I have to cut the size of the database

25 April 2016

Because I’m such a news junkie, this site has gotten so big that it’s not only slowing down access to all the content it’s also slowing down the entire server! So radical but unfortunate steps have to be taken, like deleting 100s if not thousands of articles. If I had I financial resources I’d move it to a dedicated server but that isn’t going to happen, so stuff has to go!

On my new, dedicated site, Investigating Imperialism, I have almost completed the editing of the almost 800 essays I’ve written here since 2003 and aside from articles that I think deserve a wider viewing, I hope to concentrate on the new site more than here. There is still some cleaning up and so forth to do, but the bulk of it is done.

Category: William Bowles | 2 Comments

‘A Global Industry Is Raiding Treasuries All Over the Planet’

22 April 2016 — FAIR

‘A Global Industry Is Raiding Treasuries All Over the Planet’

Janine Jackson interviewed James Henry about the Panama Papers for the April 15, 2016, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Continue reading this...

Category: Capitalism, Media | LEAVE A COMMENT

NHS: Your opt-out finally honoured

22 April 2016 — medConfidential

Dear friends,

If you have opted out, recently or before, your choices are now being honoured.

Thanks to all those who helped make this happen – especially you, our supporters, donors and friends.

The institutions involved did the right thing in the end, even if they tried all the other things first.

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Category: Liberties, National Security State, UK | LEAVE A COMMENT

Best Reasons Ever For Brexit! By S. Artesian

19 April 2016 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor

The Financial Times April 18, 2016

Fears over British EU referendum hold back hiring and investment

-Uncertainty chills business -Top London Property hit -European groups delay plans

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Category: Capitalism, Europe, UK | LEAVE A COMMENT

Media Lens: Corbyn’s Millions – Blair’s Millions

20 April 2016 — Media Lens

While ‘social media’ like Facebook and Twitter are forms of corporate media, it is unarguable that they and other web-based outlets have helped empower a serious challenge to traditional print and broadcast journalism. For the first time in history, uncompromised non-corporate voices are able to instantly challenge the filtered ‘mainstream’ version of events. This certainly helps explain the rise of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos in Spain, and now Bernie Sanders in the US.

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Time and Time Again By S. Artesian

17 April 2016 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor

Time and Time Again

1. Moaning and praying like a drunk with his head in the toilet bowl, the US bourgeoisie in 2001 promised themselves, and their various gods, to never ever do that again– that being the capital spending pub crawl/keg party they had been on since 1993. It had been a hell of a party, with a tab running to 1.1 trillion dollars, (more than all the foreign directed investment that has been pumped into China in the last 25 years).
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Category: Capitalism | LEAVE A COMMENT

In the Panama Capers we Trust By Clive Hambidge

13 April 2016 — Facilitate Global

The Panamanian Capers

Apparently, if you’ve seen the news, the leaked Panama Papers[1], from the “tight lipped” (Economist) Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co, are spilling the beans on the details of what the rich, powerful and greedy “beyond avarice” get up to with unseemly amounts of dosh, in 214,488 offshore tax havens. Mossack Fonseca & Co has been under investigation and intense scrutiny for some time. Ken Silverstein contributing editor for Vice who had cased the Mossack Fonseca & Co joint, two years before the Panama Papers disclosure, writing: “If shell companies are getaway cars for bank robbers, then Mossack Fonseca may be the world’s shadiest car dealership.” True but the Mossack Fonseca shenanigans are part of the problem but not the endemic problem. The endemic problem is American financial hegemony. Mossack Fonseca’s offices have just been raided almost certainly because Panamanian politicians and their dealers (they are all in need of a fix) will be implicated in all sorts of sordid stuff. And one expected that.

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Category: Capitalism, USA | LEAVE A COMMENT

FAIR: An ‘Unqualified’ Success at Media Manipulation

13 April 2016 — FAIR

The CNN story (4/6/16) that laid out the Clinton campaign’s anti-Sanders strategy: “Disqualify him, defeat him and unify the party later.”

On Tuesday, April 5, Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin Democratic primary by double digits, and his victory speech ran for half an hour on CNN, a rare media moment when he was able to repeat the issues that have resonated with many Democratic primary voters.

After the Wisconsin loss, the Hillary Clinton campaign went into high gear, sending emails out announcing a new strategy of going negative. The next day, CNN (4/6/16) ran a piece by senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny that began, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign is taking new steps to try and disqualify Bernie Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters.” The story laid out Clinton’s new “three-part strategy” with regard to Sanders: “Disqualify him, defeat him and unify the party later.”

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Media Lens: Last Chance President – Bernie Sanders And The Corporate Media

8 April 2016 — Media Lens

The comedian Billy Connolly once observed that politicians aren’t like the rest of us. They don’t look like us, don’t sound like us, and they rarely talk about issues that matter deeply to mere voters.

Senator Bernie Sanders, candidate for the Democrat’s US Presidential nomination, on the other hand, does look and talk like ‘ordinary’ people. He is the kind of smart, straight-talking, Jewish New Yorker celebrated by shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

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Category: Media Lens, USA | LEAVE A COMMENT

Video: Global Tax Haven Network Means Americans Can Hide Wealth At Home

7 April 2016 — The Real News Network

Economist James Henry describes the network of international banks, law firms, accountants, and trust companies that allow wealth to be hidden in tax havens like Delaware Continue reading this...

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COLDTYPE Issue 115 April 2016 – is now on line

2 April 2016 — Coldtype

Download and read it – free of charge at www.coldtype.net

REFUGEES, NOT TERRORISTS – Ben Ehrenreich ventures into the Jungle refugee camp in Calais, France, and finds . . . not terrorists, but troubled people who have fled their homes due to Western-backed aggression. In other, related, essays, Chris Hedges shows how we in the West are as guilty of terror as is ISIS, while Azeezah Khan wonders why our legal systems are so eager to brand Muslims as terrorists. In other stories, Adam Hochschild tells how Texaco supported fascism during the Spanish civil war, David Niddrie and Adrian de Kock look at student strife in South Africa, and Marjorie Cohn contrasts human rights in Cuba with those in the USA. Continue reading this...

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FAIR: Anonymity in the New York Times: By the Numbers

31 March 2016 — FAIR

A new report from FAIR looks at a year’s worth of anonymity in the New York Times, with media critic Reed Richardson taking an in-depth look at how unnamed sources were used in the paper in 2015. His research substantiates that the observation Times public editor Margaret Sullivan made in 2014 (12/29/14) is still true: “Anonymity continues to be granted to sources far more often than a last-resort basis would suggest.” Among Richardson’s findings: Continue reading this...

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Media Lens: Kunduz Killers Go Free

31 March 2016 — Media Lens

On the night of October 3, 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship repeatedly attacked a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Forty-two people were killed and dozens wounded. The US military plane had conducted five strafing runs over the course of more than an hour despite MSF pleas to Afghan, US and Nato officials to call off the attack.

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