VIDEO JOURNALISM: “Chris Hedges: Stand Up and Fight NDAA, US Turns Blind Eye to Israel Chemical Weapon Attacks” / Abby Martin
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Category Archives: News
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: “The Dead Rhetoric of War” / Chris Hedges
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a“Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.
DISCUSSION: “Chris Hedges on Obama Decision to Attack Syria and “Give Congress a Voice”” / Paul Jay
RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGE: “Persecution Or Privilege? The Real Status Of American Houses of Worship” / Americans United for Separation of Church and State
The war on Christmas. The war on marriage. Wars on schools, on prayer, on the sanctity of life – we’ve heard countless times that a culture war rages in America. If you believe the fundamentalists, they’re merely defending themselves against an overwhelming tide of secularist persecution.
But a recent report by the Council for Secular Humanism and the University of Tampa confirms that this persecution is really a myth. In fact, the report estimates that the federal government subsidizes churches to the tune of at least $71 billion per year.
The Washington Post called these numbers a “lowball,” and estimates the real number is probably much higher thanks to local tax subsidies, sales tax subsidies and fund-raising subsidies, among other benefits. When these benefits are considered the number is closer to $82.5 billion per year.
Related articles
- You give religions more than $82.5 billion a year (washingtonpost.com)
- This Week in God (maddowblog.msnbc.com)
INJUSTICE: “‘Chelsea E. Manning’ and the Gangster State” / Chris Hedges
FORT MEADE, Md.—The swift and brutal verdict read out by Army Col. Judge Denise Lind in sentencing Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison means we have become a nation run by gangsters. It signals the inversion of our moral and legal order, the death of an independent media, and the open and flagrant misuse of the law to prevent any oversight or investigation of official abuses of power, including war crimes. The passivity of most of the nation’s citizens—the most spied upon, monitored and controlled population in human history—to the judicial lynching of Manning means they will be next. There are no institutional mechanisms left to halt the shredding of our most fundamental civil liberties, including habeas corpus and due process, or to prevent pre-emptive war, the assassination of U.S. citizens by the government and the complete obliteration of privacy.
Wednesday’s sentencing marks one of the most important watersheds in U.S. history. It marks the day when the state formally declared that all who name and expose its crimes will become political prisoners or be forced, like Edward Snowden, and perhaps Glenn Greenwald, to spend the rest of their lives in exile. It marks the day when the country dropped all pretense of democracy, obliterated checks and balances under the separation of powers and rejected the rule of law. It marks the removal of the mask of democracy, already a fiction, and its replacement with the ugly, naked visage of corporate totalitarianism. State power is to be, from now on, unchecked, unfettered and unregulated. And those who do not accept unlimited state power, always the road to tyranny, will be ruthlessly persecuted. On Wednesday we became vassals. As I watched the burly guards hustle Manning out of a military courtroom at Fort Meade after the two-minute sentencing, as I listened to half a dozen of his supporters shout to him, “We’ll keep fighting for you, Bradley! You’re our hero!” I realized that our nation has become a vast penal colony.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: “Outside of the Russian Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden!”
h/t: Swedish
U.S. DISSIDENT SURVEILLANCE “After Multiple Denials, CIA Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky”
For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.
The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky’s entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley’s archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.
The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky’s CIA file comes in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.” The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky’s brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s — and the CIA’s well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word.
Now, a public records request by FOIA attorney Kel McClanahan reveals a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.
Related articles
- CIA Finally Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky (mediaite.com)
- CIA Targeted Noam Chomsky, Documents Reveal (alternet.org)
ACADEMIC vs. APOLOGIST: Reza Aslan To Fox News Anchor: “I Wrote ‘Zealot’ Because I Am An Expert”
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: “Freedom From Religion Foundation Objects to Religious Quotations on U.S. Passports”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the U.S. State Department on July 25 to object to religious quotations printed on official United States passports. FFRF has been protesting religion in passports since 2007.
FFRF, a state/church watchdog based in Madison, Wis., is a national nonprofit with more than 19,000 members across the country.
Multiple quotes on the United States passport include religious references:
“May God continue the unity of our country as the railroad unites the two great ocean of the world.” Inscribed on the Golden Spike
“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” Jefferson Memorial, Thomas Jefferson
“We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Always Question Authority 