Image by Susan Melkisethian via Flickr
by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 7, 2022
“Since the dawn of capitalism, the capitalist class has had to keep an eye on the working class in order to keep them in check. This surveillance has been around for a long time but the story of the modern surveillance state begins about a century ago.”
Image by John Englart via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Originally on RT America on Dec 4, 2021
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel on Jun 30, 2022
On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the decline of the American empire and the new global order with Professor Alfred McCoy, who holds the Harrington Chair in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
with Chris Hedges
Originally on RT America on Nov 26, 2017
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel on Jul 6, 2022
Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the decline of the United States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese empire.
By Alfred W. McCoy
TomDispatch
June 7, 2009
America’s Political Paralysis Over Torture
If, like me, you’ve been following America’s torture policies not just for the last few years, but for decades, you can’t help but experience that eerie feeling of déjà vu these days. With the departure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from Washington and the arrival of Barack Obama, it may just be back to the future when it comes to torture policy, a turn away from a dark, do-it-yourself ethos and a return to the outsourcing of torture that went on, with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, in the Cold War years.
Like Chile after the regime of General Augusto Pinochet or the Philippines after the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, Washington after Bush is now trapped in the painful politics of impunity. Unlike anything our allies have experienced, however, for Washington, and so for the rest of us, this may prove a political crisis without end or exit.
Despite dozens of official inquiries in the five years since the Abu Ghraib photos first exposed our abuse of Iraqi detainees, the torture scandal continues to spread like a virus, infecting all who touch it, including now Obama himself. By embracing a specific methodology of torture, covertly developed by the CIA over decades using countless millions of taxpayer dollars and graphically revealed in those Iraqi prison photos, we have condemned ourselves to retreat from whatever promises might be made to end this sort of abuse and are instead already returning to a bipartisan consensus that made torture America’s secret weapon throughout the Cold War.
[…]
via Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Back to the Future in Torture Policy
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