October 2011 archive

For those who still don’t understand what motivates this protest that has spread across the US and gained the world’s attention even before the so-called progressives finally stopped negating it, here is the statement of grievances from the  Occupy Wall Street NYC General Assembly:

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

The entire list is below the fold.

And a special h/t to RiaD for her article with the links and videos to many of the web sites and facebook page for Occupy Wall Street.

From OccupyWallStreet:

New York City Police Foundation – New York

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude” for the company’s donation.

“These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe,” Dimon said. “We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”

And Matt Yglesias is an idiot who thinks that “this looks like a well-timed investment as direct action protests against banks gain steam”:

To my way of thinking, this is a healthy dynamic. I’m not a radical anti-capitalist. But something you saw during the Cold War was that the possibility of radical anti-capitalists taking over helped create incentives for the business class to ensure that the “free world” organized market economies in a way that was broadly beneficial.

From Stephen Eldridge in comments:

Seems to be the better dynamic would be to tax these people more and give the money to the police that way.

Occupy Boston protesters plan rush hour rally

By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff

Demonstrators who have descended on Boston’s Financial District — one of several such demonstrations erupting across the country — plan a round of protests tomorrow that could snarl traffic in the city.

The protesters, who decry what they see as the economic hardships of ordinary Americans, said they will rally during the morning rush hour near their base, across from South Station and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The group, called Occupy Boston , is inspired by Occupy Wall Street, a demonstration entering its third week in Manhattan’s Financial District that led to the arrest of 700 people Saturday on charges of blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. The effort has spread to dozens of communities nationwide, with tens of thousands of people participating.

In Boston, the protests had been building for several days, and on Friday swelled to about 1,000 in Dewey Square. Police arrested 24 people on trespassing charges when they refused to leave the Bank of America building nearby.

‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests spreading to Canada

As police clamped down on anti-Wall Street protesters over the weekend, Toronto activists said they are planning similar demonstrations against corporate greed later this month.

Organizers from a group called Occupy Toronto plan to descend on the city’s financial district on Oct. 15 at 10 a.m. The event is inspired by Occupy Wall Street, a group of demonstrators which has camped out near New York’s Financial District for two weeks.

Similar protests are being planned that day for Calgary, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Ottawa, Vancouver and Victoria, according to the website Occupy Together, which bills itself as an unofficial hub for similar demonstrations worldwide.

Occupy Toronto had its first meeting on Sept. 29, according to its website. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 3,000 people had “liked” their Facebook group and more than 800 people had confirmed attendance at the Oct. 15 occupation.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was asked by the authors of a forthcoming book on Woody Guthrie to contribute a 25-word comment summarizing his thoughts on the man who had probably been his greatest formative influence. Dylan responded instead with a 194-line poem called “Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope. “And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’?” Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer:

You can either go to the church of your choice

Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital

You’ll find God in the church of your choice

You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land”, which is regularly sung in American schools. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the “Dust Bowl Troubadour”. Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was never an actual member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington’s disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Folk revival and Guthrie’s death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These “folk revivalists” became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie’s visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: “The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.” After learning of Guthrie’s whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Huntington’s Disease Society of America

The billionaire Koch bothers, major GOP donors who founded Americans for Prosperity to fund the tea party movement, have apparently been ignoring US laws (pdf) and making even more money trading with Iran. In an article that appeared in Bloomberg Markets Magazine, the possibly criminal activity of the brothers is exposed:

– Koch Industries used the European offices of their subsidiary Koch-Glitsch to sell millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran in an apparent violation of the US-Iran trade embargo, as recently as 2007

– Internal documents of Koch Industries prove that the company took elaborate steps to ensure that their US-employees weren’t involved in the sales to Iran

– While is not 100% certain at this point that Koch Industries did in fact violate US law, according to Bloomberg Markets Magazine, internal memos show for example that the details of the sales with Iran were meticulously checked by US lawyers of Koch Industries and coordinated with the lawyers in order to fully ensure that no visible involvement of US-citizens took place

– Koch Industries paid bribes in six countries from 2002 to 2008 to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East, comparable to similar behaviour of German technology giant Siemens (Siemens subsequently had to pay a $ 1.6 billion fine!)

– Koch Industries sacked a compliance officer in France in June 2009 who discovered the illegal bribes at Koch Industries subsidiary Koch-Glitsch

– These revelations were made possible through newly discovered documents from two labour court cases in France

– Bloomberg Markets reveals that former employees of Koch Industries harshly criticize the company for their internal practises and ethics

– The story also covers in great detail over several pages earlier violations of Koch Industries: The company in the past “rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada”

Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales

In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

By September of that year, the researchers had found evidence of improper payments to secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002, authorized by the business director of the company’s Koch-Glitsch affiliate in France.

“Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.

Egorova-Farines wasn’t rewarded for bringing the illicit payments to the company’s attention. Her superiors removed her from the inquiry in August 2008 and fired her in June 2009, calling her incompetent, even after Koch’s investigators substantiated her findings. She sued Koch-Glitsch in France for wrongful termination.

Hello? Eric Holder?

h/t to David Waldman from a Tweet at Twitter which led down the rabbit hole.

We hear a lot about trans fats in food and the negative health effects of them.  However, most folks without a background in chemistry do not really know what that means.  Tonight the object is to clear that up, and to point out sources that are high in them so they can be avoided.

Contrary to the opening statement, not all trans fats have deleterious health effects.  There are a couple that seem to be beneficial, but unfortunately they are sort of rare.  They are also some of the few trans fats that occur naturally.  By a huge margin, most trans fats consumed are artificially produced, and we shall get into that as well.

To understand the topic well, a chemistry lesson will first have to be given.  However, this IS Pique the Geek!

Well things seemed to be going ok until the bottom of the 6th when Lohse sort of fell apart.  I can’t say I question the Cardinals’ decision to leave him in as long as they did because their bullpen did them no favors, but I do sort of question the decision not to start Garcia on full rest especially since he matches up better against the Phillies left handed line up.

Tonight they’re going with Carpenter against Lee which means Garcia will get a single start at best.  Or worst, these are best 3 of 5 so they can’t possibly get eliminated until they get back to St. Louis.

They came back with 3 in the 9th which is an encouraging sign if you’re rooting for the Cardinals and Lee is not invulnerable so we shall see what we shall see.

That’s why they play the games.

Coverage starts at 8:30 pm ET on TBS.

I won’t say I’m not happy with the way Game 1 turned out, though a soul destroying crushing defeat would have been better.

The Diamondbacks were not especially impressive, but the Brewers were not much better.  Today they pitch Greinke, their ace, on 3 days rest.  In Miller (named for the beer mate, you know, the one that made Mel Famey walk us) Park he’s nearly perfect with 11 wins in 15 starts.

The Diamondbacks must make do with Hudson, who doesn’t match up on paper and has lost his last 3 starts, to avoid going back to Arizona facing elimination in their home park.

I wonder if the Jumbotron will zoom in on Jan or Joe’s face?

Coverage on TBS starts at 5 pm.

Web searches are enshrined in America’s founding documents, and cigarettes have a First Amendment right to be alive with pleasure.

Google searches for “Santorum” and “Rick Santorum for your edification. 😉

Pardon me if I seem a mite grumpy.  If we didn’t have this make up game I could have slept in until 4 which is one of my very favorite things to do.

So last night we not only got to finish the whole game, but the great Mariano Rivera came in for the last out.  I really wonder about the direction of the Yankees after he retires, he makes the rest of the team look good.

The Tigers have more potential than I initially gave them credit for and threatened enough late to get that call to the bullpen.  I think they’re making a managing error by not moving Verlander away from head to head matchups against Sabathia because what does that get you?  A scoreless game until Rivera comes in and shuts you down.

But anything can happen, that’s why you play the games.

Coverage starts on TNT at 3 pm ET.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 2 is the 275th day of the year (276th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 90 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1959, “The Twilight Zone” premiered on CBS television.

The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising plot twist and was usually brought to closure with some sort of message. The series was also notable for featuring both established stars (e.g. Cliff Robertson, Ann Blyth, Jack Klugman) and younger actors who would later became famous (e.g. Robert Redford, William Shatner, Mariette Hartley, Shelley Fabares). Rod Serling served as executive producer and head writer; he wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show’s 156 episodes. He was also the show’s host, delivering on- or off-screen monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. During the first season, except for the season’s final episode, Serling’s narrations were off-camera voiceovers; he only appeared on-camera at the end of each show to promote the next episode (footage that was removed from syndicated versions but restored for DVD release, although some of these promotions exist today only in audio format).

The “twilight zone” itself is not presented as being a tangible plane, but rather a metaphor for the strange circumstances befalling the protagonists. Serling’s opening and closing narrations usually summarized the episode’s events in tones ranging from cryptic to pithy to eloquent to unsympathetic, encapsulating how and why the main character(s) had “entered the Twilight Zone”.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain is a guest.

The roundtable, with George Will, ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper, Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace and Democratic strategist Mark Penn, debate the Cain surge, Gov. Rick Perry’s slump and Gov. Chris Christie’s big decision. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz joins the “This Week” roundtable and shares his ideas to fix Washington and bring America back.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer talks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about foreign policy, Campaign 2012, and the economy; Plus, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) and Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) weigh in on the key issues of the week.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests, Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, Rana Foroohar, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor and David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist, will discuss:

Is America Beginning A Long-term Decline?

How Is Chris Christie Making Mitt Romney Look Unacceptable?

Meet the Press with David Gregory:  Guests are Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA); Republican strategist, Mike Murphy; Washington Post columnist, EJ Dionne; and the Wall Street Journal’s, Peggy Noonan will discuss the GOP candidates and the primary calendar changes.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, a former State Department official and national security advocate, Liz Cheney will no doubt cheer the assassination of American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki. And to continue the celebration former NSA and CIA Director, Gen. Michael Hayden and former congresswoman, Jane Harman join the party.