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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER:  David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted  attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
The Myths of St. Jolie and Her Acolytes

Breast Panic on the Left

by RUTH FOWLER

A rich, powerful celebrity renowned for bad action movies, sex appeal and humanitarian missions in predominantly brown and black developing countries, writes an Op-Ed which reads like a press release in The New York Times. This Op-Ed, written in the first person, informs the public that said celebrity has had a preventive mastectomy in an exclusive, private clinic based upon the results of an expensive genetic screening test. The reason she is writing this press release aka Op-Ed is to “raise awareness” – of breast cancer, of genetic screening tests which can detect your chances of getting breast and ovarian cancer, and of mastectomy.

The world, already sycophantic in its adoration of said celebrity who can do no wrong because of her looks, her hot husband, her high-profile movies, her brood of adopted children from various developing countries, and her “charity work” as a UN ambassador – like Nicholas Kristof, she will often be photographed surrounded by brown and black children gazing at her in a staged position of worship – falls gaga over this astounding news. Because of Angelina Jolie, we are told, women will no longer feel “ashamed” and “disgusted” by their bodies if they have to undergo mastectomies. Angelina Jolie has “normalized” this procedure. Angelina Jolie is brave and courageous to have come forward. Angelina Jolie has empowered other women to make this incredible and amazing decision.

Angelina Jolie’s doctor at the exclusive clinic she attended and mentioned by name in The NYT (now laughing all the way to the bank) writes about her incredible spirit and energy post-op. With tubes still dangling out of her body, Angelina was working on her next film project just days after the op! We are given the impression that Angelina is extraordinary, some kind of super woman. Perhaps a lesser human would have been lying in bed, reveling pathetically in her painful recovery, indulging in disgraceful self-pity – but not Angelina! It is subtly implied that regular women are simply not intelligent enough to have known about these screening tests, that their lack of courage, their fear, their vanity, has thus far been an impediment to them taking the courageous and valiant option – screening test, and depending on the results, mastectomy. Only superwoman Angelina is brave enough to pay $3,000 to find out if she has inherited the cancer genes of her mother, and then excise them. But now, thanks to her “raising awareness” normal, domesticated, ignorant women without Angelina’s resources of spiritual strength and tremendous bravery can find the courage to take the expensive genetic screening tests available at a cost, and submit without a whimper to the removal of their breasts, and their replacement with elaborately reconstructed surgery. Thanks...

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