Thursday, April 1, 2010

Truthout 4/1

William Rivers Pitt | Crazy From the Ground Up
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "Sometimes, the best way to celebrate April Fools' Day is by spotlighting some actual there-but-by-the-grace-of-God-go-I fools, genuine and in the raw for all to see ... So, no, none of what follows is a joke. Alas."
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Living in a Land of Rising Right-Wing Hate
Glynn Wilson, Truthout: "Northeast Jefferson County east of Birmingham, Alabama, has long been known as a white-flight suburb and home to a crowd of racist rednecks, mostly good old boys and gals who work for the power company, the gas company, the phone company and in construction. Bordered by rural and mostly white Blount and St. Clair counties to the north and east, it has become the poor side of town. The money went south."
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Why You Need to Understand Political Psychology
Joe Brewer, Truthout: "Are you concerned about the future of our country? Do you want to find ways to revitalize democracy and set about the important work of solving our problems? Have you longed for an end to the extreme polarization in our political discourse? Then you'd better learn some psychology."
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Democracy and Domestic Violence
Joe Conason, Truthout: "When the Department of Homeland Security released a cautiously worded report on the potential dangers of right-wing extremism last April, the talk-radio wingnuts and certain Republican lawmakers went into spasms of indignation. Clearly, that report - an innocuous nine-page document commissioned by the previous Republican administration - had been conjured up by White House Democrats to smear conservatives."
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CIA Seeks to Influence Opinion on Wars
Daan de Wit, DeepJournal: "The CIA recommendations for influencing the European public into continuing their support for the mission in Afghanistan is receiving a lot of attention both in The Netherlands and beyond. But in a military conflict, war is only one stage of the struggle. The biggest struggle is for the hearts and minds of the public at large. What's special about the case of the document is not so much its content, but the fact that it is now available for all to see."
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With Obama's Offshore Drilling Announcement, Fault Lines Drawn in Climate Change Battle
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "In the wake of President Obama's announcement of his plans for large-scale offshore drilling, Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) is laying the groundwork for urgent climate change legislation - and the fault lines of the Senate climate debate are becoming clear."
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Keith Olbermann: Predatory Banking Practices Interview With Rep. Barney Frank (Video)
Keith Olbermann, Countdown: "Keith Olbermann discusses predatory banking practices and interviews Rep. Barney Frank on 'Countdown.'"
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Could the Hutaree Militia Have Spawned a Timothy McVeigh?
Mark Guarino, The Christian Science Monitor: "A former federal prosecutor who helped convict Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh suggests that the great risk of America's growing militia movement is not necessarily in the militias themselves, but in their capacity to spark rogue actors like Mr. McVeigh, whose 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building killed 168 people."
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Media Justice and the Crime of Poverty
Angola 3 News, Truthout: "Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, PO' Poet, spoken word artist, welfareQUEEN, lecturer, Indigena Taina/Boriken/Irish mama of Tiburcio and daughter of Dee and the cofounder and executive director of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork. POOR is a grassroots, nonprofit, arts organization dedicated to providing extreme access to media, education and arts for youth, adults and elders struggling with poverty, racism, disability and border fascism locally and globally."
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China's Global Shopping Spree
Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch.com: "Think of it as a tale of two countries. When it comes to procuring the resources that make industrial societies run, China is now the shopaholic of planet Earth, while the United States is staying at home. Hard-hit by the global recession, the United States has experienced a marked decline in the consumption of oil and other key industrial materials. Not so China."
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Politics as Unusual
Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D, Truthout: "The kaleidoscopic gyrations of current events continue to create a dizzying array of patterns and hues, to the point where it has become almost impossible to discern either firm ideological reference points or consistent political philosophies."
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Carrying a Backpack of Sorrow ... Soldiers on the Edge of Suicide
Nadya Williams, Truthout: "More of our young soldiers are now killing themselves than are being killed in our wars in the Middle East. The sad statistics are at the end of this article, but the following poem by a 24-year-old former Marine, who slashed his wrists twice after four years of duty and two tours of combat, tells it all."
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Orange Is the New Black: A Year in a Women's Prison
Liliana Segura, AlterNet: "Piper Kerman was a 20-something Smith College graduate, somewhat adrift and in search of adventure, which she eventually found in an older woman named Nora. Intimidating, impossibly cool, and always with cash on hand, Nora introduced her to the international heroin trade, a dangerous, unlikely universe for a 'well-educated young lady from Boston,' as Kerman describes herself in her new memoir, 'Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison' (Random House)."
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Growth Objector
Herve Kempf reports for Le Monde on the second international conference on economic degrowth that was just held in Barcelona: "Why does the word [degrowth] arouse so much interest? Because it poses the radical questions at the heart of ecology once again, questions that the rationales of sustainable development, green growth, and green capitalism have dulled."
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Stopping Malaria With a Chastity Belt
Judith Reitman, Miller-McCune: "Meddling with the sex lives of malarial mosquitoes could stop the spread of the disease. A recent study of Anopheles gambiae conducted at London's Imperial College found that a 'male mating plug' particular to these malaria-transmitting mosquitoes is the key to their reproduction - and possibly, therefore, to their control."
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No Place to Be a Voyeur
Ruth Marcus, Truthout: "A woman did it. Turns out the Republican National Committee staffer who accompanied a group of donors to Voyeur, a bondage-themed nightclub in West Hollywood, and then turned in an expense account seeking reimbursement for the nearly $2,000 tab, is one Allison Meyers, director - make that former director - of the RNC's Young Eagles program of donors under the age of 45."
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California Banks: Who Are They Working For?
Laura Flanders, GRITtv: "Does it seem right to you that a state's ability to stay afloat should be the stuff of secretive betting pools? That's just what's happening. While states like California struggle to pay their teachers, librarians and cops, traders are gambling - by buying credit default swaps - on the fate of our biggest state. And that's just half the story."
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NOW | Can an Innovative Program Make Big Cuts in America's Prison Population?
NOW: "The number of inmates in American prisons is outpacing the system's ability to hold them all. In one startling example, California prisons hold well over 50,000 more inmates than they're designed for, even though the state has built a dozen new prisons in the last 15 years. One of the biggest reasons is rampant recidivism."
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Bill Moyers Journal | King's Dream for Equality
Bill Moyers Journal: "In the months before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had expanded his focus on racial justice to include reducing economic inequality. Now, on this week's 42nd anniversary of King's assassination, Bill Moyers sits down with experts Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander to discuss how far we've really come as a country, how poor and working-class Americans have been falling behind and what America must do to fulfill Dr. King's vision."
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