Click here to view this and past newsletters online. Please add "messenger@truthout.org" to your email contacts to ensure delivery.  Friday 18 May 2012 NATO Protesters Held Without Charge After Raid as Chicago Steps Up Police ActivitiesYana Kunichoff, Truthout: "A pre-emptive raid by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on the home of two Occupy Chicago activists may have happened without a search warrant, said the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and led to the disappearance of nine activists into police custody without charge for almost 24 hours. According to witnesses, the raid was conducted by the Organized Crime Division of the CPD and a warrant produced at the site didn't have the signature of a judge. The use of pre-emptive arrests is troublesome, said lawyers following the proceedings." Read the Article Ignoring the Crisis: Philadelphia Schools Are Crumbling Ellen Brown, Truthout: "Last week, the city of Philadelphia's school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 schools by 2017. But corporate media in other cities made no mention of these massive school closings - nor of those in Chicago, Atlanta or New York City. Even in the Philadelphia media, the voices of the parents, students and teachers who will suffer were omitted from most accounts. Why does there always seem to be enough money for military expansion ... but not enough for education?" Read the Article Fracking Fluids Could Contaminate Freshwater Aquifers, Says Study Christine Shearer, Truthout: "A recent study has found that, under certain conditions, the chemical-laced water used in hydraulic fracturing can migrate through fractures and faults up to overlying aquifers in as little as tens of years. The study, done by hydrogeologist Dr. Tom Myers and published in the peer-reviewed Ground Water, raises renewed questions about the potential for hydraulic fracturing to fundamentally alter shale rock formations and the hydrogeologic cycle in ways that could affect freshwater drinking supplies." Read the Article Nurses Gather at NATO Summit to Demand Government Fund Health, Not Death Allison Kilkenny, Truthout: "Around a thousand individuals gathered at Chicago's Daley Plaza Friday afternoon to demand the US government start properly funding health and stop funding death with an ever-expanding military budget. Casey Hobbs, a registered nurse for 37 years, traveled to Chicago in order to protest for the creation of a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street…. '[It's] less than half a penny tax on financial transactions. With the billions of dollars we'd get from that, we're gonna heal America..'" Read the Article House GOP Leaders Block Amendment Solidifying Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline Robert Naiman, Truthout: "One thing the Afghan war policy hasn't lost: the GOP leadership. That was demonstrated Wednesday night when the GOP leadership blocked consideration in the House of a bipartisan amendment offered by Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) that would have nailed to the wall the current, slippery 'timetable' for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. There you have it. The reason that the amendment couldn't be allowed to come to a vote was because it could pass." Read the Article How Citizens United Is Leading to More Racism in TV Campaign Ads Lee Fang, Republic Report: "Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, is planning to unleash a race-baiting advertising assault against President Obama late in the campaign. It's a stark reminder that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision may unleash a new level of ugliness in American campaigns. Technically, the decision only allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts in elections. But in practice, Citizens United might fuel a wave of advertising designed to stir racial divisions and hatred against minority groups." Read the Article JPMorgan Chase CEO Dimon Summoned Before Senate Committee Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Senate Banking Committee summoned JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to testify under oath about the huge losses his company suffered on an investment strategy that sank JPMorgan's share price, heightened concerns about the efficacy of new regulations and tarnished the reputation of the nation's star banker. Dimon would be called to testify sometime in June after the Committee ... has completed two hearings on tightening regulation of the financial industry." Read the Article Don't Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon's Budget Could Boost the Economy Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, The Nation: "If we are going to advance beyond the past decade of war and the wreckage caused by the Great Recession to build a stable, secure and environmentally sustainable society, we need to break the grip of the military-industrial complex on the $700 billion military budget. The way to fight back begins with the simple task of presenting the facts - and advancing policies for a widely shared economic revival grounded in these facts." Read the Article The Spectacle of Military Commissions for Alleged 9/11 Masterminds Meghan Chrisner-Keefe, Truthout: "After almost ten years of detention at CIA dark sites and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators were brought before a military commission to be tried on capital charges. I observed the commission from Courtroom Two at Camp Justice.... It went from chaotic to worse over thirteen long hours. It was anything but what I had expected. But that's just it: what exactly was I expecting?" Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: Students in Montreal Are Fed Up, and More In today's On the News segment: students in Montreal are fed up, the amendment to ban indefinite detention was defeated, voters want President Obama to pick the next Supreme Court justices, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Paul Krugman | What Have Rich People Done for You Lately? Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "So a former partner of Mitt Romney's at Bain Capital says, in a new book, what Mr. Romney probably believes: we should be really grateful to the rich for all the rich things they do. Because, you see, they don't spend all their wealth building homes as big as the Taj Mahal; some of it they invest in innovation. There are many things you could say about this, but surely high on the list is the degree of historical ignorance it requires." Read the Article Knowledge Work Under Cognitive Capitalism Michael A. Peters and James Reveley, Truthout: "What do the Austrian-born, self-styled 'social ecologist' and management theorist Peter Drucker and the Italian autonomist Marxist scholar Paolo Virno have in common? Here is the connection: Drucker and the autonomists simultaneously tried to pinpoint certain deep-seated and structurally transformative tendencies in Western capitalism, society and modernity to move to a form of postindustrial economy that focuses on the production and consumption of knowledge and symbolic goods as a higher-order economic activity that encompasses and affects the entire social fabric." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "If you want to know why we are still seeing headlines like this one, 'Arizona Goes Birther: Secretary Of State Says It's "Possible" Obama Won't Be On Ballot,' it's because of the reality of headlines like this one, 'Census: Minority Babies Are Now Majority in United States.'" Read the BuzzFlash Commentary One Last Chance to Get Wall Street Reform Right Romney's Self-Revealing Sound Bite on Jeremiah Wright Do Nuclear Reactors That Jump $900 Million in Three Months Now Get Taxpayer Guarantees? Vermont First State to Ban Fracking Where's The DNC in Wisconsin? The CIA and the Case of Mistaken Rendition Did a Spy Drone Almost Bring Down a Plane in Colorado? Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines
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