by Chris Floyd 

The ever persipacious Angry Arab, As'ad AbuKhalil, plucks out the hidden (or not-so-hidden) propaganda in a passing phrase in an otherwise unremarkable Washington Post story about Syria. Let the good doctor tell it in his own words:

by William Bowles

“ The Armed Forces Press Service recently quoted Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker as saying that the current level of soldiers in Iraq could remain constant through 2010.” — ‘Iraq and Afghanistan: Staying Until the Fight is Over’ October 25, 2006

The Independent’s front page head for Wednesday 25 October proclaimed loudly “We’re out of here” purportedly the words of General George Casey, the US’s head military honcho in Iraq. Of course the devil lives in the small print as any reading ‘between the lines’ reveals. And in any case, Casey’s comments are designed precisely to give the impression that a pullout is imminent when in reality, there is no way the US can leave voluntarily, there is simply too much at stake.

By Jennifer Matsui

Dear Madonna,

You are no doubt dismayed by the public outrage that has greeted your decision to adopt a baby boy from Malawi - a country that most people in the West probably only know from the ad campaigns of charitable organizations showing sickly babies covered in flies, while being watched over by your former wedding guests, now sockless and stubbled with earnest three day beards.

I imagine that you are shocked, truly shocked that anyone would question your decision to remove a child from such unimaginable suffering as having Bono and Bob Geldof breathing down his crib. And what kind of person would condemn someone so young to a life of grinding poverty, especially someone with millions at her disposal; a loving "mammy" who will tote her little 'mchanga' around in a 1,200 thread count batik Snuggly specially designed for him by Tom Ford himself, and provide him with every consumer item under the less skin-damaging sun

Little David Banda is the luckiest boy in the world, you repeat to yourself 666 times a day while fiddling with your little red thread bracelet, because that's how every self-serving mantra eventually becomes truth. It's written in the Khabible. One minute little whats-his-name is languishing in a overcrowded, under funded orphanage in one of the poorest nations on earth, and the next minute he's soaring over the ocean in a private jet to make his new home on a palatial English estate, where he will be tended to by a complete staff of servants and diapered in monogrammed Pampers.

You have even sweetened the deal with a complete DVD box set of 'The Lion King' so that he can immerse himself in African culture. You would think that would shut up those annoying people who think removing a child from his own people and culture is somehow a bad thing, even if said culture hasn't yet invented pots to piss in.

by Chris Floyd

This is my latest piece for Truthout.org.

I.
For centuries in Britain, each sentence of death was accompanied by a strange ritual. Before handing down the verdict, the judge would first take a piece of black silk cloth and put it on his head.  With this rather bizarre and ancient drapery covering his powdered wig – itself a relic, a cultural fossil carried into modern times – he would then render the prisoner into the hangman's care.

In such a guise, the black cloth once represented the full, dread measure of state power. Today, however, a cloth of similar size, shape and color – worn across the faces of a small number of some of the most vulnerable members of British society – has become a target of that same dread power, after Britain's high and mighty unleashed a sudden, thunderous sneak attack on the nation's Muslim minority, centering the campaign around the tabloid-ready symbol of the veil.

But although the carefully orchestrated furor over this seldom-seen scrap of material has been so ludicrously disproportionate that even the Blair-fawning New York Times cried foul in a recent editorial, the campaign – and its disturbing implications – go far beyond the issue of religious vestments. Indeed, the veil row is just a covering for what appears to be a deliberate, wide-ranging program of diversion and division, aimed at creating a scapegoat – "strangers in our midst," "the enemy within" – to bear the blame for the sins of the Blair government: the fear, repression, guilt, lies and rancor produced by the abomination in Iraq.

The anti-Muslim campaign is not merely rhetorical – although the heated rhetoric from Tony Blair and many of his ministers has certainly been bad enough, giving a patina of respectability to more extremist viewpoints, now seen as a legitimate part of the "national debate. (Much as the button-pushing imbroglio over immigration in the United States has transformed fringe white-power advocates into respectable media figures, lauded by the likes of Lou Dobbs and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and welcomed in the halls of Congress.) No, Blair's Islamophobia-fest has bite with its bark: not only the on-going evisceration of civil liberties, which has fallen almost entirely on British Muslims, but new measures as well – such as the Stasi-like plan to induce university professors and staff to spy on Muslim students and report all "suspicious" behavior to the security organs.

By Dr. Paul J. Balles

If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.
 -Robert Burton

by Dave Lindorff

Forget her "Pledge," She Took an Oath: Why Pelosi is Wrong on Impeachment

by Phil Rockstroh

Headline
(Reuters): "United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts"

"O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind." —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.

Regarding the death of well over half-a-million Iraqis, the majority of the citizenry of The Corporatists States of America have experienced a comparable degree of regret and remorse that their oligarchic overlords experience when topping-off the tanks of their corporate jets with fuel purchased with money plundered from their employee's retirement accounts ... Sans conscience above -- sans conscience below.

by Arthur James

I remember the horror of death. On a darkening evening, three soldiers encountered me on a jungle trail. Our meeting startled us. The soldiers braced to shoot me. Shaking, I wedged myself and my M-16 rifle against a tree. I shot two of them. The third person dropped to the Earth on that dusk eve, crawled into dense bushes, and thankfully fled away. "Oh God." I groaned deeply. "What have I done? Why am I here?"

War unites humanity to feel madness, horror, and insanity. There must exist an enclave of peace, meditation, solace, and a quiet place to step back from this insanity. To be able to find and touch the Self's reserve of tranquility of Being is a difficult spiritual struggle. The Word one searches for to be descriptive and speak, fails. Words are all we have to work with. Words lack the power and often we people feel diminished with hardly the capacity to communicate. I represent myself guilty of this fact.

Before I digressed into the second paragraph, I began to mention that portraits were found on the limp, lifeless, lacerated forms. In long moments immediately after their death, I began wondering about those rummaged pictures my fellow squad members found. I wondered about their mothers, fathers, children, and their extended families of friends. Being stricken with a truth I had always known: These Vietnamese were people, distinguished and unique individuals. They were fellow humans, not my enemy.

by Mike Whitney

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim”.

Gustave Le Bon - "The Crowd"

by Manuel Valenzuela

The creators of American reality, those propagators of charades and mirages who dwell inside the hallways of the Ministry of Truth – otherwise known as the Corporate Media – continue their dance of deception and whitewash, festering in their offices of propaganda, directing the narratives and the epics hundreds of millions of Americans consider truth. Much like the disappearance of warmth giving way to the crispness of cold arrives with each annual changing of leaves, so the remarketing of American reality is altered by the changing faces of circumstance.

Today, this change is the complete disaster that is the occupation of Iraq, an endeavor whose initial fruition could not have taken shape without the blitzkrieg marketed incessantly into every home and mind in America by the Department of Propaganda, the Ministry of Truth and its army of pseudo-journalists.

by Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.

“Let’s vote on it.” To most people that sounds like the ideal way to solve any issue. But it can also be one of the most dangerous.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Loving v. Virginia was a landmark civil rights decision. But a 1968 Gallup poll documented that 72 percent of Americans opposed interracial marriage. Had America voted on the issue in 1968, civil rights would undoubtedly have been defeated.

On November 7, 2006 Americans in several states will vote on ballot initiatives concocted and promoted by the leaders of the evangelical Christian Right and their Republican sycophants. Increasingly, their incestuous relationship is being exposed at the same time their so-called “values voters” are fading into history. The Christian Right is slowly but surely dying, and for good reasons. But apparently they want to kill an independent judiciary before they go.

Examples were provided in an October 17, 2006 article titled “Judicial Activism Prompts Citizen Efforts to Restrain Judges”
by Pete Winn, associate editor of Citizenlink.com, a propaganda organ for James Dobson’s Focus on the Family theo-political empire:

South Dakota’s Amendment E is the most ambitious measure – it would allow residents to sue judges over their decisions. Grand juries would be convened, and judges would face removal from the bench if they were found guilty of an infraction.

Montana voters, meanwhile, must decide if they want … the right to have recall elections if they should become “dissatisfied” with a judge.

by Mickey Z.

In a recent National Football League game, Tampa Bay Buccaneer quarterback
Chris Simms suffered a ruptured spleen. Simms was rushed to the hospital, his spleen was removed, and he is now on the road to recovery. This much talked about injury inspired Robert N. Jenkins of the St. Petersburg Times to declare that Simms, in reality, "didn't need his spleen." In an article called "Humans have body parts to spare," Jenkins went on to pronounce that we also do not need our appendix, gall bladder, tonsils, esophagus, stomach,  and adrenal glands because those organs, according to conventional wisdom, are "vestigial."

I'm not here to debate what - if any - human organs are superfluous. What interests me more is the fact that most folks would read Jenkins' article and accept the premises therein without question... and this includes the most cynical lefties you'll ever meet. I know people skeptical enough to think the Foley sex scandal was leaked by Republicans to distract the public from the fiasco in Iraq. But tell those same people that some scientist has declared their spleen obsolete and they're not likely to rush off to post a rebuttal on their blog.