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Holiday or not, as long as they make the news, we round it up for you.
International Developments
❖ Finally! “Marikana mine strike: South Africa to drop murder charges” against the 270 miners whose co-workers were killed by police. Those murder charges were brought under an apartheid law. Some are now calling for President Jacob Zuma to resign.
❖ Following “a series of incidents in which foreign troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen”, training of police recruits has been suspended “while checks are carried out on possible ties to the Taliban.”
❖ Between September 21 – October 21, Iran will be conducting a test on its air defense systems. Priority: protecting nuclear facilities.
❖ Undercover spy, Mark Kennedy, infiltrated criminal and political groups for local police forces, “deployed in 11 countries on 40 occasions . . . [including] Germany, Denmark and Iceland.” Somehow, police and intelligence services have developed an international network with no parliamentary oversight. Even the Icelandic government can get no information about who authorized Kennedy’s activities there.
❖ Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu wants Tony Blair and George Bush “to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court” for the invasion of Iraq. The “International Criminal Court [which the US doesn't recognize anyway] can handle cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity”, but not aggression.
International Finance
❖ Well, well: “Business support for the [UK] government’s austerity plan started to fracture . . . after [the British Chambers of Commerce] called for a small stimulus funded through extra public borrowing.” Britain’s economy is in “a double-dip recession and the budget deficit” is rising. Both the BCC and the Confederation of British Industry “slashed their growth forecasts”.
Money Matters USA
❖ Three graphs: Corporate profits are so high they’ve set a new record; the number of people working is as low as in the early ’80s; wages as a % of the economy are at a new record low.
Politics USA
❖ “Do you think the lack of criminal prosecutions from the 2008 financial collapse could have something to do with all of the Wall Street money that went to President Barack Obama’s campaign?” If you think it’s bad now, “Just wait until after the Republican and Democratic conventions” when billions will be spent purveying “half-truths and lies.” Move to Amend is dedicated to stopping what Citizens United set in motion.
❖ When asked during a teevee show today whether Americans are better off than they were 4 years ago, MD Democratic Gov Martin O’Malley responded “No”, then quickly added “we are not as well off as we were before . . . the Bush job losses”, etc. Republicans have seized on the “No” and issued a statement about Americans’ patience wearing thin.
❖ Democratic Convention chair and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa characterizes the GOP platform as “The Platform of 1812″.
❖ Republicans plan to set up a counter-convention outside the Democratic convention. They’ll have 50 “communicators” in key positions around the arena who are going to. . . what? Talk people into voting for Romney?
❖ “Phyllis Schlafly calls for Rove resignation over Akin ‘murder’ remarks”. She wants Rove to resign but nobody’s sure from what.
❖ Newt Gingrich was upset with Rove’s remark, too, but had a more reasoned response: “‘in the age of Gabby Giffords, it is not a joke to say a member of Congress ought to get murdered.’”
❖ Today, Fox teevee’s Chris Wallace said that, in his first two years as president, Obama “had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate”, which isn’t true. There was a Democratic majority in the Senate–but for only 4 months–beginning Sep 24, 2009.
❖ Republican Veep candidate Paul Ryan “is correcting his recent claim that he ran a marathon in under three hours about two decades ago, noting he actually completed the race in just over four hours.
❖ A charter school for children with “emotional, behavioral or physical disabilities” in Bethlehem, PA no longer has a school house. The board of trustees sold it, due to overwhelming debt, and staff have been laid off. Nonetheless, the school is still receiving local and state tax dollars and will continue to, as long as it shows students enrolled.
❖ PA’s Department of Transportation has figured out how to enable the state’s oldest residents to get a “newly required voter ID after its computer system would not reocgnize the age of a 105-year-old woman.”
The War on Women
❖ Another one: MD GOP Representative Roscoe Bartlett, responding to a question about abortion, “‘. . . there are very few pregnancies as a result of rape fortunately . . . It is tiny. It is a tiny, tiny percentage . . ..’” Video.
Health, Homelessness & Hunger
❖ “A homeless man was sentenced Wednesday to 180 days in the Marion County [FL] Jail for stealing Twix and Snickers candy bars worth about $2, his second offense. He was also fined $500.
Working for A Living
❖ In 2011, 1.7 million workers in the US earned the prevailing federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour), while 2.2 million earned less than the federal minimum. The leisure and hospitality industries had the highest proportion of workers earning less than the federal minimum wage. More stats by age, gender, ethnicity, etc. [Emphasis added]
Heads Up!
❖ Here are some of the groups that will be protesting at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte: Occupy Wall Street, AFL-CIO, Southern Workers Assembly, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, No Papers No Fear, Greenpeace, North Carolina Values Coalition. How’d that last one get in this lineup?
❖ Is totalitarianism “An Accident Waiting to Happen” in the US?
Planet Earth News
❖ “Why the Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Matters”, what does it mean for us, and how quickly will the consequences occur? What can we do? “Wake up, Freak out, then Get a Grip”.
❖ According to the US Director of National Intelligence,”water demand . . . set to outstrip sustainable current supplies by 40 per cent by 2030.” Fighting over water is likely to commence, “as thirsty people, opportunistic politicians and powerful corporations battle for dwindling resources.”
❖ Post-Isaac problems in LA and MS: Widespread flooding leading to evacuations in some areas (from a few thousand to 60,000), and 7 deaths. Over half a million people were without power in LA and 60,000 in MS.
❖ Three years ago, a Turkish bulk carrier ran aground off Cape Town, South African. It has now disintegrated to the point that oil is leaking from it.
Latin America
❖ So far, Venezuela’s investigative team has not found the Yanomami community which was reportedly hit by firebombs from a helicopter, supposedly at the hands of illegal gold miners from an adjacent area of Brazil.
Mixed Bag
❖ Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, 92, has died.
Break Time
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I am sure the exorbitant prices we pay to Halliburton or Blackwater or whoever is charging for the training will continue.
What I don’t understand, GeorgeJohnston, is why it took them so long to figure out that maybe it as a good idea to do background checks and so forth on the would-be trainees. Particularly in a country as volatile as that one.
Aloha, fatster…! Another great roundup…! I’m a big fan of the Agonist…! ;-)
Tutu is right that Shrub and his Poodle should be in the Docket at The Hague, I’ve been saying that for years now…!
Check out Blair’s response…
…In a statement, Blair strongly contested Tutu’s views and said Iraq was now a more prosperous country than it had been under Saddam Hussein. “I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu’s fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown.
“And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre. We have just had the memorials both of the Halabja massacre, where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.
“In addition, his slaughter of his political opponents, the treatment of the Marsh Arabs and the systematic torture of his people make the case for removing him morally strong. But the basis of action was as stated at the time.
“In short, this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say. But surely in a healthy democracy people can agree to disagree.
“I would also point out that despite the problems, Iraq today has an economy three times or more in size, with the child mortality rate cut by a third of what it was. And with investment hugely increased in places like Basra.”
What a f*cking sleazeball…! *gah*
Thank you, Fatster. Nice to get some news on the weekend when everyone else forgets that life continues past Friday evening. Especially news that isn’t jailhouse interviews with hardened criminals.
I saw this on the local news and was very impressed with how the police have handled the protests in Tampa. There were a few scuffles this week, but so far, they’ve made most other police forces look like the criminals they are.
Police deliver food to Romneyville protestors
Wasn’t that cool, though, Gothrykke? If only it could be duplicated over and over . . . Oh, well, I dream.
Thnx so much.
“every single independent analysis”? What is he talking about?
Aloha to you, too, CTuttle. And mahalo. (Thnx to you I’m becoming sooooo bilingual.)
Shouting out to Eric Schneiderman with a Lee Morgan favorite:
Very nice, prostradedragon. And I found one for you over there, too. It’s called “So Long Eric” (Mingus).
U.S. hasn’t a clue as to how to vet Afghanis. U.S.ians are cultural morons.
Where does Blair get his facts on the size of the economy and child mortality. He’s making them up, just like he made up the WMD. His upport for the war was critical; a lot of people who didn’t trust Bush trusted Blair. I find him more culpable than Bush.
It’s impossible. There can be no ideas. Who’s to know that some recruit’s third cousin was take out by a drone attack on a village wedding?
Let’s see. Male religious fanatics, not from your country, destroy the center of world commerce and terrorize an entire city. Soon, fear reigns. Justice must be obtained. The planners of this catastrophe identify themselves and hide in the border mountains of 2 countries only tangentially involved in the attack. Invasion and occupation follow. A decade later, after the death of 99% of the murderous supporters and planners, the ” justice bringers “( thanks Bushy ) are still in your country dropping bombs, killing your loved ones, putting you in prisons and crippling your economy. Now, why in the hell, would they want you to leave? And, why in the hell, would they infiltrate the occupying forces to kill them? This seems so irrational. After all, Iraqis now love us. Why can’t these goofy Afgans? Thanks, for playing. Have a great Labor Day.
Great round up. Thank you.
Gingrich is fact deficient. However, I do not understand your comment that a majority of U.S. Senators were Democratic for only four months.
Democrats were in the majority in the Senate from January 2007 to January 2011.
From January 2009 to January 2010, sixty Senators, a filibuster proof majority, were in the Democratic Caucus. However, only 48 were Democrats. The other two were independents, namely Sanders and Lieberman.
Are you saying that Kennedy did not count toward the 60 because he was so ill? If so, I respectfully disagree.
Sick of not, Kennedy flew in whenever his vote even might have been necessary.
I remember an email from a friend entitled “They’re killing Kennedy.” He meant that Republican Senators were intentionally killing him by forcing close votes, so that he had to keep flying to Washington. (I didn’t agree with him then or now.)
IIRC, Kennedy was even allowed to vote by telephone.
Most of the time before Kennedy’s death was spent on Obamacare, which was not ready for a Senate vote anyway until December, what with Ms Collins being so meticulous about revising the bill that the health insurers had written to make it even worse for Americans.
Bottom line, AFAIK, Democrats held the majority of the Senate all throughout Obama’s first term. Democratic Senators never made up a filibuster proof majority, but the caucus did have 60 members until January, 2010.
And then, came Senator Scott Brown.
There’s that too.
One of my big puzzles is why there aren’t a lot more of those shootings. It seems so simple: Enlist. Get a uniform. Get a gun. Get ammunition. Shoot.
I guess there aren’t enough Afghanis willing to die to take out a few of the enemy.
I think suicide bombing is more efficient. When I was keeping vague track (no excel spreadsheets, mind you), it seems like 10:1 was the yield. With GoB, it seems like you only get 1:1 or 2:1 max.
Speaking of Venezuela, this made me laugh. I never thought it was anything other than U.S. sabotage; it’s what the U.S. does.
A lot of people who did not trust Bush trusted Powell, too.
And Powell knew that.
Yet, he went before the UN, on one condition, namely that Tenet sit so that he could be seen in Powell’s camera shot.
Powell says that now, to exonerate himself. However, I think it damns him all the more. It shows that Powell had plenty of doubts about Tenet’s “slam dunk” intelligence.
Powell didn’t care enough about starting a phony war to refuse to go forward until the intelligence was more to his satisfaction. He only wanted to make sure that he had Tenet in the camera shot so he could blame Tenet after the shit his the fan.
I don’t know some posters who say they are Democrats defend Powell so vociferously.
Many FDL commenters and others (e.g. Jon Stewart) have pointed out so many subtleties in Eastwood’s presentation that I’ve come to the conclusion that although Eastwood used the form of an improv, it was not an improv at all but a very carefully crafted address.
Examples: Mentioning only Jon Voight as an example of a conservative Hollywood celebrity. Saying the president should not be a lawyer when Romney is a lawyer. Attacking Obama for starting the Afghan war when, of course, W. did. Attacking Obama for not closing Gitmo and then covering his statement by criticizing O’s administration for trying to hold a terrorist trial in New York City. Seeming to mock Romney by twice stressing that he was a “stellar businessman.” Saying that Romney should “king of take over” (maybe implying, as Edward Teller noted, that no president really pulls the strings).
In each of these cases, you could conclude that Eastman really didn’t know what he was saying and is an uninformed, addled old man. I don’t believe this for a second. This was a master craftsman at work, using an “old man” schtick (combined with the fact that he really is quite old) to bolster the effectiveness of his devastating delivery.
colin powell my lai
very good, eCAHN!
If it took a cabal of analysts to figure it out after the fact, it was a failure.
Being the lawn jockey for his masters is how Powell made his way to the top.
Thanks for giving blair’s response. It is so full of lies that I can’t believe that even the quivering mass of fear, the msm, would let it go by without comment. Knut @10 is right, the answers are simply unsupportable lies, they aren’t even 1/2 truths. There is no mention of the babies born that are malformed in horrible ways due to depleted uranium (depleted does not mean not radioactive). The utilities do not support the population. I think that I need not go on. The country is so much worse off now that there is no comparison.
In regard to the RSA, has the apartheid govt ever been exorcised?
I would like to know how an american spy was able to infiltrate these groups in Iceland and Denmark without raising suspicion.
My immediate response to the explosion in Venezuela is a terrorist attack, probably by a group funded by our govt.
One wag said that Zuma is Botha in blackface.
Did you look at the link at 15?
All thinking people agree. :-)
Here are two more articles that address that issue, nixonclinbushbama:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/chris-wallace-obama-had-filibuster-proof-senate-majority
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-16/news/ct-oped-0617-zorn-md-20120616_1_minnesota-democrat-al-franken-filibuster-proof-majority-barack-obama
I hope you will find them helpful. Thnx so much.
Yep, BearCountry, and who gave those agencies authority to use this guy and why won’t they respond to questions from their parliaments? Very interesting situation, and I hope we learn more about it in the coming days.
That might be true if we were dealing only with a live address. But Eastwood’s presentation is now mainly a piece of short cinema, constantly re-watched by millions on youtube (his presentation is, in addition to its political content, a great piece of comic entertainment). As it is seen again and again, its finer points become embedded in people’s consciousness. This was really a piece of movie writing/performance/production by Eastwood.
As you suggested, I did read the link @15. Did you go further in that link to see the note about the “extraordinary event” predicted by the American embassy?
The parliaments should be able to force responses from their own police forces, unless other parliamentarians were part of the underground spying and will protect their minions.
I did see the other report a day or two earlier. Not sure I linked to it. It’s hard to tell on the toobz what to take seriously and what’s just bogus plants. I did keep it in mind though.
I’m a pop culture moron. What you are talking about is waaay above my pay grade.
I have often asked “What’s so secret about Secret Service.” Apparently not much.