Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
Maybe you have seen some news stories that you think are not receiving enough attention and you'd like to post links to them. Maybe you'd like to just chat among friends about your life, your health, your family or social circle, your pets, etc. You can also post links to your own writings here on dkos or elsewhere. Perhaps you want to share some pictures or music or links to other things. This is your kind of place to talk about what's happening.
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Good Morning!
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
News
Unemployed and liberal groups to hold protests in D.C.
WASHINGTON — Roughly 3,000 unemployed workers from around the country are expected in the nation's capitol next week for four days of protests with labor, religious and social justice groups that say Congress cares more about America's wealthiest 1 percent than it does the masses of struggling middle-class families.
Piggybacking on the Occupy Wall Street movement, the three-day "Take Back the Capitol" protest will open Monday with construction of a "Peoples Camp" on the National Mall as a base of operations. On Tuesday, protesters will hit Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress about extending federal unemployment benefits. The group walks to K Street on Wednesday to protest the political influence of corporate lobbyists.
What will Congress be leaving under the tree this year? The packages get worse and worse all the time.
Sen. Conrad: Reid to unveil payroll tax holiday compromise
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), speaking on Fox News Sunday, said that Reid informed him over the weekend that the compromise proposal was coming Monday.
Last week, Democrats floated a bill that would extend and expand the 2 percentage point payroll tax deduction for one year and that would pay for it by imposing a surtax on millionaires. Republicans proposed an alternate extension that would have been paid for by cutting the federal workforce, freezing federal worker salaries for three more years and means-testing entitlements like food stamps. Both proposals failed in the Senate.
Conrad said he was not authorized to announce the details of the new Reid proposal and Reid’s office did not comment on Sunday.
“It will be paid for in a way that is credible and serious,” Conrad said.
Occupy Melbourne Tent Monsters
What the media can learn from Occupy
I don’t think any paper captured the media’s schizophrenia better than the Daily News. The self-described People’s Paper seemed to get the movement’s message about income inequality (“It’s About Time!” a Daily News front page declared of Occupy Wall Street on Oct. 4) early on and offered some great up-close and outside-the-box reporting, especially my colleague Jason Nark’s personal account of sleeping over at Dilworth Plaza.
But as the protest dragged on, Philadelphia’s sometimes ADD-addled tabloid shifted gears and — in my opinion — got caught up in the hygiene-and-homeless hype, and overnight the protesters went from being “us” (remember, “It’s About Time!”?) to “them,” culminating in a cringe-worthy Daily News front page on Nov. 16 calling Occupy Philadelphia a “Stain on the City.”
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A true “People’s Paper” has a heading for “Powerless,” because that’s who it never stops fighting for — everyday Americans in difficult circumstances who may or may not dress or speak like us, or the elites we feel at home covering.
It sides with the rabble.
Occupy Broadway Draws Artists, Protesters To Theater District
Organized by members of the Occupy Wall Street Performance Guild, an offshoot of the Arts and Culture working group, the event drew a long list of names from the downtown New York theater scene and beyond. Performers from Elevator Repair Service, the New York Neo-Futurists, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Bread and Puppet Theater, the Living Theatre and the Civilians all appeared, as did actress Kathleen Chalfant, "Hair" co-author James Rado, and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.
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Each act received up to 20 minutes to perform, and audience members had opportunities to go onstage and contribute as well. Organizers led a reading of the First Amendment every hour, on the hour. Sporadic mic checks punctuated the performances.
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"This is really an experiment on the mobility of this movement, because we have brought all the working groups here. We had sustainability, we had the kitchen, the lawyers guild, we had medics -- we had everything that a civilization needs, really," Cerf said. "So we show that we can mobilize this kind of thing in an instant, in a day, and we can respond to any necessity. Here, there was a need to make theater for the people. Tomorrow it will be to support a foreclosure, or any other thing you can imagine."
"The whole point is that if you kick us out of the park, we're going to take it to the city, everywhere, and that's part of what we've been doing with this thing," said Shepard. "I mean, [New York Mayor Michael] Bloomberg has been trying to tell us that the show's over. But he's not really a very good stage manager, because we're all still on the stage. And at this point you can't tell the difference between the performers and the spectators, and everyone's joining in and there are occupations around the world."
Ferraris destroyed in costly Japan motorway pile-up
Eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini and two Mercedes worth a total of at least $1m (£639,000) were involved in the crash on the Chugoku expressway in Shimonoseki, south-western Japan.
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No one was seriously injured, but police in Yamaguchi prefecture said 10 people had been treated for bruises and cuts. Fourteen cars were involved in the crash.
Eurozone was flawed from the start, says Jacques Delors
One of the architects of the euro, Jacques Delors, has said the eurozone was flawed from the start and that efforts to tackle its problems have been "too little, too late".
Delors, the former president of the European commission, said errors made when the euro was created had made the current economic crisis inevitable.
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He admitted that when "Anglo Saxons", referring to Britain, had warned that a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable "they had a point".
For anyone who still does not believe that these are not normal times. These are extraordinary times.
Eurozone fiscal union: loss of sovereignty will be hard to take
It is too early to claim victory but prospects are good for Merkel's Grand Bargain in Europe
If any country in the European Union has historical reasons to fear the consequences of handing greater power to Germany it is Poland. Yet the eurozone is now so vulnerable, its banks so fragile, its economy so weak that Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorski said in Berlin this week: "I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity."
China Digs Deeper Into Canadian Tar Sands During Durban Talks
Although China boasts of its green progress, the booming nation is also making major bets on North and South American tar sands, one of the most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet. This play for civilization-threatening energy comes even as the world’s nations jockey over the fragile international climate accords in Durban, South Africa:
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These dirty investments in North American fossil fuel projects are just the latest in a rapid string of deals to give China access to high-polluting carbon energy from the Americas. Over the last three years, China-owned companies have invested over $18 billion in tar sands, shale gas, and coal projects in Canada and Venezuela:
Shell Oil bets billions on Arctic Alaska plan
NEW ORLEANS — Standing in front of a brightly colored, 3-D image of the geology far below the floor of the Chukchi Sea, Steve Phelps pointed to the "giant opportunity" that has prompted Shell Oil to pour billions of dollars into the Alaska Arctic.
"Burger -- that's the name you are going to get to know," Phelps recently told reporters gathered here to learn about the huge oil company's plans and promises for Alaska.
Phelps is Shell's Alaska exploration manager, a geologist whose job it is to find big oil. The Burger field, part of a Shell naming theme that revolved around junk food, has been eyed by various oil companies for years. But it's more than 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea -- between Siberia and the northwest coast of Alaska -- and until recently was thought to be too expensive to develop. Now Shell -- for the second time -- holds the leases.
Iraq oil hub Basra wants bigger say, more autonomy
BASRA, Iraq Dec 5 (Reuters) - Officials in Iraq's southern oil hub Basra are trying to cancel a $17 billion Shell gas deal because they want a bigger say, highlighting the pressure on central government to ease its control over the provinces.
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The final contract with Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi to capture flared gas in three southern Iraqi oilfields was signed on Nov. 24 despite objections from the Basra local council that it was not included in talks or the deal's signing.
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"In principle, we don't have any problem with developing the gas but when the contract is signed, there has to be an article that shows the provincial council has agreed ... Unfortunately, we did not know anything about this contract," said Sabah al-Bazouni, head of the Basra Provincial Council.