Marjorie Cohn | US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout: The Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history. Conspicuously absent from the website is a description of the antiwar movement, at the heart of which was the GI movement.
US Treasury and Transportation Departments Hold a Privatization Party
Ellen Dannin, Truthout: The infrastructure investment summit held last month by the US Treasury and Transportation Departments appears likely to provide a boost to the privatization industry – just as privatized infrastructure is filing for bankruptcy.
Personalizing Our Resistance to Domestic Violence
Monica Trinidad, Truthout: While telling our personal stories of struggle may sometimes feel self-serving, or even trivial, stories of personal trauma are the key to humanizing statistics of domestic and state violence, the puzzle pieces that together construct the larger narrative of the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy we oppose.
The United States Is Founded Upon the Model of European Conquest: Dispose of the Disposable People
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Beacon Press: The United States may have declared its independence from Britain, but it continued the European tradition of annihilating native inhabitants as the new nation pursued its “manifest destiny.” To expand, the original 13 colonies had to decimate the Native American nations and seize their lands.
Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, Truthout: What would happen if we disarmed the police in the United States? How would disarming the police affect police-community relations? These questions are absent from the conversations triggered by the daily examples of police violence and murder.
Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of US Public Services
Staff, PR Watch: Maggots, drug smuggling, sexual assault of prisoners: As if the news were not already bad enough, shocking new allegations of a murder-for-hire plot are emerging from Michigan as the media digs deeper into that state’s failed outsourcing of prison services.
The Real Rick Scott Debate Scandal
The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program: Rather than provide us with real news, our corporatized media gives us ratings-driven infotainment drivel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A case in point comes from last night’s Florida gubernatorial debate between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and challenger former Gov. Charlie Crist.
Randy Salzman, Thinking Highways: The “privates” in the much-touted “public-private partnerships” make billions by seeming to lose millions in US transportation projects. The evidence suggests the toll-operating firms are shell companies for international financiers and contractors who blueprint future bankruptcies.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Seven Worst-Case Scenarios in the Battle With the Islamic State
Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch: Here are seven worst-case scenarios in a part of the world where the worst case has regularly been the best that’s been offered. After all, with all that military power being brought to bear on the planet’s most volatile region, what could possibly go wrong?
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report: The largest contributor to the World Health Organization budget is not a government. It is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides more funding than either the United States or the United Kingdom. The organization’s priorities are the result of top-down decision-making from wealthy philanthropists.
On World Day of Food, Struggling for Land in Brazil
Beverly Bell, Other Worlds: Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement is addressing an urgent need in a country with one of the highest levels of unequal land distribution anywhere. Fifty-six percent of agricultural land is owned by just 3.5 percent of landowners. In 2000, multinational companies controlled 50 to 90 percent of export crops.
Ebola Regional Fund Shows Growing Solidarity in West Africa
Nicola Yeates, The Conversation: World leaders have come under fire for their inadequate and slow response to the Ebola outbreak. But how are West African countries responding collectively? What does this tell us about the potential for regional state groupings to support health systems to contribute to global poverty reduction goals?
BuzzFlash
Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Decrease Access to Affordable Cancer Treatment
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: In its analysis of a US-proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership provision, Public Citizen found that the corporate profits of Big Pharma would be increased and protected at the expense of providing medical care to people with cancer.
“Bulletproof Vest For Boys”: Florida Billboards Put a Twist on Police Brutality
Read the Article at Talking Points Memo
New Atheism Should Expand Its Horizons
Scientists Say Fracking Makes Climate Change Worse, Not Better
Ten Facts About Being Homeless in the USA
Ebola Nurses Are as Brave as Soldiers
Read the Article at The Daily Beast
If the GOP Wins the Senate, Expect a Total Assault on Reproductive Rights
Read the Article at The Nation
A Billion Tons of Food Wasted Yearly While Millions Still Go Hungry
Spirit In Action 