Truthout: 20 December 2011

Henry A. Giroux | Why Faculty Should Join Occupy Movement Protesters on College Campuses
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "The Occupy Wall Street protests refuse a notion of society that embraces a definition of agency in which people are viewed only as commodities, bound together in a Darwinian nightmare that celebrates the logic of greed, unchecked individualism and a disdain for democratic values. Joining with students in the Occupy movement is not merely a career choice; it is a choice about what kind of society we all want to live in."
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Why We All Need to Experience Occupy Wall Street
Preston Elrod, Truthout: "What the Occupy movement makes evident, as most of us are painfully aware, is that the current political economy does not work for most Americans, nor does it work for our brothers and sisters around the world. Yet, it does not tell us what to think. Instead, it encourages us to think and to learn through the countless discussions that take place each day at occupation sites around the country and abroad."
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Republicans in House Reject Deal Extending Payroll Tax Cut
Brian Knowlton, The New York Times News Service: "Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, urged Mr. Boehner to allow an up-or-down vote. The standoff leaves Mr. Boehner ending the year exactly where he began, in the middle of a nasty fiscal fight with Senate Democrats and his conservative freshmen in revolt, making it difficult to find a middle ground between mollifying his conference and coming up with legislation to avert disaster."
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Feinstein Earmark Quietly Paves Way for Easier Water Sales
Michael Doyle, McClatchy Newspapers: "Feinstein describes the measure as a sensible way to move water around the state. But opponents, who had earlier resisted the proposals when presented as separate legislation, consider it a boon for some well-connected farmers. 'It's an earmark worth millions to the water merchants, who can buy water at rock-bottom prices and resell it,' Patricia Schifferle, director of the environmental group Pacific Advocates, said in an interview Monday."
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Comic Artist Alison Bechdel: The Personal is Political
Anne Elizabeth Moore and Gabrielle Gamboa, Truthout: "The best-selling and critically acclaimed author of "Fun Home" and "Dykes to Watch Out For" acknowledges the larger challenges impacting all cartoonists today, like being a self-taught artist dealing with a rampantly professionalizing industry, or working with pen and ink in the digital age. 'Comics are a sort of mental illness,' she says - and she may have a point."
Read the Comic Strip

The Drone That Fell From the Sky
Nick Turse, TomDispatch: "That report and striking new statistics obtained from the military offer insights into underexamined flaws in drone technology. They are also a reminder of the failure of journalists to move beyond awe when it comes to high-tech warfare and America's latest wonder weapons - their curious inability to examine the stark limitations of man and machine that can send even the most advanced military technology hurtling to Earth."
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As Violence Continues, Egyptian General Blames Protesters
David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times News Service: "On Monday, General Emara no longer made any pretense of seeking the support of civilian leaders for military policies. While he boasted briefly of the military's success in delivering a transition to democracy, he made no reference to the military's recently formed, and almost immediately disbanded, civilian advisory council. 'We are definitely now living in a military coup,' said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a young liberal organizer. 'And the whole world should know.'"
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Robert Reich | The Defining Issue: Not Government's Size, but Who It's For
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of Bechtel, Martin-Marietta, and their ilk, but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat. Declining tax receipts are also driving the deficit. That's partly because most Americans have less income to tax these days."
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Why Is the Media Lying About New NDAA Power for Indefinite Military Detention of Americans?
Ralph Lopez, War Is a Crime: "What is becoming more worrisome than what Anonymous calls this "outright declaration of WAR against the American People," is the fact that the Congress, the president, and their media minions are working so hard to conceal it. If you need to overthrow the Constitution in order to fight terrorists, why not just say so? Why the guilty, criminal frame of mind?"
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This Bastardised Libertarianism Makes "Freedom" an Instrument of Oppression
George Monbiot, The Guardian UK: "But rightwing libertarians do not recognise this conflict. They speak ... as if the same freedom affects everybody in the same way. They assert their freedom to pollute, exploit, even - among the gun nuts - to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. They characterise any attempt to restrain them as tyranny. They refuse to see that there is a clash between the freedom of the pike and the freedom of the minnow."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: 14,000 US Deaths Linked to Fukushima Fallout
In today's On the News segment: 1 in 45 American children is homeless, the payroll tax cuts head for a showdown, a potential telecommunications monopoly falls apart, how your cell phone could be spying on you and more.
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Rabbi Michael Lerner | Occupy Chanukah and Christmas
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun: "Every political, economic, legal, and educational institution must be rebuilt with a New Bottom Line that judges efficiency, productivity and rationality based on how much they help develop in us our capacities to be loving and caring, kind and generous, ethically and ecologically sensitive, and responding with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe."
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Spotlight Durban: Durban's Climate Zombie Tripped by Dying Carbon Markets
Patrick Bond, Triple Crisis: "As the soul-deprived, brain-dead, heartless climate-policy Zombie stumbled off the Durban Platform last week in the direction of Qatar for the COP18 next year, it immediately tripped on the crumpled carbon markets. The emissions trade is failing not only in Europe but also in our own Durban backyard. An Africa Report investigation unveiled South Africa's highest-profile pilot Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project as a scam."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

Frankly, could the right wing play the victim card any harder?

From Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck to Newt Gingrich to Bill O'Reilly to Michele Bachmann, you would think that the "government" is mugging Americans, forcing them to have gay sex and indoctrinating them in communist ideology.

Practically speaking, in a daily capacity, the government - at any level - has very little power or control over the lives of most Americans (unless you count programs like Medicare prolonging the lives of millions of seniors). The biggest fear most US citizens have of "state power" is a police officer pulling them over for speeding. (Of course, if you are a minority, in many jurisdictions the police might harass you solely based on racial profiling - which makes people of color real victims.)

Doesn't it just get tiring to constantly be whining about one's victimhood? Isn't it sort of an admission of wimpiness?

Take the yearly so-called "War on Christmas" tirades from FOX and the right-wing "amen" media chorus, along with the religious organizations that fundraise off of the "pending Rapture." Is the government keeping anyone from celebrating Christmas, persecuting anyone who is Christian or keeping anyone from displaying lavish Christmas decorations that require a couple of nuke plants to light up?

"War on Christmas" and Christians? Hey, try being a Muslim in America.

The Congress just passed - and Obama signed - a bipartisan bill that could result in the indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil.

Is FOX opposing it as a violation of various provisions of the Constitution?

Of course not. They are too busy stoking the coals of phantom victimhood among their viewing audience.

Making people feel persecuted - instead of informing them about the difficult public policy decisions that are made in a democracy - increases ratings and advertising dollars. In fact, the "war on terror" is - to a great degree - playing upon the statistically unlikely odds of being a victim of terrorism.

There is no "War on Christmas," but there is one on our constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties.

Mark Karlin,
Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout

No Medicare for Tea Party Advocates "Against Socialized Medicine," No Care at All
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The Language of Empire
Read the Article at The Baltimore Sun

What We Have Now Is Lots of Money and Very Little Intellectual Substance
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Denver Police Evict Occupy Denver Protesters
Read the Article at The Denver Post

Charter School Industry Running Amok in Florida With Taxpayer Dollars
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood
Read the Article at Salon

Once Again, Speaker Boehner Seems a Prisoner of His Caucus
Read the Article at McClatchy Newspapers

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