As Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explain in Manufacturing Consent, which stories do and do not receive coverage in the commercially-dominated U.S. news media can be very accurately predicted based on whether or not they can pass through five institutional “filters.”  To make it onto the air, a story has to have these five qualities: […]

Schwarzenegger justifies his murder thusly: “[T]here is no reason to disturb the judicial decisions that uphold the jury’s findings that he is guilty of these four murders and should pay with his life.” Meanwhile: Commandment #1: “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” United States Constitution, Article I, Section 2: Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among […]

At 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, December 10, 1960, NBC television was supposed to broadcast something truly exceptional: a debate on the topic of “U.S. policy toward Latin America” between liberal theorist A. A. Berle and the radical “Texas wobbly” sociologist C. Wright Mills. To the enduring loss of the world, the scheduled debate […]

As a rule, corporate advertising expenditure in the United States at least keeps pace with the growth rate of the U.S. economy.  This explains why ads are constantly grabbing more space and appearing in new places, such as the fronts of grocery-store shopping-carts, above men’s urinals, at the bottoms of golf holes, and inside movie […]

In recent decades, many well-meaning thinkers and activists have peddled or purchased the idea that class conflict has somehow waned or been “de-centered” in the richer nation-states.  As workers in these countries have lost more and more power, and as vast tides of wealth have sloshed around in the form of automobiles, shopping malls, and […]

Retired U.S. Army Lt. General William Odom is a Vietnam Veteran who, in the late 1970s, helped Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski use mujahedeen zealots to “give the Soviets their Vietnam” in Afghanistan.  In the mid-1980s, Odom worked for Ronald Reagan as Director of the National Security Agency. One week ago, this very same General […]

In the year 2004, U.S. corporations made $1.2 trillion in profits. If all U.S. corporations were to donate their profits for one single month, their donation would cover the entire $100 billion cost of rebuilding New Orleans. Of course, no such pledge is forthcoming. Corporate donations to hurricane relief stand at a paltry $409 million. […]

“So far as I am aware,” wrote Paul Sweezy in 1973, “the political economy of the automobile has never been subjected to serious analysis in the Marxian literature.” Amazingly, despite the apparent onset of global warming, “peak oil,” and permanent petro-war, Sweezy’s observation remains true today.  We Marxians have not yet begun to do more […]

The United States’ attack on Iran has begun.  The administration of George W. Bush, merely the latest demagogue in charge of domestically marketing the unchanging policies of our outdated, reactionary ruling class, has commenced its media campaign accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly seated president of Iran, of being merely the latest demagogue in charge of […]