PHIL ROCKSTROH—Oprah Winfrey is and has been since her entrance into the US mass media hologram one of the capitalist elite’s most effective propagandists. By intention, her New Age snake oil-peddling patter never connects capitalist exploitation as the dominant source of individual suffering. Of course not. Oprah is a US American huckster in the model of Norman Vincent Peale.
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The Internet was initially a product of public spending. The U.S. Defense Department first conceived it in the 1960s, following a period of feverish technological competition with the Soviet Union. By the early 1990s, the government ceded control of the Internet to the private sector, which had the putative capacity to host its rapid growth.
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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—Russia’s premature declaration of victory in Syria and withdrawal has made it possible for US forces to remain in Syria and attempt to restart the effort to overthrow the Assad government. Russia would have to defend its victory, or by the failure to do so encourage more aggressive actions by Washington.
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PHILIP BUTLER—Breaking it all down. The European Union’s outgoing ambassador to Russia is pounding the message “Putin must go” at The Guardian, The Observer, at The Baltic Times, and elsewhere (See Emma Graham-Harrison’s piece citing Ušackas – “West’s rift with Russia ‘will last until Vladimir Putin goes’). One of his favorite projects was largely funded by a Nazi sympathizer/collaborator who later became a multi-million dollar consultant to western corporations including; Exxon, El Paso Natural Gas, Columbia Gas, Rockwell International, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and many others.
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ADAM JOHNSON—o bigger myth permeates corporate media’s love affair with McCain than the image of him as a “champion of human rights.” Those pushing this trope routinely ignore the fact that McCain has been among the biggest champions of, among others, human rights–abusing Israel and Saudi Arabia. McCain has repeatedly shielded Israel from criticism, even going to the mat to defend its bloody 2014 bombing of Gaza that left 1,500 civilians dead, including over 500 children, which McCain described as “admirable” in its “restraint.”
