INTERVIEW: “America is a Tinderbox” / Chris Hedges / Part 4 of 7
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Category Archives: Censorship
NATIONAL SECURITY STATE: “The State Fears Its Own People” / Noam Chomsky
h/t: AlterNet
QUOTATION: “On Speaking Truth” / Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)
Irish Writer, Poet, Classicist, Spokesman for Aestheticism, and Atheist.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation.
h/t: Being Liberal
GUN VIOLENCE: “12.08.1980”
GOD AND GUNS: “Oh, how very Amurikan!”
GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP: “Military Web Restrictions to Continue as Republican Led House Panel Passes on Amendment” / Phillip Molnar
The House Rules Committee passed on an amendment that would have stopped the military from filtering news websites on its bases.
Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., added the change to the Defense Appropriations Bill last week after reading about the Army’s restriction of The Guardian news site at the Presidio of Monterey and other installations.
“This was a decision by the Republican leadership, and the Republican leadership alone,” Grayson said by email Wednesday. “I think it’s unfortunate that the Republican leadership thinks that we need to keep our own soldiers in the dark, and prevent them from reading what every other American can learn about.”
Related articles
- CENSORSHIP: “The Guardian news website blocked at Presidio of Monterey, California” / Phillip Molnar (alwaysquestionauthority.com)
- CENSORSHIP: “Restricted Web access to The Guardian is Army wide, officials say” / Phillip Molnar (alwaysquestionauthority.com)
- US army, what a fucking joke it is (niqnaq.wordpress.com)
- Restricted web access to The Guardian is Armywide, officials say – Monterey County Herald (montereyherald.com)
- The Guardian news website blocked at Presidio of Monterey after NSA leaks (mercurynews.com)
PRESIDENTIAL COMPLICITY: “Cornel West: Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin Case Belies Failure to Challenge “New Jim Crow'” / Democracy Now!
CRITICAL THINKING: “Cable News’s Journalistic Suicide” / Marty Kaplan
CNN and MSNBC are giving wall-to-wall coverage to the Trayvon Martin murder trial. Fox News is taking brief breaks from the courtroom to empathize with Darrell Issa and Paula Deen, because George Zimmerman isn’t the only victim around who needs defending, but otherwise the cable news channels are all race-crime-porn all the time.
They have three good reasons for doing this.
CONSERVATIVE CENSORSHIP: “Former Governor, Now Purdue President, Wanted Howard Zinn Banned in Schools”
According to a series of documents obtained by an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act request, Daniels tried to use his position as governor to punish his enemies, including a professor at a local university. At the center of the story, however, is Daniels’ special hatred for historian Howard Zinn.
Zinn, in case you’re not familiar, was the author of A People’s History of the United States, a book he described to the New YorkTimes as a “history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated.” It was, and still is, a controversial book, both as a work of history and as a work embodying a particular kind of radical approach to confronting injustice. But it’s a bestseller, hugely influential, and still used often in the classroom. Zinn died in 2010, while Daniels was in office. According to the Associated Press, here’s how Daniels marked his passing in an email:
“This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away…The obits and commentaries mentioned his book, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ is the ‘textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.’ It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?”
CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT: “Locking Out the Voices of Dissent” / Chris Hedges
The security and surveillance state, after crushing the Occupy movement and eradicating its encampments, has mounted a relentless and largely clandestine campaign to deny public space to any group or movement that might spawn another popular uprising. The legal system has been grotesquely deformed in most cities to, in essence, shut public space to protesters, eradicating our right to free speech and peaceful assembly. The goal of the corporate state is to criminalize democratic, popular dissent before there is another popular eruption.
[…]
The executive, legislative and judicial branches of government have been taken over by corporations and used to protect and promote the criminal activity of Wall Street, the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, the looting of the U.S. Treasury by the banking industry and the corporate seizure of all major centers of power. The primacy of corporate profit trumps our right to a living wage, affordable and adequate health care, the regulation of industry and environmental controls, protection from corporate fraud and abuse, the right to a good and affordable public education, the ability to form labor unions, and having a government that serves the basic needs of ordinary citizens. Our voices, our rights and our aspirations are no longer of concern to the state. And if we try to assert them, the state now has mechanisms in place to shut us down.
[…]
The security organs know that as conditions worsen for the majority of Americans, as austerity cuts and chronic unemployment and underemployment drive tens of millions of families into desperation, as climate change continues to produce extreme and dangerous weather, there remains the threat of another popular backlash. The problem lies not, of course, with the Occupy movement, but with the reconfiguration of the government into a handmaiden of corporations that seek to squeeze profits out of the dying carcass of empire.
Always Question Authority 