August 27, 2014

Ferguson Police (cartoon)

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/ferguson_police_20140826

August 25, 2014

Victim of McCarthy-Era Witch Hunt calls on U-Illinois not to Fire Critic of Israeli Policies

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/mccarthy-illinois-policies.html


Victim of McCarthy-Era Witch Hunt calls on U-Illinois not to Fire Critic of Israeli Policies
By Juan Cole | Aug. 25, 2014

Note by Juan Cole: In the early 1950s, under the influence of Rep. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), a national witch hunt was conducted for leftists. McCarthy claimed to have a list of 100 Soviet moles in the State Department. Even former members of the Communist Party, which had been popular in the 1930s Great Depression before Stalin’s crimes were recognized, and which was part of the formal US alliance against the Axis in World War II, were suddenly put under scrutiny. Running against secret Communists or alleged covert socialists became common in politics (a slimy sociopath named Richard Nixon got his start in Congress that way). Screen writers in Hollywood were fired, names taken off the films, and made non-persons. No actual crime had to be alleged or proven– people were punished and ostracized, essentially for thought crimes. These techniques of intellectual bullying and intimidation, supposedly on national security grounds, were intended by many of their proponents to roll back the New Deal reforms that made a decent life possible for working people and to make criticism of the absolute property prerogatives of corporations and the very wealthy illegal. Many of our social pathologies in the 21st century are rooted in the success of this inquisitorial drive. At the University of Michigan, there is still an annual lecture, the Academic Freedom Fund, in honor of three University of Michigan professors who were fired or suspended for refusing to testify to a visiting delegation from the House Un-American Activities Committee. One of those summarily fired was a mathematician, Chandler Davis, who emigrated to Canada. Professor Davis, still feisty in his late 80′s, has just written a personal letter to University of Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise urging her to rescind the firing of Professor Steven Salaita, a specialist in Native American Studies, for his trenchant criticisms of Israeli government policy toward the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. When I first wrote him suggesting I reprint the letter, in his gentlemanly way he said it was a letter to Chancellor Wise and he preferred not. Then it got out on the internet anyway, and he relented.

Chandler Davis writes:

Dr. Phyllis Wise
Chancellor
University of Illinois

Dear Chancellor Wise:


I write from a rich experience of attacks on academic freedom; I have seen the damage that enforcing conformity can do to intellectual life. Among the victims was myself. My expulsion from American academe in 1954 has been thoroughly refuted by history, so that I speak not with the bitterness of any unresolved grievance, but with the immediacy that personal memory gives.

When anti-segregationists were expelled, when socialists were expelled, the damage was dire for the victims, but dire also for the whole community. Today, we have our work cut out for us to defeat real anti-Semitism and real bigotry of all sorts. I am heartsick to see your office betray the struggle by joining the attack on Professor Steven Salaita.

Of course some sufficiently strong partisans of the Israeli government are sorry to hear his criticism, and might deplore his presence on your faculty. You are not obliged to bow to them. They are asking you to violate the security of an academic position– in this case, a position firmly promised though not yet taken up. Even if you could justify breaking your University’s commitment to Prof. Salaita –which you can not– you should reject with indignation the calls to wrench him from the community. He is an active opponent of anti-Semitism and other bigotry, as you must know from his writings. We need him by our side.

Chandler Davis

August 25, 2014

Chris Hedges: How the Brutalized Become Brutal

from truthdig:


How the Brutalized Become Brutal

Posted on Aug 24, 2014
By Chris Hedges


The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.

Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel’s occupied territories, Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a caldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And, willfully ignorant, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described what happened when he obtained a knife and confronted a German in an office. The act he carried out was no less brutal than the beheading of Foley or the executions in Gaza. Isolated from the reality he and the other inmates endured at the camp, his act was savage. Set against the backdrop of the extermination camp it was understandable.

“It’s not a decision,” Engel said. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’ ”

Any good cop, like any good reporter, knows that every criminal has a story. No one, except for perhaps a few psychopaths, wakes up wanting to cut off another person’s head. Murder and other violent crimes almost always grow out of years of abuse of some kind suffered by the perpetrator. Even the most “civilized” among us are not immune to dehumanization. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_the_brutalized_become_brutal_20140824

August 23, 2014

Big Dallas Plunder (School privatization scheme)

from In These Times:


Big Dallas Plunder
Dallas business interests stacked the school board. Now, a rule change could open the door for wholesale school privatization.

BY GEORGE JOSEPH


Dallas school board elections are generally lackadaisical affairs. In 2011, the school board elections were cancelled for lack of interest, as all three candidates ran unopposed. But since the beginning of 2012, hundreds of thousands of Super PAC dollars from Dallas’ richest neighborhoods began flowing into nearly all of the district’s school board elections.

Since 2011, Educate Dallas, a PAC backed by the Dallas Regional Chamber (the local Chamber of Commerce), has raised $661,953 in cash on hand for its school board war chest, and the Dallas-based education reform PAC Kids First, led by millionaire tech CEO Ken Barth, has raised $661,616. The majority of their donations come from Dallas’ famous aristocrats, including Barth, Ross Perot, Ray Hunt—an oil heir with a net worth of $5.8 billion—and Harlan Crow, a real estate heir and buddy of Clarence Thomas.

What made white businessmen from Dallas’ segregated northern enclaves, who typically donate to their children’s private academies, start caring about the plight of a low-income district? In Dallas Independent School District, 89 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch and 95.4 percent are students of color.

One hint may come from trips that the Chamber funded for school board and city council members. District records show that since at least 2011, the Chamber spent thousands on its so-called “best practices” tour—trips for city council and school board members to Denver, Houston and Los Angeles to better understand charter schools, publicly funded but privately operated institutions. For-profit charters have been expanding in Dallas over the past 15 years, especially in the wake of the closure of 11 public schools in early 2012. And the Chamber boasts a number of charter-school operators among its members, including longtime affiliates Uplift Education and Texans CAN Academies, two of the city’s largest charter chains. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17110/dallas_home_rule_push_could_open_the_charter_floodgates

August 23, 2014

Chris Hedges: The Dead Rhetoric of War (2013)

from Truthdig:



The Dead Rhetoric of War

Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Chris Hedges


The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a “Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.

The myth of war, as each generation discovers over the corpses of its young and the looting of its national treasury by war profiteers, is a lie. War is no longer able to divert Americans from the economic and political decay that is rapidly turning the nation into a corporate oligarchy, a nation where “the consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. War cannot hide what we have become. War has made us a nation that openly tortures and holds people indefinitely in our archipelago of offshore penal colonies. War has unleashed death squads—known as special operations forces—to assassinate our enemies around the globe, even American citizens. War has seen us terrorize whole populations, including populations with which we are not officially at war, with armed drones that circle night and day above mud-walled villages in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. War has shredded, in the name of national security, our most basic civil liberties. War has turned us into the most spied-upon, monitored, eavesdropped and photographed population in human history. War has seen our most courageous dissidents and whistle-blowers—those who warned us of the crimes of war and empire, from Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to Edward Snowden—become persecuted political prisoners or the hunted. War has made a few very rich, as it always does, as our schools, libraries and firehouses are closed in the name of fiscal austerity, basic social service programs for children and the elderly are shut down, cities such as Detroit declare bankruptcy, and chronic underemployment and unemployment hover at 15 percent, perhaps 20. No one knows the truth anymore about America. The vast Potemkin village we have become, the monstrous lie that is America, includes the willful manipulation of financial and official statistics from Wall Street and Washington. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dead_rhetoric_of_war_20130916

August 23, 2014

For London, one Crossrail isn’t enough

from the Transport Politic blog:



For London, one Crossrail isn’t enough


As Paris begins construction on a massive new program of circumferential metro lines designed to serve inter-suburban travel, London has doubled down on its efforts to improve links within the center of the metropolitan area. The two approaches speak to the two regions’ perceived deficiencies: Paris with its inadequate transit system in the suburbs, London with a core that is difficult to traverse.

There’s one thing both cities deem essential, though: Much faster transit links to reduce travel times around each respective region. In London, that means growing support for additional new tunneled rail links designed to bring suburban commuters through the center city while speeding urban travelers.

Since the conclusion of the second World War, London’s Underground network has grown very slowly: The Victoria Line was added in 1968 and the Jubilee Line extended in 1979, but that’s about it. In some ways, that made sense: London region’s population peaked in 1951 at 8.1 million and declined precipitously until the 1980s. It only recouped it losses in 2011. But the region is now growing quickly, adding an estimated 100,000 or more people a year, reaching a projected 9.7 million 20 years from now. The number of commuters entering the city is expected to grow by 36% by 2031.

That growth has put incredible strain on the city’s transit network, with ridership growing by 40% in fifteen years. Through direct government grants, the support of the pseudo-public Network Rail, and the commitment of Transport for London, the local transit organizing body, the city has two major relief valves under construction. The Thameslink Programme, which will open for service in 2018, will improve the existing north-south rail link through the city by allowing for trains every two to three minutes; the Crossrail 1 project, also opening in 2018, will create a new, 21-km northwest-to-southeast subway corridor that is expected to increase overall transit capacity by 10% while significantly reducing east-west travel across the city center. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2014/07/30/for-london-one-crossrail-isnt-enough/

August 23, 2014

In the words of Howard Zinn ...........

[font size="4"]"Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria."


"Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless."[/font]


http://www.notable-quotes.com/z/zinn_howard.html

August 23, 2014

Self-Service Scooters are the Next Form of Communal Transportation in Paris?

The Parisian family of environmentally-friendly vehicles could very well be enlarged! After the famous Vélib’, self-service bikes, and Autolib’, public electric car sharing service, Scootlib’ is set to be the next to enlarge the ranks of alternatives for getting around the capital. Zoom with Scootlib’, Paris’ self-service scooters!

Self-Service Scooters

The City of Paris has expressed the desire to make it so that in several years, residents of the capital largely abandon their individual means of transport to circulate solely with those vehicles owned by the city. Following Velib’ and Autolib,’ enter Scootlib’. In order to meet their goal, what better than to propose the rental of the three types of vehicles most often used on the roads: bikes, cars, and scooters!

Self-service stations of electric scooters already exist in two cities: San Francisco and Barcelona. In the Californian city, one hundred scooters have taken to the roads since September 2012, and 250 are parked in the seven neighborhoods of the Catalan capital since May 2013. But the Parisian project is even more ambitious: Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, wants 3,000 to 5,000 scooters, spread out in 700 stations across the city.

The clientele targeted by Scootlib’: Teens and young working adults

The public targeted by the Scootlib’ initiative is essentially youth and young working adults, between 14 -16 years old and 35-40 years old respectively. These are the citizens who own a motorized scooter or who get around in the city using Velib’ or the metro. And the desire to use motorized scooters is increasing. It is important to note that 150,000 motorized two-wheelers currently circulate every day in Paris, even though there are only 80,000 parking places that can accommodate them. Scootlib’ could therefore be a good solution in response to this problem. This is especially true considering one particular burning issue circulating the news: the end of tolerance for sidewalk parking, which was voted by the Council of Paris on Dec. 17, 2013. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/global-site-plans-grid/322306/self-service-scooters-are-next-form-communal-transportation-paris

August 23, 2014

Bank Settlement Grade Inflation: High Bullshit to Cash Ratio in $17 Billion Bank of America Deal

from Naked Capitalism:


Bank Settlement Grade Inflation: High Bullshit to Cash Ratio in $17 Billion Bank of America Deal
Posted on August 21, 2014 by Yves Smith


Over the last year, the Administration has entered into a series of bank settlements over various types of mortgage misconduct. The sudden rush to generate headlines from misdeeds that have been covered in the media in lurid detail during and after the crisis looks an awful lot like an effort to stem continuing criticism over the abject failure to punish banks and more important, their execs for blowing up the global economy for fun and profit, particularly since the Dems are at serious risk of losing control of the Senate in the Congressional midterms.

But as much as the media dutifully amplifies the multibillion headline value of these pacts, we’ve reminded readers again and again that all of these agreements have substantial non-cash portions which are ludicrously treated as if they have the same value as cold, hard cash. As we’ve reminded readers often, it’s critical to keep your eye on the real money, since the rest of the total is almost without exception things the bank would have done anyhow (or even better, giving banks credit for costs actually borne by others, like modifying mortgages that the bank merely services, meaning the bank gets a credit for a writedown imposed on an investor).

A telling trend in this rash of deal-making is that the bullshit to cash ratio has been rising. Notice the pattern:

November 2013 JP Morgan settlement of FHFA, other Federal, and certain state mortgage claims. $13 billion headline value. $9 billion in cash. Bullshit to cash ratio: 44.4%

July 2014 Citigroup mortgage settlement over misrepresenting residential mortgage backed securities. $7 billion headline value. Cash portion $4.5 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 55.6%

August 2014 Bank of America settlement. $17 billion headline value. Cash portion $9 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 88.9%

Now admittedly, none of these approach the mother of all bullshit settlements, namely, the Federal/49 state mortgage settlement of early 2012, whose real purpose was to take pesky state attorneys generals out of the business of getting too inquisitive about mortgage chain of title issues, which Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin more colorfully called “securitization fail”. The totals kept moving around prior to the filing of the settlements with each bank, and by then, the media had lost interest in the particulars. Since these pacts are really all about managing public perception rather than punishing bank crimes, the rough and ready figures touted at time of the initial announcement are most germane.

February 2012, Federal/49 state mortgage settlement. $25 billion headline value. “Less than $5 billion” in cash, so charitably call it $5 billion. Bullshit to cash ratio: 400%. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/high-bullshit-to-cash-ratio-in-17-billion-bank-of-america-deal.html

August 23, 2014

Rick Perry 2016

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/perry_20140822