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Happy Spring!
International Developments
❖ ”Syrian rebels captured one village and parts of others on the edge of the Golan Heights [today] as fighting closed in on the strategic plateau”. If this continues there’ll be “Islamic militants [on] a front-line with Israeli troops”.
❖ “Syria crisis: Mosque bomb ‘kills pro-government cleric”, “at least” 41 others, in Damascus.
❖ “UN to probe alleged chemical weapons use in Syria.” US: Chemical weapons use unlikely.
❖ “US and Israel ‘share Iran goals‘”. President Obama is “opening talks on extending US military aid [to Israel] beyond 2017″, and he’s “urged Palestinians to drop their demands for a freeze in Israeli settlement building as a precondition for peace talks.”
❖ “The jailed leader of Kurdish rebels fighting Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, has called for a truce after years of war.”
❖ The US wants a “swift transfer” of Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda from the Embassy in Kigali to the International Criminal Court in the Hague “where he faces war crimes charges.”
❖ US Gen. John Kelly “plays down Guantanamo hunger strike”.
❖ The fruits of war: U.S. Has Left Iraq with Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers”. Depleted uranium, white phosphorus.
International Finance
❖ “Cyprus crisis: Government to create ‘solidarity fund’ after ECB issues Monday ultimatum: . . . Longer queues at Laiki [major bank] cash machines”, much more, including pictures of protests. Blazing Saddles defense? “Cyprus threatens suicide strategy.”Live streams here.
❖ Austerity has been such a failure in the UK that Prime Minister George Osborne is promising “even deeper spending cuts after election”, targeting “Areas so far protected from austerity”.
❖ Iceland shines! “Icelandic bank Kaupthing’s top executives indicted over market rigging: Court documents are expected to allege a conspiracy by Kaupthing chairman Sigurdur Einarsson”, et al.
Money Matters USA
❖ Sequester victim: Dept. of Defense’s “Tuition Assistance program for all military members.”
❖ “Audit faults Freddie Mac’s oversight of mortgage servicers: At least eight big providers of mortgage customer service have failed to properly track and resolve serious complaints about servicing fraud”.
❖ “Private sector parasites: . . . the unproductive, rent-extracting rich”. ‘Rentiers’ exist for self-perpetuation, resulting in “low taxes [for them], privatization of natural monopolies, and a macroeconomic policy driven by fear of inflation.”
Politics USA
❖ The US House passed a continuing resolution, funding the government through September.
❖ Jamie Dimon, Farmer in the Dell? DDay on “How the nation’s biggest banks use the little-covered House Agriculture Committee to gut regulations”.
❖ Continuing their efforts to squeeze the US Postal Service, “Congress advanced a spending bill requiring six-day [mail] delivery”. The USPS wanted to suspend Saturday delivery, saving $2 billion annually.
❖ House Republicans passed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s sucky budget. Table showing Ryan budget tax savings by income level. House Republicans voting nay: Amash (MI), Broun (GA), Crawford (AR), Forbes (VA), Gibson (NY), Gingrey (GA), Heck (NV), Jones (NC), Massie (KY), McKinley (WV)
❖ What’s up with this? Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): Let’s have a Social Security Commission “to come up with a set of fixes to [Social Security's] fiscal programs that Congress could approve”.
❖ MI’s Gov. RIck Snyder (R) slashed “his state’sbusiness taxes”, but now that state roads are crumbling, he’s proposing increasing gasoline taxes by 19 – 33 cents/gallon and license plate fees by 60%, so consumers will pay.
❖ KS Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) used the phrase ‘illegal immigrant’ in a presentation to the KS legislature, to which State Rep. Ponka-We Victors (D), Tohono O’odham Nation member, responded: “. . . when you mention illegal immigrant, I think of all of you.”
❖ Is SD becoming a lost cause for Democrats?
❖ Latest tactic to stop ballot recounts.
Women & Children
❖ “John Stuart Mill had it right. Our abuse of women at home mirrors, and sometimes dictates, our behavior abroad.” Violence in the home by returning “warriors” captured in these photographs.
❖ New law in India “. . . makes crimes of stalking and sexual harassment and provides for the death penalty for fatal rape attacks.”
Education Directions
❖ Rahmbo is set to close some 50 elementary schools in Chicago–to the outrage of “aldermen and community leaders in the mostly African-American neighborhoods that will be hardest hit.”
Working for A Living
❖ “The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint [similar to an indictment] against four companies involved in staffing and managing Walmart’s largest distribution center in the United States” for repeatedly threatening and punishing warehouse workers for labor organizing”.
❖ CVS stores ordering all employees using “the company’s health care to report their weight, glucose levels, and body fat to their insurer, or pay a penalty of $600 dollars”.
Heads Up!
❖ Amazon “has reportedly won a contract for CIA efforts to ‘collect everything and hang on to it forever’.” $600 million over 10 years.
❖ “Privacy laws urgently need to be updated to protect the public from information-gathering by the thousands of civilian drones expected”.
❖ Reddit and Craigslist have joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Defense League “to fight CISPA [the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act] which allows the National Security Agency and the military to collect your private Internet records”.
Planet Earth News
❖ Sally Jewell’s nomination as Secretary of the Interior was passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Only three Republicans opposed. Promised deals greased the wheels.
❖ “Climate science-denying GOPer to head climate subcommittee“. That’s Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT). He wants to dissolve the EPA, btw.
❖ “Some of the nation’s biggest oil and gas companies have made peace with environmentalists, agreeing to a voluntary set of tough new standards for fracking” in PA’s northeast section.
❖ Canadian and US indigenous peoples are forming alliances, including “physical action”, ”to block oil pipelines”.
Latin America
❖ The genocide and crimes against humanity trial of US-backed dictator “strongman, Ephraim Rios Montt” is underway in Guatemala, with standing room only in the courtroom.
Mixed Bag
❖ RIP, Rise Stevens. Carmen.
❖ Who knew? Elephant seals use pedestrian cross-walks.
❖ The sky’s oldest light.
Break Time
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About FDL News Desk
Good evening, fatster and all; a lot going on, no?
It appears to me that O is leaning so far toward Israel that he’s in danger of toppling over. He says the settlements don’t help, but doesn’t say Israel should stop them, and as you note does say to the Palestinians that they should negotiate without a freeze, which has been exactly Netanyahu’s line.
Your news is the first I’ve seen about Rise Stevens. The businessweek link is (surprisingly) a fine obit, and I love the picture of her flanked by Ralph Bunche and Ed Sullivan.
In other news, preliminary charges are now leveled against former French President Sarkozy in his campaign funding scandal.
A bill has now been introduced in the U.S. Congress that would have the effect of removing the trademark protection of the racist name of the Washington, DC National Football League team (details).
Aloha, fatster, another excellent roundup…!
❖ “Syria crisis: Mosque bomb ‘kills pro-government cleric”, “at least” 41 others, in Damascus.
That tragic assassination is on a par with the Iraqi Ashura bombings, which truly sparked the Sectarian genocide that ensued…! 8-(
Uh-oh, it’s getting ugly in Cyprus…!
Btw, Pepe still rulz, the rest droolz…! ;-)
Real liars go to Tehran…
Regardless of what ensues in Syria, the U.S. has won. The country is destroyed.
Well, It is well down the war-torn path, but, there’s still some slim hope…! 8-(
Cose enough for govt work, as they say.
In some Inter-Stellar news…
“This is a ridiculously cool story: A black hole has been found with a binary companion star so close that the star makes one complete orbit every 2.4 hours – that means it circles the black hole 600 times faster than a rifle bullet! Not only that, but the star’s fate is not a happy one: It will eventually be torn apart by the black hole; shredded and eaten.”
Thnx so much, E. F. Beall. Stevens was amazing and that obit was quite fitting (I did a double-take on first seeing the source, too).
I hope you saw the entry in yesterday’s “Health, Homelessness & Hunger” section, providing documenting about where all those poor people go to get needed medical care when their traditional (and cheaper) source for it suddenly shuts down.
Poor star! Sounds like a celestial Grimm’s fairy tale–or maybe Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum”. Amazing story and much appreciated, CTuttle.
Oops–my manners: Aloha, and mucho Mahalo for that one.
I got the Sarkozy story after this evening’s Roundup went up. I can’t help but wonder if it’s related to yesterday’s story about Christine Lagarde. Hopefully, Knut (see comment #15 in yesterday’s Roundup) or someone who’s following this closely, will fill us in.
Seems to be related.
CT, any insight into whether Iron Dome’s success rate was 0% or 90%?
Yesterday’s story. Old.
Mentions connection with Sarkozy wh was your Q.
Why yes I would, M’dear, having been on the ground floor of the development/deployment of the Patriot systems, of which, Iron Dome utilizes the very same tech and hardware, it still couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn…! All legitimate reporting, all along, has them pegged at about a 5% chance of hitting anything…! It’s truly nothing but a MIC $cam for Raytheon…! 8-(
Many thanks. My suspicions, indeed.
There is a long & complicated backstory to my asking, most of wh would involve betraying confidences so I won’t go into it.
The public knowledge that made ne suspicious is that the “precision” weapons U.S. used during GWI turned out not to be so precise after all.
Ain’t it ironic that Iron Dome couldn’t knock down those two ‘symbolic’ Gazan rockets that hit Sderot, shortly after Obummer’s visit to an Iron Dome battery…? ;-)
That too.
If there’s anything that I’m dumber than dirt about, it’s military hardware. Bent metal and loud noises ain’t my thing, nor is destruction of life & property.
My null hypothesis is that if the MIC makes it and makes claims for it, they are bogus. Other than that, I’m willing to take instruction.
The other public info is that Izzies last invasion of Gaza lasted 8 days, vs. 22 the previous one, and a higher % of Izzie pop had to hide out in air raid shelters. If Iron Dome were so great, what was the rush to hide & to leave.
That was the presstv story, wh could be biased. Gotta check it out.
Indeed… Why the rush job…? Why the Rush to Form a Syrian Opposition Interim Government?
Naturally, just as soon as the new Syrian ‘PM’ was anointed… Key Syria Dissidents Leave Coalition Grouping…
Off to a rip-roaring start, eh…? 8-(
Someone, I think Tarheeldem, is keeping track of all the U.S. appointed Syrian PMs. I got lost after about the first 10.
*heh* I think it’s the 19th…! ;-)
Meanwhile, be afraid, be very afraid of DPRK invasion of U.S. And not anyplace U.S. but in the middle of continental U.S. This one is worth watching bc it’s such a laugh.
*heh* There’s even a newer movie with the DPRK being the nefarious culprits…! In D.C. even…! Olympus Has Fallen…
Geez, when do you figure U.S. bombing of DPRK will begin.
2 movies is surely a predictor of what they have in store for us.
If the Iron Dome couldn’t hit more than 5% of the time, that suggests there were far fewer rockets fired from Gaza than reported. Otherwise there would have been far more damage where they were aimed.
The rockets were mostly the same old, ballistic (aimed, but not guided), inaccurate rockets as before. But there were also new, sophisticated Iranian ones in the mix. If they had guidance systems which could be hacked by the IDF, those new missiles would become inaccurate as well. Then the IDF could claim an Iron Dome “success” where there was none.
Was it just some luck that Tel Aviv didn’t take a lot of direct hits? Who knows?
“. . .what they have in store for us.”
Dated music?
I tell you what, maa, if the IDF/Mossad keeps upping the ante in Lebanon, Syria, and the Golan Heights, Hezbollah might target Tel Aviv, as of yet, Hezbollah has been sitting on the sidelines…!
Many of the rockets hit empty fields according to reporting I read at the time.
Dated music seems par for the Hollywood course.
Was referring to USG, though.
Oh maa, not claiming more truthiness on one side or the other. Asking Qs and looking for patterns.
We certainly need to pay attention to this, folks…!
Putin: Russia, China Help Build New World Order…
…Russia is Xi Jinping’s first foreign destination as China’s president. Xi’s talks with Putin on Friday are set to focus on oil and gas as China seeks to secure new energy resources to fuel its growing economy.
Putin told the ITAR-Tass news agency that Xi’s choice of Moscow for the trip underscored a “special character of strategic partnership” between the two former Cold War rivals.
He added that Russia and China have set an example of a “balanced and pragmatic approach” to international crises — an apparent reference to their lockstep opposition to U.N. sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime…
David Cameron and George Osborne have an original idea to solve the UK’s economic woes:
a real estate bubble.
Some background on the struggle between developers and preservationists.
More good times in Rahmboland:
Shockingly,
democracynow spending the hour on Guardian/BBC expose of Steele, Petreaus’s torture centers in Iraq.
Priest says pope is innocent of dirty war allegations:
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/03/21/pope-preferred-silent-diplomacy-during-dirty-war-says-nobel-laureate/
Regardless of the truth or not of allegations, you’d think with over 100 cardinals, they could find a pope who is not controversial.
Well, true enough. But rather beside the point looking back at the supposedly huge volume of rockets fired by Hamas last year versus a dearth of serious damage.
It doesn’t add up though all the media were reporting pretty much the same as I recall. It was Iron Dome 24/7, and yet couldn’t have been so.
Maybe there are still many more acres in empty fields than in population centers in Israel. I don’t know.
The “big sky” concept would take over and the likelihood of hitting an intended target would go way down using an aimed but unguided missile. Close your eyes and throw a rock in your back yard, and it *probably* won’t hit anything important.
I haven’t read much in comparisons between the prior 22 day event compared to the recent 8 day affair. Except that sophisticated, guided Iranian missiles had been added to the others this time. It’s confusing.
I can’t resist the obvious quesion, eCo: What makes you think there’s a cardinal who’s clean?
If you have not seen this movie about inequality you ought to:
It is called “The One-Per-Cent”.
Dick Durbin: Catfood III
Oscar Romero was an archbishop.
Regrading the Post Office and Saturday delivery, this Reuters story is misrepresenting the facts. The Post Office is being “squeezed” not by being “forced” to deliver six days, but rather, by being forced to fund the pensions of its workers many decades into the future–an arbitrary condition that no other organization has to meet.
Cutting delivery days is just the thin edge of the wedge to force the PO into privatization, or to give private companies the opportunity to grab more of its business. Labor doesn’t want to stop Saturday delivery. It’s just a concept conceived by the same people who brought us the concept of cuts to Social Security.
And I can’t resist the obvious point, mafr: He can’t be pope because he’s dead.
Hi, fatster and all. o’s trip to Israel just reinforces the obvious: our govt is dominated by Israel and there is no hope for any P/I peace until Israel has total control of all land in the W Bank and eventually Gaza (which will be used as an internment camp to hold any surviving Palestinians). Those Palestinians in the W Bank will either be driven out or killed; the future official histories written by Israel will show how there were no settlements actually there, only Bedouins that moved on.
One of the interesting things I’ve learned in recent weeks is that the Argentinian R.C. church was the exception in Latin America in the extent it was hand-in-glove with the country’s U.S.-supported, right-wing regime. In other countries in the region, the church, including the hierarchy, often opposed the governments that were at war with their own people.
Naturally, the Argentinians are the ones favored by the Vatican, now to the ultimate degree.
Fair enough.
Re the Pennsylvania fracking story: I wonder whether the agreement between the extractors and “environmentalists” is worth anything, or is pure greenwashing. At least the AP story linked to by fatster quotes some skeptics: yesterday’s NY Times story just regurgitated the press release.
The peace of the dead.
In an odd way, this is actually comical.
Oh, thanks…that’s what I was trying to get at, it’s easy to slag the Catholic church, I just meant to say, that there are many Catholics, including high ranking people like Romero (I’m not Catholic) who are devoting their lives, and sacrificing themselves for the poor, as they are supposed to do.
Absolutely. There’s just a glass ceiling for people with a conscience.
One of the ugliest and most revealing things I’ve seen from the R.C. hierarchy has been their recent attempts to slap down the U.S. nuns who are actually the best face for the church these days, out there campaigning in solidarity with the poor and vulnerable.
Giving you a preview from this evening’s Roundup. Thanks for bringing that up, kapok; it’s quite important, and no surprise:
❖ This didn’t take long: “Sierra Club blasts new plan to improve fracking” in the northeastern section of PA. (The plan was reported in yesterday’s Roundup.)
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/21/5282877/sierra-club-blasts-plan-to-improve.html
I know what you mean.
And . . . Good Morning, mafr!
Will the Easter Bunny be called as a witness.
Interesting. Thanks for that.
Maybe the Sierra Club is beginning to rediscover its soul. As I recall, they were very slow off the blocks in reacting to Deepwater Horizon, and I wondered whether they were in the process of being co-opted.
allan, thanks so much for that link to yet one more chapter in Rahmbo’s romp through Chicago. Wonder how long it’ll take for them to recover from what’s going to be left once the romp is done.
Tragic news: Dominican official links Daily Caller to alleged lies about Menendez
*weep*
that is funny.
no money changed hands. chuckle.
wait a minute, what if Carlos held the money between his toes?
eh? what about that?
I demand answers!