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.'"
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.'"
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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
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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
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Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas Succeed in Killing Obama’s Health Care Plan?
Read the Article at The New Yorker

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