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"Scum always rises to the top, but instead of scraping it off and discarding it, most people follow it!?!"
--Sherlyn Meinz, 2008
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 | History/Culture: Flying the Flag; Faking the News |
 by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country." Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations."
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom." In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company's monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation."
Bernays was no rabid right winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that "engineering public consent" was for the greater good. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, September 03 @ 21:22:46 EDT (26 reads)
(Read More... | 7274 bytes more | Comments? | History/Culture | Score: 0)
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| Screwed Again: L.A. Sheriff Plans To Use Military Heat Ray Against Inmates |
ACLU Calls On Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Officials To Abandon Plans To Use Military Heat Ray Device Against Jail Inmates
From: ACLU.org
Use Of “Assault Intervention Device” Tantamount To Torture
LOS ANGELES – The American Civil LibertiesUnion and the ACLU of Southern California today sent a letter to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca demanding that he not employ a high-tech ray gun built for the military against prisoners at the Los Angeles County Jail.
Sheriff’s Department officials announced last week they intend to begin using an “Assault Intervention Device” developed by the Raytheon Co. that fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain on inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center’s North County Correctional Facility.
“The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people’s lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, August 30 @ 21:42:47 EDT (35 reads)
(Read More... | 3963 bytes more | Comments? | Screwed Again | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: The Public Pension Outrage and Alan Greenspan's Pension |
by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
In recent weeks, there has been a serious effort by the conservatives and even many centrists to whip up anger at public sector workers over their pensions. The basic story is that public sector workers get better pensions on average than their private sector counterparts. At the same time, most state and local pension funds have large shortfalls, implying that additional government revenue will be needed to keep them solvent.
This is supposed to make people really angry at public sector workers. The right-wing noise factory has been whipping up the hostility at public employees, sensing that they may have another ACORN on their hands. A New York Times columnist even called on retired public employees to give back pensions for which they worked and have solid legal claims.
We should recognize the attack on public sector workers for what it is: a sleazy case of scapegoating that it is intended to divert people's attention from the real villains in this economy, the Wall Street boys and the inept economic policymakers who took the economy to ruin and seem intent on leaving it there. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, August 16 @ 22:23:55 EDT (54 reads)
(Read More... | 6023 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Google and Verizon Usher in the Internets |
by: Deb Weinstein, t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday's announcement that Verizon and Google will create a distinct wireless experience put net neutrality discussions not so much on the back burner as in the recycling bin.
Although early speculation suggested that the corporate giants were going to create the equivalent of an E-Z Pass lane for content providers willing to pay for higher content speeds, the actual plan is to create not just what amounts to a distinct "set of pipes" to funnel high-bandwidth content, but to also clearly define the wireless Internet as a rules-free zone that allows providers to determine what content reaches consumers.
According to a statement by the SavetheInternet Coalition, the actual proposal "isn't just as bad as we feared - it's much worse." Like cable television, the Verizon-Google proposal would create a tiered access system for providers, but unlike cable, where consumers can choose what to watch, the decision lies with the carrier. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, August 12 @ 22:09:04 EDT (55 reads)
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| Politics: Dishonoring MLK's Legacy |
What do Beck, Palin, and the NRA have to do with the 1963 March on Washington?
By Dedrick Muhammad
This year's anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington promises to be memorable.Though big commemorations aren't typical for 47th anniversaries, thousands will be in the streets on August 28 commemorating the march, including many people advancing a social agenda that would make Martin Luther King Jr. roll over in his grave.
Flamboyant talk-show host Glenn Beck has called for a national rally on the anniversary at the exact same location as the historic protest, the Lincoln Memorial. Beck's rally theme is "Restoring Honor." According to his website, this "celebration of America" won't be political. Well then, why have Sarah Palin scheduled to deliver the keynote speech, and why is the National Rifle Association endorsing this right-wing spectacle?
From what I can gather, these folks think that America can restore its honor by strengthening individual virtue, especially if enough people come to Washington on Aug. 28 to listen to inflammatory speeches. Or pick up copies of Beck's new book "The Plan," which he'll launch at this absurd event.
What do Beck, Palin, and the NRA have to do with the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered the landmark "I Have a Dream" speech? Nothing. Beck has admitted not realizing that the legendary March occurred on Aug. 28. He credits "divine providence" for having his rally/book launch converge with such a historic event. Beck now proclaims that he is working "to finish the job" that was at the heart of King's poetic vision. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 11 @ 21:09:34 EDT (62 reads)
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| Opinion: The Missing Piece Meets the Big O |
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
I've been trying to wrap my mind around the dispiriting sense of failure that seems to have enveloped the Obama administration on the eve of the November midterms. The right hates him because he won, because he's Black, and because he won. Their utter intransigence has completely upended Obama's knee-jerk instinct for compromise and bipartisanship, making it appear that he's not getting anything done, and so the middle of the electorate feels a deep sense of disappointment exacerbated by unrelentingly bad coverage in the media. The left is up in arms because he hasn't met the lofty goals set after his election, and because he's allowed himself to get rolled by the right and their corporate paymasters on half a dozen occasions, resulting in several half-a-loaf pieces of legislation that look more like giveaways than accomplishments.
But there's a missing piece in here somewhere, and strangely enough, it took a recent Sports Illustrated article to bring the situation into focus for me. The article dealt with the scandal surrounding former USC running back and Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush, whose involvement with agents and payoffs during his college career led the NCAA to punish USC severely for his, and their, transgressions. Rather than face the issue head-on and offer mea culpas, USC chose instead to erase the Bush legacy from the annals of their sports history: ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, July 31 @ 21:43:28 EDT (65 reads)
(Read More... | 8272 bytes more | Comments? | Opinion | Score: 0)
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| Screwed Again: Florida Dengue Fever Outbreak Leads Back to CIA and Army Experiments |
by: H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Zoe Martell, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
With little fanfare on July 13, Florida officials released the findings of a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study conducted recently in the Key West area revealing that about 10 percent, or 1,000 people, of the coastal town's population are infected with the dengue fever virus.
While the July 13 release made little mention of it, the CDC study was provoked by an earlier 2009 report that a woman in New York State, who had returned from a Florida Keys' visit, had contracted dengue fever. Within a few weeks of this initial report, two additional cases were discovered in people who had returned from Key West. Over the next three months of 2009, an additional 26 cases were identified, all tied to visits to the town.
Because of these reported cases, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District conducted greatly increased aerial spraying to control mosquitoes. Following the spraying, a small amount of other cases were reported, including that of a 41-year-old Key West man who found blood in his urine and had severely aching joints. Following these additional reports, the CDC launched its study of antibodies in Key West residents and found that 5 percent of the town's residents have been exposed to the dengue virus. Said CDC dengue expert, Dr. Christopher J. Gregory, "The best estimate from the survey is that about 5 percent of [residents] was infected in 2009 with dengue." Gregory also stated, "We have known for a while it is a possible risk, but this outbreak shows it is more than possible: It is something that did happen and could happen again."
Despite the low-key nature of the Florida release, the Homeland Security Administration immediately issued a "terror alert" concerning the findings and Monroe County, within which Key West is located, also issued its own health advisory warning "effective immediately." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 23 @ 20:29:48 EDT (83 reads)
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| War News: Managed News: Inside The US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire |
by: Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
We face what appears to be a military industrial media empire so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported in disconnected segments with little historical context. A case in point: The London Times reported on June 5, 2010, that American troops are now operating in 75 countries. Has President Obama secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US Special Forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world? If so, this increase is far in excess of special forces operations under the Bush administration, and reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. Somehow this information didn't make it into the US media.
"There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth."
- Charles Dickens
The US, in cooperation with NATO, is building global occupation forces for the control of international resources in support of Trilaterialist - US, Europe, Japan - corporate profits. A New York Times report on the availability of a trillion dollars in mineral wealth in Afghanistan, on top of the need for an oil/gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea, suggests other reasons for US objectives in the region. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 19 @ 15:53:09 EDT (82 reads)
(Read More... | 6529 bytes more | Comments? | War News | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: AT&T's Dirty Politics |
From: FreePress.net
Did you read the New York Times yesterday?
In a prominent editorial, the paper exposes AT&T, Verizon and Comcast for flooding Congress with cash to kill Net Neutrality.
These companies have funneled millions of dollars in campaign contributions to elected officials. ... and now they expect a return on their investment.
But campaign contributions are only the tip of the iceberg. The phone and cable industry is quietly spending hundreds of millions more — all part of a massive effort to take control of the Internet away from the people who use it.
To shed light on this dirty game, Free Press is launching "Corruption Road: How Corporate Money and Astroturf Pollute Media Policy." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 02 @ 19:25:43 EDT (100 reads)
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| Politics: From Mississippi to Arizona: For Freedom and Human Rights |
by: Linda Burnham, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The room was small, but it was filled with enormous possibility. And everyone in there knew it.
On Saturday, May 29, after a long, hot day of marching, chanting and rallying, a group of activists met in a windowless room at the Phoenix Doubletree Inn. Many had worked nonstop for weeks on end, mobilizing the tens of thousands, who poured out of their homes in support of justice for the migratory workers and families whose lives and livelihood are threatened by Arizona's immigration policy. Their phone banking, door knocking, emailing and community meetings had produced sea of people who filled the streets with their bodies and their voices.
Obama, escucha. Estamos en la lucha.
Que queremos? Justicia. Cuando? Ahora.
And now, though their day had started before sunrise, here these activists were, 14 hours later, eager to engage in a historic dialog with veterans of Mississippi Freedom Summer. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, June 18 @ 22:03:52 EDT (107 reads)
(Read More... | 7603 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 0)
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| Rants: Enough of This Crap |
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Reports have been coming out of the Gulf for days about British Petroleum blocking access to beaches and animal-cleaning stations, in some instances using private Blackwater-style mercenaries to do so. Journalists as well as citizens have been thwarted in their attempts to see for themselves the extent of the damage being done by the runaway Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Know what I'd like to see happen? I would like to see a thousand people, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, just show the hell up down there and demand access. Citizens and reporters alike, just get down there, link arms, and walk to the beaches and the marshlands with digital cameras and cell phones for instantaneous blogging of what they see, hear and smell. Pile into as many rented, borrowed and begged boats as can be mustered and plow out there to the scene of the crime. Dare the gendarmes to stop us.
One of two things would happen: either the people would break through those unconscionable corporate barriers and show the world what is really going on in the Gulf, or the forces BP has arrayed against the truth would react with violence, which would tell us everything we need to know about what is happening, and would be enough to break that God damned criminal corporation finally and forever. Either way, there would be thousands of people down there to chronicle what is happening, a ready-made army of volunteers who can also pitch in as best they can and begin the epic process of trying to undo what has been done. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 15 @ 20:23:11 EDT (101 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Gambling With Our Future |
by: Dave Lindorff
When I lived in Hong Kong back in the ‘90s, I was surrounded by gamblers. Everyone, from wealthy bankers to stuggling street vendors, bet on everything from the horses to the stock market--and they were all well aware that there was not much difference between the two. Horse-racing was a guessing game for the masses, and a rigged deal for those in the know. But so was the stock market, with the prices of key stocks controlled by oligarchs who could pass inside information to key associates, and, increasingly, by Chinese government authorities who could make decisions that would pump up the shares of Chinese firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange--the so-called “Red Chips.”
Americans are learning that our vaunted financial markets are no different.
Look at what happened on May 6, when the equities markets plunged by 10 percent in minutes, and some big companies, including Procter & Gamble, one of the companies in the 30-stock Dow Industrials Index, fell by over 30 percent briefly. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, May 12 @ 20:35:05 EDT (132 reads)
(Read More... | 6410 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Opinion: Anti-Immigrant Vigilante Movement in Disarray |
We don't need armed vigilantes patrolling the border
By Heidi Beirich
The Minuteman movement, whose members were denounced early on as "vigilantes" by then-President George W. Bush, is growing increasingly fractured and radical as Congress prepares to make another run at reforming the immigration system.
Even Chris Simcox, a Minuteman Project co-founder who once claimed he had witnessed Chinese Red Army troops massing along the Mexican border, last year criticized other leaders of his movement for going beyond immigration to embrace unrelated issues, including tax resistance, Texas secession, and even insurrection.
Simcox's comments were followed by the arrest of Shawna Forde, leader of Minuteman American Defense, for the May 2009 murder of a 9-year-old Latina girl and her father. The killing, allegedly carried out as part of a robbery intended to help support Forde's group, put many tough-talking nativist groups on the defensive. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, May 05 @ 20:44:53 EDT (147 reads)
(Read More... | 3947 bytes more | Comments? | Opinion | Score: 0)
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| History/Culture: Transgender Community in New Orleans Claims Police Harassment |
by: Jordan Flaherty, t r u t h o u t | Report
New Orleans' black and transgender community members and advocates complain of rampant and systemic harassment and discrimination from the city's police force, including sexual violence and arrest without cause. Activists hope that public outrage at recent revelations of widespread police violence and corruption offer an opportunity to make changes in police behavior and practice.
On a recent weekday evening, a group of transgender women met in the Midcity offices of Brotherhood Incorporated, an organization that provides health care and fights the spread of HIV and AIDS in low-income black communities. When the conversation turned to the police, the mood in the room turned to outrage as each woman had a story of harassment and abuse. Tyra Fields, a health worker who facilitated the meeting, told a story of being arrested without cause one night as she walked into a gay bar. "They never give us a reason they are arresting us," she said, explaining that being black and transgendered is often enough reason for arrest, generally on prostitution-related charges.
A young and soft-spoken transgendered woman named Keyasia told a story of being persecuted by police who followed her as she walked down the street, rushed into her apartment and arrested her in her own home. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, April 26 @ 12:42:25 EDT (121 reads)
(Read More... | 11932 bytes more | Comments? | History/Culture | Score: 0)
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| International: Demonizing Iran: US Media Continues Beating War Drums |
By Dave Lindorff
Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had a lead story about Israeli
planning to possibly “go it alone” in an attack on Iran if the US were not to
“succeed” in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to “stop” it’s alleged attempts
to develop a nuclear weapon capability.
Aside from the fact that there is no hard evidence that Iran is trying to
make a nuclear bomb or even to refine uranium to obtain nuclear-grade material,
the paper ignored one crucial point: Israel cannot “go it alone” in any strike
on Iran, since its key weapons--American fighter-bombers--are supplied to it,
and kept flying, thanks to the equipment and spare parts provided by the United
States. Indeed the entire Israeli military machine is largely financed and armed
by the US.
No Israeli military effort can go forward without the full backing of the
US, and to say otherwise is to simply perpetrate a fraud on the American public,
implying that Israel is an independent actor on the world stage. It is not. ...
Note: Updated 7:35 pm 4/22/10
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, April 22 @ 17:35:47 EDT (115 reads)
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