Sunday 13 November 2011
Former Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor: "A Pair of Testicles Fell Off the President After Election Day"Jason Leopold, Truthout: "'There's a pair of testicles somewhere between the Capital Building and the White House that fell off the president after Election Day [2008],' said [Morris] Davis, an Air Force colonel who spent two years as the chief prosecutor of Guantanamo military commissions.... Davis is 'hugely disappointed' that Obama reneged on a campaign promise to reject military commissions for 'war on terror' detainees, which have been condemned by human rights advocates as unconstitutional."
Read the ArticleActivists Speak: Voices From the OccupationsJeremy Gantz, In These Times: "The Occupy protesters have been ridiculed by the press, celebrated by the left, and reviled by the right - but rarely allowed to speak for themselves. After the initial New York protest morphed into a national movement in October, reporters struggled to understand the spectacle and pundits stepped in to pontificate and prognosticate. They were right about one thing: United in anger, the mostly young protesters have lost faith in America’s political and economic system - but they don’t always agree on how to repair it."
Read the ArticleRadiation Reporting: Blind, Idiotic, Corrupt - or All ThreeJohn LaForge, Truthout: "The ongoing radiation catastrophe stemming from three out-of-control nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, has taken a back seat to far graver news events of late: Michael Jackson's doctor, fund-raising by presidential hopefuls, the World Series and Netflix stock. Meanwhile, reporting about the on-going disaster relentlessly repeats the minimization and trivialization of radiation risk that began March 11, with the largest earthquake in Japanese history and the unprecedented tsunami that left over 26,000 people dead or missing and 80,000 still living in shelters."
Read the ArticleDenver Police Evict "Occupy" ProtestersThe New York Times, The New York Times News Service: "The Denver police cleared a protest encampment allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement in a downtown square Saturday evening. Sixteen people were arrested, according to the police.... Saturday night also saw protesters swept out of an Occupy encampment in Salt Lake City."
Read the ArticleMayor "1 Percent" Bloomberg Tries to Make it Harder for Homeless to Get Into SheltersTana Ganeva, AlterNet: "Last week the Bloomberg administration announced new eligibility rules that would make it harder for homeless people to get into city shelters, a cost-cutting measure astutely timed to coincide with the approach of winter.... Under the policy, originally set to go into effect next week, the city could refuse someone a bed at a shelter unless they proved they had no other housing options, such as staying with relatives or friends."
Read the ArticleBerlusconi Steps Down, and Italy Pulses With ChangeElisabetta Povoledo and Rachel Donadio, The New York Times News Service: "Marking the end of a tumultuous week and of an era in Italian politics, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned Saturday evening after Parliament approved austerity measures sought by the European Union. The lower house passed the measures on Saturday by a vote of 380 to 26, a day after they were approved by the Senate, trying to keep a step ahead of market pressures that sent borrowing rates on Italian bonds skyrocketing last week to levels that have required other euro zone countries to seek bailouts."
Read the ArticleCorporate Media Stumped on How to Cover the Occupy MovementRuss Baker, Who What Why.com: "Conventional journalism is increasingly irrelevant in a time of crisis. We find abundant proof in a recent column from the New York Times’ so-called 'Public Editor,' who is supposed to somehow magically represent the public interest and rarefied ethical values to the rest of the paper. In this column, he says the media is having difficulty figuring out how to cover Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots."
Read the ArticleCan the Oceans Continue to Feed Us?Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers: "Far out on the Pacific Ocean, the world's industrial fishing fleets pursue one of the last huge wild hunts - for the tuna eaten by millions of people around the world. Yet tuna still aren't fished sustainably.... This illustrates one part of the pressure on the world's oceans to feed a growing global population, now 7 billion. It also underscores the difficulties people have in balancing what they take against what must be left in order to have enough supplies of healthy wild fish."
Read the ArticleRichard D. Wolff | The Originality of Occupy Wall StreetRichard D. Wolff, RDWollf.com: "In the short history of OWS and its spread to date, I am struck by its impressive insistence on remaining a movement around a very general and inclusive critique of an unjust economy (99% against 1%) that has corrupted much of US politics and culture. The net result is a built-in systemic critique, sometimes explicit (remarkably often named as capitalism) and almost always implicit. The hesitation to choose among and focus on specific demands reflects the wisdom of maintaining the broad, systemic critique. The taboo against systemic critique – a legacy of post-war anti-communism – seems to be broken."
Read the ArticleProtesters Interrupt Bachmann's Speech in South CarolinaAmanda Peterson Beadle, ThinkProgress: "About 40 protesters from Occupy Charleston interupted Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) foreign policy speech during a campaign stop in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. As she was beginning her speech, the protesters stood up and recited a prepared message in unison. 'We have a message for Miss Bachmann,' they yelled. Bachmann’s supporters yelled at the protesters to sit down and tried to drown them out. The protesters chanted, 'We are the 99 Percent,' as police escorted them out."
Read the Article
62° 49° Tomorrow 
