Saturday, April 17, 2010

Truthout 4/17

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | Crocodile Tears on Wall Street
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Truthout: "With all due respect, we can only wish those Tea Party activists who gathered in Washington and other cities this week weren't so single-minded about just who's responsible for all their troubles, real and imagined.... If they thought this through, they'd be joining forces with other grassroots Americans who in the coming weeks will be demonstrating in Washington and other cities against High Finance, taking on Wall Street and the country's biggest banks.
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Obama Grants Hospital Visitation Rights to Gay and Lesbian Couples
Linda Feldmann, The Christian Science Monitor: "Gay rights activists cheered Obama's memo on hospital visitation rights, but the president faces increasing tension with constituencies who helped elect him and expected faster results."
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Max Ajl | Boldness vs. Bullets at the Gaza Border
Max Ajl, Truthout: "The razor-wire and concrete frontier between Israel and Gaza is intermittently interrupted by remote-controlled metal observation towers equipped with motion sensors. When the sensors detect something, the metal petals atop the towers peel back, blooming. A small bloom means the interior camera is peering around. A big bloom occurs when the people controlling the machine guns inside the turret are thinking about blasting someone."
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David Sirota | Journalism's Parasites
David Sirota, Truthout: "No matter how much this week's Pulitzer Prize triumphalism hides it, the fact remains that journalism these days is 'a disaster,' as Ted Koppel said recently. And unfortunately, retrospection dominates the news industry's self-analysis. Like dazed tornado victims, most media experts focus on what happened and why, oh lord, why?"
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An Insignificant Yemeni at Guantanamo Loses His Habeus Petition
Andy Worthington, Truthout: "Such is the prevailing disregard for the fate of the remaining prisoners in Guantanamo that last week, when Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, submitted a declaration in a case brought by a former prisoner, in which he stated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all knew - and didn’t care - that 'the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent,' almost no one noticed that one of the remaining 183 men had just lost his habeas corpus petition in a US court."
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The Firm Not Charged in Goldman Case Made Billions on Collapse
Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers: "New York hedge fund manager John Paulson was one of the first to predict the collapse of the subprime mortgage market — and to cash in on his knowledge. By late 2005, he already had concluded that the subprime loans underlying high-yield bonds being sold worldwide would become worthless, even as some Wall Street firms were still ramping up their sale of related securities.... As a result, his firm, Paulson & Co., made a $3.7 billion profit by betting against the housing market as it nose dived in 2006 and 2007."
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Ray McGovern | Lie to Congress; Get Fourth Star
Ray McGovern, Truthout: "U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander may well be harboring the thought attributed to prevaricator Oliver North upon being spared punishment - and instead getting rewarded handsomely - for lying about the Iran-Contra Affair: 'Is this a great country or what!'"
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Froma Harrop | Politicians Honoring Their Kind
Froma Harrop, Truthout: "Fly from Atlanta to Houston, and you may start at an airport named after two mayors and land at one named for a president. While in the air, you pass over hundreds of bridges, roadways and public buildings - all honoring politicians, alive or dead.... But politicians control the naming process. They are apparently not embarrassed to paint the tags of cronies, undistinguished judges and even themselves on projects paid for by the taxpayers. Shouldn't this bother more people?"
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Blackwater Indicted for Violating Federal Firearms Laws
Joseph Neff and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers: "Five former employees of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater violated a series of federal firearms laws to give the company a leg up in the military contracting and training business, a federal indictment charged Friday. Blackwater officials falsified federal paperwork to conceal a gift of firearms to Jordan's King Abdullah II, whom Blackwater was courting as a client, the indictment charges."
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