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…
Showing all posts tagged United States
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…
Hands up who wants to make money from the downtrodden?
How our capitalist system is increasingly ordered (and sold to the highest bidder): Late last month, a national backlash forced Bank of America to abandon its plan to charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. But Huffington Post reports that the corporation has quietly been mining other sources of fees, preying on…