18pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Why the Shooting Will Continue
Margaret Kimberley: America has a unique history with firearms. The settler colonial state enshrined gun ownership into the constitution because of a determination to maintain chattel slavery and the violent enforcement which had to go with it. ... More than two hundred years later that imperative remains. All the sound and fury about gun control is useless because this society demands that the slave patrol never disband ... While the hand wringing goes on about high body count events in public places, little is said about the 1,000 fatalities which are committed every year by the police. The police, who are now to be trusted with keeping black children safe, kill an average of three people every day ... Gun fatalities are emblematic of so much that is wrong in this country... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 28, 2018, 12:30pm

Blogosphere
Top Ten Signs the US is the most Corrupt nation in the World (2018 Edn.)
Juan Cole: Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. This year’s report from Transparency International puts the US on a par with Austria, which is ridiculous. All kinds of people from politicians to businessmen would go to jail in Austria today if they engaged in practices that are quite common in the US. ... 1. A sure sign of corruption is an electoral outcome like 2016. ... 2. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 22, 2018, 12:16pm

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