Clippings for 5 April 2009

Obama to Call for a Nuclear-Free World
Reuters reports: "President Barack Obama will call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons across the globe, in remarks on Sunday he hopes will lend credibility to his message in atomic disputes with Iran and North Korea. Visiting Prague during an eight-day visit to Europe, Obama plans to deliver what his aides have billed as a major speech on weapons proliferation."

An Unexpected Voice on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death
James Rucker writes for Truthout: " Yesterday, an unexpected voice emerged to reflect on the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death - Mychal Bell's. Mychal is one of the Jena 6, six black students charged with second-degree attempted murder for their alleged role in an attack on a white student at their high school in Jena, Louisiana. "

Accountability Means Investigate and Prosecute!
Dave Johnson writes for The Huffington Post: "I know that President Obama has only been in office a little over two months, but I am getting impatient for some accountability. One of the reasons things went so wrong during the Bush years was that there was no accountability. Almost no one was fired for doing wrong. Prosecutons were blocked by a corrupt Justice Department. Regulators were muzzled. Legislators were paid off."

US Judge, Foreign Detainees "Have US Right"
BBC News reports: "A US judge has ruled that foreign suspects held by the US in Afghanistan have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. Judge John Bates denied the motion by the US government to withhold the right to three detainees at Bagram air base. The US Supreme Court ruled last year that detainees at Guantanamo had such a right. The justice department later said those held at Bagram did not. Judge Bates said the cases were essentially the same."

House Members to President Obama: Rethink the Afghanistan Surge
John Nichols writes for The Nation: "Congressional Democrats and Republicans are signing on to a letter urging President Obama to reconsider his plan to surge tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan. "

Joseph Stiglitz: "It's going to be bad, very bad"
Der Spiegel staff conducted an interview with the Nobel Prize-winner and former chief economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglits, who talks about the Great Depression, Obama's stimulus package and today's financial crisis. The interview was reprinted on Salon.com.

Shut Out: How the Cost of Higher Education Is Dividing Our Country
Andy Kroll writes for TomDispatch.com: "A few months ago, Bobby Stapleton, a 21-year-old student at the University of Michigan, received a phone call from his younger brother. The good news came first: a senior in high school, he, too, had been accepted by the university, the fourth sibling in his family to have the opportunity to make the move to Ann Arbor from rural Hemlock, Michigan."

Commodifying Kids: The Forgotten Crisis
Henry A. Giroux writes for Truthout: "As the United States and the rest of the world enter into an economic free fall, the current crisis offers an opportunity not only to question the politics of free-market fundamentalism, the dominance of economics over politics, and the subordination of justice to the laws of finance and the accumulation of capital, but also the ways in which children's culture has been corrupted by rampant commercialization, commodification and consumption."

Silence Meets Despair of Afghan Women
Marie Cocco writes for Truthdig: "Afghanistan’s women are no longer in vogue. It was only a few years ago that Laura Bush, who normally shied from causes that could be considered controversial, took up their banner. 'The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists,' the first lady said in a radio address shortly after President Bush launched the U.S-led invasion to overthrow the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 'The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.'”

Horrible Piece of Anti-Choice Legislation Passes the Kansas House
Jason at Kansas JAckass writes: "A horrible anti-choice piece of legislation authored by GOP State Rep. Lance Kinzer passed in the Kansas House today on a vote of 82-43 and will be voted on in the Kansas Senate this afternoon. While I think every single anti-choice piece of legislation passed is awful, this one is particularly horrendous: It redefines the word 'viable' in Kansas law in such a way that many abortions currently not considered "late-term" could be."

Recommended Audio: Beyond Elections in the Americas
Benjamin Dangl writes for Truthout: "The new documentary, 'Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas,' proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reins of power and governing their own communities. 'Beyond Elections' is a road map for social change, drawing from communal councils in Venezuela and social movements in Bolivia to participatory budgeting in Brazil and worker cooperatives in Argentina."

Recommended Audio: GritTV The Weekly Spin


Friday Talking Points [72] -The Unfairness Doctrine
Chris Weigant writes for The Huffington Post: "In the world of framing issues (or 'political spin,' if you prefer), there are a few cardinal rules. One of them is when you are trying to scare people, it helps if the example you use (and the words you choose to describe it) are actually scary.[I should mention before I get going here that this article's headline has nothing whatsoever to do with the FCC, or radio or television broadcast rules... just so no one winds up disappointed.] I read a recent opinion article by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, and I found myself actually agreeing with him. This, I should point out, was not his intended purpose (since he's a pretty conservative guy, and I am decidedly not). Because I was agreeing that his "nightmare scenario" actually sounded pretty good. Read it yourself, and see what you think."

AT&T Decides that Net Neturality Won't Work for Wireless
Stacy Higginbotlhan writes for GigaOM: "Update April 3: Five days after the terms of service were changed, and four days after the first outcry in the online community, AT&T has retracted the worrisome language in its TOS that forbid third-party video transfers over its cellular network. Today the carrier issued the following statement: 'The language added on March 30 to AT&T’s wireless data service Terms and Conditions was done in error. It was brought to our attention and we have since removed it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.'"

Free Press Calls on the FCC to Protect Wireless Net Neutrality
Free Press: "In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission today, Free Press called on the agency to confirm that wireless networks must adhere to the Internet Policy Statement, which protects consumers' right to access any online content and services on any device of their choosing. " To read the letter to the FCC click here.

Think Again: Mice Playing: The Decline of Skeptical Journalism
Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory write for the Center for Americna Progress that as newspapers shrivel and downsize their investigative staffs, more and more self-interested lies will go unchallenged -- and the interests of the average citizen will be sold out. The genuises who make millions selling snake oil on cable news act as if none of this is taking place and we should all go back to bed with our trust in their oracular abilities unchanged.

Hopping on the Misinformation Band-Wagoner, GM-Style
Eric Boehlert and Jamison Foser write for Media Matters: "The media failed and they failed hard this week when it came to news that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner had resigned at the request of the Obama administration. ABC's Diane Sawyer claimed of the resignation: '[S]omebody said it's like The Apprentice, White House-style.' We're not sure who Sawyer's 'somebody' actually is, though it is worth noting her comments were far from the worst on the subject. Take, for example, Fox News' Andrew Napolitano, who said that the resignation was 'an absolute power grab, and it's the road to fascism' and that 'this is Mussolini on the Potomac.'"

Online Journalists More Optimistic About The Future Of Journalism than Print Peers
Leena Rao writes for TechCrunch: "The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study today that claims bloggers and journalists have an “uneasy” optimism about the future of news media on the web. But, the study says, their optimism definitely trumps that of broadcast and print employees in traditional media industries."

A Plan to Save Our Free Press
Benjamin Cardin writers for the Washignton Post: "The newspaper industry is turning upside down. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle are among the papers that have ceased daily publication or announced in recent months that they may have to stop publishing. Not long ago, Tribune Co., owner of the Baltimore Sun, filed for bankruptcy."