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You can also donate by check, made payable to: Or call in your donation: Friday 20 April 2012 Vermont Votes to Overturn Citizens UnitedMike Ludwig, Truthout: "Progressive activists are celebrating another victory today after the Vermont Legislature became the third in the nation late Thursday to pass resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the controversial 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed corporations and other groups to spend unlimited amounts of money influencing elections and gave rise to the now-infamous Super PACs." Read the Article Who Killed Shaima Alawadi? Arun Gupta, Truthout: "Perhaps it was an act of random hatred; perhaps it was a family dispute. What is certain is that Shaima Alawadi came to the United States for the freedom to be who she was. But instead, she apparently died because of her identity, whether it was being Muslim or Iraqi or a woman. In that regard, she joins either the thousands of other Iraqis who were killed without ever having a chance to escape homegrown dictators and US bombs, or the thousands of American women who never had a chance to escape violent partners." Read the Article The Republican Brain on the Republican Brain Chris Mooney, Truthout: "The truth is that even before the book was out, conservatives were attacking it without reading it - claiming that I was calling them abnormal. I most certainly was not. All the scientific research on what is called the 'psychology of ideology' shows that we vary in a natural range on a number of traits, some of which predispose us toward liberalism, some of which have the opposite effect. But the range itself is natural and normal. It may even be a standard feature of humanity's operating system." Read the Article Former Guantanamo Psychiatrist Promotes Dubious Drug Theory on Afghan Killings Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout: "Using false information; faulty interpretation of documents and innuendo; and in one case, withholding key disclosures regarding their background, these authors took a serious issue - the dangerous psychiatric and neurotoxic effects of mefloquine on some people and the history of the use of this drug by the military - and twisted it to further an agenda that just happened to match US interests in limiting speculation about the Kandahar massacre to Bales." Read the Article The US and Iran Are Talking. Why Is the New York Times Peddling Iran Islamophobia? Robert Naiman, Truthout: "The New York Times has suggested to its readers that Iran's supreme leader is uniquely and intrinsically untrustworthy when he says that Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon. Why? Because, according to the Times, Iran's leaders are Shiites and Shiites have a religious doctrine called 'taqiyya,' which allows them to lie. No scholar or analyst was cited by The New York Times in support of this argument, which should have been a red flag for Times' editors for an argument claiming that the leadership of a country against which the United States has threatened war is essentially different from us because they belong to a different religion." Read the Article Two Years After the BP Drilling Disaster, Gulf Residents Fear for the Future Jordan Flaherty, Truthout: "While it's too early to assess the long-term environmental impact, a host of recent studies published by the National Academy of Sciences and other respected institutions have shown troubling results. They describe mass deaths of deepwater coral; dolphins; and killifish, a small animal at the base of the Gulf food chain. 'If you add them all up, it's clear the oil is still in the ecosystem, it's still having an effect,' says Aaron Viles, deputy director of Gulf Restoration Network, a leading environmental organization active in the region." Read the Article National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance (Video) Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: "In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford's recent expose in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah." Read the Article and Watch the Video Afghan Screams Aren't Heard Hakim and Kathy Kelly, Truthout: "The monthly Global Days of Listening conversations which the youth have had with ordinary U.S., European, Middle Eastern and Australian citizens have helped change their lives person-to-person, overcoming the cold impersonal 'shoosh' of overhead rockets and under-running bloodshed. Every day, Ghulam studies, cooks, washes the dishes and lives, very normally. But some nights, in the stupor of nightmares, Ghulam shouts subconsciously, out of ear-range to the million-dollar intelligence spies, 'What kind of world is this that still insists on signing war agreements?'" Read the Article FBI Seizes Server From Progressive Internet Service Provider Jamie McClelland, War Is A Crime: "Seizing this machine serves no useful purpose in tracking down or stopping the bomb threats, but it has many serious negative implications. Anonymous e-mail is an important part of the Internet. One of the benefits of Internet technology is the ability to communicate world-wide, and this communication is fundamental to the struggles of the world's people to address many of the world's ills. In a period in which our society has seen massive losses of privacy in which just about everything we do on-line can be tracked, logged, studied and used for all kinds of purposes, anonymous Internet-based communication tools provide shade from the intrusive searchlights of ubiquitous surveillance." Read the Article Locking Down an American Workforce: Prison Labor as the Past and Future of American "Free-Market" Capitalism Joshua B. Freeman and Steve Fraser, TomDispatch: "'Now,' means our second Gilded Age and its aftermath. In these years, the system of leasing out convicts to private enterprise was reborn. This was a perverse triumph for the law of supply and demand in an era infatuated with the charms of the free market. On the supply side, the U.S. holds captive 25% of all the prisoners on the planet: 2.3 million people. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world as well, a figure that began skyrocketing in 1980 as Ronald Reagan became president. As for the demand for labor, since the 1970s American industrial corporations have found it increasingly unprofitable to invest in domestic production." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: Karl Rove's Super PAC Under Scrutiny, and More In today's On the News segment, George Zimmerman out on bail, for-profit college supporters in Congress opposing student loan reforms, Colorado and California look to pass marijuana legalization laws this fall, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Jim Hightower and the "Populist Moment" Thorne Webb Dreyer, The Rag Blog: "An issue that Jim Hightower is especially concerned about is the alarming spread of privatization and the resulting impact on the public sector, on the commons. He has recently written in his Hightower Lowdown about the move to privatize the post office, about the 'corporate foreign legion' that 'has taken over America's intelligence and military functions,' and about the closing of state parks around the country. ('By axing parks, politicos are stealing the people's property,' he wrote.)" Read the Article and Watch the Video What a Difference a Day (of Iran Talks) Makes Kate Gould, Friends Committee on National Legislation: "Hardliners on all sides - in Iran, the United States, and in other countries - have sabotaged promising opportunities for diplomacy before. This time, the Senate was on the verge of passing a far-reaching Iran sanctions package that could well have undermined the talks last weekend - if it wasn't blocked by Senator Rand Paul (KY). As early as this week, Congress is expected to vote on this sanctions bill, along with dangerous resolutions that would lower the threshold for war with Iran, and endorse ultimatums that would make diplomacy all but impossible." Read the Article Student Loan Interest Rates Loom as Political Battle Tamar Lewin, The New York Times News Service: "President Obama begins an all-out push on Friday to get Congress to extend the low interest rate on federal student loans, White House officials said, an effort that is likely to become a heated battle along party lines. If Congress fails to act, the interest rate on the loans, which are taken out by nearly eight million students each year, will double on July 1, to 6.8 percent." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "An advance analysis of the report on the financial status of the program, posted on NiemanWatchdog, argues that 'last year's report projected that at the end of 2011, Social Security would have an accumulated surplus of around $2.7 trillion, which it now has. This year's report will show that it will be even higher at the end of 2012.'" Read the BuzzFlash Commentary FAA Coughs Up Info on Where Drones Are Being Flown and Who Is Flying Them Pentagon Propaganda Campaign Targeted Reporters Asking About Propaganda US Economic Model Broken, Says Survey An Atomic Solyndra for Obama? Rush Limbaugh Boycott Spreads to Local Advertisers and Radio Stations Shocking Conflict of Interest: Private Water Companies Partner With Fracking Lobby A Wonderful Tribute to Levon Helm Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines
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