Truthout: 30 April 2012
Chicago to Welcome a Militarized May Day?
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "If there is going to be a dress rehearsal for the coming NATO summit in Chicago, May Day is
it.... It will also, coincidentally or not, be the first day that police in 'battle' dress hit the streets to prepare
for the summit. Operation Red Zone, a security perimeter around ... where the summits will be held ... will be patrolled
by federal law enforcement carrying 'non-lethal' guns beginning Tuesday."
The Obama Contradiction
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "He has few constraints (except those he's internalized). No one can stop him or
countermand his orders.... And if he cares to, he can send a robot assassin to kill you ... He sounds like a typical
villain from a James Bond novel.... As it happens, though, he's the president of the United State, a nice guy with a
charismatic wife and two lovely kids. How could this be?"
Ahead of May Day, David Harvey Details Urban Uprisings From Occupy Wall Street to the Paris Commune
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "On Tuesday, May 1st, known as May Day or International Workers' Day, Occupy Wall Street
protesters hope to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country under the slogan, 'General Strike. No Work.
No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere.' Events are planned in 125 cities. We speak with leading social theorist David Harvey,
distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about how Occupy Wall
Street compares to other large-scale grassroots movements throughout modern history."
Occupy Oakland, Workers Back Off May Day Plan to Shut Down Golden Gate Bridge
Susie Cagle, AlterNet: "May Day protest actions are planned across the region, state and nation, but many eyes are on
the flashpoint of Occupy Oakland, where organizers say 'traditional labor and precarious workers will strike together
for the first time' at Occupy's call. 'It's an interesting convergence of unorganized labor and the Occupy movement
creating this pressure and momentum that encourages the rank and file to plan strikes on this day,' said Steven Angell,
an organizer with Occupy Oakland."
Obama Campaign Grapples With New Voter ID Laws
Michael D. Shear, The New York Times News Service: "Field workers for President Obama's campaign fanned out across the
country over the weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say
threaten the campaign's hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election. Many of the laws in question -
including the ones in Florida and Wisconsin - are the subject of legal challenges by Democratic groups ..."
ALEC Retreats, the Right Wing Freaks
Mark Engler, Dissent Magazine: "With sponsors rapidly jumping ship, ALEC has tried to do some damage control. Last week
it announced that it would be 'eliminating [its] Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic
issues' such as Stand Your Ground and Voter ID. The purpose of the move, the organization said, is to focus more keenly
on 'free-market, limited government, pro-growth priorities - read: destroying unions, eliminating environmental
regulation, reducing taxes for the top 1 percent, and so forth."
Dean Baker | Budget Bunk: The Old Pox-on-Both-Your Houses Game
Dean Baker, Truthout: "In Washington, all serious people routinely write columns in which they set themselves above the
political fray and pronounce the Republicans and Democrats equally to blame for political gridlock and all that they see
wrong with the world. Today, it is my turn. Of course, beating up on the Republicans is pretty easy these days; you
mostly just have to repeat what they say.... The Democrats rely on their great myth: Bill Clinton made the hard choices,
cutting spending and raising taxes."
Our Hope Is in Our Struggle: Reclaiming Land and Life in Honduras
Consuelo Castillo, Beverly Bell and Lauren Elliot, Other Worlds: "In Honduras, as in most places, the government and the
wealthy treat land as a commodity. In pursuit of the profits it offers, they have taken enormous tracts of land from
indigenous peoples and small farmers, often through legally suspect if not outright violent means. On April 17, several
thousand Hondurans set out to take back some of this land. They occupied 30,000 acres of land that day, claiming a legal
right to grow crops there."
Connecticut's Death Penalty Message
E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: "... last week, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy signed a law repealing the
state's death penalty. There are now 17 states without capital punishment, Illinois having joined the ranks last year.
What happened in Connecticut brings home the flaw in seeing everything that has happened in the states since the midterm
vote as embodying a steady shift rightward."
TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES
The GOP Knows It Can Only Win the White House by Disenfranchising Voters. Just Ask George W. Bush
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "If the 'felon purge' that allegedly included the purge of more than 55,000 eligible
voters had not been carried out by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush, Gore would have likely won the Florida election by so
many votes that the Supreme Court couldn't have stolen it from him. So, for eight years, we had a president who had not
been elected by the majority of Americans (Gore won the national election by approximately 550,000 votes), and had been
appointed to the office as a result of the machinations of premeditated voter suppression."
Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz: More on the Possibility of a Double-Dip Recession
Krugman Debunks Claim About High Corporate Tax Rates
Humor Highlights From the White House Correspondents' Dinner
Murdoch's News Corp Has Sought to Undermine Governments
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&'s Sake!
Greenwashing the "Environmental Olympics" Big Time
Gibbs: GOP Slogan Is "You Didn't Clean Up Our Mess Fast Enough"
Support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here.
*************