William Rivers Pitt | Sick of Secrets
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: The state fathers of the North Carolina General Assembly, it seems, do not want you or anyone else to know the precise composition of the poisons being injected into the ground to lap up whatever mouthfuls of gas and oil there are to be had.
Hearing the *Ping* of Poverty – or Not
Joseph Natoli, Truthout: Steeped now as we are in a plutarchic imaginary, poverty is a ping that if you hear, you do not want to pursue. It is a ping coming from a black box you do not want to open because it not only contains what we have lost, but what we have destroyed.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren | The New Populism Is a Fight for America’s Values
Elizabeth Warren, Campaign for America’s Future: “The game is rigged. The rich and the powerful have lobbyists and lawyers and plenty of friends in Congress. Everyone else, not so much. Now we can whine about it. We can whimper. Or we can fight back. Me? I’m fighting back.”
The Florida Everglades: A New Frontline for Fracking?
Julie Dermansky, DeSmogBlog: Pamela and Jamie Duran of Naples, Fla., had not spent much time worrying about fracking. Like most Floridians, they’d been repeatedly told it couldn’t happen there. Until it did.
Read the Article and View the Photos
Meet Six Nutrition Blogger Moms Who Crashed the McDonald’s Shareholder Meeting
Staff, Yes! Magazine: Current trends suggest one in three kids will develop Type 2 diabetes as adults. These moms told McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson what they think about the fast food industry targeting their kids.
Poverty Is a “Foreign Country” on the American Screen
Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet: TV and film both influence and shape public perception, and the go-to explanation for economic hardship is still the idea of a “culture of poverty,” which says that people are poor because their families are messed up, and they don’t want to work.
Oil Giant Citgo Gets Off Easy in Criminal Case
Priscila Mosqueda, The Center for Public Integrity: A foreign oil company convicted of polluting a Texas community’s air with dangerous chemicals has gotten off easy in a criminal case that could undercut the prosecution of environmental crimes in the United States.
The Cloud Is Not the Territory
Ingrid Burrington, Waging Nonviolence: The opacity of internet infrastructure and policy – and the insistence that ideally users shouldn’t need to see or understand either – conceals data, the institutions that hold it, and the power they exercise with it.
Read the Article and View the Photos
Chilean Robin Hood? Artist Known as “Papas Fritas” on Burning $500 Million Worth of Student Debt
Amy Goodman and Juan González, Democracy Now!: Francisco Tapia, known as Francisco “Papas Fritas,” or French fries, says he burned $500 million worth of debt papers from the private Universidad del Mar. Chilean authorities are in the process of shutting down the university over financial irregularities.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript
Single Payer Advocates: How Do We Defeat Health Care for Profit?
Anne Meador, DC Media Group: At a panel hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders on Capitol Hill, advocates for single-payer health care criticized the current system in the United States as inefficient, expensive and delivering poor results in comparison to wealthy nations who offer universal health coverage to their citizens.
Bulgaria, No Country for Syrian Refugees
Claudia Ciobanu, Inter Press Service: Since November of last year, Bulgaria has virtually closed its borders to an inflow of Syrian asylum seekers and other migrants trying to enter the country from Turkey, while the EU institutions involved appear to have acquiesced to this.
BuzzFlash
Protesting McDonald’s Workers Give Shareholders a Big Mac Attack
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: The fantasy world of Ronald McDonald being a playful friend of children and families is under siege. After all, the balloons that he hands out to children can’t feed them.
Occupy Protester Cecily McMillan’s Pre-Sentencing Statement to the Judge
Read the Statement at Justice for Cecily
Eugene Robinson | The GOP Establishment Didn’t Win, They Just Swallowed the Tea
This Ice Sheet Will Unleash a Global Superstorm Sandy That Never Ends
Read the Article at Mother Jones
Tobacco, the Fossil Fuel Industry and Capitalist “Morality”
FCC Incest: Meet the Cable Cronies Who Control Net Neutrality’s Future
UN Decries Water as Weapon of War in Military Conflicts
Read the Article at Inter Press Service
Koch Brothers’ Detroit Abomination: Stunning Avarice and Cruelty Reaches New Low
Spirit In Action 