Truthout: 22 August 2011
Truthout: 22 August 2011
"The Mouse That Roared": How
Disney Instills Greed and Consumerism - Starting at Three
Months
Martha Sorren, Truthout: "Cuddly cartoon
animals and whimsical fairy-tale stories are merely Disney's
public face ... It also owns six motion picture studios, ABC
television network and its 226 affiliated stations, multiple
cable television networks, 227 radio stations, four music
companies, three cruise lines, theatrical production
companies, publishing houses, 15 magazine titles and five
video game development studios ... Henry Giroux and Grace
Pollock explore this relationship between consumer and
industry in their book 'The Mouse that Roared: Disney and
the End of Innocence.'"
Read the Article
Jubilation Sweeps
Tripoli as Rebels Hunt Desperate Qaddafi
Suliman Ali
Sway, Hannah Allam and Shashank Bengali, McClatchy
Newspapers: "The long, brutal reign of Col. Moammar Gadhafi
appeared to collapse Sunday as rebels swept into Tripoli,
captured three of his sons and set off wild street
celebrations in a capital that he'd ruled by fear for more
than four decades, Libyan and NATO officials said."
Read the Article
On the News With
Thom Hartmann: Republicans in Congress Work to Strip Wall
Street Reform, and More
Thom Hartmann, The Thom
Hartmann Program: Moammar Qaddafi's grip on power in Libya
has slipped as rebel forces swept into Tripoli to bring down
Qaddafi, the Fed secretly gave more than $1.2 trillion in
virtually interest-free loans to big banks in 2008, Charles
Koch defends billionaires, Republicans in Congress work to
strip Wall Street reform, Bill McKibben arrested in peaceful
demonstration to oppose massive 1,700-mile-long pipeline to
bring tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, and
more.
Watch the Video and Read the
Transcript
Activists Kick Off Protests Against
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline (Video)
Tar Sands
Action: Bill McKibben, Natural Resources Defense Council
co-founder Gus Speth and LGBT activist Lt. Dan Choi led a
group of climate activists in the first day of what will be
a two-week-long daily protest at the White House.
Watch the Video
Billionaire Koch
Responds to Buffett, Refuses Call for Shared
Sacrifice
Lee Fang, ThinkProgress: "Warren Buffett
penned an op-ed last week declaring that America's
super-rich have been 'coddled long enough by a
billionaire-friendly Congress.' Lamenting the numerous tax
loopholes and special breaks afforded to billionaire
investors, Buffett noted that in his entire career, even
when capital gains rates were as high as 39.9 percent, he
never saw anyone 'shy away from a sensible investment
because of the tax rate on the potential gain.' Charles
Koch, head of the massive petrochemical, manufacturing, and
commodity speculating Koch Industries corporation, has
responded to Warren's call for shared sacrifice: 'No
Thanks.'"
Read the Article
John Pilger |
Damn It or Fear It, the Forbidden Truth Is There's an
Insurrection in Britain
John Pilger, Truthout: "For
the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and
patronage and poverty that is modern Britain, mostly the
black, the marginalized and resentful, the envious and
hopeless, there is never surprise. Their relationship with
authority is integral to their obsolescence as young adults.
Half of all black British youth between the ages of 18 and
24 are unemployed, the result of deliberate policies since
Margaret Thatcher oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth
from the bottom to the top in British history. Forget plasma
TVs, this was panoramic looting."
Read the Article
After Bruising
Political Fights, Two Governors Alter Their
Tones
Monica Davey, The New York Times News Service:
"After Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican in his first months
in office, announced early this year that he wanted to cut
collective bargaining rights for public workers, relations
between political parties in his newly red State Capitol
fell into a long, deep frost. But after six months of
bruising partisan fights, Mr. Walker seemed to issue an
utterly different message this month. He said he wanted to
meet with Democrats and to find shared agenda items - an
invitation that has been met with polite acceptance and deep
skepticism."
Read the Article
Austerity
Politics Descends on US States
Richard D. Wolff:
"Last week, Democratic Governors in New York and Connecticut
repeated the austerity politics of Greece's Prime Minister
Pappandreou and Portugal's Socrates. In doing so, they
likewise imitated the austerity politics of their Republican
and Democratic counterparts across virtually all 50 states.
Austerity for labor and the public is everywhere
capitalism's Plan B. Even capitalists now see that
capitalism's Plan A failed."
Read the Article
Dean Baker | Why
Is President Obama So Anxious to Cut Social
Security?
Dean Baker, Truthout: "On his tour of the
Midwest last week, President Obama again indicated his
interest in cutting Social Security. He repeated a proposal
that his administration first put forward in the debt
ceiling negotiations: he wants to cut the annual cost of
living adjustment by 0.3 percentage points. This cut may
sound small, but it adds up over time."
Read the Article
Assad Says He
Rejects West's Call to Resign
Anthony Shadid and Nada
Bakri, The New York Times News Service: "President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria dismissed American and European calls for
him to step down as 'meaningless' on Sunday, and he declared
that Syria's ailing economy could withstand escalating
international sanctions. In an interview with Syrian
television, Mr. Assad hardly mentioned the hundreds of
thousands of protesters this summer who have posed the
gravest challenge to his family's four decades of rule."
Read the Article
Mystery of
Qaddafi's Whereabouts Looms Large in Conflict's
Endgame
Rick Gladstone, The New York Times News
Service: "For all his bluster and bombast over the past four
decades as Libya's quirky ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was
mysteriously and conspicuously absent as forces of the
six-month-old Libya rebellion encircled what they believed
to be his ultimate Tripoli hideout, the Bab al-Azizya
compound."
Read the Article
Rick Perry Moves
to the Right on Immigration
Robin Abcarian and Maeve
Reston, The Los Angeles Times: "Immigration advocates in
Texas were heartened last year when the Republican governor,
Rick Perry, flatly stated that Arizona's crackdown on
illegal immigrants 'would not be the right direction for
Texas.' But in June, Perry convened a special session of the
Legislature, hoping to pass a measure outlawing sanctuary
cities - places where police are not allowed to ask people
they detain about immigration status."
Read the Article
From Sacrilege to
Sacredness: What's the Big Deal About Snowmaking?
Mary Sojourner, New Clear Vision: "I would tell you
that I stood on this mountain that the Dine call
Dook'o'oosIId and watched a Navajo apprentice healer touch a
boulder as tenderly as he might have touched his child, but
I worry that you might relegate me to the long-gone New Age.
And if I tell you that I heard a Dine woman say that
disrespecting the Mountain is a form of genocide, 'because
the health of the Dine men is linked with the Mountain; and
the health of the Mountain is linked with their health,' I
hope you would listen with an open heart."
Read the Article
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY
HEADLINES
Rick Perry believes that he has earned respect for being a man so brazen that he didn't even blink when confronted with the apparent fact that he executed an innocent man. Indeed, he grew even more defiant as exculpatory evidence grew.
And, then, Perry made sure that the details of his eagerness to kill the "convicted" - but apparently innocent - man, were covered up by dissolving an investigation into the state killing of Cameron Todd Willingham.
Only a man with "guts," who carries a laser-sighted handgun with deadly, hollow-point bullets - even when he jogs with his security detail - could take pride in dismissing the Texas State murder of a man who wasn't likely guilty. As one person in a focus group on Perry, commissioned by a GOP gubernatorial primary opponent, crowed with admiration: "It takes balls to execute an innocent man."
A New Yorker article revealed that the investigating commission, before Perry dissolved it, found that the primary evidence against Willingham, "seemed to deny 'rational reasoning' and was more 'characteristic of mystics or psychics.'"
Justin Elliott of Salon believes that Perry's unapologetic execution of Willingham may have actually helped Perry beat Kay Bailey Hutchison when she challenged him in 2010:
Perry went on to cruise to a 20-point victory in the primary and an easy win in the general election.
[It] leaves one wondering, did the controversy actually help him in the GOP primary? If Perry jumps into the presidential contest, don't expect his primary rivals to bring up this old case ...
Some wags have joked that Perry is George W. Bush without a brain. Perhaps, Perry's pride in signing the death warrant for Willingham shows that he is also George W. Bush - who set a record for assembly-line executions in Texas - without a heart.
That's kind of like being Genghis Khan without the compassion.
Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at
Truthout
Juan Cole: Top Ten Myths About
the Libyan War
Read the Article at Informed
Comment
The First US Nuclear Power Plant to Gain a
License in Over a Decade Is Scheduled to Go Online Next
Year
Read the Article at Mother
Jones
Civil Disobedience on Tar Sands Begins
Outside the White House
Read the Article at The Nation
Wall
Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Fed
Loans
Read the Article at Bloomberg
Tone
Deaf: Romney to Nearly Quadruple His Mansion's
Size
Read the Article at The Boston
Globe
Another Protest at San Francisco's BART Train
System Against Police Shootings
Read the Article at CNN
Will
Clarence and Virginia Thomas Succeed in Killing Obama’s
Health Care Plan?
Read the Article at The New
Yorker
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