“The Mouse That Roared”: How Disney Instills Greed and Consumerism – Starting at Three Months

Jubilation Sweeps Tripoli as Rebels Hunt Desperate Qaddafi Suliman Ali Sway, Hannah Allam and Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers: “The long, brutal reign of Col. Moammar Gadhafi appeared to collapse Sunday as rebels swept into Tripoli, captured three of his sons and set off wild street celebrations in a capital that he’d ruled by fear for more than four decades, Libyan and NATO officials said.” Read the Article   Standard & Poor’s and the Bilderbergers: All Part of the Plan? Ellen Brown, Truthout: “What just happened in the stock market? Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell by at least 400 points for four straight days, a stock market first. The worst drop was on Monday, August 8, 2011, when the Dow plunged 624 points. Monday was the first day of trading after US Treasury bonds were downgraded from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poor’s (S&P). But the roller coaster actually began on Tuesday, August 2, 2011, the day after the last-minute deal to raise the US debt ceiling – a deal that was supposed to avoid the downgrade that happened anyway five days later.” Read the Article   On the News With Thom Hartmann: Republicans in Congress Work to Strip Wall Street Reform, and More Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program: Moammar Qaddafi’s grip on power in Libya has slipped as rebel forces swept into Tripoli to bring down Qaddafi, the Fed secretly gave more than $1.2 trillion in virtually interest-free loans to big banks in 2008, Charles Koch defends billionaires, Republicans in Congress work to strip Wall Street reform, Bill McKibben arrested in peaceful demonstration to oppose massive 1,700-mile-long pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript   Activists Kick Off Protests Against Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline (Video) Tar Sands Action: Bill McKibben, Natural Resources Defense Council co-founder Gus Speth and LGBT activist Lt. Dan Choi led a group of climate activists in the first day of what will be a two-week-long daily protest at the White House. Watch the Video   Billionaire Koch Responds to Buffett, Refuses Call for Shared Sacrifice Lee Fang, ThinkProgress: “Warren Buffett penned an op-ed last week declaring that America’s super-rich have been ‘coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.’ Lamenting the numerous tax loopholes and special breaks afforded to billionaire investors, Buffett noted that in his entire career, even when capital gains rates were as high as 39.9 percent, he never saw anyone ‘shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.’ Charles Koch, head of the massive petrochemical, manufacturing, and commodity speculating Koch Industries corporation, has responded to Warren’s call for shared sacrifice: ‘No Thanks.'” Read the Article   John Pilger | Damn It or Fear It, the Forbidden Truth Is There’s an Insurrection in Britain John Pilger, Truthout: “For the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and patronage and poverty that is modern Britain, mostly the black, the marginalized and resentful, the envious and hopeless, there is never surprise. Their relationship with authority is integral to their obsolescence as young adults. Half of all black British youth between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed, the result of deliberate policies since Margaret Thatcher oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in British history. Forget plasma TVs, this was panoramic looting.”Read the Article   After Bruising Political Fights, Two Governors Alter Their Tones Monica Davey, The New York Times News Service: “After Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican in his first months in office, announced early this year that he wanted to cut collective bargaining rights for public workers, relations between political parties in his newly red State Capitol fell into a long, deep frost. But after six months of bruising partisan fights, Mr. Walker seemed to issue an utterly different message this month. He said he wanted to meet with Democrats and to find shared agenda items – an invitation that has been met with polite acceptance and deep skepticism.” Read the Article   Austerity Politics Descends on US States Richard D. Wolff: “Last week, Democratic Governors in New York and Connecticut repeated the austerity politics of Greece’s Prime Minister Pappandreou and Portugal’s Socrates. In doing so, they likewise imitated the austerity politics of their Republican and Democratic counterparts across virtually all 50 states. Austerity for labor and the public is everywhere capitalism’s Plan B. Even capitalists now see that capitalism’s Plan A failed.”Read the Article   Dean Baker | Why Is President Obama So Anxious to Cut Social Security? Dean Baker, Truthout: “On his tour of the Midwest last week, President Obama again indicated his interest in cutting Social Security. He repeated a proposal that his administration first put forward in the debt ceiling negotiations: he wants to cut the annual cost of living adjustment by 0.3 percentage points. This cut may sound small, but it adds up over time.” Read the Article   Assad Says He Rejects West’s Call to Resign Anthony Shadid and Nada Bakri, The New York Times News Service: “President Bashar al-Assad of Syria dismissed American and European calls for him to step down as ‘meaningless’ on Sunday, and he declared that Syria’s ailing economy could withstand escalating international sanctions. In an interview with Syrian television, Mr. Assad hardly mentioned the hundreds of thousands of protesters this summer who have posed the gravest challenge to his family’s four decades of rule.” Read the Article   Mystery of Qaddafi’s Whereabouts Looms Large in Conflict’s Endgame Rick Gladstone, The New York Times News Service: “For all his bluster and bombast over the past four decades as Libya’s quirky ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was mysteriously and conspicuously absent as forces of the six-month-old Libya rebellion encircled what they believed to be his ultimate Tripoli hideout, the Bab al-Azizya compound.” Read the Article   Rick Perry Moves to the Right on Immigration Robin Abcarian and Maeve Reston, The Los Angeles Times: “Immigration advocates in Texas were heartened last year when the Republican governor, Rick Perry, flatly stated that Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants ‘would not be the right direction for Texas.’ But in June, Perry convened a special session of the Legislature, hoping to pass a measure outlawing sanctuary cities – places where police are not allowed to ask people they detain about immigration status.”Read the Article   From Sacrilege to Sacredness: What’s the Big Deal About Snowmaking?  Mary Sojourner, New Clear Vision: “I would tell you that I stood on this mountain that the Dine call Dook’o’oosIId and watched a Navajo apprentice healer touch a boulder as tenderly as he might have touched his child, but I worry that you might relegate me to the long-gone New Age. And if I tell you that I heard a Dine woman say that disrespecting the Mountain is a form of genocide, ‘because the health of the Dine men is linked with the Mountain; and the health of the Mountain is linked with their health,’ I hope you would listen with an open heart.”Read the Article