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Tuesday 13 April 2010
William Rivers Pitt | Tea on the Common
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I know, I know, it was just last week that I vowed never to write about these Tea Party people again. I would be more than happy to do just that, but you see, they're coming to my town, hell, to my neighborhood, and tagging along with them is none other than the Queen Of Duh, Sarah Palin."
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Iraq Vets: Coverage of Atrocities Is Too Little, Too Late
Dahr Jamail, Truthout: "The WikiLeaks video footage from Iraq taken from an Apache helicopter in July 2007 showing soldiers killing 12 people and wounding two children has caused an explosion of media coverage. But many Iraq vets feel it is too little and too late."
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US Troops Open Fire on Passenger Bus in Afghanistan, Killing Four Civilians
Jason Leopold, Truthout: "Four Afghan civilians were killed and 18 others wounded Monday when US troops opened fire on a passenger bus they believed was a threat to military personnel working to remove roadside bombs from a highway near Kandahar."
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Ignoring America's Slaveholding Past
Eugene Robinson: "It was bad enough when Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell proclaimed 'Confederate History Month' without mentioning slavery, but at least he came to his senses and apologized. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's contention that the whole controversy 'doesn't amount to diddly' is much worse."
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Make Birth Control, Not War
Thomas Hayden and Malcolm Potts, Miller-McCune: "Close your eyes for a moment and cast your mind back to the dominant news stories of early 2010. The economy in tatters? Certainly. Global stalemate on climate negotiations and unbreakable gridlock in Congress? Of course. And don't forget the terror - on Christmas Eve, 2009, a lone Nigerian man boards an airplane in Lagos and travels some 18 hours toward Detroit in what can only have been a dizzying combination of anxiety, fear and elation, and a grandiose sense of his own destiny."
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Anti-Government Extremists: On the Rise and On the March
Evan Thomas and Eve Conant, Truthout: "Stewart Rhodes does not seem like an extremist. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former US Army paratrooper and Congressional staffer. He is not at all secretive."
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The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going
Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, ProPublica: "In late 2005, the booming US housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble, which had propelled a historic growth in home prices, seemed poised to deflate. And if it had, the great financial crisis of 2008, which produced the Great Recession of 2008-09, might have come sooner and been less severe."
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Turkey's Henchmen: Mass Media Butcher the Armenian Genocide
David Boyajian, Truthout: "Most reporters and other journalists in the mass media failed to do due diligence and misled their audiences regarding last month's US House Foreign Affairs Committee vote in favor of Resolution 252, which would reaffirm the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923. Nearly all media, prior to and after the vote, falsely said or implied that the House and the federal government had never before recognized the Armenian genocide."
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The Hazards of Using Toxic Coal Ash for Land Development
Sue Sturgis, Facing South: "Following the disastrous spill of a billion gallons of coal ash waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in December 2008, poorly regulated coal ash impoundments like the one that failed have landed in the public spotlight."
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Senate Ends GOP Filibuster That's Delayed Jobless Benefits
David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Senate on Monday took a major, and likely decisive, step toward restoring jobless benefits for hundreds of thousands of people, as those constituents endured an eighth straight day without assurances of any help."
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Obama's Nuclear Summit: The Search for "Loose Nukes"
Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor: "The Obama nuclear summit is focusing less on nuclear weapons and more on more poorly guarded nuclear materials that could be used to build nukes."
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In Africa, Land Grabs Continue as Elites Resist Regulation
Hilaire Avril, Inter Press Service: "A year after the purchases of vast swathes of farm land in Africa first drew public attention, transactions remain as opaque as ever. Private companies are resisting a global code of conduct that would ensure transparency and local elites continue to benefit from deals that encourage corruption and increase food insecurity."
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Massachusetts Court Rejects Health Insurers' Bid to Raise Premiums
Will Buchanan, The Christian Science Monitor: "Six health insurers in Massachusetts, which has universal health care, wanted to raise premiums. But the state's insurance commissioner said no. A judge ruled in the state's favor."
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A Coup and a Close Call in Kyrgyzstan
Owen Matthews: "The violence that gripped Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, last week quickly turned into a dictator's worst nightmare when the snowballing riots forced President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to flee for his life."
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My Hometown and Its Fate
James Howard Kunstler: "I was in my hometown, New York City, over the weekend. Everybody, it seemed, was outside swarming in the streets and the parks in perfect strolling weather. The magnolias and dogwoods were bursting. Anything highlighted in gold leaf was all burnished up. The city's sparkling physical condition was due of course to the spectacular flow-rate of money pouring through Wall Street the past twenty years - notwithstanding the big burp of 2008."
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Massey Energy Bought Workers' Comp Insurance Shortly Before Mine Blast
Dave Lindorff, Truthout: "Massey Energy Company, owner of the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia where at least 25 miners were killed April 5 in a methane gas explosion, apparently arranged for and purchased disability compensation insurance coverage only a month before the disaster, according to one source with inside knowledge about the company's risk-management operations."
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