Monday, July 26, 2010

Truthout 7/26

Dahr Jamail | BP Response Workers Report Low Morale, Lack of Pay, Sickness
Dahr Jamail, Truthout: "BP oil disaster response workers are reporting endemic problems, such as not being paid on time, low morale, rampant sickness, equipment failures and being lied to regularly. 'Yesterday was a catastrophe,' one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Truthout, 'People are waiting 2-3 hours for their paychecks to be brought to them and I know for a fact three people that didn't get paid and no reason was given.'"
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Afghan War Leaks Expose Costly, Deceitful March of Folly
Ray McGovern, Truthout: "The brutality and fecklessness of the US-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home."
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Khmer Rouge Executioner Found Guilty, but Cambodians Say Sentence Too Light
Jared Ferrie, The Christian Science Monitor: "In the first verdict at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal, the Khmer Rouge's chief executioner has been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his nom de guerre, 'Duch,' ran the notorious S-21 prison where as many as 17,000 people were tortured before being killed."
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John McCain: "We Already Won That One"
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout: "On July 15, I attended a reception in Washington, DC, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. Geoff Millard and I spoke to Sen. John McCain. When Geoff introduced himself as chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War, McCain retorted, 'You're too late. We already won that one.'"
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Stop Hyperventilating: Obama Will Not Choose War With Iran
Steve Clemons, The Washington Note: "In September 2007, before the release of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, I wrote an article for Salon titled 'Why Bush Won't Bomb Iran.' At the time, the belief that George Bush and Dick Cheney would take military action against Iran was palpable. When I wrote my piece which was based on a great number of discussions with intelligence analysts, military brass, and others in the national security bureaucracy, I was temporarily vilified by voices on the left and the neoconservative right for popping the bubble of their deterministic obsession that the US was on its way to bombing Iran."
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Rep. Ryan Pushes Ominous "Roadmap for America's Future"
Allen McDuffee, Truthout: "In an apparent attempt to gain some semblance of support for the only definitive and substantive Republican budget plan, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) has turned to a series of think-tank presentations for backing in the absence of support from his Congressional peers."
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The Opposites Game: The Strangeness of Our American World in One Article
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "Have you ever thought about just how strange this country's version of normal truly is? Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that's been on my mind for a while. It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next to no reaction, despite the true weirdness buried in it."
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BP's Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Policy: The Well's Corked, but Public and Government Are Left in the Dark
Dave Lindorff, This Can't Be Happening: "Prof. Bob Bea, of UC Berkeley, a civil engineer with years of expertise in marine oil drilling, says he is concerned that during the current crisis of BP's blown-out well deep under the Gulf of Mexico, government scientists may not be getting all the information they need from the secretive oil company in order to make intelligent decisions about shutting down the gusher."
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Eugene Robinson | This Was All Secret?
Eugene Robinson: "The tens of thousands of classified military documents posted on the Internet Sunday confirm what critics of the war in Afghanistan already knew or suspected: We are wading deeper into a long-running, morally ambiguous conflict that has virtually no chance of ending well. The Obama administration, our NATO allies and the Afghan government responded to the documents - made public by a gadfly organization known as Wikileaks - by saying they tell us nothing new. Which is the problem."
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WikiLeaks Founder Assange Press Conference (VIDEO)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gave a press conference at the Frontline Club in London Monday to address the publication of classified documents from the US government.
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The Budget Deficit Chicken Hawks
Dean Baker, Truthout: "Most people are familiar with the concept of 'chicken hawks.' Chicken hawks are the politicians who are anxious to send other people to risk their lives in war, but somehow managed to avoid service when they had the opportunity to fight themselves. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush are the leading members of the chicken hawk society."
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US Financial Regulations: Plugging Holes in a Faulty Dam
Jeff Madrick, TripleCrisis: "Paul Volcker says the financial reregulation bill passed to much hoopla by Congress in mid-July deserves only a grade of B. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, says the Basel committee of the Bank for International Settlements is already backing off stern capital requirements for banks that the bill was supposed to establish. Michael Mandel, the former chief economist of Business Week, says he cannot even tell you what the financial regulation bill is trying to accomplish."
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Don't Let Dirty Water Frack Up New York's Clean Water (Video)
John Sellers, Stand Up New York: "Did you know that Halliburton (yes that Halliburton) patented fracking: a process that mixes millions of gallons of precious fresh water with a proprietary cocktail of toxics, injects it through our drinking water table, and into the ground at a pressure that will fracture rock? Did you know that when (ex-Halliburton CEO) Dick Cheney was VP he slipped a fracking exemption into the Safe Drinking Water Act?"
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Clean Energy and the US Handicap: One Man's Story
Melinda Burns, Miller-McCune: "On-again, off-again federal support cripples emerging industries in the United States, America's pre-eminent wind energy pioneer believes. Jim Dehlsen, America's most successful wind power innovator and entrepreneur, has been tilting at windmills since the early 1980s. Back then, he installed one of the largest wind farms in the world in the mountains near Mojave, Calif., where a strong gust could snap a windmill blade in two. He called it his 'Victory Garden.'"
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