"Mike Lofgren"- Confessions of a GOP Operative Who Left "the Cult": 3 Things Everyone Must Know About the Lunatic-Filled Republican Party

By Mike Lofgren, TruthOut.org

Posted on September 5, 2011, Printed on September 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152305/confessions_of_a_gop_operative_who_left_%22the_cult%22%3A_3_things_everyone_must_know_about_the_lunatic-filled_republican_party

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)

Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

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"Fukushima Eyewitnesses to Visit New York, Challenge UN to Stop Its Promotion of Nuclear Power"

September 6, 2011

As the nuclear crisis precipitated by the 2011 Great Eastern Earthquake unfolded, spewing radioactive material across northern Japan, Sachiko Sato of Fukushima sent her three children away to safety while she stayed behind. With clear information about fallout and radiation levels in short supply from the government, other families inside and outside the evacuation zones faced similar separation. Businesses continued as usual despite rising radiation levels, so parents, often fathers, were forced to stay at work as the wives and children left for Tokyo or western Japan.

While Sato’s children worried about their classmates who remained in Fukushima, the Japanese government, rather than arrange for wider evacuation, raised the legal radiation limit by 20 times. The new limit: 20 mSv per year, equivalent to some countries’ maximum-allowed dose for nuclear workers.

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"Paul Craig Roberts"- In America The Rule Of Law Is Vacated

Bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free...

 Global Research, August 31, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26326

With bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free, the US Department of Justice (sic) has nothing better to do than to harass the famous Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson http://rt.com/usa/news/gibson-guitar-raid-wood-489/ , arrest organic food producers in California http://rt.com/usa/news/food-agents-year-milk/  and send 12 abusive FBI agents armed with assault rifles to bust down yet another wrong door of yet another innocent family, leaving parents, children, and grandmother traumatized. http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-family-adams-home/  .

What law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson’s plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?

No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India.

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"Greg Mitchell"- Revealed: Ayn Rand Worked on a Movie Script Glorifying the Atomic Bomb

By Greg Mitchell, The Nation

Posted on September 2, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152268/revealed%3A_ayn_rand_worked_on_a_movie_script_glorifying_the_atomic_bomb

The following article first appeared on the Web site of The Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its e-mail newsletters here. 

It may surprise many to learn that, like many famous novelists, Ayn Rand had a period when she “went Hollywood.” In 1943, Rand sold the rights for The Fountainhead to Warner Bros., and wrote the screenplay. She was then hired by top producer Hall Wallis as a writer, idea generator and script doctor. Her screenplays included the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along. Right after the war she became involved in the anti-Communist movement in Hollywood and appeared as a friendly witness before Congress in testifying about the Red influence there.

At the same time, I’ve learned, she also had a kind of love affair—with the atomic bomb.

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"Brian Moench"- Obama, Drinking the Tea Party's Environmental Meltdown

Published on Monday, September 5, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/05-5

 

The name of the 1979 movie China Syndrome has ever since been attached to a catastrophic nuclear reactor meltdown.   But the name is better suited for what is evolving now in China, a new version of the China Syndrome; complete “environmental meltdown.”  (If you haven’t seen the pictures go here.)  China actually has decent environmental laws, but they are not enforced.  Chinese industry and utilities are basically free to do as they please, much like what the increasingly radical Anti-Science/Tea Party wing of the GOP is clamoring for in the United States.  So how well is this Tea Party brand of environmental protection working in China? 

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"The Toronto Star"- Author Naomi Klein Among Arrested in Oilsands Protest

Published on Saturday, September 3, 2011 by The Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1048837--author-naomi-klein-arrested-in-oilsands-protest

WASHINGTON—More than 1,000 people have been busted at the gates of the White House the past two weeks, as the most ambitious of climate protests against Canadian oil comes to a head.

Toronto author and activist Naomi Klein was not planning to be among them. Support the cause? Sure. Speak to the anti-tarsands faithful? Absolutely. But to actually get arrested?

No, Klein and the other Canadian protesters in Washington agreed — that is a stand best left to their U.S. counterparts, who need not worry whether such close encounters with law enforcement will hamper their ability to cross borders in the future.

Yet there was Klein on Friday, being led away by police in the latest harvest of detainees after a last-second decision to put her liberty on the line in opposition to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

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"Carolyn Steel"- A new food manifesto

www.odemagazine.com

CAROLYN STEEL | SPRING 2011 ISSUE
http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/74/new-food-manifesto/

From 100-mile diets to vertical farming, from green markets to organics, from obesity to genetically modified organisms, food is always in the news. The issues are political, social, emotional, psychological, ecological and economic. Take the current popularity of urban farming, for example. A renewed interest in what and how we eat combined with the aftershocks of the Great Recession have inspired city dwellers to cultivate whatever little plots of land they might have. The last time people were this keen on growing their own vegetables was during World War II. So what’s going on?

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"Chip Berlet"- Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

By Chip Berlet, Public Eye
Posted on September 1, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152271/inside_the_christian_right_dominionist_movement_that%27s_undermining_democracy

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots. At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology.

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"Stephen Leahy"- U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges

Published on Friday, September 2, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104972

With four times as many oil rigs pumping domestic oil today than eight years ago and declining domestic demand, the United States is awash in oil.

The country's oil industry is primarily interested in who will pay the most on the global marketplace. They call that "energy security" when it suits, but in reality it is "oil company security" through maximising profits, say energy experts like Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International, an NGO that researches the links between oil, gas and coal companies and governments.

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"John Atcheson"- Atlas Mugged: The Ayn Rand Six Step

Published on Friday, September 2, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Imagine your landlord coming to you one day and saying, “It’s everyone for himself. We’re not going to supply heat or water or electricity any longer, and we’re not going to conduct repairs.”

Of course, you and the rest of the tenants wouldn’t stand for such a thing . You’d kick him out if you could and move out if you couldn’t.

But suppose, over the years, he cuts the part of the portion of your rent that goes to utilities and repair work. Year after year, he’d stop by and announce his cuts with great fanfare, telling you how much money you’ll save.

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