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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Zuccotti Park, September 17, 2012 (Photo by joanneleon)
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”
– Abraham Lincoln – In a letter written to William Elkin, 1860
Irish Wanking Bankers - An Irishman Abroad.
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News
Istanbul Aims to Outshine Dubai With $2.6 Billion Bank Center
It’s now little more than a dusty patch of land in the modern suburb of Atasehir on the Asian side of Istanbul. Within three years, if all goes according to plan, high-rise office buildings will dominate the site, forming an upstart Wall Street on the Sea of Marmara: the Istanbul International Financial Center.
Like a lot of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ideas, such as his push for mostly Muslim Turkey to start formal membership talks with the European Union, the square-mile International Financial Center is bold, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party won re- election last year, envisions Turkey as a burgeoning economic as well as political power in the Middle East and southeast Europe.
The importance of Occupy
Felix Salmon
On September 7, Occupy the SEC followed up its fantastic comment letter of last February with an equally perspicacious and detailed update. At 15 pages, the new letter is much shorter than the 325-page original, but it still packs a heavy punch, and it arrives at exactly the right time: just as the SEC and other regulatory agencies are trying to work out how the Volcker Rule should look, especially in the wake of the JP Morgan London Whale fiasco. (All of which was, embarrassingly, entirely Volcker-compliant.)
Meanwhile, the Occupy Bank Working Group, which got a flurry of publicity back in March, is still going strong, working on something which has the potential to be much more far-reaching than any letter. It takes time to build a new kind of bank, which is their ultimate ambition, and they’re not there yet. But they’re moving in that direction, and if Andrew Ross Sorkin had talked to any of them before filing his column today, he might not have been so dismissive with respect to the legacy of Occupy. (“It will be an asterisk in the history books, if it gets a mention at all.”)
[ ... ]
Actually, I think that Occupy the SEC did change the debate over breaking up the banks. Certainly its letter was very widely read in Washington, where Congressional staffers are constantly inundated with lobbyists’ position papers but see very little from, well, the 99%. But more generally, Occupy was clearly opposed to the entire Washington system, and so it’s rather silly to point to the fact that the Washington system hasn’t done much in the past year, and use that as evidence that Occupy was a dud.
Go look at this article and the simple statistics cited in the article.
7,000 Millionaires Paid No Income Tax In 2011
The chart below from the Tax Policy Center shows the distribution of federal income taxes paid by income level in 2011.
American Autumn: An Occudoc
Filmmaker Dennis Trainor Jr. on his new film and the challenges facing the Occupy Movement
American Autumn: an Occudoc
Shot on the front lines and meeting spaces of the Occupy movement in NYC, Boston, and Washington, DC from the earliest days through the end of January 2012, American Autumn: an Occudoc is an inside looking out view of the occupy movement.
With interviews and insight from key organizers, thinkers and activists including Medea Benjamin, David Degraw, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Lee Camp, Naomi Klein, Nathan Schneider, Ashley Sanders, Vlad Teichberg, Sgt. Shamar Thomas, Dr. Cornel West, Kevin Zeese and many more, writer/ director Dennis Trainor Jr weaves commentary and a fearless style that often puts the viewer right between police and protesters.
The film includes an original score by Goldi, a member of the OWS music Rebel group and Guitarmy, with additional original music created by Mike Lawrence-Yanicelli.
The legendary punk band FUGAZI supplied additional songs.
AJ Russo served as the Associate producer, co-editor, and created all of the graphics; James Russo served as the audio designer.
American Autumn: an Occudoc
Does President Obama Want to Cut Social Security by 3 Percent?
That is a pretty simple and important question. Unfortunately most voters are likely to go to the polls this fall without knowing the answer. ... One of the items that continuously comes up in reference to the budget deficit is President Obama's support for the plan put forward by the co-chairs of his deficit commission, Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson. On numerous occasions President Obama has indicated his support for this plan.
One of the items in the Bowles-Simpson plan is a reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment of roughly 0.3 percentage points. This would be accomplished by using a different index that, by design, would show a lower measured rate of inflation. It is important to recognize that this is an annual cut that would accumulate over time. After a retiree has been receiving benefits for 10 years the cut would be 3.0 percent, after 20 years it would be 6 percent. If a typical retiree lives long enough to get benefits for 20 years the average benefit cut over their years of retirement would be 3 percent.
This is the most immediate cut to Social Security in the Bowles-Simpson plan but not the only one. The plan also would gradually raise the age at which retirees receive full benefits to 69. It also phases in a reduction in benefits for workers whose earnings averaged more than $40,000 a year over their working lifetime.
When President Obama indicates his support for the Bowles-Simpson plan, he is indicating his support for all of these measures.
Obama Admin Appeals NDAA Ruling in Bid to Preserve Indefinite Detention at Home and Abroad
[ ... ] We look at the Obama administration’s support for indefinite detention at home and abroad with Empty Wheel blogger Marcy Wheeler.
He owes the country an explanation of what he plans to do with this executive order, with specifics. Will we get it or will it be done in the dark of night, buried in the obsessive election news coverage and the fearmongering news?
Obama considers executive order in wake of Cybersecurity Act failure
The Obama administration is considering issuing an executive order to achieve some of the aims of the Cybersecurity Act, which died in the Senate in August. “Following congressional inaction, the President is determined to use existing executive branch authorities to protect our nation against cyber threats,” John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, wrote in a letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. “Specifically, we are exploring an Executive Order to direct executive branch departments and agencies to secure our nation’s critical infrastructure by working with the private sector.” ... The vague proposal would put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of implementing the new cybersecurity apparatus, which aims to protect so-called “critical infrastructure” from Internet-based attacks.
Hard to excerpt -- must read.
Unlike Afghan leaders, Obama fights for power of indefinite military detention
Obama lawyers file a breathless, angry appeal against the court ruling that invalidated the NDAA's chilling 2011 detention law
In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he's not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.
In response to this ruling, the Obama administration not only filed an immediate appeal, but they filed an emergency motion asking the appeals court to lift the injunction pending the appeal. Obama lawyers wrote a breathless attack on the court's ruling, denouncing it as "vastly troubling" and claiming that it "threatens tangible and dangerous consequences in the conduct of an active military conflict" and "threatens irreparable harm to national security".
[ ... ]
First, the Obama administration's unhinged claim that Judge Forrest's ruling imperils national security gives the lie to the central excuse for the NDAA: namely, that it does not expand the president's detention powers beyond what is already vested by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). Judge Forrest's ruling leaves the 2001 AUMF in place and did not purport to nullify any prior decisions applying it. [ ... ] The reality is that the NDAA did indeed wildly expand the president's detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF provided.
[ ... ]
Second, to see the sorry and wretched state of liberties in the US under President Obama, let us look to Afghanistan. The US is currently attempting to turn over to the Afghan government control of the lawless prison system the US has long maintained in Bagram and other parts of that country. But that effort is running into a serious problem: namely, the US wants the prisoners to remain there in cages without charges, but the Afghans are insisting that indefinite detention violates their belief in due process. From an Associated Press article Monday headlined "Afghans reject US-favored administrative detention"
Crowd Attacks The US Ambassador In Beijing
The statement gave no details about the demonstrators who blocked Mr Locke's car, or what angered them.
However the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei tweeted a photograph of the protest on Tuesday afternoon, and said the crowd had chanted: "Down with US imperialism" and "Pay us back our money!" referring to the trillion dollars or so of US government debt that China holds.
Some Chinese observers have blamed the US for standing behind the Japanese on their claim, and suggested that the US is attempting to foment unrest in the region as a pretext for "pivoting" its naval forces back to the Pacific.
The incident came as the US Defence secretary, Leon Panetta, was meeting with senior Chinese leaders to reassure them that the US does not intend to "contain" China by building up a military presence in Asia.
Here's The Number That Should Freak Out Obama In An Otherwise Great Poll
Overall, President Barack Obama got some great news from a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday evening.
But one number should trouble the president in an otherwise great-looking survey: His foreign policy approval rating has plummeted over the past month.
In August, 54 percent approved of Obama's handling of foreign policy. That number dropped 5 points to just 49 percent in September. Moreover, his foreign policy disapproval rating jumped 6 points over the past month. That 11-point swing gives him only a 3-point net positive approval rating on foreign policy.
The blowback from the administration's choice to adopt and continue neocon policies after promising change in the soaring speech in Cairo.
Given US Foreign Policy, Only Surprise Is There Aren't More Violent Protests
The Muslim eruption reflects a deep popular anger and blowback from US intervention in both Libya and Afghanistan
Eleven years after it began, Nato's occupation of Afghanistan is crumbling. The US decision to suspend joint Afghan-Nato operations in response to a wave of attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on Nato troops cuts the ground from beneath the centrepiece of western strategy.
[ ... ]
The US-British invasion of Afghanistan was of course launched in response to the 9/11 attacks: the poison fruit of US-led support for the Afghan mujahideen war against the Soviet Union. Why do they hate us, many Americans asked at the time, oblivious to their country's role in decades of coups, tyranny, sanctions regimes and occupations across the Middle East.
[ ... ]
This is the start of the blowback from US and western attempts to commandeer the Arab uprisings. Something similar is likely to happen in Syria. The invasion of Afghanistan more than a decade ago not only didn't destroy al-Qaida, it spread it into Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and north Africa, and today the flags of its offshoots are flying across the Arab world.
In Libya, Nato's intervention sharply escalated the death toll, triggered large-scale ethnic cleansing, spread war to Mali, and left thousands in jail without trial and the country in the control of multiple armed militias. Western governments hailed July's elections, in which most seats were not open to political parties, as bucking the Islamist trend across the region.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 9-18-12
ARRR, Mateys! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day
Appellate Judge Protects Indefinite Detention Provisions After Gov't Cries "National Security"
International Day of Peace Project: Create a Peace Center in your Community!
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel = Bain Capital Strategy II
Five Looming Curses of Privatization
On cartoons by kos
Wall Street Wankers - An Irishman Abroad (Sequel)
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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