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Identity Crisis of the Left

Eli Zaretsky
Inthesetimes.com
Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:45 UTC
Socialist poster
© Unknown
A campaign poster for the Socialist Party ticket for president, 1904.
The fight for true equality since 1776.

From the beginning of the American republic, most of the country's thinkers and politicians have argued that our nation neither had nor needed a Left.

Historians of the so-called liberal consensus school argue that the United States has simply always enjoyed agreement on such matters as private property, individualism, popular sovereignty and natural rights. Others claim that the country never developed the leftist working class or peasantry seen in other nations, a claim often termed American exceptionalism. Still others say that the country doesn't need a Left because it already believes in, or has even achieved, such goals as democracy and equality - a view held by Cold War liberals and neoconservatives.

But these are all false and misleading ways to understand America. The country has always needed, and typically has had, a powerful, independent, radical Left. While this Left has been marginalized (as it is today) and scapegoated (during periods of national emergency), the Left plays an indispensable role during the country's periods of long-term identity crisis.
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Star of David

Gaza Crisis: The World's Largest Open-Air Gulag

Ralph Nader
Counterpunch
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:00 UTC
gaza
Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world's largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life - medical items, food, water, building materials, and fuel to list a few - has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

The horrific conditions were a result of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, ignited by Israel's breaking of a truce with Gaza on November 4. Fourteen hundred people died, nearly three hundred of them children, and thousands were injured. The terror bombing of the Gazan population smashed into homes, hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, subsistence farms, UN facilities, and even the American International School. Israeli bombers destroyed over 30 members of one extended family in their home. That toll alone was three times the amount of Israeli fatalities, which included friendly fire.
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Sheriff

We're All Branch Davidians Now

Anthony Gregory
Whiskey and Gun Powder
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:49 UTC
Waco Police State
© Unknown
Nineteen years ago, just outside Waco, Texas, the FBI demonstrated once again that the state at its core is a killing machine. Monarchy, democracy, or republic - any government as conventionally defined is a legal monopoly on violence. The state is always inclined toward oppression, division, conquest, and bloodshed, because these are its tools of trade.

Matters are no different here. The myth of a free America was always seen with bitter irony by those not blessed by such freedom. In the founding generation, as half a million labored in slavery, many who fought in the Revolution genuinely believed in liberty, but for the ruling elite who chided them on, liberty was hardly more than a slogan. This has always been true of our political leaders.

The Father of the Country was a centralizing slave owner. Old Hickory talked up freedom as he threatened war on South Carolina and forced the Cherokee to flee from their ancestral land on a barbarously murderous walk of shame. The Great Emancipator turned America into a military dictatorship and abolished the revolutionary right of secession. Wilson's New Freedom was cover for a Prussianized war machine generating revenue for his profiteering buddies on Wall Street. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms failed to include the freedom not to be drafted or interned in a concentration camp. Ronald Reagan threw the word freedom around as he trained Latin American torturers and raped the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting drugs. The United States has never lived up to its rhetoric.

But the events from February 28 through April 19, 1993, still stand out in my mind as a watershed. It was the post-Cold War regime's coming of age, signifying a major event in cultural history.
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2 + 2 = 4

The Assault on Public Education

Noam Chomksy
inthesetimes.com
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:27 UTC
Image
© David McNew/Getty Images)
UCLA students occupy the hallway outside the university chancellor's office to protest funding cuts and rising tuition in March 2010.
One of America's greatest achievements is being defunded and degraded by the dictates of the marketplace.

Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere.

California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public higher education system in the world:
"California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot."
Similar defunding is under way nationwide. "In most states," The New York Times reports, "it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget," so that "the era of affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over."
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Heart - Black

How internet porn turned my beautiful boy into a hollow, self-hating shell

Liz Martin
Mail Online
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
Major internet firms were yesterday accused of being 'complicit' in exposing children to hardcore pornography and violence online by continuing to refuse to give parents the choice of blocking material that no child should see, but that is too easily available on every device now in the home.

Their defiance comes despite an independent inquiry into online protection by MPs that warned a generation of teenagers were addicted to porn.

Here, one distraught mother tells the Mail how her 11-year-old son changed beyond all recognition when he began secretly watching porn on his laptop in his own bedroom.

Online porn is as addictive as any drug. It's enslaving hundreds of thousands of British children. I know, because my son was one of them.

Charlie was 11 when not just his behaviour, but his entire character started changing. He'd always been a cheerful, friendly, sunny sort of chap. At his junior school he was popular with his classmates, loved playing football in the school team and was rarely in any kind of trouble with his teachers.
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Stop

'Cannibals turned women into pastries' in Brazil


The Telegraph
Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:04 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Jorge and Elizabeth Pires da Silveira are paraded on TV after their arrest
The trio allegedly forged a sect called Cartel who wanted to purify the world and reduce the population according to police spokesman Democrito Honorato, from the Brazilian town of Guaranhuns.

They were identified as Jorge Beltrao Negromonte and Elizabeth Pires da Silveira, both 51, and Bruna da Silva. Police allege they intended to kill three women per year.

Once at their home, it is thought that the women were killed and their "meat" was cooked and used as the filling in a pastry dish known as empanada, which was then sold to unwitting neighbours.

Police acted after two bodies were found in the garden of the house of the trio. Police believe they may be the bodies of Alexandra Falcao, 20 and Gisele da Silva, 30, both of whom disappeared recently.
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V

Mission Impossible? Unplugging Americans From The Matrix

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:12 UTC
american matric
© Unknown
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation. As readers know, from time to time I raise questions about the validity of the West's extreme hubris. (See for example, the following articles: Washington's Insouciance Has No Rival and Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade? )

China is often a country about which Washington's moralists get on their high horse. However, China's "authoritarian" government is actually more responsive to its people than America's "elected democratic" government. Moreover, however incomplete on paper the civil liberties of China's people, the Chinese government has not declared that it can violate with impunity whatever rights Chinese citizens have. And it is not China that is running torture prisons all over the globe.

For some time I have had in mind a realistic comparison of the two countries instead of the standard propagandistic comparison, but Ron Unz has beat me to the task (see, China's Rise, America's Fall and Chinese Melamine and American Vioxx: A Comparison ). Unz provides a chance for an education. Don't miss it.

Unz has done an excellent job. Moreover, he cleverly understates the case for China and overstates the case for America so as not to unduly arouse the flag-wavers. Nevertheless, the conclusion is clear: The Chinese are less threatened by their "extractive elites" than Americans are by their counterparts.
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Stormtrooper

Army investigated soldiers over drug abuse in Afghanistan


Associated Press
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 05:00 UTC
Image
© Goran Tomasevic/REUTERS
U.S. Marines patrol in front of a poppy field in a village in the Golestan district of Farah province, May 4, 2009.
The U.S. Army has investigated 56 soldiers in Afghanistan on suspicion of using or distributing heroin, morphine or other opiates during 2010 and 2011, newly obtained data shows. Eight soldiers died of drug overdoses during that time.

While the cases represent just a slice of possible drug use by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, they provide a somber snapshot of the illicit trade in the war zone, including young Afghans peddling heroin, soldiers dying after mixing cocktails of opiates, troops stealing from medical bags and Afghan soldiers and police dealing drugs to their U.S. comrades.

In a country awash with poppy fields that provide up to 90 percent of the world's opium, the U.S. military struggles to keep an eye on its far-flung troops and monitor for substance abuse.

But U.S. Army officials say that while the presence of such readily available opium - the raw ingredient for heroin - is a concern, opiate abuse has not been a pervasive problem for troops in Afghanistan.

"We have seen sporadic cases of it, but we do not see it as a widespread problem, and we have the means to check," said Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman.

Comment: For those who believe the U.S. is anything but a drug kingpin with a history of trafficking drugs have a look at the following.

US military Admits to Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade in Afghanistan
War On Drugs Is A $2.5 Trillion Racket: How Big Banks, Private Military Companies And The Prison Industry Cash In
The CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan

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Light Saber

Cindy Sheehan: Peace has a day in Court

Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan's Soap Box
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:12 UTC
Image
© Unknown
For those of you who know me and have been following my story, you know that part of my resistance to the US Empire is my refusal to pay income taxes.

This morning (April 19th), a new episode unfolded in my ongoing struggle with the IRS and the Empire the agency is nestled in.

I was subpoenaed to appear in the 9th Circuit court of the US Federal Court system in Sacramento, California - my state's capitol.

For background, I have had two meetings with the IRS agent assigned to my case where I expressed to him my unwillingness, due to my principles, to participate in funding a system that commits crimes almost every second of every day. At this point, the IRS is trying to collect 105 grand that it says I owe for the tax years 2005-2006. I first became a war tax refuser in 2005.
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Boat

Russian ships arriving in China for naval war game


MSNBC
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:42 UTC
Image
© Guang Niu/AP file
Russian missile cruiser Varyag is shown in this 2009 photo docked at Qingdao port, China's Shandong Province.
The Russian guided-missile cruiser Varyag arrived at an east Chinese naval base Saturday ahead of a planned joint exercise with the Chinese navy, news agency Xinhua reported.

The large-scale war game, the navies' first bilateral drill, is scheduled Sunday through Friday off the resort city of Qingdao in the Yellow Sea, Xinhua said.

Russia also sent from Vladivostok three Udaloy class destroyers and three support ships, said Russian news agency Ria Novosti.

China will use 16 ships, including destroyers, frigates and two submarines, in the drill called Maritime Cooperation-2012, Ria Novosti said.

A Chinese aircraft carrier may also participate, the International Business Times said.

Comment: One might wonder, were the signs done in English, paid for by U.S. dollars, made in China?

A "return to Asia" after 10 years of spreading Depleted Uranium Democracy across the middle east, with perhaps more to come.

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