May 3, 2012
Why embassies are safe havens for dissidents
BBC - The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations codified a custom that has been in place for centuries when it established the "rule of inviolability".
This states that local police and security forces are not permitted to enter, unless they have the express permission of the ambassador - even though the embassy remains the territory of the host nation.
The convention is widely adhered to and is regarded as a basic pre-requisite for diplomatic relations.
"Embassies are privileged areas. The local authorities have no rights to enter," says Colin Warbrick, a specialist in international law and honorary professor at Birmingham University.
Human rights law provides a further layer of protection, in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights and - in the case of the US - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
This means that the embassy is obliged to consider whether there is a real risk that the person could be killed or seriously injured if they were handed over to the local authorities. And if there is, then they could be held accountable if they give the person up.
This states that local police and security forces are not permitted to enter, unless they have the express permission of the ambassador - even though the embassy remains the territory of the host nation.
The convention is widely adhered to and is regarded as a basic pre-requisite for diplomatic relations.
"Embassies are privileged areas. The local authorities have no rights to enter," says Colin Warbrick, a specialist in international law and honorary professor at Birmingham University.
Human rights law provides a further layer of protection, in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights and - in the case of the US - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
This means that the embassy is obliged to consider whether there is a real risk that the person could be killed or seriously injured if they were handed over to the local authorities. And if there is, then they could be held accountable if they give the person up.
Federal court lets Bush era torture go unpunished
This is one of the worst and most dangerous decisions ever handed down by a federal court. The path to dictatorships such as Hitler's is paved with weak officials, using baroque legal arguments, justifying what to any decent human being is evil.
Common Dreams - John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who penned legal memos that provided cover for President George W. Bush's torture program, can't be sued by one of the victims of that program, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested in 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," may not hold professor John Yoo liable for "gross physical and psychological abuse" that Padilla said he suffered during more than three years of military detention, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture," said Judge Raymond Fisher in the 3-0 ruling.
San Francisco Chronicle - The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of endorsing Yoo's conduct as a lawyer in the Justice Department, where he wrote memos approving most of the practices allegedly used against plaintiff Jose Padilla in a Navy brig - sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation, and extremes of temperature, light and darkness.
Padilla also said his interrogators threatened to kill him, and he claimed Yoo had personally authorized his treatment.
At least some of Padilla's treatment may well constitute torture under current standards, the appeals court said. But when Yoo worked for the department in 2001-03, the three-judge panel said, courts had not yet decided that those practices were torture, or that so-called enemy combatants like Padilla had the same constitutional rights as other inmates.
Lowering the Bar - What do all of the following have in common?
Common Dreams - John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who penned legal memos that provided cover for President George W. Bush's torture program, can't be sued by one of the victims of that program, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested in 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," may not hold professor John Yoo liable for "gross physical and psychological abuse" that Padilla said he suffered during more than three years of military detention, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture," said Judge Raymond Fisher in the 3-0 ruling.
San Francisco Chronicle - The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of endorsing Yoo's conduct as a lawyer in the Justice Department, where he wrote memos approving most of the practices allegedly used against plaintiff Jose Padilla in a Navy brig - sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation, and extremes of temperature, light and darkness.
Padilla also said his interrogators threatened to kill him, and he claimed Yoo had personally authorized his treatment.
At least some of Padilla's treatment may well constitute torture under current standards, the appeals court said. But when Yoo worked for the department in 2001-03, the three-judge panel said, courts had not yet decided that those practices were torture, or that so-called enemy combatants like Padilla had the same constitutional rights as other inmates.
Lowering the Bar - What do all of the following have in common?
- Prolonged isolation;
- Deprivation of light;
- Exposure to prolonged periods of light and/or darkness;
- Extreme variations in temperature;
- Sleep adjustment;
- Threats of severe physical abuse;
- Death threats;
- Administration of psychotropic drugs;
- Shackling and manacling for hours at a time;
- Use of "stress" positions;
- Noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose;
- Withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket;
- Forced grooming;
- Suspension of showers;
- Removal of religious items;
- Constant surveillance;
- Incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period;
- Interference with religious observance; and
- Denial of medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions, resulting in severe and continuing mental and physical harm, pain, and profound disruption of the senses and personality.
America's inverted totalitarianism
Chris Hedges, Common Dreams, 2010 - Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism."
Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience."
"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
"It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats."
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
© 2010 TruthDig.com
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism."
Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience."
"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
"It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats."
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
© 2010 TruthDig.com
Wall Street and politics
Nicholas Confessore, NY Times Magazine - One day in late October, Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, slipped into the Regency Hotel in New York and walked up to a second-floor meeting room reserved by his aides. More than 20 of Obama’s top donors and fund-raisers, many of them from the financial industry, sat in leather chairs around a granite conference table.
Messina told them he had a problem: New York City and its suburbs, Obama’s top source of money in 2008, were behind quota. He needed their help bringing the financial community back on board.
For the next hour, the donors relayed to Messina what their friends had been saying. They felt unfairly demonized for being wealthy. They felt scapegoated for the recession. It was a few weeks into the Occupy Wall Street movement, with mass protests against the 1 percent springing up all around the country, and they blamed the president and his party for the public’s nasty mood. The administration, some suggested, had created a hostile environment for job creators.
Messina politely pushed back. It’s not the president’s fault that Americans are still upset with Wall Street, he told them, and given the public’s mood, the administration’s rhetoric had been notably restrained.
One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.
Messina told them he had a problem: New York City and its suburbs, Obama’s top source of money in 2008, were behind quota. He needed their help bringing the financial community back on board.
For the next hour, the donors relayed to Messina what their friends had been saying. They felt unfairly demonized for being wealthy. They felt scapegoated for the recession. It was a few weeks into the Occupy Wall Street movement, with mass protests against the 1 percent springing up all around the country, and they blamed the president and his party for the public’s nasty mood. The administration, some suggested, had created a hostile environment for job creators.
Messina politely pushed back. It’s not the president’s fault that Americans are still upset with Wall Street, he told them, and given the public’s mood, the administration’s rhetoric had been notably restrained.
One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.
May 2, 2012
Seau only one of several NFL players to commit suicide; some suspect concussions as cause
TMZ - Junior Seau is the latest of several former NFL players to commit suicide -- and all the deaths might be linked ... through brain-related injuries sustained during the players' football careers.
Most recently, 62-year-old former Atlanta Falcons player Ray Easterling shot himself last month in his Virginia home. His wife claims the former safety developed symptoms of dementia after his football career.
Easterling filed a federal lawsuit in Philly against the NFL in 2011 over its handling of concussion-related football injuries -- claiming the league intentionally concealed links between the injuries and the game.
Dozens and dozens of similar concussion-related lawsuits have also been filed against the NFL -- but the league insists the allegations are without merit.
50-year-old former Chicago Bears player Dave Duerson (right) was found dead in his Florida home last year from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
Before his death, he texted his family asking for his brain to be used for research (hence why he shot himself in the chest). Months later, researcher neurologists at Boston University confirmed Duerson had suffered from a neurodegenerative disease linked to concussions.
Most recently, 62-year-old former Atlanta Falcons player Ray Easterling shot himself last month in his Virginia home. His wife claims the former safety developed symptoms of dementia after his football career.
Easterling filed a federal lawsuit in Philly against the NFL in 2011 over its handling of concussion-related football injuries -- claiming the league intentionally concealed links between the injuries and the game.
Dozens and dozens of similar concussion-related lawsuits have also been filed against the NFL -- but the league insists the allegations are without merit.
50-year-old former Chicago Bears player Dave Duerson (right) was found dead in his Florida home last year from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
Before his death, he texted his family asking for his brain to be used for research (hence why he shot himself in the chest). Months later, researcher neurologists at Boston University confirmed Duerson had suffered from a neurodegenerative disease linked to concussions.
Wal-Mart to pay cheated workers $4.8 million
Huffington Post - The Department of Labor announced that Walmart had agreed to pay $4.83 million in back wages and damages to employees it had illegally denied overtime, following an agency investigation. More than 4,000 workers, all vision center managers or asset protection coordinators, will receive money from the settlement.
Vancouver's legal drug injection center
The Awl - Vancouver, Canada is the only city in North America that provides a legal facility for drug addicts to push heroin and cocaine and other types of substances into their veins. It's called InSite, and it's both government-sanctioned and government-funded.
Located in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside—often called Canada's poorest postal code—the supervised injection site opened as a 3-year experiment back in 2003 to curb the neighborhood's high levels of disease spread through shared needles and death from overdose. Now, after nearly a decade of academic research, political debate, public scrutiny and a Canadian Supreme Court ruling last September that stated InSite should remain open indefinitely, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and other cities across the nation are contemplating opening their own injection facilities. According to InSite's own records, between 2004 and 2010 they had 1418 overdoses without a single one resulting in death. No one has ever died there.
Located in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside—often called Canada's poorest postal code—the supervised injection site opened as a 3-year experiment back in 2003 to curb the neighborhood's high levels of disease spread through shared needles and death from overdose. Now, after nearly a decade of academic research, political debate, public scrutiny and a Canadian Supreme Court ruling last September that stated InSite should remain open indefinitely, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and other cities across the nation are contemplating opening their own injection facilities. According to InSite's own records, between 2004 and 2010 they had 1418 overdoses without a single one resulting in death. No one has ever died there.
DEA abandons college student in holding cell for five days without food or water
Raw Story - Daniel Chong, a 24-year old student at UC San Diego, was taken into custody during a drug raid and abandoned in a holding cell for five days without food or water, according to NBC San Diego. “They never came back, ignored all my cries and I still don’t know what happened,” he said. “I’m not sure how they could forget me.”
On April 21, Drug Enforcement Agents raided an apartment where Chong and his friends were smoking marijuana. Nine people were arrested and the agents reportedly seized ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medication, psychedelic mushrooms and weapons, according to CBS 8 News. Seven of those arrested were taken to jail and one was released.
On April 21, Drug Enforcement Agents raided an apartment where Chong and his friends were smoking marijuana. Nine people were arrested and the agents reportedly seized ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medication, psychedelic mushrooms and weapons, according to CBS 8 News. Seven of those arrested were taken to jail and one was released.
The shrinking law school
Inside Higher Ed - The critics of legal education are right,” said Wu, the chancellor and dean of the University of California Hastings College of the Law. “There are too many law schools and there are too many law students and we need to do something about that.”
So he is. Starting this fall, Hastings will admit 20 percent fewer students than in years past, a decision that required the college to eliminate several staff positions. No faculty members lost their jobs.
It’s not that no one wants to go to Hastings -- the freestanding law college in San Francisco rejects three-quarters of its applicants. And Hastings is arguably the most prestigious law school to announce such a plan, joining a trio of law colleges that rolled out reductions last year. Nationally, far fewer students are taking admissions tests and applying to law schools (applications were down about 15 percent last year countrywide and down 7 percent at Hastings). That trend is projected to continue for the foreseeable future, while those who do attend often graduate with plenty of debt but few job opportunities.
So he is. Starting this fall, Hastings will admit 20 percent fewer students than in years past, a decision that required the college to eliminate several staff positions. No faculty members lost their jobs.
It’s not that no one wants to go to Hastings -- the freestanding law college in San Francisco rejects three-quarters of its applicants. And Hastings is arguably the most prestigious law school to announce such a plan, joining a trio of law colleges that rolled out reductions last year. Nationally, far fewer students are taking admissions tests and applying to law schools (applications were down about 15 percent last year countrywide and down 7 percent at Hastings). That trend is projected to continue for the foreseeable future, while those who do attend often graduate with plenty of debt but few job opportunities.
Great moments at the Vatican
independent, UK - The Vatican is facing a deepening controversy over the burial 22 years ago of a notorious crime boss, with reports emerging that the church accepted a one billion lire (£407,000) payment from the mobster's widow to allow his interment in a basilica.
A source at the Holy See told the Ansa news agency that "despite initial reluctance" the then vicar-general of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, "in the face of such a conspicuous sum, gave his blessing" to the controversial interment of Enrico De Pedis, the former boss of Rome's notorious Magliana gang. The money was reportedly used on missions and to restore the Basilica of St Apollinare, where the mobster was laid to rest next to popes and cardinals after his death in 1990.
The claims, which the Vatican has not commented on, may explain how such a reviled criminal was buried in such a hallowed site. Last week, to deflect growing criticism and to help resolve a 30-year-old murder mystery, it emerged that Vatican officials had decided to move the remains of De Pedis from his special crypt.
A source at the Holy See told the Ansa news agency that "despite initial reluctance" the then vicar-general of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, "in the face of such a conspicuous sum, gave his blessing" to the controversial interment of Enrico De Pedis, the former boss of Rome's notorious Magliana gang. The money was reportedly used on missions and to restore the Basilica of St Apollinare, where the mobster was laid to rest next to popes and cardinals after his death in 1990.
The claims, which the Vatican has not commented on, may explain how such a reviled criminal was buried in such a hallowed site. Last week, to deflect growing criticism and to help resolve a 30-year-old murder mystery, it emerged that Vatican officials had decided to move the remains of De Pedis from his special crypt.
May 1, 2012
Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand
Furthermore. . .
Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously rejects personhood for embryos.
One in seven think the world is coming to an end
A recent poll finds 73% of Arizona voters supporting the Dream act.
Infrequently asked questions
If killing Bin Laden was so great, why aren't we safer and happier?
Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously rejects personhood for embryos.
One in seven think the world is coming to an end
A recent poll finds 73% of Arizona voters supporting the Dream act.
Infrequently asked questions
If killing Bin Laden was so great, why aren't we safer and happier?
What Obama really said about Afghanistan
David Swanson, War is a Crime - President Obama has signed an agreement with President Karzai to keep a major U.S. military presence in Afghanistan (currently about three times the size Obama began with) through the end of 2014, and to allow a significant unspecified presence beyond that date, with no end date stipulated. Obama stresses that no permanent U.S. bases will be involved, but his agreement requires Afghanistan to let U.S. troops use "Afghan" bases.
Obama forgot to provide any reason not to withdraw from Afghanistan now, given majority U.S. desire to end the war. Obama spoke on Tuesday of a transition to Afghan control, but we've heard that talk for a decade. That's not some new bright idea that requires two-and-a-half more years to develop.
Obama talked of fighting al Qaeda, but the U.S. has not been fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and has admitted for years that there is virtually no al Qaeda presence there. That's not the two-year project, and it's not the reason to remain indefinitely after 2014.
The agreement requires that all "entities" involved in a peace process renounce violence, but the Taliban will no more do that while under foreign occupation than the United States will do so while occupying. This is not a serious plan to leave. Nor is it a plan based on Afghan sovereignty, numerous claims to the contrary notwithstanding. This is a treaty for more years of war, on the model of the Bush-Maliki treaty for Iraq, but with the difference that theirs included an end date.
The agreement says it enters into force when "the Parties notify one another, through diplomatic channels, of the completion of their respective internal legal requirements." The U.S. Constitution requires ratification by the Senate of all treaties. Congress could insist on its right to approve or reject this, just as the Afghan Parliament will be permitted to do. Or Congress could require withdrawal now, as does bill HR 780, which has 70 cosponsors.
Obama forgot to provide any reason not to withdraw from Afghanistan now, given majority U.S. desire to end the war. Obama spoke on Tuesday of a transition to Afghan control, but we've heard that talk for a decade. That's not some new bright idea that requires two-and-a-half more years to develop.
Obama talked of fighting al Qaeda, but the U.S. has not been fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and has admitted for years that there is virtually no al Qaeda presence there. That's not the two-year project, and it's not the reason to remain indefinitely after 2014.
The agreement requires that all "entities" involved in a peace process renounce violence, but the Taliban will no more do that while under foreign occupation than the United States will do so while occupying. This is not a serious plan to leave. Nor is it a plan based on Afghan sovereignty, numerous claims to the contrary notwithstanding. This is a treaty for more years of war, on the model of the Bush-Maliki treaty for Iraq, but with the difference that theirs included an end date.
The agreement says it enters into force when "the Parties notify one another, through diplomatic channels, of the completion of their respective internal legal requirements." The U.S. Constitution requires ratification by the Senate of all treaties. Congress could insist on its right to approve or reject this, just as the Afghan Parliament will be permitted to do. Or Congress could require withdrawal now, as does bill HR 780, which has 70 cosponsors.
Living in politicial madness
Sam Smith
After three decades of national policies damaging the average American, it is amazing that the reaction has been as calm has it has been. Highly deceptive propaganda, the collapse of liberalism, and the atomizing ipodization of ordinary life have all contributed, but even these can't permanently conceal the fact that most Americans are being badly screwed. And know it.
The arrest of "anarchists" allegedly plotting to blow up an Ohio bridge is a reminder that just because something is delayed doesn't mean it isn't coming. A reasonable expectation is that the number and intensity of violent reactions will increase substantially. And the reasons won't simply be public anger. It has been part of the strategy of our government since 9/11 to create fear in order to justify actions to protect themselves. One thing our leaders understand is that the anger is directed at them far more than at ordinary citizens. It was, after all, the World Trade Center and not Dubuque that was attacked.
The rise in public anger will vary from the heroic to the inspiring to the badly misguided. The corporate media will inevitably use the latter examples to characterize all of what is happening and to justified new police assaults on our Constitution and communities.
Hence we can expect to hear much about the Ohio bridge episode, even as we hear virtually nothing about the numerous bridges on the verge of collapse due to Republican greed and indifference. It is one of the characteristics of such times that only those with the power to enforce the law may violate it with impunity. Thus our president can murder at will, trash the law and never have to worry that those three reporters in the corner of the press room might actually be FBI agents.
In such times - when some are blowing up bridges and others blowing up the law - a sense of chaos develops. A plethora of madness and a paucity of common sense.
Central to maintaining one's own sanity at such times is to not let the media, bomb throwers, the FBI or politicians define our world and situation.
Ignore that rule and you find yourself falling into a fantastical miasma. For example, consider this report by NPR:
We won't know the answers, if at all, until a lot of other things have happened. But we do know that, as David Shipler wrote in the NY Times:
There is, of course, no way to sort all this out without the distance of history. But in the meanwhile, those seeking a road back to democracy and decency have to avoid getting caught in the cauldron of craziness. Bridge bombers, much of the police and media, and many of our political leaders have enormous vested interest in chaos. The answer is not in judging righteousness of specific acts but in resolving the conflicts that created the problem in the first place.
The rest of us need to keep helping to build an alternative reality unruled by chaos and violence. We can not let ourselves be defined by the madness of others.
After three decades of national policies damaging the average American, it is amazing that the reaction has been as calm has it has been. Highly deceptive propaganda, the collapse of liberalism, and the atomizing ipodization of ordinary life have all contributed, but even these can't permanently conceal the fact that most Americans are being badly screwed. And know it.
The arrest of "anarchists" allegedly plotting to blow up an Ohio bridge is a reminder that just because something is delayed doesn't mean it isn't coming. A reasonable expectation is that the number and intensity of violent reactions will increase substantially. And the reasons won't simply be public anger. It has been part of the strategy of our government since 9/11 to create fear in order to justify actions to protect themselves. One thing our leaders understand is that the anger is directed at them far more than at ordinary citizens. It was, after all, the World Trade Center and not Dubuque that was attacked.
The rise in public anger will vary from the heroic to the inspiring to the badly misguided. The corporate media will inevitably use the latter examples to characterize all of what is happening and to justified new police assaults on our Constitution and communities.
Hence we can expect to hear much about the Ohio bridge episode, even as we hear virtually nothing about the numerous bridges on the verge of collapse due to Republican greed and indifference. It is one of the characteristics of such times that only those with the power to enforce the law may violate it with impunity. Thus our president can murder at will, trash the law and never have to worry that those three reporters in the corner of the press room might actually be FBI agents.
In such times - when some are blowing up bridges and others blowing up the law - a sense of chaos develops. A plethora of madness and a paucity of common sense.
Central to maintaining one's own sanity at such times is to not let the media, bomb throwers, the FBI or politicians define our world and situation.
Ignore that rule and you find yourself falling into a fantastical miasma. For example, consider this report by NPR:
The FBI announced this morning that it "has arrested five people on terrorism charges, accusing them of planning to blow up a bridge near Brecksville, Ohio," our colleagues at WKSU report.
The station says the bridge on State Route 82 "crosses over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Brecksville and Northfield." And it adds that "the FBI says the five were identified as self-proclaimed anarchists with no connection to international terrorism. They're accused of conspiring to get C-4 explosives that would be detonated remotely."Now, one might ask, where did they get these inoperable explosive devices? Based on past experience, the most logical source was the FBI. We might also ask, to what extent did the FBI encourage and create this enterprise in the first place? Did the agents con some not so intelligent "anarchists" into doing something they probably wouldn't have done if the FBI had never been there to show them how?
According to CNN, the FBI says in a statement that "the public was never in danger from explosive devices ... [the suspects were] closely monitored by law enforcement ... [and the explosives were] inoperable and posed no threat to the public."
Cleveland's Plain Dealer writes that, according to the FBI, the men had "planted what they believed were explosive devices under the Ohio 82 bridge ... as part of a May Day protest today."
We won't know the answers, if at all, until a lot of other things have happened. But we do know that, as David Shipler wrote in the NY Times:
The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.Now count the number of laws that President Obama, law enforcement agencies, and public officials of all sorts have routinely broken. Then consider the anger this has created and the encouragement to meet fire with fire that it has caused. For every bomb that explodes or envelope of white powder that appears on the desk of someone in power, ask yourself: would this have happened if those in power had operated within the law and with respect and sanity?
There is, of course, no way to sort all this out without the distance of history. But in the meanwhile, those seeking a road back to democracy and decency have to avoid getting caught in the cauldron of craziness. Bridge bombers, much of the police and media, and many of our political leaders have enormous vested interest in chaos. The answer is not in judging righteousness of specific acts but in resolving the conflicts that created the problem in the first place.
The rest of us need to keep helping to build an alternative reality unruled by chaos and violence. We can not let ourselves be defined by the madness of others.
America lags in life expectancy in many locales
McClatchy - “What are we getting for our health care dollar if we’re spending more per capita than any other country and we have the life expectancies of countries that are reeling from civil wars or natural disasters?” asked William Heisel of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “By many measures, we should have better outcomes.”
The institute, based at the University of Washington, compiled data on every county in the U.S. to calculate life expectancy each year from 1989 through 2009. It also compared county life expectancies to those in other countries. The average life expectancy for men in the U.S. in 2009 was 76.2 years and for women 81.3 years, the institute found. But life expectancies varied dramatically. In Marin County, Calif., men could expect to live to a ripe 81.6 years. In two Mississippi counties, male life expectancy was just 66.1 years, about the same as in Pakistan.
Women’s life expectancies ranged from 85.8 years in Collier County, Fla., to 74.1 years in McDowell, W.Va., comparable to that of Algeria.
MORE
The institute, based at the University of Washington, compiled data on every county in the U.S. to calculate life expectancy each year from 1989 through 2009. It also compared county life expectancies to those in other countries. The average life expectancy for men in the U.S. in 2009 was 76.2 years and for women 81.3 years, the institute found. But life expectancies varied dramatically. In Marin County, Calif., men could expect to live to a ripe 81.6 years. In two Mississippi counties, male life expectancy was just 66.1 years, about the same as in Pakistan.
Women’s life expectancies ranged from 85.8 years in Collier County, Fla., to 74.1 years in McDowell, W.Va., comparable to that of Algeria.
MORE
Don't say he didn't warn you
"Too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938." Barack Obama, 2006
Federal judge stops Texas from banning funds to Planned Parenhood
Freak Out Nation - A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting State funds through the Women’s Health Program. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law forbidding state agencies from providing funds to any organization affiliated with abortion providers even though eight Planned Parenthood clinics do not provide abortions — so they sued the State. According to Planned Parenthood via Think Progress, “over 40 percent of women who received services through the Women’s Health Program chose to rely on a Planned Parenthood health center for Women’s Health Program services.”
Criminalizing kids
Shine - When a six-year-old boy kicked his school principal last week, the school called in police, not parents.
The student had already been suspended for kicking and biting another official, when he allegedly threatened a teacher and kicked Principal Pat Lumbley. This time, the child was placed in police custody and charged with battery and intimidation.
Increasingly, precincts have become de facto detention centers. In Albuquerque alone, 90,000 students were arrested between 2009-2010. In Texas, an estimated 300,000 kids were give misdemeanors in 2010. That number includes children as young as 6.
...Over the past year, kids under the age of 13 have been arrested, or threatened with arrest, for giving wedgies, having a food fight and spraying perfume. In more serious circumstances, children are facing real prison time over hockey game fouls and threatening classroom notes.
The student had already been suspended for kicking and biting another official, when he allegedly threatened a teacher and kicked Principal Pat Lumbley. This time, the child was placed in police custody and charged with battery and intimidation.
Increasingly, precincts have become de facto detention centers. In Albuquerque alone, 90,000 students were arrested between 2009-2010. In Texas, an estimated 300,000 kids were give misdemeanors in 2010. That number includes children as young as 6.
...Over the past year, kids under the age of 13 have been arrested, or threatened with arrest, for giving wedgies, having a food fight and spraying perfume. In more serious circumstances, children are facing real prison time over hockey game fouls and threatening classroom notes.
The difference between politics and life
Boston Globe - Senator Scott Brown, who won office vowing to be the 41st vote to block President Obama’s health care law, and who has since voted three times to repeal it, acknowledged Monday that he takes advantage of one of its components to keep his elder daughter on his congressional health insurance plan. “Of course I do,’’ Brown said. He said that element of the law, which has proven widely popular despite a split over the broader measure, can be provided by states.
FBI & NY police engage in pre-May Day intimidation
Buzz Feed - Federal and New York City authorities paid surprise house calls to people related to the Occupy Wall Street movement this morning in advance of tomorrow's May Day protests. At least three residences were visited by police, two by officers from the New York City police department, one by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, according to Occupy organizers and a representative of the National Lawyers Guild.
April 30, 2012
1800 University of Oregon profs win union status
AFL-CIO - More than 1,800 University of Oregon faculty members now have a voice at work after they chose to join United Academics, an affiliate of AFT Oregon and the American Association of University Professors. The Oregon Employment Relations Board Friday certified the professors’ choice after the university dropped its objections. The new union includes tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty, adjunct instructors, research associates and assistants and post-doctoral scholars
A letter to Thomas Jefferson
[From our overstocked archives: Written by Edward Schwartz of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values for Social Policy in 1974]
Mr. Thomas Jefferson
Continental Congress
Independence Hall
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dear Mr. Jefferson:
We have read your "Declaration of Independence" with great interest. Certainly, it represents a considerable undertaking, and many of your statements do merit serious consideration. Unfortunately, the Declaration as a whole fails to meet recently adopted specifications for proposals to the Crown, so we must return the document to you for further refinement. The questions which follow might assist you in your process of revision.
1. In your opening paragraph you use the phrase "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God." What are these laws? In what way are they the criteria on which you base your central arguments? Please document with citations from the recent literature.
2. In the same paragraph you refer to the "opinions of mankind." Whose polling data are you using? Without specific evidence, it seems to us, the "opinions of mankind" are a matter of opinion.
3. You hold certain truths to be "self-evident." Could you please elaborate. If they are as evident as you claim, then it should not be difficult for you to locate the appropriate supporting statistics.
4. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" seem to be the goals of your proposal. These are not measurable goals. If you were to say that "among these is the ability to sustain an average life expectancy in six of the 13 colonies of at least 55 years, and to enable all newspapers in the colonies to print news without outside interference, and to raise the average income of the colonists by 10 percent in the next 10 years," these would be measurable goals. Please clarify.
5. You state that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government. ..." Have you weighed this assertion against all the alternatives? Or is it predicated solely on the baser instincts?
6. Your description of the existing situation is quite extensive. Such a long list of grievances should precede the statement of goals, not follow it.
7. Your strategy for achieving your goal is not developed at all. You state that the colonies "ought to be Free and Independent States," and that they are "Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown." Who or what must change to achieve this objective? In what way must they change? What resistance must you overcome to achieve the change? What specific steps will you take to overcome the resistance? How long will it take? We have found that a little foresight in these areas helps to prevent careless errors later on.
8. Who among the list of signatories will be responsible for implementing your strategy? Who conceived it? Who provided the theoretical research? Who will constitute the advisory committee? Please submit an organization chart.
9. You must include an evaluation design. We have been requiring this since Queen Anne's War.
10. What impact will your program have? Your failure to include any assessment of this inspires little confidence in the long-range prospects of your undertaking.
11. Please submit a PERT diagram, an activity chart, and an itemized budget.
We hope that these comments prove useful in revising your "Declaration of Independence."
Best Wishes,
Lord North
Mr. Thomas Jefferson
Continental Congress
Independence Hall
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dear Mr. Jefferson:
We have read your "Declaration of Independence" with great interest. Certainly, it represents a considerable undertaking, and many of your statements do merit serious consideration. Unfortunately, the Declaration as a whole fails to meet recently adopted specifications for proposals to the Crown, so we must return the document to you for further refinement. The questions which follow might assist you in your process of revision.
1. In your opening paragraph you use the phrase "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God." What are these laws? In what way are they the criteria on which you base your central arguments? Please document with citations from the recent literature.
2. In the same paragraph you refer to the "opinions of mankind." Whose polling data are you using? Without specific evidence, it seems to us, the "opinions of mankind" are a matter of opinion.
3. You hold certain truths to be "self-evident." Could you please elaborate. If they are as evident as you claim, then it should not be difficult for you to locate the appropriate supporting statistics.
4. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" seem to be the goals of your proposal. These are not measurable goals. If you were to say that "among these is the ability to sustain an average life expectancy in six of the 13 colonies of at least 55 years, and to enable all newspapers in the colonies to print news without outside interference, and to raise the average income of the colonists by 10 percent in the next 10 years," these would be measurable goals. Please clarify.
5. You state that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government. ..." Have you weighed this assertion against all the alternatives? Or is it predicated solely on the baser instincts?
6. Your description of the existing situation is quite extensive. Such a long list of grievances should precede the statement of goals, not follow it.
7. Your strategy for achieving your goal is not developed at all. You state that the colonies "ought to be Free and Independent States," and that they are "Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown." Who or what must change to achieve this objective? In what way must they change? What resistance must you overcome to achieve the change? What specific steps will you take to overcome the resistance? How long will it take? We have found that a little foresight in these areas helps to prevent careless errors later on.
8. Who among the list of signatories will be responsible for implementing your strategy? Who conceived it? Who provided the theoretical research? Who will constitute the advisory committee? Please submit an organization chart.
9. You must include an evaluation design. We have been requiring this since Queen Anne's War.
10. What impact will your program have? Your failure to include any assessment of this inspires little confidence in the long-range prospects of your undertaking.
11. Please submit a PERT diagram, an activity chart, and an itemized budget.
We hope that these comments prove useful in revising your "Declaration of Independence."
Best Wishes,
Lord North
Leading from behind
From our overstocked archives, 2008:
An interesting interview with Nelson Mandela appears in Time Magazine in which Mandela lays out ten principles of leadership. Number 3 particularly struck us because it is one that seems to have been forgotten in an age governed by corporate executive systems of control rather than the community organizer's rules of getting things done:
An interesting interview with Nelson Mandela appears in Time Magazine in which Mandela lays out ten principles of leadership. Number 3 particularly struck us because it is one that seems to have been forgotten in an age governed by corporate executive systems of control rather than the community organizer's rules of getting things done:
No. 3: Lead from the back - and let others believe they are in front. Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. "You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind." . . .
As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief's job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don't enter the debate too early," he used to say.
"During the time I worked with Mandela, he often called meetings of his kitchen cabinet at his home in Houghton, a lovely old suburb of Johannesburg. He would gather half a dozen men, Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki (who is now the South African President) and others around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway. Some of his colleagues would shout at him - to move faster, to be more radical - and Mandela would simply listen. When he finally did speak at those meetings, he slowly and methodically summarized everyone's points of view and then unfurled his own thoughts, subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it. The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. "It is wise," he said, "to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea."
What we really should be doing about Social Security
Michael Hiltzik, LA Times- The greater danger in all the panicky talk [about Social Security] from politicians and pundits, not to mention Wall Street grandees,...is that it will keep people from focusing on the most important figure in the trustees' report. It appears on Page 2, and what it says is that right now Social Security is providing benefits to 55 million people.
That testifies to the reach of a program that keeps 20 million Americans out of poverty and helps stabilize the economy by putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on goods and services. And it points to the best way to improve Social Security's value for all Americans: by increasing benefits to better serve the neediest workers, and expanding its reach to cover workers and dependents who have been cheated by or excluded from the system for far too long.
...The idea has been around for years, but its supporters have been hunkered down against a conservative campaign to cut, cut, cut. It's emerging from its foxhole now because the long recession and two stock market crashes have put the final bullets into the hopes of millions of Americans for a secure retirement.
Of the customary three legs of the retirement stool, two — personal savings and employer-paid pensions — have been shattered into smithereens by the markets, high unemployment and changes in workplace benefits. Social Security is the third leg.
"What we really should be doing is beefing up the third leg of the stool, and not breaking it too," says Kelly Ross, a retirement expert at the AFL-CIO. The union is calling for increasing benefits across the board, changing the cost-of-living formula to an index geared to the real costs faced by seniors, and scrapping the cap on wage income subject to payroll taxes, which has been set for this year at $110,100.
That testifies to the reach of a program that keeps 20 million Americans out of poverty and helps stabilize the economy by putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on goods and services. And it points to the best way to improve Social Security's value for all Americans: by increasing benefits to better serve the neediest workers, and expanding its reach to cover workers and dependents who have been cheated by or excluded from the system for far too long.
...The idea has been around for years, but its supporters have been hunkered down against a conservative campaign to cut, cut, cut. It's emerging from its foxhole now because the long recession and two stock market crashes have put the final bullets into the hopes of millions of Americans for a secure retirement.
Of the customary three legs of the retirement stool, two — personal savings and employer-paid pensions — have been shattered into smithereens by the markets, high unemployment and changes in workplace benefits. Social Security is the third leg.
"What we really should be doing is beefing up the third leg of the stool, and not breaking it too," says Kelly Ross, a retirement expert at the AFL-CIO. The union is calling for increasing benefits across the board, changing the cost-of-living formula to an index geared to the real costs faced by seniors, and scrapping the cap on wage income subject to payroll taxes, which has been set for this year at $110,100.
Why shouldn't we be depressed?
Chris Hedges, Truth Dig - When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony.
...The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.
MORE
...The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.
MORE
Private prison corporations fight sane justice policies
Alternet - The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws." The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.
Orwellandia orders no photos of huge Heathrow customs lines
Guardian - Heathrow Airport has been ordered by the UK Border Agency to stop handing out to passengers leaflets acknowledging the "very long delays" at immigration, which have become a serious government concern in the runup to the Olympics. Passengers flying into the airport at the weekend reported having to wait for up to three hours before clearing passport control. But after leaflets apologising for the problem were handed out by BAA, which owns Heathrow, the UKBA warned that they were "inappropriate" and that ministers would take "a very dim view". The airport operator was also told to prevent passengers taking pictures in the arrivals hall, according to the Daily Telegraph, which obtained correspondence from Marc Owen, director of UKBA operations at Heathrow. Pictures of lengthy queues have been posted on Twitter by frustrated travellers.
Chicago anti-protest plans becoming bizarre
CBS Chicago - Are there plans in place for a mass evacuation of downtown in the event of riots on May 20-21? A Red Cross memo out of Milwaukee indicates that there is.
Officials there have been asked to make plans to assist residents in the event of a mass exodus.
Chicago officials say the plan didn’t come from them. The U.S. Secret Service isn’t talking.
There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans.
Officials there have been asked to make plans to assist residents in the event of a mass exodus.
Chicago officials say the plan didn’t come from them. The U.S. Secret Service isn’t talking.
There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans.
May 1 update
Bloomberg - Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe tomorrow calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.
Protesters march to Wall Street during an ACT-UP and Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York, on April 25, 2012. Photographer: by John Moore/Getty Images
In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.
Protesters march to Wall Street during an ACT-UP and Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York, on April 25, 2012. Photographer: by John Moore/Getty Images
In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.
Praying with Mitt
Last week we ran a series on the relationship between Mitt Romney and Mormonism, a topic with which neither the candidate nor the media wish to deal. The whole series can be found here. We close the series now with a collection of short items on the topic
Salon - Mormon leader Marlin Jensen has recently acknowledged that Latter-day Saints are leaving the fold in droves. The former church historian spoke frankly to a group of students at Utah State University, saying, "We've never had a period of - I'll call it apostasy - like we're having now."
Church leaders never anticipated the Internet generation would access their history online. Joseph Smith used magic stones to see into the past. Today, young Mormons use Google. When they discover that their founding prophet wedded several teenage girls, it is often a traumatic revelation. Mormons experience a crisis of trust, if not outright betrayal, from their leaders.
Though the actual numbers of defections have not been published, anecdotal stories abound throughout Utah. It's not just Joseph's sex life that causes many Mormons to mistrust their leaders, but also the church's persistent commitment to right-wing politics.
Mitt Romney, 2002 - My commitment to my Church and faith is all encompassing
Sally Denton, Salon - At the recent GOP presidential debate in Florida, Romney professed that the Declaration of Independence is a theological document, not specific to the rebellious 13 colonies, but establishing a covenant "between God and man." Which would suggest that Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.
Romney avoids mentioning it, but [Joseph] Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an "army of God" advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that "they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them." Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. He had predicted the emergence of "the one Mighty and Strong" - a leader who would "set in order the house of God" - and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.
….A multibillion-dollar business empire that includes agribusiness, mining, insurance, electronic and print media, manufacturing, movie production, commercial real estate, defense contracting, retail stores and banking, the Mormon church has unprecedented economic and political power. Despite a solemn stricture against any act or tolerance of gambling, Mormons have been heavily invested and exceptionally influential in the Nevada gaming industry since the great expansion of modern Las Vegas in the 1950s. Valued for their unquestioning loyalty to authority as well as general sobriety - they are prohibited from imbibing in alcohol, tobacco or coffee - Mormons have long been recruited into top positions in government agencies and multinational corporations. They are prominent in such institutions as the CIA, FBI and the national nuclear weapons laboratories, giving the church a sphere of influence unlike any other American religion in the top echelons of government.When Morman intellectuals question their faith
When Mormons defect
What Romney presumably believes about American history, as outlined by Robert M Bowman Jr of the Institute for Religious Research:
Salon - Mormon leader Marlin Jensen has recently acknowledged that Latter-day Saints are leaving the fold in droves. The former church historian spoke frankly to a group of students at Utah State University, saying, "We've never had a period of - I'll call it apostasy - like we're having now."
Church leaders never anticipated the Internet generation would access their history online. Joseph Smith used magic stones to see into the past. Today, young Mormons use Google. When they discover that their founding prophet wedded several teenage girls, it is often a traumatic revelation. Mormons experience a crisis of trust, if not outright betrayal, from their leaders.
Though the actual numbers of defections have not been published, anecdotal stories abound throughout Utah. It's not just Joseph's sex life that causes many Mormons to mistrust their leaders, but also the church's persistent commitment to right-wing politics.
Mitt Romney, 2002 - My commitment to my Church and faith is all encompassing
Sally Denton, Salon - At the recent GOP presidential debate in Florida, Romney professed that the Declaration of Independence is a theological document, not specific to the rebellious 13 colonies, but establishing a covenant "between God and man." Which would suggest that Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.
Romney avoids mentioning it, but [Joseph] Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an "army of God" advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that "they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them." Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. He had predicted the emergence of "the one Mighty and Strong" - a leader who would "set in order the house of God" - and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.
….A multibillion-dollar business empire that includes agribusiness, mining, insurance, electronic and print media, manufacturing, movie production, commercial real estate, defense contracting, retail stores and banking, the Mormon church has unprecedented economic and political power. Despite a solemn stricture against any act or tolerance of gambling, Mormons have been heavily invested and exceptionally influential in the Nevada gaming industry since the great expansion of modern Las Vegas in the 1950s. Valued for their unquestioning loyalty to authority as well as general sobriety - they are prohibited from imbibing in alcohol, tobacco or coffee - Mormons have long been recruited into top positions in government agencies and multinational corporations. They are prominent in such institutions as the CIA, FBI and the national nuclear weapons laboratories, giving the church a sphere of influence unlike any other American religion in the top echelons of government.When Morman intellectuals question their faith
When Mormons defect
What Romney presumably believes about American history, as outlined by Robert M Bowman Jr of the Institute for Religious Research:
- American Indians are direct descendants primarily of the Book of Mormon people known as the Lamanites, who were of Israelite stock.
- The American continent is the "promised land" of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and the LDS Church's mission is to conduct the "gathering of Israel" by bringing them to America.
- Zion is to be built in America, centered at a temple to be built in Independence, Missouri.
April 29, 2012
White House Correspondents Dinner cont'd
Dylan Stableford, The Cutline - "It is the single most revolting annual gathering of pseudojournalistic **** suckery in all the land," Gawker's Hamilton Nolan wrote. "The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is a shameful display of whoredom that makes the 'average American' vomit in disgust." Nolan was not invited.
"I ask one question every year," CBS News' Mark Knoller (who was invited) wrote. "Who are all these people? Didn't see any of them covering [the president] at Ft. Stewart yesterday."
"The White House Correspondents' Dinner underlines everything that's systemically wrong with American journalism," Milo Yiannopoulos, editor of Kernal magazine, wrote. "The purpose of a free press is to hold the powerful to account. You can't do that if you're sucking up, hoping for swanky dinner invitations."
"Is the fawning, sycophantic worship service to wealth, power and celebrity over?" Politico's Ben White pondered early Sunday. "Or is there more crap today?"
"I ask one question every year," CBS News' Mark Knoller (who was invited) wrote. "Who are all these people? Didn't see any of them covering [the president] at Ft. Stewart yesterday."
"The White House Correspondents' Dinner underlines everything that's systemically wrong with American journalism," Milo Yiannopoulos, editor of Kernal magazine, wrote. "The purpose of a free press is to hold the powerful to account. You can't do that if you're sucking up, hoping for swanky dinner invitations."
"Is the fawning, sycophantic worship service to wealth, power and celebrity over?" Politico's Ben White pondered early Sunday. "Or is there more crap today?"
Britain to station surface to air missiles on citizens' homes for Olympics
Boing Boing - Residents of a gated community in east London got Ministry of Defence leaflets through their doors advising them that their roofs might be commandeers for surface-to-air missiles during the London Olympics this summer. The MoD assured them that the missiles on their roof "will only be authorised for active use following specific orders from the highest levels of government in response to a confirmed and extreme security threat". Gosh, the Olypmics sure are wonderful.
Chicago's war on protests escalates
Chicago Sun Times - Starting next week, expect to see a showing of federal law enforcement in “battle” gear, weapons slung, in a highly visible effort to protect a perimeter that encompasses the federally operated buildings in the Loop.
Law enforcement has dubbed their efforts “Operation Red Zone.” It’s headed by the Federal Protective Service, which is working with state, federal and local law enforcement in anticipation of the NATO Summit in Chicago on May 20 and 21.
Even though the actual meetings for the summit will happen at McCormick Place, federal law enforcement is aiming to protect a vast area in the Loop where thousands of federal employees and dozens of government offices are located.
The Federal Protective Service will deploy additional personnel beginning May 1, bringing in more people from out of town and outfitting them in “battle dress uniform.”
They will be carrying “non-lethal” long guns — bean bag weapons — in a show of force that at the same time will allow people to move in and out of the zone freely, Cleophas Bradley, deputy regional director with the Federal Protective Service told federal employees on Wednesday.
Celebrating the incest between Washington media and power
If you want to know how Washington politicians get away with so much, read stories like this. The Washington media has become embedded in an incestuous relationship with power that makes it highly unreliable and untrustworthy to its supposed audience. And it gets worse by the year.
Dan Zak, Washington Post - Hollywood and Washington went on a romantic date Saturday night in the basement ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where more than 2,000 politicians, celebrities, journalists and hangers-on dined on crabmeat terrine and chocolate truffles and belly-laughed at remarks delivered by President Obama and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
...Off the dais, elites mingled with elites. Kate Hudson was next to former secretary of state Colin Powell and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family” and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) cracked each other up and posed for photos together. When the dessert course arrived, Vergara ate half her mousse. Christie cleaned his plate.
The dinner is perhaps the only venue on the planet where erstwhile presidential candidate Rick Santorum would snap a photo of eternally addled starlet Lindsay Lohan. Which he did. Lohan, whose date appeared to be her attorney, sat at Fox News’s table (No. 63) with Kim Kardashian, who’s famous because the media keeps her famous.
“I have the nuclear codes,” Obama said in a voice-over that lampooned his hot-mike moment with Dmitri Medvedev this month. “What am doing telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian?”
The yearly dinner is an opportunity for elected officials to momentarily ignore the business of the people, for journalists to pretend they’re stars, for the 1 percent to use second-rate California chardonnay to cleanse their palate of the aggravations of the real world: the deteriorating situation in Syria, for example, and the slowing of both U.S. economic growth and the country’s personal saving rate , which declined for the sixth straight quarter to 3.9 percent.
But all was bubbly at the Hilton, and pundits and politicians seemed to drop their adversarial role-playing — an act that keeps them on air or in office — in favor of buddy-buddiness. The Gingriches were mobbed by well-wishers at a pre-dinner reception hosted by this very newspaper.
...The White House Correspondents’ Association was founded in 1914, and the dinner became an annual tradition in 1920. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to attend, in 1924, and the dinner finally admitted women, at the prodding of Helen Thomas, in 1962. Its official function is to honor journalists and award scholarships, though the glitz outshines the recipients.
Dan Zak, Washington Post - Hollywood and Washington went on a romantic date Saturday night in the basement ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where more than 2,000 politicians, celebrities, journalists and hangers-on dined on crabmeat terrine and chocolate truffles and belly-laughed at remarks delivered by President Obama and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
...Off the dais, elites mingled with elites. Kate Hudson was next to former secretary of state Colin Powell and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family” and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) cracked each other up and posed for photos together. When the dessert course arrived, Vergara ate half her mousse. Christie cleaned his plate.
The dinner is perhaps the only venue on the planet where erstwhile presidential candidate Rick Santorum would snap a photo of eternally addled starlet Lindsay Lohan. Which he did. Lohan, whose date appeared to be her attorney, sat at Fox News’s table (No. 63) with Kim Kardashian, who’s famous because the media keeps her famous.
“I have the nuclear codes,” Obama said in a voice-over that lampooned his hot-mike moment with Dmitri Medvedev this month. “What am doing telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian?”
The yearly dinner is an opportunity for elected officials to momentarily ignore the business of the people, for journalists to pretend they’re stars, for the 1 percent to use second-rate California chardonnay to cleanse their palate of the aggravations of the real world: the deteriorating situation in Syria, for example, and the slowing of both U.S. economic growth and the country’s personal saving rate , which declined for the sixth straight quarter to 3.9 percent.
But all was bubbly at the Hilton, and pundits and politicians seemed to drop their adversarial role-playing — an act that keeps them on air or in office — in favor of buddy-buddiness. The Gingriches were mobbed by well-wishers at a pre-dinner reception hosted by this very newspaper.
...The White House Correspondents’ Association was founded in 1914, and the dinner became an annual tradition in 1920. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to attend, in 1924, and the dinner finally admitted women, at the prodding of Helen Thomas, in 1962. Its official function is to honor journalists and award scholarships, though the glitz outshines the recipients.
April 28, 2012
Arizona says Christianity the only religion allowed to be taught
Phoenix New Times - Under Arizona law, "all books, publications, papers and audiovisual materials of a sectarian, partisan or denominational character" are prohibited from public schools and their libraries.
Thanks to Governor Jan Brewer's signature on House Bill 2563, that law now excludes the Bible.
The Bible's been declared OK, as the bill also allows high schools to offer classes on "how the Bible has influenced Western culture," although nothing requires youngsters to take the class.
...According to a House summary on the bill, here's what the classes will include:
Thanks to Governor Jan Brewer's signature on House Bill 2563, that law now excludes the Bible.
The Bible's been declared OK, as the bill also allows high schools to offer classes on "how the Bible has influenced Western culture," although nothing requires youngsters to take the class.
...According to a House summary on the bill, here's what the classes will include:
While that happens, telling a story from the Bhagavad Gita will cause a teacher to lose his or her teaching certificate. Telling the kids about the story of Noah, from the Quran -- kiss the teaching certificate goodbye. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? No way.
- The contents, characters, poetry and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory and public policy.
- The contents of, history recorded by and literary style and structure of the Old and New Testament.
- The influence of the Old and New Testament on laws, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values and culture.
Stats
Bloomberg - Wisconsin placed 42nd in the most recent Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States index, which includes personal income, tax revenue and employment. Illinois gained 32,000 jobs in the 12 months ending in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found. Wisconsin, where [Governor] Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs with the help of business-tax breaks, lost 16,900.
Anti-government Tea Party votes for CISPA
Forbes - CISPA, or the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing And Protection Act, passed the House yesterday. The bill is full of problematic intrusions into individual privacy and online liberty, and yet those members of the House who associate themselves with limited government were largely responsible for its passage.
“The complete roll call shows 206 Republicans voting for the bill, 28 against,” writes Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh. “Democrats went 42 to 140 in the opposite direction.”
Of these Republicans, “47 of the 66 members of the House Tea Party Caucus” also supported the bill, notes Patrick Cahalan.
“The complete roll call shows 206 Republicans voting for the bill, 28 against,” writes Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh. “Democrats went 42 to 140 in the opposite direction.”
Of these Republicans, “47 of the 66 members of the House Tea Party Caucus” also supported the bill, notes Patrick Cahalan.
How the media has twisted the Social Security issue
Columbia Journalism Review - Shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, Washington Post budget correspondent Lori Montgomery reported that, while a debate raged around major budgetary changes and the wisdom of cutting Social Security, a “surprisingly broad consensus is forming around the actions required to stabilize borrowing and ease fears of a European-style debt crisis in the United States.” A consensus among whom, we asked? Ordinary people who like Social Security the way it is, opinion leaders, or the reporters who record what those opinion leaders say?
Gallup polls dating back six decades consistently show some 70 percent of the public strongly supports Social Security. Most Washington opinion makers think otherwise, though. Indeed, listening to the politicians and policy gurus, one would conclude that this most basic of retirement programs for nearly all Americans is in grave danger, and America itself is in grave danger because of it.
For nearly three years CJR has observed that much of the press has reported only one side of this story using “facts” that are misleading or flat-out wrong while ignoring others...
To be sure, Social Security is not in perfect financial health. But the fact is, the program can pay full benefits until 2036, and three-quarters of the benefits after that without new revenues. Many experts believe small fixes like lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes—$110,100 for 2012—will make Social Security solvent for decades. But that option is not on Washington’s table, nor has it been discussed much in the press. Why not? Because it doesn’t fit into the doom-and-gloom narrative that has proved politically expedient to tell?
...“The elite press repeatedly quotes the commentary of the devoted opponents of social insurance retirement programs,” says Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor. “But they appear unaware of how they are supporting a strategic attack on social insurance that has been going on for years.”
...When, last year, the congressional supercommittee was attempting to cut a deal on Social Security, the Post noted that “crunch time” came with “a new round of self-centered, shortsighted intransigence on the part of AARP and its fellow don’t touch-my benefits purists.”
Samuelson has made these points before. In 1988, writing for Newsweek, he argued Social Security is a welfare program. In 1996, also in Newsweek, he seemed to challenge Bill Clinton “to alter the debate on ‘middle class entitlements.’” Earlier this year in the Post, Samuelson asserted “spending on the elderly is slowly and inexorably crowding out the rest of government.”
MORE
Gallup polls dating back six decades consistently show some 70 percent of the public strongly supports Social Security. Most Washington opinion makers think otherwise, though. Indeed, listening to the politicians and policy gurus, one would conclude that this most basic of retirement programs for nearly all Americans is in grave danger, and America itself is in grave danger because of it.
For nearly three years CJR has observed that much of the press has reported only one side of this story using “facts” that are misleading or flat-out wrong while ignoring others...
To be sure, Social Security is not in perfect financial health. But the fact is, the program can pay full benefits until 2036, and three-quarters of the benefits after that without new revenues. Many experts believe small fixes like lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes—$110,100 for 2012—will make Social Security solvent for decades. But that option is not on Washington’s table, nor has it been discussed much in the press. Why not? Because it doesn’t fit into the doom-and-gloom narrative that has proved politically expedient to tell?
...“The elite press repeatedly quotes the commentary of the devoted opponents of social insurance retirement programs,” says Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor. “But they appear unaware of how they are supporting a strategic attack on social insurance that has been going on for years.”
...When, last year, the congressional supercommittee was attempting to cut a deal on Social Security, the Post noted that “crunch time” came with “a new round of self-centered, shortsighted intransigence on the part of AARP and its fellow don’t touch-my benefits purists.”
Samuelson has made these points before. In 1988, writing for Newsweek, he argued Social Security is a welfare program. In 1996, also in Newsweek, he seemed to challenge Bill Clinton “to alter the debate on ‘middle class entitlements.’” Earlier this year in the Post, Samuelson asserted “spending on the elderly is slowly and inexorably crowding out the rest of government.”
MORE
Ex-Israeli spymaster worried by country's leadership
Common Dreams - The former head of Israel's Shin Bet security agency has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of having "messianic feelings" behind their threats to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran and they should not be trusted.
"I don't have faith in the current leadership of Israel to lead us to an event of this magnitude, of war with Iran," Yuval Diskin said at a public meeting Friday, video of which was posted on the Internet the today and quickly became the lead news item in Israel.
"I do not believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on Messianic feelings," he continued. "I have seen them up close. They are not messiahs, these two, and they are not the people that I personally trust to lead Israel into an event."
Diskin also said, "Over the past 10-15 years Israel has become more and more racist. All of the studies point to this. This is racism toward Arabs and toward foreigners, and we are also become a more belligerent society."
"I don't have faith in the current leadership of Israel to lead us to an event of this magnitude, of war with Iran," Yuval Diskin said at a public meeting Friday, video of which was posted on the Internet the today and quickly became the lead news item in Israel.
"I do not believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on Messianic feelings," he continued. "I have seen them up close. They are not messiahs, these two, and they are not the people that I personally trust to lead Israel into an event."
Diskin also said, "Over the past 10-15 years Israel has become more and more racist. All of the studies point to this. This is racism toward Arabs and toward foreigners, and we are also become a more belligerent society."
Physics news update
Phys.org -- Finding new connections between different disciplines leads to new – and sometimes useful – ideas. That’s exactly what happened when scientists in the Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York, in collaboration with City College of CUNY, Purdue University and University of Alberta, leveraged mathematical topology to create an artificially nanostructured anisotropic (exhibiting properties with different values when measured along axes in different directions) metamaterial that can be switched from a non-conductive dielectric state to a medium that behaves like metal in one direction and like a dielectric another. The metamaterial’s optical properties was mapped onto a topological transformation of an ellipsoidal surface into an hyperboloid – and transitioning from one to the other dramatically increases the photon density, resulting in dramatic increase in the light intensity inside the material.
Word: Obama's biggest accomplishment?
Peter Baker & Michael D, Shear, NY Times - Presidents running for re-election typically boast of programs they created, people they helped or laws they signed. They talk about rising test scores or falling deficits or expanding job rolls. President Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man.
To be sure, that man was Osama bin Laden, and he is not mourned among either the president’s supporters or detractors. But in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to the Qaeda mastermind, Mr. Obama has made a concerted, if to some indecorous, effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.
To be sure, that man was Osama bin Laden, and he is not mourned among either the president’s supporters or detractors. But in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to the Qaeda mastermind, Mr. Obama has made a concerted, if to some indecorous, effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.
Andrew Cuomo is making history; just ask him
NY Times - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is making history.
How can New Yorkers know for sure? Mr. Cuomo says so — and has almost every week since he took office 16 months ago.
On his fifth day in office, he challenged lawmakers to “write a new page in the history book of New York State government,” and his administration has done just that more than 80 times, judging by the number of press releases issued by his office that described one of the governor’s actions as historic.
How can New Yorkers know for sure? Mr. Cuomo says so — and has almost every week since he took office 16 months ago.
On his fifth day in office, he challenged lawmakers to “write a new page in the history book of New York State government,” and his administration has done just that more than 80 times, judging by the number of press releases issued by his office that described one of the governor’s actions as historic.
April 27, 2012
Today's helpful advice from Mitt
Political Wire - Mitt Romney had some advice for students at Ohio's Otterbein University, telling them that if they want to start a business or pay for their education, they should just borrow from their parents. Said Romney: "Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."
Diversity training doesn't work
Peter Bregman, Psychology Today - A study of 829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had "no positive effects in the average workplace." Millions of dollars a year were spent on the training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes — and the diversity of the organizations — remained the same.
It gets worse. The researchers — Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota — concluded that "In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity."
It gets worse. The researchers — Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota — concluded that "In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity."
How the federal government may play a role in mad cow disease
Washington's Blog - The government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are prohibited from testing for mad cow disease, and even investigating factory farming may get one labeled as a terrorist, even though a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter mBio shows that overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers creates “superbugs”.
Now even the Vermont Senate is ditching the Constitution
Vermont Public Radio - The Vermont Senate has voted to allow police access without a search warrant to a database of Vermonters' prescriptions maintained by the Vermont Department of Health.
In an 18-11 vote after more than two hours of debate on Wednesday, the Senate rejected the arguments of some members that allowing police access to the database would violate rights against search and seizure promised by the U.S. and Vermont constitutions.
The House earlier voted to require a search warrant before police got access to the database. A conference committee likely will have to work out the difference.
In an 18-11 vote after more than two hours of debate on Wednesday, the Senate rejected the arguments of some members that allowing police access to the database would violate rights against search and seizure promised by the U.S. and Vermont constitutions.
The House earlier voted to require a search warrant before police got access to the database. A conference committee likely will have to work out the difference.
Dutch reverse forty years of pot progress
Reuters - A controversial law that will make it harder for foreign tourists to buy cannabis at the Netherlands' famous coffee shops has been upheld by a Dutch court.
The law, which reverses 40 years of liberal drugs policy in the Netherlands, is targeted at the many foreigners who have come to see the country as a soft drugs paradise and to tackle a rise in crime related to the drug trade.
The law, which goes into force in three southern provinces on May 1 before going nationwide next year, means coffee shops can only sell cannabis to registered members.
The law, which reverses 40 years of liberal drugs policy in the Netherlands, is targeted at the many foreigners who have come to see the country as a soft drugs paradise and to tackle a rise in crime related to the drug trade.
The law, which goes into force in three southern provinces on May 1 before going nationwide next year, means coffee shops can only sell cannabis to registered members.
Stats
Portion of states where the projected climate in 2100 will not be able to sustain their official tree or flower: 3/5 - #HarpersIndex
Word
Andy Borowitz 1962: America trying to win space race w/Russians. 2012: America trying to keep up w/Kardashians
What Mormonism has spawned
Death on behalf of religious beliefs has killed millions around the globe, and on a statistical basis the Mormon Church doesn’t deserve much blame, Nor can one expect Mitt Romney to take responsibility for things like the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre or other historic violent excesses of his church.
But presidents are elected, not acquitted, and one would hope to find in their beliefs something that inspires or at least calms the spirit more than it raises questions. Romney has been a missionary, leader and donor of millions for a church that has, even in recent years, spawned groups and individuals who, though parting ways with their parent congregation, came originally out of it and subsequently practiced sexual abuse and various other criminal activities including murder.
To be sure, members of other religions commit crimes but it is rare to find a dissident Presbyterian extremist creating a cult in some mountain village or an out of control Unitarian murdering people in the name of purer non-conformity. Aside from Catholic priests abusing young boys, the LDS Church has probably been the birthplace of more strange and unpleasant religious practices than any major American religion – even though many of these practices are offensive to conventional Mormons as well.
Which raises the reasonable question: why has the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spawned such an odd, and disturbing collection of violent and strange cults?
While the explanation for this is not easy to come by, examples are worth keeping in mind. Here are a few.
The FLDS Church is estimated to have 10,000 members …Prior to November 20, 2007, the church was being led by Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father, Rulon Jeffs, in 2002. For nearly two years, Warren Jeffs had been wanted on sex-crimes charges. From May 2006 until his arrest in August 2006, he was on the FBI's Ten Most-Wanted List. On September 25, 2007, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape and was sentenced to ten years to life in prison. This conviction was later overturned. On January 28, 2011, Jeffs again asserted his leadership of the denomination. Warren Jeffs has since been sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years along with a $10,000 fine after his conviction on aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault charges
Wikipedia – Jeffrey Lundgren was a self-proclaimed prophet, former leader of a cult group, and convicted mass murderer of five people. He was married to Alice Keeler who was also convicted of conspiracy to commit mass murder. Lundgren was born in Missouri and grew up as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. According to his allegations (supported by some of his former neighbors) he was severely abused as a child, particularly by his father. While Lundgren was living in a church-owned home, located next to the Kirtland Temple, on Chillicothe Road, in Kirtland, Ohio, he volunteered as a tour guide of the historic Kirtland Temple, for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (since 2001, the Community of Christ). He began to teach the concept of "dividing the word," known as "chiastic interpretation" or "chiasmus," to interpret scriptures. Lundgren falsely claimed to have created chiastic interpretation. The foundation was that in everything created by God, the right side is a mirror image and, therefore, scripture had to be interpreted using that same method. …To apply this concept to scripture, one takes a sentence from scripture; if the sentences before and after are consistent, the center sentence is the "truth"; when the sentences before and after conflict, the center sentence is a lie. His teaching of scriptural interpretations attracted his followers. Lundgren claimed that he moved to Ohio from Missouri because the word, "OHIO" is "chiastic". About 1987, Lundgren was asked to leave the church-owned house and his job as tour guide was terminated due to suspicions of theft.
On April 23, 1988 a neighbor told Kirtland police officer Ron Andolsek that she suspected that a cult was living at the farm house and that Lundgren's son warned the neighbor's children that on May 15th the earth would open up and demons would emerge…
.
Lundgren began to offer Bible study services at his home. Lundgren would dominate the services himself and he would intimidate anyone who didn't agree with him. He would later encourage others to intimidate those who disagreed as well. He sought to convince his congregation that he was God's last prophet. He asked for money from his supporters, and some would give him their life's savings, which often were calculated to be thousands of dollars.
Lundgren then proclaimed he had received a call from God to move to Kirtland, Ohio, a Lake County suburb, located twenty miles east of Cleveland, Ohio. . .By this time, seven of Lundgren's 12 followers had moved into the family home. The remaining five were members of Dennis Avery's family. Lundgren felt that the Averys were committing a sin by not living in his house.
…On April 10, 1989 in Kirtland, Ohio, Lundgren ordered two of his followers to dig a pit in the barn, in anticipation of burying the Averys' bodies there…According to followers' admissions, Lundgren later went inside the barn, with a church member named Ron Luff luring Dennis Avery into a place where the other men awaited by asking him for help with equipment for the camping trip. Luff attempted to render Avery unconscious with a stun gun, but due to a malfunction a stun bullet struck Avery but did not knock him out.
Avery then was gagged and dragged to the place where Lundgren awaited. He was shot twice in the chest, dying almost instantly. To mask the sound of the gun, a chainsaw was left running. Luff then told Avery's wife, Cheryl, that her husband needed help. She was gagged, like her husband, but also had duct tape put over her eyes, and dragged to Lundgren. She was shot three times, twice in the breasts and once in the abdomen. Her body lay next to her husband's. The Averys' 15-year-old daughter, Trina, was shot twice in the head. The first shot missed, but the second killed her instantly. Thirteen year old Becky Avery was shot twice and left to die, while six-year-old Karen Avery was shot in the chest and head. Both died.
Wikipedia- Ervil Morrell LeBaron (1925 –1981) was the leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group who ordered the killings of many of his opponents, using the religious doctrine of blood atonement to justify the murders. He was sentenced to prison for orchestrating the murder of an opponent, and died in prison. He had at least 13 wives in a plural marriage, several of whom he married while they were still underage, and several of whom were involved in the murders.
Wikipedia- John W. Bryant (born 1946) was the founder and first leader of a Mormon fundamentalist sect that is today known as the Church of the New Covenant in Christ and is headquartered near Salem, Oregon…Beginning in 1974, Bryant began to state that he was receiving revelations from Jesus. He claimed that "John the Beloved" had visited him as an angel and instructed him to form an "Order of the Ancients". In 1975 he was taken in vision to the City of Enoch, where AUB founder Joseph White Musser and Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith, Jr. ordained him to the presidency of the church and the high priesthood. .. During his time as a leader of the group, Bryant had six wives and taught his sect about drug experimentation and heterosexual and homosexual group sex. According to sources, sect members had sexual relations during the group's temple ceremonies. In 1981, the group lost the Fair Haven Ranch when they were unable to keep up on mortgage payments. As a result, Bryant, five of his six wives, and some of the members of the group relocated to Marion County, Oregon, near Salem.
And not the least interesting aspect of all this is the fact that the attorneys general of Utah and Arizona last year published a booklet entitled The Primer: A Guidebook for Law Enforcement and Human Services Agencies Who Offer Assistance to Fundamentalist Mormon Families. It noted that “a recent, informal survey indicated there are approximately 38,000 people (residing primarily in the Rocky Mountain region) who consider themselves to be Fundamentalist Mormons. This means they adhere to the religious doctrines of early Mormonism which include polygamy or “plural marriage”, sometimes called “The Principle”. Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“LDS” or Mormon Church) excommunicates known practitioners and advocates of polygamy.”
The primer, which lists over a dozen different cults, also notes some of the problems that can be expected be found:
· Child Abuse
· Lack of safe housing
· Lack of income/pronounced poverty—no personal assets
· Lack of job training
· Distrust of government, including the criminal justice system
· Distrust of outsiders
· Strong belief that family issues are private matters
· A powerful “collective conscience” where community shares same values/beliefs
· Leaving the abuser may mean leaving the community and loss of support network
· Leaving the abuser could mean leaving children behind
· Belief that divorce/leaving is wrong
· Perpetrator’s violence and control
. Belief that leaving will mean eternal damnation
· Belief that it is her duty as a wife to remain or as a parent to protect children from abuse
The primer also notes various forms of abuse including spiritual, which includes “using the scriptures to justify, manipulate, or control; spiritual pressure to not access medical care; pressure to be perfect, obedient; unselfish or faithful to husband or leaders; not being allowed to have own spirituality.”
Mitt Romney’s church is not one of those cited, but every one of them that is had their roots in the religion that has meant so much to him yet that he is so reluctant to tell us about.
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