Electronic Pen

A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

The following is a news release from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today said federal regulators should stop thumbing their noses at a year-old law and enforce limits on excessive speculation in oil markets.

He cited secret data collected by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which showed that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks and hedge funds dominated oil markets in 2008 when prices rose sharply and topped $140 a barrel. The records - first made public by Sanders - shed light on the role of speculators at a time when oil prices soared and the pump price for gasoline spiked to around $4 a gallon.

In a letter to the commission chairman, Sanders urged Gary Gensler to convene an emergency meeting to crack down on speculators and provide needed relief for motorists and for people who live in cold-weather states, like Vermont, who face sharply higher prices this winter for oil to heat their homes.

"While making this confidential information public may have upset Wall Street oil speculators, the American people have a right to know exactly what caused gasoline prices to skyrocket to more than $4 a gallon back in the summer of 2008," Sanders said. "Further, there is little doubt that the same speculators who caused gasoline and heating oil prices to unnecessarily spike in 2008 are playing the same games again in 2011.  This is simply unacceptable and must not be allowed to continue."

The average price for a gallon of gasoline is now $3.57, still 87-cents more than gas cost two years ago when oil supplies were lower and demand for gasoline was higher.  Sanders also noted that the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the price of heating oil in the northeast will be about 33 percent higher than last winter.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT 

Rick Perry believes that he has earned respect for being a man so brazen that he didn't even blink when confronted with the apparent fact that he executed an innocent man. Indeed, he grew even more defiant as exculpatory evidence grew.

And, then, Perry made sure that the details of his eagerness to kill the "convicted" - but apparently innocent - man, were covered up by dissolving an investigation into the state killing of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Only a man with "guts," who carries a laser-sighted handgun with deadly, hollow-point bullets - even when he jogs with his security detail - could take pride in dismissing the Texas State murder of a man who wasn't likely guilty. As one person in a focus group on Perry, commissioned by a GOP gubernatorial primary opponent, crowed with admiration: "It takes balls to execute an innocent man."

A New Yorker article revealed that the investigating commission, before Perry dissolved it, found that the primary evidence against Willingham, "seemed to deny 'rational reasoning' and was more 'characteristic of mystics or psychics.'"

Justin Elliott of Salon believes that Perry's unapologetic execution of Willingham may have actually helped Perry beat Kay Bailey Hutchison when she challenged him in 2010:

Perry went on to cruise to a 20-point victory in the primary and an easy win in the general election.

[It] leaves one wondering, did the controversy actually help him in the GOP primary? If Perry jumps into the presidential contest, don't expect his primary rivals to bring up this old case ...

Some wags have joked that Perry is George W. Bush without a brain. Perhaps, Perry's pride in signing the death warrant for Willingham shows that he is also George W. Bush - who set a record for assembly-line executions in Texas - without a heart.

That's kind of like being Genghis Khan without the compassion.

******

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Most wealthy Americans will recoil at the suggestion that they should pay higher taxes, likely responding with the tired mantra that the top earners already pay most of the income tax. But, two points can be made in response to this: (1) Federal income tax is only a small part of the burden on the middle class. Based on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total of all state and local taxes, social security taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco) consumes 21% of the annual incomes of the poorest half of America. For the richest 1% of Americans, the same taxes consume 7% of their incomes. (2) The richest people pay most of the federal income taxes because they've made almost all of their new income over the past 30 years. Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has tripled its share of America's income since 1980, after taxes.

But, there are better reasons why the rich should pay higher taxes.

The very rich benefit most from national security, government-funded research, infrastructure, and property laws. Defending the country benefits the rich more, because they have more to defend. Taxpayer-funded research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Internet), the National Institute of Health (pharmaceuticals), and the National Science Foundation (the Digital Library Initiative) has laid a half-century foundation for their idea-building. The interstates and airports and FAA and TSA benefit people who have the money to travel.

Here's another good reason for the rich to pay more taxes: With the drop in tax revenue, funding for the preservation of American culture is disappearing. Do we want our national treasures deprived of maintenance because of budget cuts, as is currently happening in Italy? Do we want our national parks sold to billionaires? Do we want programs for music and the arts eliminated from schools, so that only children of the wealthy can
participate in them?

The 1912 book, "Promised Land," by Mary Antin revealed the wonder of a Russian immigrant coming to the U.S.: "In America, then, everything was free...light was free...music was free."

Not that capitalist markets don't have their place. But, the current view of democracy has gone to the other extreme. An extreme that allows individualism and personal gain to trump societal responsibility. The growing inequality makes community support and safeguards unnecessary for the privileged elite.

Finally, back to the tax statistics. Why should financial earnings (i.e., capital gains) be taxed less than wage earnings from actual work? The richest 10% of Americans owns over 80% of stocks, the gains from which are taxed (long-term) at a 15% rate, while most wage earners pay more than that on their income.

Furthermore, over the past 15 years millionaires have seen their income tax rates drop from 30% to 22%. During approximately the same time period, American economic growth declined from an annual 3.2 percent rate to 1.7 percent. Lower taxes for the rich do not lead to productivity.

Will the rich stop investing or move to another country if their taxes are increased? Not likely. They have it too good here. As Warren Buffett recently stated, "I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone - not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 - shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain."

Mr. Buffett is admitting what everyone else is beginning to realize. The rich take much more than they pay for.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

From the Monroe Doctrine, which was aimed at curbing the encroachments of European powers in the nineteenth century, to Cold War foreign policy designed to forestall the geopolitical machinations of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, Washington has stopped at nothing in its bid to maintain power and prestige within its own regional "back yard" of Latin America. But, with all of those rivalries now a relic of the past, the US is moving on to the next threat to its own hegemony: Iran. That, at least, is the impression I got from reading diplomatic cables that were recently released by the whistle-blowing outfit, WikiLeaks.

For Washington, a great concern was that Iran might gain a strategic foothold in South America, recruiting key allies such as Brazil. Much to the chagrin of the Americans, Brazil under former president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva sought to carve out a more independent foreign policy, which embraced the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. By extending cooperation to Iran, Lula aimed to increase trade and boost collaboration on biotechnology and agriculture. In a surprising development, Lula even urged the west to drop its threat of punishment against Iran for it's pursuit of a nuclear program, a move which proved very reassuring to the politically isolated Ahmadinejad.

Throughout the Bush and Obama administrations, US officials in Brasilia sought to glean more information about this budding relationship, sound out disaffected politicians, and express displeasure about growing diplomatic ties between Tehran and Brasilia when need be. Key in this effort was US ambassador in Brasilia, Clifford Sobel, who pressured the Brazilian Ministry of Energy to cut its burgeoning ties to Iran. Speaking to government officials, Sobel expressed deep concern over the Brazilian state energy company Petrobras because it was considering plans to invest in the Iranian oil and gas sector, located in the Caspian Sea.

The Petrobras Imbroglio

WikiLeaks correspondence reveals Brazilian diplomats were walking a very fine tightrope, striking out on the one hand toward rogue nations like Iran, but on the other hand very keen on placating the Bush administration and staying within Washington's good graces. Responding to Sobel, the Brazilians argued that if they did not invest in Iran, then the Chinese would certainly beat them to it when when it came time to develop deep water exploration and production. However, the Brazilians also, "acknowledged the seriousness of the issue [Brazilian-Iranian energy ties] to the international community and, although they did not say Petrobras would halt its... activities in Iran, they did make it clear that they understand the sensitivity of the political moment."

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Late-night hosts will have a field day with this
Which will result in both laughter and cheers
But Jay Leno privately must admire a guy who
Wouldn't give up his job for forty-two years.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110822/ts_nm/us_libya

NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On the U.S. left, there are certain sacred cows that one should never take on directly.  For years, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been, for the most part, sacrosanct and immune from criticism.  The underlying reasons for this kid glove treatment are hardly mysterious or difficult to surmise, particularly in light of Chávez's hostility to George Bush, the great bane of progressive folk.  Such sympathy would only increase over time, heading into high gear after the U.S.-supported coup of 2002 which was directed against Chávez.

When the coup rapidly unraveled and ended in fiasco, with right wing forces crumbling in disarray, the Venezuelan leader was returned to power in triumph.  Later, in 2006, Chávez was greeted warmly by the New York left after he lambasted Bush in a confrontational speech delivered on the floor of the United Nations.  Speaking from the same lectern that Bush had occupied just a day before, Chávez quipped "The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

When leftists want to know what to think about foreign affairs, many of them consult the views of celebrated academic Noam Chomsky.  For some time, the leftist MIT professor has provided sympathetic commentary on Venezuela, and in 2009 Chomsky even met personally with Chávez in Caracas.  It came as a slight surprise, therefore, when the professor of linguistics recently criticized Chávez for the latter's handling of a case related to María Lourdes Afiuni, a judge who was arrested in December 2009 by the president's secret intelligence police.  The Venezuelan president had ordered Afiuni's arrest after the latter freed a businessman incarcerated on charges of circumventing the country's currency controls.

In her defense, Afiuni claimed that the businessman's pretrial detention had exceeded Venezuela's legal limits, and that she was merely following United Nations protocol on such matters.  Chávez, however, was hardly convinced and proclaimed on national TV no less that the judge would have been subjected to a firing squad in a previous era.  Following her arrest, Afiuni was locked up in a women's prison where she was subjected to cruel and demeaning treatment.  Indeed, other inmates threatened to kill her and even sought to force her into sex.  Earlier this year, Afiuni was moved to house arrest after she underwent an abdominal hysterectomy at a local cancer hospital.

With much fanfare, the New York Times reported on the falling out between Chávez and his former supporter, noting that "Mr. Chomsky's willingness to press for Judge Afiuni's release shows how the president's aggressive policies toward the judiciary have stirred unease among some who are generally sympathetic to Mr. Chávez's socialist-inspired political movement."  In a telephone interview, Chomsky told the Times that he was requesting clemency for Afiuni on humanitarian grounds, and claimed that the judge had been treated very badly.  Though Afiuni's living conditions had improved somewhat, Chomsky noted, the charges against the judge were thin.  Therefore, Chomsky argued, the government should release Afiuni.

Chávez and Chomsky: A Warm History of Rapport

The recent spat between Chávez and Chomsky may put an end to a historically warm rapport.  Indeed, the Guardian of London recently wrote that "Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west. He has basked in the renowned scholar's praise for Venezuela's socialist revolution and echoed his denunciations of US imperialism."  In his speeches, Chávez frequently quotes Chomsky and the MIT professor has provided the Venezuelan leader with a degree of intellectual and political legitimacy.  Chávez has said that he is careful to "always" have not just one copy of Chomsky's books on hand but many.

The relationship dates back to 2006, when, during his celebrated speech at the United Nations, Chávez held up Chomsky's book entitled Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, and suggested that Americans read the work instead of "watching Superman and Batman" movies.  Speaking to the crowd, Chávez urged the audience "very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it."  Going even further, Chávez said the MIT professor's work was an "excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century."  Chávez added, "I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house."

Chomsky's book immediately rocketed to No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list.  Speaking to the New York Times, a Borders Bookstore manager remarked "it doesn't normally happen that you get someone of the stature of Mr. Chávez holding up a book at a speech at the U.N." Book sales notwithstanding, Chomsky told the New York Times that he wouldn't describe himself as flattered.  For good measure, the academic added that he wouldn't choose to employ Chávez's harsh UN rhetoric.

On the other hand, Chomsky added, Chávez's anger with Bush was understandable.  "The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government," the professor declared. "Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?"  The linguist added, "I have been quite interested in his [Chávez's] policies.  Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The creationist crowd does have some proof that Darwin wasn't right about every individual in a species. They are living proof: after all, they haven't evolved.

The other day, a very young boy in New Hampshire got the better of Rick Perry with a question about evolution: Perry responded, "That's a theory that is out there - and it's got some gaps in it."

Perry then went on to assert to the boy: "In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."

Except the US Supreme Court has ruled that it is a violation of the Constitution to teach creationism in schools.

Let's take another example that disproves evolution in the likes of Governor Perry. Texas has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. When queried by an interviewer about why the governor supports taxpayer funding of abstinence education in the Lone Star State when it doesn't work, Perry adamantly defended the program. This is not only a Victorian outlook, it contradicts the right-wing notion that every government program should be judged by its effectiveness.

And then there's Michele Bachmann, who just this week stated that Americans are concerned about the "rise of the Soviet Union." Maybe she was confused because it is the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being erected. As with most embodiments of creationism, Bachmann's frame of reference moves backward in time, not forward.

BuzzFlash at Truthout noted earlier this year, "a fundamentalist Christian may feel reassured that - at the Creation Museum in Kentucky - a dinosaur wears a saddle to show that all life began simultaneously with a divine spark."

Maybe the Creation Museum should replace the dinosaur with a wax replica of Rick Perry and put a saddle on his back.

Evolution, on its path to the future, just passes some people by.

******

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Over the past few years, the international left has derived much satisfaction from the course of South American political and economic integration. The novelty of such integration is that it has proceeded along progressive lines and has been pushed by regional leaders associated with the so-called "Pink Tide." With so many leftist leaders in power, it is plausible to surmise that a left bloc of countries might challenge Washington's long-term hemispheric agenda. Yet, behind all of the lofty rhetoric and idealism, serious fissures remain within South America's leftist movement, both within individual countries and within the larger regional milieu.

That, at least, is the impression I got from reading US State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Take, for example, the Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva administration in Brazil, which at times encouraged a "hostile" climate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a corporately-sponsored plan backed by Washington, but on other occasions encouraged "public doubt and confusion through its own often-conflicting statements" about the accord. Behind the scenes, the Brazilian government was much more divided on the matter than was commonly portrayed, torn between its South American loyalties on the one hand and the desire to gain access to the lucrative US market for agricultural and industrial goods on the other.

In 2003, the US Embassy in Brasilia noted that "Brazil's political goals, which include a leadership role in South America, along with a strong focus on development and the social agenda, sometimes clash in its pursuit of certain national economic interests." Cautiously, Brazil conducted sensitive negotiations with Washington over the FTAA. Lula's position was somewhat delicate: while the president needed a substantial export boost to fund his social agenda, producers were fearful about facing increased competition.

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The biggest hurdle we face today is whether we choose to move forward as a nation or backward, away from progress and toward the ways not of our forefathers, but of the most hide-bound, parochial elements in our society. Our founders were not similar to the way today's conservative politicians like to describe them. Most of today's pols and pundits are woefully under-prepared to explain the motivations of our founders, and instead, they all too often make things up to fit their ideologies.

Our founders were always a mix, of course, but as they labored to form a union and write principles of government into a document that would stand the test of time, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the rest were above all, a "band of brothers." Their imagination and foresight formed the basis of a brilliant plan.

Today, anything approaching an original thought is stampeded by the right wing as anti-American, and is considered to be not what our founders had in mind. As if the close-minded, under-educated politicians, who speak so loudly, actually understood anything more complicated than a series of talking points. Theirs is a game of takeaway, of rhetoric that fails to imagine consequences or devise rational structures.

So, whether it's Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Perry, their talking points have a familiar ring to them. And, no matter how emphatic their remarks, when charged with formulating an opinion they glance nervously about to determine if their fellow candidates are on the same page. At the last debate the candidates who were present, raised their hands in the affirmative when asked if they would oppose tax revenues even if tax cuts were favored ten to one over revenue. So obsessed are Republicans with cutting things and currying favor with Tea Partiers, there has yet to be an intelligent debate about what effect just cutting programs would have on the general economy. With respect to the most-favored bromide of the day -"Cut, Cap and Balance" - conservatives can't get enough of its feel-good aura. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone on the campaign trail that across-the board cuts may turn out to be damaging non-solutions and that a rigid "balance" amendment may not allow government to deal effectively with sudden emergencies.

Conservatives maintain that they are simply sticking to their principles when it comes to holding the line on taxes, but their rigid foothold on economic procedures leaves little room for innovative programs and fails to even consider alternatives. In some parts of the country, civil rights are endangered due to a wave of regressive laws that are making their way through the state legislatures. Years of progress are being wiped out as a right-leaning Supreme Court and a newly minted House of Representatives chart a troubled course for the country.

Adding religion to the mix is, overall, an unsettling trend that in no way conforms with the constraints of our Constitution. Rick Perry mocks the president's approach to solving our fiscal problems, but seems to suggest we can pray our way out of the crisis. He says if he is president he would make government as "inconsequential" in our lives as possible. As others have pointed out, however, conservative officials were quick to avail themselves of stimulus funds, despite the ugly connotation that word has taken on. Moreover, it would seem there is a constitutional issue with respect to the legislators who signed Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes. There is a much more important pledge that legislators promise to uphold when they are sworn into office - the duty to honor and defend the Constitution of the United States. How did we manage to get so far off track?

Perhaps the biggest problem we will face in the coming years is a failure to imagine, to see over the horizon and face the consequences of our actions or inactions in the face of an ever-evolving universe. That, more than anything else, sets the reactionary, mean spirited contingent in our Congress and the country today apart from our founders and all the imaginative forbears who created an extraordinary playing field for us.

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Texas State Board of Education declares war on the Declaration of Independence.

That's one perspective on the Lone Star State board that approves educational textbooks in Texas. After all, when you delete Thomas Jefferson - author of the Declaration of Independence - from the state curriculum, something un-American is definitely afoot.

According to a Washington Post column on faith, the board was also rejecting Jefferson's - and the Constitution's - guarantee of a separation of church and state, noting the:

board's 10-5 party-line rejection of a standard requiring students to learn that the nation's Founders "protected religious freedom by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others."

Before that amendment was rejected, board member Cynthia Dunbar, a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, argued that the Founding Fathers didn't intend to separate church and state, but rather did intend to promote religion. The board approved her revisions, which included cutting Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence and promoter of the phrase "wall of separation between church and state"), and replacing him with religious figures such as St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.

That this historical and constitutional revisionism comes from people who fancy themselves faithful to the founding fathers might appear to be evidence of historical psychoses. Unfortunately, such mental impairment in relation to the facts of America's revolutionary foundation will affect generations of students in Texas, and around the nation. That is because Texas is such a large school book market that publishers often adapt their textbooks to the Lone Star State standards, instead of creating separate editions for the rest of the nation.

It's also possible, as at least one analyst has noted, that Jefferson was removed from the curriculum because he was a deist, as were many of the great minds of the Enlightenment.

There is, perhaps, another underlying reason for the antipathy in Texas toward Jefferson. The third president of the United States was concerned that democracy might be corrupted and overpowered by businesses, in essence, "too big to fail."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations," Jefferson wrote, "which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

One thing that you can say for the Texas School Board; it sure knows how to turn historical fact into radical partisan fiction.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, thinking that Hollywood's elite will try and bail Obama out with an October 2012 release of a film about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, calls for an investigation.

Here's a question for you. Is it possible to stage an October Surprise if what's being planned isn't a secret?

One might think that Republican Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and the fellow who has been conducting congressional hearings about the threat of Islamic terrorism, might be pleased to see a movie about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, one of history's all-time Islamic terrorists. After all, it might prove to be an object lesson to current and/or future terrorists.

Instead of being supportive, however, King thinks that such a movie - to be released in mid-October 2012 - is a ploy to bolster the electoral possibilities of Barack Obama; a cinematic October Surprise if you will.

The time-honored phrase, October Surprise, recently popped back into the news for the first time in oh ... say, two years (since the last presidential election).

There are October Surprises and then ... there are October Surprises. Historians may argue over what was the first "October Surprise" - some say that in 1968, Nixon's man (Henry Kissinger) who was hanging around the Paris peace talks between the North Vietnamese and the Johnson administration, somehow convinced the North Vietnamese that they would get a better deal from a Nixon administration, so they walked.  In the election, Nixon barely edged out Hubert Humphrey.

Four years later, just prior to Election Day in 1972, President Nixon's now National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, appeared at a press conference held at the White House and announced, "We believe that peace is at hand." Kissinger's statement was surprising mostly because Nixon had promised to end the war during his presidential run four years earlier, and had not succeeded. Nevertheless, he won an overwhelming victory over South Dakota Senator George McGovern.

But the mother of all October Surprises took place during the 1980 election between President Jimmy Carter and the Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan. The hub of this October Surprise revolves around whether Team Reagan was engaged in secret negotiations with Iran to free the American hostages  -- taken a year earlier - after the election. (For the full story on everything October Surpriseish, see Consortiumnews.com's October Surprise archive --  http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html.)

Twenty-first century OS - not so surprising

Last week, however, King called for a CIA and Pentagon investigation "wanting them to review the administration's cooperation with director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, both Academy Award winners for the 2009 film 'The Hurt Locker,'" the Associated Press recently reported.

It appears that King is worried that the Obama administration might compromise the nation's security by giving away "sensitive details about the Navy SEAL mission to the Oscar-winning moviemakers behind the project."

In an interview, King said he was motivated to speak out after he heard from people in the CIA who told him that, "they were opposed to this." "Most SEALs want to stay in the background," he said, and not "tip off the enemy of what they do and don't do."

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Their last Oval Office resident

Was such a fool and a clod in

Most ways that his profile since

Has been lower than bin-Laden.

Dubya ruined America for two terms.

To many people, what really perplexes

Is his party's new idea now is another

Dim bulb cowboy governor from Texas.

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DICK MEISTER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Discrimination against working women is an obviously serious matter, and
there's a lot more of it than is generally realized, as a new report makes
all too clear.

The report, from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, says that every
year, a substantial portion of the country's employers are charged with
discrimination against women under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the nation's
basic civil rights law. Certainly not all employers charged with

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ELLIOT COHEN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, broke the story that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking British citizens' voicemail messages, including those of a murdered teenager, there was a public outcry. Unfortunately, this is the tip of a glacial iceberg that has the potential to bring down a lot more than the News of the World.

Last year, without due public debate and input, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Justice Department approved a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal that gave the Internet cable giant control over the programming of NBC news.  At the same time, pursuant to the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, Comcast as well as all other telecommunication companies are required to cooperate with the Federal government in providing the facility for government to search through all electronic communications sent down their pipes.

So presently, the government, with the help of Comcast and other telecommunication companies, can hack everyone's phone and email conversations.   Here also lies a new 21st century media model:  a telecom company that owns and operates the infrastructure for the digital transmission of news and information; simultaneously owns the newsroom; and uses it infrastructure to assist the government in mass, warrantless surveillance of all American citizens.

The News of the World spied on a relatively few number of individuals for the purpose of getting a story.  Comcast routinely spies on millions of people on behalf of government.  The official purpose of such spying is to uncover terrorist plots; however, racial profiling can be used to conduct searches; mass sweeps are warrantless; and adequate judicial oversight of screening criteria and procedures is lacking.  Worse still, in this brave new world, the media entrusted to keep an eye on government abuses of power is now part of this overreaching power structure.

Further, given the symbiotic relationship between media and government, there is nothing to stop Comcast from examining the email messages and phone conversations of rival news organizations, political opponents, and other persons and organizations of interest in an effort to "adjust" its news coverage and massage its bottom line.  In fact, Comcast has maintained that it has a broad right to monitor its customers' email messages and Internet activities.  It has an established history of having spied on its customers as well as preventing them from sharing files.  Further, it is presently lobbying Congress to do away with net neutrality, the principle that assures that everyone, not just giant media companies, has an equal voice on the Internet.  And, in 2008, Chris Albrecht, presently CEO of Starz TV, reported that Comcast's senior VP told him that Comcast was experimenting with installing cameras into its cable boxes thereby allowing it to see into people's living rooms and identify viewers.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

How did Jesus go from being a socialist in the New Testament to a selfish Ayn Rand anarcho-capitalist in modern-day America? After all, one of the most well-known bible verses is from Mark 10:25: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Sociologist Gregory Paul stated the paradox clearly in an August 12 Washington Post op-ed:

Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of - and many of whose followers are - the most hard-line anti-Christian atheists you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin's evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

But Paul points out that the New Testament primarily promotes what would nowadays be called socialism:

But to understand just how non-capitalistic Christianity is supposed to be we turn to the first chapter after the gospels, Acts, which describes the events of the early church. Chapters 2 and 4 state that all "the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need ... No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.... There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

Now folks, that's outright socialism of the type described millennia later by Marx - who likely got the general idea from the gospels.

Paul further notes that "we have Christian creationists like Jay Richards writing books titled 'Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem.' Can a stranger amalgam of opposing opinions be devised?"

In essence, the modern prosperity theologians who dominate the right wing of the Republican Party are essentially heretics. They've grafted on a post-industrial-age emphasis on the acquisition of capital and material goods to the alleged son of God, Jesus, who was himself essentially the father of socialism (as recounted in the bible).

At the next Republican debate, we would like to see a test of faith. All the candidates should be required to thread a camel through the eye of a needle.

If they can't do it, they have to shut up about Jesus, Christianity and the bible.

Now that would be refreshing.

******

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ROBERT KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

As crashing economies and austerity measures slap ever more ferociously at the lives of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, the Western world, with all its hidden poverty and institutional racism, may continue to convulse.

The riots that broke out in London over the weekend and spread throughout Great Britain, triggered by the controversial police killing of a 29-year-old man, have sent shockwaves in all directions. Who knew things were so unstable, that Britain's struggling neighborhoods were just one incident away from such destructive lunacy?

"On Twitter late last night, following the main bulk of the riots, I was astonished at the incomprehension generally expressed as to why they had occurred. There seemed to be an extraordinary lack of awareness that working class youth in Britain are being punished for the financial excesses of the banking collapse," freelance British journalist Pennie Quinton wrote on Al-Jazeera.

"The public spending cuts this year meant many of the youth summer schemes in London did not run. These riots suggest boredom - and inarticulate rage. The youth are smashing and grabbing the things society tells them to want."

Good God, the wealth gap is widening everywhere, and this is its cost: occasional public spasms of inhumanity and nihilism, perpetrated by those who have nothing much left to lose. But who cares about root causes? The riots are so compellingly photogenic, and the need for a return to order at all costs is suddenly so desperate.

"In central London," the New York Times reported, "owners of electrical goods stores along busy Tottenham Court Road shuttered their premises as convoys of riot police vans with sirens wailing crisscrossed the city, a show of force that seemed designed to cow potential looters and reassure their potential targets."

Prime Minister David Cameron, announcing the addition of 10,000 police to the streets, declared: "People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding."

This is the world I fear most: a world in which "us vs. them" is de rigueur, co-opting common sense, creating a schism in public discourse. Good guys and bad guys. It is, of course, the world we live in already, but its pervasiveness could spread. And there are so many who would prefer that, and know how to profit from it.

The British riots are a harbinger of what could happen in the U.S., where, of course, the same governmental "austerity" measures - the same cuts in services to the poor and middle class, the same jettisoning of vast segments of the populace to a forgotten hopelessness - are shattering the social structure. And the phenomenon of "flash mobs," in which hordes of young men, self-organizing through the social media, converge to commit random mayhem, have already sent jolts of panic through many urban centers.

And then there's the fact that big, full-scale riots are, well, as American as apple pie, what with our long history of racism and all. This is a looming disaster of immense proportions. Among other things, hard-core Republicans will, in their equal and opposite lunacy, see rioting as an excuse to justify further austerity measures (as punishment) and, ultimately, plunge the nation into all-out domestic war.

This is a peace alert! Peace consciousness is our only hope and it must spread. I believe that there is an extraordinary underground of such consciousness in the United States and around the world - an awareness that "us vs. them" is a single, devalued coin, that one side may succeed at doing great harm to and temporarily suppressing the other but will never "win" in the sense of freeing itself finally and forever of its enemy.

Last week, writing about the aftermath of the mass murders in Norway, and quoting columnist Colman McCarthy, I asked, "Why are we violent, but not illiterate?" There's a more concrete way to put the same question: Why was the Egyptian uprising at the beginning of the year a peaceful one while London's riot has caused the worst damage to the city since the Nazi blitz? Both were responses to police brutality, and occurred in a context of expanding social inequality, but the differences couldn't have been starker.

"When media analysts talk about an uprising like the one in Egypt as spontaneous," Cynthia Boaz wrote last month in an excellent analysis on TruthOut, "they are revealing their lack of understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent action and, simultaneously, are taking credit away from activists, who in many cases, have worked hard for years - often at great personal risk and sacrifice - to make this kind of victory possible. Regimes like Mubarak's don't fall when people just spontaneously show up in the city square. They only fall when movements are capable of exerting sustained pressure on them over a length of time."

The only way out of equal and opposite lunacy is to recognize that action and principle cannot be torn apart. "In Gandhian language, means and ends are inseparable," Boaz wrote.

What would it take to institute nonviolence training and planning on a national scale? I believe the resources to do so exist, if everyone who believes in it understands the urgency of beginning such a process now.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH FOR TRUTHOUT

While politicians argue about how to fix the US economy, many Americans don't even have enough money to fix their homes - and jobs for people who actually build real things (like houses and stores) continue to stagnate.

The evidence shows up in local stories like this one from The Chicago Sun-Times: "Elgin Lowe's store among seven closed." More than 80 people in the Chicago suburb have lost their jobs after Lowe's - the second largest home improvement chain - abruptly shuttered seven stores nationally.

Several factors contributed to the closing in Elgin, including "unemployment among Elgin tradesmen [that] is about 50 percent." That is because people can't afford new homes - and in many cases are putting off hiring contractors to do home repairs.

But what might be most troubling is that many Americans, suffering economically, may be putting off doing many home repairs themselves because of the cost of supplies.

The myth that somehow businesses will generate more jobs with higher tax breaks for the rich is a fiction created to fatten the wallets of corporate CEOs and shareholders. If there is less money for consumers to spend, stores like Lowe's close and jobs are lost, not added.

As BuzzFlash at Truthout noted before, the profit motive does not create more employment if there is not increased purchasing power.

By giving wealthy people more money, nothing is done to stimulate demand, except maybe for Prada and yachts.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

I'm not a devoted fan of Ed Shultz's MSNBC show, but when I tune in, I do appreciate his passion and willingness to fight for the working poor and the middle class. I can also share Schultz's frustration the night after Wisconsin Democrats failed in their bid to recall enough Republican State Senators to shift the balance of power in that legislative body, and why he would call out President Obama as being missing in action.

Since Governor Scott Walker launched his attack on the state's public workers and their unions this past winter, President Obama has indeed been missing in action. The recall campaign was a bellwether event. And Obama was nowhere to be found. Too busy to get involved in the recall effort; too busy to visit the state; too stressed by other matters.

Shame on you President Obama.

Breaking up is hard to do

For months I've been searching for an Obama break-up song. I certainly recognize that the president has no relationship with me other than him wanting my vote for re-election (just as he received it in 2008), and having his fundraising team pepper my mailbox, and inbox, with fundraising appeals.

Break ups don't just happen. Depending on the length, strength and depth of the relationship, a break up can be pretty darned traumartic; sometimes the after-shocks last a long time. Break ups can happen over silly things or fundamental chasms in relationships. These days, break ups may be losing its gravitas as text message and twitter replace face to face confrontation.

I've been putting this break up off, hoping against hope that Obama would start to turn things around and redeem himself; that he would recognize the nature of the forces arrayed against him, and that he would fight back. Maintaining hope thing hasn't been easy. I've got friends who gave that up a long time ago. And, I've got friends who never bought into the Obama in the first place, figuring that Obama was too closely allied with Wall Street to significantly reorder Washington's political landscape.

Things have rolled steadily downhill since Team Obama demobilized its 14 million supporters at the start of his presidency (See "Where in the World Is Obama's Missing Millions (people that is!)?" -- http://blog.buzjzflash.com/contributors/2202). Still, there was reason to believe (or so I thought and argued) that he'd come out of his compromise at all costs mentality.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll is one of my favorite daily columnists. Even his cat stories (for the most part) are fun to read. In a column dated August 10 and titled "Can Obama lead? Liberals want to know" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/09/DD8P1KKRVN.DTL) Carroll discusses Drew Westen's recent buzz-worthy New York Times column titled "What Happened to Obama." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html?pagewanted=all).

Carroll writes: "Even on Inaugural Day, Obama let the occasion make the statement. He had no overarching message, no call to arms to take the country back from the plutocrats. Indeed, he probably didn't want that - he has hired the world's finest plutocrats as his closest advisers. His election as a black man was historic; the election of this black man may not be all that game-changing."

Carroll: "... Obama is called on to lead a nation-state. There are certain responsibilities there. One is that the leader give succor to his friends and confusion to his enemies. That doesn't mean rejecting compromise; that means appearing never to be forced into compromise. And here we have a leader whose opening gambit is compromise."

Then there's Bret Stephens, a Wall Street Journal columnist who I probably agree with once in a very blue moon. However, Stephens, who writes the WSJ's "Global View" column on foreign affairs and was the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, caustically commented that Obama: "makes predictions that prove false. ... makes promises he cannot honor. ... raises expectations he cannot meet. ... reneges on commitments made in private. ... surrenders positions staked in public. ... is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved [and] He is overbearing when he ought to be absent."

I'm not sure if the Wisconsin recall effort was the final straw. I'm not sure there are any final straws, but my search for a break up song picked up steam this week.

Break up songs memorialize failed romantic relationships. For the life of me, I can't find any break up songs about leaving a political party, parting ways with a political candidate, or, for that matter, forsaking a favored sports team.

In break up songs it's  either your fault (you cheated), my fault (I'm not ready to commit), or it's no one's fault (we've grown apart). Does any of this possibly apply to my "relationship" with Obama?

Yes; the "you cheated"  break up.

My decision to support him in 2008 was just as much (perhaps even more so) an emotional decision as it was a political one. I wanted to believe in "Hope and Change." I wanted to believe in "Yes We Can."

I knew that Hillary Clinton would fight against the Right's onslaught that was guaranteed, no matter which Democrat was elected, since she and husband, President Bill, had been duking it out with the Right for years. I decided on Obama because I was optimistic that he would bring young people and those who had been disenfranchised into play. There was a possibility that a generation of hopers and changers and yes we can-ers would be loosed upon the land.

My search for a break up song

I'm old school, but this is the twenty-first century so perhaps my choice of break up songs should be closer to Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" of Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" than Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long" or Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbad22CKlB4).

In that spirit, I turned to Cristin Maher's list of "10 Best Break Up Songs" posted at Pop Crush (http://popcrush.com/best-break-up-songs/), seeking out something contemporary.

"Better That We Break," a 2008 song by Maroon 5 has the group's lead singer Adam Levine singing "I'm not fine, I'm in pain / It's harder everyday / Maybe we're better off this way? / It's better that we break."

Rhianna's 2008 song "Rehab" takes on life "after her relationship goes sour," singing "It's gonna take a miracle to bring me back / And you're the one to blame."

"Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" is Alicia Keyes' contribution: "I can still hear inside my head / Telling me, touch me, feel me / And all the time you were telling me lies / So tonight I'm gonna find a way to make it without you."

"Say Goodbye" has Chris Brown singing: "There's never a right time to say goodbye / But I gotta make the first move / 'Cause if I don't you gonna start hating me / Cause I really don't feel the way I once felt about you."

Not satisfied in my quest, , I turned to Isabella Snow's "Top 25 Break Up Songs" (http://isabellasnow.hubpages.com/hub/Top-25-Break-Up-Songs), which includes: "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" (Bill Withers); "Don't Think Twice" (Bob Dylan); "These Boots Are Made For Walking" (Nancy Sinatra); "Lonely Avenue (Ray Charles)'; "Missing You" (John Waite).

There are plenty of break up songs to choose from. But, is it really over between Obama and me?

Given the choice we'll be faced with in November 2012, and paraphrasing The Tempos 1959 summer hiatus song, "See You In September," I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing you in November ... but, in the words of B.B. King, "The Thrill is Gone."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Increased taxes on billionaires don't put a damper on investment, and a billionaire should know.

That's what Warren Buffet lays out in a blockbuster August 14 op-ed in The New York Times, in which he begs Congress to stop tossing money at the wealthiest Americans.

Buffet makes the case that the decades-long decrease in taxes on the wealthy, including IRS provisions like low long-term capital gains taxes, are fundamentally unfair - and provide no boost to the economy. They just make the rich richer.

The facts and anecdotes Buffet refers to are so compelling that they most certainly will be dismissed by the Grover Norquist "anti-tax on the affluent cheerleading squad." Compare Buffet's cogent plea to be taxed more with Michele Bachmann's fatuous gobbledygook answer to a small businessman in Iowa who asked why big corporations don't pay a greater share of the nation's taxes. By the time you finish listening to her jabberwocky, you'll have a headache - which is something Congresswoman Bachmann can relate to.

Buffet doesn't mince words when he states: "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

In an extraordinarily compelling fashion, Buffet reveals how the super rich get financial gifts from the government, while workers pick up the bill:

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It's nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill - the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf - was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income - and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Indeed, it's the declining middle class that is paying for the lavish, gluttonous lifestyles of the rich and famous.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

People want
Their MTV
More than
Their GOP.

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