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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Longwood Gardens. (Photo by joanneleon. October 14, 2012)
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
~ John F. Kennedy
Elvis Costello - Peace Love & Understanding
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News and Opinion
Hint: If Hillary’s Involved with Negotiations, They’ve Started Already
A bizarre little October Surprise just happened–and then un-happened.
The NYT released a blockbuster story–bylined by current White House and former diplomatic correspondents Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, with a “David Sanger contributed reporting” hidden at the bottom–claiming Iran had agreed to one-on-one negotiations to take place–at Iran’s insistence–after the election.
[...]
But note the grammar of the denial: It’s not true that the US and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks after the American elections.
The whole sentence is modified by “after the American elections.” Leaving open the possibility that Iran has agreed to one-on-one negotiations, end of sentence.
Iran dismisses US nuclear talks New York Times report
Iran has denied a report in the New York Times saying that it had agreed to one-on-one talks over its controversial nuclear programme with the US.
"We don't have any discussions or negotiations with America," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said.
[...]
The report, quoting unnamed officials, said Iran had agreed to the talks for the first time but would not hold them until after US elections on 6 November.
NY Times
U.S. Officials Say Iran Has Agreed to Nuclear Talks
WASHINGTON — The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.
The remarkable, unfathomable ignorance of Debbie Wasserman Schultz
The Chair of the Democratic National Committee is completely unaware of one of the biggest stories of the Obama years
On 29 May 2012, the New York Times published a remarkable 6,000-word story on its front page about what it termed President Obama's "kill list". It detailed the president's personal role in deciding which individuals will end up being targeted for assassination by the CIA based on Obama's secret, unchecked decree that they are "terrorists" and deserve to die.
Based on interviews with "three dozen of his current and former advisers", the Times' Jo Becker and Scott Shane provided extraordinary detail about Obama's actions, including how he "por[es] over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards'" and how he "insist[s] on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list'". [...] The Times "kill list" story made a huge impact and was widely discussedand condemned by media figures, politicians, analysts, and commentators.
[...]
But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congresswoman from Florida and the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, does not know about any of this. She has never heard of any of it. She has managed to remain completely ignorant about the fact that President Obama has asserted and exercised the power to secretly place human beings, including US citizens, on his "kill list" and then order the CIA to extinguish their lives.
What a choice, huh? Notice that they leave out a few options, or rather they never consider that other kinds of stimulus are possible.
JPMorgan: If the payroll tax cut falls, so does growth
A few months ago, JPMorgan thought there was a chance that the payroll tax holiday would be extended as part of a fiscal cliff deal. Now it doesn’t think the tax cut stands a chance of surviving—to the serious detriment of the economy next year.
“We are no longer of the belief that the payroll tax holiday will be extended. That change alone is worth over half a percent on GDP growth next year,” JPMorgan’s economic research team writes in a new research note. It’s downgraded its GDP growth forecast for the first quarter from 1.5 percent to just 1 percent and revised its second quarter forecast from 2.25 percent to 1.5 percent.
Why? JPMorgan estimates that the payroll tax hike “will reduce U.S. disposable income by $125 billion,” depressing consumer spending and causing a significant contraction in the economy.
Opponents of another payroll tax extension have stressed the need to shore up the finances of the Social Security Trust Fund, which the tax supports, and cite economic literature suggesting that consumers wouldn’t be likely to spent very much of a temporary tax break, instead saving it or using it to pay down their debt.
Estelle intercepted: Israel navy stops Gaza-bound boat
The Israeli navy has intercepted a boat of pro-Palestinian activists trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Finnish-flagged Estelle left Naples on 7 October with some 30 people of eight different nationalities aboard.
The boat was boarded 30 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, activists said, before being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
The Israeli military said the ship would be searched and the activists would be questioned then deported.
UK experiences 'weirdest' weather
The UK has experienced its "weirdest" weather on record in the past few months, scientists say.
The driest spring for over a century gave way to the wettest recorded April to June in a dramatic turnaround never documented before.
The scientists said there was no evidence that the weather changes were a result of Man-made climate change.
But experts from three bodies warned the UK must plan for periodic swings of drought conditions and flooding.
The warning came from the Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) at a joint briefing in London.
Terry Marsh, from the CEH, said there was no close modern precedent for the extraordinary switch in river flows. The nearest comparison was 1903 but this year was, he said, truly remarkable.
Robert Fisk. who lives in Lebanon, has not yet written about the recent events in Lebanon and Syria. In fact this piece below is the first thing he has written in the Independent since October 8th.
Photograph links Germans to 1915 Armenia genocide
The photograph – never published before – was apparently taken in the summer of 1915. Human skulls are scattered over the earth. They are all that remain of a handful of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. Behind the skulls, posing for the camera, are three Turkish officers in tall, soft hats and a man, on the far right, who is dressed in Kurdish clothes. But the two other men are Germans, both dressed in the military flat caps, belts and tunics of the Kaiserreichsheer, the Imperial German Army. It is an atrocity snapshot – just like those pictures the Nazis took of their soldiers posing before Jewish Holocaust victims a quarter of a century later.
Did the Germans participate in the mass killing of Christian Armenians in 1915? This is not the first photograph of its kind; yet hitherto the Germans have been largely absolved of crimes against humanity during the first holocaust of the 20th century. German diplomats in Turkish provinces during the First World War recorded the forced deportations and mass killing of a million and a half Armenian civilians with both horror and denunciation of the Ottoman Turks, calling the Turkish militia-killers "scum". German parliamentarians condemned the slaughter in the Reichstag.
Thousands gather for 'day of rage' in Lebanon
As anger grows, mourners gather in their thousands in central Beirut for funeral of slain intelligence chief.
Thousands of mourners have gathered in central Beirut for the funeral of Lebanon's intelligence chief who was assassinated in a car bombing on Friday.
Heavily armed troops and police set up road blocks and cordoned off Beirut's central Martyrs' Square, boosting security in the capital as crowds descended for the public funeral on Sunday.
Soldiers brought the flag-draped coffins of Wissam al-Hassan and his bodyguard to the square for burial. Hassan, an anti-Syrian official, and the bodyguard were killed in a huge bomb blast that also killed a civilian woman.
The attack triggered violent protests and was seen as a sign that Lebanon is steadily getting drawn deeper into the conflict in neighbouring Syria.
[...]
Much of Lebanon is divided between those that support Assad and those that back the rebels seeking to topple him in the country's bloody 19-month conflict.
Dozens of anti-Syrian protesters erected eight tents near the Cabinet headquarters in central Beirut, saying they will stay until Prime Minister Najib Mikati's government, which is dominated by the Shia movement Hezbollah and its allies, resigns.
Hezbollah is Syria's most powerful ally in Lebanon, which for much of the past 30 years has lived under Syrian military and political domination.
In Lebanon, everyone loses
The latest blast to rock Beirut could be a desperate hurrah from the Assad government - but were they behind it?
It's easy and perhaps logical to assign responsibility for the bombing to the Syrian government and/or Hezbollah. After all, Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan, the bomb's ostensible target, was a well known foe of the Assad government who had investigated several assassinations and bombings plots that strongly implicated the Syrian government.
If Assad was willing to "break Lebanon over [the] head" of Rafiq Hariri, as he is alleged to have threatened the former prime minister shortly before the latter's assassination in a massive car bombing, there is little reason to imagine that he would miss an opportunity to take out one of his main Lebanese foes today, especially in the context of a life or death struggle for survival. Indeed, such bombings have been an all-too routine occurrence [AR] in Beirut in the half dozen years since Hariri's murder, and most have allegedly been tied one way or another to the Syrian government.
Hezbollah's next move?
But things are rarely as simple as they seem to be. For his part, Wassim was in fact suspected by some members of the UN team that investigated Hariri's assassination of being involved in some way with the plot. It's not impossible to imagine he had acted at some point as a double agent, putting him in a position to compromise not merely the Syrians but senior Lebanese figures as well.
Gaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim may or may not be captured after year on the run
Confusion reigns over reports that Moussa Ibrahim, the mouthpiece of Muammar Gaddafi, had been captured in Libya.
"Moussa Ibrahim was arrested at a checkpoint in the town of Tarhouna," read a brief statement from the prime minister's office after rumours that he had been detained spread on social networking sites. "(He) is being taken to Tripoli where he will be handed over to the pertinent authorities to begin questioning."
Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur apparently confirmed the news on microblogging site Twitter with the following post: "Criminal Moussa Ibrahim was arrested and he is now on his way to Tripoli."
[...]
In the seven-minute recording, posted on Ibrahim's Facebook page, a voice sounding like Mr Ibrahim’s said: "We are outside of Libya. We have no relations with Bani Walid and no contact with it. We are nowhere near Bani Walid."
The Disability Trap
So he and others like him need a flexible financial safety net for the periods during which they cannot work. But no such program exists. The only way for Mr. Crelia to qualify for cash assistance was to sign up for S.S.I. — and demonstrate that he was unable to “engage in substantial gainful activity” because of his physical impairment.
He now receives a monthly check for $506 through the S.S.I. program, and he is allowed to earn $85 more. (He also receives some assistance toward his rent and food expenses.) Once he surpasses the $85, his benefit check will be reduced by $1 for every $2 he earns. And if his income reaches $1,097 a month, he will no longer be eligible for any cash S.S.I. benefits at all. So he must be poor or he must give up all government support. Mr. Crelia is never permitted to have more than $2,000 in the bank, a restriction that places the trappings of a middle-class life — a car, a modest home, a family — far out of reach.
“I’ve been kept financially sort of in this cage,” Mr. Crelia said. “Just basic things that people rely upon, having a normal life, aren’t things that are really accessible. And won’t be.”
People like Mr. Crelia — ill, but ambitious, motivated and able to work the majority of the time — don’t fit into a rigid system set up primarily to provide support for those who will never be able to enter the workplace in any capacity. Instead of accounting for a spectrum of ability and administering a benefits package accordingly, the system offers a one-size-fits-all plan: you can either work and not qualify for financial assistance, or you’re sick, and barred from earning any substantial income.
The Guardian US’ Interactive Editor Is Trying To Do Visual News Differently
The Guardian US’ interactive editor Gabriel Dance — who previously worked as chief multimedia producer at the New York Times — spoke to TPM about his team’s award-winning gay rights interactive, visualizing news and the projects he hopes to take on next.
[...]
The electoral college balloons graphic also avoids a map. Is there a conscious decision to move away from maps?
If somebody else has done it on the internet and they’ve done it really, really well, that’s going to be an internet resource that people use independent of whether they’re New York Times fans or Guardian fans or Washington Post fans. Fundamentally, we’re not looking to recreate anything anybody’s done, and there are a lot of maps out there. For election night results and for our primary results, we use maps. When appropriate, we have no beef with maps.
The goal of the team is to engage and bring the user into the story, so they can be interactive with it, hopefully become a part of the story, and have fun with it.
General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned - Seven Countries In Five Years
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
“Life is suffering,” said the Buddha.
One Love One World (We Are One) by CRAYMO
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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