Crowdsourcing - Boston Bombing - Current

Jim Walsh, a terrorism expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, joins Michael Shure inside “The War Room” to talk about how investigators are crowdsourcing for photos and videos of the Boston Marathon bombings. “What’s different about this [crowdsourcing] effort by law enforcement is the amount of data, as much as 3 terabytes,” Walsh says in explaining the sheer amount of information law enforcement may be able to use in the investigation.

Responding to Terror

Boston terrorism

These days, it is difficult to find common ground on almost anything among Democrats and Republicans, as President Obama has seen time and time again. Partisan wrangling is especially intense around issues of national security. Indeed, President Obama famously (and I believe, erroneously) opposed any official effort to examine the abuses of detainees after 9/11 out of concern that it would devolve into partisan bickering that would derail other items on his agenda. Yet on this task force, Republicans and Democrats agreed—unanimously—that the United States’s most senior officials are responsible for war crimes and abuses of fundamental human rights—torture, enforced disappearances and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The task force report comes at a propitious time. Since 9/11, many have asked how the United States would respond to “the next attack,” with most predicting a devolving spiral of human rights violations and overreactions. But such a response is far from inevitable. Common Dreams

Doublethink - Orwell's term for inconvenient facts ignored

Boston bombing

“doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”
In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”
Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of “combined effects munitions” when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.

"No more killing people - Peace" - Martin Richard

No More hurting people. Peace": 8-year old Martin Richard was killed in yesterday's bombing in Boston.

The New Confederacy

A widely-held and useful definition for confederacy is: A group of people who have united for unlawful practices; a conspiracy. Though, like the word terrorist, which the US government assigns liberally to foreigners - especially those of color who dare stand in the way of power - the words confederacy and conspiracy are not terms the US chooses to use in describing itself.
Truthout

Venezuela: Disputed Chavism Win in Close Vote

Candidate Nicolás Maduro, designated by Hugo Chávez as his successor, won the elections of April 14, 2013, with 50.66% of the votes. Only 230 thousand votes separated him from his opponent Henrique Capriles Radonski, who disputed the result and called for a recount and street protests.

 

Read more on Global  Voices »

So why are Israelis so damn happy, anyway?

Israeli Families Expecting their imminent demise are fearless,  They have feelings of belonging and importance.

Posted: 15 Apr 2013 11:00 AM PDT

Tiffanie Wen at Open Zion is perplexed:
Elder of Zion

By now everyone in Israel has read the results of the study published earlier this month that showed Israelis ranked among the happiest people among the Western nations, despite an extensive laundry list of problems in their country.

Israel ranked low in terms of income, housing, education and security for example—all things we would typical associate with contentment. As an Asian-American who hails from San Francisco, I could add a few of my own complaints to the list: lack of ethnic food, the outrageous cost of imported goods, the raging summer heat, the marginalization of minorities and refugees, and the famous Israeli frankness that has me constantly fielding questions about why I pay so much for my apartment and my (ever so subtle) fluctuation in weight (Up or down? Eating cakes or working out?), chief among them.


So then why—if they probably can't find a job or afford the apartment that they live in—are Israelis so damn happy?

War has quite a bit to do with it.
The fact is that Israel has been in a perpetual state of war—or under the threat of war—since David Ben-Gurion declared independence in May 1948, the only Western country in the world in which this is the case.


Even during periods of "peace," there still seems to exist, at a minimum, a potential intifada brewing in the West Bank, or chemical weapons making their way into the hands of Hezbollah, or rockets being lobbed into the country from Gaza.

And this has created a fascinating psychological paradox, one that has been studied extensively by Professor Zahava Solomon of Tel Aviv University. On one hand, as she told me in a recent phone interview, the culture of conflict has made Israelis constantly aware of their potential demise; on the other it has made them virtually fearless.
Think about it. How would you act if you woke up every morning thinking that this day could be your last? Or at least took a moment to imagine how you would be eulogized at your funeral? (An exercise that Stephen Covey recommended in his wildly popular “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” although admittedly “live in a war zone” did not make the list.)


The point is this: you'd enjoy the day you had.
And if you continued to survive until the next morning, this daily exercise might develop into a mantra for how you lived your life. And you might bother to take that beach day, or spend more time with your family. You might grow a pair and launch that startup you've been thinking about (Boom: Silicon Wadi) or stop a beautiful woman on the street and insist that she have lunch with you, or park on the sidewalk if there was no other parking within a five-block radius. You might climb a mountain, or go scuba diving or backpack in South America for a year. All things that Israelis do in droves, and that, in my opinion, probably lead to a more fulfilling existence.


If constant war or threat of war makes people happy, then people in Iraq and Lebanon must be ecstatic!

Ms. Wen and her TAU professor) is completely clueless.

Haaretz was even more flummoxed:

It’s not clear why Israelis are so happy, despite a relatively poor showing on measures such as housing, income, job security, community support and education. It could be that what makes the average Norwegian happy doesn’t do the trick in Israel. Or maybe Israelis try to appear happy even when they’re not and respond to pollsters accordingly.

Yeah, they are just pretending to be happy to pollsters!

The answer is not such a mystery, and it sheds more light that you might expect.

Happiness comes from many sources, but a critical one is a sense of belonging.

Israelis don't just think of themselves as citizens of a state, of a random set of people with nothing in common except an accident of where they were born. They think of themselves as a family. (This mostly applies to Jews, but not exclusively.)

This is why they can be rude to each other - because there is a knowledge that, just like in your family underneath that rudeness is love. That's why bumping into someone in the store is a lot less likely to escalate into a gunfight. You can yell and threaten and curse - but deep down you know that you are all one people.

There is a second criteria for happiness, especially obvious in the workplace. It is that one must has a sense of accomplishment, of doing something important, and of fulfilling one's responsibility.

Here, again, Israeli Jews share that idea. Just by living in Israel they are making a statement to the world that they are in their home. By sharing the burden of serving in the IDF they know they are defending their people from those who want to kill them. They aren't just anonymous citizens of a state. Everyone is important, because everyone depends on each other.

This is why Ms. Wen doesn't get it. She lives in Israel but only as an outside observer, not as an Israeli. She cannot fathom the sense of fulfillment that comes from these twin senses of belonging and of accomplishment at fulfilling your responsibilities towards those you love.

Ha'aretz, the TAU professor and many of those who live in the Tel Aviv "bubble" are also clueless - because to them Israel is just an abstraction, a land to be analyzed and criticized but not one to be viscerally involved with. To them, the emotional ties of Jews to the land of their forefathers is a silly superstitious myth - and they cannot fathom how it is the source of Israeli happiness and contentment.

This survey, unwittingly, reveals more about Israel's critics than it does about the subjects of the survey itself.

(h/t Ian)

Egypt- Review of movie filmed on cell phone

Blind Ambition

Posted: 15 Apr 2013 07:17 AM PDT

I'm sitting in the beautiful old Radio movie theatre in Downtown Cairo, watching a black and white movie filmed on a cell phone. On screen, people (all so familiar I feel I crossed them once in the street) are complaining, arguing, not listening to each other while charging forward in endless linguistic loops. The dialogues, as one audience member suggest afterwards, are as frusrating as unresolved mathematical equations. They are also captivating, the way overheard snatches of intense conversation often are, full of urgenty invoked cliches and naked self-assertion and self-righteousness.
We laugh, out of both the pleasure and the discomfort of recognition. Humour, I would venture to say, is rare in contemporary art films, which is another reason that Egyptian artist Hassan Khan's "Blind Ambition" is worth seeking out (although I do wonder how much of this very verbal film is lost to non-Arabic speakers). I saw it last night, as part of the ongoing D-Caf cultural festival. As Khan explained after the screening, it is based on "daily, personal observations" but also elaborated through a painstaking directing/acting process (which as far as I understand toes the line between scripted and improvised) and clever formal choices meant to undercut the exchanges' seeming naturalism. When people aren't speaking, for example, the film is silent. It is as if the characters' voices make them "come into being," says Khan -- the space of single, memorable moments.
Here's a good write up in Egypt Independent, too.

Has the USA Become a Low Grade Paranoid State?

America Has Turned a World Without Serious Enemies into the Most Threatening Place in the Universe

The U.S. is in less danger from external enemies than at any moment in the last century. So our security state demands we invent some.

April 14, 2013  |  

 

TomDispatch.com here.
The communist enemy, with the “ world’s fourth largest military,” has been  trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration.   Guam, Hawaii, Washington: all, it claims, are targetable.  The coverage in the media has been hair-raising.  The U.S. is  rushing an untested missile defense system to Guam, deploying missile-interceptor ships off the South Korean coast,  sending “nuclear capable” B-2 Stealth bombers thousands of miles on mock bombing runs,  pressuring China, and conducting large-scale  war games with its South Korean ally.

Right Wing Congressmen Now Represent a Wholly Different Country

There exist many outrages for which both major parties deserve our opprobrium. Financial deregulation, trade agreements penned by corporate lobbyists that have helped hollow out the middle class, deficit hysteria and nonsense about the dangers of “entitlements,” the excesses of the so-called “war on terror” and the cruel futility of the war on drugs – all of these things can rightly be laid at the feet of both parties.
But contrary to the views of Fred Hiatt or Bill Keller or 1,000 other wounded “centrists” desperate to see liberals trade away what little economic security Americans still have for a few more dollars in tax revenues, nothing anyone says or does is going to change the rational, anti-democratic political calculus of the House Republicans.
Joshua Holland

POTUS caves to GOP with SS cuts while keeping tax loopholes

Republicans Have Drooled Over the Idea of Slashing Social Security for Years, and They've Found Their Ideal Partner in Obama

The public wants nothing to do with Obama's idea of bipartisanship.

Photo Credit: © Jim Barber/Shutterstock.com

April 13, 2013  |  

 

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, revealed why it's politically naive for the president to offer up cuts in Social Security in the hope of getting Republicans to close some tax loopholes for the rich. "If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes," Boehner said in a  statement released Friday.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor agreed. He  said on CNBC he didn't understand "why we just don't see the White House come forward and do the things that we agree on" such as cutting Social Security, without additional tax increases.
Get it? The Republican leadership is already salivating over the president's proposed Social Security cut. They've been wanting to cut Social Security for years.
But they won't agree to close tax loopholes for the rich.
They're already characterizing the president's plan as a way to "save" Social Security -- even though the cuts would undermine it -- and they're embracing it as an act of "bi-partisanship."
"I'm encouraged by any steps that President Obama is taking to save and preserve Social Security,"  cooed Texas Republican firebrand Ted Cruz. "I think it should be a bipartisan priority to strengthen Social Security and Medicare to preserve the benefits for existing seniors."
Oh, please. Social Security hasn't contributed to the budget deficit. And it's solvent for the next two decades. (If we want to insure its solvency beyond that, the best fix is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes -- now $113,700.)
And the day Ted Cruz agrees to raise taxes on the wealthy or even close a tax loophole will be when Texas freezes over.
The president is scheduled to dine with a dozen Senate Republicans Wednesday night. Among those attending will be John Boozman of Arkansas, who has already  praised Obama for "starting to throw things on the table," like the Social Security cuts.
That's exactly the problem. The president throws things on the table before the Republicans have even sat down for dinner.
The president's predilection for negotiating with himself is not new. But his willingness to do it with Social Security, the government's most popular program -- which Democrats have protected from Republican assaults for almost eighty years -- doesn't bode well.
The president desperately wants a "grand bargain" on the deficit. Republicans know he does. Watch your wallets.

 

Robert B. Reich

Gloriously Ballooning Bailout Bedlam Of Cyprus

April 13, 2013

Print Version

Source: Wolf Richter, Testosterone Pit.com

Bailouts start out small. At first, Cyprus just had a funding crisis; the markets had gotten smart, after years of dousing the country with cheap euros. Not that the risks weren’t there before. But markets opened their eyes. So Cyprus went begging to Russia, and got €2.5 billion in November 2011. That money evaporated without a trace. Then last June, the two largest banks were deemed to need €2.3 billion – €500 million for the Bank of Cyprus and €1.8 billion for Laiki Bank – to fill a void in their regulatory capital, the story went. No big deal.
But the banks had been eviscerated by mismanagement and corruption, and their balance sheets were loaded with deteriorating Greek corporate debt; Greek government bonds that had received a 70% haircut; loans to developers extended during the real-estate bubble that had blown up; loans on developments that were never finished or were built so shoddily that they’ve been declared uninhabitable; loans to politicians that were written off as gifts; and mortgages extended to homeowners who were tangled up in a title-deed scandal that the banks themselves had aided and abetted, leaving 130,000 properties (in a country with 838,000 souls) without title deeds, with disputed ownership, and often worthless mortgages.
So by the end of June, as bailout talks with the Troika took off, “sources” mumbled something about €10 billion, including a government bailout, that hadn’t been on the table before. People gasped. But it was just the beginning. In August, Central Bank Governor Panicos Demetriades told parliament that the banks alone would need €12 billion! Plus a government bailout. Rumor consensus settled on €15 billion total. Then in September Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov upped the ante: Cyprus would indeed need €15 billion from the Troika, plus €5 billion from Russia, for a total of €20 billion.
Every time someone looked at the cesspool that these banks were, the bailout amount jumped. By March 25, the Troika’s number had risen to €17 billion. But it would be a new way of doing bank bailouts. The EU would contribute €9 billion, the IMF €1 billion, and €7 billion would be extracted from Cypriot uninsured depositors, bank bondholders, public sector workers, pensioners, corporate taxpayers, and others. Laiki Bank would be dismantled. The alternative would have been the collapse of the banks and the default of the government. It was an elegant, finely tuned instrument designed to keep the Eurozone intact – regardless of the price.
The havoc was immediate. So it was tweaked while banks were closed for over a week and draconian capital controls were imposed. The economy froze. But the deal stuck. Until late Wednesday.
That’s when the draft report, “Assessment of the actual or potential financing needs of Cyprus,” was leaked. Someone had given the banking cesspool, the governmental black hole, and the collapsing economy another look. “Debt sustainability analysis” it was called. And the bailout amount jumped to €23 billion – a dizzying 125% of GDP –ten times the bailout estimate of last June.
The additional €6 billion? The Cypriot government would have to extract them from people, businesses, and institutions. The Central Bank would have to sell €400 million worth of gold. Holders of Cypriot government bonds would get an appointment at the Eurozone barbershop for a crew cut. And so on. Bedlam broke out.
The Troika “served poison,” summarized President of Parliament Yannakis Omirou. “We will resist,” said Giorgos Doulouka, spokesman of the main opposition Akel party. “They are eating us alive,” he added. President Nikos Anastasiades asked for “extra assistance” from the Troika. He was immediately shot down by Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden – the “volume will remain at €10 billion” – and by German government spokesman Steffen Seibert – “The contribution from international creditors will not change.”
Two members of the governing council of the Central Bank – Haris Achniotis and Andreas Matsis – resigned and in their letter to President Anastasiades complained that the council served only for “decorative” purposes. A third member – Luis Christofides – resigned for the same reason.
The two sums weren’t “strictly comparable,” explained EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, trying to brush off the jump from €17 billion to €23 billion. “People have been comparing apples with pears and coming up with oranges.” One was “related to net financing needs” and the other was “a gross financing concept” that included buffers for a weaker fiscal development and more losses at the banks.
So at their meeting in Dublin Friday evening, the Eurozone finance ministers approved the €9 billion for Cyprus, noting “with satisfaction that the Cypriot authorities have implemented decisive bank resolution, restructuring, and recapitalization measures to address the fragile and unique situation of Cyprus’ financial sector....” Parliaments in Germany, Finland and other countries will rubber-stamp the deal. And by mid-May, the first few billions might start winding their way toward Cyprus.
But that too is just the beginning. The financial sector with its offshore services and foreign money, the core of the Cypriot economy, has been gutted. Whatever foreign money hadn’t left already would flee as soon as possible. People would no longer be able to get rich off corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial services, or off a real estate bubble.
But they did get rich off them: The average Cypriot household, according to a Eurozone-wide survey, the largest ever in Europe, had a phenomenal net worth of €670,900 ($872,000!). Over three times that of German or Dutch households, and just shy of Luxembourg’s €710,100. Wealth achievable only by small countries with huge, murky banking centers. Or oil. Few countries in the world are in that elite club. The results were so explosive that publication was delayed until after the Cyprus bailout had been decided. But the power structure had known the results for weeks [read... Total Fiasco: Germans are the Poorest, Cypriots the Second Richest in The Eurozone].
That wealth had been sucked out of the banks and the government until neither had a drop of lifeblood left. Now the party was over. And those households would be asked to foot a big part of the bailout costs. You can almost hear the snickering among European politicians.
But with financial services and real estate eliminated as a major economic activity, the country will have to refocus. Tourism is hard; it’s handicapped by the high euro and tough competition from Turkey. There is also offshore natural gas, but it will take years before the money starts flowing. The economy, deprived of its traditional activities, might perform a double-digit dive this year, and more bailout costs already appear on the horizon. What has the euro wrought?
Eurozone countries are falling like dominos. Taxpayer bailouts keep banks from collapsing, governments from defaulting, and investors from incurring well-deserved losses. In the US, President Obama’s budget, with its new taxes, is causing heart palpitations left and right. But how do countries really stack up? Read.... From Tax Hell to Tax Haven.

We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo

They were indeed manipulative men, but before they influenced other Americans they assumedly underwent something like a process of collective auto-hypnotism in which they convinced one another of the dangers they needed the American people to believe in.  There is evidence that a similar process took place in the aftermath of 9/11.  From the flustered look on George W. Bush’s face as his plane took him not toward but away from Washington on September 11, 2001, to the image of Dick Cheney, in those early months, being chauffeured around Washington in an armored motorcade with a “gas mask and a biochemical survival suit" in the backseat, you could sense that the enemy loomed large and omnipresent for them.  They were, that is, genuinely scared, even if they were also ready to make use of that fear for their own ends.

On income disparity consult the prophetic Dr. King

Poor People’s Campaign, a “multi-racial army” that would come to Washington, build an encampment and demand from Congress an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans — black, white, or brown. He had long known that the fight for racial equality could not be separated from the need for economic equity — fairness for all, including working people and the poor.

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Immigration Reform Rallies Spread From Coast to Coast, and More

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Immigration Reform Rallies Spread From Coast to Coast, and More

Democracy is ill-suited for a libertarian state - Patri Friedman

Patri Friedman

Libertarianism in Honduras

13 Oct My friend Greg Grandin writes on Facebook:

One of the stranger fallouts from the 2009 Honduran coup has been the scheme hatched by an NYU economist, Paul Romer, along with free-market libertarians—including Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri; you can’t make this shit up—to start a bunch of “year-zero” cities in the country, free-market utopias with their own laws, etc. It’s like Empire’s Workshop meets The Shock Doctrine meets Fordlandia (except Henry Ford at least had his year-zero city provide free health care). If they were to come to fruition, they would be little more than free-trade maquila zones, like the kind that run along the US-Mexican border, except more savage.

In any case, the plan has hit a snag in that a committee of the Honduran Supreme Court has declared them unconstitutional, though that ruling could be reversed by the full court. Recently, a lawyer who argued for their unconstitutionality was gunned down, joining the long list of decent people killed as a result of the US-endorsed coup.

By the way, related to the discussion Corey Robin had on his blog about whether Hayek’s and Friedman’s support for dictatorships were inherent to their thought or just situational, Patri Friedman has cleared that point up, saying, in relation to these kind of start-up cities, that “Democracy is the current industry standard political system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian state.” Peter Thiel, founder of Paypall and bankroller of FB and another supporter of the Honduran scheme, wrote: “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Glad that particular contradiction has gotten resolved. Adelante.

Time to Bell the Corporate [Obama] Cat

by Norman Solomon

The story goes that some mice became very upset about the cat in the house and convened an emergency meeting. They finally came up with the idea of tying a bell around the cat’s neck, so the dangerous feline could no longer catch victims unawares. The plan gained a lot of enthusiastic praise, until one mouse piped up with a question that preceded a long silence: “Who’s going to bell the cat?”

UN: Clean Energy Could Save Millions of Lives

Air pollution, one of the "greatest hazards to human health,” is killing millions while causing climate change

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer, Common Dreams

The UN has warned that air pollution is one of “the greatest hazards to human health.” (UN Photo/Kibae Park)A global shift to clean energy could save millions of lives while also helping to rein in runaway greenhouse gases, which have set the planet on a path of disastrous warming, UN officials stated Tuesday.
The shift would bring about a dramatic reduction in air pollution, which the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned was one of “the greatest hazards to human health.”

Top Secret Intel Docs Betray Obama Claims on Drone Targeting

US drone war kills all kinds of people beyond Al Qaeda

- Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams

Based on their review of leaked top-secret intelligence reports, McClatchy is reporting that the Obama Administration has long been guilty of misrepresenting the kind of groups and individuals it has targeted with its fleet of armed Predator and Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistani soldiers stand guard at the Shamsi Airbase located some 320 kilometers southwest of Quetta in southwest Pakistan, on December 11, 2011. (Yslb Pak Zhang Qi/Xinhua/MCT) Though critics of Obama's targeting killing have long-believed that so-called signature strikes—where targets are chosen for their behavior rather than confirmed intelligence on who they are—would be illegal under US and international law, the White House has long defended the manner in which it targets specific groups and individuals. It has done so, however, without releasing the trail of documents that track the program's decision-making.
But as McClatchy reports, the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports it reviewed "show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn’t adhere" to the standards put fourth in public statements and press interviews by White House officials.

Oklahoma grandma shames Keystone XL while POTUS waffles

Oklahoma grandmother Nancy Zorn, 79, locked herself to a piece of heavy machinery Tuesday morning in protest of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline construction, halting work on a construction site of the tar sands harbinger for several hours.
Starting early in the morning, Zorn locked herself to the large 'excavator', latching a bike lock around her neck to the machine.
“Right now our neighbors in Arkansas are feeling the toxic affect of tar sands on their community. Will Oklahoma neighborhoods be next?” Zorn asked, referring to the thousands of barrels of tar sands oil which spilled out of an Arkansas pipeline last week. “I can no longer sit by idly while toxic tar sands are pumped down from Canada and into our communities. It is time to rise up and defend our home. It is my hope that this one small action today will inspire many to protect this land and our water.”
“In the last two weeks alone there have been at least six different inland oil spills across the country,” said Eric Wheeler, an Oklahoma native and spokesperson for Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. “It’s time to stop referring to pipeline spills as accidents, it’s now abundantly clear that leaks are just part of business as usual. Tar sands hurt everyone they touch, from the indigenous communities in Alberta whose water is being poisoned, to the Gulf Coast communities that are forced to breathe toxic refinery emissions. We’re not going to allow this toxic stuff in our beautiful state.”
Zorn was eventually removed from the equipment by local police and taken into custody.
Zorn is the second Oklahoma grandmother this year risking arrest to stop construction of the pipeline, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance said Tuesday. The action is part of a series of civil disobedience actions against the pipeline construction led by the group.
A decision to approve the cross border Keystone pipeline route, from tar sands oil fields in Canada to the Gulf Coast, is expected soon from the Obama administration.
While Obama waffles over the subject, and other oil friendly lawmakers attempt to force the pipeline in Congress
Common Dreams