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Beyond the Limits of Neoliberal Higher Education: Global Youth Resistance and the American/British Divide

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Henry A. Giroux - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - The global reach and destructiveness of neoliberal values and disciplinary controls are not only evident in the widespread hardships and human suffering caused by the economic recession of 2008, they are also visible in the ongoing and ruthless assault on the social state, workers, unions, higher education, students, and any vestige of the social at odds with neoliberal values. Under the regime of market fundamentalism, institutions that were meant to limit human suffering and misfortune and protect the public from the excesses of the market have been either weakened or abolished, as are many of those public spheres where private troubles can be understood as social problems and addressed as such.

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Koch Brothers Fueling Far Right Academic Centers Across the US

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Lee Fang - May. 13 (Opinion) - FSU had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s operatives would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications. The simmering controversy sheds light on the vast influence of the Koch political machine, which spans from the top conservative think tanks, Republican politicians, a small army of contracted lobbyists, and Tea Party front groups in nearly every state.

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Libya and the World of Oil

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Noam Chomsky - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - In Egypt and Tunisia, the popular uprising has won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, the regimes remain and are “seemingly determined to curb the pro-democracy momentum generated so far. A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal” – and one that the West will seek to keep far removed.

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New Yorkers Rage Against the Cuts

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Inter Press Service - By Kanya D'Almeida - Mar. 25 (News Report) - In the shadow of towering colonial-style office buildings of the world's most powerful financial district, a crowd over 5,000-strong amassed outside Manhattan's City Hall Thursday, chanting "The people united will never be defeated!" As the contagious effects of democratic uprisings radiate from North Africa to North America, New York City's exploited workers and students are not about to let the opportunity for mass struggle pass them by.

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Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan's Disastrous Nuclear Operators

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Greg Palast - Mar. 15 (Opinion) - The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

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Big Win for Biotech: USDA Deregulates Monsanto Alfalfa

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Mike Ludwig - Feb. 07 (Special Report) - , the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fully deregulated Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa that is genetically modified (GM) to be resistant to Roundup herbicide. The decision squashed a proposed compromise between the biotech industry and its opponents that would have placed geographic restrictions on Roundup Ready alfalfa to prevent organic and traditional alfalfa from being contaminated by herbicide sprays and transgenes spread by cross-pollination and other factors.read more

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For the US in Egypt, Blowback Is a Bitch

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Michael Winship - Feb. 06 (Opinion) - Almost seven years have passed since I spent some time in the Middle East. The closest I get to the opinions of "the Arab street" these days is the fellow who runs the delicatessen a block away from me. Mohamed is Egyptian, with family living in Cairo and outside the city. All of them are safe - as far as he knows. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must go, Mohamed says, but he fears that, regardless of the promises, Mubarak will figure out a way to keep his henchmen in power and the brutal legacy of cruelty and torture will continue.read more

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Something is Rotten

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Dave Lindorff - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - In most countries, including the US and UK, these would not pass the test to be considered a crime, much less qualify as a category of “rape," but Swedish authorities, who in all of this year have only submitted one other request to Interpol for assistance in capturing a sex crimes suspect, asked the international police agency to issue a so-called Red Alert for Assange, who was subsquently asked by police in the UK, where he was staying, to turn himself in or face arrest. (The other Interpol Red Alert sought by Swedish prosecutors this year was for Jan Christer Wallenkurtz, a 58-year-old Swedish national wanted on multiple charges of alleged sex crimes and sex crimes against children.)

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Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold, Jeffrey Kaye - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

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Special Prosecutor Declines to File Criminal Charges Over Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Nearly three years after he was appointed to investigate the destruction of at least 92 interrogation videotapes, a dozen of which showed two high-value detainees being subjected to waterboarding and various other torture techniques by CIA interrogators, Special Prosecutor John Durham has determined that he does not have enough evidence to secure an indictment against anyone responsible for the purge. Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement Tuesday that Durham, a US Attorney from Connecticut, has "concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of interrogation videotapes."

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Computer Scientists, Election Integrity Advocates Question Feasibility of "Digital Democracy"

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Alissa Bohling - Oct. 13 (Special Report) - Despite the recent hack during public testing of DC's Internet voting pilot and the rash of other security problems that have plagued the short history of online voting systems, elections entrepreneurs, along with some state officials and voter advocates, continue to make headway as they push for the adoption of i-voting technology.read more

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When Generosity Hurts: Bill Gates, Public School Teachers and the Politics of Humiliation

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry Giroux - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - His words reflect something of the all too evident brutish transformation of the revolutionary zeal that marked an earlier era's investment in substantive democratization to that which piously and patriotically calls itself revolutionary some 50 years later, and seeks nothing less than the total destruction of the democratic potential of American education.

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UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israeli Killing of US Citizen was "Execution"

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Gareth Porter - Oct. 01 (News Report) - The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos. The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

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Experts: Health Hazards in Gulf Warrant Evacuations

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Rose Aguilar - Jul. 22 (News Report) - When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It?s that bad. We need to start talking about who?s going to pay for evacuations." In 1989, Ott, who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster. For the past two months, she?s been traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what?s really happening and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of cleanup workers and residents. read ...

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Monsanto, Big Brother of the New World Agricultural Order

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Mickey Z. - Jun. 27 (Interview) - In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes: "What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects - the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures - of Western society's economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet."

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Chartering Disaster: Why Duncan's Corporate-Based Schools Can't Deliver an Education That Matters

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry A.Girouux - Jun. 26 (Opinion) - In Arne Duncan's world, the language of educational reform is defined primarily through the modalities of competition, measurement and quantification. Competition is now one of the most important registers organizing and defining schools and classroom pedagogical practices - no doubt made obvious by the name of Obama's educational reform policy "Race to the Top," with its allusion to Wall Street values and casino capitalism. Within this discourse, there seems to be little understanding, as Stuart Hall has argued, "that there is a limit to the good that can be produced by individual competitiveness."[1] Of course, competition itself is not the problem since competition can be healthy in a number of areas. The real issue is when competition becomes, as Christopher Newfield points out, "the sole organizing principle of society."[2]

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Private Contractors and Covert Wars in Latin America

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

UpsideDownWorld - By Cyril Mychalejko - Jun. 15 (News Report) - U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) threatened to issue subpoenas against the U.S. Defense and State Departments last month if they continue to refuse to accurately account for billions of dollars spent on private contractors assisting Washington in the 'war on drugs' in Latin America. But McCaskill's concerns raise broader questions about oversight and transparency of a controversial industry and its ever expanding role in Washington's foreign policy.

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American Media Hide the Evidence: Did Israeli Troops Execute or Murder the Mavi Marmara Victims?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Dave Lindorff, - Jun. 07 (Opinion) - You want to know why we need independent journalism, and why those of you who are reading this article need to support the publication in which you are reading it and the publication in which it originally appeared? Because if you rely for your news on the US corporate media, whether ad-supported or underwriter-supported, you won’t learn that Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American citizen slain by Israeli commandos in the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla May 31, was shot in the back and in the back of the head, as well as multiple times in the face.

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BP And Halliburton Build Legal Teams, Attempt To Buy Off Government Officials

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - Jun. 05 (News Report) - Facing possible jail time for their roles in the largest oil spill in American history, BP and Halliburton are building high-powered legal teams with "deep Department of Justice and White House ties." But the companies are pursuing other means to defend themselves as well. Halliburton"s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it "the busiest donation month for Halliburton"s PAC since September 2008," Politico reports. read ...

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Dumbing Down Teachers: Attacking Colleges of Education in the Name of Reform

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry A. Giroux - May. 25 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration's educational reform movement increasingly adopts the interests and values of a "free-market" culture, many students graduate public schooling and higher education with an impoverished political imagination, unable to recognize injustice and unfairness. They often find themselves invested in a notion of unattached individualism that severs them from any sense of moral and social responsibility to others or to a larger notion of the common good.

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Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds

Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Beverly Bell - May. 19 (News Report) - "A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

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Chevron's "Crude" Attempt to Suppress Free Speech

Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Bill Moyers, Michael Winship - May. 15 (Opinion) - Even as headlines and broadcast news are dominated by BP's fire-ravaged, sunken offshore rig and the ruptured well gushing a reported 210,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico, there's another important story involving Big Oil and pollution - one that shatters not only the environment but the essential First Amendment right of journalists to tell truth and shame the devil. read more

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America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Zach Carter - May. 13 (Opinion) - The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains?corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit at any cost. Without further ado, here are the 10 most corrupt capitalists in the U.S. economy.

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Elena Kagan Backs Monsanto, Sides with Conservative Justices

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Joshua Frank - May. 13 (Special Report) - While Elena Kagan has no experience on the bench and has provided the public with little to no information about where she stands on some of the most important issues of the day, the fact that she came to bat for Monsanto, at a time when the company is reeling from negative press, may shed some light on how she could rule in future GE cases.

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Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well

Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Greg Palast - May. 06 (Opinion) - I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).

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