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.
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Good Morning!
Poster Art from Occupy General Strike Facebook Page
The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.
-- Lech Walesa
News
Full Show: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble
Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.
Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview
Former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to flaunt his new book Hard Measures, which details how he came to be in charge of CIA torture against terror suspects at “black site” prisons, why torture was effective and why it should not be vilified.
The segment with Lesley Stahl has the same title as Rodriguez’s book. The title sounds like the name of a film starring an action movie star like John Cena or Steven Seagal, which makes it appropriate because each answer from Rodriguez is dripping with bravado. From Rodriguez’s first answer to the last, one cannot help but realize that it is somehow unmanly to be concerned that torture of terror suspects violates the rule of law. He appears in his sleek white Corvette rolling down the highway to the CIA. And he says at one point, “We needed to get everyone in government to put their big boy pants on and give us the authorities we needed.”
A Guide to May Day
In New York City, starting at 8 am, Bryant Park will be the site of a “Pop-up Occupation“ featuring free food, a free market, free services, skillshares, workshops, teach-ins, speak-outs, public art, performances, discussions and direct-action trainings. At noon, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello will lead a guitar workshop and rehearsal for the Occupy Guitarmy. At 2 o’clock, activists, led by Morello and the Occupy Guitarmy, are expected to march to Union Square Park. After a concert and rally at the historic site of so many past radical calls to action, participants will leave Union Square at 5:30 for a permitted march to Wall Street with a coalition of organized labor, immigrant rights groups and faith-based activists.
The most militant of the Occupy groups, Occupy Oakland, is planning to occupy the Golden Gate Bridge at 6 am followed by a series of direct actions facilitated at three announced strike stations: the anti-capitalist station at Snow Park, the anti-patriarchy station at 1st & Broadway and the anti-gentrification at 22nd & Telegraph. (There’s also a fourth station that is not being advertised.) All morning pickets, occupations and autonomous actions are expected to leave from these locations from 8:30 am until the reconvergence at noon. The Strike Stations should be active and will offer free sustenance like food, snacks, water, coffee and medical supplies. At 3 pm there’ll be a broad march starting at the Fruitvale BART station.
Occupy Guitarmy Hoping to Make Music a Central Part of May Day
You can't arrest a song!
The group Occupy Guitarmy has actions planned all day Tuesday and held a rehearsal this afternoon for anyone who wanted to show up in Tompkins Square Park.
[ ... ]
The group is assembling at noon at Bryant Park by the Gertrude Stein statue. They are marching from around 2-4 p.m. to Union Square where they will play music until 5:30 p.m. At that point, they are planning on joining the larger Occupy demonstrations with immigrant and labor groups to head to Wall Street. Guitarist Tom Morello, from Rage Against the Machine, will be supporting them along the way, and the two we chatted with today said they think Ben Harper and others are likely to join.
Saturday.
NYPD Arrests NYCLU Legal Observer On OWS Spring Training March
An NYCLU legal observer was arrested during an OWS march in front of an MTA building in Lower Manhattan yesterday. This reporter was standing 20 yards north of the incident and didn't witness the arrest, but videographer Tim Pool captured Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona speaking forcefully to the legal observer, then pulling her into the street by her arm to be arrested. Cardona is best known for punching protester Felix Rivera-Pitre in the face for seemingly no reason at a demonstration on October 14 of last year.
It's unclear what the legal observer was charged with, but NYCLU's Communications Director Jennifer Carnig confirmed that those charges were dropped at around 9:15 p.m. The NYPD's press office has not yet responded to an email regarding the charges.
MSM / Corporate media.
Union Leaders, Occupy Call for Day of Action
The turning of the calendar page is expected to bring a day of protests in the Bay Area.
Union leaders, community activists and Occupy Oakland are among the groups calling for a series of events on May Day, which is Tuesday, May 1.
[ ... ]
Specifically, Occupy Oakland is calling for "no work, no school and no business as usual" and says there will be "decentralized actions" including pickets, blockades and marches in, around and through the city of Oakland.
If You - and the Yes Men - Owned Bank of America
An interview with Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum on his latest prank against Bank of America and why every protest needs some fun.
Last week, a press release was released announcing YourBofA.com, a new website (apparently) from Bank of America. It was followed by another, seemingly hastily-written press release imploring readers to ignore the “malicious website (YourBofA.com) that is fraudulently representing itself as a Bank of America re-branding effort.” The second release insisted, “Bank of America is not making plans to enter into federal receivership.”
The website (and both press releases) were creations of the activist pranksters The Yes Men, who have pretended to speak for the World Trade Organization, Chevron, the World Economic Forum, and many others, all in good, subversive fun. To learn how laughter can be the greatest weapon of all, I sat down with Andy Bichlbaum, one of the founders of The Yes Men, last month at Scratcher Bar in the East Village. In addition to The Yes Men, The Yes Lab, and teaching at New York University, he has recently been involved in developing the Plus Brigades, a project of Occupy Wall Street meant to infuse the movement with renewed creativity in the streets.
Yay! Another random act of culture in Philadelphia on Saturday at Geno's. (But I bet Pat's was not happy about that!)
South Philly Cheesesteak, with a Side of Opera
But the sound wasn't really the lesson learned this time. This time, in the three minute "flash Performance" by the the Opera Company of Philadelphia among the cheesesteak-eaters outside Geno's in South Philadelphia, I realized why live performances are usually always covered with multiple cameras. There is not much I can do about that the next time, so maybe it's not a lesson learned. I'll just call it a lesson appreciated.
Bankers Are Still Wrecking Housing Market Fundamentals
Regardless of the recent bullish stories on the housing market (examples here, here, here and here), housing market fundamentals are lousy. Demand in the last decade was wildly distorted by banker abandonment of underwriting and appraisals. Now bankers are worsening the crash they created. As a result, prices will just keep falling, and foreclosures cannot lead to clearing the market (regardless of what some say). Foreclosures can only make the problems worse.
Market Distortion From Excess Demand in Bubble Years
As a first step to seeing the problems, let’s get real about how profoundly market-distorting that lender-inflated bubble was. People who could not afford to buy homes, period, were nonetheless given loans, artificially expanding the number of people expressing demand. In addition, people who could have afforded a house, if not the house they purchased, expressed their natural demand in the ‘wrong’ segment of the market. Both distortions combined to spike prices far higher than natural demand would have driven them.
Big US companies adding jobs ... overseas
Call it trickle-down job growth.
Robust overseas job growth at American multinational companies indirectly benefits workers here in the United States, although the impact would be magnified if these big businesses reinvested more of their overseas profits into the domestic economy.
[ ... ]
A Wall Street Journal analysis of 35 companies based in the United States that employ more than 50,000 people found that they collectively added 446,000 jobs between 2009 and 2011, around three quarters of which were overseas. During that period, 60 percent of their revenue growth came from overseas.
[ Emphasis added. ]
Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?
Narrative Science’s CTO and cofounder, Kristian Hammond, works in a small office just a few feet away from the buzz of coders and engineers. To Hammond, these stories are only the first step toward what will eventually become a news universe dominated by computer-generated stories. How dominant? Last year at a small conference of journalists and technologists, I asked Hammond to predict what percentage of news would be written by computers in 15 years. At first he tried to duck the question, but with some prodding he sighed and gave in: “More than 90 percent.”
Missile sites on roofs planned for London
Residents of apartment block alarmed by military's plans to install battery on tower to protect Olympics.
Residents of an upscale apartment block near London's Olympic Park have been told of plans by Britain's military to install a missile battery on top of a tower within their housing complex to protect the 2012 Games this summer.
White House defends drone attacks
WASHINGTON — White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan Sunday defended the administration's campaign of drone missile attacks against militants while acknowledging that the airstrikes have sometimes killed noncombatants.
"Unfortunately, in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population," Brennan said on ABC's "This Week," answering a question about the covert drone program. U.S. missile attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere are not officially acknowledged by the administration but are frequently discussed indirectly.
[ ... ]
"Sometimes you have to take life to save lives, and that's what we've been able to do to prevent these individual terrorists from carrying out their murderous attacks."
Iraq at 'a crossroad', fugitive VP tells AFP
ANKARA — Iraq has reached a "crossroad," its fugitive vice-president told AFP Friday but strongly rejected the country's partition amid a deepening crisis stoking sectarian tensions.
[ ... ]
"Unfortunately Maliki is becoming the core of the problem," said Hashemi, accusing him of consolidating power and marginalising his coalition partners from the decision-making process.
[ ... ]
Iraq's regional Kurdish government led by Massud Barzani is also locked in a dispute with Maliki over territorial claims and the control of the region's rich energy sources.
Ex-Libyan oil minister's body found in Danube
"As far as we know there are no direct links to the Libyan revolution but police are currently investigating this."
The police are appealing for witnesses and hope to conduct a post-mortem examination on Monday.
Hahslinger said Ghanem apparently left his residence early Sunday morning after spending Saturday evening at home with an acquaintance. He had no further details.
Ghanem, 69, served under Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi as prime minister from 2003 to 2006 and then as oil minister until 2011.
He had defected last June during the uprising that toppled Gaddafi.
[ ... ]
Ghanem helped steer the country's oil policy and held the high-profile job of representing Libya at OPEC meetings. [ ... ] His defection came just weeks before he was due to represent Libya at an OPEC meeting in Vienna.
Member of Afghan elite forces blamed in attack on NATO
KABUL, Afghanistan — For the first time, a member of Afghanistan's elite special forces has carried out a deadly attack against an American military mentor, a senior Afghan army official said Friday, an ominous escalation in the "green-on-blue" shootings that have threatened Western troops' partnership with the Afghan police and army.
In conducting the training, Western troops work and fight alongside their Afghan counterparts, often at small, remote bases, a relationship that is meant to foster trust and understanding but which sometimes flares into lethal altercations.
[ ... ]
The latest deadly insider attack came Wednesday at a joint base in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province, said Afghan army corps commander Gen. Abdul Hameed. He said a member of the Afghan special forces opened fire during a heated argument and killed an American soldier, whom he described as a member of the U.S. special forces. An Afghan interpreter was wounded, he said.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
U.S. Amasses Stealth-Jet Armada Near Iran
The U.S. Air Force is quietly assembling the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team at bases near Iran. Stealthy F-22 Raptors on their first front-line deployment have joined a potent mix of active-duty and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, including some fitted with the latest advanced radars. The Raptor-Eagle team has been honing special tactics for clearing the air of Iranian fighters in the event of war.
The fighters join a growing naval armada that includes Navy carriers, submarines, cruisers and destroyers plus patrol boats and minesweepers enhanced with the latest close-in weaponry.
[ ... ]
It’s the methods above that the U.S. dogfighting armada would likely use to wipe out the antiquated but determined Iranian air force if the unthinkable occurred and fighting broke out. The warplanes are in place. The pilots are ready. Hopefully they won’t be needed.