Ordering Pizza Made Easier
Andy suggests viewing this creative example to highlight the issue of privacy.
Andy suggests viewing this creative example to highlight the issue of privacy.
Stan Goff is a Special Forces veteran following in a long tradition of US soldiers who have seen the inside of US capitalism’s violence and rejected its moral and intellectual presuppositions through a comprehensive and active critique (see Smedley Butler for more on this tradition). Goff has produced several books (his latest focus on gender and misogyny in the US culture and the military will appear this year), many articles (read his vision of a new hegemony), and a new blog and focuses his activism on organizing for peace and radical politics within the US military. In his recent article on “Debating a Neocon†, this past master of combat arms exposes the sham of rightist ideology with a flick of the wrist and notes: “it is truly remarkable how easily KO’ed these neocons are once you step outside the tight little ring of the Republicrats. They’ve got maybe three combinations, and they are slow as a cow. Everything inside has been ritual combat, so they do very badly when someone actually intends to hit them.†HIT THIS RIGHTIST SCUM, HARD!!! Advising intelligent and vigorous resistance, “this burned-out commie vet†suggests that we “keep battering away because these people are weaker than they seem, even if they DO have state power. (I’m ready for my IRS audit, sir.) And quit accepting their premises, or you’ll never end up with anything except their conclusions.†Goff, who lived the frontlines of US imperialism, reminds us all that capitalism is inseparable from militarism and violence at the world scale, regardless of the nation-state.
Award-Winning Journalist Robert O’Harrow goes behind the scenes of our emerging surveillance society in his book, No Place To Hide, and examines how private companies and the government are working together to collect massive amounts of data on citizens.
“…The
details about our lives are no longer our own.” O’Harrow was interviewed recently on “Democracy Now!”
Republican Rep.
Ron Paul of Texas, says that a new bill, HR 418, is really about creating a National Identity Card and not about Immigration Reform.
This bill establishes a massive, centrally coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, Social Security number, and physical and possibly other characteristics.
The bill could have a chilling effect on the exercise of our constitutionally guaranteed rights, Paul says.
In one of Town Hall Meeting’s first conference calls, we talked about how consumer-driven we are as a nation, often at the expense of a debt-free, balanced life.
The “why” of this behavior is closely examined by Peter C.
Whybrow, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, in his latest book, American Mania — When More Is Not Enough.
Whybrow examines the addictive consumption of the world’s most affluent nation and shows how people are so hooked into buying that they suffer epidemic rates of obesity, stress, depression and anxiety.
Whybrow’s analysis looks at the roots of American culture as a laissez faire competitive free market economy and explores how the nation’s migrant temperament has created this environment.
While watching Washington Week on PBS tonight, I heard a reporter speak about a government’s indirect responsiblity for murder. When asked who was responsible for the recent assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, Tom Gjelton said, “The assassination is clearly the consequence of the political environment in Lebanon right now and the argument [by the U.S.] is that Syria is responsible for that political environment. So, indirectly, at least [Syria is responsible for the assassination].” I hear things like this in the media today and wonder, how can they so boldly let certain rules apply to some and not to others? Only days after this assassination, there are claims that Syria was “at least indirectly” responsible due to their foreign policy (in this case an actual occupation) in Lebanon. How about almost four years later, the mainstream media admitting that 9/11 occurred at least indirectly due to U.S. foreign policy or even addressing that all the death occurring in Iraq today is due to the U.S. occupation of that country? Or that the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa or the U.S.S. Cole bombing weren’t just random acts against freedom and democracy. Our media is failing us and it is getting to the point of absurdity, listening to these wannabe journalists.
On a side note, PBS is supposed to be a place for Americans to get independent news. The panel on Washington Week are almost always from major institutions, such as Time Magazine, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. This is just another argument for supporting your local, independent media, such as Pacifica. In case you are wondering, Tom Gjelton works for NPR. I think you can safely lump NPR and PBS in with the rest of the mainstream media in terms of bad journalism. Why? Because the panelists on these shows are almost exclusively out of the mainstream media.
It looks like the Iraq election results came back with a not so surprising desire for the U.S. occupation to end. Naomi Klein reports how Iraqis voted. It looks like the U.S. government won’t be letting democracy get in the way of their agenda, however. Even though it looks like the United Iraqi Alliance won popular support, a man inserted into that party by the U.S. (he is also currently the Finance Minister) will run the country. Not much of a coincidence to me that a captain of business would be made the leader, and not democratically. Klein points out how the U.S. mainstream media, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper on The Daily Show, were simply pleased that people voted, not caring at all what they were voting for. People have been acting so pleasantly surprised that Iraqis actually came out to vote, displaying a desire for liberty. When will people realize that no matter what our ethnicity, all people desire freedom and liberty? The fact that people came out to vote under such dangerous conditions is just more evidence of this. More people in the media must do what Naomi Klein did and pay attention to what changes they actually voted for.
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Democracy Now!
October 11, 2024
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