The Economic Debate Has yet to Target Key Issues
Danny Schechter writes for Media Channel: "There is still an air of unreality in the economic debate that is increasingly dominating the election. For one thing, it is still “AAU” (All About Us), as if what happens in the US economy in a globalized world is somehow separate and disconnected to what happens to people “out there.” It is as if our growing deficit, subprime crisis and dropping dollar only affects the United States. Of course, that’s not true. OPEC has blamed the rising price of oil on speculators, the subprime scandal and the deliberate decline of the dollar."

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Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio
Written by veteran media critic and Emmy winner Rory O'Connor, Shock Jocks features unsparing profiles of the ten worst conservative radio talkers in America, including Michael Savage, Bill O' Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus and the rest. Shock Jocks highlights the politicized and often factually challenged world of talk radio that dominates a sizable portion of America's airwaves, and shows how misogyny, racism, and utter contempt for other human beings is disguised as “free speech”. This scathing account also details the progressive alternatives fighting for airtime, and what you can do to help.

To watch an video interview of Rory O'Conner, click here.

To order the book, click here.

An Excerpt From Robert Scheer’s “The Pornography of Power”
War doesn’t pay, nor does imperial ambition. This proposition should be evident to anyone who has paid attention to the fivefold increase in the price of oil since George W. Bush took office. The principle of nonintervention is neither liberal nor conservative in orientation, and at the inception of the Republic it was accepted as a commonsense.

To read Empire or Republic, click here.

Fifty New Manhattan Projects
Vladimir Keilis-Borok and Michael D. Intriligator write: "Both history and common sense teach us that to overcome these threats requires innovative research at the frontier of basic science. Such research has again and again rescued humankind from immediate dangers through decisively better new technologies. We would like to propose a new approach to setting up such research that would address the major threats humanity faces."

Despite its catastrophic outcome, the Manhattan Project can provide a useful model of how we might now mobilize science to address the major global dangers we now face—but overcoming these threats will require innovative research and international cooperation among scientists focused on the common good.

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I Guess You Can Call It Torture.
McClatchy reporters traveled to 11 countries to interview 66 freed Guantanamo and Afghanistan prison detainees. The result is a stunning 5-part series and multi-media presentation titled "Guantanamo: Beyond the Law."


McCain's Playbook: Hate, Fear and Caveman Politics
According to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "The idea that John McCain is kicking off his trek to the White House by fleeing at top-end speed from the faltering Republican brand is the kind of absurdly facile misperception that only the American campaign press could swallow whole. The reality is that the once independent-thinking McCain has by now completely remade himself into a prototypical, dumbed-down Republican Party stooge -- one who plans to rely on the same GOP strategy that has been winning elections ever since Pat Buchanan and Dick Nixon cooked up a plan for cleaving the South back in 1968. Rather than serving up the 'straight talk' he promises, McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who's ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway."

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