Department of the Missing Media Critique

Of course Washington decries the corruption in Afghanistan and calls it out as a major obstacle to its mission there. That is certainly rich points out Dilip Hiro in “The Great Afghan Corruption Scam: How Operation Enduring Freedom Mutated into Operation Enduring Corruption” since the United States, due to grotesque incompetence, amorality and graft itself, has been an enabler and participant in the colossal corruption in Afghanistan. Read below the fold...

EXCERPTS:

"6 U.S. Cities That Criminalize Homelessness" by Kevin Mathews:

... Rather than finding ways to provide assistance to some of the country’s least fortunate citizens, lawmakers have developed strict regulations to criminalize homeless people’s activities, as if they were sleeping on the sidewalk and panhandling out of malice rather than necessity.

Read below the fold...

"An engineer, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a deserted island.
They are starving, when miraculously they find a box filled with canned food.
What to do? They consider the problem, bringing their collective lifetimes of
study and discipline to the task.

Being the practical, straightforward sort, the engineer suggests that they
simply find a rock and hit the cans until they break open.
“No, no!” cry the chemist and economist, “we would spill too much food and the
birds would get it!” Read below the fold...

The new Pope Francis is 76 years old. He is the former cardinal of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and now spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, 40% of whom live in Latin America.

He appeared on Wednesday on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, an hour after the white smoke appeared from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

According to Patrick O'Connor of wsws: Read below the fold...

Rand Paul’s Message to Obama: Don’t Drone Me Bro
by Medea Benjamin

[Benjamin comments on how Rand Paul brought up the question that if drones had existed back in the tumultuous anti-Vietnam War 60’s and 70’s, would Jane Fonda and students at Kent State college have been droned or threatened with droning for treason with their protests? He warns that the threshold of defining the enemy may become so lowered that “free speech and assembly” could become regarded as dangerous insurgency.] Read below the fold...

After Obama’s SOTU message on February 12, 2013, Jill Stein, Green Party 2012 presidential candidate, addressed a national video audience with "Our Green State of the Union" assessment -- what Jill Stein herself called the “REAL state of our nation.”

Stein:

We need a real discussion of where we are, so we can set our priorities right and secure the future for our imperiled families, communities, country and planet.

Read below the fold...

That ,at least in Europe, there is someone to actually stop the merry go round that is government and lobbying. Too bad we don't have a similar functionary OR a media
that doesn't accept the bovine excrement that Congress critters need lobbyists to 'educate' them on complex subjects OR that such is some sort of 'free speech'(if it was 'free' why are these lobbyists so well paid?)
EU Commission probed by ombudsman over lobbyists Read below the fold...

US drones are destroying many “collateral damage” civilians in Yemen and thus inspiring more and more Yemenis to bitterly and momentously side with Al-Qaeda against the US. Declares Glenn Greenwald, the droning is not only amoral but strategically STUPID. Read below the fold...

Starving child covered in flies

It appears a lot of people are as sick to death as I am of the World Vision and Tear Fund TV ads featuring starving, fly-infested African children. Read below the fold...

Daniel Ellsberg

“When all who are honestly mistaken hear the truth, they will either quit being mistaken or cease being honest.” ~Anonymous~ Read below the fold...

It seems most of American TV anchors and commentators, local or national, are enthralled by the “Jon Stewart complex.” They and/or their writers and/or their producers can’t resist smirkily delivering puerile and sensationalized disclosures aimed at, or more likely cultivating in their viewers, an insatiable lust for gotcha-schadenfreude. Read below the fold...

NATO ministers met in Brussels today, December 5th, to approve Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles and for foreign and US troops to be deployed to their border with Syria.

The US/NATO War-machine plows onward in the attempted illegitimate overthrow of Syria, much as it did with its successful illegitimate overthrow of Libya.

Turkey has offered geographical strategic assistance to the US- and NATO-backed so-called “rebels” trying to overthrow Assad’s Syrian regime. Turkey now offers itself as a flimsy fig-leaf for craven powerful western intervention into Syria. Read below the fold...

Mohammed Omer, Palestinian journalist based in Gaza who in 2008 won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, writes:

“Air strikes are bombing everything that moves. Everything that moves in the streets is being bombed and attacked. ... One thing that we ought to talk about here is the humanitarian situation in the Gaza strip. This is a situation of targeting a population of civilians, exactly like Israel is shooting in a fishbowl. And there is no shelter, and there is nowhere to run for the general population. Gaza is living in a very dire situation.”

Bill Van Auken of wsws writes: Read below the fold...