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Longwood Gardens. May, 2013. Photo by: joanneleon
Longwood Gardens. May, 2013. Photo by: joanneleon
Harpo's Blues | Phoebe Snow
News & Opinion
I am not familiar with this activist, Phyllis Bennis, but I'd like to start following her work. She's got information about a topic that is difficult to get data about. There is a 7 minute interview that I've included and I consider it a must watch. The 2014 deadline for withdrawal (sort of) from Afghanistan fast approaches. I think it's wrong to quote numbers of troops without talking about the number of contractors and mercenaries, but that is what is happening. I think it's wrong to claim that you're ending the war in Afghanistan when you still pay mercenaries to replace troops. They are still American forces if they are being paid by us. To claim otherwise is profoundly dishonest.
Afghan marathon: US troops 'passing the baton to mercenaries' ahead of 2014 withdrawal
While Washington is pulling out its military might from Afghanistan next year, it is stepping up efforts to supply the war-torn state with plenty of military contractors, practically switching from national armed forces to mercenaries.
According to the latest census on contractors accompanying US forces performed by the Professional Overseas Contractors industry group, the US employs 110,404 people in Afghanistan, 33,444 of which are Americans. Their job classifications include everything from base support to construction and from logistics to security.
“There are already far more contractors or mercenaries in Afghanistan than there are [US] troops,” Middle East expert, Phyllis Bennis told RT.
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In any case, experts agree, the US paid contractors will stay in Afghanistan for many years to come.
Felix Salmon is doing some good work on the Cooper Union story. How many other stories like this are out there, with foolish administrators mismanaging money and Wall Street swindling educational institutions? Read further to see Salmon's suggestions for a solution, related to the land under the Chrysler building.
Are Cooper Union’s finances fixable?
Stewart chides Michaelson for his reliance on hedge funds, which have not served the Cooper endowment well. In the 2012 fiscal year, for instance, Cooper’s returns on its managed endowment were negative: they were down 5%, in a period where a standard mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds would have returned a positive 8%. And with more than $100 million in hedge fund investments in 2008, Cooper was paying more than $2 million a year in hedge fund management fees alone, never mind performance fees. That’s the kind of money the college desperately needs for operational expenses.
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On top of that, Cooper levered up its endowment at exactly the wrong time, borrowing $34 million at an interest rate of 5.875% and investing it in the endowment, where it promptly evaporated during the financial crisis. Michaelson tries to explain this away by saying that the borrowed money was kept in cash, while it was the rest of the endowment which lost money. But if you look at the endowment that way, then, as Stewart points out, hedge funds accounted for more than 60% of the funds Michaelson was managing. That’s an insane ratio, especially given that Michaelson was quoted in the WSJ as being “especially critical” of the Yale Model of investing in illiquid alternative asset classes.
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But the real answer is that while the higher payments from the Chrysler lease would be enough to cover the operating costs of a small, excellent college, they would not be enough to cover Cooper’s operating costs and the mortgage payments on the new building. Michaelson is making it sound, here, as though he decided to charge tuition for the sake of the school. In fact, he decided to charge tuition because that’s the only way that the school can pay off the monster loan he took out with no conception of how he could ever pay it off.
Demonstrators in front of the Cooper Union university president's home, a couple blocks from the school (and free living perk from the school). Go to the 4:00 mark.
NYC Students Occupy Cooper Union & Prez's Dwelling
Students Occupy Cooper Union President's Office while Others move in front of Bharucha's nearby Dwelling, Demanding he leave Cooper Union Fee Free or be Ousted.
"No Tuition, is our mission".
Students Occupy Cooper Union NYC #2
Students Occupy Cooper Union President's Office in New York City, Wishing His Ouster for his Proposing Entrance Fees where Education has been Free since Founding.
This is where Abraham Lincoln spoke.
This video is from December, 2012 and was produced by Occupy Public Access TV. You can see the influence of Occupy protest techniques throughout the various protests and the involvement of Occupy Wall Street. This issue with financial mismanagement is not a new problem. The students have been fighting this for two years. But this time, they have gotten more attention and are calling for, administration members to step down via a vote of no confidence.
Cooper Union Students Stage Lock-In To Save Tuition-Free Education
New York's last free college is in danger of losing that status. Administration at Cooper Union plan to impose tuition for the first time in the college's 153-year history. On Monday, December 3rd, students staged a protest during which twelve students locked themselves in the building's clock tower. They announced their presence by dropping a banner which blocked the window of the president's office below. The lock-in lasted seven days during which the banner remained in place.
Many groups expressed support for the students, including the OWS-affiliated Strike Debt. Protesters adopted the color red to symbolize the connection between their struggle and the wider issues of student loans and other forms of debt. On Saturday, December 8th, we joined them for a march and rally.
Cooper Union administration has announced no punitive action will be taken against the students. In a minor concession to one of the students' demands, a student representative will be allowed to attend administrative meetings. However, the plan to impose tuition has not been scrapped.
Taped by Atiq Zabinski, edited by Adrian Resa Jones and Atiq Zabinski.
Free tuition since 1859. "Free as air and water". The tuition "levy" proposal is not on all students but they feel that this is a slippery slope. A healthy progressive movement with integrity would be taking up this cause.
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place. Founded in 1859, and inspired in 1830 when Peter Cooper learned about the government-supported École Polytechnique of Paris,[4][5] the school established a radical new model of American higher education: its mission reflects founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that an education "equal to the best"[6] should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all".[7] The Cooper Union previously granted each admitted student a full-tuition scholarship; as of April 23, 2013, due to financial concerns, that policy has been eliminated beginning with the class entering in the fall of 2014.
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Financial crisis [edit]
Around October 29, 2011, rumors leaked out that the school was in serious financial trouble, and on October 31, a series of open forums were held with students, faculty, and alumni to address the crisis.[46] Speaking on social networking websites, current and past students voiced opposition to the plan. The president of the school, Jamshed Bharucha, indicated that depletion of the school's endowment required additional sources of funding, such as a possible tuition levy and more pointed solicitation of alumni donations and research grants, were being considered to offset recent financial practices such as liquidating assets and spending heavily on a controversial new academic building. On April 24, 2012, the college announced approval from its Board of Trustees to attempt to establish a new tuition-based cross-disciplinary graduate program, expand its fee-based continuing education programs, and possibly impose tuition on some students in its existing graduate programs, effective in September 2013.[47][48] In December 2012, as a protest against the possibility of tuition being charged, 11 students occupied a suite in the Foundation Building for a week.[49] Solicitation of additional endowment to support the free tuition policy was complicated by the school's policy of granting full tuition scholarships to wealthy students; charging high tuition was complicated by the school's lack of the customary amenities offered by other high-tuition schools.[50]
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The Cooper Union acts as a symbol of Progressivism in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel His Family (1917) by Ernest Poole, as well as in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel From Immigrant to Inventor (1924) by Michael Pupin.
Somehow the warnings from Russia were missed when Boston and federal authorities were obsessed with shutting down the Occupy movement.
Unaware of Tsarnaev warnings, Boston counterterror unit tracked protesters
In the fall of 2011, a key Boston police counterterror intelligence unit -- funded with millions of dollars in U.S. homeland security grants -- was closely monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on "commercial and financial sector assets" in downtown areas, according to internal police documents.
The police monitoring of the activities of Occupy Boston -- an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests that swept the country in 2011 -- came during a period after the U.S. government received the second of two warnings from the Russian government about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
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“They were monitoring completely lawful activities,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice, a civil liberties group that recently obtained the documents on the BRIC’s monitoring of Occupy Boston under the Freedom of Information Act. She said the BRIC monitoring was an example of the “vast expenditure of government money” to collect intelligence on activities unrelated to terrorism, in violation of First Amendment rights.
We're the biggest buyer of cyberweapons, which is creating a big market for people who find and sell information about security holes and software to exploit them -- the black hat market. As a result, there's no benefit to reporting security threats when you can make a lot of money from them and there's no incentive to report them to Microsoft, Apple, industrial equipment manufacturers, etc. because the longer a security threat remains unfixed the longer it can be exploited. Big defense contractors are flooding into this field, purchasing small hacking companies and the business is often done using a middleman broker, shady operations, and even criminal organizations are involved. At the same time, our government wants to crack down on illegal downloads by kids and their parents. WTF? Where is the line between what's legal and what's illegal?
Special Report: U.S. cyberwar strategy stokes fear of blowback
The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks.
That's because U.S. intelligence and military agencies aren't buying the tools primarily to fend off attacks. Rather, they are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons that can disrupt data or damage systems.
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It's a global market that operates under the radar, often facilitated by other companies that act as brokers. On the buy side are U.S. government agencies and the defense contractors that fold the exploits into cyber-weapons. With little or no regulation, it is impossible to say who else might be purchasing zero-days and to what end, but the customers are known to include organized crime groups and repressive governments spying on their citizens.
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Until 2010, Vupen often notified software vendors for free when it found vulnerabilities, said chief executive Chaouki Bekrar. That has now changed. "As our research costs became higher and higher, we decided to no longer volunteer for multi-billion-dollar companies," Bekrar said. When software makers wouldn't agree to a compensation system, he said, Vupen chose to sell to governments instead. "Software vendors created this market by not decently paying researchers for their hard work."
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Major players in the field include Raytheon Co, Northrop Grumman Corp and Harris Corp, all of which have acquired smaller companies that specialize in finding new vulnerabilities and writing exploits. Those companies declined to discuss their wares. "It's tough for us, when you get into the realm of offensive," said Northrop spokesman Mark Root.
Reuters reviewed a product catalogue from one large contractor, which was made available on condition the vendor not be named. Scores of programs were listed. Among them was a means to turn any iPhone into a room-wide eavesdropping device. Another was a system for installing spyware on a printer or other device and moving that malware to a nearby computer via radio waves, even when the machines aren't connected to anything.
The US government might be the biggest hacker in the world
In a time when the government continues to prosecute alleged domestic computer criminals — so much so that demands for technology law reform have been rampant as of late — Menn says the US is guilty of spending millions on discovering, identifying and exploiting previously unknown security flaws, often gaining unfettered access to the systems and networks of international targets.
As a result, the US has become one of the world’s top players in regards to wreaking havoc over the Internet — even as calls to investigate foreign hackers increase in Congress.
Interview: NATO Supreme Allied Commander on Syria and Soft Power
Admiral James Stavridis talks with us about this year's biggest military challenges.
What's going to happen in Afghanistan after the U.S. pulls out in 2014?
In Afghanistan, unlike Syria -- where I'm pessimistic about outcomes -- I'm cautiously optimistic about outcomes.
Some have called Afghanistan the graveyard of empires, and it probably is the graveyard of empires. The good news is, we aren't an empire. [...]
‘Act of Congress’ Stresses Hopeful Creation of Dodd-Frank, Omits Grim Ending
President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in July 2010, hailing it as an overhaul to prevent the kind of crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 and one of the signature achievements of his first term. Almost three years later, much of the big stuff the law calls for is on hold, under legal and legislative assault, or still working its way through the regulatory intestines. According to a law firm that tracks the legislation, only 38 percent of the 398 Dodd-Frank rules have been imposed, while regulators haven't yet publicly put forward versions of almost a third of them.
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Is this the face of success? A new book, "Act of Congress," by Robert Kaiser, an associate editor and senior correspondent for The Washington Post, gives that question a qualified yes. "The story of Dodd-Frank does demonstrate that Congress still canwork," he writes, "and it shows how, but only in extreme circumstances."
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Kaiser's account reminds you of those fairy tales that end with the wedding and don't follow up to see how the prince and princess's married life turns out. "Act of Congress" doesn't cover what happened after the law's enactment. In large part because of the ongoing, messy aftermath, many students of finance don't see Dodd-Frank as much of a triumph at all. In the wake of this generation's worst global financial and economic crisis, Congress passed the bare minimum of what was necessary. Dodd-Frank did not restructure the financial industry. It did not remake the financial regulatory architecture. Instead, the law tinkered around the edges, increasing regulation for this, expanding the power for that. Congress left much of the toil to financial regulators with limited resources. Troublingly, this has given the banks another opportunity, out of the public eye, to wrest exemptions that emasculate the rules.
WTF?
Sallie Mae Profit Boosts College Endowments And Pension Funds As Students Pay More
University endowments and teachers’ pension funds are among big investors in Sallie Mae, the private lender that has been generating enormous profits thanks to soaring student debt and the climbing cost of education, a Huffington Post review of financial documents has revealed.
The previously unreported investments mean that education professionals are able to profit twice off the same student: first by hiking the cost of tuition, then through dividends and higher valuations on their holdings in Sallie Mae, the largest student lender and loan servicer in the country, which profits by charging relatively high interest rates on its loans and not refinancing high-rate loans after students graduate and get well-paying jobs.
Sallie Mae is a former government-sponsored enterprise that was fully privatized in 2004 and now trades publicly as SLM Corp.
“It’s a conflict of interest,” said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime higher education analyst who most recently served as associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers. “There is something inherently problematic about benefitting from the financing of the tuition you charge through investments in any lender.”
Gitmo ‘should never have come into existence,’ says congressman
Moran, a Democrat, called on President Obama to use his executive authority to begin the process of closing the detention center. He also admitted Congress’ role in derailing the president’s earlier efforts: “Now, yes, Congress has constrained the president’s options for closing this detention facility, but President Obama still retains the authority to do so should he wish to choose to fully exercise his existing power and authority. He does have the authority to do so.”
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Colonel Morris Davis, who served as the chief prosecutor at the prison from 2005-2007, has been calling for the facility’s closure and has amassed more than 188,000 signatures on his petition on Change.org. Prisoners in Guantanamo “should be prosecuted in federal court where it’s been fast, efficient,” said Davis. He noted that critics of trying detainees in the U.S. sometimes cite the case of Ahmed Ghailani, who was acquitted of all but one of the 280 charges brought against him in civilian court in regards to the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. However, said Davis, Ghailani received life without parole in a maximum security prison for that one offense.
Davis spoke of the twisted justice system inside Guantanamo. The military commissions there have overseen seven convictions of prisoners after a trial or plea deal; however, five of the prisoners convicted of war crimes have returned home. “Our joke at Guantanamo was you gotta lose to win, ’cause if you get charged as a war criminal, convicted and lose you might go home. If you don’t get charged you can sit there for the rest of your life.”
Speechless. And is our DHS going to get this "crowd control" stuff too since they are so fond of Israeli methods? They don't use it on Israelis at demonstrations, only on Palestinians.
Crap Cannon: Israel sprays putrid liquid to control West Bank crowd
Israel has given the green light for the construction of a further 300 homes in a West Bank settlement.The number of eviction incidents has risen sharply since a new Israeli government, with even stronger opposition to a 2-state solution, took office in March. And the Israeli defense force are ready to use almost anything to back their governments orders, including special anti-riot measure called 'Skunk'.
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