Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
News
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Rise up on May 12th, 2012 - We are the 99%
On the 15th of October 2011 we took to the streets in over 1000 cities in 82 countries. We got organized and took the first steps on the road to dignity and global change. That was more than six months ago yet we continue to have to raise our voices to make politicians and bankers understand that they in no way represent us. We are united in our demands: the welfare of the 99% must be respected.
Governments only represent us if they follow the will of the vast majority, not just the privileged few.We are united, we are everywhere, we are where you least expect us.
We demand, firmly but without violence: social justice, wealth distribution and an ethic of commons. We condemn poverty, inequality, environmental devastation and corruption as tools of subjugation by the powerful on society.
We will not stop until we achieve our objectives: the 99% will take to the streets again and again until we have a say in the world in which we live. We want global change. Let's turn the streets into the world's biggest loudspeaker on the 12th of May.
Because we are the 99%, we are not owned by politicians and bankers. Take to the streets on May 12th!
Join us.
“Occupy Cop” under attack
Retired Philadelphia Police Capt. Ray Lewis could lose his life insurance for wearing his uniform to a protest
On Occupy Wall Street’s Nov. 17 Day of Action, the NYPD arrested nearly 250 protesters. Ray Lewis, however, stuck out: the retired Philadelphia Police captain was dressed in uniform. He was holding a sign that on one side encouraged people to watch the Charles Ferguson financial crisis documentary “Inside Job.” On the other: “NYPD Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries.” ...
The blowback from the police establishment was swift: A Nov. 23 letter from Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey demanded that Lewis “immediately cease and desist wearing, using or otherwise displaying any official Philadelphia Police Department uniform, badges or facsimiles thereof or any official departmental insignia.”
Ramsey soon backed down, citing Lewis’ First Amendment rights. Not so for the politically powerful Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, led by president John McNesby, which has continued its campaign against Lewis.
FOP pension director Henry Vannelli has filed a grievance that could prompt Lewis’ expulsion from the FOP, cutting him off from the life insurance and free legal support offered to current and retired officers.
Spanish students strike over education crisis
Spanish students took to the streets Thursday in anger at crisis cuts in education, the first in several days of broader social protests across the country. ...
“We have called this demonstration as an initial response to this attack on public education, which is without precedent in the past 35 years,” he said, citing reforms that protesters say are ruining their studies.
As Spain fights to stabilise its public finances, schools and universities have for months been complaining of shrinking budgets for research and extra work for teachers.
Since the last student marches on February 29, the government has announced a further three billion euros in cost-cutting reforms, expanding class sizes and raising university fees to an average 1,500 euros from 1,000 euros.
U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam
The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass... The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing. But the officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.
Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant,” Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.”
Sen. Franken Wants Justice Dept. To Reveal When It Sought Cell Phone GPS Data
Franken asked the Justice Department directly on Thursday in an open letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder: How many times has the agency sought location data from cell phone companies over the past five years, for how many individuals, and how much money has it paid to get the data?
“I am eager to learn about how frequently the Department requests location information and what legal standard the Department believes it must meet to obtain it,” Franken wrote in his letter, giving the DOJ one month to answer them. ...
The ACLU itself has been aggressively pursuing further information on how widespread the practice of cell phone location snooping is, publishing the results of its Freedom of Information Act and public records requests for such records from the Justice Department and state and local law enforcement authorities.
The local results alone revealed that most of the nation’s law enforcement agencies don’t seek a warrant and yet regularly request cell phone location data, “routinely violating American’s privacy rights.”
Governments response to finding out that fracking causes serious danger to the climate is that they should watch the damage happening more carefully rather than trying to stop the damage from occurring...
Greater use of fracking is backed by UK's environment watchdog
Fracking, the controversial technique for extracting the new energy source of shale gas, should be allowed to go ahead, Britain's top environmental regulator has said.
The hydraulic fracturing of shale rock, which has been blamed for causing earthquakes and polluting ground water and has generated fierce opposition from environmentalists, should proceed as long as it is monitored carefully and is accompanied by measures to minimise carbon emissions, said the chairman of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith of Finsbury. ...
"But, with careful use of the drilling technology, with rigorous monitoring and inspection, and with the development of a major programme of carbon capture and storage for gas-fired power generation, then shale gas could be a truly useful part of our energy mix."
Updated Cornell Study Shows Fracking Causes More Global Warming Than Coal
Hydraulic fracking is getting a pretty bad reputation for its potential to pollute water, cause cancer, and trigger earthquakes — need we go on? But a new study from Cornell reports that the natural gas extraction technique may be more harmful than even coal when it comes to global warming. The research team has updated their controversial findings with fresh data to support the conclusion that fracking in a major source of released methane. The study looks at how much gas is released into the atmosphere, revealing a significant jump in atmospheric methane. Methane, as compared to CO2, has the potential to trap over 100 times more heat over the course of ten years, making fracking one of the most environmentally destructive ways to source energy.
The Cornell study, released last year in Climatic Change Letters, was lead by Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology Robert Howarth, and is the first of its kind to study the global warming impact of natural gas extraction from shale deposits. The conclusion was that fracking releases up to 8% of the extracted methane directly into the atmosphere, and reports that all methane will contribute to 44% of global warming. The significant jump in leaked gas using fracking compared to conventional gas wells is due to the size of the fracking wells and how they operate; fracking wells take more time to drill before being capped, require more venting, and there is an issue of flowback waste.
Why The Oregon Attorney General Race Has National Implications For Marijuana Laws
A former federal prosecutor has raised the ire of marijuana activists who have mobilized against his campaign
Holton had been interim U.S. Attorney for Oregon when federal agents executed search warrants on several marijuana farms in the state last fall. That and other actions from his office had irked medical marijuana and pro-legalization activists...
they launched a full-scale attack on Holton, one that has gained the attention of national pro-legalization and medical marijuana activists, several of whom are supporting Holton's opponent, Ellen Rosenblum. A former Oregon Court of Appeals judge, Rosenblum will face off against him in the Democratic primary next Tuesday. No Republican has entered the race, so the winner of the primary will determine the November outcome.
Blog Posts of Interest
In honor of last night's Freaky Friday here's Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins:
Hat tip to Cassiodorus for this link:
Left Educational Tasks in a Capital-Occupied Nation
Argentina moves to the forefront in transgender rights by rserven
Taibbi: “How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform,” And What We Can Do About It Right Now! by bobswern
Some thoughts about taking out the trash: