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Occupy Wall Street, 2011. Photo by: joanneleon.
Occupy Wall Street 1st Anniversay. September, 2012. Photo by: joanneleon.
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Occupy Wall Street's New Fight(s) (with Allison Kilkenny)
This is simply amazing. I can't imagine how this was worth what it cost to get to this point. I read that the cost so far has been
600 million euros ($800 million), much of which will be paid by insurers. We were talking about this last night and wondering why they'd pay so much for a salvage operation. I am guessing that they have to remove the ship one way or another and can't just leave it there, and to try to dismantle it while it was sitting in water, stuck on rocks, partially submerged, not upright but turned on its side, would have been an enormously difficult task too, so setting it upright and eventually towing it to a dry dock somewhere was the best solution even though the final cost of it might be a billion dollars, probably more than the thing was worth brand new. I'm also wondering if it was costing the owners money every day it was sitting there capsized in fines or something like that. Anyway, it's a feat of engineering which is always of great interest to me. There were two people who were never found after the accident. No word yet on them. The brother of one of them is on site, hoping to take the body home for a proper burial.
Costa Concordia salvage operation Time lapse footage
This is a must watch interview, IMHO. Amy Goodman has paired up Katrina Vanden Heuvel, an expert on Russian-American relations, and Andrew Bacevich, historian, retired Army officer, West Point grad, current professor and author.
Take note of how vanden Heuvel, right out of the gate, tries a bit of an 11-dimensional chess explanation of the proposed Syrian diplomatic solution. Bacevich, later on, very gently doesn't buy it. vanden Heuvel, in her talking points segment, is unsure of herself, halting speech, etc. Later on she changes her perspective and speaks more confidently, etc. It's very interesting to watch. I'm curious to see if you got the same impressions that I got.
Could Russia-U.S. Deal on Syria Chemical Weapons Lead To a Non-Imperial, New Internationalism?
This is a follow up interview with Andrew Bacevich. We've heard this message in his Moyers & Co. interview with Phil Donahue, but the message is so strong and important, I'm happy to hear it explained in a slightly different way by Bacevich, who has become one of my most respected voices on war. Please, let this man talk to the country via more widely viewed programs. Since he has a new book, I assume he's on a book tour and will get a lot of air time and face time with talks and interviews. I'm going to see if he's coming my area on a book tour. This is a man who we all need to be listening too (particularly leaders and people in positions of power but also average Americans).
Andrew Bacevich on "Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country"
Hat tip to joe shikspack for a good number of stories in the news section today. We're going to try to overlap a lot of our news sections going forward to see how that works out.
Here we go again with the sabre rattling. Is this an attempt at sabotaging the UN resolution so that Russia will veto it, knowing that the military threat clause is a deal breaker? Whoever attempts to derail a peaceful solution should be held accountable and everyone in the world should know who was responsible for the sabotage. The US has shown in the past that we'll bomb without a UN resolution, so insisting it be in there up front is unreasonable. Plus, there is nothing stopping the US and allies from going back to the UN security council if Assad does not abide by the terms in the first one or act in good faith. Whoever is mucking with this now should stop the sabotage.
Cracks appear between US and Russia over Syrian chemical weapons deal
The first cracks have appeared in the Geneva agreement on Syrian chemical disarmament as Russia dismissed calls for a swift UN resolution threatening punitive measures against Damascus.
The spat focused on the timing of a resolution under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which includes enforcement measures such as the possible use of military action to bolster a security council decision.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said calls for an immediate chapter 7 resolution showed a "lack of understanding" of Saturday's Geneva agreement with the US about the process of declaring, inspecting and dismantling Syria's chemical weapons.
Any resolution this week cannot include chapter 7, Lavrov insisted. "I am certain that despite the statements we are hearing from certain European capitals, the American side will firmly adhere to what was agreed," the Russian foreign minister said.
He was reacting to reports from a meeting in Paris between the US secretary of state, John Kerry, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, and the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, who declared themselves united behind a tough UN resolution to put the Geneva agreement into practice.
What's behind Kerry and Kissinger's meeting?
And one observation is striking about the photograph of Kerry and Kissinger, one who served Nixon, a Republican, and one who serves Obama, a Democrat. What does it say about U.S. foreign policy? What it says to me is something a lot of us have known for a long time is that U.S. foreign policy is more or less--and you would have to say more--consistent than you would ever think. It doesn't make a lot of difference whether you get a Republican or a Democratic president or secretary of state. They both love the military. They brag about it as Obama has bragged about the military. They love to use it. And at their core, they're imperialists through and through. Both Ks, both Ks believe in American exceptionalism. Obama mentioned that in his speech the other day on Syria. They believe it's their mission to save the world. And, of course, save the world only applies when it's saving the world for U.S. interests. So, for example, they get upset and angry over allegations that they believe that Syria used chemical weapons. But you saw 1,400 people killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, not a peep. Likewise, a couple of thousand at least killed in Egypt and not a peep.
Sidelined France still determined to go after Assad
Sidelined from the US-Russia negotiations on chemical weapons, France is determined that demands for President Bashar al-Assad to be tried for war crimes do not drop off the rapidly shifting international agenda. ...
France’s Socialist government unequivocally backed punitive military action in response to what they regard as a watershed moment in Syria’s civil war, and Fabius has indicated that he expects the UN report to point a finger of blame in the direction of the regime.
“What we are saying is that the Geneva accord does not settle all accounts,” said a well-placed French official. “It is not a stamp of approval for Assad, whom we simply do not trust. There is a lot more involved.” ...
Caught off balance by Russia’s chemical weapons initiative, France’s focus in the coming days and weeks will be securing the toughest possible terms for the UN resolution that will put the Geneva accord into force.
Report: Half of Syrian rebels are hardline jihadists or Al-Qaeda operatives
Jihadists and members of hardline Islamist groups make up almost half of forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to extracts from a British defence study published in Monday’s Daily Telegraph.
The analysis by defence consultancy IHS Jane’s, due to be published in full later this week, puts the number of rebel forces at around 100,000, the Telegraph reported. ...
“The insurgency is now dominated by groups which have at least an Islamist viewpoint on the conflict,” Charles Lister, author of the analysis, told the British newspaper
The World after the Kerry-Lavrov accord on Syria
The agreement reached by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry at Geneva on Saturday regarding the sequester of Syria’s chemical weapons is a little unlikely to shorten the civil war or save many lives in Syria. But it did signal winners and losers in the region and the world. ...
The agreement for Syria to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and allow inspections of its chemical weapons averted a unilateral American attack on Damascus, which would have symbolically underlined that Russia is no longer a great power and has no inviolate spheres of influence. In contrast, since Lavrov put forward his plan last Monday to have Syria’s chemical weapons inspected, Russia has been treated as an equal by US diplomats. Russia has gained stature. ...
The announcement in March of 2003 by the George W. Bush administration that the US would invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan regardless of what anyone else in the world thought was an announcement that the US was the sole superpower and the primary Middle East hegemon.
The Kerry-Lavrov agreement may have been the moment when the world returned to a multilateral foreign policy and the US stopped being the sole superpower. We are back to the nineteenth century when there were multiple power centers and each had its sphere of influence.
Obama wants to take credit for Syria chem weapons plan
Nobel laureates urge end to Syria hospital attacks, say system is on the ‘brink of collapse
Fifty leaders in world medicine, including three winners of the Nobel prize, on Monday urged all combatants in Syria to spare hospitals, doctors and nurses, warning that the country’s medical infrastructure was being deliberately targeted and was now on the brink of collapse.
“Systematic assaults on medical professionals, facilities and patients are breaking Syria’s health-care system and making it nearly impossible for civilians to receive essential medical services,” they said in an open letter published by The Lancet.
“According to the WHO (World Health Organisation), 37 percent of Syrian hospitals have been destroyed and a further 20 percent severely damaged. Makeshift clinics have become fully fledged trauma centres, struggling to cope with the injured and sick.
“According to the Violations Documentation Centre, an estimated 469 health workers are currently imprisoned, and about 15,000 doctors have been forced to flee abroad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Of the 5,000 physicians in Aleppo before the conflict started, only 36 remain.”
"Terrorism is Part of Our History": Angela Davis on ’63 Church Bombing, Growing up in "Bombingham"
The NSA Spies On Your Credit Card Transactions
The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL.
The information from the American foreign intelligence agency, acquired by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called "Tracfin," which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions.
Further NSA documents from 2010 show that the NSA also targets the transactions of customers of large credit card companies like VISA for surveillance. NSA analysts at an internal conference that year described in detail how they had apparently successfully searched through the US company's complex transaction network for tapping possibilities. ...
But even intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area. The collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data is a deep invasion of privacy, and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal information," much of which "is not about our targets," the document says.
'Follow the Money': NSA spies on Visa customers, SWIFT transactions
Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander
It has been previously reported that the mentality of NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander is captured by his motto "Collect it All". It's a get-everything approach he pioneered first when aimed at an enemy population in the middle of a war zone in Iraq, one he has now imported onto US soil, aimed at the domestic population and everyone else.
But a perhaps even more disturbing and revealing vignette into the spy chief's mind comes from a new Foreign Policy article describing what the journal calls his "all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine". The article describes how even his NSA peers see him as a "cowboy" willing to play fast and loose with legal limits in order to construct a system of ubiquitous surveillance. But the personality driving all of this - not just Alexander's but much of Washington's - is perhaps best captured by this one passage, highlighted by PBS' News Hour in a post entitled: "NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise". The room was christened as part of the "Information Dominance Center":
"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
"'Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,' says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."
Former NSA and CIA director says terrorists love using Gmail
Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden stood on the pulpit of a church across from the White House on Sunday and declared Gmail the preferred online service of terrorists. As part of an adult education forum at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Hayden gave a wide ranging speech on "the tension between security and liberty."
During the speech, he specifically defended Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which provides the legal basis for the PRISM program. In doing so, Hayden claimed "Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: "I don't think you're going to see that in a Google commercial, but it's free, it's ubiquitous, so of course it is." ...
Hayden also conceded that the United States. "could be fairly charged with the militarization of the World Wide Web." The NSA's Tactical Access Operations (TAO) is reportedly charged with hacking foreign targets to steal data and monitor communications. It also reportedly develops programs that could destroy or damage foreign computers and networks using cyberattacks.
Labor Leaders, Obamacare, and the Fate of the Unions
A funny thing happened a couple of months ago: labor leaders finally awoke from their coma and realized that Obamacare was not only bad for unions, but for working families in general.
Once the biggest salespeople of the bill’s passage, union leaders are suddenly full of rage and “shock” at the realities of Obamacare. ...
Obamacare is perhaps the most blatant example of the complete incompetency of many U.S. labor leaders, who’ve tied the fate of organized labor to the Democratic Party, with disastrous results.
As the jobs crisis grinds on and wages and benefits are being attacked across the board, this “strategy” of labor leaders has proven be an utter failure. Union leaders have remained silent as the Democrats have attacked teachers, public employees, and implemented austerity measures on a state and federal level that shift the cost of the recession on working people.
Here are excerpts from the Union leaders' letter mentioned in the article above:
Union Letter: Obamacare Will ‘Destroy The Very Health and Wellbeing’ of Workers
Dear Leader Reid and Leader Pelosi:
When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class. ...
Since the ACA was enacted, we have been bringing our deep concerns to the Administration, seeking reasonable regulatory interpretations to the statute that would help prevent the destruction of non-profit health plans. As you both know first-hand, our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretations for their respective grievances. Most disconcerting of course is last week’s huge accommodation for the employer community—extending the statutorily mandated “December 31, 2013” deadline for the employer mandate and penalties.
Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios:
First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.
Second, millions of Americans are covered by non-profit health insurance plans like the ones in which most of our members participate. These non-profit plans are governed jointly by unions and companies under the Taft-Hartley Act. Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans.
And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies. ...
James P. Hoffa
General President
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Joseph Hansen
International President
UFCW
D. Taylor
President
UNITE-HERE
Never-Released Energy Department Report Predicts Increasing Domestic Conflicts over Water, Energy
This year, as the drilling industry drew millions of gallons of water per well in Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, residents in these states struggled with severe droughts and some farmers opted to sell their water to the oil and gas industry rather than try to compete with them for limited resources. ...
Researchers for the Federal Department of Energy saw problems like this coming, according to thousands of pages of documents about the topic provided to DeSmog, but their recommendations and warnings were consistently edited and downplayed and the final version of their report has yet to be released.
“On multiple occasions, the editors asked for changes within the document because certain assertions would likely lead to rejection by OMB,” concluded the Civil Society Institute, which obtained the documents through Freedom of Information requests and provided them to DeSmog.
OMB stands for the Office of Management and Budget, the White House agency responsible for ensuring new reports and regulations are consistent with the current administration's policies. The revisions to the Department of Energy report were made, the Civil Society Institute concluded in their internal assessment of the drafts, “regardless of whether or not the assertions were true, and regardless of whether or not OMB’s response would be ‘a fair critique.’”
Washington Throws Chemical Safety Standards Out the Window, Are Fracking Chemicals Next?
In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rolled back safety regulations for the chemical industry, while the U.S. House of Representatives has prepared to take aim at the government’s ability to monitor chemicals and other safety hazards posed by fracking.
Bowing to pressure by the chemical industry, the EPA has decided to withdraw a proposal that would have added numerous new substances to their database of hazardous chemicals, which is used to issue public health assessments and warnings. ... The EPA had previously expressed a great deal of concern over the lack of safety standards in place for toxic chemicals that studies had shown were dangerous to the public, but the pressure coming from the chemical industry was far too great for them to overcome. ...
Rather than compiling their lists now, as their proposed rule allowed, the EPA decided to wait until all chemicals are thoroughly and repeatedly analyzed, a process expected to finish in 2017, unless delayed. Then they will begin the process of drafting new proposals.
This means that the American public will suffer another four years of inaction and exposure to chemicals that the agency already knows are toxic.
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Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright at Occupy Wall Street