News Brief

Noam Chomsky | The Charade of Israeli-Palestinian TalksNoam Chomsky: "Washington's pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion - excluding Arab East Jerusalem - should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S. diplomatic history."
Read the Article

Thom Hartmann | An Informed and Educated Electorate
Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers: Today we present the next chapter in our series of installments of Thom Hartmann's book, "Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country." Hartmann recalls: "After Reagan blew up the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, two very interesting things happened. The first was the rise of rightwing hate-speech talk radio, starting with Rush Limbaugh that very year. The second, which really stepped up fast after President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which further deregulated the broadcast industry, was that the money losing news divisions of the Big Three TV networks were taken under the wings of their entertainment divisions - and wrung dry. Foreign bureaus were closed. Reporters were fired. Stories that promoted the wonders of advertisers or other companies (like movie production houses) owned by the same mega-corporations that owned the networks began to appear. And investigative journalism that cast a bright light on corporate malfeasance vanished."
Read the Article

Outline Emerges of Deal to Extend Tax Cuts, Jobless Insurance
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: "Leading senators from both parties on Sunday sketched the broad outline of a compromise to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans in exchange for another extension of benefits for the millions of long-term unemployed. The outlines of compromise emerged after Republicans quashed an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed last week and then Senate Democrats failed on Saturday to cut off debate in order to pass legislation that would extend the tax cuts for all but the top 2 percent of earners."
Read the Article

News in Brief: DREAM Act in Jeopardy, and More ...
DREAM Act in trouble in the Senate; California Prop 8 back in federal court; Wal-Mart sexist practices in court; Obama ready to cave on tax cuts; and more ...
Read the Article

Chris Hedges | Happy as a Hangman
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "To be innocent in America means we passively permit offshore penal colonies where we torture human beings, some of whom are children. To be innocent in America is to acquiesce to the relentless corporate destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity."
Read the Article

Marriage and the Court of Public Opinion
Brian Powell, The Los Angeles Times: "In 1948, the idea of interracial marriage in the United States was almost unimaginable. The few polls on this topic at the time showed that Americans were nearly unanimous in their disapproval of it.... In the next few days, the legal battle over the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which restricted the definition of marriage to a legal union between a man and a woman, will be revisited. Californians narrowly passed this proposition in 2008. But a few months ago, a federal judge struck down the ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional. Arguments for and against sustaining this judicial decision will be made."
Read the Article

Climate Deal Failure Could Devastate World's Poor, IPCC Chief Says
Stacy Feldman, SolveClimate: "Further delay in international action to slow warming would endanger vast numbers of lives in the world's poorest countries, but Cancun can still deliver decisive progress to help avert disaster, the head of the UN climate science panel said. In an interview with SolveClimate News, Rajendra Pachauri said he 'would think' that the Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 negotiations taking place in the Mexican resort would achieve at least some success toward a new climate pact."
Read the Article

The Green Economy Is Here and It Ain't Pretty
Dean Baker, Truthout: "... the ultimate triumph of recycling in Wall Street's green economy was getting Erskine Bowles as co-chair of President Obama's deficit commission. Bowles was openly getting $335,000 a year as a director of Morgan Stanley, even as he drew out plans for the future of Social Security, Medicare and tax policy for decades to come. In deference to Wall Street, none of the major media outlets noted this seeming conflict of interest."
Read the Article

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Alfred W. McCoy, TomDispatch: "A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don't bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting."
Read the Article

Sen. Bernie Sanders | "Today in America We Have the Most Unequal Distribution of Wealth Since the Great Depression!" (VIDEO)
Sen. Bernie Sanders, MOXnews: Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses the US Senate.
Read the Article