Click HERE to watch important CJtv selections
**SPECIAL** Check this video out if you value freedom. HR 1955, proposed by Jane Harman (D-Calif.) criminalizes dissenting speech as essentially seditious and supportive of "terror". It was passed by near unanimity in the House of Scoundrels, with only 6 votes abstaining or not voting. [•]
Loading ...
Change we can believe in??
Okay, let’s get the obvious out of the way. It was historic. I choked up a number of times, tears came to my eyes, even though I didn’t vote for him. I voted for Ralph Nader for the fourth time in a row. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
Henry Paulson: Top mover in the American bourgeoisie’s most powerful sector.
Dateline: November 28-30, 2008
By MIKE WHITNEY
Things are getting crazier by the day. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that the Fed would commit another $800 billion to fight the financial crisis which has spread to the broader economy and is causing sharp declines in consumer spending. The Fed plans to buy $600 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and another $200 billion of Triple A bonds from non-bank financial companies that provide financing for consumers. There’s just one little hitch, Fannie and Freddie are already owned by the government, so buying the bad paper is like moving the figures from one ledger to another. It’s pointless, except for the fact, that by shuffling the paperwork, Bernanke can drive down long-term interest rates and (hopefully) rekindle flagging home sales. It’s quite a trick. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
Chavez supporters in front of wall with effigy of their caudillo.
November 25, 2008
The Petroleum Broadcasting System
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela
By PATRICK IRELAN
On Tuesday 25 November 2008, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) carried a 90-minute review of the presidency of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. As the show progresses, it quickly becomes apparent to the viewer why critics often refer to PBS as the “Petroleum Broadcasting System.” Venezuela has huge oil reserves. Big Oil provides much of the funding for PBS programs. And it would not be wise to offend this source of cash, regardless of how greedy and despicable the oil barons might be. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
GM’s Hummers: symbol of arrogant excess and ostentatious affluence. And let the environment eat cake.
November 25, 2008
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three
By JAMES ABOUREZK | Simulpost with Counterpunch.org | 
Print This Post
Just as I was about to give up on Congress, BAM, POW, a California Congressman decked the auto executives with a one-two punch. As these august gentlemen were sitting before a House Committee telling the Congressmen how bad it was, and that they needed money badly, Brad Sherman asked the group of beggars to raise their hand if any of them flew by commercial airline to the hearings in Washington. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
TAKE ONE: In Time of Trouble
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN | Dateline: November 28-30, 2008 \ CounterPunch Diary | Print This Post
America’s sense of exceptionalism is not new. The Puritans were the forerunners of today’s Kingdom/Dominion/Reconstructionist teaching. The Puritans believed that they were carrying to America true Christianity as decreed by God, especially as written in the Old Testament. They believed too that they were on a divine mission to America, a place specially appointed by God to be the “New Israel,” a theocratic “city upon a hill.”
There have been bleaker Thanksgivings, to be sure, than the one Americans celebrated Thursday. The circumstances of the storied first feast in 1621, (very interestingly discussed on Counterpunch this weekend by David Yearsley and Mike Ely) on the Massachusetts shoreline actually took place in the ruined Indian village of Pawtuxet. As every schoolchild knows, the Wampanoag Indians brought the little band of Puritans wild turkeys. Cortez had shipped turkeys back to Europe from Mexico and a decade later, by the 1530s they were well-known in Germany and England, hailed at the festive board as part of tradition immemorial. The Puritans had domestic turkeys with them in New England, gazing out at their wild relatives, offered by the Indians who regarded them as somewhat second-rate as food. They also brought along corn and seasonal squashes. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
James Petras: More uncompromising than ever before, and a thorn under the saddle for many fellow progressives.
Dateline: Wednesday, november 26, 2008
By Stephen Gowans | Print This Post
James Petras has taken issue with progressive public intellectuals (PPIs) who endorsed the Obama candidacy on pragmatic grounds and who argued the Democratic candidate is a lesser evil, while at the same time condemning lesser evils abroad. In particular, Petras wonders why there’s not a single PPI who supports “the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the popularly supported nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, the anti-occupation Taliban in Afghanistan or even the right, recognized under international law, of the Iranian people to the peaceful development of nuclear energy.” Whatever their defects, continues Petras, “these are the ‘lesser evil’.” (1) [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
Noam Chomsky: Tireless critic of Western imperialism. Routinely blackballed by the corporate media he remains far less well known and influential at home than abroad.
Dateline: ZNET November 25,2008 / By Noam Chomsky | Print This Post
The word that immediately rolled off of every tongue after the presidential election was “historic.” And rightly so. A Black family in the White House is truly a momentous event. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: American brainwash · Ideological Combat
First American billionaire John D. Rockefeller, the father of “Standard Oil”, and grandaddy of ExxonMobil. All energy industries used by the industrial revolution—from coal to oil— have a history smeared with blood, but few match oil for its nefarious effects, including now not only involvement in endless wars, but the puncturing of the biosphere.
Dateline: Tue, 11/25/2008 | Print This Post
It is often said that the United States “has no energy policy,” that we “need to develop one as quickly as possible,” and that it should be based on alternate fuels and more importantly, alternate and renewable energy sources. Well the last two parts are true; the first is definitely not. As we enter an era of debate on and development of a new energy policy, it is very important to understand these facts. We would not be substituting something for nothing. Rather we would be replacing the current energy policy with another one. Further, the new one would be highly antithetical to the interests (to say nothing of the profits) of the developers and defenders of the old one. They would (and indeed will) constitute a very powerful enemy of change. It is impossible to estimate just how far they will go in defending their interests. But these folks have fought dirty in the past and there is no reason to believe that they will change their stripes anytime soon. But no old policy can be changed to a new one if one does not clearly understand just what the present one is. [Read more →]
→ 9 CommentsTags: Ideological Combat
Millions stand behind him. But too many of the wrong kind. In time, as more betrayals of ordinary Americans pile up at the hand of Obama and his lieutenants, racism may resurface among white blue-collar workers who will find in Obama the perfect target for their frustrations. Unless he makes good on some of his populist promises, far from helping to defuse racism Obama may actually end up aggravating racial tensions in America.
22 November 2008 | Print This Post
The increasingly right-wing character of the transition being organized in preparation for President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration in January has elicited expressions of concern from the middle-class “left.” This milieu, whose views are reflected in publications like the Nation magazine, played a significant role during the election campaign in promoting Obama’s candidacy and the Democratic Party as vehicles for fundamental political and social change. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: American Politicians · American Way of Life · American brainwash · Bourgeois Democracy · Bourgeois Economics · Class Analysis · Establishment Whores · Ideological Combat · Indecent Plutocracy
The Team Obama Should Have Picked
By RAMZI KYSIA | Print This Post
OUR NATION hasn’t yet finished counting all the election returns, but the outlines of a future Obama Administration are already clear: Clinton at State, Geithner at Treasury, Summers to head the National Economic Council, Holder at Justice, Emmanuel as Chief of Staff, General James Jones as the likely National Security Advisor, and Robert Gates likely to stay on at Defense. [Read more →]
→ No CommentsTags: American Politicians · American brainwash
