Truthout: 7 October 2011

Noam Chomsky | The Threat of Warships on an "Island of World Peace"
Noam Chomsky, Truthout: "Jeju Island is once again threatened by joint U.S.-South Korean militarization and violence: the construction of a naval base on what many consider to be Jeju's most beautiful coastline.... The protest now taking place on Jeju counts as a critical struggle against a potentially devastating war in Asia, and against the deeply rooted institutional structures that are driving the world toward ever more conflict."
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Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Three Women Activists
Hannah Allam and Adam Baron, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to three women activists, two from Liberia and one from Yemen, in recognition of their nonviolent campaigns toward peace and women's rights in conflict zones. The 2011 laureates are: Africa's first democratically elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of Liberia; Leymah Gwobee, also of Liberia; and Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni civil society campaigner."
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"Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground"
Jonathan Steele, Counterpoint Press: "This tarnished history of peace talks and cease-fire agreements appears to have imbued U.S. decision makers and the American electorate with a deep prejudice against them.... Since freedom must not be compromised, the notion that a war to safeguard and spread liberty should give way to talks sounds weak and unworthy of a nation that is the world's sole superpower and whose sacred self-appointed mission is to prevail.
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Occupy Wall Street: Demanding Justice
Terrance Heath, Campaign for America's Future: "Empathy makes casting moral judgments upon others more complicated and more difficult, because seeing something of our reality in them gives them a context - a 'story' like our own, which frames their choices and actions with complexities that bleed over into our stories and those of others. For conservatives like Brooks, empathy in government becomes even more troublesome, because it subverts morality by shielding people from the consequences of their sins."
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The "Getting" of Assange and the Smearing of a Revolution
John Pilger, Truthout: "It is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a 'grave danger' to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a Temporary Surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. The founder and editor of WikiLeaks, who published the greatest leak of official documents in history, providing a unique insight into rapacious wars and the lies told by governments, is likely to find himself in a hell hole not dissimilar to the 'torturous' dungeon that held Pvt. Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower."
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Ten Years After: Ten Afghan Perspectives in Film
Community Supported Film, Truthout: "The tenth anniversaries of 9/11 and the October 7 US-led invasion of Afghanistan are upon us. As Americans reflect on the impact of these events on our lives, the grassroots film series 'The Fruit of Our Labor' reflects on the situation from an Afghan perspective. Seven of the ten films focus on women and women's issues; four of which were filmed and produced by Afghan women. Their cameras eavesdrop on the saucy banter of women as they tend to everyday tasks such as baking bread and planting seedlings, and on their consoling but firm words as they counsel each other in the aftermath of traumatic war injuries."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: The 99 Percent Movement Marched Through the Streets of Washington, DC, and More
In today's On the News Segment: The 99 percent movement marched through the streets of Washington, DC, yesterday, demanding an end to the wars; the economy added 103,000 jobs as the unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent; today is the tenth anniversary of starting the war in Afghanistan; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stripped Republicans of the power to introduce endless amendments; 46 lawmakers called for an investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; and more.
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"American Autumn" Opens in Beauty
Leslie Thatcher, Truthout: "October 6, 2011, was a perfect autumn day in our nation's capital: bright and clement. And at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, from early this morning, people gathered from across the US and places beyond to 'stop the machine' and demand that human need, not corporate greed, guide the direction of this country. The October 2011 movement - planned six months ago - is separate from, but wholly synergistic with the 'Occupy Washington' movement in nearby McPherson Park."
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Eleven Facts You Need to Know About the Nation's Biggest Banks
Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress: "The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests - as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said - makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession."
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"Bearing the Weight" (Video)
Mona Haidari and Hamid Arshia, The Fruit of Our Labor: This video is part of a series of grassroots films about Afghanistan by Afghan women, focusing on women's situations in Afghanistan ten years since the US-led invasion.
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BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

If there is a populist change afoot making the pragmatic case to rebalance economic income in America, Elizabeth Warren is its political voice.

In a nascent campaign for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy and now occupied by Republican Scott Brown, Warren has broken through the DC Democratic tacit oath to "see no evil" where it exists in the financial and corporate world.

In a debate this week among Democratic hopefuls vying in the primary for the right to take on Brown, Warren put it bluntly:

The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. This happened more than three years ago, and there still has been no basic accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it.

"Everyone has to follow the law," Warren flatly declared during the debate.

But right now on Wall Street, the only people that the politicians and police are applying the law to are the protesters.

For years, those who corrupted our banking system have gotten away with the biggest financial heist in history - and gotten bonuses and a government bailout for bringing America to its knees.

Shortly after announcing her candidacy this fall, Warren embarked on a "talking tour" in which she violated the Capitol Hill (and White House) commitment to put corporations on some sort of deified pedestal. With her ability to speak in frank, simple terms, she told one gathering: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his [or her] own. Nobody!" She then went on to list all the ways in which government services, education and research support the private sector and enhance corporate success. (The Internet, it should be noted, grew out of a series of government research projects - and corporations are making billions upon billions of dollars now from this "public commons" research.)

You can't strengthen a financial system by rewarding those who grotesquely undermine the nation through manipulation for personal enrichment - and, to boot, expect the government to provide them with services and educated workers for free.

Warren knows that, and she is offering a welcome dose of common sense. What's more, she's opening up the floodgate for like-minded politicians to, as George Lakoff would say, "reframe" the national debate.

This isn't about class warfare, Warren argues, this is about the reality of how we prosper as a nation.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Paul Krugman Supports Occupy Wall Street Over "Exquisitely Tailored Plutocrats"
Read the Article at The New York Times

Hundreds of Continental and United Airlines Pilots Demonstrated on Wall Street
Read the Article at The Daily Mail

How Does Occupy Wall Street Impact Obama?
Read the Article at The Washington Post

Sen. Dick Durbin Tells Americans to Boycott the Bank of America for Ripping Off Customers
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Misplaced White House Priorities: Shutting Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in California
Read the Article at The Associated Press

"We Are the 99 Percent" Creators Revealed
Read the Article at Mother Jones

The Sarah Palin/Fox News Debacle
Read the Article at Media Matters

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