Tag: corporate power

History is always written by the winners.  Native Americans know it, African Americans know it, Latinos know it, working class people in every country in this world know it, every union member who has ever lived knows it.  Everyone who has ever been beaten into submission by the power of armies, by the power of economic might, by the power of entrenched conservatism, entrenched conformity, and entrenched bigotry knows it.

When two cultures or belief systems clash, the loser is slandered and condemned by the winner, who writes the history books, books which glorify their culture or belief system and sanctify it as inherently superior.  The truth is ignored.  As Napoleon once said, “What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”

Many may want to catch this discussion, for a number of reasons, but one being it shows as others have that this country Needs an Inquiry into what went on during the previous administration. I want Indictments, but the country Has To Clear This Up one way or another as it was All Done In Our Names!!

They talk about a number of issues but Wilkerson tears into bush, cheney, condi, rumsfeld and others.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Buy this cartoon

When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In.  But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .

That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it’s echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged.  Don’t even think about it.  Byron Dorgan got the message.  Chris Dodd got the message.  Robert Wexler got the message.  We all got the message.  

2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,

Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I don’t have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don’t have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don’t have to tell you because she wasn’t the only one who made that mistake.  100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.  

So here we are.      

“Pragmatic” progressives tell us we can’t jump the track, the corporate media tells us we’re just cars on a cable, the “Christians” tell us life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we’ve seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.

Sing it if you understand . . .

 

Well here’s some serious rain on humanity’s latest parade:   Cell phones can indeed give you cancer.

Who will tell the children?

In a decade long, landmark study, it turns out that long term use of cell phones ‘significantly increases risk’ of tumors.

Great.

How much you want to bet that people just decide to ignore this?

I mean, who wants to give up their cell phone?

The “funny” thing (not funny ha-ha but funny queer) about this is that they just don’t know how to break it to the public:

Publication of the results of the £20million investigation have been delayed over disagreements how best to present the conclusions.

Maybe they should spend another ten years and twenty million pounds doing a study on how to tell the cell-phone loving public.  

I’m sure the corporatocracy would gladly delay this as long as possible.

And it’s sort of embarrassing for the governments as well:

The findings are expected to put pressure on the British Government, which has always insisted that mobile phones are safe to use.

Sorry, I realize this is bad news.   But something we should all be aware of.

Might want to spread it around.

Mistakes were made when Baxter Pharmaceuticals mistakenly sent out virulent flu strains contained in a flu vaccine which, if it hadn’t been caught by Czech medicos, could have resulted in a pandemic catastrophe. The laboratory protocols make this kind of mistake nearly impossible without malice of forethought. Or as it is viralized today; LIHOP.

As our cities start to crumble,

And the towers fall around us,

The sun is slowly fading,

And it’s colder than the sea . . .

45,000 Americans died last year because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 45,000 more Americans will die this year, 45,000 Americans are going to die next year and the year after that and the year after that because corporate profit is more important than human lives, because money determines who receives medical care and who doesn’t, because the depravity of Republicans, the moral cowardice of Democrats, the craven propaganda peddling of the corporate media, and the back room deals of Barack Obama have turned an electoral mandate for health care reform into a Category Five Clusterfuck of co-ops that can’t compete, mandates that punish the powerless, and a public option trigger that will never be pulled.

Brace yourselves for three more years of change we can’t believe in, brace yourselves for more “bipartisan solutions”, brace yourselves for escalating establishment attacks on progressives, brace yourselves for more Republican outrages, more Republican threats, more Republican attacks.  The truth is burning, crosses are burning, trillions of dollars are burning, Baucus and Conrad and Snowe have lit the funeral pyre of real change and we have Obama to thank for that, he’s the one who gave them the torches.

45,000 Americans are dying every year because they cannot get the medical care they need. America is suffering a Hurricane Katrina death toll every month. A 9/11 death toll every 30 days.  More than 3,000 Americans died in January because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 3,000 more died in February, 3,000 more in March and April and May and June and July and August.  A hurricane didn’t kill them. Muslim hijackers didn’t kill them.  The corporate hijackers of America’s government killed them, the Muhammed Attas of K Street, the Bin Ladins of the Beltway, the Jihadists of Corporate Greed killed them.  They were American citizens, they needed health care, they asked to be given medical treatment, but the profit driven health insurance industry gave them a death sentence instead.