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Wednesday 25 January 2012

Why All the Robo-Signing? Shining a Light on the Shadow Banking System
Ellen Brown, Truthout: "The Wall Street Journal reported ... that the Obama administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the 'robo-signing' scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation is revealing that it did not just happen occasionally, but was an industry-wide practice ... and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes."
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Breast Cancer Behind Bars: How a Prison Sentence Can Become a Death Sentence
Victoria Law, Truthout: "Imagine finding a lump in your breast. Imagine that your efforts to schedule a medical check-up are stymied and you have to wait weeks, if not months, for that initial exam.... Imagine that, when you finally do see a doctor, you are told that you have breast cancer. When you walk out of the office, you are locked into your prison cell with no more information or sympathy than when you walked in. This is the daily reality for women in prison."
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In State of the Union, Obama Calls for Minimum 30 Percent Tax on Millionaires
Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress: "During [the] State of the Union, President Obama - noting that one quarter of millionaires are able to pay less in taxes than millions of middle class families - called for a minimum 30 percent income tax rate for millionaires.... Earlier in the speech, President Obama also called for a mortgage refinancing plan, paid for by a new fee on the largest banks in the country."
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Activist Primer: The Nitty-Gritty on the Amendment Movement to Defeat Citizens United
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "Hundreds of protests across the country over the past weekend marked the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's controversial ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission... which unleashed unlimited independent campaign spending and gave rise to the now-infamous super PACs.... A recent poll shows that 62 percent of voters oppose the Citizens United decision ... More than half of those polled said they would support a constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling."
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Sickened and Still Waiting for Justice: 9/11 First Responders and Cold War Nuclear Weapons Workers Battle for Fair Compensation
Antoinette Bonsignore, Truthout: "In order to be considered for possible compensation benefits under the Zadroga Act, [sickened] 9/11 heroes would be required to drop any ... private litigation regarding illnesses developed from toxic exposures at the World Trade Center site. For those sickened with cancer, the choice was far more ominous since the Zadroga Act does not currently provide compensation benefits for anyone that has developed cancer - and it remains unclear when cancer victims will be covered under the Zadroga Act, if ever."
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Is Schneiderman Selling Out? Joins Federal Committee That Looks Designed to Undermine AGs Against Mortgage Settlement Deal
Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism: "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been celebrated as the progressive Great White Hope. But the danger of assuming leadership is that that individual becomes a target both of attacks and of seduction. And while I'd like to think better of Schneiderman, an announcement earlier this evening has strong hallmarks of Schneiderman falling prey to the combined pressures and blandishments of the Administration and its allies."
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Blowing the Whistle on Big Pharma
Mark Karlin, Truthout: "An untold number of patients using the drug in question (marketed under the names Epogen, Aranesp and Procrit) died as a result of its side effects.... Regulators repeatedly asked the two companies to perform safety trials, but the firms never quite got around to it... Independent research showed that the drug not only killed people, it multiplied tumor cells.... If our government regulators had had the authority to penalize these companies, some loved ones might still be alive today."
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Part II: Increasing Reliance on Guest Worker Programs
David Bacon, The Americas Program: "The creation of a vulnerable workforce through the displacement of communities is not new. Africa became 'a warren for the hunting of black skins' during the bloody displacement of communities by the slave traders.... As slave-owners sought to differentiate slaves from free people, they created the first racial categories. Society was divided into those with greater and fewer rights, using skin color and origin. When anti-immigrant ideologues call modern migrants 'illegals,' they use a category inherited and developed from slavery."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Mitt Romney Is Definitely Wall Street's Favorite Guy, and More
In today's On the News segment: Mitt Romney is definitely Wall Street's favorite guy, 83 percent of Americans approve of Obama's economic plan laid out in his State of the Union speech, the situation at Fukushima may once again be getting worse, and more.
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US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes
Ray McGovern, Consortium News: "A consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States - and Israel - that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon.... You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn't you? ... However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the [New York] Times ... to process."
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Egypt Today, One Year Later: A Revolution Revisited
Carl Finamore, BeyondChron: "There is an escalating counterrevolution in Egypt, led by the country's military rulers. Can Egypt's youth leaders and working class create genuinely independent trade union and political organizations of the oppressed in time to effectively halt this counterrevolution? This is the crucial challenge at this critical moment for the popular movements and it led me back to this great city and country to see for myself how it all unfolds on this, the first anniversary of the people's greatest victory."
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USDA Ignores Pesticide Ravaging Bee Population, Threatening Global Environment
Mike Barrett, Natural Society: "There has been a great deal of cover up and secrecy regarding the ongoing bee deaths, enraging environmentalists and activists alike.... The USDA and EPA knew why a series of 'mysterious' downfalls were occurring with crops, birds, and bees. Although technological products like cell phone towers and cell phones are hurting the bee population, it was actually the pesticide brought to you by Bayer which was causing the damage, and the USDA knew of it all along."
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Washington Post CEO, Kaplan and Predatory Accounting That Hits Poor Students Hard
Danny Weil, Truthout: "Washington Post CEO Donald Graham admits that Kaplan University engaged in a scheme to raise tuition on poor students ... for the sole purpose of avoiding a violation of the Department of Education's '90/10' rule and to assure Kaplan's profits' successful and continual reliance on subsidies from the pockets of publicly funded, federal student loan money.... If enough students borrow the cost of tuition, Kaplan would be in violation of the 90/10 rule."
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State of the Union Remarks (Video and Transcript)
President Barack Obama, Truthout: "In his election-year State of the Union address, President Obama addressed a long list of proposals, including tax reform, education, energy and foreign policy."
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

*TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES*

You may not think that you've heard a lot from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement lately, but you have.

That's because the OWS campaign, although truncheoned and pepper sprayed out of its encampments, has profoundly influenced the presidential campaign this year.

For the past several weeks, the Obama campaign (despite progressive setbacks like the signing of the "indefinite detention" military authorization bill) has rhetorically - and in some important actions - steered toward the issue of income inequality. The White House has also taken on many of the Republican myths about the economy.

The State of the Union Address, last night, was a testament to how far Obama has come in recognizing that the 99 percent can only be fooled by the 1 percent for so long.

For decades, corporate media and a lobbyist-run federal government have created a false image of the US and its problems, leading to "solutions" that only worsen our economy (just think of the GOP notion that "tax cuts" solve every national financial ill). This, according to Noam Chomsky, is what is called a "democracy" of "manufactured consent."

Despite indisputable, factual evidence that Reagan raised taxes numerous times to keep the nation out of a deep recession, the Republicans continue to claim that his tax cutting was the high watermark in American prosperity. "Trickle down" economics became so engrained in the false narrative of "manufactured consent" that even many Democrats - too beholden to corporate lobbyists and wealthy contributors - perpetuated the myth.

The OWS movement, however, drove a truck right through that fiction - among others - and forced the media to put income inequality back into the news. Polls showed increasing opposition to tax breaks for the wealthy (although most Americans already were against them) - and increasing support for rebuilding the manufacturing base. Wall Street firms and global corporations that didn't even pay taxes in the US started to be exposed in the mass media, not just on the Internet.

As a result, even the opportunistic, high-octane egomaniac, Newt Gingrich, embraced millions of dollars of third-party (Citizens United permitted) ads that trashed Romney as a plutocratic, heartless job cutter. Those ads (ironically financed by $5 million from one of the richest men in America, Sheldon Adelson) propelled Gingrich - along with Romney's cold-hearted response that working class and poor people just "envied" him - to a decisive victory among Tea Partiers and evangelicals in South Carolina (SC). There were, of course, other issues at work, including Newt's use of racist code words, but the anti-1 percent message played a decisive role in Gingrich's SC win (even though he himself is in the top 1 percent financially).

Obama's State of the Union address didn't hit every progressive note - not by a long shot - but it went a long way toward reshaping the political narrative. Ultimately, this impacts the voter who starts to see issues through a new "frame."

All of this political rhetoric is a work in progress, but thus far, the influence of OWS can be felt far and wide. It's a volatile moment - as the American empire contracts and a portion of the white population fights the inevitability of a diversified population and power structure.

But finally, we are starting to hear the rumblings of an alternative narrative, and it sounds a bit like democracy instead of corporate governance.

Mark Karlin,
Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout

In Haditha Case: Marine Gets No Jail Time in Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians
Read the Article at The Los Angeles Times

Apple's Chinese Factories to Be Audited After Violation of Working Conditions
Read the Article at The Guardian UK

Newt Gingrich Is a Master Magician of the Dark Arts: His Blathering Can Explode a Sane Person's Brain
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

In Police Training, a Dark Film on US Muslims
Read the Article at The New York Times

Executives at Bailed-Out Banks Convinced Government They Couldn't Survive on $500,000
Read the Article at Gothamist

Ten Steps to a Radical Revolution of Values in the USA
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Monsanto Says It Won't Sell Genetically Modified Maize in France in 2012
Read the Article at Reuters

Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

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