 |
|
David R. Hoffman for the World Crisis Web
If there is one axiom to define life under the Bush dictatorship, it is that America is dominated and manipulated by individuals without principles, who automatically denounce the policies and practices of people or political parties they oppose, yet openly embrace commensurate policies and practices that serve their own political agendas or selfish interests. Recently, for example, many “conservative” critics expressed indignation over comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolph Hitler. Yet this outrage is conspicuously absent when right-wing commentators make similar comparisons between Nazis and notable liberals.
David R. Hoffman for the World Crisis Web
A popular saying proclaims that there are three types of criticism. The first, and most welcome, is positive criticism. The second, and equally welcomed, is negative criticism, since it confirms that one’s work has been noticed. The third, and worst, is no criticism at all, because it signifies that one’s work is irrelevant or unworthy of being critiqued. But before an individual becomes too elated by positive criticisms, or too deflated by negative ones, it must first be determined whether such criticisms are legitimate or illegitimate. The essential question to be asked is, “Are the critics acting with sincerity and integrity, or are they motivated by agendas that make their words biased at best and hypocritical at worst?”
How The Media Deal With Dangerous Facts
It is vital that we be trained to tolerate absurdity in the media-portrayed myths about nation and society. The media?s self-appointed task of attempting to reconcile our leaders? actions with the libertarian values they claim to uphold requires frequent resort to what can be called Logical Media Lunacy. This involves ignoring known facts and documented history, and violating elementary norms of rational debate to the point of insanity, but in a way that consistently benefits powerful interests. Thus media performance might be likened to a series of insane fits of irrational behaviour ? but with every ?fit? nevertheless manifesting a consistent pattern benefiting the same vested interests in the same way.
Manuel Valenzuela
War is that most ignoble of human creations, in which lower classes fight each other to the death for the benefits of the few elite-greed-infected bastards that blink not an eye at the death and maiming of those young “plebeians” they sent to war in far away lands to fight those same brothers being exploited by the powerful on the other side. In the end, victory or defeat matters not to the dead and injured who have gained nothing and lost everything, returning home to an easily forgetful government that throws veterans into the bowels of indifference, tossing away the key and washing its hands clean of the human catastrophe it created.
David R Hoffman
The coup by George W. Bush in the year 2000, coupled with the invasion of Iraq, revealed how easily those in the USA can be manipulated, how willing they are to be lied to, and how vacuous the freedoms of speech and press have become in that country. But, perhaps most disturbingly, these events demonstrated that even though the words “freedom, democracy and human rights” are chanted like mantras by political leaders, many in the USA have apparently welcomed, or at the very least are blissfully unconcerned about, the erosion of freedom, the abuse of human rights, and their nation’s growing transformation from a democracy into a neo-fascist dictatorship.
Kris Axtman
Some people are so attatched to the illusion that the USA is a morally superior society, that they refuse to believe their country could be a source of terrorism. Sustained by isolated ideologies, they refuse to admit that some of their neighbours live in fear from groups of fellow Americans who would like to see them dead or placed in exile. Earlier this week, I posted an article about a white racist organisation that had built up an arsenal of chemical and conventional weaponry, possibly intended for the mass killing of black Americans. Some people suspected the article because it was originally published in the Black Commentator. The following article, published by the respected Christian Science Monitor, with images from a CBS News station, should set the matter beyond doubt.
Racist Terrorist Groups in the Heart of the USA
The Bush men decorate our holidays in Homeland Security yellow, orange and red, while demonizing Islamic green as the color of the most implacable foes of Western “civilization.” Yet official silence conspires to hide genocidal maniacs in our midst who have sworn to erase the Black presence from the landscape of the United States: White Terror. Tens of thousands of members of a racist legion operate openly in every corner of the nation ? men, women, juveniles, extended families, cells, gangs, churches, clans, militias, border armies, all engaged in what they consider to be a war to the death against non-white America.
Norman Solomon
Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act. So far, the mainstream USA media has ignored her, and the UK authorities plan to put her in jail in as quiet a manner as possible. However, the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public’s right to know on both sides of the Atlantic, for it details how, in the lead-up to war against Iraq, the USA and UK governments were systematically spying on their fellow Security Council members, at exactly the time when they were trying to gain support for their invasion plans.
Manuel Valenzuela
As the USA erupts in an assortment of colors marking the holiday season, a new color has made its way into the cocktail of delight and merriment. The most un-Christmas-like color has infiltrated itself into our collective holiday cheer, creating with its presence a most frightful time of year. Like a most unwelcome neighbor or relative, orange has crept inside our homes and communities, making its annual appearance just in time to spoil our most cherished and comforting holiday.
 |
 |
Get free membership of the World Crisis Web, entitling you to post your own views on the articles published here, and to receive email summaries of the best articles on the site, as well as analysis and comment from other key sites.
Your privacy will always be fully respected. No-one's details will ever be given, sold, or otherwise traded to anyone else.
The World Crisis Web gives you automatically updated RSS news feeds for desktop newsreaders, or to add to your web site.
Amnesty International - Global Justice Gap Condemns Millions to Abuse
The PA's Disingenuous Boycott Campaign
A Shameful War: Israel in the Dock
Somalia: Bad Policies of Strange Bedfellows
The End of Hypocrisy: Crime's Gleeful Abandon in Gaza
Contact the editor without having to bother with e-mail.