Thursday, July 8, 2010

Truthout 7/8

George Lakoff | Disaster Messaging
George Lakoff, Truthout: "Democrats are constantly resorting to disaster messaging. Here's a description of the typical situation: The Republicans out-message the Democrats. The Democrats, having no effective response, face disaster: They lose politically, either in electoral support or failure on crucial legislation. The Democrats then take polls and do focus groups. The pollsters discover that extremist Republicans control the most common ('mainstream') way of thinking and talking about the given issue."
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Big Oil Refuses to Negotiate Safety Bargain With Union Despite Deadly Accidents
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The United Steel Workers (USW) union announced Tuesday an attempt to reopen safety negotiations with the oil industry as tempers rage over a string of deadly explosions at oil refineries in recent months. Shell Oil, the industry leader that represents oil interests in pattern negotiations with the USW, said the industry wasn't interested, according to the USW."
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Anne Elizabeth Moore | Cambodian Authorities Don't Want You Asking: Who Killed Chea Vichea?
Anne Elizabeth Moore, Truthout: "Six years after his death, the murdered union leader still agitates. On January 22, 2004, leader of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia Chea Vichea was shot in the head and chest as he waited at a newsstand near Wat Langka in Phnom Penh. The bright celebrations of Chinese New Year were halted as garment factory workers, a constituency of over 300,000 people at the time (mostly young women), mourned the sudden loss of their most ardent advocate. Not long beforehand, Vichea had fought for and won a raise in minimum pay for garment workers. Approximately 20% of the country lives off these wages, and the union leader was widely revered. When police failed to make any progress after several days, people began to demand justice, and two men were promptly arrested, tried, and sentenced to 20 years in prison each for the murder. They were released again last year when evidence had mounted indicating their innocence."
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Making a List, Checking It Twice
Jon Letman, The Hawaii Independent: "This is a story about a surfer named Tom. Born and raised on Kauai, Tom has been surfing since he was a small child. He has a job too, of course. He's a web programmer, working with several others, implementing web shopping carts and custom applications for websites around the country. He also manages the computer network for a Hawaii-based non-profit that does environmental work. But his passion, Tom will tell you, is surfing."
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Robert Scheer | Geithner and Summers: Candidates for the McChrystal Treatment
Robert Scheer, Truthout: "It's not working. Time for the president to concede that the economy is at best stagnating and at worst about to take another steep nosedive. I don't know if we are headed for another Great Depression, as Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman dared suggest recently, but it is amply clear that the Barack Obama strategy, inherited from George W. Bush, of bailing out Wall Street in the forlorn hope that it would repair the economic damage the fat cats inflicted on the rest of us has not worked."
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News in Brief: USDA Sued Over Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus Trees, and More ...
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: US Department of Agriculture sued for permitting open-air testing of genetically engineered trees in seven southern states; Obama administration asks federal court to reinstate moratorium in Gulf; government posts $100 million for detecting cyber assaults on vital infrastructure; and more ...
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Oil Containment Effort Facing Two Key Moments
Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers: "The battle to contain BP's massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is approaching two critical junctures in coming days that could affect how the months-long catastrophe ends."
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William J. Astore | Hope and Change Fade, but War Endures
William J. Astore, TomDispatch: "If one quality characterizes our wars today, it's their endurance. They never seem to end. Though war itself may not be an American inevitability, these days many factors combine to make constant war an American near certainty. Put metaphorically, our nation's pursuit of war taps so many wellsprings of our behavior that a concerted effort to cap it would dwarf BP's efforts in the Gulf of Mexico."
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Dying-In to End the Wars
Dan Pearson, Truthout: "On February 22, 2010, Chris Gaunt began conducting a weekly sit-in at the local offices of her US Senators, Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin, in Des Moines, Iowa, urging them to refuse any further funding for war. A number of other local peace activists joined Chris in conjunction with The Peaceable Assembly Campaign. Despite these efforts, it was clear that the senators themselves were not willing to seriously consider voting against war funding or even listen to the rationale that Chris and others were offering. Chris recognized that, to be taken seriously, more had to be done."
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Iraq Bombers Kill 12 in Baghdad on Last Day of Shiite Pilgrimage
Liam Stack, The Christian Science Monitor: "Bombs killed at least 12 people in Baghdad on Thursday, the final day of a Shiite religious festival that brought as many as 1 million pilgrims to the capital to worship at the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh of Shiite Islam's 12 most holy saints. The attacks followed closely on a larger assault that killed as many as 60 people Wednesday in blasts targeting Shiites headed to a shrine in northern Baghdad."
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Joe Conason | Show Us the Money
Joe Conason, Truthout: "So often are the certitudes and pronouncements of the chattering class simply mistaken that they must always be treated with deep skepticism. That is especially true when anything important is at stake - from the arguments for invading Iraq several years ago to today's economic stagnation. Whatever the conventional wisdom tells you must be true is almost certainly false."
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BP Oil Spill: Relief Well Is Ahead of Schedule, Close to Target
Mark Guarino, The Christian Science Monitor: "Drilling for a relief well that could finally stop the BP oil spill is a few hundred feet from its target. But it will take until mid-August, officials say, for operations to begin for sealing the well."
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Nick Mottern | Questions for West Point and US
Nick Mottern, Truthout: "Shortly after the occasion of Independence Day, I want to report on going to West Point on June 28, 2001, with six colleagues to raise questions for incoming cadets about the legality and purpose of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
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