Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 17, 2014 7:52:07 AM | 1
Rowan you seemingly do not understand anything. According to Marx the future will be the end of all labels like “proletariat”

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Sounds to me more like English gentlemen will win.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 13:09 utc | 3

For one of the best things on the (appalling) state of organized labor in the United States check out Gregg Shotwell’s excellently written and on the mark “A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need” in the latest Monthly Review.

Posted by: Mike Maloney | Apr 17 2014 13:41 utc | 5

Scientists Support Seymour Hersh
Don’t underestimate Syrian rebel know-how: they may have made the rockets used to launch chemical weapons at Ghouta.
http://fpif.org/scientists-support-seymour-hersh/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=scientists-support-seymour-hersh

Posted by: Virgile | Apr 17 2014 14:03 utc | 7

RBD @4
I agree with you. I posted the link and overlapping excerpts on an earlier thread. He writes of his “forty years” in journalism and it never having been as bad in his experience.
Do you not think, however, that more and more people are ‘tuning out’ this propaganda, and that, leaving the malicious intent aside, its ability actually to drum up lynch mobs is almost pathetically small?
What I have noticed, in Canada, is that previously, mildly sceptical msm outlets, such as the Toronto Star, are back in lockstep with the message issuers.
This has something to do with the complete collapse of social democracy, which leaves all three major parties favouring Tar Sands development, “standing by” Israel and lamenting “Russian aggression.”
All of which is related, in some part, to fund raising campaigns. As to the media, so precarious are the finances of newspapers that they too rely on capital infusions from political businessmen, simply to finance desperate attempts to bridge the gap and come up with a business model for the internet age. This makes them very conservative journalistically which, in my view, adds to their problems by undermining the little credibility they have left.
Of course the underlying logic of what the media is doing-a logic particularly evident in TV where all the stations depend upon government goodwill to renew licenses, expand and merge and report to state commissions increasingly stacked with political operatives- is to become semi-official, subsidised organs of the state, part of the publicly funded propaganda apparatus. That is the role that the NY Times, The Post, and all the rest of the press seems to be auditioning for. The media has lost confidence in its audience’s ability or desire to keep it in the style to which it had grown accustomed when its opinions mattered.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 17 2014 14:21 utc | 9

From Truthdig on Palestine:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/pictures_dont_lie_refuting_there_was_no_palestine_20140417

Posted by: ben | Apr 17 2014 14:33 utc | 11

USE THE HEAD, FORGET THE HEART
OK, any issue at all! What about, how to determine what is and is not news worthy? Do I have to turn on the TV or troll the Intranet to find out? Am I that inept? Or is it possible to find my own answers? Yes, the survival of the human race is important. But, what gets me out of bed in the morning, what gets me hard as a rock is art, which to me is the same thing. Being creative is what sets us apart form the animals from Kiev!
Watching the news over the last few weeks has sapped all of my creative “precious bodily fluids”(Ripper, 1963). Maybe that is what they want all along! An uncreative mind is a malleable mind!
However, if one steps back and finds one footing, a new world opens up. For me, what is absolutely amazing is how the first language, the language of our dreaming mind, the language that the ancients used to record history on the cave walls during the Chatelperronien period, is as formidable and alive today as it was then.
If you want to know what is truly news worthy to you, on a personal level, interpret your dreams! Caveat, do not listen to academia or experts on the subject. Make up your own mind! They do not want you to know how powerful and creative you mind truly is. After almost a century, they still haven’t figured out the “meaning of animals in cave paintings”!
Permit me to “settle the issue:
In the parlance of metaphor, if I wish to express the notion of the earth generally, I would draw a long horizontal line. However, if I wish to express that I hold an idea about the earth, I would use an image of a pig, which is exactly what the pigs means in the prehistoric painting from the Cave of Altamira, in Spain. SEE ALTAMIRA’s THREE PIGS
Beings do not have knowledge, they are knowledge, (Epp, 2001) and to the natural mind each being holds a unique knowledge. The hawk’s ability to navigate the sky affords it the capacity to see what is over the horizon. Thus, its metaphorical meaning is visionary knowledge. As the pig has evolved its evolutionary trajectory, in such a way as to know what is beneath the earth (truffles), it is the pig, not the hawk, that metaphorically expresses knowledge of the earth. Yes, the pig holds an array of other meanings. Today it could conjure up the Kiev junta. However, if we sort the array of meanings according to the frequency of their usage in social applications during the time when the image was painted, knowledge of the earth would be the first scalar.
The language that the ancients used to express their ideas on the cave walls is the exact language of our subconscious mind. It is immune to Ripper’s attack plan R sent to the wing. Yes, they can kill me. News flash, we are all going to die. However, I plan to go out with a paint brush in my hand, not a pistol!
The creative mind has not, and never will be infected with the symbolic language we all use to think in the exact same manner and the exact way on every subject. It speaks to us about our genuine concerns and resolve those concerns in terms of the metaphorical language of the subconscious mind on an individual level!
Can you imagine the Ukrainians in the east painting a huge mural in every city square about their heritage and history as the Fascist Freaks surround grandma, grandpa and their children with tanks and gun ships? I do not think the world will tolerate another moment of US/NATO’s shit when this goes viral! I can see the headlines now, “Children and grandparents while painting a mural in their city square are brutally attacked by the junta from Kiev!” That will be the end of WWW III in a New York Minute!

Posted by: HAHA | Apr 17 2014 17:10 utc | 13

There was nothing of this in the mainstream. God save the children and all suffering innocents of Syria.
In case you missed it:
http://levantreport.com/2014/04/15/breaking-news-another-christian-elementary-school-attacked-by-syrian-rebels/

Posted by: Brad | Apr 17 2014 17:24 utc | 15

Sorry, I didn’t see the “other then about Ukraine” notice, I thought I read Open Thread same as was for the 9th.

Posted by: Tom Murphy | Apr 17 2014 17:45 utc | 17

@ 15
Exactly, agenda setting by MSM. It is not just what and how they report that is important, it is what they do not say that is more important.
“A child was killed and more than 36 others wounded Tuesday when a mortar shell slammed into a schoolyard…”

Posted by: HAHA | Apr 17 2014 17:54 utc | 19

Bevin@9
La Presse in Montreal is still doing an excellent job as a traditional newspaper. Their web paper is classt and their print version actually gained subscribers ladt year. Paul Desmarais let them be journalists. He died last fall, and we can’t know how his successors will manage the paper, but so far so good. On the Ukraine, not so good, ad their reporter Agnes Gruda seems to swallow the swill she gets from the government. She was just as bad in and on Syria. I don’t know if it’s congenital with her. I used to think she was pretty decent, but then I wasn’t paying attention. With tnat name she’s East European.

Posted by: Knut | Apr 17 2014 19:31 utc | 21

Mike Maloney @ 5
Agree. Great story.
According to Howard Zinn the labor movement never had a chance in the U.S.
As early as the 1890’s the top leadership had sold out, bought and paid for by the robber barons.
The people in the ranks fought hard and well, but if you believe Zinn, the fight was rigged from the start.
In the U.S. all the forces of the state, the legal system, the financial system, the propaganda empire, as well as popular fun-culture are against unions. Most church goers too, for some reason, seem to believe unions are an abomination in the eyes of God.
Plato’s Parable of the Cave seems to be the best explanation as to why as things get worse, instead of banding together, Americans are ever more inclined to keep their eyes down and their mouths shut.

Posted by: Ken Nari | Apr 17 2014 21:52 utc | 23

Very good point US caught in own web of lies:

The US position is clearly unsound and if violence unfolds as Kiev intends despite stories of its forces switching sides, the Obama administration will be severely weakened.
With that weakening, the settlements with Syria and Iran may well fail.
The situation in Ukraine may well have been orchestrated, not to weaken Russia but to enfeeble the United States. With the empty talk about sanctions and moves against Russia, something else is going on…

Posted by: ProPeace | Apr 17 2014 22:01 utc | 25

THE ROVING EYE
Ukraine and the grand chessboard
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-170414.html

Posted by: Santos | Apr 17 2014 23:42 utc | 27

Santos #27 That Pepe Escobar writes “Psaki, said that reports of CIA Director John Brennan telling regime changers in Kiev to “conduct tactical operations” – or an “anti-terrorist” offensive – in eastern Ukraine are “completely false”.
This brings to mind the often quoted saying by Claude Cockburn “to never believe a story until it is officially denied”. (this was often quoted by his equally famous son Alexander Cockburn).

Posted by: ToivoS | Apr 17 2014 23:59 utc | 29

Look like ISIS ( or Da’esh ) is about to below up Iraq and unfortunately , unlike Syria , Iraq hasn’t any army to stand against them .

Posted by: Tanha | Apr 18 2014 6:39 utc | 31

Posted by: Tom Murphy | Apr 18, 2014 3:00:01 AM | 32
“but when questioned she can’t back it up”
Has that oily faced creature ever backed up any of her lies?

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 18 2014 8:03 utc | 33

Three Easy Pieces
—
People I know are still challenged by ‘conspiracy theories’, asking, since it’s so easy to loot and steal, just look at Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation, why would there need to be a ‘Deep Government’? It’s too much work, too many secrets to keep, too hard to plan.
That misses the whole point. There is no conspiracy after the 2000 Coup. The conspiracy is in plain view now. Open for business! Mil.Gov.Sci.Edu needs clients. Military needs clients in Syria, Ukraine, we’re back in Philippines again, 800 foreign bases, and they’re already deploying US troop boots on the ground into AfriCom! Government has ObamaCare now. Potentially 100,000,000 privately employed Americans will have to go through Government to get their health insurance, their senior care, and fend off medical bankruptcy. Science has Climate Chains, potentially 365,000,000 Americans who used to get all the Science they ever needed from Wunderground and Hubble, will now be paying a Carbon Tithe raising their utilities costs by ~18%. And Education, on the breakout cusp of Free Internet Education for All Khans, has recaptured that trillion dollar market with Race to the Top mandatory national testing, and student loans bicycling $100Bs of Fed funds into private coffers.
It’s all being sold to US as ‘cost savings’ and ‘new renewable initiatives’ and ‘the sound of freedom’ and ‘97% say you must pay’ and ‘Johnny can’t STEM’. That’s not a Conspiracy, that’s a Corporate Socialist Coup. All opposition is stifled. Deniers will be assimilated.
We are all Prawns now.
—
The allegory to this are the TeaParty and Sovereigntists. They’re really going whole-hog into tax dodging, PAC founding, poaching, trespassing, illegal logging, you name it, the Commons is being ravaged, while they shriek Communism! and States Rights! and pass the costs of their rogue thefts to the rest of US. Together with Corporate, these Right Sector Revivalists are going to overturn US society with their now in-your-face-all-out-looting, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the aftermath of the Fall of the Iron Curtain, except that Soviet citizens had public housing, while Americans will die in the woods.
—
And last, repeating the news, the US is now deploying boots on the ground in AfriCom. One of our distributed family in the States got their deployment orders. Few realize that the first week of Obama’s 2008 term, he created AfriCom, and in that same week, the Nigerian tin-pot dictators nationalized all their natural resources out from under their citizens, rendering an entire nation into outdoor prison camps full of zeks, relocatable at will. The direct outcome of O’Biden’s Climate Chains Biofuels Initiative Mandate is the wholesale slash-and-burning of 880,000 net square miles of pristine tropical rain forest and savannah last year alone, with millions of campesanos and aboriginals and artisanals pushed off their free-land holdings into jobless urban gulags to starve, and 10,000,000 3W children now at risk of Famine, according to World Bank. Whole African nations have been nationalized and their resource lands leased away to Western corporations, while the Greens Hysteria-Mongering omni-communications with End Days rabbinical whip lashing.
“In Detroit’s Fall, We Sinned All!!”. Then they fly back to the Left Coast, and gnosh.
AfriCom = ObamaCare = Climate Chains = RTTT, it’s all Unconnect the Dots!
—
The solution? More American last life savings looting for ‘foreign aid’. More American last life savings looting for ‘AfriCom’ and ‘Pivot to Asia’. More American last life savings looting for ‘Climate Chains’. More American last life savings looting for ‘RTTT’. You know America’s last life savings will be looted for the Kiev Ave Monopoly card.
There’s no conspiracy here. We have reached critical mass. We passed the tipping point. The Four Horsemen of our Slow Motion American Apocalypse ride freely across the land.
—
Anyway, they’re deploying US troops to 54 US bases in AfriCom.
Where is Saint Snowden? Light the signal fires! Whoo-woo-woo.

Posted by: Chip Nikh | Apr 18 2014 11:47 utc | 35

I want to confirm as well that your site and Pat Lang’s have been inaccessible for varying spells of time over the last few days.

Posted by: Maracatu | Apr 18 2014 17:02 utc | 37

It may be getting monotonous, but I just want to counteract that little plug for “Colonel Lang”. I decided some time ago, I think it was after looking at a Jones interview with Col Donn de Grand Pre, who “knows personally the pilot who shot down Flight 93 on 9/11,” and I said to myself, I’ve had enough of these goddam colonels. I cherish the most obvious and yet most intriguing of these, though, someone with whom I was in email correspondence for years, on and off. When I started making little jokes about al-CiA-duh he put me down, but he was fun. He was a retired Lt-Col from a specialist psyops unit, in fact he was the Lt-Col who created it (for the real in-crowd: I’m talking about Lt-Col Mike Aquino). The trick is to somehow manage to present oneself as a great “rebel against the establishment.” Obviously this is easier to do from the Right than from the Left. So communicating with someone like that is already an exercise in mutual psychological warfare from the word go. But it can be fun, and you can open up unexpected compartments in your own mind, that you didn’t know were there.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 18 2014 18:20 utc | 39

Thanks for the links Virgile
God’s wrath on Easter!
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/99359/World/Region/Foreigner-dies-of-MERS-in-Saudi.aspx

Posted by: Mina | Apr 18 2014 19:12 utc | 41

Rebels funded by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are doing a useful job at decimating each other

Islamist rebel head killed in Syria, watchdog says
Nusra Front chief Abu Mohammed al-Ansari and his family slaughtered by al-Qaeda breakaway faction
Read more: Islamist rebel head killed in Syria, watchdog says | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamist-rebel-head-killed-in-syria-watchdog-says/#ixzz2zGoAdPa7

Posted by: Virgile | Apr 18 2014 20:06 utc | 43

Ken Nari@23,
Fascism seeks to atomize the working class through the destruction of organized labor during times of capitalist profitability crisis. So those who seek to destroy the Union are Fascists plain and simple. General Strike and an overhaul of the social order is the solution to Fascism.
As Richard Wolf pointed out in his book and in the interview with Bill Moyers, Unions are just part of the pecking order structure of the corporations. The big boss who gets the big bonuses (taken from the workers) makes all the decisions. It is time for work place democracy where everybody has a say and the enterprise is owned by the workers.
A famous person once said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” That famous person was Abraham Lincoln, possibly the last decent Republican president.

Posted by: Cynthia | Apr 18 2014 21:17 utc | 45

@46
Chip, at Rowan’s risk of becoming a bore—we deserve rule by the satanic societies because we turned away from God, and there are no churches to flee to even if one does wake in fright.
For the sake for merciful brevity:- about five minutes after Waterloo, our one true Creator and just Judge silently unlatched the shtetls and ghettos of the Pale of Settlement. Over the following fifty years there crept forth, bug-eyed with fear and loathing, the criminally insane victims of Judaism, liberated (“emancipated”) to punish apostate humanity as the hammer of God’s perfectly just revenge. The London cops always knew Jack the Ripper was Aaron Kosminski, died 1919 but hidden by Jews to this day. Beginning the “Jewish century” with the first concentration camps and genocide upon the Boers, it was God who empowered the Talmud crazed Goy haters. Only humanity’s general return to the routine practice of TRUE religion can possibly curb and displace the anti-human power of the very first victims of Judaic deception. Assuredly there is justice in the world.
So bitch, curse and squeal or else admit, weep and kneel—or else.

Posted by: Michaël | Apr 18 2014 23:54 utc | 47

the Natasha Poklonskaya machine just keeps rolling on! sex symbol of the Russian Spring?
Crimean prosecutor music clip hits 3.7 mn views in three days http://t.co/QVvlZc583H http://t.co/Oy0HVww7LX

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 1:15 utc | 49

Natalya, by the bye is just like Vladimir Vladimiyovich, an offering to frantic humanity from the just good God. Aren’t they beautiful.

Posted by: Michaël | Apr 19 2014 1:38 utc | 51

Jpost to the rescue…

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 19 2014 3:17 utc | 53

Posted by: Michaël | Apr 18, 2014 9:38:44 PM | 51
“Natalya, by the bye is just like Vladimir Vladimiyovich, an offering to frantic humanity from the just good God. Aren’t they beautiful.”
I wondered why the “anti-semitism” expressed in this writer’s post was tolerated here, while valid anti-zionism of others resulted in the person being banned. Now I know. Having the proper political views with regard to “empire” works wonders on these western propaganda sites.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 19 2014 3:32 utc | 55

Is it possible to refer to all these creatively-writing Lt-Cols as “half-bird colonels”? Or is that going too far? Cos they don’t have any birds on their shoulders or on their lapels or wherever, not even half ones, they just have bottlecaps.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 19 2014 3:55 utc | 57

“sucks ass. ;)”
Oops. That looks bad. Sorry about that. I don’t mean to disrespect the western ruling class and the “how to get ahead in western society” culture that facilitates their rule. Please, NSA, Mossad, Brit public school administrators, etc. pay no attention.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 19 2014 4:11 utc | 59

ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in a statement posted on Jihadi forums:

Al-Qaeda today is no longer a base of Jihad. Its leadership has become a hammer to break the project of the Islamic State. The leaders of al-Qaeda have deviated from the correct path. They have divided the ranks of the Mujahidin in every place.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 19 2014 4:26 utc | 61

If B bans for antisemitism, why has Michael not been blocked?
I mean, Michael is denying the goddamn holocaust. Pragma never did anything approaching that.

Posted by: Massinissa | Apr 19 2014 4:51 utc | 63

#64 the juvenile references to ZUS, etc got very tiresome but the other problem with p was his utter lack of sophistication — many grandiose statements, with much factual (some of it accurate) in these interminably long posts that when distilled down to content were quite empty.

Posted by: ToivoS | Apr 19 2014 5:28 utc | 65

I love this bloody array of actually respectable intellects. But we have been lied to from our cradles.
Right up front I blab the dynamic, one, hated, true religion and dynamic anti-religion—and I don’t get banned! That is rare, so I love b. That boy has balls and charity, both virtues from Latin vir:- that man is an actually virile intellect. Viva MoonRise over Alabama! Just don’t feed the trolls.
Next venue, the big next crime scene, will be Africa because Ukraina is imminently freed from the satanic Empire, whose principal executives are the schmuks of history, permitted to think it is all a vast ingenious Jewish conspiracy. It’s not.
Anti-bullshit-semitism? Gawd. Israel Shahak said that anti-semitism is useful only in the hands of [us] Jews. In other words it is a false flag; only cunning little Goy-haters deface graves etc. with swastikas. Haven’t MofA’s read and loved judicial-inc.biz? What dedicated scholarship, what bravery that patriotic American Jewish lawyer persisted and persisted in! He got closed down from way, way upstairs. It was Sauron who needed to shut him up.

Posted by: Michaël | Apr 19 2014 6:33 utc | 67

#64 OK I can accept that from you — you think I am an inferior man, if I translated that correctly.

Posted by: ToivoS | Apr 19 2014 6:56 utc | 69

Nina Byzantina ‏@NinaByzantina 10h
Publicly available map of protests in east #Ukraine (original – ridus.ru) | Военная география Юго-востока. #Украина pic.twitter.com/eS7KE0o0V4

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 7:22 utc | 71

russkies corrupting locals against the pure ukrainian fatherland?
Nina Byzantina @NinaByzantina · 14h
#Seversk local w/ member of #Donbass people’s militia | #Северск – под контролем #ДНР.
https://twitter.com/NinaByzantina/status/457208195543343105/photo/1
#Северск #Донецк #Ukraine

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 8:24 utc | 73

a trojan horse? whatever is Snowden up to? lets call out Edward Snowden
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38270.htm
what the hell? another and odd attempt to demonise President Putin from a guy who sought asylum in russia…Snowden is not russian, nor does he work for russia intelligence
id ike to know why he felt the need to ask the question at all? for he can also ask it of france UK germany italy spain canada australia etc etc
Snowden is not russian…nor is he french german austraian italian or lithuanian…
Thos who see Snowden as a deepstate plant in russia now have a bit more evidence

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 11:42 utc | 75

first south koreas Victor Ahn, then americas Victor Wild now a ukrainian athlete chooses to represent Russia #goodsign…note how they are all fleeing the US and its allies for the land of the really free!
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_04_19/Ukrainian-pentathlete-Buryak-decides-to-represent-Russian-national-team-9141/

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 12:02 utc | 77

commentators are saying the LL story may be a fake

Posted by: brian | Apr 19 2014 12:15 utc | 79

Why Israel Is Staying On The Sidelines In Ukraine Crisis
Israel has been largely silent about Russia’s muscling in on Ukraine. The tiny country — with a Russian Jewish foreign minister — seems to want to preserve its good relations with Moscow.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/17/304186891/why-israel-is-staying-on-the-sidelines-in-ukraine-crisis

Posted by: Virgile | Apr 19 2014 12:44 utc | 81

One in Five American Children Don’t Have Enough to Eat.
Hmmm, I wonder if sparking another Cold War would give all of those hungry useless brats a means to getting some rations. Gee, if we just could get another “Pearl Harbor” type event to really kick the whole thing off. What to do, what to do?
Paging central casting…central casting…Oleg Bogdan Ladenov report to HQ.
In other news: Former Yahoo executive to collect nearly $110 million for 15 months of work
Now, an outsider might think that the simultaneity of these two disparate situations would be the catalyst for great social change and upheaval, that long abandoned ideas of class consciousness etc would be be once again at the forefront of the minds of the common peon and that change was right around the corner.
Not in Daydream Nation America, sucka!! The fucking NBA and NHL playoffs are on!!!!

Posted by: JSorrentine | Apr 19 2014 14:26 utc | 83

More news on how pathetic Poland is and how embarrassingly obsequious their leadership is to The Pimpagon.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Apr 19 2014 14:52 utc | 85

The proper slang for Lt.Colonel is Chicken Col.I believe.
Oh,God,or Bernhard,don’t listen to the Zionists hating comments which expose their total virulent racism and lack of concern for others.There’s enough controlled sites for the Zionists to feel secure about.(The whole MSM.)
Over at the Graun,they have a bunch of alleged liberals groaning about Stormfront(never went there in my life),and that possible link to the idiot Miller,who shot Christians instead of his alleged targets Jews,with support of that SPLC,run by Zionist racist Jews.My God,the disconnect from reality of these liberals who support the govts total overreach in the rancher Bundys case,they can’t see the out of control connection between the govts actions there and internationally.I mean,total hypocrisy writ large.And that clown Miller?,was a FBI informant at one time,in an unsuccessful attempt at putting other alleged troublemakers in jail.Red Herring?Nothing would surprise me today,and these Zionists here,protesting about words spoken which belittle and accuse Jews of whatever,if these accusations are unconnected from reality,they would crash under the weight of that unreality,and be laughable.But of course,even in the most virulent statements there are many instances of truth,which of course is the rub they don’t like.
The Holocaust;I have never met anyone who claimed that Hitler didn’t put his political enemies in jail while fighting the world.And that many,many innocents died.It’s the method of their deaths that raises questions,as gassing victims in closed camps would make a lot of stink(sic)to their fellow inmates(how do you remove a 100?stiffs from a shower WO anyone catching on?),which in turn would create absolute resistance and mayhem in such a camp,but I’ve never ever heard of a CC breakout.Why is that?Sounds like a one sided tale to me,as usual here in America(and Western world).Makes a good excuse for creating a nation(Israel)from another eh.

Posted by: dahoit | Apr 19 2014 15:18 utc | 87

#5;Organized labor in this ongoing recession(that our poohbahs keep saying we have turned the corner on?)is on the outside looking in,and has become silent.And the employers are creating worse working conditions,taking away rights and benefits and screwing the American worker.Work retail today?Sales goals,# hours to claim health benefits,blocked out days you can’t take off WO penalty,points systems for sick time,and cutthroat fellow workers stealing sales while being exploited also.All this in a time of job shortage.And who are the CEOs of most of these chains?And all the other wealth stealing corporate criminals?Slavers all.

Posted by: dahoit | Apr 19 2014 15:39 utc | 89

20,23;Jesus, and churches,and church members,are not the same.If the modern church had any real belief in JC,they would follow His teachings.The NY Cardinal just reenacted the Procession,but his silence on everything about our war of terror belies his actions.And almost nationwide,its the same.I think it’s just cowardice on these churches,as with falling attendance,they are afraid of losing more congregants,when I believe its the opposite, church hypocrisy,that drives the people away.I wish Pope Francis could influence his members more,we will see.

Posted by: dahoit | Apr 19 2014 16:33 utc | 91

@86
I read that piece the other day and the author is usually featured on the libertarian financial site ZeroHedge. While saying crony capitalism and fascism are one and the same is not very enlightening as it’s basically a tautological statement, I believe that the author shows his true propagandist colors when he weekly tries to shoehorn China into the discussion as an example of Communism as by doing so it reinforces the ignorant – but prevalent – propagandistic meme that has been circulating ever since the financial crisis – which btw was when ZeroHedge first appeared – namely that there is NO NIL ZIP NADA difference between fascism and communism.
Living in the US, a person is confronted with complete rewrites of reality on a constant basis and that extends obviously to every sphere of human thought – e.g., science, history, political philosophy, etc. – so when I first heard the “fascism = communism” meme I simply wrote it off as ignorant American fuckheads displaying their true colors. “Hey, it was National SOCIALISM!11!!”, screamed the retards. However, over the last 5 years, nominally “libertarian” sites like ZH and others have consistently and continuously pushed this meme so as to muddy the waters and waylay any true honest investigation/discussion of the differences between opposing political systems of thought especially ones that might make the life of the peon a bit less harsh/exploited. Gee, I wonder why TPTB would want that?
By holding up modern China as an example of Communism, Smith expressly shows us that he is fucking propagandist scum inhabiting the more clever of propagandist echelons as the peon is then seemingly left with NO OPTIONS as to how they could potentially reorder or rethink their society.
Fascism? No, that’s the Nazis and the US isn’t like the Nazis! We’re just spreading democracy, bitches!
Communism (and this in Americanese means the exact same thing as all forms of socialism, natch)? Well, Stalin killed 34 trillion people and look at the Chinese! Boo hiss.
Thus, Hughes, like a good bootlicker, cleverly leaves his readers to ponder “crony” capitalism – as if it’s not capitalism itself that’s the fucking inherent problem just the “crony” part.
Whew, thank baby Jesus, Smith is around to help pick up my spirits or as a peon I would have started to think that there might have been something wrong with capitalism as a whole. Shudder.
Yup, if we just reformed the fucking tax code why THEN THEN there would be peace on Earth, people could finally stop whoring out their daughters to eat and we could have good-natured pickup basketball games in the park between bankers and food stamp recipients. Suits versus skins?
What a fucking maroon Marx was wasting his entire life talking about the inherent inhuman ends of capitalism when the answer was there for all to see plain as day in the…TAX CODE!
Obviously, on another level of thinking than Marx entirely (so deep you’d never find him), Smith NAILED IT and I always look forward to him pithily solving more of the world’s problems with tactics that somehow – gee willikers – leave the overall capitalistic superstructure in place. Praise the BABY JEZUS!!1!
It’s just “crony” wage-slavery that’s the problem, folks! See what I did there?

Posted by: JSorrentine | Apr 19 2014 17:26 utc | 93

Snowden got too pussy it seems. He didnt dare standing up to the neocons and critics in the west for staying in Russia.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladimir-putin-surveillance-us-leaders-snowden

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 19 2014 19:18 utc | 95

@Anonymous #95:
Well, writing that piece for the Guardian didn’t do Snowden much good. The Atlantic still hates him:
The Lies Edward Snowden Tells
The very idea that there’s a comparison to be made between electronic surveillance carried out by Russia and the unconstitutional activities of the NSA is preposterous: Russia simply doesn’t have anything near the same amount of money to spend on spying on everyone the way the NSA has. The USG’s defense budget is eight times Russia’s, and it’s reasonable to suppose that the same holds for their respective electronic surveillance budgets.
Also, what that hack writing for the Atlantic overlooks is because the Russian system of government is not nearly as corrupt and lawless as the USG, there will never be a Russian Snowden, who reveals how the RF engages in spying because he is so disgusted by it.

Posted by: Demian | Apr 19 2014 19:51 utc | 97

@Massinissa #98:
As I’m sure you know, the idea of a panopticon was an invention of the English utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. No country has as much closed circuit TV cameras deployed across it (by the government) as Britain. So this obsession with univeral surveillance appears to be specifically anglophone.
Second, Russia does not have the kind of military industrial complex that the US does. Besides an obsession with universal surveillance, what drives the NSA is the greed of private contractors.
So I don’t think that Russia is ever going to become a panopticon state like the US or UK.
To get back to Snowden, Jessica Radick has a piece on how he is being smeared again.

Posted by: Demian | Apr 19 2014 20:18 utc | 99