Truthout 4/5

A Society Consumed by Locusts: Youth in the Age of Moral and Political Plagues
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "As the recent health care debate has made clear, the decades-long conservative campaign against the alleged abuses of 'big government' is far from over. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan insisted that government was the problem not the solution, he unleashed what was to become a neoliberal juggernaut against both the welfare state and the concept of the public good."
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William Rivers Pitt | Stupid People With Guns
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I'm sitting inside my dark little office on a sunny day to write this, and believe me, it's a sacrifice. We got more than 14 inches of rain here in Boston during the month of March, and it has reached the point that people have forgotten what the sun is. They're outside right now sacrificing goats and Pekingese dogs to the Yellow Orb God so the harvest will be good."
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False Spring
James Howard Kunstler, kunstler.com: "In a place like upstate New York, north of Albany, where April is more generally known as "mud season," and the wait for "ice-out" on the big lakes takes forever, and on frigid nights the windigos steal through the tops of the tall pines -- it would seem foolish to complain about perfectly beautiful weather."
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Greenspan, Summers, and Why the Economy Is So Out of Whack
Robert Reich, RobertReich.org: "I'm in the 'green room' at ABC News, waiting to join a roundtable panel discussion on ABC's weekly Sunday news program, This Week. Alan Greenspan is now being interviewed. He says he bore no responsibility for the housing bubble that catapulted the nation into a financial crisis in 2008 because no one could have known about the bubble when he chaired the Fed in the years before it burst. Larry Summers was interviewed just before Greenspan."
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Not Just Guantanamo: US Torturing Muslim Pretrial Detainee in New York City
Bill Quigley, Truthout: "Today, in New York City, the US is torturing a Muslim detainee with no prior criminal record who has not even gone to trial. For the last almost three years, Syed Fahad Hashmi has been kept in total pretrial isolation inside in a small cell under 24-hour video and audio surveillance."
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Major Earthquake Strikes Mexico, Shakes Southern California
Matt Renner, Truthout: "At least one person has died in a house collapse in Mexicali, Alfredo Escobedo, director of emergency services in Baja California, Mexico told Reuters. Escobedo told Reuters that electric was out in parts of the city. A parking garage also collapsed but apparently did not cause any fatalities."
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Deficit Commissions and Financial Transactions Taxes: Who Is Serious?
Dean Baker, Truthout: "In the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, with unemployment projected to remain at elevated levels for most of the next decade, we have the bizarre spectacle of a presidential commission on the deficit. The commission is supposed to issue a report to Congress by the end of the year on how to get the long-term deficit under control."
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Silence Is Betrayal
Stephen Rohde, Los Angeles Daily Journal: "On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a historic speech at Riverside Church in New York City, which has become known as 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.'In a powerful and inspiring speech, Dr. King declared that his deep religious faith would no longer allow him to confine himself to the domestic struggle for civil rights."
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Bombs Strike Four Embassies in Baghdad, Killing at Least 30
Laith Hammoudi, McClatchy Newspapers: "A wave of bombings struck foreign diplomatic missions in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 224 others, Iraqi authorities said. Three explosions targeted the Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian and German embassies in quick succession before noon; some of the embassies were clustered in the same area."
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US Consulate in Peshawar Attacked by Pakistan Taliban
Issam Ahmed, The Christian Science Monitor: "Three powerful blasts rocked the north-western Pakistan city of Peshawar on Monday, in a coordinated attack on the US consulate. Eight people including three Pakistan Taliban militants were killed but no one in the US consulate was hurt, according to Reuters."
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Does Obama's Nuclear Posture Review Go Far Enough?
Peter G. Cohen, Truthout: "The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) [the Defense Department's evaluation of the state of nuclear policy] will soon be made public after numerous delays, apparently caused by deep divisions within the administration on the use of these apocalyptic weapons. Some experts want them drastically reduced, others want to maintain the existing stockpile and the facilities to quickly create new weapons should the need arise."
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Concert of Europe
Sophie Gherardi, Truthout: An excerpt from La Tribune editor Sophie Gherardi's book, "Capital Sins": "Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed Angela Merkel on the front steps of the Elysee Palace. Both knew that diplomacy is like opera: the tenor and the soprano must look at one another tenderly as they warble their duet, even if they can't stand each other. 'You take what Angela Merkel says, you translate it into French, and that's exactly what I think,' the president of the Republic asserted with aplomb."
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