Critical reading

This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the "graveyard of social movements", the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.

Original interview footage derives from Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Albert, John Stauber (PR Watch), Sharon Smith (Historian), William I. Robinson (Editor, Critical Globalization Studies), Morris Berman (Author, Dark Ages America), and famed black panther Larry Pinkney.

Non-original interviews/lectures include Michael Hudson, Paul Craig Roberts, Ted Rall, Richard Wolff, Glen Ford, Lewis Black, Glenn Greenwald, George Carlin, Gerald Cliente, Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Wollin and Martin Luther King.

Visit http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php for more info.

Posted on Apr 10, 2011

By Chris Hedges

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

March 29, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT

Commentary: A ‘Super-Rich Delusion’ is leading us to ruin

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.

Revolutions build over long periods — to critical mass, a flash point. Then they ignite suddenly, unpredictably. Like Egypt, started on a young Google executive’s Facebook page. Then it goes viral, raging uncontrollably. Can’t be stopped. Here in America the set-up is our nation’s pervasive “Super-Rich Delusion.”

We know the Super Rich don’t care. Not about you. Nor the American public. They can’t see. Can’t hear. Stay trapped in their Forbes-400 bubble. An echo chamber that isolates them. They see the public as faceless workers, customers, taxpayers. See GOP power on the ascent. Reaganomics is back. Unions on the run. Clueless masses are easily manipulated.

Even Obama is secretly working with the GOP, will never touch his Super Rich donors. Yes, the Super-Rich Delusion is that powerful, infecting all America.

Allison Kilkenny | March 29, 2011

Jay Espinoza is happy with Denver’s turnout for this past weekend’s US Uncut national day of action. Some people “drove upwards of [an] hour to make it to the protest,” he tells me.

Like the other US Uncut cells, the group presented a fake check for $2.7 billion—in this case to a Wells Fargo bank manager—in order to represent the amount Wells Fargo owes in taxes to the United States. And the story ends as it ended for all the other US Uncut chapters, according to Espinoza. “The manager.... told me that they did not care for our cause and we were told to leave.”

This is how US Uncut has chosen to protest the austerity measures handed down from Washington, but the group is not alone in that resistance. As in the UK, students have been a source of thriving activism, a reality that counters the popular narrative that anyone younger than fifty is somehow an apathetic, non-contributing zero.

Eric Kleefeld | March 25, 2011, 10:27PM

Yet another shoe has dropped in the battle over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) anti-public employee union law -- with state Republican leaders now apparently defying or attempting to circumvent a court order that temporarily blocked implementation of the law.

Last week, a judge in Dane County (Madison) blocked the law on procedural grounds, ruling that a key conference committee used to advance the bill -- and to get around the state Senate Dems' walkout from the state -- had violated the state open-meetings law by failing to give proper 24-hours notice.

Friday, Mar 25, 2011 09:46 ET

Ian Murphy, the man who punked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, is running on a "pro-Craigslist transsexuals" platform

By Justin Elliott

You may remember Ian Murphy as the journalist who called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker posing as right-wing mega-donor David Koch.

It turns out that Murphy, who is editor of the Buffalo Beast, lives in the New York district formerly represented by Chris Lee, the Republican who recently resigned after it emerged he was posing as a lobbyist and cruising Craigslist for mistresses.

Murphy is now running as a Green in the special election scheduled for May 24. In an homage to Lee, Murphy's campaign slogan is "Laid back dude seeks votes, maybe more."

His platform is a mix of standard Green stuff -- tax billionaires, slash military spending -- and more idiosyncratic material:

March 22, 2011

Israel's Latest Apartheid Law

By ILAN PAPPÉ

Those of us who have been veteran comrades in the struggle for peace and justice in Palestine have quite often been frustrated by the inability to galvanize enough support in the political and media establishments in the West against the brutal occupation of the West Bank and the strangulation of Gaza. We believed that clear cut evidence of the oppression and the highly visible criminal policies that raged since 1967 should have at least triggered a world reaction similar to the one that now takes place against Libya, and even more so.

Dan Coughlin | March 20, 2011

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s triumphant return to Haiti after seven years of forced exile in South Africa signals a new stage in the Caribbean country’s popular and democratic struggle just as a resurgent right wing prepares to lay electoral claim—for the first time ever—to the country’s presidency in a controversial US-backed presidential poll on Sunday.

“Today may the Haitian people mark the end of exile and coup d’état, while peacefully we must move from social exclusion to social inclusion,” said Aristide, referring to the bloody 2004 US-backed coup, the second time he was driven from power after being elected with huge popular majorities.

Aristide’s return comes at a key turning point in the country’s history. Bolstered by a 14,000-strong UN military occupation known as MINUSTAH, and massive international aid following the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s tiny right-wing elite have become stronger, economically and politically, than at any time in the last twenty-five years.

Media Ignores Brutal Crackdowns By US Allies Bahrain And Yemen

One of the major factors in the success so far of the “Jasmine Revolution” — the wave of pro-democracy revolts across the Middle East — has been the empowering international press coverage of the protests.

Yet in recent weeks, this coverage in the United States has been overwhelmingly focused on just one country where these revolts are occurring — Libya. While the events in Libya, where rebels are battling the Qaddafi dictatorship, certainly merit coverage, the American press has unfortunately failed to provide the same detailed coverage to the events in Yemen and Bahrain, two U.S. allies where mostly nonviolent protesters are being brutally put down by the armed forces in those countries.

by Steve Early, Spring 2011

March 13, 2011

By Paul Mattick

Apart from the patently nonreality-based dissent of its Republican members, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission could hardly have expected the report it issued in January to arouse much excitement. After a year and a half of research and the testimony of academics and other economic experts, it came up with no more than the already conventional wisdom that the economic downturn that burst into public view in 2007 might have been avoided, having been caused by a combination of lax governmental regulation and excessive risk-taking by lenders and borrowers, particularly in the housing market. The same conventional wisdom assures us that swift government action prevented the Great Recession from turning into a full-blown depression, and that the downturn has given way to recovery, albeit a "fragile" one. No matter how often it is repeated, however, this wisdom remains unconvincing.

Dave Zirin
Sports correspondent, The Nation Magazine
Posted: March 10, 2011 12:09 AM

"If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put in out." - Haymarket martyr August Spies.