First pubished on Counterpunch on June 15, 2012. As the United States Supreme Court prepares to release its ruling for or against the corporatist “health insurance reform” Barack Obama and the Democrats passed in early 2010 (the so-called Affordable Health care Act), let us pause briefly to consider what a hot plutocratic mess U.S. political [...]
First published on ZNet on June 12, 2012. It is interesting and chilling to observe how U.S. corporate media helps nudge the nation’s rancid and plutocratic political culture ever further rightward with seemingly innocent and innocuous word and phrase choices that are chock full of reactionary meaning. Starting in mid 2009 and well into last [...]
Originally published on ZNet on June 6, 2012 We're helping [Scott Walker], as we should. We've gotten pretty good at this over the years. We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We're going to spend more. --- Right wing multibillionaire arch-plutocrat David Koch, speaking to Palm Beach Post reporter Stacy Singer on February 11, 2012[1] [...]
First publlished on ZNet on June 5, 2012. Relieved as he must be at his recent acquittal and mistrial on federal campaign finance charges, John Edwards surely knows that his major party political career will never be revived. This is mostly his fault. Edwards sunk his reputation with clueless, out-of-control narcissism that led him into [...]
First published on ZNet on May 24, 2012. Imagine that a democratic and popular media – a people’s media – had been on the beat in Chicago during the NATO summit and protests that concluded in that city three days ago. That media would have noted from the outset that NATO is an aggressive imperial killing [...]
By Paul Street, Z Magazine (May 2012), Volume 25, Number 5. By Paul Street PDF Version Printer Friendly Version American foreign policy intellectuals like to cite the threat posed by “failed states” and “broken societies” abroad as justification for America’s massive military empire and for Washington’s recurrent interventions in the internal affairs of other nations. [...]
First published on ZNet on May 17, 2012. Many Americans seem to believe that the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the deployment of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement, including the policing and repression of protests. The statute does no such thing. Its complex terms and judicial interpretations are riddled with limits and loopholes and [...]
Paul Street is speaking (along with three others) this Friday (May 18, 2012) in Chicago on corporate-imperial mass media and its coverage of NATO Summit - information belowNational Writers Union Press Advisory Contact: Kim Scipes, Chapter Chair 773/615-5019Journalists to Discuss Media Coverage of NATO Meetings in ChicagoThe Chicago Chapter of the National Writers Union, UAW #1981, [...]
Originally published on ZNet on May 11, 2012. As a member of the so-called hard left with little taste for self-promotion and a fairly strong understanding of how the dominant ideological institutions are unlikely to permit public respectability or even mere notice for any but a tiny number of serious left thinkers and activists, I [...]
This essay first appeared on ZNet on May 9, 2012. Eager to find and amplify signs of mass radical potential in a period when the capitalist rich are ever more clearly destroying democracy and the Earth – the chances for a decent future –we on the United States left are understandably prone to underestimate the [...]