Click here to view this and past newsletters online. Please add "messenger@truthout.org" to your email contacts to ensure delivery.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

35,948 Arrested Yesterday
Maya Schenwar, Truthout: "Last Friday, the day the NATO 3 were arrested, approximately 35,948 people were arrested across the United States.... I wonder if these moments in the wake of mass activist arrests - specifically, when vocal activists (some of them white and middle class) are arrested by the dozen and thrust into the public eye - might be an apt time to spread awareness of the stark injustices perpetrated every minute, across the country, in the name of 'criminal justice.'"
Read the Article

Evidence Mounts That Afghan Massacre Was Linked to Special Operations Forces' Response to Improvised Explosive Device
Gareth Porter and Shah Nouri, Truthout: "Interviews with survivors, relatives of the civilians massacred in Panjwai on March 11 ... add new evidence suggesting that the massacre was linked to the response by the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit to a roadside bomb that had blown up a US troop carrier three days earlier. The brother of one of those killed said that the victim had been warned by a US soldier at a checkpoint near the Special Forces camp that the Americans knew his vineyard was very close to where the improvised explosive device (IED) exploded."
Read the Article

Rape Behind Bars: New Rules to Protect LGBTQ Inmates, but Will Immigration and Customs Enforcement Comply?
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "After living in Tucson, Arizona, for 20 years, Tanya Guzman-Martinez was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and placed in a detention center for suspected undocumented immigrants. Guzman-Martinez identifies and lives as a woman, but ICE ignored her transgendered status and put her in a male housing unit where she endured "extreme" harassment and abuse, including two sexual assaults, at the hands of guards and male detainees, according to a the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)."
Read the Article

On the News With Thom Hartmann: The Economy Could Be Headed for a "Fiscal Cliff," and More
In today's On the News segment: the economy could be headed for a "fiscal cliff," hundreds of thousands of people in Quebec protested austerity cuts to education and tuition hikes, the Chamber of Commerce is "planning on having a good year" buying up elected officials, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

Congress Isn't Just Stalemated, It's Broken, Experts Say
David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers: "Congress isn't just stuck in partisan and ideological gridlock: It's broken. Once again this month, and probably throughout this year, lawmakers are mired in stalemates over what used to be routine solutions to commonplace issues. Today, almost everything on Capitol Hill is taken hostage in the partisan war. There's no single easy explanation, but there are several."
Read the Article

Robert Reich | Why Obama Should Be Attacking Casino Capitalism
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "I wish President Obama would draw the obvious connection between Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase. That way his so-called 'attack' on private equity is neither a personal attack on Mitt Romney nor a generalized attack on American business. It's an attack on a particular kind of capitalism that Romney and JPMorgan both practice: Using other peoples' money to make big bets which, if they go wrong, can wreak havoc on the economy."
Read the Article

Kansas Governor Signs Bill for Massive Tax Cuts
Brent D. Wistrom, McClatchy Newspapers: "Gov. Sam Brownback signed one of the state's largest income tax cuts in history.... But moderate Republicans and Democrats have decried the bill because it is projected to force the state to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, potentially reducing funding for education and other services used by thousands of Kansans."
Read the Article

Jim Hightower | Snarling Banks
Jim Hightower, Truthout: "It's about time that workers, consumers, small farmers and other 'small fry' joined together in a populist rebellion to make big-shot Congress critters of both parties listen to us.... Very few Americans on this side of the ATM machine think that the biggest problem in Washington is that the moneychangers don't have enough clout. But, incredibly, here they come with a super PAC intended to force lawmakers to bow even deeper to their needs."
Read the Article

The Not-So-Free Market: How Consumerism Fuels Human Trafficking
Mischa Geracoulis, Truthout: "According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal operation - tied with arms smuggling and second only to drug trafficking. It's highly profitable; estimates figure that trafficking enterprises generate upward of 30 billion US dollars per year.... No longer a problem that's 'out there,' trafficking happens internally, in all 50 states, right in our very own neighborhoods."
Read the Article

Obama, Education and the End of the American Dream
Michael A. Peters, Truthout: "Obama is a skillful politician and a great orator. He has consistently made reference to the American Dream in his campaigning for the presidency and after, often focusing on his own remarkable story as emblematic of the possible. He has also carefully used the intellectual resources of the American Dream to unify Americans and to provide the vision for the society he wants others to dream of. The question is, in a time of decline, how serviceable is this dream: Can it be restored?"
Read the Article

Quebec Suspends Civil Liberties in Response to the Student Strike
Elizabeth Leier, Truthout: "Since the global financial meltdown of 2008, many Western countries have experienced widespread protesting and even, in some cases, rioting in the streets. This has been the year of the Occupy movement, a cry for solidarity in the face of ever-growing crony capitalism and belt tightening from governments. In Canada's francophone Province of Quebec, it is students that have mobilized this year to combat growing austerity plans and, in particular, a post-secondary tuition hike of 82 percent spread over seven years."
Read the Article

A 21 Protest Song Salute
Staff, Moyers & Co.: "Singer and activist Tom Morello says it's his job as a musician 'to steel the backbone of people on the front lines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles.' Here's a list of 21 songs that have done just that - from Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land to Public Enemy's Fight the Power."
Watch the Videos

Click here for more Truthout articles

The Racism of the Republican Party May Destroy Our Democracy
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "Right now, there is a significant segment of the US population that is so full of a self-eviscerating hate - due to the need for feeling affirmation and empowerment from an Anglo-Saxon ruling class - that their bilious loathing may fatally wound a nation founded upon the resilience of an evolving democracy."
Read the BuzzFlash Commentary

John Brennan's New Power: Determining Who Will Die by US Drone
Read the Article at Salon

Money, Religion and American Exceptionalism
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Egyptians Presidential Election Experiment
Read the Article at The Nation

Apple Dumps Coal - Sort of
Read the Article at Mother Jones

HeavenUp: Facebook's Christian Competitor?
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Why a Growing Movement of Young People Could Ignite a Workers' Revolution
Read the Article at AlterNet

Busting the Carbon and Cost Myths of Germany's Nuclear Exit
Read the Article at The Guardian UK

Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

To ensure you receive our messages please add the following address to your email address book: messenger@truthout.org

Click here to Subscribe
Our Privacy Policy
Click here to Unsubscribe