Confirmation of what you always knew....or suspected

You are likely to readily agree with the various matters detailed by Professor Juan Cole on his blog, Informed Comment.

"There are so many open secrets in our corporatocracy. But precisely because they are the open secrets of powerful multi-billion-dollar concerns with phalanxes of attorneys, which after all themselves own most “news” media, they are the secrets that dare not say their name.

But every once in a while, some evidence for these secrets is proffered to the public, perhaps because the corporation involved has been embroiled in a major (known) scandal and so is too weak to prevent it any more. So here are today’s “You always knew it, but…” revelations:

10. You always knew it, but yesterday former British prime minister John Major admitted that billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch came to his office and threatened him that if he did not change his foreign policy, Murdoch’s corporations “would not be able to support” him. Major confesses to having been overly frightened by the prospect of bad publicity. Murdoch’s Fox Cable News likewise works by intimidation and fear tactics.

9. Even though corporation profits as a percentage of our gross domestic product are at a high for the post-War II period, workers have seen little benefit, since CEO compensation is is now 350 times that of the the average worker, up from 50 times in the period from 1960-1985.

8. You always knew it, but now WHO has officially announced that diesel fumes cause lung cancer.

7. Romney wants to remake Obamacare so that millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions will be excluded from it.

6. The UN peace-keeping head has now pronounced whatever is going on in Syria to be ‘a civil war.’

5. Criminalizing ever more drugs is getting in the way of bio-medical research.

4. Stealth Republican-enacted state laws supposedly intended to prevent voter fraud don’t actually work.

3. Too much dependence on natural gas will cause carbon emissions to sky-rocket, according to the International Energy Agency

2. Even congressmen are having to use strong-arm tactics to find out how many Americans are being spied on by the government.

1. Economic inequality is leading the US to the brink, according to a Nobelist in economics."

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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