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Monday 7 May 2012

Chris Hedges | The People’s Bishop
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: “‘You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stodgy liturgies,’ [said Bishop Packard]. ‘They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows. They are a caricature of what Jesus intended. Jesus would be turning over the money-changing tables in their vestibules. Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world.'”
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Dean Baker | Bernie Sanders Advocates a Free Market in AIDS Drugs
Dean Baker, Truthout: “Drugs are cheap. Patent monopolies are expensive. These are simple facts that everyone should know, but for some reason few do…. The higher prices due to patent monopolies are the reason that many people have difficulty paying for drugs. If all drugs were sold in a free market as generics, paying for drugs would not be a serious issue except for the very poor. Of course, patent protection is the way in which drug companies finance their research.”
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Epistle to the Ecotopians
Ernest Callenbach, TomDispatch: “When disasters strike and institutions falter, as at the end of empires, it does not mean that the buildings all fall down and everybody dies. Life goes on, and in particular, the remaining people fashion new institutions that they hope will better ensure their survival. So I look to a long-term process of ‘succession,’ as the biological concept has it, where ‘disturbances’ kill off an ecosystem, but little by little new plants colonize the devastated area …”
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Corporations Win in Battle Against Investment Regulation
Isolda Agazzi, Inter Press Service: “… [M]ultinationals are gaining ground in the fight against state regulations that aim to protect the environment, public health or social policies. According to the most recent data released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the number of lawsuits brought against governments by companies … was 450 at the end of 2011…. In the many instances in which these lawsuits have been successful, governments have been made to pay fines amounting to tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars or euros.”
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Japan Shuts Down Its Last Nuclear Reactor to Widespread Public Celebration, and More
In today’s On the News segment: Japan shut down its last nuclear reactor Saturday to widespread public celebration, GOP war on women renders widest gender gap in US voters’ preference for presidential candidates since the 2000 election, the nation’s four largest oil companies are all ALEC members, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time Bomb
Brad Jacobson, AlterNet: “More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site’s current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over. But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite …”
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Violence, USA: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux
Michael Slate and Henry A. Giroux, The Michael Slate Show: “… ‘[T]he United States is not only obsessed with military values shaping foreign policy, but war and militarism have become a mediating force that begins to seep into almost every aspect of daily life. That is we see war and its dynamics of cruelty and punishment seeping into a whole range of institutions…. [W]e see schools as being modeled increasingly after prisons. We see police forces being paramilitarized. We see popular culture endlessly celebrating the spectacle of violence, and so it goes.”
Listen to the Show and Read the Transcript

Fighting for the Future: Interview With Youth Climate Movement Leader Alec Loorz
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: “Alec Loorz is a 17-year-old high school student in Ventura, California, who believes his generation is poised to inherit a world where … environmental degradation … has put the future of human society at risk. He is one of seven youth plaintiffs currently suing the federal government on behalf of youth everywhere in an attempt to take Washington to task on climate change…. On May 11, a federal court in Washington, DC, will decide whether young people have standing in such a case against the government.”
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A Question of Timing: What America Can Learn From the Revolt in Europe
Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog: “Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders. Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: ‘When people think about the economy they don’t see it through the dry numbers of the deficit figures, trade balances or inflation forecasts – but instead the things that make the difference between a life that’s worth living and a daily grind that drags them down.'”
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Mic Checking John Stumpf: An Inside Report on Protesting Wells Fargo’s Shareholder Meeting
Veronica Castro, Truthout: “This is the story of how a few ‘shareholders’ went inside Wells Fargo’s meeting to confront its president and CEO John Stumpf…. With our share certificates in hand, we arrived more than three hours early to the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting. Although the police had already blocked all the entrances, we were allowed to pass once we showed our shares. We must have taken them by surprise because we were quickly escorted out to wait in an alley.”
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Progressive Election Strategy and the Norman Solomon Campaign
Jeff Cohen, New Politics: “… [E]xperts in the district see Norman as now running second. The frontrunner is … a well-funded state assemblyman who has received most of the labor and environmental endorsements – despite having accepted donations in recent years from companies like Walmart and PG&E that are despised by union and green activists…. These membership groups face a choice in primaries: Do they embrace party regulars and the status quo, or back outsider candidates who want to transform the party … and the country?”
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Four Years After Wall Street Crash, Regulation of Financial Markets Is Still Spotty
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: “Almost four years after America’s financial near-collapse, regulators are now empowered to police financial markets as never before. Yet some of the most important rules to curb Wall Street’s bad behavior have yet to take effect – and could be watered down…. [O]nly about 33 percent of the new rules to rein in Wall Street are in force, according to the Davis Polk law firm, which specializes in regulation and puts out a monthly report on Dodd-Frank.”
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Economic Update With Richard D. Wolff: US Banks Are Invading the Payday Loan Industry
Richard D. Wolff, Economic Update and Truthout: “Wolff updates us on how major US banks are invading the payday loan, small loan and prepaid credit card businesses for big profits. Following this is a discussion on the French presidential election results, which are undermining European austerity regimes. Last, Wolff explains the US growth rate that is declining to an anemic 2.2%. Following these economic updates, Wolff is joined by Sarah Jaffee, labor editor for AlterNet.org, for an interview about Occupy Wall Street, Mayday demonstrations, and the student debt crisis.”
Listen to the Show

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The Forgotten Murdered in Mexico and in the US: Disposable People
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: “The forgotten – the ones who haven’t risen on the economic scale or who have the wrong skin color – are all too often statistics in death, not names. They are just bodies, not recognized as people with families and loved ones. In this sort of discrimination – the diminishment of a value of a life – there is no border between the United States and Mexico.”
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Paul Krugman: “The French Are Revolting. The Greeks, Too. And It’s About Time.”
Read the Article at The New York Times

Republicans Lead the Way in Ludicrous Political Slugfests
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

US Should Return Stolen Land to Native American Tribes, Says United Nations
Read the Article at The Guardian UK

Glenn Greenwald | Surveillance State Democracy
Read the Article at Salon

Why America’s Rich People Are Better Than Everyone Else’s
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Bill Keller | Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison
Read the Article at The New York Times

Occupy’s Meme Warrior: Adbusters’ Kalle Lasn on Occupy and a Resurgent Left
Read the Article at In These Times

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