Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.
This week’s attacks on Islamic State positions in Syria mean that Obama has bombed no less than seven different countries in six years. All this comes from a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. There’s been a new Cold War too, to go with the hot ones. The man who promised a “reset” in relations with Russia has taken his country and other western nations into a new economic trade war with Moscow after the US engineered, along with the EU, a highly provocative regime change in a country bordering Russia.
That the president wants the authority to intervene in the Syrian civil war is not a sufficient reason to give him that power. Under the Constitution, it is Congress’s independent responsibility to commence war.
We are the representatives of the American people. The government is proposing to take their resources and to put their children’s lives at risk. I encourage all my colleagues to give the decision the weight it is due.
From a historical point of view, it is ironic that a young senator from Illinois who campaigned in large part agains the Iraq War and who showcased his credentials as a constitutional scholar would be the handmaiden of the permanent “state of exception” described by the National Socialist philosopher Carl Schmitt, who argued that sovereigns should have the right to suspend the legal and juridical constraints of their societies so that they may act outside of law. This is the opposite of the legal constitutionalism that forms the philosophical basis of the American legal order, which can be summarized with the words of Edward Coke: “The King himself should be under no man, but under God and the Law.”
Gary Webb’s reports were that powerful that they made careerist journalists tremble and lash out and dutifully show that era’s media bosses that they had done their bidding. And then there were others who tried to be fairer to Webb but still feared the big media lords so much that they colored their defenses of the essential truth of the Dark Alliance series with sprinkled disclaimers that he had made errors or wasn’t a saint. You know, the false dichotomy of “telling both sides” of a story that does not have two sides that is formula for corporate media.
By refusing to inform their readers that the US has been arming the rebels in Syria since 2012 the mainstream liberal media have done exactly what best suits the US and UK governments. And by so closely following the US and UK Governments’ preferred narrative, the media continues to minimise the US’s responsibility for the on-going carnage in Syria and the rise of Islamic State.
By Pepe Escobar (Asia Times | The Roving Eye) The Tomahawks are finally flying again – propelled by newspeak. 42 Tomahawks fired from a Sixth Fleet destroyer parked in Mare Nostrum, plus F-22s raising hell and Hellfires spouted by drones, that’s a neat mini-Shock and Awe to honor Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State. […]
With his usual high passion and varying pitch, Mark analyses the result of yesterdays referendum on Scottish independence.
Do not allow the rich, with their lavishly funded organs of deception and bought establishment lackeys like the disgraceful Nick Robinson to win this battle. Do not let fear hold you back. Because the only possible choice for anyone who wants a democratic Scotland is Yes.
When headlines were analysed for evidence of Pro-Union/Pro-Independence framing, it was discovered that whilst 976 (61.8%) headlines showed no obvious bias towards either side, those headlines which did display some form of bias showed that for every headline which framed Scottish independence positively, there were 4.3 articles which were against independence.
People of Scotland, do not believe the lies and empty threats from the corporations, bankers and Westminster politicians – the working class of England are behind you.
The team here at BSN wish you every success in your future – we say you deserve your chance to show the world how a small, independent state can thrive without letting go of your values and integrity.
#VoteYes
Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been on the same side as the neo-Nazis. In the US it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States on this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews”. But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit.
