NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

Chris Hedges: America’s Disappeared Chris Hedges

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Jul. 19 (Special Report) - Torture, prolonged detention without trial, sexual humiliation, rape, disappearance, extortion, looting, random murder and abuse, have become, as in Argentina during the Dirty War, part of our own subterranean world of detention sites and torture centers. - 2011/07/18

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I Missed My Chance to Pee on Rupert Murdoch

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Richard Reeves, - Jul. 18 (Opinion) - I first met Rupert Murdoch at the urinal in the men's room. It was 1976 in an office building somewhere in Manhattan. We were both about to go into a meeting about the fate of New York magazine ... It was quickly apparent that the fix was in, that Murdoch had already won over a majority of the money people on the board, and he was going to leave the room the owner of the magazine we had made. Like many of us - Ken Auletta, Gail Sheehy, Pete Hamill, Gloria Steinem, Steve Brill, I can't remember them all - I quit on the spot. We all knew we could not work for this man.'

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John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By John Dean - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The fact that Supreme Court justices are exempt from the code of ethical conduct which applies to the rest of the federal judiciary; the problem of bringing a sitting justice before the Congress to question the conduct of a constitutional co-equal; the reality that justices cannot easily defend themselves against news media charges; the defiant, in-your-face posture of Thomas—the list goes on but it need not. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench. As the associate deputy attorney general in President Richard M. Nixon’s Department of Justice, I was there when Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist outlined how to remove a Supreme Court justice who had engaged in conduct not quite as troublesome as that of Thomas. Rehnquist, of course, would later become chief justice of the United States. His memorandum providing the process for the Department of Justice to proceed against then Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas remains solid precedent and the way to deal with Clarence Thomas. But before looking at the solution, I should explain the problem.

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Turning the Camera on the Police

Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By David Sirota - May. 19 (News Analysis) - What’s good for the police apparently isn’t good for the people—or so the law enforcement community would have us believe when it comes to surveillance. That’s a concise summary of a new trend reported by National Public Radio last week—a trend whereby law enforcement officials have been trying to prevent civilians from using cellphone cameras in public places as a means of deterring police brutality.

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‘Electronic Brownshirts’

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman: - May. 18 (News Analysis) - Right-wing media personality Andrew Breitbart is the forceful advocate of the slew of deceptively edited videos that target and smear progressive individuals and institutions.

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A Monster of Our Own Creation

Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Scheer - May. 09 (News Analysis) - 'He was our kind of guy until he wasn't, an ally during the Cold War until he no longer served our purposes. The problem with Osama bin Laden was not that he was a fanatical holy warrior; we liked his kind just fine as long as the infidels he targeted were not us but Russians and the secular Afghans in power in Kabul whom the Soviets backed.' Robert Scheer, Truthdig

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Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden’s Death

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - May. 02 (Opinion) - The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

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The New Corporate World Order

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Scheer - Apr. 22 (News Analysis) - The debate over Republicans’ insistence on continued tax breaks for the superrich and the corporations they run should come to a screeching halt with the report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Those tax breaks over the past decade, leaving some corporations such as General Electric to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million

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The Abu Ghraib Photos You Haven't Seen

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Nick Turse - Apr. 22 (Review) - Riley Sharbonno didn’t round up people. He didn’t carry out any massacres and didn’t witness any. But Sharbonno did go to war. And he did return with memories that were mixed up, messy or missing. Monica Haller helped him to put them back together in a fascinating photo book—a term she eschews, instead calling the project “an object of deployment.” A thick tome of more than 470 pages, “Riley and his story. Me and my outrage. You and us.” is a piece of art and a historical document. It’s a war story and a meditation on memory as well as a rumination on its absence.

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Our Public Schools Are Churning Out Drones for the Corporate State

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Chris Hedges - Apr. 11 (Opinion) - A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

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Obama's Fatal Addiction

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Scheer - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - If it had been revealed that Jeffrey Immelt once hired an undocumented nanny, or defaulted on his mortgage, he would be forced to resign as head of President Barack Obama’s “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.” But the fact that General Electric, where Immelt is CEO, didn’t pay taxes on its $14.5 billion profit last year—and indeed is asking for a $3.2 billion tax rebate—has not produced a word of criticism from the president, who in January praised Immelt as a business leader who “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.”

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Chris Hedges: Huffington’s Plunder - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - The sale of The Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, and the tidy profit made by principal owner and founder Arianna Huffington, who was already rich, is emblematic of the new paradigm of American journalism. - 2011/02/21

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Obama's Budget: Freezing the Poor

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 17 (Opinion) - Americans are cold, hungry and unemployed. By increasing military spending, already greater than all of the world’s military budgets combined, we are only spreading that misery abroad. We should get our priorities straight.

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How Our Empire Crushes Opposition

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Chris Hedges - Feb. 08 (Opinion) - Is it time to take to the streets? We all need to wake up! "To the members of our dwindling middle class -- as well as those in the working class who have yet to confront our new political and economic configuration -- the powerful use phrases like 'the consent of the governed' and 'democracy' that help lull us into complacency. The longer we believe in the fiction that we are included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations pillage the country without the threat of rebellion."

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Robert Scheer: In Money-Changers We Trust - Robert Scheer's Columns - Truthdig

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - Jan. 03 (Opinion) - Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations—thanks to massive government largesse—to survive the mess they created. - 2010/12/28

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Amy Goodman: President Obama’s Christmas Gift to AT&T (and Comcast and Verizon)

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 24 (Opinion) - Jump ahead to December 2010, where Obama is clearly in the back seat, being driven by Internet giants like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. With him is his appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, his Harvard Law School classmate and basketball pal who just pushed through a rule on network neutrality that Internet activists consider disastrous.

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War Should Be an Election Issue

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - Just days away from crucial midterm elections, WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website, unveiled the largest classified military leak in history. But in the U.S., it barely warranted a mention on the agenda-setting Sunday talk shows.

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Existence of Tea Party Candidates Casts Doubt on Evolution

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Andy Borowitz: - Oct. 17 (Comedy News) - Two of the theory of evolution’s most vociferous doubters, Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell, may be living proof that Darwin was wrong, leading scientists believe.

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Do Not Pity the Democrats

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Chris Hedges - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication.

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Ground Zero for Tolerance

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - Aug. 18 - by Robert ScheerAre the Republicans terminally stupid or are they just playing the dangerous fool? In either case, the irrational attack on Muslims everywhere by the GOP's leadership is not only deeply subversive with regard to the American ideal of religious tolerance but also poses a profound threat to our national security. Nor does it help that some top Democrats like Harry Reid are willing to demean Muslims even as we fight two wars in which victory depends on our ability to convey a respect for their religion.read more

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News at 11: How Climate Change Affects You

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 11 (News Analysis) - Meteorologist Jeff Masters defined for me the crux of the problem: “A lot of TV meteorologists are very skeptical that human-caused global climate change is real. They’ve been seduced by the view pushed by the fossil-fuel industry that humans really aren’t responsible ... we’re fighting a battle against an enemy that’s very well-funded, that’s intent on providing disinformation about what the real science says.”

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Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Chris Hedges - Aug. 02 (Opinion) - Today I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. We have spent five weeks reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” The class is taught in a small room in the basement of the prison. I pass through a metal detector, am patted down by a guard and walk through three pairs of iron gates to get to my students. We have covered Spain’s genocide of the native inhabitants in the Caribbean and the Americas, the war for independence in the United States and the disgraceful slaughter of Native Americans.

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WikiLeaks' Afghan War Diary

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - Wikileaks.org has done it again, publishing thousands of classified documents about the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

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Immigration Reform Is Good for Big Business

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Bill Boyarsky - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Among the most powerful interests backing immigration reform are the conservative, capitalistic U.S. Chamber of Commerce, fast-food restaurant chains and big agribusiness firms.

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Euros Crisis Has American Fingerprint

Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By William Pfaff - May. 12 (Opinion) - Self admittedly profligate Greece did not invent the world crisis, nor did Portugal, Spain or Italy. The guilt lies with the United States.

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