Glenn Greenwald

More than 1,500 Afghans block the highway between Kabul
and Kandahar in Seed Abad, Wardak province, Afghanistan,
Saturday, May 26, 2012. (Credit: AP/Rahmatullah Nikzad)

Yet another Afghan family (and a bakery in Pakistan) is extinguished by an airstrike: unleash the justifications

Yesterday, I wrote about the rotted workings of the Imperial Mind, but today presents a tragic occasion to examine its close, indispensable cousin: the Authoritarian Mind. From CNN on May 27, 2012:

A suspected NATO airstrike killed eight civilians — including six children — in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said.

The airstrike took place Saturday night in Paktia province, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the governor of Paktia. He said an entire family was killed in the strike.

The LA Times identified the victims as “Mohammed Shafi, his wife and his six children,” and cited the statements from the spokesman for the Paktia governor’s office that “there is no evidence that Shafi was a Taliban insurgent or linked with Al Qaeda.” The Afghan spokesman blamed the incident on the refusal of NATO to coordinate strikes with Afghan forces to ensure civilians are not targeted (“If they had shared this with us, this wouldn’t have happened”).

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Stephen Lendman

Who exactly did this? - The Syrian government or CIA's rebel
groups? (Photo: Shaam News Network, via Reuters)

Washington orchestrates everything behind the scenes. Obama wants to replace Assad with a pro-Western puppet.

A previous article discussed scoundrel media anti-Iranian propaganda. They also target Syria. They march in lockstep with imperial lawlessness.

Readers and viewers deserve better than misinformation and betrayal. They need alternative sources to avoid it.

Washington has longstanding designs on Iran and Syria. Regime change is planned by any means. War threatens both countries. Obama, the peace candidate, can't wait to start another one. He's already guilty of war crimes multiples times over.

Media scoundrels back him. Peace, equity, justice, human and civil rights, other democratic values, and obeying rule of law principles don't matter. Political Washington abhors them. So do media scoundrels.

America unmasked is loathsome, dangerous and rapacious. Scoundrel media reality reveals rejection of fundamental journalistic principles.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) "is dedicated to the perpetuation of a free press as the cornerstone of our nation and our liberty."

Democratic freedom depends on keeping "the American people well informed....It is the role of journalists to provide this information in an accurate, comprehensive, timely and understandable manner."

SPJ's Code of Ethics affirms this responsibility. Scoundrel media members fall way short. Fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully filtered. Dissent is marginalized, and support for wealth and power is policy.

Aggressive wars are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with government policy no matter how repugnant, lawless or destructive.

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Robert Stevens

Family tragedy in Bathis Square: A 90-year old woman and
her son (60), both from Syros, comitted suicide by jumping
from their 6th floor balcony. (Photo/Caption: Άποψη)

The appalling suicide of a mother and son in Athens again underscores the social nightmare being visited on Greece by the troika—the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The tragedy occurred May 24. The mother, aged 90, and her son, aged 60, leapt hand in hand from the roof of their apartment building in the capital shortly after 8 a.m.

The son was identified as Antonis Perris, an unemployed musician. Since Antonis had been unable to find work, the pair had been forced to survive on the mother’s pension of just €340 (US$427) a month.

The joint suicide occurred only days before IMF head Christine Lagarde dismissed reports that people were dying in the country due to the savage austerity measures being imposed, callously claiming that it was “payback” time for Greek workers.

The night before their deaths, Perris described their deteriorating economic situation and suffering on a well-known blog site. He wrote,

I have been taking care of my 90-year-old mother for 20 years. In the last 3-4 years she has developed Alzheimer’s, recently she also has been having Schizophrenic fits amongst her other grave health problems, so nursing homes won’t accept her.

The problem is that I hadn’t foreseen the crisis so I don’t have enough cash in my account, although I have real estate assets I sell from time to time, I’m left without cash and we can no longer eat. I borrow money from my credit card with 22% interest even though the banks themselves borrow with 1%. I have other running costs.

Unfortunately, I have also developed serious health problems lately. I have no solution in front of me. I can no longer live this drama. There’s no solution. Does anyone have a solution?

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Gilad Atzmon

The Telegraph reported [last Thursday] that “ministers have criticised Britain’s biggest exam board after pupils were asked to explain ‘why some people are prejudiced against Jews’ as part of a GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education).

Apparently more than 1,000 teenagers are believed to have taken the religious studies tests, which challenged pupils to assess the reasons behind anti-Semitism.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, which set the exam, rightly said that the question acknowledged that “some people hold prejudices” – they probably expected the students to examine the reasons that lead to anti Jewish feelings rather than simply justifying them.

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