Media

Top 10 Reasons Why It's Just Fine for U.S. to Blow Up Children

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Is it really necessary for me to explain to you why it’s acceptable, necessary, and admirable for the United States and its minor allies to be blowing up houses, families, men, women, and children in Syria?

This latest story of blowing up 85 civilians in their homes has some people confused and concerned. Let me help you out.

1. Somebody mistook them for ISIS fighters, determined that each of them was a continuing and imminent threat to the United States, verified a near zero possibility of read more

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"Modern Warfare Destroys Your Brain" in More Ways Than One

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The most likely way to die in a U.S. war, by far, is to live in the country that the United States is attacking. But the most likely way in which a U.S. participant in a war will die is by suicide.

There are a couple of widely observed top causes of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops returning from recent wars deeply disturbed in their minds. One is having been near an explosion. Another, which has been around longer than explosions have, is having killed, having nearly died, having seen blood read more

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How Dateline NBC Lies About Drones

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By David Swanson

NBC’s Dateline program aired pro-drone propaganda this week and has posted the video online. Their so-called report purports to be “balanced” and “even-handed.” In fact it misleadingly promotes an extremely destructive government program that millions of people would protest if they knew the actual facts of the matter.

Dateline introduces us to drones with the claim that drones have saved lives by “hitting terrorist targets.” Unlike any read more

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Seymour Hersh Erases Public's Role on Syria

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By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

We once again owe the great reporter Seymour Hersh a serious debt for his reporting, in this case for his London Review of Books articles on President Barack Obama’s war making, now published as a book called The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Despite the title, three of the four articles are about Syria.

But there is a shortcoming in how Hersh tells history, as in how many reporters do. I’ve watched Hersh do interviews about the topic on Democracy read more

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The Killer Drone Lovers Have Their Movie

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If the recent spate of anti-drone movies and plays was making you feel warm thoughts about U.S. culture, you’ll want to avoid seeing “Eye in the Sky,” starring Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, and Aaron Paul. This is what “Zero Dark Thirty” was for torture lies. This is what “The Interview” was for hatred of North Korea. The Director of “Eye in the Sky,” Gavin Hood, openly brags about having had military advisors on this film, just as those films read more

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The Super Bowl Promotes War

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By David Swanson, teleSUR

Super Bowl 50 will be the first National Football League championship to happen since it was reported that much of the pro-military hoopla at football games, the honoring of troops and glorifying of wars that most people had assumed was voluntary or part of a marketing scheme for the NFL, has actually been a money-making scheme for the NFL. The U.S. military read more

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Getting Closer to Being Sorry I Ever Promoted John Oliver

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“Finally, Fake News Done Right,” I proclaimed. John Oliver had gone after nukes, prisons, income inequality, internet censors, and climate destroyers. He has since gone after many other evils. But — apart from the nukes — as far as I’ve seen it’s never war, not at length and not briefly.

In fact, Oliver likes to joke that peace is boring, wants people to throw mangos at the head of the president of Venezuela, read more

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Bernie v. Media

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By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

Major corporate media outlets in the United States are reporting on a new viability for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, based on his rise in the polls nationally and in Iowa and New Hampshire — and possibly, though this goes largely unmentioned, based on his big new advertising purchases from major corporate media outlets. In independent progressive media as well, there’s a small flood of maybe-he-can-really-win articles.

Whether read more

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If a Social Movement Falls Outside of the Media, Are Any Lives Improved?

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When We Fight We Win! is the overly violent and overly optimistic title of a very good new book about recent nonviolent social struggles in the United States for LGBTQ rights, immigrants rights, economic justice, public education, a sustainable environment, and an end to mass incarceration.

My initial response to this book was very different from my considered response.

My initial response to a table of contents like the one in this book is always: Where the hell is war? Don’t they read more

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Iniquity, the 0.000006%, and Who Pays $300k to Hear Hillary

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The United States’ 20 wealthiest people (The 0.000006 Percent) now own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households. The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population — plus more than a third of the Latino population — combined; more wealth combined than the bottom 61 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 194 million people or 70 million households.

These read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Jon Schwarz on Secret Unaccountable Government

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-jon-schwarz-on-secret-unaccountable-government 

Jon Schwarz‘s new job is with The Intercept. He previously worked for Michael Moore’s Dog Eat Dog Films and was Research Producer for Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. He’s contributed to many publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Peter Werbe on Radical Independent Media

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-peter-werbe-on-radical-independent-media 

Peter Werbe is a radio host in Detroit. He discusses his long involvement with The Fifth Estate, which has been publishing radical ideas for 50 years now. See:
http://peterwerbe.com
http://fifthestate.org

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica stations can also download from AudioPort.

Syndicated read more

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5 Things to Do About ISIS, or Can an American Without a Gun "Do Something"?

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Toward the end of altering our idea of what counts as “doing something,” I offer this composite representation of numerous media interviews I’ve done.  

Interviewer: So you’d stop the planes and the drones and the bombs and the special forces. You’ve said lots about what you wouldn’t do, but can you say what you would do?

Me: Sure, I believe the United States government should propose and attempt to negotiate and at the same time unilaterally read more

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The TPP: You, Me, Everyone Else, Against the Media

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The proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a test of whether the people of the United States can communicate something critically important to each other that the major media corporations do not want communicated.

For years I’ve joined with others in quoting people like former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to the effect that if the text of the TPP were shown to the public, that would be the end of it, because it’s just so awful.

But now that the text has finally been read more

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Is War Beautiful?

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“War Is Beautiful” is the ironic title of a beautiful new book of photographs. The subtitle is “The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict.” There’s an asterisk after those words, and it leads to these: “(In which the author explains why he no longer reads The New York Times).” The author never explains why he read the New York Times to begin with.

The author of this read more

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Living With Racism in the USA

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I thought Deepa Iyer’s new book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future, would be about positive and jarring cultural contributions from immigrants, how their literature, music, myths, cooking, clothing, and cultural practices are merging with and influencing wider U.S. culture. I think that would be a good book. Maybe someone’s written it.

This, too, is a good book, and I recommend it. But it is mostly about the all-too-familiar read more

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Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism of Israel?

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The University of California is seeking to ban criticism of Israel. This is a widespread phenomenon in the United States, as attested by two new reports and cases like that of Steven Salaita, author of Uncivil Rights: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.

Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois for criticizing Israel on Twitter. Norman Finkelstein had been denied tenure by DePaul University for criticizing Israel. William Robinson was almost driven out at UC Santa Barbara for refusing read more

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