October 30, 2013

John McCain, a**hole

WASHINGTON -- Even though his wife is petitioning him to back the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has not yet decided how he will vote, saying he is concerned the landmark civil rights legislation could result in "reverse discrimination."

ENDA would prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Monday he plans to bring the legislation to the floor before Thanksgiving.

When asked what lingering concerns he had about backing ENDA, McCain replied, "Whether it imposes quotas, whether it has reverse discrimination, whether it has the kinds of provisions that really preserve equal rights for all citizens or, like for example, busing. Busing was done in the name of equality. Busing was a failure. Quotas were a failure. A lot of people thought they were solutions. They weren't. They bred problems."

.....(snip).....

"I think the young people know we do not need reverse discrimination, they don't believe in quotas and they don't believe in some of the programs we saw in the name of racial equality implemented in the past which turned out to be counterproductive," he said. "Ask people in Boston if busing turned out to be a good idea." ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/john-mccain-enda_n_4175050.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

October 30, 2013

Man Charged With Lawn Mower DUI

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/tony-caulder_n_4175404.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news




KENNEBUNK, Maine (AP) — A Maine man faces drunken driving charges after allegedly using his riding lawn mower to make a beer run.

Police say convenience store employees turned away 51-year-old Tony Caulder when he came to the store earlier this month because they thought he was drunk.

Officials tell WMTW-TV that (http://bit.ly/17v9jgn ) the employees followed the Kennebunk man outside to make sure he wasn't getting into a car and called police when he rode off on the lawn mower.

Police charged him with operating under the influence after stopping him a short time later. Nobody answered at a phone listed in Caulder's name.

October 30, 2013

BART Permanently Lifts Rush Hour Bike Ban

The Bay Area's transit agency voted unanimously last week to lift the long-standing ban on bikes aboard trains during rush hour. After the five-month pilot program ends on December 1st, bikes will be permanently allowed on all BART trains, at all times.

Previously, riders couldn’t bring bikes onto most trains during peak commute hours. There’s still some restrictions: bicyclists aren’t supposed to board crowded trains, and bikes are never allowed in the first car, or the first three cars during rush hour.

It’s a big victory for bike advocates, who have been pushing BART to do away with the ban since the 1970s, when bikes were completely banned. Surveys from three pilot programs (one is ongoing) showed most riders don’t mind sharing trains with bikes. In the latest survey, 79 percent of those surveyed were in favor of allowing bikes on board during commute hours.

Still, about one quarter of riders surveyed said allowing bikes on board made their commute worse. Common complaints included cyclists pushing their way onto crowded cars or taking up seats reserved for seniors and disabled riders. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.wnyc.org/story/bart-permanently-lifts-rush-hour-bike-ban/

October 30, 2013

Judge Recants His Own Recanting of Key Voter ID Ruling

from The Progressive:


Judge Recants His Own Recanting of Key Voter ID Ruling
By Brad Friedman, Oct. 29, 2013


Okay. Now this is beginning to get completely absurd.

In an article at New Republic headlined "I Did Not 'Recant' on Voter ID Laws'," published Monday, 7th Circuit Appellate Court Judge Richard Posner now claims he hasn't actually disavowed his landmark majority opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board after all!

The record will show, however, the Reagan-appointed judge may have a bit of a faulty -- or, at least, selective -- memory.

The Crawford case is the now-infamous 2007 challenge to Indiana's then new polling place Photo ID restriction law which Posner voted to uphold in a 2 to 1 decision. The law was subsequently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. It is the only high-profile case to uphold such laws as Constitutional, even though Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the controlling opinion at SCOTUS, now believes dissenting Justice David Souter "got the thing correct." .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/judge-recants-own-recanting-of-key-voter-id-ruling

October 29, 2013

Doug Ireland, Radical Journalist: 1946 – 2013

from truthdig:


Doug Ireland, Radical Journalist: 1946 – 2013

Posted on Oct 29, 2013
By Scott Tucker


Doug Ireland, gay liberationist and radical journalist, died in his East Village home in New York City on Oct. 26. He had survived two strokes, and in his last years also suffered from diabetes, kidney disease, sciatica and the long-term effects of childhood polio.

In 1963, at the age of 17, Ireland was elected to the National Council of Students for a Democratic Society, and became an assistant national secretary from 1963 to 1964. In 1966 he left SDS, and concentrated his activist work on the electoral wing of the anti-war movement. Ireland had begun his work in journalism at the New York Post. From the late 1970s until his death, he worked primarily as a political journalist for publications of the left, including The Nation and In These Times in the United States, and Liberation and Bakchich in France. He also wrote for The Village Voice, The New York Observer and New York magazine. In more recent years, he was a regular columnist for Gay City News in New York.

Ireland was not only a left-wing critic of sexual and political conformism among sectors of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements, but he was also one of the notable public intellectuals of the civil libertarian left. Our paths crossed only three times, many years ago in the previous century. During his period of heavy drinking, I once visited his apartment and helped him fill trash bags with empty bottles and pizza boxes. The only time we had a truly free-ranging conversation in person was when he, Dennis Altman and I were weekend guests of Ethan Geto, staying on one of the Thimble Islands of Connecticut in a small cabin that had once been owned by Tom Thumb.

In the following years, we would exchange emails now and then on various subjects including AIDS activism and European politics. Neither of us ever ventured beyond the personal boundaries of the other, and we were never close friends. Even in the more impersonal realm of public events, our political alliances were somewhat testy and contingent. Both of us had joined activist groups of the left in our teens, and both of us were also active in the post-Stonewall gay movement on the East Coast. This is considerable common ground in politics, and we took care to highlight the overlapping segments of the Venn diagrams. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/doug_ireland_radical_journalist_1946_2013_20131029

October 29, 2013

Germany: Spying Fallout: Conservative Calls for End of Data Pact

from Der Spiegel:



With members of his party calling for consequences in the NSA spying affair, a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's sister party says he wants the EU to cancel its Safe Harbor data agreement with the US.

For US Internet giants like Facebook and Google, the so-called "Safe Harbor" pact between the EU and the US is extremely practical. The agreement allows US companies doing business in the EU to transfer personal data like the birthplace, telephone numbers and email addresses of EU citizens to the US. More than 3,000 US firms joined the program, including, among others, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

The 1998 agreement has come under criticism time and again because of the lax data privacy laws in the US. Although the Safe Harbor agreement provides for a level of protection for the transferred data according to EU standards, data protection advocates often voiced doubts about how seriously it was being implemented.

The concerns grew in Brussels by the time former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the secret monitoring program of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US, and it became known that companies like Facebook and Google had provided data to the NSA. EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding has called the Safe Harbor agreement a "loophole," rather than a "protection of our citizens." For years, audits have revealed serious breaches of the Safe Harbor rules by US companies. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-politician-wants-to-end-safe-harbor-agreement-with-us-a-930703.html

October 29, 2013

Robert Parry: Neocons Push Israeli-Saudi Alliance

from Consortium News:


Neocons Push Israeli-Saudi Alliance
October 29, 2013

Exclusive: Early U.S. presidents warned against the dangers of “entangling alliances,” prescient advice that the neocons want President Obama to ignore amid demands from Israel and Saudi Arabia that America tie itself up in the endless and bloody sectarian conflicts of the Middle East, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


American neocons are rallying to the new Israeli-Saudi alliance by demanding that President Barack Obama engage more aggressively against the two countries’ foes in the Middle East, thus “bolstering Israeli and Saudi confidence,” as the Washington Post’s deputy editorial-page editor Jackson Diehl declared.

For years, the Washington Post has served as Official Washington’s neocon flagship, bristling in support of every hawkish demand for U.S. intervention in the Mideast, most notably assembling a flotilla of misguided consensus in support of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and then pounding any American skeptics who dared emerge over the horizon.

Diehl’s column on Monday represented an extension of the neocons’ knee-jerk support of Israeli interests to those of the Saudi monarchy, Israel’s new secret friend. Diehl hoisted the banner of this odd-couple alliance in excoriating President Obama for letting down these two “allies” as they maneuver to crush what’s known as the Shiite crescent extending from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

In sync with the regional interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel, Diehl argued that the United States should toughen up its military posture in the Middle East with the goal of “reshaping conditions on the ground,” specifically going after Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and damaging the new Iranian government of President Hassan Rouhani, or in Diehl’s words, “weakening Assad (and) degrading Iranian strength.” ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/10/29/neocons-push-israeli-saudi-alliance/

October 29, 2013

Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University

Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University

Tuesday, 29 October 2013 09:16
By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

"The University is a critical institution or it is nothing." - Stuart Hall

I want to begin with the words of the late African-American poet, Audre Lourde, who was in her time a formidable writer, educator, feminist, gay rights activist and public intellectual who displayed a relentless courage in addressing the injustices she witnessed all around her. She writes:

Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

And while Lourde refers to poetry here, I think a strong case can be made that the attributes she ascribes to poetry can also be attributed to higher education - a genuine higher education.2 In this case, an education that includes history, philosophy, all of the arts and humanities, the criticality of the social sciences, the world of discovery made manifest by science, and the transformations in health and in law wrought by the professions that are at the heart of what it means to know something about the human condition. Lourde's defense of poetry as a mode of education is especially crucial for those of us who believe that the university is nothing if it is not a public trust and social good; that is a critical institution infused with the promise of cultivating intellectual insight, the imagination, inquisitiveness, risk-taking, social responsibility and the struggle for justice. At best, universities should be at the "heart of intense public discourse, passionate learning and vocal citizen involvement in the issues of the times." It is in the spirit of such an ideal that I first want to address those larger economic, social, and cultural interests that threaten this notion of education, especially higher education.

Across the globe, the forces of casino capitalism are on the march. With the return of the Gilded Age and its dream worlds of consumption, privatization and deregulation, not only are democratic values and social protections at risk, but the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections crucial to democratic life are in danger of disappearing altogether. As public spheres, once enlivened by broad engagements with common concerns, are being transformed into "spectacular spaces of consumption," the flight from mutual obligations and social responsibilities intensifies and has resulted in what Tony Judt identifies as a "loss of faith in the culture of open democracy."3 This loss of faith in the power of public dialogue and dissent is not unrelated to the diminished belief in higher education as central to producing critical citizens and a crucial democratic public sphere in its own right. At stake here is not only the meaning and purpose of higher education, but also civil society, politics and the fate of democracy itself. Thomas Frank is on target when he argues that "Over the course of the past few decades, the power of concentrated money has subverted professions, destroyed small investors, wrecked the regulatory state, corrupted legislators en masse and repeatedly put the economy through the wringer. Now it has come for our democracy itself."4 And, yet, the only questions being asked about knowledge production, the purpose of education, the nature of politics, and our understanding of the future are determined largely by market forces.

The mantras of neoliberalism are now well known: Government is the problem; Society is a fiction; Sovereignty is market-driven; Deregulation and commodification are vehicles for freedom; and Higher education should serve corporate interests rather than the public good. In addition, the yardstick of profit has become the only viable measure of the good life, while civic engagement and public spheres devoted to the common good are viewed by many politicians and their publics as either a hindrance to the goals of a market-driven society or alibis for government inefficiency and waste. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university

October 29, 2013

Istanbul not Constantinople, Istanbul not Constantinople

(BBC) A railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus Strait is due to open in Turkey, creating a new link between the Asian and European shores of Istanbul.

The tunnel is the world's first connecting two continents, and is designed to withstand earthquakes.

It is being opened on the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years championed the undersea engineering project, first conceived by an Ottoman sultan in 1860. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24721779

October 29, 2013

A Different Kind of Shutdown: What if progressives took a page from the Tea Party?

from In These Times:



A Different Kind of Shutdown
What if progressives took a page from the Tea Party?

BY Bhaskar Sunkara


During the height of this fall’s government shutdown, Obama spoke to factory workers about Republican intransigence in Congress. He asked them: If they wanted a raise and more vacation time, would they just shut down the plant and walk off the job?

Telling the story to reporters, the president recalled, “I said, ‘How do you think that would go?’ They all thought they’d be fired. And I think most of us think that. You know, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a raise or asking for more time off. But you can’t burn down the plant or your office if you don’t get your way. Well, the same thing is true here. … The American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs.”

The thing is: They once did exactly that. Workers never got anything by asking nicely. They got it by striking, picketing, and yes, occasionally dynamiting their employers. But in an era of declining industrial action, when few are inculcated in the traditions of union solidarity and the strike, those memories have faded. Obama wants to see them completely forgotten.

During the height of New Deal-era militancy, nearly all of General Motors’ 150,000 production workers were involved in a workplace shutdown or factory occupation. “Every time a dispute came up,” one UAW member remembered, “the fellows would have a tendency to sit down and just stop working.” ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15798/a_different_kind_of_shutdown/