At the behest of a massive grassroots effort organized by Democracy for America, a whopping 22 Attorneys General have signed on to support a brief urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its controversial 2010 Citizens United decision, DFA announced today.

Support for the brief, championed by Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock, was thought to be minimal, a DFA statement said, but organizers are hailing the endorsements as a major victory in the struggle against the Supreme Court’s decision, which said limits to independent political spending violated the First Amendment.

Over the weekend, the United States decided to resume part of its arms shipments to Bahrain, more than one year after a $53 million deal with the country was suspended during violent crackdowns on peaceful protests in the country last year. This follows news that prominent Bahraini human rights activists Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was arrested last week on unspecified charges. These events closely follow major series of “days of rage” protests by opposition groups that coincided with the Formula 1 grand prix the gulf nation hosted at the end of April, which was successful in scaring off many tourists and bringing attention to the abuses of the regime of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

In These Times is proud to partner with the Alternative Press Center, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing public awareness of alternative press, to present a monthly round-up of the best of independent media from around the globe.

In 1989, the Soviet-type regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. All of these regime changes occurred nonviolently, essentially, and put an end to the half-century long Cold War. But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—created in the late 1940s to counter growing Soviet power—is bigger than ever, and often leading the charge for new military action everywhere from Libya to Afghanistan. In 1991, there were NATO 15 member states as the Soviet Union, against which NATO was said to defend, collapsed. Today there are 28 members. Of the 13 member countries that joined since 1991, nine were either Soviet bloc counties or Communist non-aligned nations (Yugoslavia and Albania).

As leaders of NATO member nations convene in Chicago this weekend for the alliance's annual summit, it's worth remembering NATO's post-Soviet expansion. Indeed, ironically,  the world's most prominent military alliance did not conduct a military campaign until after the Cold War ended. It has since conducted 36, according to this NATO document (PDF), released before last year's Libya campaign. According to NATO's website: "Today, 138 000 military personnel are engaged in NATO missions around the world... These forces are currently operating in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Mediterranean, off the Horn of Africa and in Somalia."

In The Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World Dominance (Verso Books, 1999), Peter Gowan offers excellent background for understanding the expansion of NATO after the Soviet collapse. His article "Making sense of NATO's war on Yugoslavia," published in the Socialist Register in 2000, notes the organization's secrecy:

Media folk love to lament the future of journalism. It's hard not to—evidence of the industry's demise keeps building.

Just this week, CareerCast ranked "Newspaper Reporter" and "Broadcaster" on its list of the "10 Worst Jobs of 2012"—the first time two different media jobs got that dubious honor in a single year. And GOP congressmen are once again launching a symbolic crusade against publicly-funded media, with Sen. James DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) on Thursday telling their colleagues in Congress public broadcasting is just too darn expensive to keep funding. (Never mind the United States spends just $1.43 per capita on public media, the lowest in the developed world).

Craig Aaron, CEO and president of the media reform group Free Press, has very different thoughts about government support for media. On Thursday he told an audience at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill., that journalists need to stop bemoaning and start acting.

"You can't be objective about your own demise," Aaron told the small crowd, quoting a reporter from the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News who (unsuccessfully) urged her colleagues to speak up before their publication met its gloomy end.

JPMorgan Chase's disclosure yesterday that it has lost $2 billion in the last six weeks through a failed hedging strategy has sparked renewed calls for tougher financial regulation.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a statement today calling the loss a debacle that needs to be prevented by breaking up the power of the six big banks in the U.S. 

 In the wake of yesterday's announcement, Securities and Exchange Commission regulators are already looking into the mega-bank for possible civil violations. According to the New York Times:

The inquiry, which is being run out of New York, will probably examine the bank’s past regulatory filings about the internal unit that placed the trades, as well as recent statements from the firm’s top executives.

It’s a truism that Richard Mourdock’s victory over Richard Lugar on Tuesday, in the Indiana primary to select the GOP’s candidate for the Senate, was a blow to bipartisanship in Washington. Mourdock campaigned as a politician who disdains compromise, and his assault on Lugar as a moderate made him a Tea Party favorite.

But it will make little difference in the Senate’s voting patterns if Indiana replaces Lugar with Mourdock in November, because Lugar, despite his reputation, has never been much of a moderate.

The website ProgressivePunch, which tracks Congressional voting records, gives Lugar a lifetime “progressive score” of 14 percent overall and just seven percent on crucial votes. And Lugar’s progressive score ranks among the worst when Indiana’s political makeup is factored into his voting record. (ProgressivePunch gives more progressive points to a politician who represents a red state but votes for progressive causes. For example, Democrat Tim Johnson ranks higher by this formula than he does in absolute terms, because he represents South Dakota, a deeply red state. Lugar’s relative rank, by contrast, is much lower than his absolute rank—85 versus 62.) 

Yet Lugar’s defeat will make a difference in ways that can’t be captured by voting tallies. He was often mistaken for a moderate because of his soft-spoken manner and his willingness to hear his opponents out. Mourdock’s victory wasn’t so much the rejection of a moderate voting record as the rejection of a moderate style. Republican voters chose a more aggressive, hard-edged approach to politics. And that shift in style has implications for legislation and public policy that go far beyond just how politicians vote.

For the first time ever, a president of the United States supports gay marriage.

In an interview today with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, President Obama announced that he now supports same-sex marriage.  or the last several years, Obama had maintained the position that he only supported civil unions and not same-sex marriages but that his thoughts on the issue were “constantly evolving.” 

The president’s decision to announce his change of heart now, just six months before the election and immediately after North Carolina’s approval of an amendment banning same-sex marriage, comes as a surprise to analysts who believed he would avoid taking a position on the hot-button issue until after November.

ABC released Obama’s official statement on same-sex marriage on Wednesday after the interview.

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

The ABC report also notes that Obama’s statement was nothing more than a personal opinion and that he still maintains that states should be allowed to make their own decisions on the issue. Still, the timing of the statement in relation to Amendment One’s passage in North Carolina could suggest that the president’s statement is his way of directly opposing the bill which his campaign said left him “disappointed.” 

Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill today which would have frozen interest rates at 3.4% on federally subsidized student Stafford loans instead of doubling them on July 1. The bill proposed covering the $6 billion cost of maintaining the current interest rates for a year by eliminating a tax-loophole that currently exists for “s-corporations,” firms with three or fewer shareholders who earn more than $250,000 for married couples or $200,000 for singles. 

The House of Representatives narrowly approved a Republican plan last month to make up the $6 billion through a cut from a preventative healthcare fund, but the Democrats opposed it, putting forth Tuesday’s bill in the Senate instead.  The Senate voted 52 -- 45 along party lines, with the Democrats failing to reach the 60 votes required to overcome the Republican filibuster.  The only Republican to vote “present” was Olympia Snowe of Maine.  With the costs of student debt now exceeding $1 trillion and student loans surpassing credit cards as the largest source of individual debt, many believe the issue will be a large source of debate in the upcoming presidential elections. 

This article appeared originally at IPS News.

BRUSSELS, May 3, 2012 (Tierramérica) - Major publicly traded U.S. corporations, including Dow Chemical, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Cabot Corporation, have secured multi-million-dollar dubious carbon credits to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, as revealed in this investigative report.

Dow scored the largest purchase volumes. The Michigan-headquartered giant owns dozens of CO2-venting plants producing plastics and chemicals in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Poland. Altogether, those plants ranked 21st among the top 100 European buyers of certified emissions reduction certificates (CERs) that originated from questionable projects.

Power and processing plants operating in the European Union (EU), including subsidiaries of U.S. companies, are required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – which cause global warming – by switching to cleaner technologies or offsetting their emissions through the purchase of CERs.
 

Though international envoy Kofi Annan said last week that the U.N.-backed peace plan for Syria is "on track," violence is continuing. More than 8,000 Syrians have already died in the fighting since peaceful protests began in the country in March 2011. Centers of dissent such as the cities of Hama and Homs are still being ruthlessly attacked by forces loyal to the Assad regime. Pro-regime forces are also targeting those who have spoken to the few U.N. observers currently in the country and anyone able to send news or video reports out of the country in spite of the regime’s media lockdown. 

At first glance, the situation in Syria might look a good deal like what we saw last year in Libya—a peaceful protest, an autocratic leader, violent repression and strongholds of resistance under siege. But the situation in the two countries is very different.