US Soldiers | Busted at Occupy | Fukushima | Long Revolution

Please include Truthout in your year-end charitable giving.

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Torture's Other Victims: US Soldiers
Jason Leopold, Truthout: "The Iraq war isn't over. For tens of thousands of soldiers returning from the battlefield, it never will be. Some of these men and women will turn to alcohol and drugs to ease their mental injuries; some will end up homeless, unemployed and divorced ... Most will be forgotten. Fortunately, there are journalists like Joshua Phillips who have taken great pains to preserve the memories of a handful of veterans whose lives have been ravaged by the war."
Watch the Video Interview

Greg Palast | Our Photographer - and His Lens - Busted at Occupy
Greg Palast, Truthout: "On Saturday, our [photographer] ... along with a bishop of the Episcopalian Church and three ministers of various faiths ... were pushed face-first into the dirt at Duarte Park, handcuffed and hauled off in a police van to the lockup in Lower Manhattan ... [Police] weren't impressed by Bishop George Packard's red robes. His excellency was handcuffed and charged along with ... another newsman for trespassing on the property owned by the bishop's own church, Trinity."
Read the Article

"The Protester" Becomes Time's Person of the Year, Wants More
J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "This year's 'Protester' was not protesting government paralysis. Governments are not the primary bearers of power in the geopolitical landscape. Bigger things are at work, and the biggest of these is the globalization of capital ... 'The Protester' is focused on something bigger than Time Magazine's cover, bigger even than governments. 'The Protester' in 2011 is focused on saving the world by turning it over to the people who live here."
Read the Article

House GOP Rejects Tax-Cut Plan, Making Hike More Likely Jan. 1
David Lightman and William Douglas, McClatchy Newspapers: "The bitter showdown of Republicans versus the White House and congressional Democrats over a Social Security tax break grew uglier and more tense Tuesday, and the result is that 160 million people face the increasingly likely prospect of a tax increase Jan. 1 ... The Senate adjourned last week until mid-January ... The standoff is about partisan positioning for next November's elections. Each party thinks it can persuade voters that the other is being irresponsible."
Read the Article

Can a Montana Program to Reduce Veteran Suicide Succeed at the National Level?
Eric Newhouse, Truthout: "As America closes out its mission in Iraq, the Pentagon is gearing up to provide hundreds of thousands of returning soldiers with a new safeguard: intensive screenings for mental and emotional problems caused by combat. But military suicides - on average, one soldier has taken his or her own life every 36 hours between 2005 and 2010 - aren't slowing down yet, according to an alarming new report."
Read the Article

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Tons of Radioactive Waste Found Underneath Fukushima, and More
In today's On the News segment: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of a major global economic downturn, Chinese hackers breach the US Chamber of Commerce database, the US government tries to keep latest strain of bird flu secret and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

Three Million Could Lose Jobless Pay in Impasse
Robert Pear, The New York Times News Service: "More than three million people stand to lose unemployment insurance benefits in the near future because of an impasse in Congress over how to extend the aid and how to offset the cost. Jobless benefits have been overshadowed by debate on a payroll tax cut, but have become a huge sticking point in negotiations on a bill that deals with both issues."
Read the Article

With the Long Revolution Underway, We Need to Think Big
David Palumbo-Liu, Truthout: "I attended the demonstration in Oxford, which drew the largest crowd in the southwestern part of the United Kingdom. I heard things one could never have imagined before at a labor strike ... The message overall was that it was time to think big - this global crisis demands a global response, and the suffering of one population in one spot on the globe connects intimately with that of others."
Read the Article

Why "Evidence-Based" Education Fails
Paul Thomas, The Daily Censored: "How did the largest and most aggressive federal education initiative, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), garner bipartisan support under George W. Bush, and how have the central tenets of that legislation - accountability, standards, and testing - maintained and increased their value as approaches to education reform despite the tremendous evidence that they do not work? One answer may lie in the power of claims that NCLB and the accountability paradigm are 'evidence-based,' scientific, and thus objective."
Read the Article

Crippling the Right to Organize: GOP Inaction May Leave National Labor Relations Board Inoperable (Video)
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "The National Labor Relations Board, the government body that oversees labor complaints, is on the verge of being shut down ... Unless a solution is found, the NLRB would be frozen come January. Without the NLRB, workers would lose their legal recourse to defend their right to organize and to protect themselves against anti-union activity by employers."
Watch the Video

Click here for more Truthout articles
BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

How are Citizens United and Newt Gingrich related?

You have to go back to 2010 and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which officially bestowed corporate personhood on campaign financing. The case was to determine whether or not a third party organization or corporation could pay for media (including advertising) that might affect a political campaign. The media in question in Citizens United was a movie that attacked Hillary Clinton.

Citizens United won the case on a re-hearing and opened the floodgates for corporations and organizations to basically support or oppose candidates without financial restriction through the use of political broadcasts, for example.

Newt Gingrich and his third wife, Callista, own Gingrich Productions. Gingrich Productions has worked closely with Citizens United on a wide variety of films, including "Rediscovering God in America," "Rediscovering God in America II," "Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny," "We Have the Power," and "Nine Days That Changed The World." The work of Gingrich Productions, which is a for-profit corporation, is integrated into the work of Citizens United - and into the pockets of the Gingriches.

Interestingly, as a product of Gingrich Productions, Callista - not to be outdone by her prolific, conservative, revisionist-historian author-husband - recently wrote a children's book promoting American exceptionalism, "Sweet Land of Liberty," starring Ellis the Elephant: "Traveling through time, Ellis partakes in the pivotal moments that have shaped our nation's unique history and character. Authored by Callista Gingrich and illustrated by Susan Arciero, Sweet Land of Liberty will delight young and old alike through the charming adventures of Ellis the Elephant and the story of why America is an exceptional nation."

Gingrich is actually a branding, moneymaking machine, with revenue sources that pay for luxury expenses such as his reportedly $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's. His politics and his merchandising of himself for multimillion-dollar profits are inextricably intertwined. Just the other day, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Gingrich's campaign was paying a Gingrich company to rent mailing lists. In essence, that is just one small alleged example of how the Newtster may be personally making money off of running for president.

Gingrich "enterprises" extend far and wide beyond Gingrich Productions, including examples such as his infamous Freddie Mac "consulting fee." According to ABC News, "the former speaker of the House claims he never lobbied, but was merely a 'consultant' for the company, which paid him $1.6 million in nine years."

What is at issue here in Gingrich's relationship to Citizens United, his companies, his consulting fees, etcetera, is that his work to keep himself in the public eye is inextricably tied to the marketing of Newt Gingrich as a product. Perhaps he is sincerely running for president, but he is also enhancing his brand.

Gingrich doesn't appear to be making a dash for the dollars with his provocative pronouncements, but he is.

In some ways, he is the actual physical embodiment of corporate personhood, because you don't know where Gingrich the entrepreneur begins and Gingrich the candidate ends. But we will probably find out the latter soon enough.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

There Is No "War on Christmas," but There Is One on Our Constitutionally Guaranteed Civil Liberties
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

House GOP Takes a Political Beating in Payroll Tax Fight
Read the Article at CBS News

Egyptian Women March on Frontlines of Country's Revolution
Read the Article at MSNBC

Local Police Stockpile High-Tech, Combat-Ready Gear
Read the Article at The Center for Investigative Reporting

Wisconsin Democrats File Rebuttal to GOP Lawsuit Against Walker Recall Procedures
Read the Article at Talking Points Memo

Activists Say 111 Killed in Syria's "Bloodiest Day"
Read the Article at Reuters

When Companies Promote Work-Life Balance for Low-Wage Workers, Everyone Wins
Read the Article at Utne Reader

Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

ENDS

© Scoop Media