In the wake of Brexit and Trump, ‘mainstream’ media have done the formerly unthinkable by focusing on media bias. The intensity of focus has been such that the Oxford Dictionaries have announced that ‘post-truth’ is their ‘Word of the Year 2016’. ‘Post-truth’ refers to ‘circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion […]
One year ago today, Veterans For Peace UK member Daniel Lenham stood outside Downing St and threw his service medals on the ground (see video below) in protest at the government’s decision to sanction air strikes on Syria. Now he has written a moving poem about his decision: Myth of the Medal One year ago today, I gave you them […]
The Election That Changed Everything and Could Prove History’s Deal-Breaker For decades, Washington had a habit of using the Central Intelligence Agency to deep-six governments of the people, by the people, and for the people that weren’t to its taste and replacing them with governments of the [take your choice: military junta, shah, autocrat, dictator] across the planet. There was […]
Thirteen months ago, I highlighted how, after the chaos of Iraq and Libya, the mass media began softening the public up for another illegal military intervention in another sovereign state – this time in Syria. Rupert Murdoch, who has a direct financial interest in regime change in Syria (see Israel & energy independence below) oversaw some of the more overt forms of anti-Syrian […]
All this Fake news talk keeps jogging our memory of how many different ways the corrupt media manipulates and fakes news on a daily basis. I hearken back to a young boy who was recently pulled from the rubble in Syria after a missile leveled his home. The boy is bleeding from his head and is clearly wounded. But the […]
The wars in Syria and Iraq celebrated the unfortunate end of the “free and independent press” and the rise of the “neo-analysts”. They sit in far-off lands, with no ground knowledge of the war, collecting information and analysing the colourful bin of social networking sites.
They have even the temerity to believe they can dictate to the US administration what measures should be taken, who to support and, as if they had mastered the “art of war”, they even push for a nuclear war with Russia.
Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the 1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups.
It is indeed peculiar that Trump can be elected President on 47.4% of the popular vote. But not nearly as peculiar as that the Conservatives can have untrammelled power in the UK on 36.9% of the popular vote. Both electoral systems need reform, but the UK’s is absolutely indefensible. There is a tiny blogroll down the bottom right hand margin […]
Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since Trump won the presidency. There is a lot of money to be made from a militarized police state.
Trump’s polite deference to Obama this week, and vice versa, shows in an unintended way what Obama meant when he said “we are all on one team”. That “team” is the American oligarchy. It is not the American nation. Disenfranchised working-class Americans may simply have gotten Trump into the “team” – against their genuine aspirations for radical democratic change.
Trump is not the answer, of course. He is the symptom. He is the symptom of the virus of neo liberal Capitalism. I never thought Trump would win because I didn’t think he wanted to win. And maybe, maybe he didn’t. None of that mattered, as it turned out. The liberals will blame racists and NASCAR rednecks, and more, they will blame leftists. And, they will blame Putin and Russia.
Trump isn’t the antithesis of liberal America. You liberals created him. You unleashed this monster. It is you in the mirror. You stayed silent, you took no stand while your country was stolen from you. In fact, you did worse: you enthusiastically voted time after time for those who did the stealing.
