Truthout Headlines: 06-02-11

Sunday 6 February 2011

Muslim Brotherhood Join Egypt Talks as Mubarak Allies Make Concessions
David D. Kirkpatrick, Kareem Fahim and Alan Cowell, The New York Times News Service: "Members of the Muslim Brotherhood joined other opposition groups meeting with Vice President Omar Suleiman on Sunday in what seemed a significant departure in the nation's uprising and political history. The Brotherhood is an outlawed Islamist organization often depicted by the authorities as committed to the overthrow of the secular order in the heart of the Middle East.... But it has remained Egypt's biggest opposition force against the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak. After the meeting had started, The Associated Press said that talks included some of the top issues for the opposition - including freedom of the press and the release of those detained since anti-government protests started - as well as agreement to begin setting up a structure to study amending the country's constitution."
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Now Gaza Begins to Shake
Pam Bailey, Inter Press Service: "Ripple effects of the Egyptian uprising are now spreading to Gaza, where some groups are planning a new rally next week. Moves by some Gazans to mimic protesters in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen by taking to the streets are making the Hamas government nervous. Government officials sponsored an official rally in solidarity with the Egyptian protesters earlier, but when a small group of journalists and bloggers organized their own, six women and eight men were arrested. Two of the women, known for their outspoken criticism of the regime, were beaten up."
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The Conservative Class War Continued
Eric Alterman, The Nation: "Can it be mere coincidence that the right-wing media promoted this phony-baloney story at a moment when, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, points out, conservatives are 'readying a massive assault' on the pensions and benefits of these same employees? Led by Newt Gingrich, conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations to firefighters, cops, teachers and, yes, sanitation workers. The assault on public employee unions is the next phase of a forty-year class war in America by the rich against the rest of us. It is of a piece with the steady dismantling of our progressive taxation system and the explosion of economic inequality."
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Clashes Spread Across Key Border Region in Southern Sudan
Alan Boswell, McClatchy Newspapers: "Clashes spread across a key border region in southern Sudan on Saturday following a wave of mutinies among southerners in the northern army, leaving at least 41 dead as Sudan begins to divide into two nations following a southern referendum on independence last month. Official results show that southerners voted 99 percent for forming their own country, and full independence is set to take effect in July this year. The referendum was the core provision of a U.S.-brokered 2005 peace deal between Sudan's Arab government in the north and the rebellious African south, ending decades of war that killed 2 million people."
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"Celebrate People's History: the Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution"
Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout: "The truism has it right. If you're not depressed or angry about the state of the world, you're not paying attention. A quick glance at the daily headlines is enough to have many of us wringing our hands in despair. Countless wars seem like they'll never end; social welfare programs are being slashed; the Tea Party is on the rise; ultraconservatives have picked up the mantle of feminism; and schoolyard bullies have pushed an escalating number of LGBTQ youth to commit suicide, to name just a few of the atrocities presently hitting home. Scary times, we tell each other as we try to muster the wherewithal for a meaningful fight back. Enter 'Celebrate People's History' (CPH), a stunning look at street art - usually in the form of two-color posters - that recognizes the countless men and women who, since time immemorial, have participated in political actions to challenge the status quo."
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Revisiting the Reagan Nightmare
Terrance Heath, The Campaign for America's Future: "In a sense, it's highly appropriate that the centennial of Reagan's birth falls upon us in the midst of a economic nightmare from which it is uncertain when - or if - the nation will awaken. Though we will be inevitably awash in conservative praise and hagiography of Reagan, his 100th birthday is also an occasion to remember how America's long economic nightmare began. It's a story told many times, but it bears telling again, and again.... Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years. And it started with Reagan. Anyone who's wringing their hands about America's debt and China's ownership of it has Reagan to thank."
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At Stake in Egypt: Reading Gaza Mom
David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org: "The ideal remedy to the ignoring of Gaza, I think, would be if we had a writer and speaker who was from Gaza but also lived frequently right here in the Washington, D.C., area, someone who was a news reporter who could get the facts and report them, but also someone who could tell a human story of life as a Gazan, and someone up to speed on the most useful current forms of communication: a blogger, and a blogger whose best work had been excerpted and collected into a well-edited book. That would be ideal and is also Laila El-Haddad of http://gazamom.com and now of 'Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between'."
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The Problems With the Rivlin-Ryan Medicare Plan
James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario: "Uwe Reinhardt has a post about the Rivlin-Ryan Medicare Plan, which would convert Medicare into a voucher program for people currently under 55 and also fix the growth rate of the value of the vouchers at GDP growth plus one percentage point. The issue Reinhardt focuses on, and which I also blogged about a while back, is that health care costs have been climbing considerably faster than that, so over time the value of the vouchers will fall relative to real health care costs.But another problem is that, at least according to the CBO's summary, the Rivlin-Ryan plan doesn't say anything about how elderly people will buy insurance. Now, it's possible that the Rivlin-Ryan plan takes the Obama health care reform and its reforms to the individual market (including a prohibition on medical underwriting and the creation of exchanges for buying insurance) as a starting point. But that would be interesting, since Paul Ryan voted to repeal the Obama health care reform."
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"Juggernaut:" the Standardized Test
Marion Brady, The Washington Post: "Picture a huge, ancient chariot being pulled through narrow city streets, carrying a crude idol of a god. So massive is the chariot, citizens are crushed under its wooden wheels. The current education-change experiment, begun in the 1980s at the urging of corporate America, is a juggernaut. The god it carries is The Standardized Test. But the chariot has stalled, so questions must be asked.... Can machine-scored test questions attach useful, meaningful numbers or letter grades indicating the quality of the complex thought processes upon which our survival and success depend? Most educators say 'No'."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

Reagan led America into the death of Main Street while he championed its glory.

He did that by acting the role of the proud defender of "American exceptionalism" and "moral values," while he implemented a policy and mindset that led to the economic decline of "middle America" – and championed death squads and brutal dictatorships abroad.

But his most detrimental accomplishment was ushering in the age of governance by global corporations – who have an allegiance only to profits and manufacturing at the lowest cost (overseas), not to jobs or decent pay in the United States.

Yesterday, BuzzFlash wrote about how this destructive change in America's political prism was exemplified by GE's launching of Reagan's political career, and how GE is still benefiting in the Obama White House.

Journalist David Lindorff trenchantly analyzes how GE's investment in Reagan is still paying off - in the Obama administration - with the cynical appointment of GE honcho Jeffrey Immelt as "jobs czar":

Between 2005 and 2009, according to GE’s own 10-K financial reports, the company shed jobs in the US so fast, and added them abroad so fast, that the US employee share of GE’s total workforce dropped from 51 percent to 44 percent, a process of job destruction that has continued apace since then. In 2009 and 2010, according to information compiled by the United Electrical Workers (UE), GE closed down 29 manufacturing plants in North America, 28 of them in the US and one in Canada.... Meanwhile, Immelt recently told Forbes magazine about his company’s plans for expanding jobs ... in India.

It gets worse. GE is a master at using offshore tax schemes to avoid paying its fair share to the help cover for the costs of running America. As Lindorff documents,

The company also likes the idea of lower corporate taxes (for the years 2007 to 2009, according to Citizens for Tax Justice's Bob McIntyre, Immelt's GE managed to finagle a tax rate of -14.1%, which is to say the government gave the company an extra 14.1% over and above its profits!), and of course all kinds of tax incentives aimed at increasing hiring, though these measures, while helping corporate bottom lines, have demonstrably failed to lead to significant job creation. GE also opposes measures that would punish companies for outsourcing production, or that would make it harder for it to bring in high-skilled workers from abroad to replace educated but higher-paid American workers.

In short, it is now politically acceptable for a Democratic president to appoint a chief adviser on job creation whose major skill set is closing American plants, sending jobs overseas, and not only avoiding his company (GE) from paying taxes, but actually ending up with a US government subsidy.

On the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birthday, this is his legacy The myth of "morning in America" will endure in Republican fundraisers and fawning corporate media coverage, but the facts speak for themselves – and they are a damning indictment.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Bush Trip to Switzerland Canceled Over Torture Protest Fears
Read the Article at Miami Herald

Iran Kicks Off Espionage Trial of US Hikers
Read the Article at The Christian Science Monitor

Farm Insurance Fraud Cheating Taxpayers Out of Millions
Read the Article at The LA Times

Egyptian Natural Gas to Israel Cut Off After Explosion
Read the Article at Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Neo-Nazism Growing in Eastern Germany
Read the Article at The AP

Undocumented Immigrants From India Surprise Border Officials in Texas
Read the Article at The LA Times

Wallflowers at the Revolution: Amid the Egyptian Crisis, Television Pundits Aggrandized American Inventions, Twitter and Facebook
Read the Article at The New York Times

Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power
Read the Article at The LA Times

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