Friday, July 30, 2010

Truthout 7/30

Top Democrats Pressure White House Over WikiLeaks Revelations
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The Afghan war is coming under renewed scrutiny as web surfers across the world browse through the bloody battle scenes and military follies described in the thousands of classified military reports released by WikiLeaks, and now top Democrats are finally expressing concerns over the longevity of a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade."
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A Movement Rises in Arizona
Jordan Flaherty, Truthout: "Three months ago, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the notorious SB 1070, a bill that put her state at the forefront of a movement to intensify the criminalization of undocumented immigrants. Since then, activists have responded through legal challenges, political lobbying, grassroots organizing and mass mobilizations. More than a hundred thousand people from across Arizona marched on the state capitol on May 29."
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Going Where Glenn Beck Wouldn't: Defining White Culture
Mikhail Lyubansky, Op-Ed News: "My facebook and twitter friend @clyde_online, a community organizer in DC, has been pestering me to define U.S. white culture. Up until now, I've demurred. Frankly, there are other things I'd rather write about. Besides, though I'm certainly aware of the status and meaning that our civilization has managed to assign to whiteness and realize that I benefit from both, I don't personally buy into either. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of whiteness altogether."
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BP Wants Experts to Keep Quiet; House Says No Way
Deb Weinstein, Truthout: "BP's headache continues to get worse. In a July 29 letter to BP America's President Lamar McKay, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-California) and Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) have demanded BP's executive appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by August 6. Unlike then-CEO Tony Hayward's testimony which focused on the April 20 explosion, this time Waxman and Markey are looking into a less-visible component of the BP disaster."
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News in Brief: Administration May Bypass Congress on Immigration Reform, and More ...
Obama administration considers ways to act on immigration reform without Congressional approval; worldwide protests greet Arizona law; July bloodiest month in Afghanistan; floods in Pakistan leave hundreds dead; Rangel charged with 13 ethics violations; UN rights body tells Israel to lift Gaza blockade; Obama signed war funding bill providing $37 billion more for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Justice Department explores espionage charges against WikiLeaks.
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Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld | Our Complicity
Dahr Jamail, Dahr Jamial's Dispatches: "Not long ago we strolled along a beautiful white-sand beach in Orange Beach, Alabama, taking photos of freshly washed ashore black and brown tar balls. We watched little boys playing in the shallow surf, trying to catch minnows, as red oil boom bobbed in the waves just offshore behind them. This is the world we have all created."
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Homes Keep Falling Into Foreclosure as Programs Fail to Help
Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers: "More than three years into the housing crisis that helped trigger a worldwide recession, the torrid pace of home foreclosures continues to tear at the core of the American dream. New figures Thursday from Realty-Trac showed that foreclosure activity declined over the first six months of the year in nine of the 10 large metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates."
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Zombie Neocon Strategy Behind Israel's "Bomb Iran" Campaign
Gareth Porter, Truthout: "Reuel Marc Gerecht's screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack. What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran."
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Strengthen Social Security Coalition Puts Both Parties on Notice
Isiah J. Poole, Campaign for America's Future: "More than 60 organizations that represent more than 30 million Americans are banding together to deliver a straightforward message to politicians this fall: Don't mess with Social Security. 'Don't turn Social Security in the scapegoat for the deficit,' said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee today at a news conference in Washington's National Press Club launching the Strengthen Social Security campaign."
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The Angry Left Needs Hugs and Kisses
Jules Siegel, Truthout: "The angry left is angry with Barack Obama. It's lying on the floor kicking and screaming and holding its breath. Goodness is not being accomplished. Injustice continues sort of unabated. Bad people are doing bad things. This is obviously all the president's fault. I wish. The angry left presumes that the president is in full control of the government, when he's obviously not. Even George W. Bush learned that and he was a Republican."
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Henry Giroux: "Youth in a Suspect Society" (Audio Interview)
Allen Ruff, host of the listener-supported radio program "A Public Affair," WORT, 89.9FM, Madison, Wisconsin, interviews Henry Giroux to discuss his new book, "Youth in a Suspect Society."
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Who Pays for Agricultural Dumping? Farmers in Developing Countries
Timothy A. Wise, TripleCrisis.com: "Brazil and the United States may have settled, for now, their long-running WTO dispute over U.S. cotton subsidies, but the issues it raised remain. After all, Brazilian producers were not the only ones hurt by U.S. dumping of its highly subsidized cotton on world markets, which not only took market share from competing producers, it depressed the international price for all producers."
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Greek Society Begins to Crack Under Harsh Measures
Apostolis Fotiadis, Inter Press Service: "Every working day, more than a hundred people crowd around the entrance of the merchant and passenger boats' reconstruction industry, well known as 'The Zone', in the southern suburb of Attiki. Most of them are unemployed steel workers and torch welders, who wait desperately from the early hours of the morning for an announcement of jobs offered on a daily basis on the ships that dock at the port."
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The Deception of Real-World Inception
David Sirota, Truthout: "For all of its 'Matrix'-like convolutions and 'Alice in Wonderland' allusions, the new film 'Inception' adds something significant to the ancient ruminations about reality's authenticity - something profoundly relevant to this epoch of confusion. In the movie's tale of corporate espionage, we are asked to ponder this moment's most disturbing epistemological questions: Namely, how are ideas deposited in people's minds, and how incurable are those ideas when they are wrong?"
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What a Legal Pot Economy Would Look Like (Video)
Haik Hoisington, AlterNet: "This fall Californians will go to the polls with a chance to make history. They will be able to cast a vote to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol or cigarettes. California's Proposition 19 is one of many similar initiatives cropping up on state ballots across the country."
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