Summary: One of the biggest stories of our time is the evolution of the America-that-once-was into The New America. It’s so slow to be easily missed, especially since it’s a melody the news media cannot hear. And those they look to for advice, the courtiers of the Versailles-on-the-Potomac, will not hear it. Here are the some of the latest reports on this grand theme.
These were all reported on our twitter feed, @FabiusMaximus01. Use the button on the right-side menu bar to subscribe; give yourself a front seat on this battle (ie, it will become a battle if we decide to fight back).
(1) Top recommendations
- This Reuters series about The New America should be at the top of your reading list:
“The Unequal State of America“ - “Is Our Republic Ending?“, Steven Strauss (Harvard), Huffington Post, 16 December 2012 — “Eight Parallels Between the Collapse of Rome’s Republic and Contemporary America”
- “True Believer: Petraeus and the Mythology of Afghanistan“, Gareth Porter, Truthout, 20 December 2012 — This is story about us. Our desire to be fooled. Our wish to follow a man on a white horse. Eventually we’ll probably find him, and the remnants of the Republic will collapse.
- “Why the Pundits Are Wrong About Big Money and the 2012 Elections“, AlterNet, 20 December 2012 — “One campaign funded largely by the super-rich lost to another funded by same, and money mattered big-time in House elections.”
- “Gun Control Without Equality Means More Massacres, Not Fewer“, Mark Ames, 21 December 2012 — The psychological stress created by the slow economic collapse of the bottom 47% of America will result in more killings, of every sort.
- Two essential sources of info and insight about the coming New America: TomDispatch and Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian.
(2) Other interesting stories, bread crumbs to a vision of a The New America
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- Preparing our children for the New America: ACLU report on the over-policing of our schools, July 2009
- Watching your grade-school classmates taken away by police in handcuffs is educational, teaching about citizenship in The New America: : “10 Disgusting Examples Of Very Young School Children Being Arrested, Handcuffed And Brutalized By Police“, The Truth is Now, 20 April 2012
- Shutting down social mobility in America: “The De Facto Privatization of State Universities“, Roger Pielke Jr (Prof, U CO – Boulder), 17 December 2012
- “America is the Torture Superpower”, Torture Superpower“, TomDispatch, 18 December 2012
- In the New America we support the rich: “Yacht Owners Go Galt in Newport Beach“, Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 18 December 2012 — It’s a misleading title.
- “Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate reactions?“, Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 19 December 2012 — “Numerous commentators have rightly lamented the difference in how these childrens’ deaths are perceived {in America}. What explains it?”
- “The coming drone attack on America“, Naomi Wolf, op-ed in The Guardian, 21 December 2012 — “Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised”
- “Missing British-Somali man reappears in New York court“, Alice K Ross, from the great Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 22 December 2012 — Did you really believe that Obama stopped renditions?
(3) For More Information
For a full list of posts about this war see the FM Reference Page America – how can we stop the quiet coup now in progress?
Posts about the mainstream media:
- Only our amnesia makes reading the newspapers bearable, 30 April 2008
- “Elegy for a rubber stamp”, by Lewis Lapham, 26 August 2008
- “The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism”, 23 December 2008
- The magic of the mainstream media changes even the plainest words into face powder, 24 April 2009
- The media – a broken component of America’s machinery to observe and understand the world, 2 June 2009
- We’re ignorant about the world because we rely on our media for information, 3 June 2009
- About campaigns for high office in America – we always expect a better result from the same process, 17 June 2009
- Are we blind, or just incurious about important news?, 6 July 2009
- We know nothing because we read newspapers, 12 October 2009 – About mythical numbers
- Must the old media die for the new media to flourish?, 29 October 2009
- Journalists, relying on anonymous government sources, attack anonymous bloggers who correct journalists’ errors, 25 July 2010
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Re: Torture Superpower“
That Khaled el-Masri story something right out of that Brazil movie. Totally outrageous. A one letter mistake in the name, just like “Tuttle-Buttle” and the guy gets hauled off to to who-knows-where by the CIA for water boarding and sodomy.
[quote] Torture is, however, invariably about shame and vengeance, humiliation, power, and control. We’re just slapping you now, but we control you and who knows what will happen next, what we’re capable of? [/quote]
Yes, well put. This is the message of torture, and I think it’s a message meant not only for those who are tortured, it’s a message to everyone. And, well, what can I say, other than “message received.”
“Torture is, however, invariably about shame and vengeance, humiliation, power, and control. We’re just slapping you now, but we control you and who knows what will happen next, what we’re capable of?”
This will be the inaugural address of the president of the United States in another few years.
Well said. Notice how important is the “who knows what will happen next, what we’re capable of?” — uncertainty about policies and the absence of an obvious logic as to targets of repression (cowing people into submission through constant, overbearing terror) were a hallmark of the hardest dictatorships such as Stalinism.
Obama and others campaigned against things Bush was doing and then adopted the exact same policies and put them “on steroids.”. No one complains about torture now and the media ignores the “kill list.” Apparently it’s much better to kill people than try them — not to mention 3 of the kills were US citizens. The President has put Wall St under his wing and in fact put some of the people who created this mess in charge of fixing it..
Nun,
Perhaps Bush Jr’s greatest impact on America is darkening our souls so that a decade after 9-11 theaters of Americans watch scenes of torture and applaud. Fiction, because the torture took place but produced little or no useful information. We love the lies. We cheer and clap at our propaganda films.