Clipmarks | papananook's clips

If the Left Debated the Campaign Issues

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:29:24 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: good read

SARGENT: In the last session you established that presidential elections are mostly a PR campaign and that, sincere or not, the campaign has little to do with truth or with fundamental changes in existing institutions and a lot to do with getting elected, with the help of elite funding and false promises to voters. Let's turn to a few specific issues, starting with foreign policy. How would the left or a left candidate go about exposing U.S. foreign policy?

ALBERT: I don't think what the candidates say about foreign policy means much at all. They seek to appeal to funders, media, and various constituencies. They say what their pollsters tell them to say. At times they say what they believe while at other times they say what they don't believe. They sell themselves in the same way Proctor and Gamble sells toothpaste—by saying whatever needs to be said to find a way to get support.

to go about it is not by looking at what they say, but by looking at the history of American foreign policy

The Penguin and Batman discuss the American electorate.

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:20:30 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Win for Penguin

Clip Source: www.democraticunderground.com

[Video]

Emerson: "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it"

Run time: 01:25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgJ5AcsXp4M

Posted on YouTube: May 09, 2008
By YouTube Member: sparkypenguin

Views on YouTube: 4247

Posted on DU: May 10, 2008
By DU Member: kpete
Views on DU: 358

Was It Really What Jeremiah Wright Said, Or Was It Because He's Black?

Sat, 10 May 2008 22:11:40 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Moyer's the best...

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

White preachers are given leeway in politics that Jeremiah Wright wasn't.

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: "Who's telling the truth over there?"

"Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience."

That's how people see Jeremiah Wright.

In my conversation with him and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage.

More than 2,000 people have written me about him, and their opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American-hating radical," one of my viewers wrote. Another called him a "nut case."

Many more were sympathetic to him. Many asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to the shocking anger they saw at the National Press Club.

A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not

USA bombing Sadr City civilians

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:57:06 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: add another atrocity to the list...WHEN WILL IT END?

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

PEPE ESCOBAR, THE REAL NEWS ANALYST: It’s been five years since George W. Bush proclaimed Mission Accomplished in Iraq. Now take a very good look at these images. Yes, they are disturbing. You won’t see them on Western TV networks. And no, there’s not a hint of mission accomplished about them.

These are innocent civilians-– poor Shi’ite Arabs living in the three million-strong Sadr City in Baghdad, one of the largest slums in the world. As The Real News has reported Sadr City is being walled in–- transformed into a gulag, and pounded relentlessly by US air strikes. The Pentagon-–and the Iraqi government–-say they are “protecting the Green Zone” by attacking Sadr City. . .As if that traumatic scene of the helicopter leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975 was rattling too many military minds.

1745 Iraqi civilians were killed in April-– against 159 policemen and 104 soldiers. Over 400 people were killed in Sadr City alone. Only 10% were guerrillas.

Dick Cheney’s recent tour

America's Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:51:26 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Armed with potent drugs and new technology, a dangerous breed of soldiers are being trained to fight America's future wars.

Amphetamines and the military first met somewhere in the fog of WWII, when axis and allied forces alike were issued speed tablets to head off fatigue on the battlefield.

More than 60 years later, the U.S. Air Force still doles out dextro-amphetamine to pilots whose duties do not afford them the luxury of sleep.

Far from getting discouraged, the working consensus appears to be that we just haven't gotten the drugs right yet. In recent years, the U.S., the UK and France -- among others -- have reportedly been funding investigations into a new line-up of military performance enhancers. The bulk of these drugs are already familiar to us from the lists of substances banned by international sporting bodies, including the stimulant ephedrine, non-stimulant "wakefulness promoting agents" like modafinil (aka Provigil) and erythropoietin, used to improve endurance

Protest Songs for 2008

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:48:45 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Protest Songs for 2008 Click the ad to go to singer/songwriter Zak Smith's website. Watch the video for his song Traitor's Way, written in response to the war in Iraq. Also listen to his song Choke This Republic Boys, written about the state of the media in America.

The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy, such as it is...

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:44:44 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: what a wonderful buncha jazzbos...

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

On TV and the radio, conservative pundits infuse violence into their arguments, destroying our precious culture of civil debate.

The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Feldmann's new book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy (Ig Publishing, 2008).

The emergence of a cohort of right-wing pundits who use violent logic, language and arguments in national political debate did not gradually take shape over a long stretch of time, but rose up at a starling speed in the lead-up to the national elections of 2004 and 2006. As the horrific extent of the Iraqi military occupation waxed and George W. Bush's popularity waned, a hitherto sarcastic right-wing punditry seemed all at once to step into a new rhetorical frame. Suddenly, with Bush's re-election in doubt, casualties spiraling out of control, and revelations of U.S. military human rights abuses popping up all over, right-wing pundits shifted their tone from critique to conspiracy.

The Revised Constitution of "God's United States"

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:35:01 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Scary reading

Clip Source: www.bush1984.com

A Patriotic Citizens Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Preamble: We the people of God’s United States, in order to provide for the common defense, in balance with the blessings of liberty and our position as the Freest Country on Earth ™, do ordain the replacement of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with law, and ratified as per the original, outdated Constitution of the United States, by two thirds of both Houses of Congress, as well as the Legislatures of three fourths of the fifty states, in the year of our Lord 2009, to hereafter be known as The Patriotic Citizen’s Bill of Rights. The full force of the provisions of these Amendments are effective immediately, and the Judicial Branch of the Government of God’s United States is hereby instructed to interpret any disparity between the original Articles of the Constitution and its original Amendments, and this revised and updated Patriotic Citizen’s Constitution, in favor of the latter.

If Americans knew...

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:19:52 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: powerful vid...

Clip Source: www.brasschecktv.com

[Video]

The most propagandized country
on earth, the US

Sixty years of massive, ongoing, coldly calculated human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.

That's the legacy of the State of Israel.

Americans pay the bills for this tyranny and our hopelessly corrupt news media and elected officials go along with it because it's politically expedient.

Note: The videos of IfAmericansKnew.org are constantly removed by YouTube censors.

I have no idea how long this one will be up.

Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee

Sat, 10 May 2008 19:09:00 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Oh, this is rich--ya gotta read the whole thing at above link(or get the book)

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

In this excerpt from his new book, Matt Taibbi shares his experiences at a Hagee's boot camp for new converts.

The following is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book, The Great Derangement" (Spiegel and Grau, 2008). Update: Matt Taibbi has responded to readers concerns about a passage in this excerpt. Response pasted at the bottom.

I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I'd spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio -- anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.

He scanned his clipboard, found my name on the appropriate sheet of paper, and X-ed me out with a highlighter. "Don't worry, Matthew," he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "A wonderful woman named Martha is going to take care of you at the ranch. You just tell her what you need when you get there."