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garlandcannon (CC BY 2.0)

Feast of Fools

The campaigns don’t favor the voters with the gratitude and respect owed to their standing as valuable citizens participating in making such a thing as a common good. They stay on message with their parsing of democracy as the ancient Greek name for the American Express card.

Posted on Sep 20, 2012 READ MORE



AP/Sergey Ponomarev

Naomi Wolf on Kate Middleton Topless, Pussy Riot, and the Sexualized Female Body

According to the author of “Vagina: A New Biography,” we are undergoing an “unprecedented struggle” among women, their bodies and sexuality. Citing recent examples including the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, the frenzy over “virginity tests” in Egypt and recent efforts in the U.S. to legislate the female body, Wolf argues that female sexuality is being targeted around the world.

Posted on Sep 19, 2012 READ MORE



Mike Disharoon (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Robert Caro, LBJ and the Pursuit of Power

Robert Caro has so far spent 36 years writing the saga of Lyndon Johnson—more time than the ambitious Texan spent climbing from Congress to the White House. Caro just released his fourth installment, “The Passage of Power,” which chronicles Johnson’s exit from a strong position in the Senate into the relative powerlessness of the vice presidency.

Posted on Jun 12, 2012 READ MORE


Chris Hedges in Times Square

Occupy TVNY has this interview with Chris Hedges, who, during the major global protests on Saturday, compared Occupy Wall Street to the other movements he’s covered around the world, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.

Posted on Oct 17, 2011 READ MORE  |  39 COMMENTS



Youtube / mavgirl69

Truthdigger of the Week: Jesse LaGreca

Occupy Wall Street protester Jesse LaGreca, our Truthdigger of the Week, responded to the provocative questions of a Fox News reporter with such clarity and fortitude in support of the movement that his message gained viral attention.

Posted on Oct 7, 2011 READ MORE  |  55 COMMENTS



AP / Rodrigo Abd

Five Women Who Matter Most

The Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women is an obscenely wealthy international sisterhood of politicians, celebrities and billionaires. This is an alternative.

Posted on Oct 4, 2011 READ MORE  |  8 COMMENTS



AP / Central Vermont Public Service

Vermont Feels Irene’s Wrath

While New York City escaped the worst of Tropical Storm Irene, much of Vermont did not. The state saw bridges washed away, roads battered and power lines downed in the midst of what officials say is the worst flooding in more than 80 years. (more)

Posted on Aug 29, 2011 READ MORE  |  1 COMMENT



AP / Eraldo Peres

Brazil Judge Blocks Amazon Dam

Plans to build a giant hydroelectric dam in the Amazon have been suspended by a Brazilian judge after the project sparked local and worldwide concern over its impact on the environment and the indigenous population.

Posted on Feb 26, 2011 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS


Ahmadinejad
AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian

Watchdog: Iran May Be Trying to Develop Nuclear-Armed Missile

In a confidential report released Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency says it has received new information that suggests Iran may be trying to develop a nuclear-armed missile, marking a crucial point in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the U.N.

Posted on Feb 25, 2011 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS



Wikimedia Commons

Iran Bakes a Yellowcake

Iran has officially declared that it has created its first domestically produced piece of raw uranium, otherwise deceptively known as non-edible yellowcake, and has subsequently delivered that uranium to a plant for enrichment.

Posted on Dec 5, 2010 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS



AP / Mikhail Metzel

Russia to Help Venezuela Build Nuclear Power Plant

With a little help from its friends, Venezuela is now one step closer to building its first nuclear power plant. After a two-day stint in Moscow, President Hugo Chavez has received the support of Russia for the construction of a nuclear power station aimed at diversifying the country’s energy supply.

Posted on Oct 15, 2010 READ MORE  |  35 COMMENTS



White House / Pete Souza

First Lady Lands on Top of Power List

Michelle Obama put her own career on hold to help her husband become president, but it looks like the perks of being first lady extend beyond just having a kick-ass organic veggie patch at her disposal. 

Posted on Oct 7, 2010 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS



AP / Vahid Salemi

Grand Opening: Iranian Nuclear Plant

Drum roll, please. After 36 years in the making and with great help from Russia in its construction, Iran held a ceremony Saturday to mark the opening of the country’s first nuclear power plant. The event marked the beginning of the transfer of uranium fuel rods into the plant, which aims to start producing electricity later this year.

Posted on Aug 21, 2010 READ MORE  |  6 COMMENTS


Obama

‘Daily Show’: Now About That Whole Presidential Power Thing

Barack Obama talked big, back in his campaigning days, about doing things a little differently from Bush II were he to succeed W. in the White House. Many of these changes had to do with how he planned to wield executive power.

Posted on Jun 16, 2010 READ MORE  |  12 COMMENTS



Flickr / exquisitur (CC-BY)

Arizona vs. Los Angeles, Round Two

An Arizona utility official has responded to Los Angeles’ high-profile boycott of his state by threatening to starve L.A. of electrical power generated in Arizona. L.A. officials quickly fired back by pointing out that while the city gets about 25 percent of its power from plants in Arizona, it partly owns those facilities.

Posted on May 19, 2010 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS


White Out

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Posted on May 6, 2010 READ MORE        


Ralph Nader
AP / Carolyn Kaster

How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too

Ralph Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup.

Posted on Apr 5, 2010 READ MORE  |  345 COMMENTS


ENTER_ALT_TEXT

Perry Anderson on the Specter of China

Is China on its way toward becoming the feared colossus of the 21st century, surpassing the United States in its imperial ambitions and economic hegemony?

Posted on Mar 19, 2010 READ MORE  |  4 COMMENTS


Obama’s Nuclear Option

President Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

Posted on Feb 16, 2010 READ MORE  |  33 COMMENTS



AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian

Ahmadinejad Orders Uranium Enrichment

After days of confusion over whether or not Iran would reopen negotiations regarding its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered his country’s atomic energy agency to begin producing uranium for a medical reactor in Tehran. The United States quickly expressed disappointment over the announcement.

Posted on Feb 7, 2010 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS



AP / Mary Altaffer

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists

The gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process.

Posted on Dec 28, 2009 READ MORE  |  74 COMMENTS



Statkraft

New Kind of Power Plant Gets Energy From Salt Water

A Norwegian company thinks it can squeeze enough electricity out of the natural phenomenon of osmosis to power China. Right now the company’s plant can barely heat a tea kettle, but officials hope to power a village in a few years, and a lot more after that.

Posted on Nov 25, 2009 READ MORE  |  1 COMMENT



Flickr / langalex

The Dark Side of Green Energy

Renewable energy projects are sprouting up across the country, much to the delight of environmentalists. Or is it? Green power, it turns out, is very thirsty. Developers are requesting billions of gallons of water annually to cool, cleanse and maintain their solar farms and other projects—billions more than we may have.

Posted on Sep 30, 2009 READ MORE  |  12 COMMENTS


What if the Big Cheese Had Been White?

If race were the only issue, there would be much less hyperventilation about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.‘s unpleasant run-in with the criminal justice system. The debate is also about power and entitlement.

Posted on Jul 28, 2009 READ MORE  |  39 COMMENTS


Clean Coal or Dry Hole?

Obama should be applauded for taking climate change seriously, but one of his administration’s centerpiece initiatives may be digging a very expensive dry hole—literally.

Posted on Jun 4, 2009 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS


Global Capitalism: The Suicide Version

The globalization of the international economy launched as an accidental policy of the Clinton administration has proved to be a destroyer of people, governments and wealth.

Posted on Mar 24, 2009 READ MORE  |  39 COMMENTS



Jacob Heilbrunn on Alger Hiss

Susan Jacoby’s lucid new book reminds us that the Hiss case offered a vengeful postwar right a golden opportunity to tar the New Deal as a crypto-communist conspiracy—and why it still matters.

Posted on Mar 20, 2009 READ MORE  |  20 COMMENTS



amazon.com

Andrew Nagorski on the Bolsheviks’ Crimes

There was a time when Russia was an economic power on the rise. Sean McMeekin’s new book, “History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks,” explains what nipped that growth in the bud.

Posted on Jan 2, 2009 READ MORE  |  35 COMMENTS



AP photo / Khalil Hamra

Man Is a Cruel Animal

We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.

Posted on Dec 22, 2008 READ MORE  |  85 COMMENTS



U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Michael Bracken

America’s Afghan Thugs

An American living in Kandahar writes in The Washington Post that the “corrupt gunslingers” the U.S. put in charge of Afghanistan are as much to blame for the resurgence of the Taliban as anyone. “Why,” after all, “would anyone defend officials who pillage them?”

Posted on Dec 15, 2008 READ MORE  |  5 COMMENTS


Dennis Kucinich
AP photo / Kevin Wolf

Rep. Dennis Kucinich on His Battle With the Banks

Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland 30 years ago today.

Posted on Dec 15, 2008 READ MORE  |  53 COMMENTS


We Told You So

With the release of three new reports, there’s no debate anymore about who was correct and who wasn’t concerning the economic collapse and the Wall Street bailout. The studies prove that progressive critics were right and the Washington ideologues and the pundits were wrong.

Posted on Dec 11, 2008 READ MORE  |  47 COMMENTS


ENTER_ALT_TEXT
signonsandiego.com

U.S. Hegemony on the Outs

Maybe it was the past eight years, or maybe it was the past three months, but a new report by the U.S. intelligence community estimates that American global power is on the decline, and will be for the next two decades as upcoming powers like China and India gain greater international standing.

Posted on Nov 21, 2008 READ MORE  |  6 COMMENTS


Not a Scratch on That Glass Ceiling

It is time to stop kidding ourselves. This wasn’t a breakthrough year for American women in politics. It was a brutal one.

Posted on Nov 19, 2008 READ MORE  |  20 COMMENTS



imdb.com

Turning Trash Into Electricity

Here’s a solution to the energy crisis Americans are sure to love: A company called Geoplasma is building a plant in Florida that will vaporize garbage with a plasma torch, turning 1,500 tons of waste into 60 megawatts of the good stuff. It may not be as clean as solar, but hey, America is the Saudi Arabia of trash.

Posted on Nov 13, 2008 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS



speaker.gov

‘Whatever Nancy Wants, Nancy Gets’

Nancy Pelosi isn’t as showy as some of her predecessors, but according to a profile in the Politico, the most powerful woman in American political history is firmly in control of her domain. Tom “the Hammer” DeLay says she is “the most powerful speaker in a generation—she will be able to do anything she wants.” As one anonymous lawmaker put it, “Whatever Nancy wants, Nancy gets.”

Posted on Nov 12, 2008 READ MORE  |  16 COMMENTS



AP photo / Charles Dharapak

John Dean: Republican Rule Is Dangerous

Nixon’s former counsel has written a scathing review of conservative Republican politics and says the McCain-Palin ticket, which “scares the hell out of me,” fits the mold. How’s this for an endorsement?: “If Obama is rejected on November 4th for another authoritarian conservative like McCain, I must ask if Americans are sufficiently intelligent to competently govern themselves.”

Posted on Nov 2, 2008 READ MORE  |  32 COMMENTS


Ike Dials Down After Slamming Texas Shore

By Saturday afternoon, Hurricane Ike had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but not before unleashing its full force on Galveston and Houston, Texas, along with coastal Louisiana. Both states were dealing with widespread power outages in Ike’s wake, and the extent of the damage couldn’t be fully assessed until flooding subsided and debris was cleared.

Posted on Sep 13, 2008 READ MORE


ENTER_ALT_TEXT
wikimedia.org

China Gets the (Sooty) Gold in Power Emissions

China’s unceasing economic growth has always worried environmentalists, and a new report by the Center for Global Development may put those concerns on a new level. After increasing power-plant emissions by a third this year, China’s coal-based power sector is poised to be the most polluting in the world ... even worse than that of the United States.

Posted on Aug 27, 2008 READ MORE  |  5 COMMENTS


ENTER_ALT_TEXT
Wikipedia Commons

Russia: They’re Baaaaaaaaack

They aren’t as big, and their iconography is nowhere near Soviet-grade, but according to columnist Anne Penketh of London’s The Independent, the Russians’ Georgia invasion can only be seen as a rank humiliation of the West by a triumphant Vladimir Putin.

Posted on Aug 13, 2008 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS


A Loss of Transatlantic Harmony

The relationship among the three principal centers of world power of the past half-century is now at the edge of fundamental change.

Posted on Jul 6, 2008 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS


Carlin

George Carlin on Words, War and Power

While YouTube teems with clips from the extensive career of the late, great George Carlin, it would be impossible to capture the full scope of his comic genius. Having said that, here are a few highlights.

Posted on Jun 24, 2008 READ MORE  |  5 COMMENTS



U.S. Air Force / Airman 1st Class Nadine Y. Barclay

The Clean-Energy State

The Guardian reports that New Mexico, with its thousands of square miles of sun-soaked, wind-swept land, is vying to become the epicenter of the new green economy. Given the right tax breaks and technological breakthroughs, the Land of Enchantment could become the Saudi Arabia of sun.

Posted on Jun 23, 2008 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS


coal
Flickr / LHOON

The Democrats’ Lump of Coal

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agree on many issues, but it’s a bit surprising to see two candidates who’ve talked so much about the climate crisis and a new green economy tout their love of coal. Obama has an ad up in Kentucky that claims “Barack understands” the plight of the coal industry, while Clinton has promised voters in the state she would put more money into coal programs.

Posted on May 11, 2008 READ MORE  |  8 COMMENTS


Baghdad power lines
AP photo / Samir Mizban

Baghdad’s Other Power Struggle

As one U.S. soldier tells Truthdig foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen, it’s not entirely a bad sign that residents of Baghdad’s Saidiyah neighborhood are complaining about their meager daily power allotment: A year earlier they were concerned about just staying alive.

Posted on May 11, 2008 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS


John Yoo
Washington Post / Karen Ballard

Torture’s Poet Laureate

A recently declassified memo shines the spotlight once again on John “Take Them to the Point of Death” Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor and once deputy legal counsel in the Justice Department.

Posted on Apr 2, 2008 READ MORE  |  35 COMMENTS


Berger and Albright
news.bbc.co.uk

Whispering in the Ear of the President

It’s safe to assume that the people currently advising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy will continue to do so if their candidate is elected. So what approaches can we expect from an Obama or a Clinton administration? There are some bad apples in either bunch, but Foreign Policy in Focus says the company Obama and Clinton keep largely parallels their votes on the war.

Posted on Feb 11, 2008 READ MORE  |  26 COMMENTS


Iraq power line
nytimes.com

Iraq Awards Iran Contracts, U.S. Sulks

Determined to show just how adolescent they can be, U.S. representatives in Baghdad have expressed dissatisfaction and suspicion over a pair of power plants that Iranian and Chinese companies plan to build in Iraq. One American military official described the contracts this way: “As you know, it’s not always as it appears.”

Posted on Oct 18, 2007 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS


Leading Iraqis Get Practical

If one were to ask President Bush to make sense of his strategy in Iraq, he would likely suggest that by providing stability, the Iraqi government could work toward reconciliation and an end to sectarian bloodletting, but according to several key Iraqi leaders, that just isn’t going to happen. Better, they argue, to focus on the basics of governing and providing services that Iraqis continue to suffer without.

Posted on Oct 8, 2007 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS


Harnessing the Sun Leaves Vidal in the Dark

Powering his home with solar energy sounded like an enlightened idea to Gore Vidal, but after several exasperating rounds of “routine” inspections and unexpected blackouts, it seems that even Southern California’s most abundant natural resource can be caught up in red tape.

Posted on Jul 2, 2007 READ MORE  |  4 COMMENTS


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