These may be the first elections in which class will carry more weight than race; the “right to be forgotten” threatens freedom of speech on the Internet; meanwhile, some smartphone voice recognition software is racist and sexist. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top.

Will This Be the First Election Where Class Trumps Race?
As stirring as Occupy Wall Street’s exhortations about the 99 percent were, it’s important to realize that they were the symptom, not the cause, of a wider trend.

Apple Asks Outside Group to Inspect Factories
Responding to a growing outcry over conditions at its overseas factories, Apple said Monday that an outside organization had begun to audit working conditions at the plants where the bulk of iPhones, iPads and other Apple products are built, and that the group would make its finding public.

Is gay literature over?
Gay life in America has utterly transformed itself since World War II.

A Eulogy for Kodak
In January, Eastman Kodak filed Chapter 11 documents in U.S. bankruptcy court.

A New Obama Cinema?
A lone lean figure strides purposefully through a dark tunnel, maybe a highway underpass.

Islamists bring shooting of Egyptian TV series to halt
Islamist students halted the filming of an Egyptian television series at Cairo’s Ain Shams University protesting against the “indecent” clothing of the actresses.

A Grave New Threat to Free Speech From Europe
At the end of January, Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, announced a sweeping new privacy right: the “right to be forgotten.”

Dogs Against Romney
A protest planned for the Westminster dog show is the latest sign the scandal Mitt Romney’s treatment of his dog, Seamus, during a 1983 road trip, just won’t die.

Does Your Smartphone Think Rape And Anti-Semitism Are OK?
We already knew that Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant on Apple iPhones, is sexist—she can locate where to get viagra and blowjobs, but not where to get an abortion, birth control or cunnilingus.

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The former GOP front-runner seemed to enjoy the spotlight, so it comes as some surprise that he rebuffed ABC when it offered to let him cha-cha among other B-list (and below) celebrities on “Dancing With the Stars.” Apparently he does not have the moves of Tom DeLay.

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On Tuesday, Barack Obama played host to China’s Vice President Xi Jinping at the White House to discuss trade, human rights and other diplomatic topics. Why all the fuss over a VP? For one, Xi was returning a gesture that his American counterpart, Joe Biden, recently made. For another, he is expected to become China’s next president, replacing Hu Jintao next year.  —KA

BBC:

During a state department lunch later, Mr Xi said there had been “tremendous” achievements for China in human rights in the past 30 years, adding “of course there’s always room for improvement”.

He also hailed further economic co-operation with the US, saying that any issues should be resolved through dialogue, “not protectionism”.

The leaders were expected to discuss foreign policy issues, including Syria and Iran. But Washington also hopes to learn more about the Chinese heir apparent’s leadership style, say correspondents.

Mr Xi is making a week-long trip as the guest of US Vice-President Joe Biden, who made a high-profile visit to China late last year.

Earlier in the day, Mr Xi met Mr Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the White House’s Roosevelt Room.

Read more

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Here’s a startling, but perhaps not surprising, bit of news for those inclined to put colors on their kissers: The Food and Drug Administration ran some tests on hundreds of lipsticks and found that many made by popular brands such as L’Oreal, Cover Girl and Nars contained a very unsexy ingredient: lead.  —KA

The Washington Post:

Four hundred of the nation’s most popular lipsticks contained trace levels of lead when tested recently by the federal government, confirming similar results of earlier analyses but on a much wider scale and at higher levels than previously detected.

The findings exacerbate an ongoing disagreement between the FDA and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a consumer group that’s been pushing the government for years to set limits for lead levels in lipsticks. The FDA has resisted, insisting that the lead levels detected in two rounds of its own testing, including the most recent one, do not pose safety risks. But the consumer group says the FDA has no scientific basis for its conclusion.

Read more

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So much for Rubenesque: An artist by the memorable name of Anna Utopia Giordano has reshaped the famous figures of several nudes from classical paintings—think Velazquez, Bouguereau and Botticelli—to give them a 21st-century sensibility. (Read: They’re a lot skinnier.)

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There’s horse-race politics, but then there are also bona fide plot twists in the presidential campaign season, and we’re looking at one of them with the boost conservatives are giving Rick Santorum—yes, he of the sweater vest—as he and the formerly more confident Mitt Romney get ready for Arizona and Michigan primaries late this month.  —KA

Los Angeles Times:

A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows that Santorum now leads Romney 30%-27% among Republican primary voters nationwide. Romney’s standing is statistically unchanged, while Santorum has surged 14 points since a January survey, conducted between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.

Newt Gingrich, who triumphed in South Carolina, has now dropped into fourth place with just 10% support, down from 21% last month. Ron Paul is just ahead of him at 12%, down from 15%.

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In this clip from his axed Fox Business show, “Freedom Watch,” Judge Andrew Napolitano asks some questions that may be too advanced for the average viewer of the Murdochian network—or any habitual viewer of any major network looking to absorb the latest talking points and get on with her day.

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The prolonged Republican primary campaign appears to be taking a toll on independent voters’ faith in Mitt Romney. According to the latest Pew poll, only a minority of independents now describe Romney as “honest and trustworthy” and slightly more than half of independent voters now favor Barack Obama in a race against Romney, who led the president in that category only a month ago.

As is pointed out every four years or so, so-called independent voters typically decide presidential elections.

The survey shows Rick Santorum bolting into a tie with Romney among Republicans. Among registered voters of all stripes, Obama now leads Romney, Santorum and Newt Gingrich in hypothetical match-ups by 8, 10 and 18 points, respectively.

Obama fans would do well to not get too excited at this stage of the race. As of July 1988, Michael Dukakis held a 17-point lead over George H.W. Bush.  —PZS

(Hat tip Political Wire)

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The Hollywood Republican is an uncommon breed, and many specimens apparently feel that their chosen professional habitat does not allow them to proliferate as freely as their less conservative counterparts. But sightings are more common during election season. (Above, Vince Vaughn, a supporter of Ron Paul.)

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Let’s see which gullible politician might pick up this little satirical number from The Onion News Network and think it’s for real. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy a good spoof on campaign ads at President Obama’s expense.

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No doubt anticipating the pointed criticism soon to follow from Republican ranks, President Obama weighed the short term against the long view in the speech he gave Monday at Northern Virginia Community College about his $3.8 trillion budget plan.

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Eric Alterman writes in The Nation that the casino magnate who has propped up Newt Gingrich’s campaign is the ultimate caricature of “the anti-Semitic clichés that have dogged the Jewish people throughout history.” And yet no one seems to have noticed.

Adelson takes a hard line in advocating what he considers to be Israel’s best interests and has made no secret of his desire to bend U.S. foreign policy to his will, which plays into the paranoid anti-Semitic claptrap about a secret cabal of wealthy Jews pulling the strings of world leaders. As Alterman writes: “How can it be that the self-proclaimed ‘richest Jew in the world’ can buy the foreign policy of a major party’s potential presidential candidate on behalf of a vision of endless Israeli aggression—up to and including US support for yet another potentially disastrous pre-emptive attack—and the historically abused entity of ‘the Jews’ has somehow escaped the blame?”

The columnist takes it as a sign of “the near-complete disappearance of this once wholly respectable American prejudice” and argues that anti-Semitism has now been distorted by neoconservatives and their allies to mean anti-Israel, as opposed to anti-Jew.  —PZS

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Early on Sunday morning, somewhere around 4 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, the going price of “The Ultimate Collection,” a greatest-hits compilation by the newly departed musical icon Whitney Houston, jumped 60 percent on the U.K. version of Apple’s iTunes store. By Sunday night, the price had dropped, but by then The Guardian had also taken note.

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On Monday, gay marriage supporters scored another legislative victory with the news that the New Jersey Senate had passed a bill that will allow same-sex couples to make it official—that is, if the measure can make it past the state’s conservative governor, Chris Christie. That might be the tough part.  —KA

AP via Google News:

New Jersey lawmakers gave their blessing to legalizing gay marriage for the first time Monday as the state Senate passed a bill that would allow nuptials for same-sex couples, despite Gov. Chris Christie’s insistence that he will veto such legislation.
The Senate’s 24-16 vote sends the bill to the Assembly, which is expected to pass it on Thursday.

Monday’s vote contrasts with the only other gay-marriage vote taken in the Legislature. In January 2010, gay marriage supporters thought they had built a narrow majority in the Senate, but senators began to defect, and the measure was defeated 20-14. Since then, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat from West Deptford, has changed his position. He says he regrets abstaining two years ago and has made gay marriage recognition a top priority.

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On Sunday, after months of economic and political turmoil, Greek citizens fed up with paying for mistakes made by their country’s power elite took to the streets by the tens of thousands to signal their disapproval of the austerity measures the government pushed through late that night. Message received.  —KA

The Daily Beast via Yahoo News:

The burnt out shells of at least 45 buildings in central Athens were still smoldering on Monday morning after a weekend of angry protests reached its apex on Sunday night in what Greek prime minister Luca Papademos called the worst breakdown of violence since 2008. Broken glass, chunks of marble ripped from the public squares and empty tear gas canisters lined the streets after an all-night battle pitted protesters against security forces who say they were outnumbered by a five-to-one ratio. Hundreds of protesters and police officers were injured and local Greek Sky television reported that at least twice, security forces ran out of tear gas.

[...] The demonstrations followed general strikes last week that were meant to warn politicians against passing a biting austerity package that would save Greece from debt default—at a hefty price tag for the population. The $4.3 billion package was ultimately approved by a 199 to 74 margin in a late-night vote, but the victory was bittersweet for Greek leaders. “We must understand and persuade Greek citizens that when you have to choose between bad and worse, you must choose the bad to avoid the worst,” Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos told parliament ahead of the vote.

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Who made your week by speaking truth to power, blowing the whistle or standing up to injustice?

Truthdigger of the Week is a feature in which we recognize a person or group that made a difference.

See past winners here. Nominate this week’s winner here.

Last week, we recognized 9th Circuit Justice Stephen Reinhardt, who put a fine point on his court’s decision to rule California’s Prop. 8 unconstitutional.

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There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement.

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The problem with culture wars is that one side typically has absolutely no understanding of what the other is trying to say.

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The annual Washington showcase of the far right is plunging toward new depths of disgrace by featuring “white nationalists” among its speakers.

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Last week on Truthdig Radio: Robert Scheer on the mortgage settlement, MLK in his own words, and “A Queer History of the United States” author Michael Bronski on Rick Santorum, Proposition 8, Ellen DeGeneres and gay marriage in Washington state. (This is a pledge show.)

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Who is Foster Friess, the multimillionaire financial investor who is almost single-handedly keeping Rick Santorum’s monetarily challenged campaign afloat?

Friess has long used his personal fortune to champion conservative causes while supporting GOP candidates. He has garnered much attention recently for his connection to Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who has seen his political stock rise after last week’s victories in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and the Missouri primary.

In the wake of Santorum’s momentum, Think Progress has put together a list of seven “of the more interesting things about Friess” that you should know. —TB

Think Progress:

1. He has a long history funding Islamophobic organizations. One of Friess’ biggest beneficiaries is a collection of some of the largest Islamophobic organizations in the country, including Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and David Horowitz’s Terrorism Awareness Project.

2. He filmed an introduction video to Clarion Fund’s Islamophobic “Obsession” Documentary. The controversy and outrage over the film “Obsession” has been well documented, but that didn’t seem to faze Friess, who filmed a five and a half minute promotional video in which he encouraged viewers to purchase the full DVD and use it “as a voting guide when you go into the election booth on election day.”

3. He preached intolerance in a commencement speech at the Graziadio School of Business at Pepperdine University. “Be more intolerant,” urged Friess to a room full of graduating students in 2007. “There’s a group of people—maybe the secular Taliban is a good name for them—who have morphed this idea, that you have to accept my values being every bit as cherished as your values. That’s not tolerance…there are too many things in this world which we sit back and tolerate.”

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Something interesting happens when hardworking, fiscally minded Americans find themselves on the public dole: They resent the government that lends a hand and feel guilty for accepting help. A major article from The New York Times documents the anxiety, frustration and confusion of a growing class of dependent Americans. —ARK

The New York Times:

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

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After scrapping its own monitoring team, the Arab League on Sunday asked the U.N. Security Council to assemble a joint Arab-U.N. peacekeeping force to end the 11-month campaign of brutal repression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that has killed more than 5,000 people.

“Until when will we remain spectators?” Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said. “It is a disgrace for us as Muslims and Arabs to accept” the slaughter in Syria. Faisal did not say whether support should include sending armed forces into the country, and Western nations have downplayed the option of military intervention. —ARK

The Guardian:

The resolution called for “opening communication channels with the Syrian opposition and providing all forms of political and material support to it”, according to the final resolution drawn up at a meeting in Cairo. It also urged the Syrian opposition to unite.

The resolution said violence against civilians in Syria had violated international law and “perpetrators deserve punishment”. The resolution reaffirmed a call for Arabs to impose economic sanctions on Syria and decided on ending diplomatic co-operation with Damascus.

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As George Orwell pointed out more than half a century ago, the storehouse of the English language occasionally needs a good sweep. In the hands of excited, careless or tired writers, words and phrases that once were new or uniquely descriptive become so overused that they seem to threaten the integrity of the language itself. With a broom (or rather, cartwheel) in hand, CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn attempts a cleaning.

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As if there were any doubt, a two-hour Senate Budget Committee hearing on Thursday reported some alarming trends in income inequality, Mother Jones reported.

Among the realities shown were the 2010 CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 325 to 1; the steep rise of the 1 percent’s share in the national income over recent decades; and the declining tax rate on America’s top earners since the early 1960s.

Mother Jones published another series of inequality charts in April, showing, among other things, that the mega-rich have taken the lion’s share of wealth produced over the last three decades while the income and wages of American workers who were boosting productivity stood still. One of the most striking facts was this: “If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.” —ARK

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Five senior journalists with The Sun newspaper were arrested early Saturday as part of an investigation into the alleged bribery of police officers and other public officials, bringing the arrests of current or former Sun employees to nine. Rupert Murdoch pledged his continued support for the British paper, which he owns.

A police officer, a Ministry of Defense employee and a member of the armed forces were also taken into custody in the case, for suspicion of corruption, misconduct and conspiracy. —ARK

The Guardian:

[T]he journalists, who include the deputy editor, were arrested in connection with an investigation into inappropriate payments to police and public officials.

[News International chief executive Tom] Mockridge confirmed that the five Sun journalists involved are deputy editor Geoff Webster, picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker and deputy news editor John Sturgis.

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A Syrian military general and hospital director was killed in an attack by three gunmen in a residential street in Damascus on Saturday in an assassination that marks a move away from the anti-government uprising’s nonviolent roots. The killing came ahead of a meeting of Arab League members in Cairo to consider a new response to the violence in Syria and as pro- and anti-Assad forces exchanged fire nearby in northern Lebanon. —ARK

The New York Times:

The doctor [Dr. Issa al-Khouli], trained in Romania and France, came from an Alawite family with close ties inside the Assad government that has run Syria for the past 40 years, according to one activist in Syria who was piecing together his biography.

… The killing came as the violent government offensive against Homs continued into a second week, leaving hundreds of dead and wounded. It followed by one day two bombs that targeted security directorates in the northern city of Aleppo, killing 28 people and wounding about 235, according to the government count. Outside analysts and diplomats suggested that the bombings might represent a new foray by Sunni jihadists from neighboring Iraq.

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On Feb. 9, administration officials stood alongside state attorneys general to announce a $25 billion mortgage settlement reminiscent of deal made three Februarys ago. Three years later, that program is widely considered a failure.

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The White House called for a health insurance rule change that will allow religious employers to avoid covering workers’ birth control costs. Also, Santorum’s surge; the $26 billion banking industry mortgage settlement; the 9th Circuit blows down California’s gay marriage ban; and new details about JFK and a White House intern come to light.

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On the surface, the case of Knox v. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lacks blockbuster appeal. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, it has the potential to further rig the playing field in favor of big business and the right wing.

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Chinese authorities demonstrated their continued disregard for free speech and human rights as they sentenced a democratic dissident to seven years in jail for sending a poem he had written and other messages over the Internet, the man’s son told reporters. The verdict cited Zhu Yufu’s online calls for a democratic political movement, the son said. —ARK

The Guardian:

Zhu Yufu was jailed for “inciting subversion of state power” by a court in Hangzhou, eastern China, after a trial hearing on 31 January when prosecutors cited a poem and messages he had sent on the internet, his son Zhu Ang told Reuters.

The poem said: “It’s time, Chinese people! It’s time. The Square belongs to all.” References to a “square” might evoke memories among many Chinese people of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, though the poem did not mention it or the 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Prosecutors also cited text messages that he sent using Skype. There was no suggestion that the online chat service helped police to collect evidence.

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President Obama announced Friday a proposal he hopes will mollify conservatives who are irked about a rule that would require religious employers to provide free contraceptive products to workers under company health insurance plans. The proposal’s success banks on the generosity of insurance companies, which will be asked to pay for the services themselves. —ARK

The New York Times:

“Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room. He said the “political football” his foes were making of the new rule prompted him to speed up work on a solution. “It became clear that spending months hammering a solution was not going to be an option.”

… The administration plan most closely resembles Hawaii’s, in which employees at religious institutions whose health insurance plans do not offer free contraception can get birth control through side benefits. The difference, though, is that whereas in Hawaii the employees nominally pay for the benefits, the Obama proposal would shift the cost to insurers. Administration officials hope that insurers will not object because in the long run, they argue, contraceptives end up saving more money than they cost because they prevent unwanted pregnancies.

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American cultural historian and social critic Morris Berman shared the findings in his new book “Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline” with an audience at Seattle’s Elliot Bay bookstore last fall. Like much of the tidings brought to us by the best of our sober-eyed critics, his forecast for the future of the republic and the welfare of its coming generations is not hopeful.

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Earlier this month, the press exposed shifty dealings in the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood following a congressional investigation supported by anti-abortion groups. ProPublica collects the story’s major developments and the changes in Komen’s official explanation. —ARK

ProPublica:

Wednesday, Feb. 1

Komen offers multiple explanations for its decision to defund: tighter grant-making requirements, nothing to do with the congressional investigation, everything to do with the investigation ...

Komen issues a statement saying that its actions have been widely mischaracterized and it needs to set the record straight: In the course of strengthening its grant program, the foundation put in place more stringent criteria. Planned Parenthood simply didn’t make the cut. The statement makes no mention of the Congressional investigation.

While Komen says the decision was not meant to target Planned Parenthood, inside sources offer a different story ...

Board member John Raffaelli tells the New York Times that Komen changed to its grant-making process specifically to end its relationship with Planned Parenthood. According to Raffaelli, Komen was worried a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood would damage Komen’s credibility.

Read more

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