Pepe Escobar, unlike his denser American colleagues, makes great use of myths and metaphors in his reportage. As he says in his new piece for Asia Times Online, ‘Surge’ smoke follows Petraeus to AfPak, “Anyone who buys Pentagon spin believing the same successful “surge” will happen in the Pashtun south and southeast of Afghanistan must have smoked Hindu Kush’s finest.”

Tens of thousands of progressive activists are converging on Detroit this week for the U.S. Social Forum to envision a better future. In the fight for social justice and sustainability, health and health care are at the forefront. During the meeting, the Washtenaw Reds plan to launch a free clinic in Detroit. They envision the facility as a center of healing and a nexus of political organizing. The USSF also features workshops on reproductive justice and drug policy issues. Urban farming and food justice are also key items on the agenda, Paul Abowd of In These Times reports.

by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger

President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that he would be deploying 1,200 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to beef up security along the Río Bravo. This surprise move has garnered criticism from immigrant rights supporters, who argue that it will dehumanize and endanger immigrant and Latino communities.

Pepe Escobar’s latest article for Asia Times Online, The American Taliban are coming, deconstructs the “official” myth-making regarding the failed Times Square bombing, looks into the worldview of neo-jihadis like Faisal Shahzad, Dhiren Barot, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and sees blowback on America’s horizon.

Pep Escobar recently pointed out real-time political myth-making intended to obscure the real driving force behind the threat of nuclear war in the Middle East: nuclear terrorism by the US and Israel in the name of full-spectrum dominance. Such efforts make a mockery of every word spoken on nuclear weapons by the US.

Pepe Escobar, in a May 8, 2010 AntiWar Radio interview with (the other) Scott Horton, answers, again, the trillion dollar question: why are we fighting bogus holy wars in Eurasia? It’s the dominance, dammit!

CTuttle, commenting on the previous DCM diary, Deconstructing Myths of America: Pepe Escobar Special Edition pt1, makes two points most difficult to challenge: A) “Pepe [Escobar] is the man;” and B) Gareth Porter ain’t too shabby, either. As evidence, watch Porter’s July 12 and 14, 2009 videos for The Real News Network.

Pepe Escobar, the “extreme traveler” who writes The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online, makes better use of mythology in an analysis of geopolitics than any other journalist I’ve read. His May 1, 2010 article, “The Myth of Talibanistan,” is yet another superlative example.

How did the US military reduce Clausewitz to “get ‘er done”? Lt. Col. William Astore (USAF, Ret.) yesterday posted at TomDispatch.com a detailed analysis of our military’s obsession with the mythical superiority of Third Reich methods, such as blitzkrieg. One problem our military overlords overlooked: those methods got their Nazi master’s asses kicked all around the world. Pepe Escobar’s July 20, 2008 interview with Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt, The Pentagonization of US Life, amplifies Astore’s points.

TRNN Senior Editor Paul Jay and University of Massachusetts-Amherst Professor Jame Crotty get to the the heart of the recent financial collapse by examining not just the data points of executive compensation, but far more importantly, the mythology that makes us believe that the prophets of everlasting profit are our proper masters of the universe.