Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Truthout 6/8

Henry A. Giroux | Teachers Without Jobs and Education Without Hope: Beyond Bailouts and the Fetish of the Measurement Trap (Part 2)
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "In the United States and Europe, thousands of demonstrators have organized to protest government cutbacks and austerity measures being enacted upon the most vulnerable members of society. In the United States, students have poured out into the streets of cities on both coasts. In Berkeley, California; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Montclair, New Jersey, they are protesting massive cuts in educational funding for both public and higher education and the laying off of thousands of teachers. The cuts are serious. According to the National Education Association, there are as many as '26,000 teachers in jeopardy of layoffs in California, 20,000 in Illinois, 13,000 in New York, 8,000 in Michigan and 6,000 in New Jersey.' The mainstream media coverage of these projected job losses and even the more critical analyses of these events generally reduce soaring job layoff among public schoolteachers to an unhappy consequence of the economic recession."
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Zach Carter | Deficit Reduction = Selling Out to Wall Street
Zach Carter | Media Consortium: "In the fall of 2008, decades of finance-first, bankers-know-best economic policies coalesced to create one of the worst economic crises in history, one that the banks themselves could not survive without staggering levels of government support. Yet astonishingly, nearly two years after the crash, Wall Street is still setting the economic agenda in Washington. As Congress begins to examine broader economic policy, lawmakers are under heavy Wall Street pressure to reduce th federal budget deficit - even though that could mean deepening the jobs crisis without any substantive economic benefits."
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Dispersant Disaster: A Closer Look at BP's Toxic Solution
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "Kristian Gustavson found 'all sorts' of dead dolphins and sea turtles on Ship Island in past weeks. Dead marine life is a common sight in the Gulf of Mexico these days, but Gustavson said the water was clear. The beaches on the Mississippi barrier island were white and clean. Oil from the British Petroleum's underwater catastrophe had not reached the sprawling marine graveyard."
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Michael Winship | A Guide Through Israel's No-One Land
Michael Winship,Truthout: "'Where is the balance between wisdom and force?' I've thought of that question several times over the last few days, as accusations and counteraccusations fly over Israel's May 31 fatal commando operation against the flotilla of humanitarian aid ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. Nine civilians were killed, including a 19-year-old American citizen of Turkish descent. On Monday, four others died, Palestinian divers shot by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) off the Gaza coast. Israel says the divers were preparing a terrorist attack; the commander of Palestine's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade says it was just a training exercise."
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Pentagon Tightens Grip on the Obama Administration and the Intelligence Community
Melvin A. Goodman, Truthout: "President Barack Obama's appointment of retired Gen. James Clapper as the director of national intelligence (DNI) demonstrates the Pentagon's enormous influence over the president and indicates that there is little likelihood of genuine reform of the hidebound intelligence community."
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BP Well May Be Spewing 100,000 Barrels a Day, Scientist Says
Renee Schoof and Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers: "BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well may be spewing what the company once-called its worst case scenario - 100,000 barrels a day, a member of the government panel told McClatchy Monday."
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The Hypocritic Oath
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "Critics call out Congress for choosing the good will of doctors over the good health of patients, as the House proposes to lowering funding for unemployment health benefits while putting $22 billion toward a measure guaranteeing high doctor pay."
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Who Is to Blame for the Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?
Scott West, Truthout: "While the oil continues to gush into the Gulf, it is difficult to focus on the question of who is to blame, yet, it is something we must all consider. It is important not only to hold someone or something accountable, but also to learn from this event so we do not repeat it."
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Europe in the Iron Grip of Neoliberal Fiscal Discipline and Anti-Labor Measures
Chronis Polychroniou, Truthout: "We live in critical times. Global capitalism has plunged much of the world in a crisis of unprecedented proportions and is causing misery and suffering for millions of people. Economic insecurity, mass unemployment, declining wages, poverty, social marginalization, crime, fear and social decomposition are now defining features of many advanced societies. With growth concentrated largely on speculative financial activities and the suppression of wages, wealth is so unequally distributed in many advanced capitalist societies that the social and historical boundaries between rich and poor nations have completely broken down. Wealth and poverty coexist in close proximity in many cities in advanced societies just as they do in the less developed world."
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Robert Reich | Put Jobless Young People to Work Cleaning Up BP's Mess and Order BP to Pay
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Friday's job report was awful. For most new high school and college grads finding a job is harder than ever. Meanwhile, states are cutting summer jobs for disadvantaged young people. What to do with this army of young unemployed? Send them to the Gulf to clean up beaches and wetlands, and send the bill to BP."
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Lewis Lapham | Field of Dreams: The CIA and Me and Other Adventures in American Sports
Lewis Lapham, TomDispatch, "Rosenstock-Huessy was a German army officer in World War I, afterward a professor of medieval law in Breslau until the Nazis acquired the franchise in 1933. Signed for the next year's season by Harvard University to teach undergraduates the rudiments of Western civilization, he soon noticed that few of them grasped what he was trying to say, couldn't square the lines of thought with the circle of their emotions. To overcome the difficulties the professor recast his lectures in the idiom of sports and games, the only world, he said, 'in which the American student really has confidence ... this world encompasses all of his virtues and experiences, affections and interests.'"
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