I invite you to listen to this great Randy Newman song again: Just a few Words in Defense of Our Country. Newman’s satire is so easy going, so fast and loose, so intelligent and so insidious that when you think he’s talking about other people–stupid, vain, greedy, hypocritical other people–little by little you begin to [...]
Filed under: United States, politics | Tagged: goodbye goodbye goodbye, political satire, politics, Randy Newman, the end of an empire is messy at best | 1 Comment »
This photograph by Gary Winogrand, taken 44 years ago, seems to me not to have lost any of its powerful meaning. If anything, it’s more relevant today than when it was made. It is, I think, a reminder of lessons that were never learned. Scan courtesy of Masters of Photography
Filed under: The Impending Apocalypse, United States, gringos, politics, war crimes | Tagged: Gary Winogrand, American Legion, unlearned lessons, veterans' benefits, war hero's homecoming | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been an unconditional admirer of Lewis Lapham ever since I discovered Harper’s Magazine many years ago. Lapham was the editor of Harper’s for 30 years, from 1976 to 2006. His current title is “editor emeritus,” which is not to say he’s retired. He still writes his regular Notebook feature for Harper’s and he’s embarked [...]
Filed under: US media, United States, books, politics, sources | Tagged: Harper's Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, Lewis Lapham | Leave a Comment »
Are You in Favor of Freedom? Invade a small country! United States governments and companies are the greatest promoters of freedom in the world today. They’re unanimously in favor of “freedom,” without ever explaining clearly to the rest of the world (nor to their own citizens) just which freedom it is they’re in favor of, [...]
Filed under: gringos, politics | Tagged: fraydum, free-enterprise fraud, freedom, freedom fraud, predatory capitalism | Leave a Comment »
One of the main assertions of my new manuscript, The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile, is that there are aspects of American society which can be seen better from abroad than from “under the American bell jar.” What we outsiders can see clearly–while wondering why the Americans themselves have so much [...]
Filed under: United States, books | Tagged: Mike Booth, random kindness, see ourselves as others see us, see yourselves as others see you, seeing the U.S. from abroad, senseless acts of beauty, sordidness, the American bell jar, The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile | Leave a Comment »
American academic, Joan Roelofs, in Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (State University of New York Press, 2003) argues that Ford and similar foundations play a key role in co-opting opposition movements: While dissent from ruling class ideas is labeled ‘extremism’ and is isolated, individual dissenters may be welcomed and transformed. Indeed, ruling [...]
Filed under: US media, gringos | Tagged: CIA, CIA front organizations, Ford Foundation, two-headed dog | 1 Comment »
This article in today’s Independent provides a nice summing up of what the U.S. and Britain have achieved with their war on Iraq. Authors Raymond Whitaker and Stephen Foley have prepared a thorough and dispassionate report from an independent British point of view. It makes fascinating–and depressing–reading. At the end of the piece they offer [...]
Filed under: Iraq, US media, United States | Tagged: Al-Qa'ida, David Owen, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Iran, Iraq War, Lord Owen, Neocons, the Kurds, Tim Spicer, Tony Blair, US media | Leave a Comment »
So when my conversation with the South American Gentleman turned to my old classmate, I asked him, “What’s Old Friend up to these days? Is he still at the Ford Foundation?” “No,” said SAG, “he reached a very high position in the Ford Foundation, but then left them and went to work for a Washington [...]
Filed under: US media, gringos | Tagged: CIA funding of front organizations, CIA-Ford Foundation collaboration, Ford Foundation and the CIA, Orthrus, South America | Leave a Comment »
Last month I received an email from a South American gentleman I had never met. He said that he and his wife were coming to Spain on vacation and that an old friend of mine had recommended that they stop by Granada to visit us. I was bemused because more than 30 years ago we [...]
Filed under: US media, gringos | Tagged: CIA, CIA and human rights, CIA fronts, CIA human rights subsidies, devious Gringos, Ford Foundation, foundations and the CIA, human rights | 3 Comments »
I read in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune that Arizona state senator, Karen Johnson, has sponsored a bill–which the Arizona State Judiciary Committee approved last week–that would allow people with a concealed-weapons permit to carry firearms at public colleges and universities. This is a self-styled “right-wing wacko’s” solution to the ongoing epidemic of shootings in American [...]
Filed under: The Impending Apocalypse, United States | Tagged: pre-emptive strike, gun control, gun friendly states, Arizona, state senator Karen Johnson, right-wing wacko, guns on campus, America, left-wing radicals, gun crimes, gun murders, miracle cures | 3 Comments »
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