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Our  government's perverse definition of "national security" was on  display again this summer. By large majorities, the U.S. Congress  approved a so-called emergency appropriation of $33.5 billion to  escalate the war in Afghanistan-adding to the more than $1 trillion  that the United States has already spent waging wars in Afghanistan  and Iraq.

Rockstroh writes: "Corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on the time lost - languishing in office cubicles, in commuter traffic -- or simply numbed-out and exhausted from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state. " 

The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted.No, I am not playing the popular elementary school game of  Opposites Day. It's true. Progressives won in the 2010 mid-term  elections.

Bruce Bartlett says it was a failure to focus. Paul Krugman says it was a failure of nerve. Nancy Pelosi says it was the economy's failure. Barack Obama says it was his own failure - to explain that he was, in fact, focused on the economy.

Makes sense!  Of course this applies  to the U.S. as well as Canada.  Sometimes a fresh look and a little attitude change can make a huge difference.  I for one, have looked at people lately as "stupid" and " lazy."  It does make a difference to think of people as simply "shut-out," due to the media

On the night he won, I too shed a little tear; but the people weeping today are those having their homes repossessed

We need to build a grassroots progressive movement -- wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.

The following remarks were prepared for delivery on October 29, 2010 as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University:I  was honored when you asked me to join in celebrating Howard Zinn's  life and legacy. I was also surprised.  I am a journalist, not  a historian.  The difference betw

It was Bill Clinton's campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992 created the election slogan: "It's the Economy, Stupid." For the 2010 Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: "It's Corporate Crime and Control, Stupid." But notwithstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by U.S. corporations in favor of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists. 

Conspicuous consumption is back on Wall Street, in anticipation of bonuses close to pre-recession levels. Some American companies have just posted the largest quarterly profits ever. Meanwhile, one in five families is relying on food stamps to get by and unemployment remains stuck at around 10%.

There's a bumper sticker still clinging to the back of my old camper, bearing a phrase you've probably heard before or perhaps even uttered: "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm." At the time I'd placed this on the tailgate for display, it made perfect sense to me. The Dominant Paradigm was the one manufactured by the warmongers, corporateers, securitizers, and mediamen. The rest of us were living in a Subordinate Paradigm, and the path to our salvation lay in tearing down the one imposing itself upon us. Since those halcyon bumper-sticker days, however, I've come to see that this logic is actually inverted, and that in fact WE are the Dominant Paradigm while those ostensibly in charge are the ones who continually attempt to subvert it.

Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.

Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough!

A survey from CBS News' "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair magazine shows that most Americans, given a set limited choices for balancing the national budget, would prefer to see taxes increased for the wealthy.

One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt "middle class". A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s.

It's time to speak hard truths. The U.S. is the richest country on earth. But the way we spend our money makes us one of the poorer.

Former leader is wanted to stand trial for the possession of expropriated property and transferring foreign currency abroad