September 10, 2010
America's Ground Zero is just another piece of real estate.
WRISEUP.COM
Tomorrow will mark the ninth anniversary of the horrific events of “9/11″ and the United States of America is still licking its festering wounds.
The way the average American still obsesses about it, one would think it was the worst tragedy in the history of mankind: 3,000 American adults were killed in one day.
The simple reality, however, is that there have been many, many, many far worse tragedies in history and they continue right up to today.
In a deep backwoods town in Florida some non-descript so-called “Christian” evangelist is still musing about a possible Bonfire Of The Korans tomorrow.
And the bizarre campaign against an Islamic inter-faith community centre near so-called “Ground Zero” in New York has spawned campaigns and violence against the construction of Islamic mosques elsewhere in the country.
read more »
September 7, 2010
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Some goofball, right-wing, so-called “Christian” evangelist in the backwoods of Florida has declared next Saturday – 9/11/2010 – International Quran Burning Day and the corporate mass media have been stumbling over each other in their common efforts to make the goofball some sort of folk hero.
Meanwhile, the unconstitutional effort to block construction of a Muslim community centre near – but not at – so-called Ground Zero
has spawned a school of anti-Mosque activists clear across AmeriKKKa.
Granted, Islam is a backward, repressive, homophobic, misogynist, war-loving and capitalism-promoting religion. But so is every other organized religion. read more »
September 4, 2010
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
It has now been about 40 years since one-time United States president Richard Nixon declared a “War On Drugs” and much of the world followed suit.
Over the course of those four decades, there has been scant evidence that the warriors are winning.
Worldwide, over a hundred thousand lives have been lost, millions have gone to jail and millions more have been saddled with criminal records for their victimless crimes, consumption rates have soared, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent globally to wage the “war,” and drug-financed gangs have become so wealthy and powerful that they are oftentimes wealthier and more powerful than the governments that are waging war on them.
A single shred of evidence of the possibility of ultimate victory in the “War On Drugs” might still convince me otherwise, but until that unlikely time I am forced to conclude that the global War On Drugs is a global Waste Of Time, Money And Human Lives And Suffering. read more »
August 21, 2010
Generous to a fault in military and prison spending, Stephen Harper is dying to impose an austerity budget on Canadians.
WRISEUP.COM
The governments of Greece and South Africa are having to contend with mass uprisings these days in the wake of the harsh “austerity” budgets they have attempted to foist upon their countries’ poor and working classes. And so it should be.
In the case of South Africa, it is one million public-sector workers who have risen up and demanded a living wage. The South African government’s current austerity was caused by the $5 billion this poor country was forced to spend in order to host the World Cup of soccer.
In the case of Greece, it is a broad swath of poor and working-class citizens who have risen up in the face of a harsh austerity program foist upon their government by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.
It is bad enough that these two national governments are attempting to redress their fiscal imbalances on the backs of the poor and the working classes.
read more »
August 16, 2010
Omar Khadr was only 15 when captured by U.S. forces.
WRISEUP.COM
The Guantanamo Bay show trial of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr faces another lengthy delay after the accused’s lawyer fell ill last week.
That there is even going to be a trial for this alleged child soldier is a travesty in and of itself. That Canada and the U.S. conspired in bringing this Canadian child to “justice” is a grievous shame on both countries.
Khadr’s “trial” will be Guantanamo Bay’s first under United States President Barack Obama and the first time in modern history that any country in the world has prosecuted a child who was younger than 18 when the alleged war crimes occurred.
In fact, trying an alleged combattant under the age of 18 is banned under international law and Canada and the U.S. are both signatories to the global treaties that banned the prosecution of child soldiers.
read more »
August 7, 2010
New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez epitomizes capitalist greed.
WRISEUP.COM
For decades sports fans have bemoaned the greed of “fat-cat athletes” who are “only in it for the money” and have lost touch with the “love of the game.” Many pine for those halcyon days of yore when pure-hearted ball players, gridiron gladiators and hockey heroes played for pride, for glory and for championships.
Clearly, the ability of talented sportsmen (and, to be sure, there is a glass ceiling in the sports world that few women break through) to earn hundreds or even thousands of times what their fans must survive on rankles with their followers. Everyone can plainly see that bouncing a ball, swinging a bat or stopping a puck is not as important as, say, performing life-saving operations and should not pay better by orders of magnitude. But it does.
read more »
July 28, 2010
Has Peter Mansbridge joined the Bilderbergers?
WRISEUP.COM
There was a time when CBC was an honest public broadcaster, even decried by some as “leftist.”
But that is certainly not the case today.
What is the role of a national public broadcaster in a country dominated by right-wing corporate mass media committed to a corporate agenda that has been impoverishing poor, working-class and middle-class Canadians for the last 30 years?
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July 27, 2010
It's time to bring our courageous troops home.
WRISEUP.COM
When Wikileaks published more than 76,000 secret documents on the comportment of the Afghan war this week, it laid bare the soul of the entire evil project.
It disclosed evidence of war crimes and other atrocities committed by Coalition forces. It betrayed the fact that the American – and Canadian – political and military leadership continues to mislead the public about the reality on the ground. And it proved there is no valid rationale for continuing the sordid misadvbenture.
Let’s face it: This is a war the so-called Coalition has waged based on a litany and a legacy of monstrous lies and fatally flawed “intelligence.”
read more »
July 12, 2010
The Haitian capital is in dire straits.
WRISEUP.COM
Today’s media coverage of the situation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, six months after it was levelled by an earthquake made me mindful of my Dad, who passed away almost 15 years ago.
My Dad was an Irish Catholic whose family was stripped of all its possessions and expelled from Northern Ireland in 1920 (when he was three years old) for supporting Irish reunification. They arrived in Canada in the dead of winter with nothing.
My Dad also struggled through the Great Depression of the Dirty Thirties and spent four years fighting on the frontlines in Europe during the Second World War.
So, by the time he married and fathered children, he had seen his share of the ugly side of humanity.
read more »
June 17, 2010
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
It’s quite revealing to observe how the corporate mass media and the political class in the U.S. and even Canada deal with corporate crime.
For two months now we’ve been treated to an interminable daily soap opera on BP’s massive and catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP (British Petroleum not Beyond Petroleum) has been lambasted, excoriated, tongue-lashed, pilloried, raked over the coals, called every name under the sun but a child of God, damned and ridiculed by every talking head on television and every politician who has come within range of a camera and mike. read more »
