Dissent Mag

Life In the Post Political Age

by Joe Bageant / July 23rd, 2008

Every now and then I am fortunate enough to communicate with someone who has near complete insight into our political process, why things happen and where it seems likely to be headed. Recently I received this brilliant analysis from a high powered political consultant whose name is withheld for obvious reasons. He/she has to live and work in the political world and for either party. In any case, I found it breathtaking in its fundamental analysis and its clarity — clarity being no easy thing to accomplish is the swamp of media-consumerism-politics.
– Joe Bageant

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With its stuck-on-orange alert levels and swollen no-fly lists, the Bush administration knows well the value of exaggerating the terror threat.

by Ivan Eland

(Consortium News)

Editor’s Note: In the nearly seven years since the 9/11 attacks, the neoconservatives in the Bush administration have learned well the value of fear in controlling a population. With their stuck-on-orange alert levels, the neocons have persuaded many Americans to trade in their liberties for the allure of safety.

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Global Exchange, (5/02)

US diplomats like to say that when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process the US plays the role of ‘an honest broker. “But the US’s massive foreign aid payments to Israel mean that, in fact, the US is taking sides. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world, receiving more than $6 billion annually-or about $8 million every-day. Until the US stops lending its weight to Israel through biased and unfair support, a truly just peace will remain elusive.

Note video - “Israeli shoots Palestinian with hands bound point blank”, “Video Israel Doesn’t Want You to See” and “If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!” below the article

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So Goes the Newsroom, the Empire and the World

Posted on Jul 21, 2008

By Chris Hedges

The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.

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“Measure of America” report documents social decay of the United States
US ranks 42nd in life expectancy

by Patrick Martin

Global Research, July 20, 2008
wsws.org

A new study released Wednesday, entitled “The Measure of America,” provides a wealth of data demonstrating the profound and deepening social decay of the United States. Commissioned by the Oxfam charity and several foundations, and published by Columbia University Press, the report documents, using government figures, the dramatic decline of American society relative to other advanced industrialized countries and the mounting social disparities within the US.

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Monday, 14 July 2008, 5:06 pm

Michael Collins: Election Fraud and Tyranny - Part 1
See also… Michael Collins: Election Fraud and Tyranny (2)
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, D.C.

“Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008″
Mark Crispin Miller (Ed.),
Ig Publishing, Brooklyn, NY

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By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted July 17, 2008.

The Beltway press has become dysfunctional, failing to see news when it happens and hyping non-stories that require no real reporting.

Journalism, by nature, is not difficult. It really isn’t. Most of the key attributes for solid reporting and editing come naturally to most people; fairness, hard work, and — most important — common sense.

News judgment, for instance, consists mostly of editors and producers using common sense to determine, based on the limited resources at hand, which breaking events and stories should be covered, and which ones can be set aside as less important.

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Jul 14, 2008 04:30 AM

Michael Geist

For most of the past two years, the net neutrality issue, which focuses on equal treatment of Internet traffic, was limited to academics and consumer groups pointing to the dangers to the public of a two-tier Internet. That dynamic changed dramatically this year when Bell Canada began “deep-packet inspection” of its traffic and limited the bandwidth it allocates to certain applications at peak times (a practice known as “throttling”).

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