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Activists Strip Down to Their Birthday Suits to Protest Fur
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on December 1, 2009 at 12:48 PM.

Tony Kushner: Right-Wing Opposition to Recognizing Climate Change Comes "Entirely From Greed"
Posted by Staff, TheNation.com on November 30, 2009 at 1:25 PM.

In 1991, Angels in America was one of the first major American dramas to take on the impact of human lives on the environment, as the character Hannah Pitt fretted about the hole in the ozone layer. Eighteen years later, the U.S. is on the verge of major negotiations over another, still more intractable instance of environmental degradation caused by humans, in Copenhagen this December. The Nation asked playwright and Editorial Board member Tony Kushner to reflect on the environmental legacy of Angels in America, and to discuss the artistic challenges of coping with an issue like climate change.

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Angels in America took on the impact of humans on the environment. Now we face a more intractable instance of environmental decay.&topic=politics">

Scahill and Olbermann on Blackwater: Murderous Crusaders for Christ
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 27, 2009 at 6:00 PM.

In the window to your right, see frequent AlterNet contributor discuss Blackwater on Keith Olbermann's show. And if you missed it this Tuesday, be sure to check out Jeremy's piece on the shady mercenary firm's secret war in Pakistan.

Glenn Beck Dividing U.S. into 7 Parts ... Will Offer Americans Right-Wing Education
Posted by Staff, Media Matters for America on November 23, 2009 at 1:57 PM.

Who says conservatives don't value book learnin'?

Check out the video to your right, courtesy of Media Matters.

What Sarah Palin's "Jewish people will be flocking to Israel" prediction really means
Posted by Bruce Wilson, AlterNet on November 21, 2009 at 7:24 AM.

There's some acceptance that statements such as Sarah Palin's prediction that Jews will soon be "flocking to Israel" may indicate Palin holds apocalyptic beliefs. What's not understood is that she's closely associated with a religious tendency whose leaders promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, including one most commonly used by the Third Reich, in the 1930's and 1940's, to whip up anti-Semitic hatreds: the claim that a worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers manipulates the world economy and preys on working classes.

Stumping for her new autobiography, Sarah Palin has made a round of interviews with high profile media figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. In the Walters interview Palin justified her support for expansion of Jewish settler enclaves on Israel's West Bank with a strange prediction. Walters asked, "Now let's talk about some issues - the Middle East. The Obama Administration does not want Israel to build any more settlements on what they consider Palestinian territory. What is your view on this ?" Palin responded, "I disagree with the Obama Administration on that. I believe that, um, the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead."

Why might Palin's prediction come to pass ?

In the 1920's and 1930's, rising anti-Semitism was propelled, in part, by conspiracy theories alleging that Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild banking family controlled both the German and world economies through the manipulation of global money markets. Leaders in Sarah Palin's religious tendency have for years been promoting extremely similar conspiracy theories. Some of these allege that the Rothschild banking family heads an international conspiracy that dominates much of the world economy and controls the U.S.economy through the Federal Reserve.

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Hmmm ... Why Do So Many Wingnuts Have Such an Obsessive Fear of Being Raped?
Posted by Staff, Media Matters for America on November 20, 2009 at 10:45 AM.

Conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage frequently employ rape metaphors when discussing progressives or progressive policies. For example, Beck said that New Yorkers are "being raped by [their] government," while Limbaugh, during a discussion of health care, told his listeners: "Get ready to get gang-raped again."

Video to your right; much more after the jump ...

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Sarah Palin Running for President ... of Facebook?
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 2:42 PM.

Ana Marie Cox and Naomi Klein point out that Sarah Palin seems to be campaigning for President. But President of what? Klein thinks she's running for President of nothing. Cox thinks she shooting for President of Facebook. What do you think?

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham Breaks Ranks, Admits "The Green Economy Is Coming"
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on November 5, 2009 at 11:15 AM.

Finally, a little help from Republicans on the climate bill. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday, "We will be working closely with the White House over the course of the next weeks with a few to try to pull together what ultimately could be presented to Sen. Reid and the leadership as a piece of legislation that we hope could get the 60 votes necessary to pass or more, and we would hope it would be more."

It seems not everyone want to be a member of the Party of No Show. Watch the rest.

This video is courtesy of Think Progress.

Iowa Wingnut Steve King Lauds Lobbyists as American Heros for Bussing in Health Reform Protesters
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on November 4, 2009 at 2:46 PM.

On Thursday, the lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — which were instrumental in orchestrating dozens of anti-Obama tea parties and town hall disruptions — are planning an anti-health reform rally at the steps of the Capitol. Republican leadership, like Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), have endorsed the rally. But two of the most rabidly right-wing members of Congress, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) are amongst the most aggressive promoters of the rally, with the help of talk radio and Fox News.

FreedomWorks has launched a website called “DontKillGrandma.com” listing recommended tactics for activists to engage in while protesting health reform. For the Thursday rally, FreedomWorks says activists should engage in a “simultaneous chant of ‘Kill the Bill.’” FreedomWorks is funded by corporate money and is led by Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader and until recently lobbyist from DLA Piper.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is busing people to the rally. AFP is led by astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips and is bankrolled by gas and oil baron David Koch, the world’s 9th richest person and the financier of dozens of conservative think-tanks, publications, and politicians. Like they did for the April tea parties, AFP has commissioned at least 10 buses from Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina to bring protesters — free of charge — to DC for the rally.

During a speech last night, King thanked the lobbyists for bringing in buses from “state after state after state.”

[Ed: Watch it in the window to your right.]

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GOP Loon Goes Off the Rails: Health Reform Greater Threat than Terrorism
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 2, 2009 at 11:12 AM.

Few Republican congressional members have served as a greater fount for hyperbolic and uninformed ranting about health care reform as has Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). As ThinkProgress previously documented, Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Bill Moyers: We Can't Afford to Escalate the War in Afghanistan
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 1, 2009 at 7:24 PM.

Let's not let our governing class make this long and dirty war "our war."

Hanging with the Tea Baggers: What Exactly Do They Mean by 'Judgement Day'?
Posted by Brad Friedman, Brad Blog on October 31, 2009 at 10:22 AM.

So we went out to Griffith Park out here in L.A. to check out the kick-off day for the new "Tea Party Express II" national tour. Thought we might meet some interesting people and file a quick video report. Met a lot of interesting people, and so ended up making a short film of sorts. Enjoy. Spread the word. Go tell the story ("both sides")...

Honduras's 'Bloodless Coup': What You're Not Seeing on TV
Posted by Avi Lewis, Al Jazeera English on October 27, 2009 at 7:43 AM.

This video is a trailer for the Fault Lines' coverage of the coup in Honduras. Watch Part One and Part Two of the full version of Fault Lines: 100 Days of Resistance.

I arrived in Honduras one week after ousted president Manuel Zelaya returned to begin his long spell of internal exile in the Brazilian embassy. With my crew from Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English TV, I went straight from the airport to a funeral. A week later, on our last night of filming, we attended another funeral. The first was for a 24-year-old woman, the second for a 50-year-old schoolteacher, and both active in the resistance to the coup. According to their families, both were killed for it.

The coup regime in Honduras is winning. Tepid pressure from the Obama administration is making it easy for the de facto government to run out the clock until the highly compromised elections in just five weeks. Whether or not international observers bless that vote, a new government will take power in Honduras and declare the stain of the coup removed, democracy restored. Absent the kind of meaningful sanctions Washington has so far been unwilling to impose, the status quo will triumph: the backers of the coup will go unpunished.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. mainstream media is not reporting the story of what is really going on in Honduras. The de facto government and its backers invested $400,000 (that we know of) in bipartisan lobbying, and succeeded in implanting a deeply distorted narrative of events -- a nouveau cold war story starring Hugo Chávez as puppet master and Zelaya as marionette. Meanwhile, the voice of the social movement struggling to reform its country's constitution in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere has been all but ignored.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders: The Fight for Better Health Care
Posted by Sen. Bernie Sanders on October 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM.

One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films.

Stay up-to-date with "Unfiltered" on Facebook. Follow Bernie on Twitter.

President Obama's Heroes: A Bunch of People Who Would Not Approve of War in Afghanistan
Posted by ZP Heller on October 23, 2009 at 12:33 PM.

On September 8, 2009, a school girl named Lilly asked President Obama who he'd have lunch with if he could pick anyone alive or dead. The president chose Gandhi, explaining that Gandhi's nonviolence inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez in the United States.

All three of these men--Gandhi, MLK and Chavez--were committed to nonviolence and opposed war as a foreign policy tool. Similar to his invocations of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount during the campaign, the president continues to cite "inspiration" from luminaries of nonviolence, only to reject their philosophies when it comes time to govern.

Learn more about the war in Afghanistan at http://rethinkafghanistan.com.

Mr. President, your heroes are watching you.