Fox News ridicules our Afghan mission
by Allan Woods
OTTAWA – Canada’s defence minister wants an apology from a U.S. television network because of a program that joked about the country’s contribution to the mission in Afghanistan.Peter MacKay said today that a Fox News show that trashed the capabilities of the Canadian military and joked about the need to take a time-out from the war effort after 2011 was in poor taste. |
Bill O'Reilly's 'great ambushes...of justice' stalks blogger
by Muriel Kane
Blogger Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress has become the latest victim of an ambush by a producer for Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.The O'Reilly Factor's producers -- who have been dubbed "great ambushers...of justice" by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart -- are well-known for attempting to catch competing journalists as they go about their daily routines and firing accusatory questions at them. |
AP: GOP predicts doomsday if Obama budget passes
by Associated Press
Congressional Republicans on Sunday predicted a doomsday scenario of crushing debt and eventual federal bankruptcy if President Barack Obama's massive spending blueprint wins passage.But a White House adviser dismissed the negative assessments, saying she is "incredibly confident" that the president's policies will "do the job" for the economy. |
Obama Told Us To Speak Out, But Is He Listening?
by William Greider
The president is getting what he asked for, but perhaps not what he had in mind. During the campaign, Barack Obama beckoned Americans to put aside their cynicism about politics and re-engage as active citizens. They are now doing so with red-hot anger. They are outraged by events and forcing their way into congressional affairs and behind closed doors where policy wonks discuss issues with cerebral civility. The president is now trapped between these two realms -- the governing elites who decide things and the people who are governed. Which side is he on? If he does not choose wisely, the anger could devour his presidency. |
The Real Criminals are Neither Lynndie England nor the AIG Traders
by Thom Hartmann
Whenever a politician or commentator bloviates about the brokers at AIG who are getting bonuses, we should all be remembering Lynndie England and Charles Granger. AIG brokers are to the financial meltdown what England was to the Iraq war.Certainly she did things that were deplorable. But she thought they were legal (England, operating under orders to "soften up terrorists," even thought she was helping defend our nation). And to the extent that John Yoo's memos were law, arguably her actions were legal (although the Bushies never wanted it tested, so threw them to the wolves). |
America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout
by Chris Hedges
In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money. |
IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot at Gaza Rescuers, Note Says
by Amira Hass
GAZA STRIP - "Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue," was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing. |
US Will Appoint Afghan 'Prime Minister' to Bypass Hamid Karzai
by Julian Borger and Ewen MacAskill
White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in KabulThe US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned. |
Gather ‘round Children and You Shall See…
by Trish Purcell
…Politicians, driven by self-interest, proving their incompetence and ethical shortcomings by pompously spouting hypocrisy as a substitute for working for the common good of the people and the country.…Media, driven by ambition and profit, proving their cowardice and lack of integrity by parroting out-of-context sound bites instead of seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.. |
Water: Commodity or human right?
by Mary Shaw
I am writing this on March 22, World Water Day. And I am thinking about how spoiled we Americans are. We use and abuse our natural resources without giving it a second thought.But our recklessness could soon turn around to bite us -- and the rest of the world. |
Close Down Guantanamo? What About Our Own Hellholes?
by Sherwood Ross
From Florida to California, America's dehumanizing prisons confront President Obama and our governors with a challenge every bit as daunting as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.In California, the state's 33 adult prisons teem with nearly double the inmates they were designed to hold," The New York Times reports. In Florida, officials say they must build 19 more prisons over the next five years. |
Seeing red over Russia? Misguided conservatives in North America sound alarm over the Kremlin's military overhaul
by Eric Margolis
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Or are they?That depends on whom you ask.President Dmitry Medvedev announced Tuesday that Russia would modernize its large but decrepit armed forces, starting in 2011. New nuclear and conventional weapons systems will be acquired, but there also will be large cuts in Russia's 1,027,000-member armed forces, including large numbers of officers. Defence spending could rise 30%. |
Iraq: Deaths Rise, Pretense We Care Fades
by David Swanson
Thus far, 4,261 members of the U.S. military have been killed in Iraq and 67,237 wounded, not counting many diagnosed after leaving Iraq, including estimated hundreds of thousands with traumatic brain injury, hundreds of thousands with post-traumatic stress disorder, unknown numbers poisoned by hexavalent chromium or depleted uranium, also not counting the many victims of murder by veterans unable to stop doing their jobs, not counting the one in three women in the military sexually assaulted by men in the military, and not counting 6,570 suicides, and twice that many attempts, per year by veterans, and rising. Suffering and death for U.S. troops resulting from the war on Iraq is rising, not diminishing. Veterans are becoming ill, homeless, murderous, and suicidal. |
Economic Dirty Bomb Goes Off in New York: With a Whimper, Not a Bang… the Old Neighborhood Empties
by Tom Engelhardt
A block from my apartment, on a still largely mom-and-pop, relatively low-slung stretch of Broadway, two spanking new apartment towers rose just as the good times were ending for New York. As I pass the tower on the west side of Broadway each morning, one of its massive ground-floor windows displays the same eternal message in white letters against a bright red background: "Locate yourself at the center of the fastest expanding portion of the affluent Upper West Side." |
Pitchforks and Protests: The Fury Down Below - Will Public Anger With The Ongoing Rip-off Have An Impact?
by Danny Schechter
It took a little time but the American public is in a state of growing fury, looking for who is to blame for their declining economic fortunes. It's being called a "populist fury."Jon Stewart has a hilarious graphic of angry citizens armed with sticks moving across his TV screen to represent the protests he knows will be coming. Three million marchers in France this past week can't be all wrong. What has been someone else's crisis is now everyone's problem and the public is pissed off. |
Imagine this commercial airing on American TV.
by xxdr_zombiexx
This will just take a minute.I often mention how the "Mainstream Media" scrapes any realistic references to "marijuana" out of its presentations, save for a few mentions here and there, either as negative propaganda bits, or "human interests" asides.I am experimenting with Twitter (gasp!) and have quickly found a great new source of cannabis news and came across this PSA/commercial funded by NORML. I am unsure of how old this is, but I have just seen it. |
