Friday, March 19, 2010

Truthout 3/19

William Rivers Pitt | Five Yards and a Cloud of Dust
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "Last week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) made it clear to any and all that he was going to vote 'No' on the health care reform package currently being considered by the House. His argument was simple, and on many levels, entirely correct: the current bill is half a loaf, does not contain any kind of public option and is a big, fat giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries."
Read the Article

Antiwar Protesters: "Bombs Don't Bring Democracy"
Yana Kunichoff and Mary Susan Littlepage, Truthout: "Two days before the seventh anniversary of the occupation of Iraq, more than a thousand antiwar protesters marched Thursday in downtown Chicago to chants of 'Obama, don't lie to me. Bombs don't bring democracy!' and 'Money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupation!' The rally is one of many antiwar events being held across the country in places ranging from New York to Utah to Georgia to protest the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Read the Article

Returning the Senate to Majority Rule
Steven Hill, Truthout: "Standing at the edge of the health care precipice, President Barack Obama has reached a defining point in his presidency. The recent news that Anthem Blue Cross is planning to jack up individual premiums as much as 40 percent is just the latest example of our flailing health care system."
Read the Article

The Growing Movement for Publicly Owned Banks
Ellen Brown, Truthout: "As the states' budget and credit crises deepen, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have included that solution in their platforms."
Read the Article

SEC Admits Flawed Oversight of Lehman Brothers
Grace Huang, Truthout: "In the wake of a 2,200-page report on how 'misleading' accounting techniques led to Lehman Brothers' collapse, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Schapiro would not comment on whether an investigation would commence, but acknowledged that the agency's oversight of Lehman was 'terribly flawed in design and execution.'"
Read the Article

Eugene Robinson | "Kumbaya" No More
Eugene Robinson: "If health care reform finally staggers across the finish line, it will be because President Obama and Congressional Democrats recognized - at long last - the truth that has been staring them in the face for more than a year: They'll be better off politically if they just try their best to do the right thing."
Read the Article

PTSD Nation
John Omaha, Truthout: "Can a nation have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)? Can a diagnosis created to understand the dysregulated behavior of individuals be applied to an entire nation? I argue yes on both counts. If a diagnosis can help us understand and treat aberrant behavior, then it doesn't matter if the aberrantly behaving thing is an individual or a nation of 350 million people."
Read the Article

Froma Harrop | Will Snowe Fall in Maine?
Froma Harrop, Truthout: "Go visit potato country at the tippy-top of Maine. There, struggling farmers can look across the St. John River at equally hard-pressed potato growers in New Brunswick, Canada. The big difference between them is that if one of the Mainers falls grievously ill, the family may have to sell the farm to pay medical bills. The Canadian family doesn't."
Read the Article

Silent Spring Has Sprung
Randall Amster, Truthout: "Seasons change, yet some things remain the same. Nearly half a century ago, Rachel Carson debuted the first serial installment of what would eventually become one of the landmark works of the 20th century, 'Silent Spring.' In that book, Carson famously argued that the pesticide DDT was responsible for negative impacts on the environment, animals and humans alike, despite disinformation spread by industry and government officials about its purported safety and utility in agribusiness."
Read the Article

Iran Protests: Is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Winning?
Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor: "With Iran protests largely shut down, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has declared 'victory.' But as Iranians evaluate the past year during Norouz celebrations this weekend, he knows he's lost legitimacy, say close observers. Iran celebrates the start of the Persian New Year - or Norouz - this weekend, a time of joyful spring renewal that will also be used by Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei to take stock of the damage done to the Islamic regime by post-election Iran protests and a determined opposition movement."
Read the Article

Egypt Waging War on Bloggers
William Fisher, Truthout: "Egypt's war on bloggers suffered a major hit last week. Caving to pressure from the United Nations and international human rights groups, a military court released a 20-year-old civilian university student accused of blogging false information about the Army and insulting officers involved in recruitment at a military academy."
Read the Article

Joe Conason | Right Wing Gone Wild
Joe Conason, Truthout: "Demagogues often prosper under the rules of democracy, intimidating the moderate and preying on the weak-minded. But in a healthy society, such figures cannot cross a final threshold of decency without jeopardizing their own status - and today's right-wing nihilists seem to be on the verge of doing just that."
Read the Article

No comments:

Post a Comment


What do you think it symbolizes?