First published on ZNet on September 3, 2012. Amidst the standard nauseating surfeit of arch-plutocratic and white-nationalist nonsense displayed during last week’s Republican National Convention (RNC), one particularly ugly moment came with the speech U.S. Senator Marc Rubio (R-Florida) gave by way of introducing Mitt Romney. Theater of Reactionary Falsehood To se sure, there’s a [...]
First published at ZNet on August 27, 2012. Q & A With Diego Viana, Repórter – Valor Econômico: http://www.valoronline.com.br 1. As show in your books, Obama’s achievements fare quite disappointingly when compared to the progressive agenda his candidacy was associated with. Given his personal history and political connections, particularly within the Democratic Party, to [...]
Published on Black Agenda Report on August 15. 2012 BAR intro: The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s groundbreaking report on police killings of Blacks is a snapshot of war. “The executions continue nationwide: from north to south, east to west, in rural towns and large metropolitan areas.” The police and other racist pull the triggers, but [...]
Inside Story: US 2012 http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryus2012/2012/08/20128773951170473.html Analysing Obama's track record Cornel West and Paul Street weigh up Obama's achievements and shortcomings as we ask if he should get a second term. Inside Story US 2012 Last Modified: 10 Aug 2012 11:49 Barack Obama, the US president, is running on his record as he fights for another [...]
Black Agenda Report, August 6, 2012. This article previously appeared in Z-Net [5]. “Romney’s racist “cultural” explanation of inequality is as American as apple pie.” Many Democrats clucked disapprovingly after it was reported that Mitt Romney recently told 50 or so rich campaign donors at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that Israelis had higher [...]
Co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio. First published on Counterpunch on July 27, 2012. The election season is upon us and along with it comes the standard Republican claims to be up against a powerful Democratic Party machine backed by the awesome clout of the “union bosses” of American labor. We have been told this endlessly [...]
First published on ZNet on July 26, 2012. “The Greatest Country on Earth” With news of the latest mass civilian gun killing in the United States – 12 dead and 70 wounded (the casualty count would likely have been higher if the gunman’s automatic rifle hadn’t jammed) at an early showing of the latest Batman [...]
First published on ZNet on July 19, 2012. “You Can’t Be Neglecting of Marketing and P.R.” It doesn’t get much more emblematic of the plutocratic nothingness of what passes for a democratic political culture in the U.S. than a recent televised conversation between United States President Barack Obama and “CBS This Morning” anchor Charlie Rose. [...]
First published on ZNet on July 11, 2012. Learning recently that Ray Bradbury had just died at 91, I started looking through my bookshelves for an old copy of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury’s great dystopian novel warning of a future authoritarian state in which books were burned as part of authorities’ determination to wipe out the [...]
First publlished on ZNet on July 4th. As July 4th arrives amidst raging forest fires in Colorado and across the U.S. (CBS reported 50 fires in 30 states two nights ago) during an epic drought in yet another one of the hottest Junes and summers and years on record, let us pause to consider what a [...]