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 we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We chat about our lives, our health, our families, our social circles, our pets, etc. We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, etc.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
News
Inside that new anti-Occupy bill
In recent days, there has been a considerable amount of online speculation over a bill that made its way through the House and the Senate last week with little opposition — HR 347, or the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. Some have decried it as specifically anti-Occupy legislation with the aim to further curtail First Amendment rights. HR 347 makes it a prosecutable offense to knowingly, and without lawful authority, enter “(1) the White House or its grounds or the Vice President’s official residence or its grounds, (2) a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting, or (3) a building or grounds so restricted due to a special event of national significance.”
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The law used to say that the person must have entered the area “knowingly” and “willfully.” HR 347, however, scrapped the “willfully,” which essentially now renders it a crime to remain in a restricted area, even if you do not know that it’s illegal for you to be there.
UN top torture official denounces Bradley Manning’s detention
In December, 2010, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture announced a formal investigation into the conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention that endured for the eight months he was held at a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. The Army Private has been detained since May, 2010, on charges that he leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks, but has not yet been tried. Yesterday, the U.N. official overseeing the investigation pronounced that “Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation“ to which he was subjected at Quantico. That official, Juan Ernesto Mendez, heads the U.N. office created by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, bestowed with the mandate “to examine questions relevant to torture.”
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Over the past year, the U.N. torture investigator repeatedly complained – including in official reprimands – that his investigation was being obstructed by the Obama administration, which refused to provide unmonitored access to interview Manning. About this refusal to allow an unmonitored interview with Manning, the U.N. official said: “Such a condition violates long-standing rules that the UN applies for prison visits and for interviews with inmates everywhere in the world.” In reporting on this U.N. grievance, The Guardian wrote: “It is the kind of censure the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world”; indeed, “the vast majority of states allowed for visits to detainees without conditions.” Just to underscore how unusual was this obstruction: the Bush administration allowed investigators with the International Committee of the Red Cross private interviews even with the most “high-value” detainees at Guantanamo: that is, once they emerged from the CIA “black sites” where they were kept for almost three years beyond the reach of the ICRC (see p. 3 of the ICRC report).
David Dayen:
• The new site America Underwater pushes deep modifications as a solution to the foreclosure crisis. But we’re going in the other direction. Since the new year, foreclosure starts are up and loan modifications are down.
• Student debt has reached crisis levels, and will sit in the background of every economic policy for the next generation, largely without comment. It now costs more to go to a public university in California than it does to go to Harvard.
Great job compiling a list of various warnings and predictions that never came to pass.
Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979.
For more than quarter of a century Western officials have claimed repeatedly that Iran is close to joining the nuclear club. Such a result is always declared "unacceptable" and a possible reason for military action, with "all options on the table" to prevent upsetting the Mideast strategic balance dominated by the US and Israel.
And yet, those predictions have time and again come and gone. This chronicle of past predictions lends historical perspective to today’s rhetoric about Iran.
Are scientists close to uncovering the Higgs boson?
Now physicists at the Tevatron particle accelerator at Illinois' Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory report hints in their data that suggest the particle may exist with a mass between 115 to 135 giga-electron volts, or GeV (for comparison, a proton has a mass of about 0.938 GeV).
"We see a distinct Higgs-like signature that cannot be easily explained without the presence of something new," physicist Wade Fisher of Michigan State University said in a statement. "If what we're seeing really is the Higgs boson, it will be a major milestone for the world physics community and will place the keystone in the most successful particle physics theory in history."
US economist eyes World Bank presidency
Jeffrey Sachs, a Professor of Economics at Columbia University, has said he wants to be the next president of the World Bank as the current head of the global lender is near the end of his five-year term.
The US economist told Al Jazeera the global institution, which has the power to give money to developing and poor nations, had failed in the past.
"I think the World Bank has made many, many mistakes over the years it has been led by Wall Street, by bankers and politicians," said Sachs.
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The current head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is due to step down in June. The US and Europe have traditionally appointed heads of the World Bank and the IMF respectively.
Financier convicted for US investment fraud
A jury has convicted financier Allen Stanford on all but one of the charges he faced for allegedly bilking investors out of more than $7bn in one of the largest pyramid schemes in US history.
The Texan had pleaded not guilty to bilking 30,000 investors from more than 100 countries through bogus investments with Stanford International Bank.
Jurors on Tuesday found him guilty of 13 of 14 counts of fraud, conspiracy, moneylaundering and obstruction of justice which each carry maximum sentences of five to 20 years in jail.
Stanford, 61, has spent the past three years in jail after being deemed a flight risk shortly after his February 2009 arrest.
Obama seeks Syria options as oil minister joins rebels
WASHINGTON: The top two officials at the Pentagon said that the US President, Barack Obama, had asked for preliminary military options to respond to the increasingly violent Syria conflict, but they emphasised the risks and said that the administration still believed diplomatic and economic pressure was the best way to protect Syrians from the Assad government's repression.
Pressure continued to mount on the Syria President, Basha al-Assad, with the first high-profile defection from the regime being announced from Lebanon. The Deputy Oil Minister, Abdo Hussameddin, announced his resignation in a video posted by activists on YouTube and said he was joining the revolt.
Talk of US military in Syria divides Congress
President Barack Obama's 2008 rival — Republican Sen. John McCain — has called for the president to launch airstrikes against Assad to force him from power and end the bloodshed. The United Nations estimates that more than 7,500 Syrians have been killed, with hundreds more fleeing to neighboring nations to avoid the slaughter.
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Obama has asked the Pentagon for a preliminary review of military options, such as enforcement of a no-fly zone and humanitarian airlifts. He insisted that the military would be ready if the commander in chief made the request.
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In Congress, only McCain's closest Senate colleagues have echoed his plea. War-weary Republicans and Democrats have expressed serious reservations about U.S. military involvement in Syria after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the divisive political fight last summer over U.S. intervention in Libya, and the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran.
Libya militias pose threat to precarious stability
Six months after Kadafi was ousted, well-armed militias made up of former rebels present an increasing threat to Libya's precarious stability.
Amnesty International describes the militias as "largely out of control." Others view them as a temporary scourge in a country torn by retribution and tribal rivalries.
Traveling in reckless caravans across deserts and through cities, the militias defy easy categorization and represent a direct challenge to the overwhelmed Transitional National Council.
Obama: Assad will fall in Syria
President Obama upped the rhetorical ante against Syrian leader Bashar Assad today, saying his departure from power is only a matter of time.
"It's not a question of ... if Assad leaves," Obama said at a White House news conference. "It's a question of when."
U.S. probes allegations Afghan Air Force involved in drug running
(Reuters) - U.S. authorities are looking into allegations that some Afghan Air Force (AAF) officials have been using aircraft to transport narcotics and illegal weapons across the country, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
The U.S. Afghanistan Strategy Is Failing and It's Time to Pull Out: The recent Koran burning protests are just the beginning of the problems America has in Afghanistan
Michael Shank and Raúl Grijalva U.S. News & World Report
March 7, 2012
That the U.S. military is burning Korans and urinating on dead bodies is, without question, bad diplomacy--really bad, in fact--but it does not constitute bad military strategy, nor does it necessarily warrant a call for a more immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had plenty of reasons already to withdrawal. This is why nearly two-dozen U.S. Senators and nearly 90 members of the House of Representatives are calling for an expedited withdrawal ahead of NATO's May meeting in Chicago. This is also why a majority of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, want troops out as soon as possible.
The real cost of the Iraq war
The number of suicides in the US army rose by 80% after the US launched the war on Iraq, American military doctors reported on Thursday.
From 1977 to 2003, the tally of army suicides had trended slightly downwards and was far below civilian rates.