March 2015 archive

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.

March 14 is the 73rd day of the year (74th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 292 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1885, The Mikado a light opera by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, had its first public performance in London.

The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. Before the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera. The Mikado remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera, and it is especially popular with amateur and school productions. The work has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history.

Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. Gilbert used foreign or fictional locales in several operas, including The Mikado, Princess Ida, The Gondoliers, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke, to soften the impact of his pointed satire of British institutions.

The Mikado is a comedy that deals with themes of death and cruelty. This works only because Gilbert treats these themes as trivial, even lighthearted issues. For instance, in Pish-Tush’s song “Our great Mikado, virtuous man”, he sings: “The youth who winked a roving eye/ Or breathed a non-connubial sigh/ Was thereupon condemned to die / He usually objected.” The term for this rhetorical technique is meiosis, a drastic understatement of the situation. Other examples of this are when self-decapitation is described as “an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt”, and also as merely “awkward”. When a discussion occurs of Nanki-Poo’s life being “cut short in a month”, the tone remains comic and only mock-melancholy. Burial alive is described as “a stuffy death”. Finally, execution by boiling oil or by melted lead is described by the Mikado as a “humorous but lingering” punishment.

Death is treated as a businesslike event in Gilbert’s Topsy-Turvy world. Pooh-Bah calls Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, an “industrious mechanic”. Ko-Ko also treats his bloody office as a profession, saying, “I can’t consent to embark on a professional operation unless I see my way to a successful result.” Of course, joking about death does not originate with The Mikado. The plot conceit that Nanki-Poo may marry Yum-Yum if he agrees to die at the end of the month was used in A Wife for a Month, a 17th century play by John Fletcher. Ko-Ko’s final speech affirms that death has been, throughout the opera, a fiction, a matter of words that can be dispelled with a phrase or two: being dead and being “as good as dead” are equated. In a review of the original production of The Mikado, after praising the show generally, the critic noted that the show’s humour nevertheless depends on

“unsparing exposure of human weaknesses and follies-things grave and even horrible invested with a ridiculous aspect-all the motives prompting our actions traced back to inexhaustible sources of selfishness and cowardice…. Decapitation, disembowelment, immersion in boiling oil or molten lead are the eventualities upon which (the characters’) attention (and that of the audience) is kept fixed with gruesome persistence…. (Gilbert) has unquestionably succeeded in imbuing society with his own quaint, scornful, inverted philosophy; and has thereby established a solid claim to rank amongst the foremost of those latter-day Englishmen who have exercised a distinct psychical influence upon their contemporaries.”

It’s been nearly 5 years since two women in Sweden lodged charges of rape against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Swedish prosecutors have been seeking his extradition from England to question him regarding the allegations but Mr. Assange fearing that this was a ploy to have him extradited to the United States where he would be arrested and prosecuted for leaking secret documents that exposed US covering up war crimes. Lawyers for Mr. Assange said that the Swedish prosecutors could question him in England and they believe that would end the matter. However the prosecutors, claiming it would be inadequate to question him in England, went to British court seeking extradition. Mr. Assange then sought asylum at the Ecuadoran embassy. Now, after over four years and time running out on the statute of limitations on charging him, the Swedish prosecutor has agreed to question Mr. Assange in England. Frustrated and tired, Mr. Assange’s response was “They could have done this long ago. What took them so long?” The answer is probably the salivating US justice and state departments who would love nothing more that to get him to a country that would extradite him to the US over the espionage charges.

Julian Assange to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London

By David Crouch, The Guardian

Lawyers for Wikileaks founder welcome prosecutor’s decision to interview Assange at Ecuadorian embassy in bid to break deadlock

Marianne Ny, who heads the investigation into accusations of rape, coercion and sexual molestation against Assange, made a formal request to interrogate him in the Ecuadorian embassy – the first sign of movement in a case that has been frozen since August 2012.

The prosecutor will also ask the UK government and Ecuador for permission to carry out the interviews at the embassy in London, where Assange has been staying for more than two-and-a-half years to avoid extradition to Sweden, from where he fears being handed over to the US to face espionage charges.

Ny said she had changed her mind because the statute of limitations on several of the crimes of which Assange is suspected runs out in August 2015. [..]

The British Foreign Office said in November it would welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy. Ecuador’s government has also repeatedly stated that it approves of such a step. Assange has been wanted in Sweden since the accusations were made against him in August 2010.

His lawyers, who are currently appealing against his arrest warrant in Sweden’s highest court, have complained bitterly about the prosecutor’s refusal to travel to London to speak to him – an essential step under Swedish jurisprudence to establish whether Assange can be formally charged. [..]

The prosecutor’s apparent U-turn on Friday came just days after a supreme court judge in Stockholm wrote to the prosecutor general, directing him to give his opinion concerning Assange’s appeal, “especially regarding the investigatory procedure and the principle of proportionality”.

Further pressure on the prosecutor came in November when the appeal court, while rejecting Assange’s arguments, nonetheless directed sharp criticism at Ny for failing in her obligation to move the case forward.

It remains to be seen whether the charges of rape, that were brought by two women who were in a consensual relationship with Mr. Assange at the time, will result in an arrest warrant. There are a lot of questions about the women’s backgrounds and alleged connections with the CIA that would love to get their hands on Mr. Assange.  

UK Parliament Committee, Calling For Reform, Shows Its “Evidence” to Justify Mass Surveillance

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

3/12/15

The Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament (ISC) issued a lengthy report today on the surveillance practices of GCHQ. Invoking the now-standard Orwellian tactic of claiming that “bulk collection” is not “mass surveillance,” the Committee predictably cleared GCHQ of illegality, but it did announce that it has “serious concerns” over the agency’s lack of transparency and oversight. Citing the Snowden disclosures, it called for a significant overhaul of the legal framework governing electronic surveillance.

…

The report follows a British court decision last month finding that GCHQ did act illegally in spying without the transparency required by human rights laws. In light of the numerous official findings in the U.S., U.K. and the EU of illegality and the need for reform when it comes to electronic surveillance, it is hard to imagine how anyone could say that we’d have been better off if Edward Snowden had not blown the whistle on all of this and instead allowed us to remain ignorant of what these governments were doing in the dark. Given all these findings even from these governments, is there anyone who still thinks that way?

One of the most contested questions in the surveillance debate is whether mass collection stops terror attacks, as these agencies claim. A U.S. federal court, Obama’s own commission, an independent privacy board of the U.S. Government, and members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee have all categorically said no convincing evidence exists to show this is true.

But the 8 members of the UK Parliamentary Committee – one of whom is The Most Hon. The Marquess of Lothian – have concluded otherwise, claiming “that GCHQ’s bulk interception capability is used primarily to find patterns in, or characteristics of, online communications which indicate involvement in threats to national security.” The alleged basis for this conclusion is that “GCHQ have provided case studies to the Committee demonstrating the effectiveness of their bulk interception capabilities.” Here is the entirety of the discussion in this report of those successful “case studies”:

* * * * *

You’re just going to have to take their word for it: these mass surveillance programs were crucial in stopping these extremely dangerous terrorist plots. “Unfortunately,” you can’t know about any of this, but if those official asterisks don’t convince you, what will?

…

GCHQ literally collects billions of emails and other electronic communications events every day. But don’t worry: they don’t read every single one of them. They only read “***%” of what they collect, or “fewer than *** of *** per cent of the items that transit the internet in one day.” So what’s the big concern?

The great irony of this is that the Committee here is marching under the banner of greater transparency, even as their principal arguments rest on asterisks of concealment. But this is how the largest western democracies generally function: they make highly dubious (often disproven) claims to justify radical powers, and then demand that you accept them on faith, because allowing you to see the evidence for yourself would endanger your life. That tactic, as much as anything, is a very compelling explanation for why Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers decide to do what they do.

(Ok, maybe you are somewhat unfamiliar with popular French comic strips.  I admit it’s an acquired taste.)

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Glenn Greenwald: Maybe Obama’s Sanctions on Venezuela are Not Really About His “Deep Concern” Over Suppression of Political Rights

The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. – a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.

Today, one of the Obama administration’s closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that country’s few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on “terrorism” charges. That is completely consistent with that regime’s systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers, executions of those with minority religious views, and exploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics.

Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis – nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s. Perhaps those who actually believe U.S. proclamations about imposing sanctions on Venezuela in objection to suppression of political opposition might spend some time thinking about what accounts for that disparity.

Paul Krugman: Strength Is Weakness

We’ve been warned over and over that the Federal Reserve, in its effort to improve the economy, is “debasing” the dollar. The archaic word itself tells you a lot about where the people issuing such warnings are coming from. It’s an allusion to the ancient practice of replacing pure gold or silver coins with “debased” coins in which the precious-metal content was adulterated with cheaper stuff. Message to the gold bugs and Ayn Rand disciples who dominate the Republican Party: That’s not how modern money works. Still, the Fed’s critics keep insisting that easy-money policies will lead to a plunging dollar.

Reality, however, keeps declining to oblige. Far from heading downstairs to debasement, the dollar has soared through the roof. (Sorry.) Over the past year, it has risen 20 percent, on average, against other major currencies; it’s up 27 percent against the euro. Hooray for the strong dollar! [..]

Or not. Actually, the strong dollar is bad for America. In an immediate sense, it will weaken our long-delayed economic recovery by widening the trade deficit. In a deeper sense, the message from the dollar’s surge is that we’re less insulated than many thought from problems overseas. In particular, you should think of the strong dollar/weak euro combination as the way Europe exports its troubles to the rest of the world, America very much included.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Uncle Sam cartoon debuts; Brigadoon opens on Broadway; Deadly rampage at Scottish elementary school.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Grifters Gonna Grift

And media organizations like Politico make it so damn easy because it’s their grift too.

Atrios

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.

March 13 is the 72nd day of the year (73rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 293 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1881. Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, is killed in the streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary “People’s Will” group. The People’s Will, organized in 1879, employed terrorism and assassination in their attempt to overthrow Russia’s czarist autocracy. They murdered officials and made several attempts on the czar’s life before finally assassinating him on March 13, 1881.

Alexander II succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father in 1855. The first year of his reign was devoted to the prosecution of the Crimean War and, after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace, led by his trusted counsellor Prince Gorchakov. The country had been exhausted and humiliated by the war. Bribe-taking, theft and corruption were everywhere. Encouraged by public opinion he began a period of radical reforms, including an attempt to not to depend on a landed aristocracy controlling the poor, a move to developing Russia’s natural resources and to thoroughly reform all branches of the administration.

Emancipation of the serfs

In spite of his obstinacy in playing the Russian autocrat, Alexander II acted willfully for several years, somewhat like a constitutional sovereign of the continental type. Soon after the conclusion of peace, important changes were made in legislation concerning industry and commerce, and the new freedom thus afforded produced a large number of limited liability companies. Plans were formed for building a great network of railways-partly for the purpose of developing the natural resources of the country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its power for defence and attack.

The existence of serfdom was tackled boldly, taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces and, hoping that their relations with the serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way (meaning in a way more satisfactory for the proprietors), he authorised the formation of committees “for ameliorating the condition of the peasants”, and laid down the principles on which the amelioration was to be effected.

This step was followed by one still more significant. Without consulting his ordinary advisers, Alexander ordered the Minister of the Interior to send a circular to the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a copy of the instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that perhaps the landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar desire. The hint was taken: in all provinces where serfdom existed, emancipation committees were formed.

But the emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukase. It contained very complicated problems, deeply affecting the economic, social and political future of the nation.

Alexander had to choose between the different measures recommended to him. Should the serfs become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the landlords, or should they be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors?

The emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry became one of the last groups of peasants in Europe to shake off serfdom.

The architects of the emancipation manifesto were Alexander’s brother Konstantin, Yakov Rostovtsev, and Nikolay Milyutin.

On 3 March 1861, 6 years after his accession, the emancipation law was signed and published.

Training Games

This is a variation on a pretty common Leadership Training game (been at many, moderated more than a few) that I also saw a takeoff of today on Girl Meets World.  In the game I played you broke into problem solving groups where you were treated according to your label.

These were not randomly assigned and I knew my moderator and later worked with him as State Membership Recruiting Co-ordinator.  It was a job I thought I’d loathe because I hate selling and I only took it to keep an eye on this guy and keep him 100 because at the time my Rebel Alliance thought the primary problem with the Club was fake growth and cooking the Memberships books.  I had no reason to trust him nor he me.

As it turns out we made quite a team.  Flushed the paper, organized 10 new locals, added 300+ members.  I worked hard, but no harder than he did.  Capped 5 consecutive years of growth.  I thought I’d hate selling but I didn’t understand what it was that we sold-

Opportunity, success, and leadership to people who might otherwise go through their whole lives thinking that they were hopeless and inferior.  As I look back it’s perhaps the best work I’ve ever done.

You may ask what this moderator labeled me on my team.

Expert.  Listen to him.

Tonightly we’ll be talking about Boxing and Brain Damage.  I’d have more thoughts about this if I hadn’t been pounding a deeper dent in my desk today.  Was that a bell?  I’m sure I heard a bell.

Continuity

Why is it NEVER about racism?

Next Week’s Guests-

• Monday 3/16: Andrew Cockburn
• Tuesday 3/17: Amanda Seyfried
• Wednesday 3/18: Kevin Hart
• Thursday 3/19: Will Ferrell

Rob Corddry will be on to pitch Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (some people say it’s funny, I’ll probably never know) and most definitely NOT to remind Jon that he’s getting old and quitting.

Honest.

Just a gentle reminder. We’re coming up on Silly Season (me for doing it) with March Madness looming and Melbourne Sunday.  Expect more incoherence and distraction.

Common’s web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

So yesterday the DJI took a 300 point tumble as the European Central Bank instituted Quantitative Easing.  What is that and why is it unhelpful at best.

Quantitative Easing is a monitary policy to create liquidity when interest rates are already at zero.  The Central Bank redeems it’s old bonds at face value and issues new ones reflecting the zero interest environment.

Now there’s already a mechanism to do that called a Bond Market where you can take your paper and sell it to someone else at the current interest rate BUT you have to do so at a discount to face value to reflect the current interest.  A trivial example-

If the interest rate is 10% over 10 years you can buy a bond from the Central Bank for $900 that has a face value of $1000 redeemable in 10 years.  Now during that 10 years you get nothing, at the end you get $1000.

If you need the money now (liquidity), you go to the Bond Market and sell your bond at the going rate which has several complicating factors like the current interest rate and the date the bond comes due but is less than the face value promised if you hold the bond until it is paid (discount).

Quantitative Easing pays you face value now.  Whether this is a good deal for the Central Bank (and it almost never is because that’s not the point) depends on the amount of time between now and when the bond comes due and what interest rates are (if interest rates rise steeply and there is a lot of time between now and when the bonds are due it’s a good deal for the Central Bank).

So what is the point?  Central Bank bonds are mostly held by regular Banks who are required to hold a certain amount of assets in the form of these bonds.  The Banks cash out their Central Bank bonds, buy zero interest Central Bank bonds and pocket the difference.  In other words, just another bailout disguised with accounting tricks.

This is thought by Keynesians who think this new influx of money will be put to productive economic use to be slightly stimulative.  It’s thought by Modern Monitarists to be meaningless and by Austerians a debasement of the currency.

In fact most of the money simply goes into the pockets of Banks, the Billionaires, or gets wiped out in speculative bubbles like… oh, say the Stock Market.

So what we have here is a policy that might make a minimal amount of sense if there were a demand for productive use but will really only be used to make our insolvent Banks seem more solvent when they are in fact bankrupt.

This will become very apparent in Germany and throughout the Euro-Zone after Greece, Spain, Italy, and France repudiate their Euro debts and return to their own devalued (but for who?  Banks and bond holders, that’s who) currency.

Transcript

Transcript

Michael Hudson is a Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson to resign

by Jon Swaine, The Guardian

Wednesday 11 March 2015 16.16 EDT

The embattled police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, is to resign a week after his department was accused of racial bias in a scathing report by the US government, an aide to the St Louis county executive told the Guardian on Wednesday.

…

The resignation of Jackson has long been anticipated after he was heavily criticised for his handling of the furore over a white police officer’s fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old in Ferguson last year.

Residents were appalled that Jackson’s officers left the body of Michael Brown lying for more than four hours in the residential side-street where he had been shot dead by Darren Wilson on 9 August. Successive nights of protests followed Brown’s death.

…

The resignation was welcomed by protest groups and lawmakers critical of Jackson’s leadership. “This is long overdue,” said Antonio French, a St Louis alderman. “There were grounds to fire or ask for the resignation of Chief Jackson months ago.

“But the details in the Department of Justice’s report of how his department operated meant there was no way for him to remain in that position if the city is to move forward”.

…

Jackson, 58, is the sixth senior Ferguson official to lose his job since the Department of Justice last week sharply criticised the city’s criminal justice system. Investigators concluded that police and court authorities targeted black people disproportionately and frequently violated their constitutional rights.

John Shaw, the city manager, was removed from his job on Tuesday evening. His departure followed the resignation of municipal court judge Ronald J Brockmeyer, Brockmeyer’s court clerk, and two of Jackson’s senior commanders.

Jackson presided over a police force that was 94% white in a St Louis suburb whose population is two-thirds black. African American residents reported feeling badly alienated from the officers who aggressively policed their driving and daily lives. The Justice Department’s report blamed the community disintegration on the city’s aggressive policy of raising revenue through small court fines.

The police chief was named along with Shaw and Brockmeyer as one of the driving forces behind the revenue-generation policy.

Investigators found an email from Jackson to Shaw in March 2011 reporting that court revenue in the previous month was $179,862.50, which “beat our next biggest month in the last four years by over $17,000.” The city manager replied: “Wonderful!”

Racist emails unearthed by the federal investigators prompted the resignations of veteran officers Sergeant William Mudd and Captain Rick Henke, who was effectively Jackson’s second-in-command, and the firing of Mary Ann Twitty, the city’s court clerk.

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Joshua Kopstein: Washington’s cybersecurity is about surveillance, not security

Congress’ latest legislative attempt promises protection, but it would just let the government spy more easily on us

The term “cybersecurity” has long been a comically ubiquitous utterance in Washington. But recent proposals from Congress, the White House and the intelligence community are straining the word’s meaning to dubious ends.

For most Americans, cybersecurity is the protection we desperately need in response to the dwindling separation between our physical and digital lives. Two-thirds of Americans now carry pocket-size computers full of intimate data that are connected to the Internet at all times, and cars, refrigerators and thermostats are not far behind. After a year of high-profile hacks – from the crippling compromise of Sony Pictures to major intrusions at Target, Home Depot and most recently the health insurance giant Anthem – who would say no to cybersecurity?

But D.C.’s cybersecurity rhetoric is a political smokescreen. Though based on real threats, its purpose is to rally support for sweeping policies such as the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), Congress’ latest attempt at cybersecurity legislation, that merely enable more surveillance.

New York Times Editorial: Republican Idiocy on Iran

After helping to ignite a firestorm over a possible nuclear agreement with Iran, Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, is now sort of acknowledging his error. “Maybe that wasn’t exactly the best way to do that,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday.

He was referring to the disgraceful and irresponsible letter that he and 46 Senate colleagues sent to Iran’s leaders this week that generated outrage from Democrats and even some conservatives. [..]

Maybe Mr. McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, should have thought about the consequences before he signed the letter, which was drafted by Tom Cotton, a Republican of Arkansas, a junior senator with no foreign policy credentials. Instead of trying to be leaders and statesmen, the Republicans in Congress seem to think their role is outside the American government, divorced from constitutional principles, tradition and the security interests of the American people.