Will we ever learn?
Showing all posts tagged United States
Lessons of Keystone XL for #Occupy
How to mobilise people power against corporate power is a key task of the 21st century, as disaster capitalists attempt to swarm around energy resources. Interesting piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker: Last spring, months before Wall Street was Occupied, civil disobedience of the kind sweeping the Arab world was hard to imagine…
Hello terror, we can make money from you
Post 9/11, countless companies saw an opportunity to make a killing on the desperate desire of both democracies and repressive states to monitor citizens. And when the US government, supposedly the freest nation on Earth, brazenly spied on people in the name of “security”, the path was set. The Wall Street Journal reports: Documents obtained…
MSM once again, like Iraq 2003, ramping up war against Iran
Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker that in the rush to accept the Israeli and American line over Iran – Tehran is a major threat and must be isolated (pretty much the same argument they’ve been making for a decade or more) – skepticism and rationality has once again disappeared: I’ve been reporting on…
Here’s why #Occupy is not only important but essential
Via the New York Times: They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by. Down but not quite out, these Americans form a…
Clueless Hollywood romanced by occupation-loving Israel
Are these captains of… the entertainment industry totally clueless, and have no idea that they’re being co-opted into selling the image of “cool Israel”? Haaretz reports: Two delegations from Hollywood are visiting Israel to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one comprised of actors and another mainly featuring directors. Today, both groups will meet with President…
Occupy movement has demands (and rejects disaster capitalists making a buck)
While Arundhati Roy addressed Washington Square Park in New York, held at Judson Memorial Church this week: I like her vision: We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As “cap-ists”…
Norman Finkelstein on American Jews turning away from Israel
Why has the disillusionment emerged (via an interview in New Left Project)?: There is a common misunderstanding here, because everybody just assumes that the one and only factor shaping American Jewish attachment to Israel, and also the inexorable one, is the ‘ethnic’ factor: if you’re Jewish you must be pro-Israel, in fact you must be…
Private prisons leeches on society
Correction Corporation of America’s Stewart facility in Lumpkin, Georgia is the largest private detention center in the nation. Stewart currently profits close to $50 million a year. As if that weren’t enough, CCA often cuts costs by denying basic services to its inmates and by limiting access to their family members. CCA charges inmates close…
What 9/11 has allowed America to become
Sigh: What happens when a government builds a massive, unaccountable police apparatus to thwart infiltration by a foreign menace, only to see the society it’s supposed to protect take to the streets for entirely different reasons? It looks as though we may be about to find out. The Occupy protests have been mostly peaceful, with…