The Good News Flower Hour #2 Folks, here’s the second installment of The Good News Flower Hour, wherein I provide the voice for a flower that reads the news. The debut is HERE. We are still tweaking the concept and streamlining the production schedule on these — it takes a LONG-ass time to make these little three-minute suckers — but we hope to make this a weekly feature in the very near future. Enjoy.
REALITY CHECK: This Ain’t The Great Depression
SLATE: “By the afternoon of March 3, scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business,” FDR said in his March 12, 1933, fireside chat (now available on a very cool podcast at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Web site). In 1933, some 4,000 commercial banks failed, causing depositors to take huge losses. (There was no FDIC back then.) The recession that started in August 1929 lasted for a grinding 43 months, during which unemployment soared to 25 percent and national income was cut in half. By contrast, through mid-November 2008, only 19 banks had failed. The Federal […]
NOTHING IS REAL: The JFK Assassination Conspiracy
The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he’d always kept hidden: who killed JFK BY ERIK HEDEGAARD/ROLLING STONE Posted Mar 21, 2007 1:15 PM Once, when the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges recently had been constant and terrible: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his […]
INTELLIGENCE REPORT: The End Of Empire
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The report, Global Trends 2025, is published every four years by the National Intelligence Council to give U.S. leaders insight into looming problems and opportunities. It also says countries in Africa and South Asia may find themselves unstable and ungoverned, as state regimes collapse or wither away under security problems and water and food shortages brought about by climate change and a population increase of 1.4 billion. The potential for conflict will be greater in 2025 than it is now, as the world’s population competes for declining and shifting food, water and energy resources. The report, a year […]
IT’S OFFICIAL: Hillary To Take Secretary of State
THE GUARDIAN: Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned. Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem. Clinton would be well placed to become the country’s dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New […]
ARTSY: The Lonesome Death Of Amy Winehouse
ONTD: An artist is displaying in New York a statue in real size of the British singer Amy Winehouse fallen in the ground in a blood puddle, with a shot in the head. In the back, there’s a real size statue of the American writer William S. Burroughs with a rifle in his hand.The installation belongs to the Italian artist Marco Perego and is called “The only good rock star is a dead rock star”. It is on sale for about US$ 100,000 and started to be displayed last week in the Half Gallery, New York. Perego explains that the […]
WAR ON ERROR: Judge Orders Release Of Gitmo 5
GLENN GREENWALD: The five men ordered released today have been imprisoned in a cage by the Bush administration for 7 straight years without being charged with any crimes and without there being any credible evidence that they did anything wrong. If the members of Congress who voted for the Military Commissions Act had their way (see them here and here), or if the four Supreme Court Justice in the Boumediene minority had theirs, the Bush administration would nonetheless have been empowered to keep them encaged indefinitely, for the rest of their lives if desired, without ever having to charge them with any crime or […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Sean Penn stars in Gus Van Sant‘s new biopic Milk — the story of an out gay politician who inspired a community with his courage, and whose 1978 murder made headlines across the country. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black says he was among those for whom Harvey Milk made a real difference. Born to Mormon parents, he grew up amid the military communities of San Antonio, Texas. He says Milk’s story, when he finally learned about it, helped him summon the courage to come out to his family and friends. “Texas kept me very quiet,” Black told the Bay […]
BIN WORRIED: Al Qaeda Calls Obama ‘House Negro’
NEW YORK TIMES: In a propaganda salvo by Al Qaeda aimed at undercutting the enthusiasm of Muslims worldwide about the American election, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy condemned President-elect Barack Obama as a “house Negro” who would continue a campaign against Islam that Al Qaeda’s leaders said was begun by President Bush. Appealing to the “weak and oppressed” around the world, the Qaeda deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, said in a video released Wednesday that the “new face” of America only masked a “heart full of hate.” For years, the terrorist network sought to fuel anti-Americanism with prolific audio and video recordings […]
NO ONE MUST KNOW: Top 25 Censored News Stories
#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s. Authors Joshua Holland and Michael […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR The name of former anti-war activist William Ayers was brought up twice in an attempt to discredit Barack Obama during the recent presidential campaign — first by Hillary Clinton, and then by the McCain campaign. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama — who served on two nonprofit boards with Ayers — of “palling around with terrorists.” The accusations stemmed from Ayers’ involvement with the Weather Underground, a radical group responsible for bombings on the New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. The federal case […]
MAYOR NUTTER: This Won’t Hurt A Bit
INQUIRER: After 11 days of mounting outcry over its budget cuts, the Nutter administration yesterday tried to assuage critics with more detailed explanations for its decisions to target 11 libraries, seven fire companies, and 68 pools for closing. For libraries, the administration released statistics on usage and location, arguing that the 11 chosen were among the less heavily used and the nearest to other facilities. For the fire companies, the administration released a variety of measurements, including number and variety of calls each handled and length of response time. It was the most comprehensive offering yet of the data behind […]
MAYOR NUTTER: Buddy, Can You Spare A Billion?
RAY CHARLES: Busted [Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] WALL STREET JOURNAL: Requests for federal emergency funding are piling up, with the latest requests coming from cash-strapped cities seeking help to shore up budgets strained by sinking revenue, pension-plan losses and difficulty getting financing amid the credit crisis. On Friday, the mayors of Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta asked the Treasury Department to set aside $50 billion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to spur infrastructure investment to create jobs and lift local economies. The mayors also asked for loans to cover short-term borrowing needs and to meet payroll. In a […]