You are hereCorporatism and Fascism
Corporatism and Fascism
Corporatism and Fascism
Leaked EPA Document Showing Water Contamination Could Be Smoking Gun in Federal Lawsuit
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A PowerPoint presentation obtained from a source and published by DeSmog in August 2013 has made its way into a major hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") related legal case, which is set to go to trial soon in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
New Book Reveals Koch Brothers Paid Firm Run by Former NYPD Chief to Smear Journalist
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The just-published book "Dark Money," penned by New Yorker staff reporter Jane Mayer, reveals that the Koch Brothers hired the former commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD) — and his daughter, a former FBI agent — to smear her as a "plagiarist" in the months after the release of her August 2010 bombshell article on the Kochs.
Rethinking Bernie Sanders: Attacking Wall Street and the Corrupt US Political System Makes Sanders a Genuine Revolutionary
By Dave Lindorff
I admit I’ve been slow to warm up to the idea of supporting Bernie Sanders. Maybe it’s because I publicly backed Barack Obama in 2008 and quickly came to rue that decision after he took office.
Is T-Mobile’s video app an attack on net neutrality?: Binge On, Opt In, Truth Out
By Alfredo Lopez
Last week, T-Mobile's CEO John Lagere pubicly asked the Electronic Frontier Foundation a straightforward question: "Who the f*** are you anyway, EFF? Why are you stirring up so much trouble and who pays you?"
Dying and well-behaved and you might get medicine: Pennsylvania’s Barbaric Protocol for Non-Treatment of Prisoners with Hep-C
By Dave Lindorff
Emails: US Government Facilitated LNG Business Deals Before Terminals Got Required Federal Permits
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Emails and documents obtained by DeSmog reveal that the U.S. Department of Trade has actively promoted and facilitated business deals for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and export terminal owners, even before some of the terminals have the federal regulatory agency permits needed to open for business.
Obama's Oily Christmas Gift: Faster Pipeline Approvals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.
My 2016 New Years Day: The Good, the Sad and the Ugly
By John Grant
Philadelphia -- A number of things converged to make my New Years special this year. Three of them were good, one was not so good -- in fact, it had the sense of a nasty omen for the future.
Ruling soon on Mumia non-treatment policy challenge: PA Admits Secret ‘Protocol’ Denies Hep-C Treatment to All But Dying Inmates
By Dave Lindorff
Following three days of contentious testimony in a courtroom in Scranton, PA late last month, a federal district judge is considering a legal petition by Pennsylvania's most well-known prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for a finding that the state's long-running refusal to treat his active case of Hepatitis-C, a potentially fatal disease, violates his Eighth Amendment right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
Court could rule not treating inmates with Hep C violates 8th Amendment: Dr. Jess Guh on Hep-C Epidemic in Nation’s Prisons
Dr. Jess Guh on Hep-C Epidimec in Nation’s Prison and PA’s Refusal to Treat Mumia Abu-Jamal
A Progressive Radio Network podcast
Dave Lindorff and his guest on PRN.fm's “This Can't Be Happening!" program, Dr. Jess Guh, talk about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s court battle in federal court in Scranton to force the state’s prison system to provide him with treatment for his active and potentially fatal case of Hepatitis-C.
Dr. Guh, a primary car physician from Seattle who has been investigating the shoddy standard of health care in the nation’s prisons, and who has reviewed some 100 pages of Mumia’s medical record, says that what Pennsylvania and many other states are doing to prisoners in their control by denying Hep-C treatment is nothing short of malpractice and neglegence on a massive scale.
To hear this podcast, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2972
Big Oil Argued for U.S. Crude Exports to Fend Off Iran, But First Exporter Vitol Group Also Exported Iran's Oil
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The American Petroleum Institute (API) successfully lobbied for an end to the 40-year ban on exporting U.S.-produced crude oil in part by making a geopolitical argument: Iran and Russia have the ability to export their oil, so why not unleash America?
What winter?: No Denying It, Climate Change Is Happening Now
By Dave Lindorff
The leaves came off the last trees -- a crabapple, a willow and a hardy Norway maple -- during the first week of December this year, surely the latest I can remember seeing leaves on trees since we moved to the Philadelphia area 18 years ago. But it’s not just that.
Abu-Jamal case shows widespread neglect of inmate health: Mumia Faces Possible Second Death Sentence
By Jess Guh
This is the third in a three-part series on Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight to force the Pennsylvania prison system to treat his active Hep-C infection, and that of thousands of other infected state inmates, and on the raging Hepatitis-C epidemic in the nation's prisons. (Click here for Part I or here for Part II)
Seattle, WA – Physicians are held to professional expectations dictating that the failure to provide standard healthcare is malpractice. There is no difference between failing to provide a service and performing a liable medical mistake.
ExxonMobil, Peabody Coal Lobbying for Bill Preventing Climate Change Accounting in US Trade Deals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The day before global leaders and diplomats passed a climate change deal in Paris at the United Nations climate summit, the U.S. House of Representatives — in a 256-158 vote — authorized the final text of a bill that has a provision preventing climate change to be accounted for in all U.S. trade deals going forward.
Federal Court Gives Blessing to Covertly Approved Enbridge Cross-Border Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A federal court has ruled that the Enbridge Alberta Clipper (Line 67) cross-border tar sands pipeline expansion project, permitted covertly and behind closed doors by the Obama Administration, got its greenlight in a legal manner.
Groups Ask Columbia University To Reveal Funding Behind Exxon-Tied Center on Global Energy Policy
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Final exams and winter break loom large for students at Columbia University, but at the upper echelons of the university's administration, new calls for transparency about the funding of a university affiliated center are likely to create plenty of homework as well.
Judge rejects state’s arguments to reject case: Abu-Jamal Gets Federal Court Hearing Seeking Order to Treat His Hepatitis-C Inf
By Dave Lindorff
The second in a three-part series on Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight to force the Pennsylvania prison system to treat his active Hep-C infection, and that of thousands of other infected state inmates, and on the raging Hepatitis C epidemic in the nation's prisons
Mumia Abu-Jamal Battles for His Life...Again
By Linn Washington, Jr.
The big courthouse news in Pennsylvania this week does not involve yet another sordid revelation in the sleazy racist-pornographic email scandal now soiling top justice system officials in the Keystone State that include a state supreme court justice and ranking prosecutors.
Where will that money go?: The Zuckerberg Family Donation and a Legacy of Control
By Alfredo Lopez
When I was very young, my parents used to tell me why having "lots of toys" wasn't a good idea. "The more you have, the more you want," they would say. I didn't have many toys -- we were poor -- so the idea of possessions feeding greed didn't make much sense to me then.
Meet the Lobbyists and Big Money Interests Pushing to End the Oil Exports Ban
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The ongoing push to lift the ban on exports of U.S.-produced crude oil appears to be coming to a close, with Congress agreeing to a budget deal with a provision to end the decades-old embargo.
In Midst of ExxonMobil Climate Denial Scandal, Company Hiring Climate Change Researcher
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Caught in the crosshairs of an ongoing New York Attorney General investigation exploring its role in studying the damage climate change could cause since the 1970's and then proceeding to fund climate science denial campaigns, ExxonMobil has announced an interesting job opening.
US Journalists Duck the Big Climate Question: Can Capitalism and Mankind Both Survive?
By Dave Lindorff
Trump Didn't Vote to Kill 1 Million Muslims in Iraq, Hillary Did
Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for pointing out that the U.S. media is acting as though Donald Trump just invented bigotry this week (one of those ugly details I'm happy to miss by never watching television). But not only is explicit bigotry toward Muslims not new, implicit bigotry toward Muslims has been the foundation of the largest public project in the United States for the past quarter century.
The driving forces behind war planning in Washington are power, domination, profit, politics, and the inertia of war planning as a path toward career success. These sociopaths are happy to bomb Germans or Yugoslavians. The value they place on sailors in Pearl Harbor or contemplated victims of Operation Northwoods, or U.S. troops stop-lossed into insanity is negligible. They don't think twice about overthrowing a democracy in Iran and laying the groundwork for Islamic power. They have no qualms about arming Muslim radicals in Afghanistan or Iraq, and toppling secular governments in Iraq or Libya or Syria. That most ISIS weaponry is U.S. weaponry seized from Iraq can only please the profiteers who will sell the weapons to combat ISIS. Their best friends are the killer Muslims running Saudi Arabia and nearby kingdoms. Their Christian hatred for Islam is as real as Karl Rove's integrity or Donald Trump's hair.
But you can't keep dumping $1 trillion a year into U.S. militarism without an enemy as frightening as -- actually it has to be more frightening than -- the Soviet Union and nuclear holocaust. In the irrational world of fear, a throat slitting is as frightening as a nuclear bomb, in fact more so. Many, many people in the United States, when they stop to think about it, recognize that the wars of recent decades have been counterproductive, creating enemies rather than eliminating them, endangering rather than protecting, costing a mountain of lives and of dollars, savagely destroying the natural environment, eroding civil liberties in the name of wars for "freedom," and brutalizing morality, justifying murder, torture, kidnapping, etc. But with fear and hatred of Muslims thrown into the mix, all of that clear understanding is erased by the need to kill Muslims. Suddenly a rich stew of World War II myths and Hollywood entertainment reminds everyone that only war works and nothing else is acceptable.
Donald Trump didn't vote for the war on Iraq that killed a million Muslims. He didn't vote to fund it and escalate it over and over again. Hillary Clinton did that. Which is not to say that Trump wouldn't have done so too, or worse, if he thought it would get him on TV more. The point is that the hatred is not new. Without it, basic U.S. policy would be understood as irrational.
There are now news stories from around the United States and the world about people shunning Trump businesses and expressing fear about living in Trump-branded buildings. They're concerned that there may be an attack. No doubt among those expressing this worry are some of that majority of Americans who tell pollsters they want more war. So, they recognize blowback. It's not a difficult concept. Hostility toward others produces hostility back toward you or someone taken to represent you. Pretty basic. But in advocating more war, millions of people are willing and able to hide their understanding of blowback in some fascist vault in a back corner of their brains. Sure, more war will produce more blowback, they may think, but hopefully it will hit somebody else -- especially if I unload my Trump condo and live somewhere else, perhaps a liberal gated community with an African-American guard whose name I even know.
I walked by a wall recently and took a photo of it. Someone had written "Anything war can do, peace can do better." Wisest thing I've ever seen on that wall. But someone else had scrawled underneath a poetic piece of pure ignorance from deep within the terrified soul of U.S. paranoia: "(Except stopping Hitler!)" I don't think the rest of the world finds it easy to get inside this type of U.S. thinking, in which the outside world is full of a menacing evil constantly analogized to Hitler, the "new Hitler," the "modern Hitler," -- and Hitler is understood as having arisen with no help from the Treaty of Versailles, no help from Wall Street, no assistance from the militarism of Western culture, and no possibility of being halted short of global domination except by massive violence.
Kids, dear world, in the United States, you should know are compelled to pledge allegiance to a U.S. flag every morning, and then to pray in what they call a "moment of silence." They are then taught a mythologized U.S. history year after year with hardly any mention of the other 96% of humanity. Then they're told that Muslims want to slit their throats. Why? What did they do? Nothing. They'd just been shopping and watching football and minding their own business. They had a flag out front and plenty of support-the-troops shit stuck to the SUV. Why? Must just be the barbarity of the Muslims. Why not kill them off? It worked with the Native Americans. Kill them off, but don't talk about it like that out loud.
Only, if there's a war on al Qaeda support it, and if there's a war with al Qaeda against Syria oppose it, and if it's repackaged as a war on al Qaeda under a new and even scarier name, support it with a passion. And if killing them is OK, what in the hell is all the fuss about over torturing them? And if torturing them is OK, what in the world could be wrong with denying them entry into the United States? This is the logic of war propaganda. Trump agrees with the Washington establishment, he just has some sort of media-driven Tourette syndrome that leads him to blurt things out. If he's made president, the second most dangerous place in this country will be a mosque. The first will remain anywhere between Trump and a television camera.
Regime change in Chicago!: Cover-Up of a Police Murder Requires Resignation of Chicago Mayor Emanuel
By Linn Washington, Jr.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a bold yet belated move when he fired his embattled police superintendent in the wake of a national uproar surrounding the release of a chilling video that captured the police killing of a teen--a ward of the city of Chicago.
A half century of US hospital bombings: Gen. John Campbell, Commander in Afghanistan and Serial Liar
By Dave Lindorff
“US forces would never intentionally strike a hospital.”
-- US Commander of NATO Forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Campbell
Where’s the truth, and how can you find it?: The US Corporate Media are Essentially Propaganda Organs of the US Government
Are the American corporate media largely propaganda organs, or news organizations?
Warmongers & Peacemongers: Learning How Not to Rule the World
By John Grant
[Al Qaeda’s] strategic objective has always been ... the overthrow of the House of Saud. In pursuing that regional goal, however, it has been drawn into a worldwide conflict with American power.
