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!
Longwood Gardens. August, 2012 by joanneleon
Messy Room
by Shel Silverstein
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!
News
Tampa Sherriff gears up for mass arrests of RNC protesters
TAMPA - A big factor during the RNC is the potential for a large number of arrests.
In anticipation, in an unprecedented move, Hillsborough County jail officials announced one facility is completely cleared and essentially reconstructed just for the Republican National Convention. ...
They are ready to handle a mass amount of inmates. Previtera said the system can handle 1000 additional arrests.
BLACK ICE Russia's ongoing oil spill crisis
After analysing satellite images to identify spill sites, Greenpeace staff travelled to this and other Arctic and subarctic regions to investigate and document the spills and expose the extent of the damage. All these photos were taken over a three-day period in just one of the many oil spill hotspots in Russia.
[ ... ]
How much oil is spilled in Russia each year?
Extreme weather conditions along with a lack of maintenance have resulted in a slow but constant seepage of oil from pipeline ruptures. Additionally, there is still "outlawed" burning of associated gas (60% of which is methane — a powerful greenhouse gas). Russia burns around 40 billion cubic metres of this kind of gas annually.
[From infographic: 10,000+ oil spills per year. 5 million tonnes of crude oil are spilled in Russian oil fields each year. Equivalent to 7 Deepwater Horizons.]
Drug war’s racial disparity moves NAACP to embrace marijuana legalization
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the nation’s oldest civil rights groups, said at its Colorado-Montana-Wyoming state conference on Thursday that its members support Colorado’s marijuana legalization ballot initiative.
“We are committed to changing policies that result in a disproportionate number of African-Americans and other people of color being introduced into the criminal justice system,” NAACP chapter president Rosemary Harris Lytle said, according to a media advisory.
“With this endorsement, NAACP activists in Colorado take a significant step: calling for equity, justice and more effective policy — such as the proposal to regulate marijuana like alcohol in our state,” she added. “The flawed drug policies that so negatively impact our communities must be replaced with policy that is not disproportionately punitive based on race but that helps us get to the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”
FDA trying to ban gay men as sperm donors
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to implement new rules that will ban men who have had sex with other men from acting as anonymous sperm donors. The agency claims to be adopting the measures as a means of protecting recipients from HIV transmission, but according to the Associated Press, LGBT rights groups have been quick to point out that not only is the policy discriminatory on its face, it isn’t based in scientific reality.
“The part I find most offensive — and a little frightening — is that it isn’t based on good science,” Kevin Cathcart of Lambda Legal told the AP. “There’s a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool.” ...
Leland Traiman, director of a California clinic that specializes in sperm donations from gay men, said, “Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years.”
HSBC In Settlement Talks With U.S. Over Money Laundering
The bank, Europe’s largest by market value, made a $700 million provision in July for any U.S. fines after a Senate Committee found it had given terrorists and drug cartels access to the U.S. financial system. That sum might increase, Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver has said.
[ ... ]
“It’s time to reexamine the audit function of federal regulators,” said Gurule, speaking of U.S. regulations meant to enforce sanctions. “It’s bad and the system is not working.”
Wall Street Gets Its Way in Washington
Every once in a while the financial industry lives up to its critics’ worst expectations: that it operates against the interest of the investing public, in cahoots with captive regulators and Washington’s powerful elite.
This is exactly what happened Wednesday, when Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro had to cancel an Aug. 29 vote on sensible new rules to make money-market mutual funds safer. Although Schapiro had the support of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and leading conservative economists, she knew that three of the five commissioners would oppose her. This came after an intensive and often-misleading campaign by the $2.6 trillion money-fund industry to gloss over the inherent instability of the funds.
The enemy in Afghanistan is highly sophisticated technically?
U.S. general: We hacked the enemy in Afghanistan
"I can tell you that as a commander in Afghanistan in the year 2010, I was able to use my cyber operations against my adversary with great impact," Mills said. "I was able to get inside his nets, infect his command-and-control, and in fact defend myself against his almost constant incursions to get inside my wire, to affect my operations."
[ ... ]
"It's not secret," Lewis said in a telephone interview, but he added: "I haven't seen as explicit a statement on this as the one" Mills made.
Iran Draws India Closer With Talks on Afghanistan
India, Iran and Afghanistan will hold talks on giving greater access to landlocked Afghanistan, a move that could also ease Iran's isolation in the region, Indian officials said Saturday.
[ ... ]
Iran is also hoping to develop an industrial zone near Chahbahar port and wants to attract foreign investment to set up industries there, Mathai said.
The trilateral talks come days ahead of a non-aligned summit meeting hosted by Iran in which leaders of some 120 countries are expected to participate.
Yemen's Food Crisis: 10 Million Starving
As it currently stands there are no two ways about it, Yemen is no longer on the brink of a catastrophic food crisis, but rather is now in the midst of a food catastrophe. Oxfam last September warned that Yemen was at breaking point, today one can freely admit that Yemen has broke. For example in al Hodeidah and Hajjah, one in three children are malnourished, which is double the standard emergency level. While the UN estimates that 267, 000 Yemeni children are facing life threatening levels of malnutrition. Yemen's food crisis presents a number of challenges to Yemenis across the political, economical and social spectrum. The previously already poor are on the verge of death, the once slim middle class are finding it hard to pay for life necessities, whilst the rich and often elite, find it much easier to spend their wealth. But it is children who bear the brunt of Yemen's food price escalation, as mothers are reportedly taking their children out of school to beg on the streets.
But Yemen's food crisis does not only represent a threat to Yemenis, but much more importantly it represents a threat to various actors in the region and the wider world, ranging from neighbouring oil-rich, but moral-poor Saudi Arabia to the ever-more self-interested United States. This is because Yemenis across the country but particularly in the South have lost faith and trust in their government; beyond this they are no desperate for any support from anyone willing to help them. When the central government is unable to provide for its people, help reduce inflation and meet the most basic of security, extremist organisations such as Ansar al-Sharia are monopolising on the dire economic reality by providing the most basic of needs including food and in turn gain their trust. Although practicality dictates that these extremist operations are some-what limited to the more lawless areas of Yemen, the fact remains that central government seem unable, unwilling and incapable of forming a comprehensive response to the immediate food catastrophe.
Blog Posts of Interest
Can Weathercasters Become Climatecasters? CCSOS by ClimateBrad
The Evening Blues - 8-24-12 by joe shikspack
The Coffee and Donut Riots by rserven
Empire State Building Shooting Shows Danger of Using Guns to Stop Gun Violence by David Dayen
Nobody Offering the Solutions Needed on Housing by David Dayen
Ray Charles - Hit The Road Jack
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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