"Robert Jensen"- The Anguish in the American Dream

Published on Thursday, June 23, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/23-5

by Robert Jensen

Whether celebrated or condemned, the American Dream endures, though always ambiguously. We are forever describing and defining, analyzing and assessing the concept, and with each attempt to clarify, the idea of an American Dream grows more incoherent yet more entrenched.

The literature of this dream analysis is virtually endless, as writers undertake the task of achieving, saving, chasing, restoring, protecting, confronting, pursuing, reviving, shaping, renewing, and challenging the American Dream. Other writers are busy devouring, recapturing, fulfilling, chasing, liberating, advertising, redesigning, rescuing, spreading, updating, inventing, reevaluating, financing, redefining, remembering, and expanding the American Dream. And let’s not forget those who are deepening, building, debating, burying, destroying, ruining, promoting, tracking, betraying, remaking, living, regulating, undermining, marketing, downsizing, and revitalizing the American Dream.

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"Kevin Carson" - Our Corporate Military – An Irrational, Authoritarian Institution

Counterpunch, June 22, 2011

http://counterpunch.org/carson06242011.html

Nicholas Kristoff, in a New York Times op-ed ("Our Lefty Military," June 16), lauds the "astonishingly liberal ethos" that governs the military internally — single-payer health insurance, job security, educational opportunities, free daycare — in support of Gen. Wesley Clark's description of it as "the purest application of socialism there is."

For me — an avowed libertarian socialist as well as a market anarchist — at least two howlers stand out here. First, when I think of "socialism," I think of all the liberatory things originally associated with that term back in the days of the early working class and classical socialist movement in the nineteenth century: Empowerment of the working class, worker control of production, and all the rest. Last I heard, the U.S. military isn't set up as a worker cooperative, with enlisted men electing officers, managing their own work, or voting on whether or not to go to war. Taking orders from a boss "because I said so" isn't my idea of socialism.

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"William River Pitts"- Clarence Thomas Must Go

Thursday 23 June 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/clarence-thomas-must-go/1308761622

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do not like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In my opinion, he has no business sitting on the high court after the reprehensible treatment he forced Anita Hill to endure, and has been a disgrace to the bench lo these last twenty years. Anthony Weiner, one of Clarence Thomas' most ardent critics, was just run out of Washington DC on a rail for behavior far less offensive; Mr. Thomas is lucky there was no such thing as Twitter when he was sexually harassing Hill, or he'd be chasing ambulances outside of muni court like the hack he is. He sits up there like a lump, never speaking or offering questions to petitioners, and has not had an original thought since his shameful Senate approval.

But his vapid intellectual presence on the bench is only a small part of the story. Mr. Thomas has, by all appearances, turned his position on the court into a license to print money for himself, his family, and a few choice friends.

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"Bill Boyarsky"- Bad News for a Country Tired of War

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bad_news_for_a_country_tired_of_war_20110623/

Posted on Jun 23, 2011

By Bill Boyarsky

Barack Obama’s plan for a limited withdrawal from Afghanistan means tens of thousands of American troops will remain there, many of them fighting, for several years to come.

In his speech Wednesday night, the president announced he will reduce the U.S. fighting force in Afghanistan by 10,000 by the end of this year and a total of 33,000 by September 2012. After that, he said, “our troops will be coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete. …”

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"University of Missouri Health System"-Discovery Offers Insights Into Link Between Parkinson's and Pesticides

Findings could lead to better prevention and treatment for common neurodegenerative disease

University of Missouri Health System, June 20, 2011

http://medicine.missouri.edu/news/0130.php

In a new article published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine take some of the first steps toward unraveling the molecular dysfunction that occurs when proteins are exposed to environmental toxins. Their discovery helps further explain recent NIH findings that demonstrate the link between Parkinson's disease and two particular pesticides – rotenone and paraquat.

"Fewer than 5 percent of Parkinson's cases are attributed to genetics, but more than 95 percent of cases have unknown causes," said Zezong Gu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences. "This study provides the evidence that oxidative stress, possibly due to sustained exposure to environmental toxins, may serve as a primary cause of Parkinson's. This helps us begin to unveil why many people, such as farmers exposed to pesticides, have an increased incidence of the disease."

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"NCAR"-Economic cost of weather may total $485 billion in US

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/ncfa-eco062211.php

National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

BOULDER—Everything has its price, even the weather. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billion in the United States.

The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

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"Chicago Tribune"-AMA: Nearly one in five medical claims processed inaccurately

chicagotribune.com

By Bruce Japsen

Tribune staff reporter

Health insurance companies are inaccurately processing nearly one in five medical claims, slowing payments to doctors and adding bureaucratic headaches to patients, the American Medical Association said this morning.

In its annual report card on the health insurance industry, released during the the group's annual House of Delegates meeting here, the AMA said commercial health insurance companies have an error rate of 19.3 percent, up 2 percentage points from last year's report.

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"Science Daily"-Large Numbers of Birth Defects Seen Near Mountaintop Mining Operations

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110623090001.htm

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) — Birth defects are significantly more common in areas of mountaintop coal mining and are on the rise as the practice becomes more common, according to a study by researchers at Washington State University and West Virginia University.

The researchers, led by Melissa Ahern, health economist and associate professor in WSU's College of Pharmacy, found 235 birth defects per 10,000 births where mountaintop mining is most common in four central Appalachian states. That's nearly twice the rate of 144 defects per 10,000 in non-mining areas.

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“Agence France-Presse” - Obama: Signs Taliban may want a political settlement

Agence France-Presse

June 23, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/23/obama-signs-taliban-may-want-a-political-settlement/

FORT DRUM, New York — US President Barack Obama said Thursday there were signs that the Taliban may be interested in a political settlement critical to stabilizing Afghanistan after US troops come home.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile defended what she said was Washington's "very preliminary outreach" to the Taliban as part of a necessary but unpleasant bid for a political solution in Afghanistan.

Obama referred to the dialogue with the Afghan insurgency for the second time in as many days, after announcing that he would bring home 33,000 troops home from Afghanistan by next summer on Wednesday.

"Because of you, we are now taking the fight to the Taliban instead of the Taliban bringing the fight to us," Obama told Afghanistan combat veterans from the US Army's 10th Mountain Division in upstate New York.

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David Edwards” - NC woman sterilized because state deemed her ‘promiscuous’

David Edwards

June 23, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/nc-woman-sterilized-because-state-deemed-her-promiscuous/

The day that Elaine Riddick had her first and only child at the age of 14, the state of North Carolina had her sterilized on the orders of a court. Riddick had been raped but the state said she was promiscuous.

“They said that I was feeble-minded, they said that I was promiscuous,” Riddick, now 57, told CBS News. “I’ve always been able to take care of myself – I’ve never been promiscuous.”

“So how can people use these things to describe a child that had been abandoned? Or that had been raped by the neighbor and then again, raped by the state of North Carolina?”

North Carolina is the first state to consider a $20,000 payment to victims of sterilizations, but it is doubtful that the Republican-controlled legislature will set aside the necessary funds.

CBS News noted that more than 60,000 women in 32 states were sterilized from the 1920′s to the 1970s to keep down welfare costs. The practice is no longer in use.

Watch this video from CBS News, broadcast June 23, 2011.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/22/eveningnews/main20073457.shtml