Sunday, December 6, 2015

RSN: The GOP Is a 'Radical Insurgency', Clinton Super PAC Donor Is Former Goldman Exec and Foreclosure Crisis Profiteer





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Noam Chomsky: The GOP Is a 'Radical Insurgency' 
Noam Chomsky. (photo: Andrew Rusk) 
Arturo Garcia, Raw Story 
Garcia writes: "'It's important to recognize that they are no longer a normal political party,' Chomsky said in an interview, adding that 'the former [Republican] Party is now a 'radical insurgency' that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics.'" 
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IT professor Noam Chomsky told Truthout that, even if someone like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is elected president, the Republican Party will retain the ability to stifle any attempts to move the US in a more progressive direction for years to come.
“It’s important to recognize that they are no longer a normal political party,” Chomsky said in an interview published on Thursday, adding that “the former [Republican] Party is now a ‘radical insurgency’ that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics, for interesting reasons that we can’t go into here.”
Chomsky expanded on those reasons in a separate interview with Frontline earlier this year, citing findings from the conservative American Enterprise Institute:
Since Ronald Reagan, the leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilising sectors of the population that have not previously been an organised political force, among them extremist evangelical Christians, now probably the majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slave-holding States; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern society — though not the mainstream of the most powerful country in world history.
Sanders would also face opposition from many Democrats, Chomsky argued, since their policy shifts would not make them more like moderate Republicans. The senator’s best chance of effecting change if elected, the philosopher argued on Thursday, would come from the rise of popular movements which could push him further in his own policies.
“That brings us, I think, to the most important part of the Sanders candidacy,” Chomsky said. “It has mobilized a huge number of people. If those forces can be sustained beyond the election, instead of fading away once the extravaganza is over, they could become the kind of popular force that the country badly needs if it is to deal in a constructive way with the enormous challenges that lie ahead.”

Only in America: Our Shared Blame for the Shooting in San Bernardino 
Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker 
Gopnik writes: "Only in America are there enough mass shootings in a single week to allow pundits and philosophers to make complicated points about the nature of responsibility and guilt that elsewhere might exist only in the realm of gruesome thought experiments." 
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End the Gun Epidemic in America 
The New York Times | Editorial 
Excerpt: "It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency." 
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Clinton Super PAC Donor Is Former Goldman Exec and Foreclosure Crisis Profiteer 
Zaid Jilani, The Intercept 
Jilani writes: "The fact remains that the Clinton campaign is fundraising heavily from Wall Street." 
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Net Neutrality Is Back in Court and Back in Trouble 
Brian Fung, The Washington Post 
Fung writes: "The stakes for the Federal Communications Commission are high. Friday marked the third time the agency has appeared before the court in recent years to justify regulating Internet providers more heavily." 
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12 Million Homeless, Displaced Syrians Facing Disaster as Winter Approaches 
Ma'an News Agency 
Excerpt: "More than 12 million people in Syria - nearly half of whom are children - are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance before winter sets into the war-torn country, an international aid group said Friday." 
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UN Climate Talks Approve Draft Text, but Many Disputes Remain 
Matt McGrath, BBC News 
McGrath writes: "Delegates at a UN climate conference in Paris have approved a draft text they hope will form the basis of an agreement to curb global carbon emissions." 
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