March 2010
12 posts
Does the US Government Understand the Terrorist... →
“Most Americans just assume that the U.S. government’s actions to protect them from terrorism, if not perfect, are rational, based on sound information and analysis, and undertaken with the intention…
Chris Hedges: Calling All Rebels →
We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Hedges is always excellent, so go and read this. I would have quoted the intro, but it’s so delicious I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself.
(via Instapaper)
Upton Sinclair and the Contradictions of... →
The bogus neutrality of professional journalism is evident in the manner in which it tends to cover anti-capitalist social movements. In professional journalism, business is assumed to be the natural steward of society, while labor is seen as a less benevolent force and left politics generally are held in suspicion.
This is an absolutely excellent article. (Hence the two quotes.)
(via...
Upton Sinclair and the Contradictions of... →
Yet while The Jungle remains a staple of American literature, The Brass Check has been all but forgotten. This is the case despite its groundbreaking critique of the structural basis of U.S. journalism, arguably the first such systematic critique ever made. Anticipating much of the best in more recent structural media criticism, Sinclair explained the class bias built into journalism in a...
Corrupt DEA Agents in Colombia Help Narcos and... →
DEA agents on the front lines of the drug war in Colombia are on drug traffickers’ payrolls, complicit in the murders of informants who knew too much, and, most startlingly, directly involved in helping Colombia’s infamous rightwing paramilitary death squads to launder drug money.
(via Instapaper)
Ben Goldacre on science and media →
The people best at corporate PR play much better in the mainstream media than people who are doing something for real. The PR people are willing to distort their methods to make things more media-friendly.
There are people trying to do serious work addressing health inequality – but they don’t get in newspapers. What you get in the media is people who claim to be providing medicine but who...
HAITI - THE BROKEN WING | MediaLens →
In our search of the Lexis Nexis media database (February 3) we checked for articles containing the word ‘Haiti’ over the last month. This gave 2,256 results (some online press articles are not captured by Lexis Nexis). Our search for articles containing ‘Aristide’ gave 47 results. The words ‘Haiti’ and ‘Voodoo’ gave 53 results. The words ‘Haiti’ and ‘looting’ gave 136 results.
These...
Beyond Supply and Demand: Obama’s Drug Wars in... →
The United States does not so much wage war on drugs as wage war with drugs. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. government has considered certain drugs, including most recently flu vaccines, strategic materials and has subsidized their mass-production and stockpiling in the interests of national security.9 Drugs, among other things, can numb a soldier’s pain, stimulate and ease labor, and...
Charles Bowden on "The War Next Door" →
He’s talking about Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and the war on drugs.
This is an utterly astonishing interview. Charles Bowden sounds like he’s describing the apocalypse.
“This city kills people. And nothing happens to the killers.”
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means...”
– Paulo Freire
Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade... →
If you’re looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it’s the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while...
February 2010
25 posts
Chris Hedges on “The Death and Life of American... →
Chris Hedges reviews Bob McChesney and John Nichols’s new book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism”.
Certainly, as the authors point out, the faux objectivity and neutrality of the traditional news industry hastened the cultural irrelevance of traditional news gathering. The narrowing of debates within the press to the minor differences among the power elite had a debilitating effect...