WEE Honor Our Fallen: Memorial Day, 2014

[Demeter]

&feature=kp

Memorial Day is a US federal holiday wherein the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces are remembered. The holiday, which is celebrated every year on the final Monday of May, was formerly known as Decoration Day and originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century, Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service. It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.

Many people visit cemeteries and memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Many volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries.

Annual Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountains. In cases involving a family graveyard where remote ancestors as well as those who were deceased more recently are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles. People gather on the designated day and put flowers on graves and renew contacts with kinfolk and others. There often is a religious service and a "dinner on the ground," the traditional term for a potluck meal in which people used to spread the dishes out on sheets or tablecloths on the grass. It is believed that this practice began before the American Civil War and thus may reflect the real origin of the "memorial day" idea.

Memorial Day is not to be confused with Veterans Day; Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving, while Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day

If it weren't for them, we would not be here today. Let their sacrifices not be in vain. Fight injustice, corruption, and the 1%, who would throw away our young people for greed.

[Demeter]

1. Unfunnies for the holiday

[Demeter]

23. One for the road

[Demeter]

2. Debt Rattle May 18 2014: How To Redress The Planet’s Energy Balance

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/debt-rattle-may-18-2014-how-to-redress-the=-planets-energy-balance/

If we can agree for a moment that there is a very real possibility that we will have both much less capital and less energy available to us in the future, what should we do to define our response to this possibility? The obvious answer would seem to be to scale down, and do that as best we can without causing our societies to crumble because of it. We could take comfort in the knowledge that, despite the huge range of inventions and surge in wealth we have developed over the past 150 years, there is no proof whatsoever that we are happier today than our ancestors were in the Paris of 1900 or Chicago of 1950. We could also acknowledge that our present lifestyles are highly destructive to our habitat, so scaling down would seem to be a good idea from that perspective as well.

Still, though many of us are aware of both the potential of less energy availability and the failure of the use of that energy, in combination with our ingenuity, in making us happier and more fulfilled human beings, scaling down is not on the agenda of societies at large. To the contrary, the “successful” people we see as our leaders talk only of more growth, whether or not that’s realistic, let alone desirable, and we pretty blindly follow them in that line of thinking, presumably until it becomes impossible to deny any longer that growth is no longer on the horizon. Since we have a long tradition of seeing any downturn as merely temporary, that realization may take a long time to sink in, which in turn may mean that people need to be dying by the side of the road before we accept it as truth.

A philosophically intriguing debate is why we are so averse to using less energy, and why we perceive less growth as such a bad thing. There are those who point to our fear of dying, which makes us want to stay always a step ahead of death, so to speak. That’s a nice idea, but the use of – more – energy might kill us too. In a recent episode of his remake of the Cosmos TV series, Neil DeGrasseTyson referred to the fact that we live in a very quiet period of earth’s history, after a very long period of severe turbulence, but there’s this “strange” human drive to unleash all manner of greenhouse gases that risks setting off another period of turbulence.

DeGrasseTyson lamented the fact that we have proven in our history that we can be terribly ingenious, so why can we not now? Why are we unable to steer ourselves away from the consequences of ever more energy consumption? An interesting though perhaps challenging answer to that lament is that “the human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy”, as David Price wrote in 1995, that “when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance.” That turns the question into: can or can we not escape our destiny? Price:

Energy and Human Evolution

Life on Earth is driven by energy. Autotrophs take it from solar radiation and heterotrophs take it from autotrophs. Energy captured slowly by photosynthesis is stored up, and as denser reservoirs of energy have come into being over the course of Earth’s history, heterotrophs that could use more energy evolved to exploit them, Homo sapiens is such a heterotroph; indeed, the ability to use energy extrasomatically (outside the body) enables human beings to use far more energy than any other heterotroph that has ever evolved. The control of fire and the exploitation of fossil fuels have made it possible for Homo sapiens to release, in a short time, vast amounts of energy that accumulated long before the species appeared.

By using extrasomatic energy to modify more and more of its environment to suit human needs, the human population effectively expanded its resource base so that for long periods it has exceeded contemporary requirements. This allowed an expansion of population similar to that of species introduced into extremely propitious new habitats, such as rabbits in Australia or Japanese beetles in the United States. The world’s present population of over 5.5 billion is sustained and continues to grow through the use of extrasomatic energy.

But the exhaustion of fossil fuels, which supply three quarters of this energy, is not far off, and no other energy source is abundant and cheap enough to take their place. A collapse of the earth’s human population cannot be more than a few years away. If there are survivors, they will not be able to carry on the cultural traditions of civilization, which require abundant, cheap energy. It is unlikely, however, that the species itself can long persist without the energy whose exploitation is so much a part of its modus vivendi.

The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance...

The inherent question: can we maintain a form civilization once energy availability diminishes, or will be die fighting each other for what’s left? David Price strongly suggests the latter. In other words: once our numbers start falling, where will they stop? Note Price’s picture of us as a species “introduced” into a habitat that is “extremely propitious”, a notion that is crucial to his idea as to both why we are where we are, and where we’re going...Price suggests that the chances for human survival are slim at best. But we’re not gone yet. Which means we have a choice between either burning through all resources as fast as we can, or trying to scale down voluntarily, before we are forced to scale down. “Simply” getting used to using much less energy, and adapting to a life, even if that may not be as simple as it sounds, for a myriad of reasons, in which fossil fuels don’t provide each of us in the West with 200+ “energy slaves”...


SOMBER, SOBERING, LENGTHY, MEATY READ.

[Demeter]

3. From the Civil War

[DemReadingDU]

43. Excellent selections of patriotic songs!

Thanks for finding and posting!

[Fuddnik]

4. Or another observation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024998510

[Demeter]

5. An American Banking Revolution Awaits

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23931-an-american-banking-revolution-awaits

These tough economic times require creative alternatives to Wall Street, including more state banks...That independent streak gained luster when 15 Vermont towns voted earlier this year to reinforce this independent tradition by approving a proposal to create a state bank. The Vermont Economic Development Authority would get a license to do what private banks normally do — only with a mandate to serve the public interest no matter what. This isn’t unprecedented. North Dakota has enjoyed a flourishing state banking system for nearly a century. Costa Rica set another good precedent. Its public banking dates back to 1949. As of a decade ago, its four state banks held 75 percent or more of all individual deposits. All this is quite vexing to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. As elsewhere, they have muscled Costa Rica to privatize its government-owned businesses. Costa Rica has largely done this, but it won’t let go of its state-owned banks. For some reason, Costa Ricans don’t trust the commercial ones.

No, Americans don’t trust our banks either. But only North Dakota’s state bank remains under public control. Everywhere else, banking laws have made it very profitable for old-fashioned mutual (non-profit) savings banks, once popular, to sell out their depositors and turn commercial. The executives who accomplish this switch all do very nicely for themselves. Luckily, credit unions carry on from bygone times as a thorn in the side of the industry, but Wall Street is working hard to extinguish them too. Credit unions depend heavily on their non-profit status to protect them against taxes, so conservative outfits like the Tax Foundation are trying mightily to squash that exemption.

Theoretically, the government is our protector from the avaricious cartel of private banks. Both state and federal laws ostensibly provide us with banking watchdogs which safeguard the honesty and fairness of our saving and borrowing. That’s really just in theory. Unfortunately, a cynical revolving door regularly sends regulators wheeling into bank jobs and bankers hot-footing it over to regulation. At the same time, lobbyists sap the rectitude of those lawmakers and oversight agencies who you might have thought had our best interests at heart. Hence, banks feel unrestricted to manipulate credit cards, student loans, mortgages, securitizations, hedge funds, credit default swaps, currency exchanges, and all manner of rigged financial transactions. Our regulators rein them in sometimes, but in many cases not until after the damage is done. As a result, when mortgages default, neighborhoods collapse, families are ruined, and the economy tanks, the banks go right on — perhaps with their wrists slapped.

One other savings alternative does exist: the Post Office. In years gone by, the U.S. Postal Service doubled as a bank that had lots of branches and no securitized mortgages. But given the general lack of trust most people have with banks, some lawmakers are looking to bring the Post Office back into banking. That would be a new American Revolution.

[Demeter]

6. Revolutionary War

[Demeter]

7. The Rape of Detroit by The State of Michigan By Charles D. Brown

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-rape-of-detroit-by-state-of.html


Here is a summary in rough timeline of the rough raping and pillaging of the People
and City workers of Detroit by Wall Street, "Snake" Snyder and the
Republicans of the State of Michigan who themselves were much more
fiscally irresponsible than Detroit's elected officials:

Circa 2008 and 2009,

-The Wall Street banks are bailed out of insolvency by the People of the
United States , including the federal tax payers of Detroit for
trillions of dollars ( a trillion is a thousand billion; a billion is
a thousand million). The Wall Streeters claim that the whole financial
system is at risk , so even banks that are not insolvent are at risk
and effectively bailed out of failure.

Later some of these banks will
force the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit and demand that they be
paid instead of city workers, pensions and services.
General Motors and Chrysler are bailed out of bankruptcy for tens of
billions of dollars by the People of the US ,including Detroit
taxpayers.

-The State of Michigan is in serious fiscal crisis and irresponsibility
due to what the media terms a "one state recession " in Michigan, GM
and Chrysler failures ,etc.

- President Obama and the US taxpayers , including Detroiters, bail
out The State of Michigan with $7.8 billion (7.8 thousand million dollars)of
Obama Stimulus. Meanwhile , ( and I do mean "mean&quot
Republicans, including Michigan Republicans, are slandering
Obama to beat the band for the much needed national Stimulus.
Yet, be clear, at the same time,Michigan
Republicans are hypocritically begging Obama for Stimulus money.

-2010 : tea Republicans sweep Michigan state government offices in part
by lying and slandering Obama for the Stimulus and Obamacare; Michigan
voters are fooled big time and sweep in Republicans, including lying
Snyder ,who runs not as a tea Republican; but then proceeds to carryout
the tea party pirates' assault on working people including raping Detroit and
passing a work-for -less law against unions.

-2011; tea Republicans and Snyder juice up the Emergency Manager/ Wall
Street Dictator law preparing to take over Detroit. The essence of
the law is to insure payments of municipal bond debts to Wall Street
bond creditors the top priority of the City's spending over anything
else. It provides for the usurpation of the People's ,voted Charter law and
elected officials' powers by an unelected dictator. It is literally
taxation without representation. It violates the Michigan
Constitution's provision against the legislature imposing local
legislation on a City without a vote of the People of the city.
Snake Snyder takes first steps in finding Detroit fiscally
irresponsible. Refuses Councilmember JoAnn Watson's direct request to
Snyder personally in a meeting with Snyder in his office to pay $220
million owed Detroit from a deal made by former Governor "Snake" Engler
and Mayor Archer. Snyder's staff explicitly tells him in front of
Watson that the State does owe Detroit the money.

-2012: State escalates fraudulent accusations that Detroit is fiscally
irresponsible and other such terms. The immediate budget deficit is
only $ 200 million or so and would be balanced if the State would pay
the $220 million it owes Detroit , not to mention share some of the
$7.8 billion Obama Stimulus that the State itself was bailed out of its own fiscal
irresponsibility with.

Meanwhile , the yellow journalistic Detroit News and Free Press
( not to mention electronic media) start
running headlines and editorials concerning Detroit's _long_ term
debt, that is mostly owed in five, ten , 20 years, and do not
constitute an immediate fiscal crisis , but nonetheless is lyingly
portrayed as such by those rags and on television.

Negro Mayor Bing is in on the whole conspiracy with Snake Snyder,
MC'ing Snyder's inaugural; volunteering to be the Emergency Manager (
Snyder is laughing at the Negro behind his back on that); hiring the
law firm , Miller Canfield, that had drafted the new draconian
Dictator law for the State to "represent" Detroit's interests ( ha ha)
in negotiating with Snyder on the takeover under the law with a
"Consent" Agreement . while excluding Corporation Counsel Krystal
Crittendon from the negotiations.

The City Council "consents" to
"Consent" Agreement in a 5 to 4 vote, with the threat of imposition of
an Emergency Dictator, who can rape it of all its powers, like a gun
to its head when it "consents". Under the coerced deal, fake boards,paid large
salaries, are imposed over the City Council . Consultants ,
incompetent to evaluate city jobs, are hired at outrageous salaries to
advise the fake state boards to cut City workers jobs and wages , with
that money then paid to the incompetent consultants. Most are white ,
replacing mostly Black people. For example , one city worker was
raped of $70,000 of sick pay from foregone use of sick days over 25
years which she would have collected upon retirement. That's just one
worker.

Negro mayor Bing generally runs the whole city's business and
departments incompetently , such as restoring cuts to the budget that
City Council had made in trying to balance the budget; not providing
bus service;or fixing pubic lighting; spinning the health department
and its money off to a private corporation without City Council
approval; publically going shopping on the east coast with Karen
Dumas, press secretary and chief of staff, etc. ;so that Snyder will
have an excuse to takeover the City as people are rightly protesting
poor services.

On Mildred Gaddis' WCHB radio talk show, State Treasurer Andy Dillon admits that the
State of Michigan owes Detroit the $220 million plus that would take
it out of deficit for that year and prevent the State from taking over
for at least another year. But the State doesn't pay the money. In
fact, at one point the State prevents the City from getting the money
from another loan of tens of millions that would further delay the
basis for it taking over immediately.

The State runs a $1 billion
"surplus" itself, which it would not have without the Obama $7.8
billion bailout ,but the State shares none of that with Detroit.
Detroit Corporation Counsel, Krystal Crittendon , asserts that the
City of Detroit may not enter into the Consent Agreement with the
State because of a state law and the City Charter because the State
owes Detroit $220 million. Negro Mayor Bing sends Miller Canfield to
oppose his Corporation Counsel's lawsuit against the "Consent"
Agreement.

The People of Michigan repeal the Emergency Dictator Law in a
statewide ( not just Detroit) referendum ! State law had required the
Dictator law to be suspended and therefore it should not have
continued in being used to rape Detroit during the election process.
But Snyder illegally ignored this and continued the rape of Detroit.
Then after the law was repealed by the People, Snyder , the Republican
legislature and lying Republican State Court of Appeals enacted in
violation of the will of their Bosses in a DEMOCRACY, the People, a
law with the essential same provision of for imposition of an
unelected Dictator, lying that the new law was different than the old
law in that essential provision.

2013 State continues the fraudulent takeover of Detroit forcing the
City Council to recant on several small acts of resistance: refusing
to hire Miller Canfield to represent the City's interests against the
takeover ( ha ha ha), refusing to fire Corporation Counsel Krystal
Crittendon, refusing to giveaway Belle Isle in a deal completely
onesided to the State's interests. The City Council reverses itself
on all these issues. It delays for a couple of weeks finishing the
giveaway of Belle Isle and Snake Snyder in fake indignation uses that
as an excuse to rape the City further by imposing a Wall Street
Dictator. The person Snake Snyder imposes as dictator is literally a
Wall Street lawyer .

The dictator fires city workers further , makes more cuts to wages,
drastically cuts retirees' healthcare benefits. He takes the City
into bankruptcy without a vote of the City Council; and forces the
City to hire his law firm for tens of millions of dollars to represent
the City.
The claims in part are that the City $18 billion in debt. Of course
most of that is not due to be paid for 5, 10, 15 years. $6 billion of
it is owed by the Water Department, which has secure payments from its
customers with no danger of it not being paid.

Snake Snyder and the Wall Street dictator take the retirees' pensions
into bankruptcy , admitting under oath, that they had the power not to
take them in to be threatened with being cut. Thereby he has put in
jeopardy billions of dollars in payments in wages, benefits and
pensions to city workers and retirees, to be stolen and given to
fabulously rich Wall Street bankers , including in bonuses and golden
parachutes even when they had run the banks into the most spectacular
bankruptcy in the history of the world ( no exaggeration) from which
they were bailed out by the American taxpayers including Detroit city
workers and pensioners.

One critical focused point: Snake Snyder the Thief and Wall Street
shill could have bailed Detroit out of its deficit with money the
State rightfully owed Detroit, and some of the $ 7.8 billion the State
itself was bailed out of it's own bankruptcy by Obama and the American
taxpayers, including Detroiters, AND MONEY DETROITERS PAY DIRECTLY TO
THE STATE IN TAXES. WHAT DO DETROITERS GET FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
FOR ALL THE TAXES WE PAY THEM ALL THESE YEARS. NOT A DAMN THING


Randa Morris: It has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. It's 100 percent political and the 1 percent getting richer from it, that's only the butter on the bread. This will happen in all areas that vote dem in Michigan. EM will happen in all areas of MI that traditionally vote dem. Elected officials will be replaced with right wing puppets who will then pave the way for the robbery of the people.



http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/wall-streets-war-against-the-cities-why-bondholders-cant-and-shouldnt-be-paid.html

http://www.workers.org/2011/us/banks_destroyed_detroit_0407/

http://peoplesworld.org/state-takeovers-of-cities-and-schools-are-un-american/

[AnneD]

36. It was sooooooo gracious...

of Jamie Dimon to lend his support. Looks like they pulled a Katrina on Detroit.

[Demeter]

8. Union Songs

&list=PL69448D30FB4D0CA8

[Demeter]

9. Final Word on U.S. Law Isn’t: Supreme Court Keeps Editing

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/us/final-word-on-us-law-isnt-supreme-court-keeps-editing.html?_r=0

The Supreme Court has been quietly revising its decisions years after they were issued, altering the law of the land without public notice. The revisions include “truly substantive changes in factual statements and legal reasoning,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard and the author of a new study examining the phenomenon. The court can act quickly, as when Justice Antonin Scalia last month corrected an embarrassing error in a dissent in a case involving the Environmental Protection Agency. But most changes are neither prompt nor publicized, and the court’s secretive editing process has led judges and law professors astray, causing them to rely on passages that were later scrubbed from the official record. The widening public access to online versions of the court’s decisions, some of which do not reflect the final wording, has made the longstanding problem more pronounced.

Unannounced changes have not reversed decisions outright, but they have withdrawn conclusions on significant points of law. They have also retreated from descriptions of common ground with other justices, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor did in a major gay rights case. The larger point, said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford, is that Supreme Court decisions are parsed by judges and scholars with exceptional care. “In Supreme Court opinions, every word matters,” he said. “When they’re changing the wording of opinions, they’re basically rewriting the law.”

Supreme Court opinions are often produced under intense time pressure because of the court’s self-imposed deadline, which generally calls for the announcement of decisions in all cases argued during the term before the justices leave for their summer break. In this term, 29 of the 70 cases argued since October remain to be decided in the next five weeks or so.

The court does warn readers that early versions of its decisions, available at the courthouse and on the court’s website, are works in progress. A small-print notice says that “this opinion is subject to formal revision before publication,” and it asks readers to notify the court of “any typographical or other formal errors.” But aside from announcing the abstract proposition that revisions are possible, the court almost never notes when a change has been made, much less specifies what it was. And many changes do not seem merely typographical or formal Four legal publishers are granted access to “change pages” that show all revisions. Those documents are not made public, and the court refused to provide copies to The New York Times. The final and authoritative versions of decisions, some published five years after they were announced, do not, moreover, always fully supplant the original ones. Otherwise reliable Internet resources and even the court’s own website at times still post older versions.

[Demeter]

10. I.R.S. Bars Employers From Dumping Workers Into Health Exchanges

OH YEAH? IRS AND WHAT ARMY?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/us/irs-bars-employers-from-dumping-workers-into-health-exchanges.html

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.

Under a central provision of the health care law, larger employers are required to offer health coverage to full-time workers, or else the employers may be subject to penalties.

Many employers — some that now offer coverage and some that do not — had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly...

I THINK WE JUST GOT THE CORPORATE VOTE FOR UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER....

[Demeter]

22. Medicare doesn't need a "CEO" because it's a simple, rugged, and effective single payer system, not

Medicare doesn't need a "CEO" because it's a simple, rugged, and effective single payer system, not an insanely complex Rube Goldberg device


http://www.correntewire.com/obamacare_clusterfuck_medicare_doesnt_need_a_ceo_because_its_a_simple_rugged_and_effective_single

Get a load of this from Reuters:

Exclusive: Obama allies revive push for Obamacare CEO

(Aside from the obvious "jobs for the boiz" aspect: )

A group of healthcare experts close to the White House is urging the Obama administration to appoint a new chief executive officer to oversee Obamacare's online health insurance exchanges and safeguard the next open enrollment period that begins in six months.

The recommendation, in a report due to be released by the Washington-based Center for American Progress think tank, calls for a major shakeup within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which presided over last year's disastrous rollout of the federal market portal, HealthCare.gov.

The idea would be to take the exchanges out of the current bureaucracy and put them in the hands of a CEO with private-sector experience who could run them as true e-commerce sites. The CEO would answer only to President Barack Obama and his intended new health secretary, Sylvia Mathews Burwell.{1}

So, the so-called "progressive" Center for American Progress is fully on board with the neo-gliberal idea that "government should be run like a business,"{2} eh? Market state, here we come!

My hair has been on fire about this for some time. It couldn't be more clear that ObamaCare is the thin end of the wedge: That all government services will be delivered like ObamaCare because markets, and that goes for Social Security, too{3}. We have, again, a clear example of how Obama is the more effective evil, and that "progressives" are, if anything, more dangerous than conservatives. (Nobody ever asks "progress toward what?" and they never do quite explain. For good reason, I would think.

NOTES

1. Orchestrate much?

2. That is, with massive rental extraction, executive looting and, in this case, jobs for the Democratic nomenklatura.

3. The "grand bargain" narrative is getting old, although a bunch of insiders are still raking in the big bucks pushing it. At some point, I'm guessing that the squillionaires, maybe even Petersen, are going to wise up and fund initiatives to push what CAP describes; no doubt Silicon Valley ones. If anybody who follows this stuff -- say, on CSPAN -- could keep an eye out for that idea emerging, that would be great.

NOTE For those who came in late, here's a Rube Goldberg device:

http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128776fae11970c-pi


UPDATE Yes, I'm aware that Medicare has a neo-gliberal infestation, and that they have deployed the favorite play in their playbook: (1) Degrade the quality of government services, (2) Privatize them, and (3) Profit. No underpants gnomes, they! So this is not a post to explain why Medicare has problems too; we know that.

[kickysnana]

40. This could be an oversight on the Admins part..even when they ruled for the

99% there was an ulterior motive lurking such as all the help for our good friends the Native Americans when it was actually pipelines across their lands they were working on.

[DemReadingDU]

11. Stephen Hertz, Corporate Lawyer, Jumped and Dies

5/21/14 Stephen Hertz, Corporate Lawyer, Dies at 55
Stephen R. Hertz, a top lawyer in mergers and acquisitions as well as private equity buyouts, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 55. In an apparent suicide, Mr. Hertz jumped from his Upper West Side apartment, a police department spokeswoman said. Mr. Hertz, as a partner at the prominent white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, advised clients including Landstar System, a transportation services provider, and Cambrex, a life sciences company, on a range of corporate matters. He also represented private equity firms including Stone Point Capital and HarbourVest Partners.

He wrote on trends in the private equity world, with his byline appearing frequently in Debevoise’s private equity newsletter. In an article written last year with a number of colleagues, Mr. Hertz addressed the examinations of private equity firms being conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also may have helped Debevoise gain a measure of cultural stardom. According to abovethelaw.com, Mr. Hertz was a friend of Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the TV show “The West Wing,” which occasionally featured the law firm.

“We are shocked and deeply saddened by the passing of our partner and friend Steve Hertz,” a Debevoise spokesman said in a statement. “Steve was an exceptionally warm and caring person, extraordinarily dedicated to our clients, and generous to his colleagues. He will be profoundly missed.”

Stephen Richard Hertz was born on April 18, 1959, in Manhattan. He received his bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College in 1982 and his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1985, joining Debevoise that year. He became a partner of the firm in 2000. Mr. Hertz is survived by his wife, Debra Condren, a psychologist and author, and a son from a previous marriage, Jake.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/stephen-hertz-corporate-lawyer-dies-at-55/

[Demeter]

12. Obama Makes Surprise Trip to Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/world/asia/obama-in-afghanistan.html

The last time President Obama visited Afghanistan, he came to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai. But that was two years ago. When Mr. Obama returned to Afghanistan on Sunday, conspicuously absent from the agenda was a meeting with Mr. Karzai, who has staunchly opposed an enduring American presence here.

The trip to Afghanistan was unannounced, and Mr. Obama slipped out of the White House secretly on Saturday evening. He arrived a day ahead of Memorial Day under the cover of darkness at Bagram Air Base, the sprawling American encampment north of Kabul, accompanied by the country music singer Brad Paisley, who performed for about an hour before the president spoke to troops.

Though Mr. Obama did not meet with Mr. Karzai, who is to leave office in the coming months, he vowed that he would work with whoever wins the presidential runoff scheduled for June 14: either Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani. White House officials said that the trip, Mr. Obama’s fourth to Afghanistan since taking office, was intended strictly as a visit with troops, and that they wanted to avoid any appearance of trying to sway the Afghan political process...

[Demeter]

13. White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-mistakenly-identifies-cia-chief-in-afghanistan/2014/05/25/ac8e80cc-e444-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?wprss=rss_national



The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as George W. Bush administration officials sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq.

The Post is withholding the name of the CIA officer at the request of Obama administration officials who warned that the officer and his family could be at risk if the name were published. The CIA and the White House declined to comment...

WHAT COULD THEY SAY? OOOPS, MY BAD....

[Demeter]

17. Oh when will they ever learn?

[Demeter]

14. Goldman, JPMorgan sued over zinc prices

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/goldman-jpmorgan-sued-over-zinc-012023897.html

A lawsuit filed on Friday alleges that Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), the London Metal Exchange and metal warehouse operators have conspired since 2010 to manipulate the price of zinc in the United States. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, also names as defendants the mining and commodities trading group Glencore Xstrata (GLEN.L) and its Pacorini Metals USA LLC unit. Metro International Trade Services, the metal warehousing of Goldman Sachs, is also named a defendant.

The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, echoes the allegations made in previously filed lawsuits over alleged manipulation of the aluminium market in the United States. It claims the defendants used a variety of means to restrain trade in zinc, including by manipulating LME rules to ensure long queues for metals and shuttling zinc between warehouses for no reason other than to "cause and exacerbate anticompetitive effects." Like aluminium, physical prices of zinc have soared in recent years due to the queues, causing extra costs to users, such as galvanizers.

London Metal Exchange warehouses in New Orleans hold 80 percent of the zinc in the exchange-registered stockpile. Pacorini operates most of the sheds in that port city...

[Demeter]

15. Credit Suisse chief executive says no plans to quit

https://news.yahoo.com/credit-suisse-boss-dougan-says-no-plans-quit-153737236--sector.html

Credit Suisse's Chief Executive Brady Dougan told a Swiss Sunday newspaper he has no plans to step down and his bank would not need a capital increase despite a $2.5 billion deal with U.S. authorities over a tax dispute.

Swiss lawmakers have been among those calling for Dougan and other executives to resign to allow the bank to make a fresh start after its settlement with U.S. authorities over charges it helped Americans to evade taxes.

Asked in an interview with Sonntagsblick if he had thought about leaving the bank, Dougan said: "No. I have been working nearly 25 years for this bank, I'm committed to Credit Suisse, its customers, its staff, its shareholders."

Dougan said a capital increase would not be necessary for the bank to meet its goals of posting a capital ratio of at least 10 percent by the end of the year and targeting an 11 percent ratio thereafter.

Switzerland's financial regulator said on Tuesday there were no indications Credit Suisse's senior management had known of specific misconduct, effectively clearing the bank's executives of blame in the tax case.

SO, WILL HE QUIT, JUMP, OR BE DEFENESTRATED? THE GUY IS TOAST...IF THE RULE OF PUBLICITY APPLIES.

[Demeter]

16. The Internet Behind The Internet

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/05/25/315821415/going-dark-the-internet-behind-the-internet?ft=1&f=1001

The average computer user with an Internet connection has access to an amazing wealth of information. But there's also an entire world that's invisible to your standard Web browser.

These parts of the Internet are known as the Deep Web. The tools to get to there are just a few clicks away, and more and more people who want to browse the Web anonymously are signing on. Fans of the series House of Cards might recall the Deep Web being worked into the plot of latest season. The character Lucas, a newspaper editor who was trying find a hacker, gets a little crash course from one of his reporters:

"Ninety-six percent of the Internet isn't accessible through standard search engines. Most of it's useless but it's where you go to find anything and everything: child porn, Bitcoin laundry, narcotics, hackers for hire ..."

Wired reporter Kim Zetter tells NPR's Arun Rath that the show kind of got it right, but that there should be a distinction between what's called the Deep Web and what are known as Darknet sites.

"The Deep Web is anything not accessible through the commercial search engines," Zetter says.

Then, there's the Darknet, a specific part of that hidden Web where you can operate in total anonymity. Without being tracked, people can access websites that sell drugs, weapons and they can even hire assassins. One such black-market site, Silk Road, got attention last fall after a crackdown by the FBI. Zeeter says the Darknet has another purpose that doesn't usually make the news: It helps political dissidents who want to evade government censors...

MORE

[Demeter]

18. America

[Demeter]

19. Ukraine: Major "Western" Think Tank Admits Defeat

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/05/ukraine-major-western-think-tank-admits-defeat.html

There is simply no viable alternative for Ukraine than to cooperate with Russia and to pay the price that is necessary to do so. That is why Russia is just sitting back and waiting for that simple truth to become evident. Back in February we said:

Putin will now sit back and let the "west" squabble about who will throw tons of money into the bottomless pit that Ukraine is going to become. ... Putin now just has to wait for the apple to fall from the tree.

In March:

To the growing unrest one can add the likely economic collapse that will come rather sooner than later. Any "western" help will be conditioned on austerity and impoverishing the people as well as on political reform that the oligarchs and the current politicians will not allow to happen. Under such condition further unrest is a given while Ukraine falls apart and there is no need at all for Russia to intervene to achieve such.

Russia will do nothing nefarious, it will do just nothing. Russia will not help, neither economically nor politically, unless Kiev and the "west" are willing to pay its price: A federalized Ukraine with strong regions and a weak central government.

Two month later this truth finally dawns to the mediocre thinkers in those "western" misnamed tanks. The Brookings Institute, which in general supports Obama policies, finally admits that a Ukraine without Russia is impossible and therefore cooperation with Russia on Ukraine is the Only viable way forward. It all comes back to money. The loss of access to Russian markets is already hitting and will kill Ukraine's heavy and weapon industry in east Ukraine. That will be expensive:

[A] minimum estimate is $276 billion to buy off the east. It is unthinkable that the West would pay this amount.
...
The key point here is that there can be no viable Ukraine without serious contributions from both Russia and the West. Of all the options for Ukraine’s future, a Ukraine exclusively in the West is the least feasible. A Ukraine fully under Russian control and with severed links to the West is, unfortunately, possible.

A Ukraine in the "west" is impossible. A Ukraine within the Russian Federation is possible but would somewhat hurt Russia at least in the short term. A finlandized Ukraine, in which Russia has a major say is the best possible outcome for all sides.

The upcoming sham elections of the chocolate king Poroshenko over which Russia has major sway -his markets and some of his factories are in Russia- is now just a fig leaf for the "west" to disengage. Poroshenko will be send eastward to pledge allegiance to Russia and to sign the unconditional surrender treaty. He has to:

Having normal relations with Russia is a natural position for Ukraine which fits her strategic interests. For this basic reason, Ukrainian politicians haven’t the slightest chance of ignoring their past, present, or future ties with Russia, regardless of the fact that they are talking about it.

He will then have to suppress the Nazis in the west Ukraine. The political part of the EU Association Agreement, which the coup government signed, will be revoked and the economic part will not be signed at all.

All this now seems to turn into a major defeat for the neo-cons who completely misjudged the situation:

Strategists in the US may not have foreseen that, because of the very delicate domestic equilibrium of so many difference forces and actors, the Ukrainian state may have simply disintegrated in the face of a drastic geopolitical turn, as it is indeed happening.
...
The US finds itself once again in the awkward position of having decisively contributed to the insurgence of a certain critical phase [...] where however the partners and allies on the ground [...] are successively abandoned at the decisive moment ..

The neocons had planned this attack on Russia via Ukraine and Crimea and they, again, failed. That does not mean that the issue is over. In sight of defeat the neocons love to "surge" and to escalate the situation. But as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan such "surges" are unlikely to change the inevitable outcomes.

[Fuddnik]

27. Neocons = Professional Losers.

I've said it for years, these are the guys who inspire communist revolutions, not Marx or Lenin.

And Neoliberals are there partners in crime, blinded by their own slobbering over potential profits and austerity. Pootie Poot just has to lay back and watch Obama and Kerry self implode, while he laughs his ass off.

[Demeter]

20. 100-year-old beggar celebrated as living saint in Bulgaria

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/24/100-year-old-beggar-celebrated-as-living-saint-in-bulgaria/

A 100-year-old beggar in a threadbare coat, "Grandpa" Dobri, is already celebrated as a saint in Bulgaria -- a symbol of goodness in a country ravaged by poverty and corruption. For over 20 years, Dobri Dobrev has been begging on the streets of Sofia, collecting alms worth tens of thousands of euros. And he has given it all to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. This has made him the largest private donor of the golden-domed Alexander Nevski cathedral even as he maintains an ascetic lifestyle.

"Take some bread, it comes from God!" the hunched old man mutters under his straggly white beard, offering believers the buns that other people give him as they drop coins into his plastic cup and bend to kiss his hand.

"He gave us 35,700 leva (18,250 euros, $24,900) in 2009, while living a life deprived of all comfort," Bishop Tikhon, chairman of the cathedral’s trustees board, told AFP.

"Dobri is an extremely rare phenomenon."

Several smaller monasteries and churches also say they have received between 2,500 and 10,000 euros each from the small man wearing peasant leather sandals. These sums are considerable in Bulgaria, which remains the European Union's poorest member seven years after joining the bloc and where the average monthly salary is about 420 euros.



Dobri is a comforting figure to Bulgarians amid pervasive corruption and deprivation, sociologists say..."While the media is full of scandalous reports on the luxurious lifestyle of certain Church dignitaries, Grandpa Dobri personifies moral values such as self-denial and generosity," said Theodora Karamelska, a sociology professor at Sofia's New Bulgarian University. For Bulgarians he is like a saint "thanks to his romantic appearance and the richness of his soul," she added.

The background of this man, who refuses any interviews, is patchy. Born in the summer of 1914, he partially lost his hearing in one of the bombings of the Bulgarian capital during World War II. "This made him pious in his own way," said Elena Genova, a distant relative, in their native village of Baylovo, 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Sofia. "He left his wife and their four children, including a new born baby, to take up different jobs around monasteries," she said.
"In the past 20 years, he has devoted himself to collecting alms." She affectionately calls him "Grandpa" Dobri and often helps him count the money he has collected.

The old man lives in a small room basically furnished with a bed and a table next to the church in Baylovo, which was renovated with 10,000 leva donated by him. A neighbour or another helper gives him a ride when he needs to go to Sofia. The media dubbed Dobri "The Living Saint from Baylovo", and his name -- which comes from the Bulgarian word for "good" -- has become a symbol for goodness in a country where religious faith has been on the rise since the fall of communism 25 years ago.

MORE AT LINK...TAKE TOOTHPASTE AND BRUSH WITH YOU

[Demeter]

21. STAR SPANGLED BANNER

[Demeter]

24. Equal Rights to Profit from Impoverishing People and Causing a Great Extinction Event by Ian Welsh

THIS IS A MANIFESTO, A RIGHTEOUS RANT, A CRY FOR OUR TIMES--MUST READ!

http://www.ianwelsh.net/equal-rights-to-profit-from-impoverishing-people-and-causing-a-great-extinction-event/

...Too many people in the West want only one thing: they want in on the evil gravy train. They see that there is a scam going on, a scam that impoverishes millions and helps create and maintain rape factories like in the Congo, and their response is “I want in on that gravy train! Why are women, and African-Americans and the working class and (insert discriminated class here) not on the gravy train too!” They look at what CEOs make, or the banker bailouts, and they want the money; they want their own bailouts.

But what they don’t want to do is drain the swamp. They don’t want to change the way the world works so that having an iPhone doesn’t mean men and women in the Congo are being raped and murdered in a systematic fashion. In the Congo they will take their rape victims, bend them over and have every man in a military unit rape them. The blood flows like water.

A choice was made in the late 70s to 1980, not to drain the swamp. In fact, the choice was made then to increase evil and poverty in the world an the only reason one can say that it has decreased is China, who didn’t go along with the IMF/World Bank prescription. This was a choice: as problematic as Carter was (and he was very) he suggested a different way: Americans resoundingly rejected it. The Brits elected Thatcher.

These acts of greed and selfishness; these acts of “I’ve got mine, fuck you Jack” had consequences...If what people want is equal rights to profit from a system which is profoundly evil, and whose function is to enrich a few people by impoverishing many many more while maintaining rape colonies, I’m out. I’m not fighting for fairness in the neo-Imperialism business. “The best people at maintaining our project of impoverishing people and screwing up the world, causing a great extinction event, should be chosen objectively, without regards to ethnicity, gender, age or sexual preference” is not a hill I’m dying on.

[Demeter]

25. Shocker: Cable TV prices went up four times the rate of inflation

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/shocker-cable-tv-prices-went-up-four-times-the-rate-of-inflation/

Even communities with multiple competitors weren't spared...

[Demeter]

26. Scott Brown says no one should work at a minimum-wage job in the U.S. forever. Instead they should m

Scott Brown says no one should work at a minimum-wage job in the U.S. forever. Instead they should move to Canada. Or Germany. Or France. Or …

http://angrybearblog.com/2014/05/scott-brown-says-no-one-should-work-a-minimum-wage-job-in-the-u-s-forever-instead-they-should-move-to-canada-or-germany-or-france-or.html

I’m encouraged any time government functions. We’re a very philanthropic society. We always want people to have safety nets. Medicaid is meant to be a temporary measure to provide benefits for people who are in difficult circumstances. It’s not meant to be going on forever.

– Scott Brown, when Politico reporter Kyle Cheney asked him whether he supports New Hampshire’s Medicaid expansion.

So if he’s elected to the Senate he’ll propose a really large increase in the minimum wage. Expect Walmart and McDonald’s to make sizable donations to Jeanne Shaheen’s reelection campaign committee. Luckily for us Dems, they’re people and can do that.

[xchrom]

28. Eurosceptic 'earthquake' rocks EU elections

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27559714


Eurosceptic and far-right parties have seized ground in elections to the European parliament, in what France's PM called a "political earthquake".

The French National Front and UK Independence Party both performed strongly, while the three big centrist blocs in parliament all lost seats.

The outcome means a greater say for those who want to cut back the EU's powers, or abolish it completely.

UK PM David Cameron said the public was "disillusioned" with the EU.

[Demeter]

41. It's all that fracking

[xchrom]

29. Spain’s two-party system dealt major blow in EU elections

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/05/26/inenglish/1401097098_896523.html

Spain’s two main parties, which have been taking turns in power since 1977, obtained their worst results in democratic history at the European elections on Sunday.


Together, the Popular Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) failed to attract even 50 percent of the vote, compared with the 80 percent they garnered at the 2009 EU elections.

This massive loss of support reflects the rapid rise of smaller parties that portray the two main players as being similarly corrupt, beholden to money and unable to effectively deal with the economic crisis.

Despite the fragmentation of the vote, however, no anti-European or xenophobe party has made any headway in Spain, in contrast with other countries such as France, Britain or Greece.

[xchrom]

30. One in five Spanish job seekers has not worked in three years

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/05/23/inenglish/1400850136_012143.html

Six years into a profound jobs crisis, and the full effects of long-term unemployment are beginning to emerge. Figures from the latest Active Population Survey show that 60% of Spain’s 6 million unemployed have not worked in a year. What’s worse is that among this group, the proportion of people who have been without work for three years or more is growing, and now stands at one out of every five job seekers, according to data published on Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

The Active Population Survey shows that last year there was an average of 1,275,700 job seekers who, having been active previously, had been unable to return to the job market in at least three years. This represents a rise in long-term unemployment of 234,200 people compared with 2012, an increase of 22%.

Admittedly, the pace of the increase has fallen off in the last two years, when long-term unemployment was rising at a rate of 40% a year. But it remains way above the general unemployment rate, which has begun to fall in the last two quarters, as a result of the marked decline in the active population. In 2007 the proportion of people who had gone three years without working was just 13% of all job seekers, while in 2013 that figure reached 21%.

[xchrom]

31. Too much EU money down the drain?

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/05/21/inenglish/1400669510_198237.html

“What were they thinking when they misspent European money?” asked the prime minister of one European Union member state during the 2012 bank bailout talks between Madrid and Brussels. Attitudes within the EU’s northern countries toward the perceived profligacy that led to the collapse of the property market in the southern periphery were perhaps best summed up by a cartoon in a German newspaper in 2008 featuring a Greek, a Spaniard and an Italian lying on the beach and demanding that their cowed-looking German companion buy them all a beer. But soon after Spain was plunged into an unprecedented financial crisis that awoke it from a dream largely financed with European money.

Inoperative desalination plants, empty arts centers, rail lines that go nowhere… Between 2007 and 2013, Spain received more than €23 billion from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), with just 61 percent of projects completed and paid back. During the same period, Spain was given €11.5 billion from the EU’s Social and Cohesion Funds. Almost all the money has been well-spent and accounted for, and has improved Spaniards’ quality of life and helped grow the economy. But this can’t hide the existence of corruption and negligence in making better use of EU money. The Anti-Fraud Office has already recommended that the EC ask Spain to return €250 million for allegedly exaggerating the cost of the stone used to build the El Musel port in Gijón.

[xchrom]

32. WORLD STOCKS MOSTLY HIGHER ON US OPTIMISM

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-26-05-08-35

HONG KONG (AP) -- World stock markets mostly rose Monday on investor optimism about the U.S. economy, hints from China about further stimulus and weakness in the yen.

Markets in Asia were supported by Friday's Commerce Department report that new home sales rose 6.4 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted 433,000 after falling in the previous two months. Demand for new homes has been one of the last missing pieces as the U.S. economy, the world's largest, recovers from the global financial crisis.

Investors were also heartened after the Standard & Poor's 500 finished 0.4 percent higher at 1,900.53, the first time it has ended above the 1,900 level.

Remarks by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that suggested Beijing is preparing further mini-stimulus measures to support the economy gave a lift to Chinese shares.

[xchrom]

33. GREEK OPPOSITION CALLS FOR EARLY ELECTIONS

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/greek-opposition-calls-early-elections

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's main opposition party has formally requested an early general election after winning Sunday's vote for the European Parliament, arguing that the country's conservative government now lacks the legitimacy to implement reforms related to international bailouts.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party, visited Greece's president Monday to make the request "to restore the democratic order in the country."

Tsipras has vowed to cancel bailout agreements that rescued Greece from bankruptcy but also imposed harsh austerity measures.

With just over 99 percent of votes voted, Syriza leads with 26.6 percent of the vote, while center-right coalition government leader New Democracy received 22.71 percent.

[Demeter]

42. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Christmas came early...

[xchrom]

34. AFTER ANTI-EU PARTIES SURGE, WHAT'S AHEAD?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EUROPEAN_ELECTIONS_THE_UPSHOT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-26-07-19-10

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Europe's voters have spoken, and the result "is a shock, an earthquake," France's prime minister said.

Official but still partial returns from the 28-nation European Parliament elections show an unprecedented surge by Euroskeptics and outright anti-EU politicians. The likely upshot is that the trade bloc will find it more difficult to agree on a range of issues, including how much to liberalize its internal market in services, what to include in a proposed trade agreement with the United States and how to strike the balance between different energy sources.

By winning a larger share of seats in the European Parliament, more of Europe's outsiders also have a better platform to influence politics in their home countries.

"European politics will be different from today on," said Doru Frantescu, policy director and co-founder of VoteWatch Europe, an independent Brussels-based organization that tracked opinion polls in the run-up to the elections that finished Sunday.

[xchrom]

35. 'Ukraine Is Run by a Guy Who Makes Chocolate'

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/deciphering-the-meaning-of-the-ukrainian-election/371575/

?n65sb7
Ukrainian businessman and presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko speaks to supporters in front of a board showing exit-poll results. (Reuters/Stringer)

There are still plenty of ways Russia can continue to meddle in Ukraine's affairs. But with Petro Poroshenko's apparent victory in the May 25 presidential election amid a solid turnout, Kiev may have turned a corner. I spoke with longtime Russia-watcher Edward Lucas, international editor of The Economist.

Brian Whitmore: What is your main takeaway from today's election in Ukraine?

Edward Lucas: This was quite unlike a Russian election because we didn't know at the start of the campaign who was going to win it. There was a real political choice. It turned out that Poroshenko thrashed [Yulia] Tymoshenko, but that's not unusual in democracies to get landslides. But we didn't know [this would happen] at the beginning. So this was a profound challenge to the Putinist idea of managed democracy. This was unmanaged democracy....

Another thing that is important is that the far right got thrashed. So this idea that Ukraine is run by fascists is complete nonsense. Ukraine is run by a guy who makes chocolate. So the way in which [far-right parties] Pravy Sektor and Svoboda went nowhere is a very powerful counterpoint to the Kremlin demonization of Ukraine.

[xchrom]

37. Piketty in Elysium

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180000/piketty-elysium

At the beginning of last summer’s blockbuster film Elysium, three rogue shuttles from Earth approach a space station that houses a super-rich enclave. It’s the ultimate offshore gated community, where the inhabitants possess magical machines that rid them of disease so that they can live practically forever. The shuttles, meanwhile, contain the poor, the sick, “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” In this science-fiction scenario, the Earth has been become little more than a Third World outpost of hovels, prisons and unregulated factories.

Two of the shuttles containing illegal border-crossers are immediately shot down. One of them, however, manages to land on Elysium. A mother and her disabled child break into a sparkling clean house and locate the magic machine. The child lies on the flat surface, the machine hums and her handicap disappears. It’s a short-lived triumph, as armed guards seize the intruders and repair the security breach.

The future, as Hollywood imagines it, rarely looks good. We’ve either bombed ourselves back into barbarism (Mad Max, The Road), trashed the environment (Soylent Green, Wall-E) or somehow eliminated our ability to procreate (The Children of Men). In Total Recall, the horrors of unregulated capitalism have been outsourced to Mars, where an autocrat runs a mining operation designed by Hieronymus Bosch.

If in the past we imagined a future of distant penal colonies for the criminal 1 percent, we now are projecting a penal Earth for the outcast 99 percent. Elysium is almost a parody of this 99-to-1 dichotomy, for the space station is home to only a tiny handful of people, while Earth looks like the crack-ravaged South Bronx of the 1980s. In this scenario, the wolves of Wall Street have siphoned up as much wealth as they can before departing, not for some exclusive Caribbean island—rising waters have presumably eliminated those tax havens—but for the insulated comforts of outer space.

[antigop]

38. "I Never Knew His Name" from "The Civil War"

[antigop]

39. "The Honor of Your Name" from "The Civil War"

For the wives and families...