Tea Party Focuses on Wrong Target

 Capitalism is the word, of the neocons, have you heard?

 By Henry A. Giroux

Tea Party candidates express anger over government programs, but say nothing about a government that provides tax breaks for the rich, allows politicians to be bought off by powerful lobbyists, contracts out government functions to private industries and guts almost every major public sphere necessary for sustaining an increasingly faltering democracy.

Tea Party members are outraged, but their anger is really directed at the New Deal, the social state and all those others whom they believe do not qualify as "real" Americans.

At the same time the American public is awash in a craven and vacuous media machine that routinely tells us that people are angry, but offers no analysis capable of treating such anger as symptomatic of an economic system that creates massive inequalities, rewards the ultra rich and powerful and punishes everybody else.

liberal pundits argue that the rich and powerful are indifferent to poor people and, of course, he is right, but only partly so. In actuality, it is much worse.

Today's young people and others caught in webs of poverty and despair face not only the indifference of the rich and powerful, but also the scorn of the very people charged with preserving, protecting and defending their rights.

We now live in a country in which the government allows entire populations and groups to be perceived and treated as disposable, reduced to fodder for the neoliberal waste management industries created by a market-driven society in which gross inequalities and massive human suffering are its most obvious byproducts.

Campbell's Soup "surrenders" to Islam, Right wingers boycott

Who'd a thought low-fat cream of broccoli soup could be seen as a "surrender" to Islam?

By Ben Zaritsky

The far right has never been better, speaking the good news of capitalism, defending the constitution, protecting our rights, and spreading Islamophobia.

If forced to choose, what of all of these values the far right would choose to promote. Luckily for all of us, we now have an answer.

Campbell's Soup, earlier this year, announced a new line of halal-based soups. Halal is an Islamic dietary law (think kosher).

While it may seem more in line with conservative ideology to support Campbell's capitalist endeavor to venture into an otherwise untapped North American market and make a profit, the conservative base has chosen to promote more fear and hatred – it is an election year, after all.

This outrageous move by Campbell's has put Islamophobes across North America on alert with a "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" mentality.

In an attempt to stop Campbell's from producing edible foods, a new Facebook group, which now has nearly 3,000 members, has been started to boycott the company.

One Facebooker, who wrote to Campbell's about his feelings on the issue, expresses his experience:

"I was shaking from rage so much that this is what I was able to say without cursing. You cowards bend to the un-American Islamic law spreading across America?

"I will make sure that all my family and friends never buys another can of you Islam loving garbage ever again. Traitors! I hope to GOD that you're stocks plummet as we educate the world about you UN-American Cowards."

Even the Tea Party Nation weighed in with a clever boycott tweet: "Campbell's now making Muslim approved soups. Mmmmm Mmmmm not good. No more campbells for me".

It's a good thing that Marie Callender's hasn't tried to make a halal-based apple pie, or that Oscar Mayer hasn't made a halal-based hot dog. The national guard would have been called out to stop such an obscene abuse of the American culture.

After all, we haven't worked so hard to mutilate and Americanize all of our other foods only to allow others to come into our country and eat foods they find palatable.

If it isn't deep fried, completely processed, and/or containing various bits of animal product in it, then it is not American.

Foods such as "low fat cream of broccoli" or "vegetarian vegetable" (both of which are part of the new Campbell's halal-based soup line) are completely un-American.

No sir, let's keep our soup red, white and blue. None of this halal junk for us. And while we're at it, do we really need kosher and vegan?

No, we must take a stand. We can not allow this type of behavior to continue. You give an inch, they take a mile. We must keep our patriotic soup safe.