Truthout: 11 November 2011

Keystone XL Pipeline Activists Claim Temporary Victory After Months of Protest
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The State Department announced yesterday that the review process for the Keystone XL pipeline would be extended until after the 2012 election. The announcement came just four days after thousands of protesters peacefully surrounded the White House to pressure President Obama to reject the massive project. State Department officials said the administration needs more time to assess the potential environmental impacts of the pipeline, but the decision also lifts the president out of a political dilemma as the 2012 election season begins ... 'I 100 percent think that young people were ... a large part of what drove the decision,' said Courtney Hight, a director of the Energy Action Coalition, a group that organizes young activists. 'Young people are what brought him into the White House, and he knows that.'"
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Veterans Day Began as a Pledge to End All Wars
David Swanson, War Is A Crime: "Believe it or not, November 11th was not made a holiday in order to celebrate war, support troops, or cheer the 11th year of occupying Afghanistan. This day was made a holiday in order to celebrate an armistice that ended what was up until that point, in 1918, one of the worst things our species had thus far done to itself, namely World War I. World War I, then known simply as the world war or the great war, had been marketed as a war to end war. Celebrating its end was also understood as celebrating the end of all wars. A ten-year campaign was launched in 1918 that in 1928 created the Kellogg-Briand Pact, legally banning all wars. That treaty is still on the books, which is why war making is a criminal act and how Nazis came to be prosecuted for it."
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Now Is the Time for an Economic Bill of Rights
Ellen Brown, Truthout: "Henry Ford said, 'It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.' We are beginning to understand, and Occupy Wall Street looks like the beginning of the revolution ... We need an Economic Bill of Rights, and we need to end the privatization of the national currency. Only when the privilege of creating the national money supply is returned to the people can we have a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people."
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Wall Street Protests Inspire Ire Over Bank Recruiting
Kevin Roose, New York Times News Service: "As protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement continue to camp out in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, students at some of the nation's top colleges are also taking up the banner of antibank activism, beginning with their schools' on-campus recruiting programs ... An op-ed in The Harvard Crimson entitled 'Boycott Wall Street' encouraged Harvard undergraduates to consider careers in more creative fields, such as engineering and journalism. 'Many of these careers may not be as financially rewarding as investment banking,' the op-ed's author, David Weinfeld, a Harvard alumnus, wrote. 'But I assure you, they will almost certainly make you less insipid than your profiteering peers.'"
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Man Outed as Undercover Cop at Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality, Supports the Movement
Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress: "Across the country, police have used undercover and/or plainsclothed police officers to monitor occupations and protests that are a part of the 99 Percent Movement. In a video released last month, Oakland Police Officer Fred Shavies was outed as one of these plainsclothed officers at Occupy Oakland ... Now, in an interview with Justin Warren, Shavies said that he was just doing his job and that he actually supports the movement. He said that the police brutality that occurred could be our generation's Birmingham - referring to the civil rights struggle in the South - and that he hopes the movement is a turning point for changing the country."
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Henry A. Giroux: Penn State Crisis - the Failure of the University (Radio Interview)
Chris Spannos, NYTimes eXaminer: NYTX Editor Chris Spannos interviews former Penn State Professor Henry Giroux about the Penn State Crisis by using three New York Times articles published Thursday, November 10 as the reference point for discussing media, the culture of silence and the institutional crisis of higher education.
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Occupy Homes: New Coalition Links Homeowners, Activists in Direct Action to Halt Foreclosures (Video)
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "A loose-knit coalition of activists known as 'Occupy Homes' is working to stave off pending evictions by occupying homes at risk of foreclosure when tenants enlist its support. The movement has recently enjoyed a number of successes."
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Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport
William Yardley, New York Times News Service: "The soldier accused of being the ringleader of a rogue Army unit that killed three Afghan civilians last year for sport, crimes that angered Afghan leaders and villagers and rattled high levels of the American military, was found guilty of all charges on Thursday ... He also pulled a tooth from one man, saying in court that he had 'disassociated' the bodies from being human, that taking the fingers and a tooth was like removing antlers from a deer."
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In Mexico, a Universal Struggle Against Power and Forgetting
John Pilger, Truthout: "What is it about Mexico that is a universal political dream? As in a Rivera mural, nothing is held back: no class martyrdom, no colonial tragedy. The message is freedom next time ... These angry, eloquent and often courageous people have long known something many in Europe and the United States are only beginning to realize: there is no choice but to fight the economic extremism unleashed in Washington and London a generation ago."
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An Obama Nightmare: Immigrant Deportation
William Fisher, Truthout: "Cecilia Munoz has to be the most frustrated official in the Obama White House. She's the president's chief adviser on immigration issues. It fell to Munoz to try to explain why the Obama administration is deporting 400,000 people every year and racking up the largest number of deportations of any president in American history.... In the process, ICE is tearing families apart. It is deporting the parents of children born in the US - leaving the kids with relatives when possible, with public assistance agencies where not."
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Cain, Penn State Scandals Should Make America Face Everyday Sex Abuse
Behrouz Saba, New America Media: "Herman Cain has opted for a blanket denial, asserting that the four women who have so far accused him of inappropriate sexual conduct belong to a Democratic Party conspiracy to deprive America of a businessman in the White House ... Sexual assault, despite a common perception, does not come down to 'he said, she said.' It is an indefensible crime against which all have to speak with one voice."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

You might not think that Missoula, Montana, (population around 65,000) would be the place that a revolt against corporate personhood might start, but you'd be wrong.

In fact, this past Tuesday, 75 percent of the voters in Missoula supported a referendum declaring that "corporations are not human beings." It's part of a national movement to encourage states to support a constitutional amendment to deny to corporations the rights given to individual Americans. The campaign was launched after the 2010 US Supreme Court decision granting corporations the rights of free speech guaranteed to individuals, including campaign spending.

According to the Missoulian, Cynthia Wolken - the councilwoman who initiated the referendum - was hopeful that other cities would follow suit:

"Basically, it affirmed what we were all seeing on the streets, which is the average Missoulian wanted to have their voice heard ... and they want their elected officials to fix the problem of corporate personhood," Wolken said. "So I hope this message is heard and we get started on fixing the problem."

As she sees it, corporations have been given too much power, and as stated in the Missoula resolution, their "profits and survival are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings."

Every week, over the past few months, Truthout has been excerpting Thom Hartmann's prescient book, "Unequal Protection," on how corporate personhood mistakenly became embedded in court rulings. In the book - available in a revised and expanded edition from Truthout - Hartmann writes:

For humans to take back control of our governments by undoing corporate personhood, we'll have to begin with the governments that are the closest and most accessible to us. It's almost impossible for you or me to go to Washington, D.C., and have a meeting with our senator or representative - most of us usually can't even get them on the phone unless we're a big contributor. But most of us can meet with our city council members or show up at their meetings. Lobbying within the local community is both easy and effective. Local politicians are the closest to - and generally the most responsive - to the people they represent.

When enough local communities have passed ordinances that directly challenge corporate personhood, state legislatures will begin to notice. As with the issues of slavery, women's suffrage, and Prohibition (among others), when local communities take actions that are followed by states, eventually the federal government will get on board.

Missoula, the home of the University of Montana, is showing the way.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

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