Lesser Evolving News Stories

22 Comments

1. 

   Marie2 on July 25, 2013 at 2:03 pm

   Plunder American Style

   Detroit:

   The 1% is salivating over the prospect that the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) collection will appear on the auction block.

   A goodly number of “progressives” (cough, cough) at dKos are down with stripping fine art from Detroit in the interest of “saving” pensions.  As if the choice is art or pensions and not what progressives have known for over a hundred years: it’s
   Bread AND Roses.  That shuttering the DIA will make a whit of difference to those with their eyes on the prize of Detroit pensions.

   San Francisco:

   We don’t need/want a community college.  Poor and low income folks need to move and make more room for the “makers and shakers” grads from elite universities.

   Chicago:

   The agenda to close public schools in Chicago begun by Arne Duncan in 2002 got a boost from Rahm Emmanuel that put fifty schools on the chopping block.  Message to poor/low income parents, move.

   New York City

   Bloomberg message to a Black Church: stop-and-frisk is here to stay.  Don’t like it?  Move.

   • 

     Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 3:28 pm

     Detroit:

     New $444 million hockey arena is still a go.  Because publicly funded facilities for private, for-profit sports teams and/or sporting events are one of the worst public investments.

2. 

   Marie2 on July 25, 2013 at 3:47 pm

   SAC Capital indicted on insider trading.  Unfortunately, Steve Cohen not personally indicted.

   Anyone that thinks SAC was just one of the few bad apples and insider trading wasn’t rampant on Wall Street and the hedge funds doesn’t appreciate how competition works among financial institutions.  

3. 

   Oui on July 25, 2013 at 4:48 pm

   .

   Spain train crash: Video footage emerges showing moment train derails and kills 78, as police interview driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo

   (The Independent) – distressing video footage emerged of the moment a train in the Santiago de Compostela crashed, killing up to 80 passengers and leaving up to 168 injured in one of the worst train crashes in four decades. 36 of the injured, including four children, remain in a critical condition.

   The footage, recorded by a security camera positioned above the track, shows the trains first carriage behind the locomotive come off the tracks first, slamming the tail of the locomotive into a concrete wall. All the carriages can then be seen veering off the tracks as the locomotive hurtles towards the camera.

   One of the train drivers is now being formally investigated by police, according to the BBC.

   Spanish national newspaper El Pais has reported that the train operator admitted he had been driving the train at 180 km/h immediately after the incident.

   • 

     Marie2 on July 25, 2013 at 6:18 pm

     The apparent disregard of the driver for the well-being of the passengers in his keep is so far beyond neglect that there is no accurate word for it.

4. 

   Oui on July 25, 2013 at 4:59 pm

   .

   Thousands take to the streets after opposition leader gunned down in Tunisia

   (RT.com) – Tunisian opposition member Mohamed Brahmi was shot dead in the capital Tunis on Thursday, six months after the murder of another secular leader sparked a national crisis. Thousands of secularists have poured on to the streets in protest.

   Several Islamist party offices and government buildings have been set on fire.  Police in Tunisia’s second-largest city of Sfax have fired teargas to disperse hundreds of protesters who stormed a local government office while demonstrators threw stones at them. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

   Mohamed Brahmi’s murder must be fully investigated and killers brought to justice

   • Turmoil hits Tunisia after secular politician slain
   • 

     Marie2 on July 25, 2013 at 6:12 pm

     Disturbing.  

5. 

   Marie2 on July 25, 2013 at 6:23 pm

   LA journalist Michael Krikorian has video evidence that Michael Hastings died in a solo vehicle car wreck.  But we have to take his word for it as he’s not going to do a public service and share it to end all the speculation about the oddities surrounding the crash and subsequent fire.

   • 

     Marie2 on July 27, 2013 at 6:03 pm

     LA Weekly now has this video up.  Sort of.  It’s edited and doesn’t include more than 60 seconds that Krikorian used to compare the speed of Hastings’ car to others that passed by before him.  Even so, Hastings’ speed shouldn’t be too difficult for an engineer to calculate.  (The distance from the camera to the crash site is only a few hundred feet.)  

     Have no idea how this video confirms that it was an accident as claimed by Krikorian.  It does confirm that the crash and fire were either simultaneous or extremely close together in time, and if the latter, unlikely to confirm which came first.

     One other note, Krikorian wrote,”Highland has a very slight rise and fall at its intersection with Melrose.”  That is north of where the image was captured and Hastings was traveling south.  Doesn’t appear that that “rise and fall” had any impact on Hastings’ car.

6. 

   Oui on July 26, 2013 at 12:13 am

   .

   Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying Gulf spill evidence

   HOUSTON, Tx (Reuters) – Halliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

   The government said Halliburton’s guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill and requires the world’s second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine.

   Halliburton also agreed to three years of probation and to continue cooperating with the criminal probe into the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

   BP sues Halliburton for Deepwater Horizon oil spill clean-up costs – 2012

   • BP Praises Transocean Settlement, Fingers Halliburton
   • BP Wants To Stop Paying Damages For Gulf Spill While Lawyer Is Investigated For Misconduct
7. 

   Oui on July 26, 2013 at 12:26 am

   .

   Officials: 5 Charged In Largest Hacking, Data Breach Scheme Ever Prosecuted

   NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – Four Russian nationals and a Ukrainian have been charged with running a sophisticated hacking organization that over seven years penetrated computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations.

   Indictments were announced Thursday in Newark, where U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman called the case the largest hacking and data breach scheme ever prosecuted in the United States.

   “They targeted some of the largest companies in the world, stealing millions of credit and debit card numbers and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to their victim.”

   The indictment says the suspects sent each other instant messages as they took control of the corporate data, telling each other, for instance: “NASDAQ is owned.” At least one man told others that he used Google news alerts to learn whether his hacks had been discovered, according to the court filing.

   The defendants were identified as Russians Vladimir Drinkman, Aleksandr Kalinin, Roman Kotov and Dmitriy Smilianets, and Ukrainian Mikhail Rytikov.

   Drinkman and Smilianets were arrested at the request of the United States while traveling in the Netherlands on June 28, 2012. Smilianets was extradited Sept. 7, 2012, and remains in federal custody. He will appear in District of New Jersey federal court to be arraigned on the superseding indictment on a date to be determined. Drinkman is in custody in the Netherlands pending an extradition hearing. Kalinin, Kotov and Rytikov remain at large. All of the defendants are Russian nationals except for Rytikov, who is a citizen of Ukraine.

   Official Press Release U.S. Attorney District of New Jersey

8. 

   Oui on July 26, 2013 at 11:06 am

   .

   Willie Reed, who risked his life to testify in the Emmett Till murder trial, dies at 76
   Willie Reed July 14, 1937 – July 18, 2013

   OAK LAWN. Ill. (WaPo) – Willie Reed did not know Emmett Till, the young black man whose murder in the Mississippi Delta became one of the most infamous lynchings in the history of the Jim Crow South. Mr. Reed saw him only once — on Aug. 28, 1955, during the last hours of Till’s life — in the back of a green and white Chevrolet pickup truck.

   Mr. Reed, an African American sharecropper, risked his life at 18 to appear as a surprise witness in the prosecution of the white men accused of the crime. He became the momentary hero of the Till trial, an event that helped spur the civil rights movement but left a moral stain on the American legal system.

   …
   Despite the overwhelming incriminating evidence — including testimony by Till’s great-uncle — the all-white jury acquitted the defendants after little more than an hour of deliberation. One of the jurors said they would have rendered a verdict more speedily if they had not “stopped to drink pop.”

   Weeks later, despite the danger and over his mother’s vigorous objections, Mr. Reed returned to Mississippi to testify against the same defendants on separate kidnaping charges. The grand jury declined to return an indictment. The next year, knowing that they were protected by laws against double jeopardy, the defendants confessed to the Till killing in a paid interview with Look magazine.

   Key Witness Against Emmett Till’s Killers Led A Quiet Life

   • TIME: From Emmett Till to Barack Obama
9. 

   Oui on July 26, 2013 at 12:29 pm

   .

   “Whoever Speaks of 1967 borders speaks of Auschwitz”: Israel Cabinet not Serious about talks on a Palestinian State

   (Informed Comment) – US Secretary of State John Kerry  very tentatively announced that he has hopes that Israeli and Palestinian negotiations will start back up with a visit of both sides to Washington in the coming week. Oddly, he made the announcement alone, not flanked by either Palestinians or Israelis, prompting questions of whether he really had a breakthrough or firm commitments.

   Euronews reports

   For this reason, US Secretary of State John Kerry’s quixotic quest to restart talks is both a welcome distraction and an unwelcome threat for the Likud. It is welcome, because without a fictional “peace process,” the massive Israeli theft of Palestinian land and resources is nakedly exposed to the world. It is a threat, because there is always a danger that the negotiations may have some successes, requiring actual Israeli concessions of practical import, which is definitely not what the Likud wants.

   The right wing Israeli project of slowly annexing the West Bank and starving out the Palestinians in Gaza involves a great deal of future-blindness and magical thinking. They seem to imagine that the Palestinians at some point will abruptly vanish into thin air, like an illusionist’s rabbit. After decades of carefully hiding from themselves their acts of butchery and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in 1948, and then more decades of denying that there are any such things as Palestinians, the Israeli Right appears to have half-convinced itself that there isn’t really a problem with their Drang nach Osten.

   h/t Int’l Middle East Media Center

   • Statement John Kerry on peace talks in Amman, Jordan
   • 

     Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 1:21 pm

     … Whoever speaks of the 1967 borders speaks of Auschwitz.

     Way overplaying one’s hand.  Aggrieved white people in this country settle for likening themselves to Rosa Parks:

     A California dairy farmer, protesting the government’s milk pricing system, poured milk down a drain in front of TV cameras claiming that he had to take a stand just like Rosa Parks had to take a stand. A street performer in Saint Augustine, Florida is challenging a city ordinance that bans him from doing his act on the town’s historic Saint George Street. The performers lawyer told the Florida Times-Union, telling these people they can exercise their first amendment rights somewhere other than on Saint George is like telling Rosa Parks that she has to sit in the back of the bus. Which is, coincidentally, also the argument of another Florida lawyer. This one representing adult dancers contesting Tampa’s ordinance outlawing lap dancing.

     A bit more from Sarah Vowell’s piece.

     …
     Robert Guillaume In Sports Night: And because I love you, I can say this. No rich young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks. Got it?
     …
     …Maybe those who would compare their personal inconveniences to the epic struggles of history are just looking for company. And who wouldn’t want to be in the company of Rosa Parks. On the other hand, perhaps people who compare themselves to Rosa Parks are simply arrogant, pampered nincompoops with delusions of grandeur who couldn’t tell the difference between a paper cut and decapitation.

10. 

    Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 1:59 pm

    Barnaby Jack dies in SF at age 35.  No details released by coroner.  Follow for his association with Black Hat and Def-Sec LV annual conventions and hackers in general.  

11. 

    Oui on July 26, 2013 at 3:17 pm

    .

    Pregnant women gather to protest Sufi thinker who urged them not to ‘stroll in public’

    (Hürriyet) –  Pregnant women gathered in Istanbul July 25 to protest the statements of a lawyer and Sufi thinker who said on state television that it was “disgraceful” for expectant women to show themselves in public.

    In Taksim Square and in Kadıköy on the Asian side, pregnant women and their husbands, who wore pillows under their t-shirts, defied Ömer Tuğrul İnançer ‘s opposition to them “strolling around” by chanting “our bodies are ours” in two separate demonstrations.

    “Announcing pregnancy with a flourish of trumpets is against our civility. [They] should not stroll in the streets with such bellies. First of all, it is not aesthetic,” İnançer had said during a daily special iftar program on TRT.

    “After seven or eight months of pregnancy, future mothers go out with their husbands by car to get some fresh air. And they go out in the evening hours. But now, they are all on television. It’s disgraceful. It is not realism, it is immorality,” he added.

    After İnançer’s TV appearance, Twitter users denounced his words under the hashtag #resistpregnant, which echoed the slogans of the Gezi protests, and called for demonstrations.

    Twitter is Turkey’s only hope amid riots

    • The Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard (see Ömer Tuğrul İnançer)
      Yes, the same person I had come across before – The Saudi-Israeli Alliance and Piggy-back Coup of 2005.
    • 

      Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 3:31 pm

      Such a retrograde additional attack on women that we should expect US fundies to emulate it in the near future.

12. 

    Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 3:58 pm

    Snowden & Russia

    Holder assures Russia that Snowden won’t be tortured or subject to the death penalty.  

    Equally disturbing is the 7/12/13 State Dept Daily Briefing.  A snippet:

    QUESTION: Well, is the United States Government now in the business of trying to discourage people or governments from facilitating people having – meeting with human rights activists? I don’t get it.

    MS. PSAKI: Matt, this is not a universal position of the United States. This is an individual —

    QUESTION: So it’s just in this one case.

    MS. PSAKI: — who has been accused of three – of felony charges.

    QUESTION: But surely – Jen —

    MS. PSAKI: This is not a unique —

    QUESTION: Okay. He’s been accused. Do you remember the old line that we’re supposed to all know – he has not been convicted of anything yet.

    MS. PSAKI: And he can return to the United States and face the charges.
    …..

    QUESTION: No, I mean, it’s a legitimate question. I mean, you talk about even in Russia that journalists have been persecuted and political activists have been persecuted and you call for free speech around the world. But you’re not saying that Mr. Snowden has the right of free speech?

    MS. PSAKI: That’s not at all what I was saying. We believe, of course, broadly in free speech. Our concern here was that this was – there was obvious facilitation by the Russians in this case. We’ve conveyed that. We’ve conveyed our concerns. I’m saying them publicly.
    …

    • 

      Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 4:35 pm

      Given the WH deletion of this assurance from its webpage:

      …Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

      is the “no torture and no death penalty” promise worth much?  (When do the folks in DC figure out that scrubbing websites is useless?)

      • 

        Oui on July 26, 2013 at 5:04 pm

        .
        Using the same contractor for vetting purposes, just unbelievable!

        “Individuals applying for work within the Obama administration via this site were required to go through
        intensive consumer and criminal background checks performed by the ChoicePoint Corporation.”

        The IRS, ChoicePoint, Nature’s End, and You

        • 

          Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 5:44 pm

          We’re not supposed to notice.  And if we do, we’re supposed to a) decide it’s no big deal after all or b) claim it’s still different and not as bad b/c Obama is too awesome to do anything as bad as Bush did.  

    • 

      Marie2 on July 26, 2013 at 11:05 pm

      Hope International Law experts weigh in on “promise letter” not to execute.  iirc wouldn’t be good enough to extradite someone from a member country of the Council of Europe to a US state with a death penalty for murder.  Russia, however, has only placed a moratorium on capital punishment (since 1996) and not repealed its law; so, the situation might be more complicated.

      (We might be different today if the SCOTUS moratorium on the death penalty 1972-1976 had never been lifted and unleashed our penchant for revenge.)