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Sunday 6 May 2012

A Poet's Pain Launches a Peace Movement in Mexico
Mark Karlin, Truthout: "[Javier] Sicilia, 55, is a poet, a journalist, a novelist, a professor - a man of letters in the European model.... What Sicilia did not anticipate was that he would stop writing - that his poetry would turn to silence - when his 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco, was killed and became collateral damage in the US-backed war on drugs in Mexico. But the silence that fell upon Sicilia's poems was replaced with his leadership [that] has evolved into a populist movement, The Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity."
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Report on College Protest Crackdown Urges Changes for Police
Doug Oakley, McClatchy Newspapers: "University of California administrators should take more responsibility for controlling their police and police should be better trained to keep campus protests peaceful, says a report the university system released Friday. The report was prepared in the aftermath of protests in November at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis. Both protests drew criticism of police actions: jabbing protesters with batons at Berkeley and using pepper spray on passive protesters at Davis."
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Nine Swing States, Critical to Presidential Race, Are Mixed Lot
Michael Cooper, The New York Times News Service: "With just over six months until Election Day ... the outcome would most likely be determined by how well President Obama and Mitt Romney perform in nine tossup states. All nine voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, only to see Republicans make big gains since then. Now, with many of those states transformed economically and politically by the recession, they are perhaps even less predictable than they were in past close elections."
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New York Activists Ask Attorney General: "How Can We Help?"
J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "'How can we help? How can we help? How can we help?' It's not your average protest slogan, but it's what the group chanted today as it marched from Zuccotti Park to 120 Broadway, which houses the office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The AG chairs President Obama's task force to investigate the routine fraud and abuse that characterized Wall Street during the Bush-era inflation of the housing bubble and precipitated the 2008 financial crash and subsequent recession."
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Sex, Drugs and the Rocky Road of HPV Vaccination
Adina Nack, Girl w/ Pen: "As a sexual health researcher, I have followed the saga of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination since the early 2000s. In the past few weeks, three news stories recently caught my attention – both for what they reported and also for what they left out."
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What Teachers Want
Dana Goldstein, The Nation: "It can't be good news that a survey of teachers released in March by MetLife found the lowest job satisfaction numbers since 1989, with just 44 percent of respondents describing themselves as 'very satisfied' with their classroom careers, down from 59 percent in 2009 and 62 percent in 2008. According to MetLife, nearly a third of public school teachers are considering leaving their jobs."
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Raza Studies: Inside or Outside of Western Civilization?
Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Dr. Cintli's Blog: "The struggle to defend Raza Studies in Tucson, Arizona isn't simply an epic struggle; it is civilizational in scope. While it may sound hyperbolic, such a characterization actually comes from its opponents, such as former state schools' superintendent, Tom Horne, who has long contended that Raza or Mexican American Studies (MAS) does not emanate from Greco-Roman culture, and therefore lies outside of Western Civilization."
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Robert Reich | The Stall Has Arrived
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "We've still got a terrible cyclical problem - we can't get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.Yet the underlying problem is structural, and it's been growing for decades. The structural problem of stagnant or declining real incomes for most people, and soaring income and wealth at the top, was masked during the boom years when the middle class could turn their homes into piggy banks and extract home-equity loans or refinance. But the mask came off in 2008 as home values plummeted."
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Leaving Afghanistan by Staying
David Swanson, War Is a Crime: "Obama is full of praise for U.S. troops, as if they've benefitted Afghanistan. And he's full of concern for the suffering of U.S. troops and U.S. citizens.... 'Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war,' Obama said, forgetting that one of those two countries had invaded the other one and occupied it for over a decade. 'The reason America is safe is because of you,' Obama told U.S. troops, forgetting that the war has made our nation more hated around the world."
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Robots "R" Us: Military-Style Drones Reported on 63 Bases in the US
Danny Schechter, The Rag Blog: "It's easy to understand why presidents, politicians, and the military love robots. They don't talk back. They follow orders. You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal. These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science 'faction' ... And that's why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice."
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Fighting Fire With Water: The Christian Role in the War on Women
Nynia Chance, RH Reality Check: "Birth should never be about control, but there are those who are working very hard to make it so. There are those who are doing their level best to usurp control over women's legal and moral rights to their own lives, under the pretense of protecting hypothetical lives that could come into being. And they do so under the idea that it is their divinely-appointed place to ensure that each woman is put into hers, regardless of her own conscience and beliefs."
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The BuzzFlash commentary for Truthout will return Monday, May 7th.

Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am
Read the Article at AlterNet

Socialist Candidate Francois Hollande Wins French Presidential Election
Read the Article at Raw Story

Young Voters Are Abandoning Obama - But Not Running to Romney
Read the Article at The Daily Beast

Eavesdropping Base Undergoes Massive Expansion
Read the Article at the Guardian UK

Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back
Read the Article at Mother Jones

The Fastest Broadband in the Country Is Being Built by Local Communities
Read the Article at Crooks and Liars

Bachmann Rewrites History, Claims Women "Overwhelmingly" Voted GOP in 2010
Read the Article at ThinkProgress

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