Investigative News, Web Sites, Journalists Link Scroll
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Sustainable Action Newsletter, Lawrence, Ks. 29 May 2012
Click here to read the extensive listing of events.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
An Old Trick Learned Early .... Perception Management in Print
Journalism's Old Deception Devices:
How a tiny group of magazine editors managed to swap the word 'indebted' for 'entitled' and the figure '$6500 increase for a 4-year degree' for '$325'.
How a tiny group of magazine editors managed to swap the word 'indebted' for 'entitled' and the figure '$6500 increase for a 4-year degree' for '$325'.
A Mega - Hit! Saturday High Noon on RFK was a classic!
First aired Saturday High Noon, 26 May 2012.
Featured Guest: Dave Lindorff from the This Can't Be Happening news collective on the student loan crisis in public education.
Archive Note: There was a small technical glitch during the first half hour with FSRN's special documentary.
Dave Lindorff is a world traveler and award winning investigative journalist
with a distinguished educational background.
A two time
Fullbright Scholar, he and his colleagues at the news collective won the
2011 Project Censored award and their work was published in the annual
book.
The special Free Speech Radio News
Memorial Day documentary on the future of public education will air
before Lindorff comes on to discuss the loan sharks preying on students
in public education.
Reminder:Free Speech Radio News and This Can't Be Happening both are deserving of our donations in any amount.
Spoiler Alert: In the closing minutes of this broadcast listen to our rant against the monster sites ripping off writers.
Click here to listen or download this very popular show.
Spoiler Alert: In the closing minutes of this broadcast listen to our rant against the monster sites ripping off writers.
Click here to listen or download this very popular show.
Dustin Moyer: "Kansas too extreme to be inviting" @ Letters, Topeka Capital Journal
 |
| Gov. Sam Brownback, corn pone revolutionary. |
An expatriated native Kansan living in Denver writes the single daily newspaper in the state capital a letter, to say goodbye and why he's not coming home.
[Excerpt] " ... During the past recession, schools and vulnerable populations fell subject to funding decreases. As we find ourselves on the road to recovery, we have the opportunity to restore these cuts and ensure continued success and prosperity for Kansas. Instead, Brownback and conservatives in the Legislature have chosen to ignore this priority and have pursued a policy of tax cuts while simultaneously advancing economically irrelevant social legislation, and passing some of the most severe anti-abortion laws in the nation. ... "
Read more at the Topeka Capital Journal.
Pink Slime Runs Downhill
Comments about Dustin Moyer's letter run across the political economic spectrum, but some interesting anecdotal tidbits are discovered.
Which of Gov. Sam Brownback's daughters are still living in Kansas?
How does economic and demographic "development" between California and Kansas fare?
Are the majority to leave Kansas the intelligent youth, or illegal immigrant workers no longer employable as "pig stickers in a slaughterhouse"?
Saturday, May 26, 2012
"WHITECLAY NEBRASKA: A TOWN THAT SPECIALIZES IN POISONING INDIAN PEOPLE" @ Scission
[Excerpt] ... Sale
and possession of alcohol is prohibited on the reservation under tribal
laws. This has been the case with one short exception since the
reservation has existed.
Whiteclay has four off-sale beer stores licensed by the State of Nebraska which sell the equivalent of 4.5 million 12-ounce cans of beer annually (12,500 cans per day), mostly to the Oglalas living on the Pine Ridge. ... Read more at Scission.
Whiteclay has four off-sale beer stores licensed by the State of Nebraska which sell the equivalent of 4.5 million 12-ounce cans of beer annually (12,500 cans per day), mostly to the Oglalas living on the Pine Ridge. ... Read more at Scission.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Michael Collins: "How Rupert Murdoch Gave P.M. Cameron a 'Kiss of Death'" @ The Money Party & Australia Independent
Two great articles on the Murdoch worldwide media scandal.
"The kiss of Rupert Murdoch" at The Australian Independent
&
"Hunt pushed BSkyB to Cameron one month before Cameron gave Hunt the nod, Levenson Inquiry" at The Money Party
George Kenney Podcast: "early modern European history w/ Dr. Craig Koslofsky"
The latest from George Kenney, last show before leaving on extended holiday.
Catch the link at Discomfit Magazine.
Yasmine Ali: "Turnabout is Fair Play: Proud to be an Extortionist!" @ This Can't Be Happening!
Lahore --
US Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), the chair and
ranking minority member respectively of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, say the US must not pay $5000 per truck as demanded by
Pakistan, for supplies being shipped through this country to American
troops in Afghanistan. McCain went further, calling the Pakistni demand
“extortion.”
He also stated, on the TV show “The Cable,” that “We can’t look at aid in that light. It’s now becoming a matter of principle”.
I love it!
Extortion, dear Sen. McCain, is defined as the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value through the abuse of one’s office or authority.
Is it the first time US would be paying for transit of NATO supplies? They have long been paying an average of about $250 a truck for transit, as a senior US official has stated in a report by David S. Cloud in the Los Angeles Times published May 19th.
So the question dear Sen. McCain, is not about principle but rather about principal. The question could have been one of principle had the US not been paying anything at all, and then one fine day, Pakistan had woken up to the idea of…what did you say...ah yes…extortion. The question here though, is simply about the amount.
Let us step back a moment and consider the example of a shopkeeper selling goods--goods that someone needs desperately to buy. The shopkeeper sets a price. But the consumer, a sly, manipulating piece of work, tries everything within his power -- public protest, a smear campaign in the neighborhood, anonymous phone threats to burn down the shop -- to make the shopkeeper lower the price. The shopkeeper , a normally docile man--is obstinate this once though. He refuses to succumb to the consumer’s pressure tactics.
Who is the extortionist here: the shopkeeper or the shopper?
Maybe McCain, in his youthful exuberance, forgot that the NATO supply route to Afghanistan via Pakistan has damaged the country’s road infrastructure to the tune of 100 billion rupees over the last 10 years, as reported in the Pakistani newspaper The Nation.
Talking of principles is inappropriate when one has been on a killing spree, you know, and the US has been on one, killing Pakistani civilians, including children and older people -- the more the merrier...
For the rest of this article by Yasmeen Ali in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent two-ime Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, at: www.thiscantbehappening.
Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
He also stated, on the TV show “The Cable,” that “We can’t look at aid in that light. It’s now becoming a matter of principle”.
I love it!
Extortion, dear Sen. McCain, is defined as the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value through the abuse of one’s office or authority.
Is it the first time US would be paying for transit of NATO supplies? They have long been paying an average of about $250 a truck for transit, as a senior US official has stated in a report by David S. Cloud in the Los Angeles Times published May 19th.
So the question dear Sen. McCain, is not about principle but rather about principal. The question could have been one of principle had the US not been paying anything at all, and then one fine day, Pakistan had woken up to the idea of…what did you say...ah yes…extortion. The question here though, is simply about the amount.
Let us step back a moment and consider the example of a shopkeeper selling goods--goods that someone needs desperately to buy. The shopkeeper sets a price. But the consumer, a sly, manipulating piece of work, tries everything within his power -- public protest, a smear campaign in the neighborhood, anonymous phone threats to burn down the shop -- to make the shopkeeper lower the price. The shopkeeper , a normally docile man--is obstinate this once though. He refuses to succumb to the consumer’s pressure tactics.
Who is the extortionist here: the shopkeeper or the shopper?
Maybe McCain, in his youthful exuberance, forgot that the NATO supply route to Afghanistan via Pakistan has damaged the country’s road infrastructure to the tune of 100 billion rupees over the last 10 years, as reported in the Pakistani newspaper The Nation.
Talking of principles is inappropriate when one has been on a killing spree, you know, and the US has been on one, killing Pakistani civilians, including children and older people -- the more the merrier...
For the rest of this article by Yasmeen Ali in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent two-ime Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, at: www.thiscantbehappening.
Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
This publication is now celebrating
its first full year of publication. We did this all with almost no
financial support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help
us make our second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial
support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you
believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put
your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use
the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at
the address listed on the “Support Us” page.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Dave Lindorff: "Planting Evidence to Sow Fear: Chicago Cops are the Terrorists" @ This Can't Be Happening!
It seems pretty clear by now that the three young “domestic terrorists” arrested by Chicago police in a warrantless house invasion reminiscent of what US military forces are doing on a daily basis in Afghanistan, are the victims of planted evidence -- part of the police-state-style crackdown on anti-NATO protesters in Chicago last week.
The Chicago Police clearly realized that it would be hard to convince a jury that the homemade beer-making equipment in the house was some dreaded bio-terror weapon, so for good measure they apparently dropped off some glass jars with gas in them and tried to make out that the kids were preparing molotov cocktails. That’s the word from National Lawyers Guild attorneys representing the men.
They say their clients and others like them coming into Chicago from out of town to join in protests against the NATO summit were “befriended” by police informants and undercover Chicago Police, who then offered to obtain gasoline or explosive materials like toy rocket motors, and who proposed actions like firebombing police stations.
This kind of entrapment and official deceit by police should alarm every American. It’s bad enough when police plant evidence and lie about evidence in order to win convictions, since it means innocent people will be sent to prison or worse. But with the new post 9-11 terrorism laws, like the state terrorism statutes in Illinois being applied in these cases, it becomes far more difficult for a victim of such police and prosecutorial misconduct to challenge the case against her or him.
In terror cases, the government can claim “national security” to hide the evidence and even the identity of the witnesses from the defendants and the courts, the jury and the public, and can avoid ever being questioned about it publicly. In a worst case, the federal government doesn’t even need to bring the case to trial. If the victim is accused of being a terrorist, under the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and various executive orders, that person can be locked away indefinitely without trial -- exactly the kind of abuse that led American colonists to rise up against their British colonial overlords 237 years ago.
Residents like me from Philadelphia know all about this stuff. Planting evidence on people you want to lock away has a venerable history in this once revolutionary town. In 1995, six Philly cops were convicted of presenting false testimony and of framing over a hundred people with planted evidence that sent the victims to jail with long prison terms.
In the end, two of those cops ended up serving jail terms themselves as the result of a federal corruption probe...
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDOFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1175
Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
This publication is now celebrating its first full year of publication. We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help us make our second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page.
The Chicago Police clearly realized that it would be hard to convince a jury that the homemade beer-making equipment in the house was some dreaded bio-terror weapon, so for good measure they apparently dropped off some glass jars with gas in them and tried to make out that the kids were preparing molotov cocktails. That’s the word from National Lawyers Guild attorneys representing the men.
They say their clients and others like them coming into Chicago from out of town to join in protests against the NATO summit were “befriended” by police informants and undercover Chicago Police, who then offered to obtain gasoline or explosive materials like toy rocket motors, and who proposed actions like firebombing police stations.
This kind of entrapment and official deceit by police should alarm every American. It’s bad enough when police plant evidence and lie about evidence in order to win convictions, since it means innocent people will be sent to prison or worse. But with the new post 9-11 terrorism laws, like the state terrorism statutes in Illinois being applied in these cases, it becomes far more difficult for a victim of such police and prosecutorial misconduct to challenge the case against her or him.
In terror cases, the government can claim “national security” to hide the evidence and even the identity of the witnesses from the defendants and the courts, the jury and the public, and can avoid ever being questioned about it publicly. In a worst case, the federal government doesn’t even need to bring the case to trial. If the victim is accused of being a terrorist, under the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and various executive orders, that person can be locked away indefinitely without trial -- exactly the kind of abuse that led American colonists to rise up against their British colonial overlords 237 years ago.
Residents like me from Philadelphia know all about this stuff. Planting evidence on people you want to lock away has a venerable history in this once revolutionary town. In 1995, six Philly cops were convicted of presenting false testimony and of framing over a hundred people with planted evidence that sent the victims to jail with long prison terms.
In the end, two of those cops ended up serving jail terms themselves as the result of a federal corruption probe...
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDOFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1175
Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
This publication is now celebrating its first full year of publication. We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help us make our second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Hanging out with Occupy Wichita: CISPA Protest @ Verizon Wireless
We had a great protest tonight outside Verizon. The management was furious and called the police. The police were nice and said we could stay as long as we liked, so we did. The next CISPA protest will be outside a Bank of America location, likely in the first week of June. We will keep you posted and you can also stay updated here: https://www.facebook.com/occupywichita and here: https://www.facebook.com/Occupyict
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Ray McGovern: "Applying the Six-Day War to Iran" @ Consortium News
Read it and other vital news articles at Consortium News.
Ellen Cantarow: "How Rural America Got Fracked" @ Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: Ellen Cantarow, The New Eco-Devastation in Rural America
When workers drilling tunnels at Gauley
Bridge, West Virginia, began to die, Union Carbide had an answer. It
hadn’t been taking adequate precautions against the inhalation of silica
dust, a known danger to workers since the days of ancient Greece.
Instead, in many cases, a company doctor would simply tell the families
of the workers that they had died of “tunnelitis,” and a local
undertaker would be paid $50 to dispose of each corpse. A few years
later, in 1935, a congressional subcommittee discovered that
approximately 700 workers had perished while drilling through Hawk’s
Nest Mountain, many of them buried in unmarked graves at the side of the
road just outside the tunnel. The subcommittee concluded
that Union Carbide’s project had been accomplished through a “grave and
inhuman disregard of all considerations for the health, lives and
future of the employees."
Despite the “Hawk’s Nest Incident” and thousands of Depression-era lawsuits against foundries, mines, and construction companies, silicosis never disappeared. In the decades since, as TomDispatch authors David Rosner and Jerry Markowitz have repeatedly demonstrated, industry worked tirelessly to label silicosis a “disease of the past,” even while ensuring that it would continue to be a disease of the present. By the late 1990s, the Columbia University researchers found that from New York to California, from Texas all the way back to West Virginia, millions of workers in foundries, shipyards, mines, and oil refineries, among other industries, were endangered by silica dust.
Today, there’s a new silicosis scare on the horizon and a new eco-nightmare brewing in the far corners of rural America. Like the Hawk's Nest disaster it has flown under the radar -- until now.
Once upon a time, mining companies tore open hills or bored through or chopped off mountain tops to get at vital resources inside. They were intent on creating quicker paths through nature’s obstacles, or (as at Gauley Bridge) diverting the flow of mighty rivers. Today, they’re doing it merely to find the raw materials -- so-called frac sand -- to use in an assault on land several states away. Multinational corporations are razing ancient hills of sandstone in the Midwest and shipping that silica off to other pastoral settings around the United States. There, America’s prehistoric patrimony is being used to devastating effect to fracture shale deposits deep within the earth -- they call it “hydraulic fracturing” -- and causing all manner of environmental havoc. Not everyone, however, is keen on this “sand rush” and coalitions of small-town farmers, environmentalists, and public health advocates are now beginning to stand firm against the big energy corporations running sand-mining operations in their communities.
Ground zero in this frac-fight is the rural Wisconsin towns to which TomDispatch’s roving environmental reporter Ellen Cantarow traveled this spring to get the biggest domestic environmental story that nobody knows about. Walking the fields of family farms under siege and talking to the men and women resisting the corporations, Cantarow offers up a shocking report of vital interest. There’s a battle raging for America’s geological past and ecological future -- our fresh food and clean water supplies may hinge on who wins it. Nick Turse
Despite the “Hawk’s Nest Incident” and thousands of Depression-era lawsuits against foundries, mines, and construction companies, silicosis never disappeared. In the decades since, as TomDispatch authors David Rosner and Jerry Markowitz have repeatedly demonstrated, industry worked tirelessly to label silicosis a “disease of the past,” even while ensuring that it would continue to be a disease of the present. By the late 1990s, the Columbia University researchers found that from New York to California, from Texas all the way back to West Virginia, millions of workers in foundries, shipyards, mines, and oil refineries, among other industries, were endangered by silica dust.
Today, there’s a new silicosis scare on the horizon and a new eco-nightmare brewing in the far corners of rural America. Like the Hawk's Nest disaster it has flown under the radar -- until now.
Once upon a time, mining companies tore open hills or bored through or chopped off mountain tops to get at vital resources inside. They were intent on creating quicker paths through nature’s obstacles, or (as at Gauley Bridge) diverting the flow of mighty rivers. Today, they’re doing it merely to find the raw materials -- so-called frac sand -- to use in an assault on land several states away. Multinational corporations are razing ancient hills of sandstone in the Midwest and shipping that silica off to other pastoral settings around the United States. There, America’s prehistoric patrimony is being used to devastating effect to fracture shale deposits deep within the earth -- they call it “hydraulic fracturing” -- and causing all manner of environmental havoc. Not everyone, however, is keen on this “sand rush” and coalitions of small-town farmers, environmentalists, and public health advocates are now beginning to stand firm against the big energy corporations running sand-mining operations in their communities.
Ground zero in this frac-fight is the rural Wisconsin towns to which TomDispatch’s roving environmental reporter Ellen Cantarow traveled this spring to get the biggest domestic environmental story that nobody knows about. Walking the fields of family farms under siege and talking to the men and women resisting the corporations, Cantarow offers up a shocking report of vital interest. There’s a battle raging for America’s geological past and ecological future -- our fresh food and clean water supplies may hinge on who wins it. Nick Turse
How Rural America Got Fracked
The Environmental Nightmare You Know Nothing About
By Ellen Cantarow
If the world can be seen in a grain of sand, watch out. As Wisconsinites are learning, there’s money (and misery) in sand -- and if you’ve got the right kind, an oil company may soon be at your doorstep.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
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