Tweet
Greetings!
International Developments
❖ “Syria in ruins . . . [P]eople hope only for end to conflict as regime shells residential areas and democratic influence on rebels wanes”. Government’s increasingly relying on militia.
❖ French President Francois Hollande: “Islamist militants from neighboring Nigeria abducted a French family of seven . . . in northern Cameroon”.
❖ “Crisis deepens in Tunisia as PM set to quit”.
❖ Afghanistan war deaths declined from 3,021 in 2011 to 2,754 in 2012. Why? “the slowing pace of the war; more fighting by Afghan forces, who use less lethal weapons; and an assiduous effort by the Western-led forces to reduce the impact on civilians.” Drone strikes increased, from 294 in 2011 to 506 in 2012.
❖ “Taliban targeting Afghan women and government workers”.
❖ Iraq today: “4.5 million children . . .are now orphans. [Some] 600,000 children . . . living on the streets, without either shelter or food to survive”. The few state-run orphanages currently can’t meet “their most essential needs.” Much more.
❖ “Poland will drop charges against a former intelligence chief prompted by allegations that the CIA was allowed to run a secret prison in Poland for al Qaeda suspects”
❖ A 12-story building in Shanghai supposedly houses the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s cyberwars headquarters. They’ve “stolen vast amounts of data from . . . western companies and defence groups”.
❖ “General John Allen has decided to retire rather than proceed with his nomination as the NATO supreme allied commander”. “Health reasons”.
International Finance
❖ A woman set herself afire in an Almassaora, Spain bank. No motive given yet, but there’ve been “at least five mortgage default-related suicides in recent months.”
❖ Amazon’s cancelled their arrangement with the German security firm which provided neo-Nazi thugs who frightened workers. Investigations continue.
❖ How much money is sitting in the Fed, by major banks? Wells Fargo – $97.1bn; JPMorgan – $88.6bn; Goldman Sachs – $58.7bn; Canada’s TD Bank, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Switzerland’s UBS – $12bn each. When rates rise the Fed could be paying $50bn – $75bn in interest on those amounts. Just imagine the public reaction.
Money Matters USA
❖ Simpson & Bowles: cut $600bn “over 10 years to . . . Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.” They did recommend revenue increases, which Republicans won’t accept anyway.
❖ Giant chain stores going down? Permanently contracting economy? Global trade relationships destroyed? What’s next? Today’s younger generations will need to adapt and restore “the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other.”
Politics USA
❖ “Meet 6 Politicians Getting Rich from America’s Endless Wars: The defense industry is a powerful and influential lobby.” Half are Dems.
❖ US “Postal Service of The Future”.
❖ Republican logic, MI style: “all those smug tree-huggers who dodge their fair share of road costs by driving cars that don’t use enough gasoline” deserve higher vehicle registration fees since they are “probably not paying their fare [sic] share” anyway.
❖ *Gasp!* A Republican state Senator in TX has proposed raising taxes to fund annual maintenance and “grow” the state’s road system.
❖ Tea-Party photo[shop] of KKKKarl.
❖ Colorado’s state House passed an entire package of gun control bills. Now on to the Democrat-controlled state Senate.
Health, Homelessness & Hunger
❖ “US retailers and restaurants [sic] chains that employ millions of low-wage workers are considering various ways to avoid . . . enrolling employees in health insurance plans under” the Affordable Care Act. One option: pay the $2,000/year penalty for not covering each worker rather than the $4,664 enrollment cost.
❖ By passing up the opportunity to have their own health exchanges, Republican governors are strengthening the hand of the federal government and increasing the chances for a “nationally-run insurance marketplace”.
Women & Children
❖ “The Republicans are always telling us about their reverence for life. Really? They are going to have 600,000 poor women and children not have proper food” due to the sequester. Video
❖ Catholic bishops in Germany are considering the “morning after pill” as pressure builds for reform, particularly following “last month’s refusals by two Catholic hospitals in Cologne to treat a rape victim.”
❖ “Arkansas state Senate approved a [Republican[ measure on Monday to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy except in the case of rape, incest or to save the mother's life." Now it's on Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's desk for signature.
Working for A Living
❖ President Obama has called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9/hour and 54% of Americans agree. "Who Decided Workers Should Fall Behind" anyway?
❖ President Obama warns "thousands of teachers will be laid off if the looming automatic spending cuts go into effect."
❖ New AFL-CIO website: "Our Values @WORK"
❖ During difficult economic times, particularly for very young adults trying to find a job, the US Labor Dept. has halted enrollment in the Job Corps "due to concerns over mismanagement."
❖ Great message for America's workers: "Investigation: Washington [DC] Airport Agency Leadership Targeted Pro-Labor Board Members in Rail Line Fight”.
Planet Earth News
❖ Interpol’s Environmental Crime Program has arrested “200 people in a wide-ranging international operation against illegal logging and trafficking of timber”–12 Central and South American countries; $100bn world-side.
❖ “BP to fight government’s ‘excessive’ demands over Deepwater oil spill”. Transocean, however, has agreed to a $1bn payment in civil penalties.
❖ Continuous update: “Ohio Residents Shut Down Fracking Waste Storage Facility”.
❖ Scientific American article on protecting the Arctic “from a rush for natural resources as melting ice makes mineral and energy exploration easier”.
❖ Yay! Berea (KY) Utilities’ solar panels leasing has grown so much that 132 new panels willl be in soon.
❖ Solar module costs/watt–from $1.29 in 2009 to an estimated $0.42 in 2015.
❖ What do birds on Midway Island eat?
Latin America
❖ Excepting Guantanamo, Latin America was the only region not participating in the US’ post-9/11 rendition and torture programs. This despite, or because of, intense US efforts in the ’70s and ’80s to turn Latin American countries into brutally repressive right-wing regimes. Will resistance to US military efforts in the region continue?
❖ New poll: Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Madura would win a presidential vote.
Break Time
45 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
jumping jehosophat that is a load of stuff Fatster.
I would not want my cat playing around owls
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/29/owl-catches-cat_n_2038526.html
LOLOL, well, just jump right in, mafr!
I hear you about owls and kitties. They definitely don’t mix well–which is why the two in that video are so unique.
And, . . . Good evening to you!
X2.
In particular, our fatster has now picked up the Tunisian leadership soap opera. As an update, Prime Minister Jebali has in fact resigned.
Of course it’s hard to see what else he could do after his own party rejected his plan for resolving the country’s political crisis.
I’m surprised: I would have thought a cat could hold its own since owls are not all that large.
Has Box Turtle’s science page been told?
What? Nothing about the Hilary Mantel-Kate Middleton slam down?
And you call yourself a news site?
Major news update: Stay granted in the planned execution of the mentally disabled man in GA
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/federal-appeals-court-halts-ga-execution-18541885
The price of austerity, UK style: Desperate 1,701 fight for eight Costa Coffee jobs
Thnx for that update, E. F. Beall.
Owls can be very vicious.
Also, as to “Politics USA,” General Allen will not head NATO after all: He has “decided” to retire, citing the need to help his ailing wife.
Right.
Oh, mea culpa, allan, mea culpa!
I’ve just been too busy following those people whose names start with a “K”.
This is hilarious, E. F. Beall. I put Gen. Allen in “International Developments”. You know, NATO and all. Well, he’s well-covered now.
Another excellent take-down… Iraq War Deception Still Costing Dearly…
…Wilkerson claimed that his boss had no idea about the veracity of the intelligence he cited during that UN speech, yet goes on to say: “Though neither Powell nor anyone else from the State Department team intentionally lied, we did participate in a hoax.”
Oh, boy, that’s some parsing: “Nobody lied but we did participate in a hoax.”
I wonder how that fits in with the West Point honor code.
Imagine if one or two of these big shots had joined Joe Wilson, the ambassador who blew in the whistle on the phony Niger yellow cake documents, and stepped forward to publicly unmask the Bush conspiracy?
Powell alone, perhaps, could have put out the war bonfire with a one-word press conference: “Lies.” Especially if he had George Tenet standing beside him.
But no.
All these what-ifs come too late for the 35,000 American dead and wounded and their families, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead and displaced Iraqis and their broken state, who we should mourn en masse on the invasion’s 10th-year anniversary, March 19.
If just one good thing had come of the war, I suppose someone could make a half-assed argument for it.
But today’s news from Iraq in The Washington Post put yet another punctuation mark on the fatal folly: the Iranians are ever more ensconced in Iraq.
Nice going, guys. Isn’t it time for a truth commission on the whole shoddy affair?
Aloha, fatster…!
Heartbreaking stuff, allan.
Odd how so many innocent people end up paying–and dearly, too–for the mistakes of so very few.
Thnx for the link.
Aloha, CTuttle. Nice summary there. Many thanks for it.
Good news, fatster; here’s a little more detail from the Guardian.
Oops, mea culpa.
No problem. I’m still chuckling–and after a day with the nooze, I need a good chuckle. Many thnx.
Oh, good, good!
This is focused on the Great Horned Owl, but it’s applicable to them all:
http://bismarcktribune.com/lifestyles/outdoors/beware-the-horned-owl-s-deadly-talons/article_0c7df116-3242-11df-b81f-001cc4c03286.html
An owl can give a whole new, vivid meaning to the old phrase, “steal your face”.
Regarding giant chain stores. . .
It’s an excellent link. My only reservation . . . big chains, malls, and the like, didn’t simply invent themselves. Nor did someone put something in the water to lure people to obsessively patronize these places. Nor is it a problem peculiar to just the US.
Well, that’s more than one reservation I suppose. Yet I agree that they are toxic regardless of how they came about. I think it was Pogo’s, “We have met the enemy, and they is US”.”
Wow! A creature indeed not to mess with. Thanks for the ornithology lesson from Bismarck (North Dakota, I gather, since the temperature is said to be -1 in March).
Glad you found the article interesting, too, maa8722. I guess people simply got lured by the promise of lower prices. Somehow, it seems, running out and buying stuff became addictive (just my opinion, btw).
I grew up with Pogo. Thnx so much for the reminder.
In more international news, it seems that Netanyahu has co-opted Tzipi Livni to be Israel’s Justice Minister, with responsibility for reviving the so-called peace process.
To be sure, the announcement was NOT accompanied by any initiative to stop the settlements movement, so as to make her task actually possible.
Regarding US retailers paying penalty to avoid enrolling employees in health care. . .
WSJ ran a piece ~two or three weeks ago about another tactic. I don’t have a link, but it was about incorporating the workforce as a separate entity in its own right. I don’t recall all the particulars, but it sounded weird. Apparently legislation would be needed to close the loophole.
Re: #23
I think there’s a herding instinct, too, which must go waaay back in our evolution. It was safety, comfort for crowds in familiar surroundings.
Today’s shoppers caught on? Maybe our high tech world nowadays, relative ease of transportation, etc., opened the big box doors in a bad way.
*wow* In Kansas City… One of top restaurants in Midwest is ‘just completely gone’…
OMG. That’s just awful, CTuttle. Thnx for letting us know.
I missed out on that “herding instinct”, maa8722. I tend to be a bit claustrophobic. You do have a point, though.
❖ Iraq today: “4.5 million children . . .are now orphans. [Some] 600,000 children . . . living on the streets, without either shelter or food to survive
This type of thing, this fact, and all of the others that go along with it, is why Obama can not be considered as evil as Bush/Cheney and their accomplices.
How much money is sitting in the Fed, by major banks?
Lets say enough money, that if invested in an energy program,a war on energy insstead of fabricated war against countries to steal their potential energy, this might actually liberate America from oil whores and actually end the squandering of trillions of dollars of economic value out tailpipes while Americans get no return on monies spent then wasted. .80 cents of every dollar spent on potential energy from oil monopolies for generations, gone?
This is fucking servitude to monopolies protected by our government just as Madison and Jefferson feared. Meanwhile Wall Street fucks America and their speculation and abject fucking greed, fucks America! These mother fucker are fascist corporate traitors sucking Mammon’s dick. Just as Jefferson and Madisn feared…….
Last night, I tried to forward to you the email I received from the Yale prof. This morning I got an error message that it was undeliverable. If you have my email addy, send me a message & I’ll forward my email to you.
Yes, America had no problem hanging fucking Nazi war criminals????????????
WTF, is the problem now?
See it first hand. Brother owns very successful muti- million dollar retail, wholesale business.
Dumps his own sister on the health exchange, cause he is a cheap fucking selfish prick!
Yes. Then a trial. Then Convictions. Then executions. Just like the Nazis for the action manifest by “our” war criminals is a page taken from the fascist hand book written by Nazis.
We were cross-country skiing a few years ago in the Parc de la Maurice just outside Shawinigan (Quebec) when we came across a group of youngsters who had been camping out in one of the huts with their teacher. Apparently one of the kids was teasing an owl and got attacked by it, and almost lost his eye. They are ferocious creatures. You hardly ever see them, though, unless you are a serious birder and know where to look. Some of them are huge.
We’ve never shopped in them. When I was growing up in the 50s they didn’t exist yet; in the 60s I was in University and wasn’t buying anything (and didn’t have a car), and ever since I have lived in the middle of a city where I can walk to almost everything I need except electronic equipment, which seems to have been monopolized by the big boxes. What I could never understand is how they expected old people who don’t drive to get their food, drugs, and other necessities. Home free delivery?
Not to say we don’t have our own creeping problems. About a kilometer a way there are a host of new apartment buildings, some renovated factories, which do not have any retail space on street level. People who live there have to cross a railway yard to get to the nearest mall. It’s asinine. The apartments are quite nice, but we will never move to a place where we can’t shop on foot.
Which Jackson was it who needed a $43 Thou watch? Gag…
Is there no shame?
I find this the most persuasive explanation–unfortunately.
Tell me how this differs from Roe v. Wade. I smell political posturing. Bigtime. Looks like the forced-birth folks have lost their argument in Arkansas.
It sounds like the government needs to come up with its own version of the “chained CPI” for banks. It isn’t quite the interest they owe the 2+ trillion to the trust fund if it were to come due but with those numbers it’s a pretty hefty chunk of change in interest they’ll be owing banks for investing in treasuries.
Then again maybe these banks will be so thankful for the zero interest loans the Fed has been giving them that they’ll decide the billions in interest (tongue firmly in cheek) don’t need to be collected and will just roll all their treasuries over. LOL
If it were only just “protected.” In the case of the banking industry who essentially has been able to make money off of a window that allows them money to get money at no interest and then collect the interest off things like treasuries I’d say the government not only protects this industry but has coddled it.
Saying he was “very sorry for my behavior,” former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) has revealed that he secretly fathered a son more than 30 years ago with the daughter of former Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.)
yes
that owl and cat video is too wonderful. bonding over a mutual *love* of mice. the cat charging and jumping OVER the owl. and the head rubs. too, too much.