August 2009
'Empire of Illusion' by Chris Hedges Reviewed
Real power in America doesn't reside in citizens, or the government, but in corporations.
So argues Chris Hedges in his new book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books).
Hardly a revelation.
Anticorporate jeremiads have become a dime a dozen in this, the year of our economic discontent.
CO2 and Global Warming Models by Washington's Blog
As USA Today recently pointed out, a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that the models of CO2 and global warming used by most scientists could be wrong.
Specifically:
During the warming period, known as the “Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum” (PETM), for unknown reasons, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. This makes the PETM one of the best ancient climate analogues for present-day Earth...
The Day the President Turned Black by Greg Palast
He's in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!
Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.
The Honduran Connection by Bill Weinberg
No nation has recognized the regime that took power in Honduras June 28, when the military summarily deported President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica in his pajamas. Nonetheless, the political right in both the United States and Honduras is trying to build political support for the coup regime.
Spitzer: Federal Reserve is ‘a Ponzi scheme, an inside job’ by Daniel Tencer
The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.
America the Great ... Police State by Gore Vidal
For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans.
Hail to the Thief, Again? by George Reisch & Brandon Forbes
Everybody thinks Radiohead’s 2003 album, Hail to the Thief, is a nod to the US Presidential election of 2000—an election that may have been stolen amidst confusion and debate about election-results reporting, voting booth design, hanging chads and recounts that were finally ended by a Bush-friendly supreme court decision.
International d’Horreur by Marco Lanzagorta
Arguably, the American film industry is the main driving force that dictates the content and the look of most of the movies that are produced all around the globe. Such a commanding influence does not rest on aesthetic arguments though, but is based on the sheer power of economics. Indeed, even though films are artistic products that reflect the specific cultural landscape of its creators, their distribution often follows the strict financial guidelines imposed by Hollywood.
Does This Purple Mink Make Me Look Gay? by Jonah Weiner
The rise of no homo and the changing face of hip-hop homophobia.
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