Click here to view this and past newsletters online. Please add "messenger@truthout.org" to your email contacts to ensure delivery.  Thursday 26 April 2012 Prison Industries: "Don't Let Society Improve or We Lose Business"Dina Rasor, Truthout: "This is an industry that needs misery, long sentences, rounded-up undocumented immigrants and increasing crime to flourish. In order to keep the prison beds filled, The GEO Group and others have paid out millions of dollars to lobbyists, federal and state legislators, and governors to allow our immigration problem to go unsolved, to make sure that no drugs are decriminalized and that an ineffective War on Drugs continues, and to make certain that long-term prison sentences, like California's three-strikes-and-you're-imprisoned-for-life laws, keep a steady flow of revenue and profits flowing to their shareholders." Read the Article Shedding Light on the Secret Pre-Trial of Bradley Manning Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The government has so far refused to provide key pieces of evidence against him to his defense team, a process known as discovery. Several pre-trial meetings between prosecutors and Manning's defense were also held behind closed doors and out of public light. Court orders and motions are currently held secret despite complaints lodged by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Assange. CCR attorney Shane Kadidal told Truthout that he was surprised by the lack of media presence at the hearings." Read the Article Noam Chomsky: Occupy Points to a "Different Way of Living" John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus: "It's a big agenda that Occupy has identified, nothing less than a complete renewal of U.S. society and the U.S. role in the world. Chomsky sees not only the radical agenda but also the radical practice of the Occupiers. 'Part of what functioning, free communities like the Occupy communities can be working for and spreading to others is just a different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on maximizing values that are important for life,' he concludes in this valuable set of remarks and interviews." Read the Article Could New Argument Against SB1070 Prove Law Is Unconstitutional? Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "Margaret Hu, an assistant professor at Duke University, argues that by making laws like SB1070, Arizona 'represents an attempt to control the terms of what federal resources and officers must be appropriated to accommodate a myriad of state immigration enforcement programs.' While it's unconstitutional for the federal government to do this under the 'anti-commandeering principle,' Hu argues that it should be unconstitutional for states to do it as well. She calls the attempt by Arizona to use federal resources for its enforcement goal 'reverse-commandeering.'" Read the Article The CISPA Scoop: White House Threatens Veto of Cybersecurity Bill Amid Online Protests Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "Civil liberties groups, including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, say the bill's language is dangerously broad and would allow private companies to circumvent existing privacy laws and share massive amounts of user information such as private emails with government agencies. Facebook, AT&T, IBM, and hundreds of other private companies endorsed CISPA." Read the Article ALEC and ExxonMobil Push Loopholes in Fracking Chemical Disclosure Rules Cora Currier, ProPublica: "Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a 'trade secrets' provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public. The Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate fracking in order to protect groundwater, because in 2005 Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act." Read the Article Budget Control Act Military Cuts Will Cover the Social Security Shortfall Robert Naiman, Truthout: "But if you look at the claims advanced on behalf of cutting Social Security benefits, a common theme is the claim that 'the country can't afford' the Social Security benefits that we have been promised. That claim has nothing to do with the method of financing. Well, if the country can't afford to pay the Social Security benefits that we were promised, then the country can't afford to maintain current levels of military spending, and the level of military cuts in the sequester must stand. Because the two things are the same size." Read the Article Disabled People Protest to Preserve Their Benefits Rose Aguilar, Truthout: "We should all be outraged over how people with disabilities are treated in a country with so much wealth. For many of these activists, just leaving the house is a chore. But if they don't travel to the nation's capitol to speak out and raise awareness, who will? They could lose their in-home supportive services; they could lose the right to stay in their homes. And that's why, year after year, they make the trek, knowing they might be arrested and won't get much media attention unless a celebrity joins them." Read the Article Is US-Afghan Agreement a Prelude to Afghan Civil War? Matt Southworth, Truthout: "The DoD and the Obama administration have maintained that the US war is going well, and that the United States is in the right position to begin to transition out of the lead role by the end of 2014. This directly contradicts information from the ground and from whistleblowers like Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, whose 84-page report has changed the conversation around Capitol Hill. It is clear that assessments regarding progress on the ground given by the military to Congress and the administration have been largely misleading. The distance between rhetoric and reality is setting up the worst-case scenario." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: GOP Plans to Cut $33 Billion From Food Assistance Programs, and More In today's On the News segment: Super PAC sugar daddies, Congress debates student loans, the federal campaign against marijuana dispensaries, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript ACT UP Is at It Again Melissa Gira Grant, Waging Nonviolence: "Long before the red ribbon became an innocuous symbol of AIDS 'awareness' and celebrity philanthropy, there was the pink triangle and there was ACT UP and there were thousands of people taking to the streets for their lives. Once a symbol used to mark suspected queers for death in the Holocaust, ACT UP appropriated the pink triangle for themselves, now flipped on its base, pointing upward on a black field, away from the grave, signed with the call to arms, 'SILENCE = DEATH.'... On the morning of April 25, 2012, ACT UP took back those same streets, alongside activists from the Occupy movement, itself aspiring to be the kind of umbrella that can gather and propel young queers and allies to work together." Read the Article Bill Moyers: Heather McGhee on Student Debt (Video) Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co.: "In this 2012 Moyers Moment from Moyers & Company, Heather McGhee, director of the Washington office of the research and advocacy organization Demos, talks about the crushing burden of student debt. She points out that while young people are paying as much as 18 percent interest on private student loans, 'the banks they're paying that interest to are getting, basically, a zero-interest loan from the government every day.'" Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Demonstrators Confront Wells Fargo Shareholders David Bacon, Truthout: "On Tuesday, April 24 in San Francisco, thousands of angry homeowners, immigrants, union members, Occupiers and community groups converged on the annual shareholders meeting of Wells Fargo Bank. In a carefully choreographed protest, simultaneous marches left Justin Herman Plaza on the city's waterfront, the site of the Occupy San Francisco encampment last fall. Demonstrators walked up parallel streets into the financial district, where they encircled the block in which the meeting was set to take place, in the Julia Morgan ballroom of the Merchants Exchange Building." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles
The BuzzFlash commentary for Truthout will return soon. The Corruption Law That Scares the Bejesus Out of Corporate America America's Mad Cow Crisis May Day: Occupy Wall Street Gears Up for Nationwide Strike Rupert Murdoch's Email Bombshell at the Leveson Inquiry GOP Tries to Water Down Violence Against Women Act, Expresses Willingness to Tolerate Some Domestic Abuse Earth Faces a Century of Disasters, Report Warns Newt Gingrich Wins Race for Biggest GOP Debt Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines
---------- Support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here.
|
||||
