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 welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, news, etc.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
July, 2012 by joanneleon
O flower at my window
Why blossom you so fair,
With your green and purple cup
Upturned to sun and air?
'I bloom, blithesome Bessie,
To cheer your childish heart;
The world is full of labor,
And this shall be my part.'
Whirl, busy wheel, faster,
Spin, little thread, spin;
The sun shines fair without,
And we are gay within.
~Louisa May Alcott
Shpongle - Divine Moments Of Truth
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Drop in
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News
Three more U.S. soldiers killed by Afghan in grim day for NATO
"Let me clearly say that those two incidents clearly do not reflect the overall situation here in Afghanistan," the chief NATO force spokesman, Brigadier-General Gunter Katz, told reporters on Saturday.
The three Marines were shot by a base employee who turned a gun on them, in the third rogue attack in four days. Foreign military sources said the man had not been wearing a uniform and it was unclear how he got hold of the weapon.
[ ... ]
In the earlier attack, an Afghan police commander and several of his men killed three U.S. Marines in darkness early on Friday after inviting them to a Ramadan breakfast to discuss security.
U.S. Goldman Disclosure a Rare Break in Secrecy
WASHINGTON — After deciding not to prosecute Goldman Sachs for its conduct during the financial crisis, the Justice Department did something rare: it publicly announced that the investigation was closed.
The unusual public announcement came after Goldman’s lawyers pushed for a notification that the bank would not be charged, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
[ ... ]
“Whether the decision by the Department of Justice is the product of weak laws or weak enforcement, Goldman Sachs” actions were deceptive and immoral,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement.
You mess with Goldman, you're gonna pay. If a federal court overturns your conviction, then the state is gonna come after you on different charges. You're gonna pay. On the other hand... Goldman commits fraud, messes with you or anyone else in the world, helps to wreck the economy, contributes to destroying lives, buys your government, lies under oath to Congress... they even create shitty deals, sell them to you, then bet against you and ... feds find no reason to indict them. Well we can count on the state coming in and charging them, right?
Ex-Goldman Programmer Is Arrested Again
Mr. Aleynikov was charged in state court less than six months after a federal appeals court overturned his conviction on federal criminal charges that he stole secret source code from Goldman’s computers.
While the case involved a relatively low-level ex-employee at a financial firm, the government has taken a particularly hard line. The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, have made the prosecution of corporate espionage and high-tech theft a top priority.
[ ... ]
Federal authorities arrested Mr. Aleynikov three years ago after Goldman reported him to the United States attorney in Manhattan. He was accused of stealing the bank’s highly confidential code for its high-frequency trading operations when he left the bank to join a start-up. A federal jury found him guilty in 2010, but an appeals court reversed his conviction, ruling that prosecutors misapplied the federal corporate espionage laws against him.
Standard Chartered Case Casts a Chill Over Banks
Until Mr. Lawsky’s case against Standard Chartered claimed that the bank cloaked these so-called U-turn transactions, there was virtual consensus among Treasury Department authorities, the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office that such transactions were legal, even if they violated the spirit of the law, according to people briefed on the matter.
A number of European banks, including Lloyds, Barclays and ING, that have already settled money laundering cases with the Justice Department and the district attorney’s office are concerned that they could be in the state banking regulator’s sights, according to federal authorities who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
[ ... ]
With his move against Standard Chartered, Mr. Lawsky “has created utter turmoil,” said a federal official who insisted on anonymity because the conversations with the bank executives were private.
[ ... ]
The banks are not the only ones caught off guard. The Justice Department, which is investigating Standard Chartered, was on the verge of concluding that virtually all of the bank’s transactions with Iran complied with the law, according to current and former authorities, who, like others interviewed on the matter, declined to be identified.
Exclusive: Standard Chartered, regulators in settlement talks
The settlement negotiations are expected to last through the weekend and could result in a resolution by next week, these people said. The negotiations are at a delicate stage and could collapse, they added.
One set of talks is with federal officials while a separate negotiation is taking place with the New York bank regulator, underscoring a divide that exists between New York officials and other regulators, the sources said.
How about quantitative easing for the people?
Through an almost astrological coincidence of timing, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board all held their policy meetings this week immediately after Wednesday’s publication of the weakest manufacturing numbers for Europe and America since the summer of 2009. With the euro-zone and Britain clearly back in deep recession and the U.S. apparently on the brink, the central bankers all decided to do nothing, at least for the moment.
[ ... ]
So far $2 trillion has been created by the Fed and £375 billion by the Bank of England, but where has all this new money gone? It has certainly not appeared in my wallet or bank account – nor has it fattened yours, unless you happen to be a bond trader or banker. The fact is that all the new money has been spent on buying bonds. QE has thus inflated bond prices and boosted bank profits, but achieved little else.
The one economic benefit of QE has been to help governments finance the huge deficits caused by recession without having to raise taxes, slash public spending or face Greek-style bankruptcy. In this sense, QE has certainly prevented the U.S. and Britain from suffering worse outcomes, but it has failed to stimulate employment or economic growth. [ ... ] One such radical measure is too controversial for any policymaker to mention publicly, although some have discussed it in private: Instead of giving newly created money to bond traders, central banks could distribute it directly to the public.
The victims of low-interest locusts
Another financial crisis looms for U.S. taxpayers, a disaster likely to create even worse human misery than the mortgage fiasco that some of us warned about years before the Wall Street meltdown in 2008.
The crisis next time: collapsing investment incomes for older Americans as artificially reduced interest rates force them to use up their savings and drive more pension plans into failure.
Eviscerating the interest income of savers is the undeniable result of a long-running Federal Reserve policy to reduce interest rates, especially since December 2008. The Fed reiterated on Aug. 1 that it plans to keep interest rates low through late 2014. It says this helps to promote stronger economic growth and bring down the jobless rate.
Target Election Fraud, Not "Voter Fraud"
Fact: There are two things that occur more often than the right-wing myth of “voter fraud”: UFO sightings, and election-rigging. Statistically, you’re 3,615 times more likely to report seeing an alien than you are of seeing voter fraud. And we watched the right wing nakedly steal three elections in recent memory.
[...]
David Prosser, an arch-conservative justice on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, won his 2011 election against Joanne Kloppenburg, ultimately because Waukesha County Clerk Cathy Nicklaus, who used to work for the GOP caucus that Prosser oversaw, "miscounted" 14,315 votes after Kloppenburg emerged with a slim lead. Nicklaus' "error" gave her former boss a 7,500-vote margin of victory, which almost exactly matched the amount of votes needed to avoid a state-funded vote recount. Nicklaus apparently forgot to click "save" on a Microsoft Access template. Convenient, no?
Meatless Mondays can be patriotic, too
Recently, the Texas commissioner of agriculture reacted with outrage to the fact that employees of the United States Department of Agriculture would dare suggest, in an internal newsletter on “greening” the Washington headquarters, that co-workers might consider practicing “Meatless Mondays” to reduce the environmental impact of their diet. “Last I checked,” blogged Commissioner Todd Staples, “USDA had a very specific duty to promote and champion American agriculture. Imagine Ford or Chevy discouraging the purchase of their pickup trucks. Anyone else see the absurdity? How about the betrayal?”
Staples went on to call the suggestion to forgo meat once in a while ”treasonous.” L’état, c’est boeuf. But there’s a bigger question: Is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s purpose, indeed, simply to promote the consumption of American commodities in the same way Ford tries to sell F-150s? Or is it instead to help agriculture work for the American public at large?
Social media and the new Cold War
There is a new Cold War starting. It does not involve opposing military forces, but it does involve competing ideas about how political life should be organized. The battles are between broadcast media outlets and social-media upstarts, which have very different approaches to news production, ownership and censorship. And some of the biggest battles are in Russia, where the ruling elites that dominate broadcast media are pitted against the civil society groups that flourish through social media.
In Saudi Arabia, the public streams home-brewed comedy shows on YouTube, while the state-run television broadcaster covers the monarch’s ceremonies. In China, the party owns all media, but seems less and less able to control political conversation among Chinese citizens over its own social-media operator.
[ ... ]
It is hard to know how the Media Cold War will be won, but I’d put the money on civil society actors and social media.
Activist group sends Obama a message by carving it into a cornfield
Hot tip from an ex-resident of D.C. to all you activists out there: If you want to get the president’s attention, standing outside the White House with some signs and bullhorns is not going to do it. Everyone does that. You have to get creative. Like these guys, who cut their message into a field of crops, in hopes that the president would see it from Air Force One as he flies into Grand Junction, Colo., on a visit
Rate of arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted
Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.
[ ... ]
The consequences of losing the Arctic's ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap's white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.
Bo’s Wife Apologizes To Party For Murder, Xinhua Says
Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai, confessed to murdering a British businessman and apologized to the country’s Communist Party leaders, who are trying ensure the case doesn’t undermine this year’s leadership transition.
Gu admitted to dripping cyanide into Neil Heywood’s mouth as he lay drunk on his bed because she thought he had threatened her son, the official Xinhua News Agency wrote in an account of the seven-hour trial on Aug. 9 in the eastern city of Hefei. Zhang Xiaojun, an orderly in Gu’s house, confessed to aiding in the crime, Xinhua said in its Aug. 10 report.
Washington Puts Its Money on Proxy War
The Election Year Outsourcing that No One’s Talking About
By Nick Turse
From Asia and Africa to the Middle East and the Americas, the Obama administration is increasingly embracing a multifaceted, light-footprint brand of warfare. Gone, for the moment at least, are the days of full-scale invasions of the Eurasian mainland. Instead, Washington is now planning to rely ever more heavily on drones and special operations forces to fight scattered global enemies on the cheap. A centerpiece of this new American way of war is the outsourcing of fighting duties to local proxies around the world.
While the United States is currently engaged in just one outright proxy war, backing a multi-nation African force to battle Islamist militants in Somalia, it’s laying the groundwork for the extensive use of surrogate forces in the future, training “native” troops to carry out missions -- up to and including outright warfare. With this in mind and under the auspices of the Pentagon and the State Department, U.S. military personnel now take part in near-constant joint exercises and training missions around the world aimed at fostering alliances, building coalitions, and whipping surrogate forces into shape to support U.S. national security objectives.
While using slightly different methods in different regions, the basic strategy is a global one in which the U.S. will train, equip, and advise indigenous forces -- generally from poor, underdeveloped nations -- to do the fighting (and dying) it doesn’t want to do. In the process, as small an American force as possible, including special forces operatives and air support, will be brought to bear to aid those surrogates. Like drones, proxy warfare appears to offer an easy solution to complex problems. But as Washington’s 30-year debacle in Afghanistan indicates, the ultimate costs may prove both unimaginable and unimaginably high.
U.S., Turkey to explore imposing Syria no-fly zone
(Reuters) - The United States and Turkey indicated on Saturday they were studying a range of measures, including a no-fly zone, as battles between Syrian rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces shook Aleppo and the heart of Damascus.
[ ... ]
No-fly zones imposed by NATO and Arab allies helped Libyan rebels overthrow Muammar Gaddafi last year. Until recently, the West had shunned the idea of repeating any Libya-style action.
U.S. Navy Ship Collides With Tanker Near Strait Of Hormuz
The collision between USS Porter and the Panamanian-flagged bulk oil tanker M/V Otowasan occurred at about 1 a.m. local time, Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Greg Raelson said in a phone interview today. The collision was not combat-related and overall damage to the ship is being evaluated, he said.
Israel To Hold Home Front Drill Amid Rise In Iran Tensions
Israel’s Home Front Command this week will test its nationwide text-message system to alert the public of danger, the military said, amid reports that the country is considering a strike against Iran.
[ ... ]
Channel Two news said Aug. 10 that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak see the window for striking Iran in an effort to halt its nuclear program closing within months. The leaders are leaning toward a strike on Iran before U.S. elections in November despite opposition to such a move by the security establishment, the Haaretz daily reported Aug. 10.
Commentary: NRA prevents funding for studies on gun violence
"None of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control," says the rider placed on the CDC's budget, and, as of this year, added to the National Institutes of Health's budget.
The CDC and NIH award billions in grants. They fund research into cancer, brain injury, tobacco use, obesity, AIDS, abortion, hearing loss, allergies, infectious diseases, back pain and virtually everything else related to human health. But gun violence is the one area that carries that specific language. The effect has been to limit federal funding into research that could be used to shape policy.
White House Pulls Down TSA Petition
About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures [ ... ] White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition. The site also went down for "maintenance" following an article in Wired that sought support for the campaign.
Grass-Roots Mobilization, by Corporate America
Today, business interests are involved in many efforts to partner with citizen advocacy groups as a corporate tool beyond conventional lobbying. They hire consultants to help them to organize. I estimate, based on my studies of “grass-roots lobbying firms” since the early 1970s, that this subspecialty of corporate lobbying is now a $1 billion-a-year industry. These practices have become well established; since the 1970s, the Public Affairs Council, the association of public affairs officers from many of the world’s largest corporations from Dow to Disney, has held an annual National Grassroots Conference.
As business has become more politically mobilized and as the field of citizen advocacy organizations has expanded since the 1970s, corporations and industry groups have become much more active in financing pro-corporate activists. This is evident today in efforts ranging from Americans Against Food Taxes (the soda industry) to Citizens for Fire Safety (manufacturers of flame-retardant chemicals). They have exploited communication tools from e-mail to phone banks to social media to stir the sentiments of an increasingly partisan public with strong opinions on issues like taxation and environmental regulations. Their efforts are not just aimed at conservative activists; Walmart, for instance, developed a “New York Community Action Network” comprising African-American community leaders, low-income residents and labor groups as part of its effort to open a store in the city. While unsuccessful thus far, similar strategies helped Walmart open stores in Washington and Chicago.
I estimate that 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use grass-roots-mobilization consultants. Many are independent agencies founded by former political campaign professionals searching for revenue during electoral off years, deploying their voter outreach skills to help companies win. Others are branches of large public-relations conglomerates. Businesses hire these consultants most often when facing protest or controversy, and highly regulated industries appear to be some of the heaviest users of their services.
Blog Posts of Interest
Defense Motion Details Horrific Conditions Bradley Manning Was Subjected to at Quantico by Kevin Gosztola on The Dissenter
Eugene Robinson NAILS IT: “What part of ‘hottest month ever’ do you people not understand?” by Lefty Coaster on DailyKos
Medicare, Medicaid Far More Cost-Efficient Than Private Insurance by David Dayen on FDL News
Bankster Fraud Has Driven 100 Million Into Poverty, Killing Many by Washington's Blog
America’s Great 2012 Drought by Washington's Blog
Tweet your senator or senate candidate by DCBlogger on Corrente
TrapWire: Wikileaks reveals ex-CIA agents running a face-recognition profiling company that surveils NYC subways, London stock exchange, Vegas casinos and more by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing
Shpongle - No Turn Unstoned live