A Divided Nation Agrees on One Thing: Many People Want a Gun

 Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/us/guns-2020-election.html?searchResultPosition=2

Oct. 27, 2020

By Dionne Searcey and Richard A. Oppel Jr.

CHANTILLY, Va.— Like many Americans, two women a thousand miles apart are each anxious about the uncertain state of the nation. Their reasons are altogether different. But they have found common ground, and a sense of certainty, in a recent purchase: a gun.

Ann-Marie Saccurato traced her purchase to the night she was eating dinner at a sidewalk restaurant not long ago in Delray Beach, Fla., when a Black Lives Matter march passed and her mind began to wander.

Advertising vs. Democracy: An Interview with Jean Kilbourne

Oct. 23, 2020

By Hugh Iglarsh

Link:https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/23/advertising-vs-democracy-an-interview-with-jean-kilbourne/

There it is, on page 56 of Jean Kilbourne’s book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel: the graphic that stopped me cold and made me realize just how prophetic was her work (originally published in hardcover in 1999 as Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising). It was an ad for a German marketing firm, contained within a decades-old issue of the trade journal Advertising Age. Beneath a corporate cornucopia of All-American legacy brands and products – Levi’s, Pepsi, Camel cigarettes, a Chiquita banana, a Big Mac, etc. – was the caption, “Let’s make America great again.”

With its depiction of American “greatness” as a collage of heavily advertised commodities, the ad would have seemed crass and stupid when it first appeared, but hardly remarkable. Now, of course, that cluster of words and pictures glitters with irony and implication. The caption of this homage to consumerism suggests a link between the slick hucksterism of the ad business and the fanatical nationalism of the MAGA cult. Is the connection real? If so, how does the Trump phenomenon – that cheesy mash-up of reality TV and Triumph of the Will – relate to the marketing and PR that saturate American culture and consciousness? Is Trump’s ugly but compelling political spectacle, which hogs the media foreground, an outgrowth of the inescapable, desensitizing background noise that is advertising?

The Shrinking of the American Mind

 By Roger Cohen

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/opinion/Trump-biden-debates.html?searchResultPosition=1

Among the words or phrases that were never spoken in the two presidential debates were:
Syria, human rights, drones, democracy, inequality, dictatorship, Israel, Palestine, Middle East, United Nations, World Health Organization, Guantánamo, European Union, Britain, Brexit, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Africa (or any single African state), South America, terrorism, multilateral, authoritarianism, alliance.
That’s a pretty good measure of the shrinking of the American mind.
President Trump never mentioned Afghanistan, where the United States lost more than 2,400 lives and spent some $2 trillion over the past two decades. Joe Biden did, once.
One of the characteristics of a nightmare is that it is all-consuming. Everything beyond it fades into the murk. President Trump, in an extraordinary sustained broadcast of his self-obsession, has managed to corral the world into the shadow of an orange colossus.
Yes, Trump was more civil in the second debate, and Biden, ahead in the polls, did himself no harm. Still, it was an affair of stunning mediocrity and myopia.
 

Who’s the Tax Cheat: The Lady in Jail or the Man in the White House?

Oct. 10, 2020

By Nicholas Kristof

While reading that President Trump had claimed $70,000 in highly dubious tax deductions for hair styling for his television show, I kept thinking about a homeless African-American woman named Tanya McDowell who was imprisoned for misleading officials to get her young son into a better school district.

McDowell was sentenced to five years in prison in 2012, in part for drug offenses and in part for “larceny” because she had claimed her babysitter’s address so her son could attend a better school in Connecticut.

U.S. Slides Backward In Social Progress Index

 As the world makes slow if uneven progress on social and environmental performance, the United States is falling behind its peer nations, among the few countries to see its Social Progress Index (SPI) score decline during the past decade.

Prof. Richard Wolff - Is Capitalism On Life Support?

COVID-19 Cases as of September 29, 2020

Recent global statistics disclose number of Coronavirus cases and fatalities as a result of that. A quick view is presented below. Special attention is to the cases per one million and comparison of countries in this respect. 

Will Michele Flournoy Be the Angel of Death for the American Empire?

 Link: https://original.antiwar.com/mbenjamin/2020/09/22/will-michele-flournoy-be-the-angel-of-death-for-the-american-empire/

By: Medea Benjamine and Nicolas JS Davies

If the Democrats manage to push Joe Biden over the finish line in November’s election, he will find himself presiding over a decadent, declining empire. He will either continue the policies that have led the American empire to decadence and decline, or seize the moment to move our nation into a new phase: a transition to a peaceful and sustainable post-imperial future.

The foreign policy team Biden assembles will be key, including his choice for Secretary of Defense. But Biden’s rumored favorite, Michele Flournoy, is not the gal for this historic moment. Yes, she would break the glass ceiling as the first female Secretary of Defense, but, as one of the architects of our endless wars and record military budgets, she would only help to steer the American empire farther down its current path of lost wars, corrupt militarism and terminal decline.

It Can Happen Here

 By: Cass R. Sunstein

Link: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/it-can-happen-here?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Many accounts of the Nazi period depict a barely imaginable series of events, a nation gone mad. That makes it easy to take comfort in the thought that it can’t happen again.

Liberal democracy has enjoyed much better days. Vladimir Putin has entrenched authoritarian rule and is firmly in charge of a resurgent Russia. In global influence, China may have surpassed the United States, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is now empowered to remain in office indefinitely. In light of recent turns toward authoritarianism in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines, there is widespread talk of a “democratic recession.” In the United States, President Donald Trump may not be sufficiently committed to constitutional principles of democratic government.

The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling

Glenn Greenwald

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the-u-s-is-fraying-severely-if-not-unravelling/

THE YEAR 2020 has been one of the most tumultuous in modern American history. To find events remotely as destabilizing and transformative, one has to go back to the 2008 financial crisis and the 9/11 and anthrax attacks of 2001, though those systemic shocks, profound as they were, were isolated (one a national security crisis, the other a financial crisis) and thus more limited in scope than the multicrisis instability now shaping U.S. politics and culture.

Wolff Responds: Capitalism on Life Support

If you liked this short response, you can also check the followings:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3a19Jgj5fM



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGNjniz5zzU

چه باید کرد

پس از سالیان دراز که ایرانیان با حکومت ملاها مدارا کرده اند، نه تنها این حکومت منحوس عقب نشینی نکرده است، بلکه با توجه به نادانی عده قلیلی، بر شقاوت و ستمگری خود افزوده است. متاسفانه گروهی آنچنان به غرب وابسته شده اند که به سختی میتوانند تفاوتها را تشخیص دهند. بر کسی پوشیده نیست که حکومت آخوندی هیچگاه مطابق میل ایرانیان نبوده است و طرفداری گروههای سیاسی ان زمان از خمینی به عنوان کسی که میتوانست گروههای مخالف رژیم شاهی را موتلف کند، به دلیل حمایت از رژیم جدیدی به رهبری این آخوند به ظاهر ساده، نبود. ولی چنانکه در نهاد هر رهبر مذهبی اینرا میتوان جست، سو استفاده از شوق انقلابی توده برای استفاده شخصی، در مورد خمینی نیز مصداق داشت. کسانی که در زمان انقلاب حضور نداشتند، به عنوان نمونه نسل پس از انقلاب، جوانان آن زمان را ناآگاه، و تشخیص آنها را از حکومت شاهی گمراه میدانند. در اینکه انقلابیون خمینی را آنچنان که بایست نمیشناختند و او را به غلط شخصی مصلح به مصالح عموم انگاشته بودند، شکی نیست. البته او در همان یکسال نخست با  خشونتی که در مقابله با مخالفینش نشان داد، مانند اعدام و کشتار و جنگ و تبعیضات جنسی، فطرتش را شناسانده بود. لیکن قدرت نظامی و خشونت او آنچنان پیشرفته بود که مقابله با آن بسیار دشوار مینمود، و پس از چهار دهه، بی عدالتی و خشونت و دزدی و پستی به عنوان سیاست حکومت از ان کوچک مرد همچنان جاری است، و میراث او به نیکی نگاهبانی میشود.

چرا چین از طریق دوستی با غرب قدرتمند شد، اما ما نه

 

 Source: Virgool

بعد از جنگ تحمیلی، تقریبا همان زمانی که صنایع آمریکایی ناگهان به چین سرازیر شدند و رشد سریع و بی سابقه چین شروع شد، ایران هم تقریبا اهداف مشابهی را دنبال می کرد. دوران ریاست جمهوری آیت الله رفسنجانی بود و اولویت کشور توسعه اقتصادی بود، آن هم از طریق گسترش روابط تجاری با غرب. سی سال جلوتر، یعنی امروز، چین اولین قدرت اقتصادی جهان است و اخیرا حتی از آمریکا هم سبقت گرفته است. اما ایران درگیر مشکلات عدیده اقتصادی است که عمدتا ناشی از وابستگی اقتصادی به غرب و نتیجتا آسیب پذیری در مقابل تحریمهای اقتصادی غرب است. چه تفاوتی میان مدل توسعه چین و ایران وجود داشته که نتایجی تا این اندازه متفاوت بدست آمده است؟

Only Medicare For All Can Beat Covid

 AUGUST 21, 2020

by EVE OTTENBERG

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/21/only-medicare-for-all-can-beat-covid/

The U.S. has coped with Covid-19 far worse than any other country on the globe. Though much, much of this catastrophe of over 170,000 dead can be laid at Trump’s door, some of it has to do with the uniquely awful American system of for-profit health care. Those words, “for profit,” mean that the U.S. public health infrastructure, always stunted, had completely shriveled by the time the plague struck. Other countries dealt better with covid because they have different health care systems – single payer or Medicare for All systems, in other words, ones that are, to varying degrees, socialized.

Two clicks to midnight

 By: Ken Leslie    August 21, 2020

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55482.htm

While I was absent from this esteemed blog focusing on other things, an extremely dangerous situation started to develop and I found myself reaching for the keyboard again. If some of my previous writings were a bit alarmist, the tone was motivated by a genuine angst before an unfeeling and unstoppable machine of conquest and destruction the likes of which the world had never seen. And angst it is—anybody with an ounce of common sense can see that the World is hurtling towards some kind of catastrophe. Whether this occurs in a year or five is less relevant. The point is that we are witnessing a process of rapid implosion of the current global system and are not able to see what will replace it. There is no compelling vision of the future—a universal vessel of hope that would transport us across the turbulent waters of fundamental change. This time I am not anxious but resigned. Resignation does not imply learned helplessness—unlike most people around me I am grateful for the ability to be aware of the danger and to articulate what I see as the truth without fear or self-censorship.

Oh, and if the post sounds like a rant, that’s because it is one.

Lights! Camera! Kill! Hollywood, the Pentagon and Imperial Ambitions

AUGUST 14, 2020
by MATTHEW HOH

Link: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/14/lights-camera-kill-hollywood-the-pentagon-and-imperial-ambitions/

There’s a sickness that comes with the certainty of those who view the world in so black and white, so good and bad, so us versus them terms, that killing is often a morally defensible act. More so, such killing often goes beyond just simple self defense, to a level of retributive necessity, a preventive act that makes the act of killing practically an act of altruism. “If I hadn’t killed the bad guy, the bad guy would have killed other people” so the reasoning goes. The myth of redemptive violence, is clearly espoused and expressed in our explanations of American history: we had to kill the British to be free; in America’s majority Christian religion: Jesus had to die in the most painful way possible, on the cross, for mankind to be saved; and in the United State’s greatest popular culture: Luke had to destroy the Death Star to save the galaxy…

Cornel West and Tricia Rose Talk AOC

 Link: https://therealnews.com/stories/cornel-west-and-tricia-rose-talk-aoc-racial-justice-and-more

Story Transcript

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Kim Brown: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Kim Brown. As we stand here at the midpoint of 2020 of what has already been a tumultuous year, it’s so important that we take moments to memorialize, observe, reflect, and analyze all of the things that have our society, and by extension, our world in a state of flux right now. And that is exactly what The Tight Rope hopes to achieve. It’s the brand new podcast hosted by professors and doctors Tricia Rose and Cornel West, and their inaugural episode features an in-depth and revealing conversation with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Let’s take a look.

تعریف امپرياليسم

When Iran Welcomed Jewish Refugees

In the middle of World War II, Tehran became a haven for both Jewish and Catholic Polish refugees who were welcomed as they arrived from Soviet Central Asia.

Polish refugees, recently released from Russian concentration camps, in an Iranian camp, circa 1945. Photo from Three Lions / Getty Images.

در رابطه با قرارداد ۲۵ساله ایران و چین

ایران و چین

© Fotolia / Curioso Photography

سیاسی

12:19 09.07.2020دریافت لینک کوتاه

31715

قاسم محب‌علی، کارشناس سیاست خارجی و دیپلمات سابق ایرانی اظهار داشت در رابطه با انعقاد قرارداد ۲۵ساله با چین، نگرانی اساسی آن است که روابط ایران و چین متوازن نیست و ایران به سبب تحریم‌ها، انتخاب‌های جایگزین ندارد. همین امر سبب می‌شود تا کفه ترازو به نفع امتیازگیری چین سنگین‌تر شود.

به گزارش اسپوتنیک به نقل از شرق، برنامه همکاری‌های جامع (۲۵ساله) ایران و چین بار دیگر تبدیل به نگرانی عمومی در سطح جامعه شده است. ابعاد مختلفی که در پیش‌نویس نهایی آن به نگارش درآمده و به بیرون درز کرده است، نگرانی‌هایی جدی در مورد شیوه همکاری ایران و چین ایجاد کرده است و کارشناسان و متخصصان هشدار می‌دهند که اگر نسبت به مواردی که در این پیش‌نویس آمده (این پیش‌نویس را ایران تهیه کرده و هنوز به تأیید چین نرسیده است، بنابراین نمی‌توان آن را نهایی قلمداد کرد) اصلاحات جدی صورت نگیرد و دقت کافی به کار گرفته نشود، می‌تواند به زیان ایران تمام شود.