The Alleged News®

by Richard Balzano Americans are perhaps the planet’s most propagandized population. Exceptionalism, innocence, and decades of propaganda have diluted the general public’s ability to critically process international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. The media is complicit, for when Washington sets its crosshairs on another government and primes the public for intervention, the empire’s ambitions are strategically branded in uplifting good-guy savior rhetoric and cheered by flag-waving mainstream media consumers insisting that this time we’ll be greeted as liberators. (Hint: we won’t… .) Protesters recently took to the streets in Iran and Venezuela, but not for the reasons we’re given by the mainstream media. Many of …

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by Richard Balzano Economic coercion has become a routine instrument of U.S. foreign policy, using sanctions to pressure smaller states to yield to American hegemony. Often hailed as a peaceful alternative to conventional warfare, sanctions are inherently violent by design, undercutting any claims of humanitarian intent. Sanctions are designed to inflict deprivation inside target states. Sanction-induced deprivation (SID) is intended to create unrest and trigger anti-government mobilization, to in turn bring about desired political change. Reasonable observers may identify popular mobilization as evidence of civil society, but with no sense of irony or self-reflection, Washington capitalizes on protests to label target governments as illegitimate authoritarian …

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Edward E. Carlton, the husband of Mrs. Etta M. Carlton, who was brutally murdered in her house at Watertown, Mass., in March, 1883, died in Texas a few weeks ago from injuries received by falling from a railroad train. Carlton hung around Boston for a year after his wife’s murder, until he succeeded in collecting a $5,000 insurance on her life. He was able to prove that he had no hand in the actual killing of his wife, but there are probably not many persons who regard him as innocent of the crime. • Senator [Charles W.] Jones [Democrat] of Florida has been absent from …

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A medical authority says “persons have been bitten by mad dogs and have not gone mad.” And then, again, some persons get mad on being bitten by a dog that is not mad. The rule works both ways. Holden Dick, an Indian, and Vincente Olivas, a Mexican, both convicted murderers, were taken out of jail at Susanville, California, Jan. 28th, and hanged to beams in the woodshed of the court house by a mob. During the recent blizzard two unknown families, consisting of nine persons, were frozen to death near San Bois, Choctaw Nation, and their four horses were frozen in harness. The party were …

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The Ohio house of representatives has appointed a committee of five members to investigate the charges made against four members of the present house, that they accepted bribes to vote for Henry B. Payne for United States senator while members of the last general assembly. Senator Payne represents the Standard Oil Co., and incidentally the democracy. [Subsequent investigations made it clear that Washington Freemen, our editor in 1886, was justified in his suspicions. Nevertheless, Payne’s colleagues in the Senate—perhaps not feeling qualified to cast the first stone—declined to expel him. – The Ed.] A man named Lapour killed the sheriff of Colfax county, Neb., Jan. …

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