Antidote to FAKE NEWS PART 3



Joshua Frank
Finally, it’s over. Well, sort of, anyway. Late Sunday afternoon, Attorney General Bill Barr released his much-anticipated summary of Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation. The big news, of course, was that nobody in Trump’s orbit “knowingly” coordinated with Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. Trump won’t be charged with obstruction of justice and not a single American was indicted for conspiracy.



George Ochenski

Everyone has heard the old saying about “the fox guarding the hen house” — which generally means you wind up with a fat fox and dead chickens. That’s something Montana’s senators should keep in mind when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee weighs Donald Trump’s nomination of former oil, gas and mining lobbyist David Bernhardt to be the next Secretary of the Interior following the December resignation of ethics-plagued Ryan Zinke.



Thomas Klikauer
Business bullshit is about the meaningless language conjured up in schools, in banks, in consultancy firms, in politics, and in the media. This language drives thousands of business schools. It is this language that is handed down to MBAs.




Chelli Stanley
The Chicago Police department calls a survivor of violence a ‘liar’ and the world agrees?  Nah.  Whether we look at it logically, legally, or historically, there’s much more to the story than that.
I had never heard of Jussie Smollett before the attack and media coverage.  I don’t watch TV and had never watched Empire, but something seemed off in the way the story developed so I started investigating. 




William deBuys
Borders are cruel. I know this because I’ve been studying the U.S.-Mexico border for more than 40 years. It features prominently in two of my books, written in different decades. It keeps pulling me back. Every time I cross that border, I say to myself that this is no big deal — I’m used to it. And every time, I feel that familiar fear-or-flight jolt of adrenaline and hear the inner warning: Watch out! Things go wrong here.




Robert Fisk
Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. Jacinda Ardern won her spurs last week with her response to the Christchurch atrocity. But the world’s praise for her eloquence and compassion missed the point.
Ardern was different. She fought from the start like a real politician, scorning the killer, attacking racism and slapping back at Turkish president Erdogan’s revolting election propaganda – which used the murderer’s own video – then hitting out at US president Trump. And insisting that New Zealand’s gun laws would change forever.




Binoy Kampmark


James C. Kennedy





Jenna Orkin
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
— Edward Bernays


Elizabeth Keyes



March 25, 2019
Jonathan Cook

Three Lessons for the Left from the Mueller Inquiry


White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump’s camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.




Dave Lindorff

The TSA’s Role as Journalist Harasser and Media ‘Watchdog’


Transportation Security Administration – Public Domain
Sometimes you have to leave the United States to understand how far this country has evolved towards becoming a police state.
I got a good example of this just last week on a trip with my harpsichordist wife to Vienna where she had been contracted to perform on Austrian State Radio in Vienna a concert of music by a leftist Jewish composer who settled in the US after fleeing from Austria just ahead of the Nazi Anschluss that took over and incorporated that country into Germany.



Tanya Golash-Boza – Michael Golash

Epifanio Camacho: a Militant Farmworker Brushed Out of History


Image Source Pakal Hatuey’s Youtube Video: Complete Interview With Epifanio Camacho
Cesar Chavez is perhaps best known for his role in the 1965-1970 Delano grape strike and boycott and his nonviolent tactics in those protests.
Although Chavez insisted on nonviolence, there was dissent within the National Farmworkers Association as some workers believed more militant tactics were necessary. One of these workers was Epifanio Camacho.  With Cesar Chavez day approaching, it is important to remember the work and life of Epifanio Camacho, who recently published his memoir.




Robert Fisk

Don’t Believe the Hype: Here’s Why ISIS Hasn’t Been Defeated


Drawing Nathaniel St. Clair
After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever I read that victory has been declared – whether it be of the Bush “mission accomplished” variety or the “last Isis stronghold about to fall” fantasy – I draw in my breath. Because you can make a safe bet that it’s not true.



Jack Rasmus

The Capitulation of Jerome Powell and the Fed


Photograph Source Federal Reserve – DSC_6329 – Publica Domain
This past week, on March 20, 2019, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell announced the US central bank would not raise interest rates in 2019. The Fed’s benchmark rate, called the Fed Funds rate, is thus frozen at 2.375% for the foreseeable future, i.e. leaving the central bank virtually no room to lower rates in the event of the next recession, which is now just around the corner.



Lawrence Davidson


John Feffer




James Ridgeway

Good Agent, Bad Agent: Robert Mueller and 9/11

This profile of Robert Mueller originally ran in CounterPunch on June 21, 2017.
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director named special counsel for the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, is depicted as an iconic G-man: serious, patrician, and totally incorruptible. But in reality, it’s a little different. As with FBI Agent Dale Cooper in the latest iteration of “Twin Peaks,” there is a Good Mueller and a Bad Mueller. We’ve heard a lot about the good-guy Mueller, but nothing much about his bad side. And there is a bad side–though it’s not the one that Trump supporters would have us think.


READING LIST

Dean Baker
Lawrence Wittner
Thomas Knapp
Stephen Cooper
Andrew Moss
Henry Giroux
Gabriel Rockhill
H. Bruce Franklin
Paul Street
Andrew Levine
Bruce E. Levine
Jeffrey St. Clair
Charles Pierson
Moshe Adler

 




Russia and the Democrats

Two years ago authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote in their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign that within 24 hours of her 2016 electoral loss, Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign staff decided to blame the loss on Russian interference. Given the apparent source of the charge in opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign, the move seemed both desperate and pathetic— a thread for Clinton’s true believers to hang onto, an effort to keep campaign contributions rolling in and a ploy to cleave liberals from the left through red-baiting. More  https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/27/russia-and-the-democrats/




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