There’s Something Happening Here… There… Everywhere

Posted: February 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 90 Comments

One World, One Pain

Hello news junkies, so how’s your Presidents Day going? This post basically picks up where BB’s morning reads left off. Minkoff Minx also has a live blog on the protests going. I don’t know about you, but the world is spinning so fast right now, it’s hard to keep up, and I need all the help I can get. I’ve been perusing reads from around the blogosphere to fill in the gaps on what I missed last week and what’s been cooking this morning. I thought I’d share a bit of what I found (see below the youtube of Buffalo Springfield), in case it might save anyone else trying to catch up a little legwork. 

Something Happening Everywhere: Midday Monday reads

Libya Live Updates (The Guardian), 5:12 pm, Evening summary:

  • Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, “may have gone to Venezuela”, British foreign secretary William Hague has said (see 4.43pm).
  • Two Libyan fighter jets and two civilian helicopters have landed in Malta (see 4.41pm).
  • There are reports of gunfire in Tripoli and of the navy bombing parts of the capital (see 5.07pm).
  • The Bahrain grand prix has been cancelled because of anti-government protests there (see 4.42pm).
  • Five people are dead after riots in Morocco (See 4.20pm).

In Women’s rights news:

US protests:

Something Happening Here: Sky Dancing catchup

  • Quixote summed up the essence of the current fight over unions really well in a comment she left on my Saturday morning post: “You don’t have to be pro-labor to support unions. Anyone who cares about the right to assemble should be defending people’s rights!This isn’t about busting unions. It’s about busting basic rights.”
  • If you didn’t catch Bostonboomer‘s read the other night about the “national security” secret of Dennis Montgomery and the eEtreppid software fiasco, be sure to check it out. It’s a horribly depressing state of affairs, but the way BB covered it, at least you’ll laugh while crying.

Something Happening There: Stuff from other blogs

  • Taylor Marsh has this interesting read up right now: American Oligarchy, in which she asks, “Reagan and Clinton both bit the tax hike bullet, but will Obama?” My wild guess on that is No.
  • Over at The Widdershins (via chatblu’s Saturday morning post), Cream City came up with a great little quip: “Walker to Wisconsin: Let them eat cheese.” Cream City also shared some helpful WI media links in the comments at TW: wisopinion.com (aggregates left/right blogs, editorials, etc), wispolitics.com (news), jsonline.com (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, conservative), madison.com (combined Madison papers, you can guess the political leaning of those) Pat Johnson wrote a very beautiful post this morning at TW as well, about the woman in that Great Depression photo. You know the one. Oh, and yesterday chatblu put up a wonderful thread ahead of Presidents Day and got a great chat and youtube exchange of movies going — Lazy Sunday: Political Pictures.
  • Peter Daou: Witnessing history ... “Every age has its historic events and moments, but it’s hard to deny that we’re living through an epic time in history. Here are just a handful of the things we’ve seen in the past few years: The amputation of Manhattan’s skyline… One of the most destructive tsunamis ever recorded (Indian Ocean)… One of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded (Haiti), One of the worst environmental disasters ever (Gulf spill)… The emergence – and denial – of the biggest threat to human life (climate change)… The most successful U.S. presidential campaign ever by a woman… The election of the first U.S. black president… And now, the 2011 Middle East and North Africa uprisings…”
  • Last but not least. Provocative read from the Black Agenda Report/Bruce A Dixon: The New Black Politics: All We Want Is A Black Royal Family, Not Jobs, Peace, or Justice. Snippet: “When black Americans used to identify with the world’s oppressed and down-trodden, they were at least identifying with people like themselves. Now we are more likely to see ourselves in Michelle Obama, who takes six or eight vacations a year in some of the world’s most expensive resorts, than in a poor greiving Palestinian or Congolese mother.”

Presidents’ Day Reads

Posted: February 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Diplomacy Nightmares, Drone Warfare, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, Libya, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, worker rights, Yemen | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Good Morning! It’s “Presidents’ Day.” Talk about a generic holiday. We used to mark two presidents’ birthdays in February–Washington’s birthday on the 22nd and Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th–but now we just have a Monday in February when everything goes on sale, and pictures of Washington and Lincoln are used to sell cars and mattresses. At least some of us get the day off work.

There’s an awful lot of news happening, and I’m guessing there could be a even more happening Libya by the time you start reading this. The latest is that protesters are in Tripoli, and the family of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is vowing to fight the protesters “to the last man standing,” according to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam in a really monotonous, rambling speech yesterday.

Anti-government protesters rallied in Tripoli’s streets, tribal leaders spoke out against Gaddafi, and army units defected to the opposition as oil exporter Libya endured one of the bloodiest revolts to convulse the Arab world.

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appeared on national television in an attempt to both threaten and calm people, saying the army would enforce security at any price.

“Our spirits are high and the leader Muammar Gaddafi is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are behind him as is the Libyan army,” he said.

“We will keep fighting until the last man standing, even to the last woman standing…We will not leave Libya to the Italians or the Turks.”

He also warned of “rivers of blood.” But those may be famous last words. From the Guardian UK:

In fast-moving developments after midnight, demonstrators were reported to be in Tripoli’s Green Square and preparing to march on Gaddafi’s compound as rumours spread that the leader had fled to Venezuela. Other reports described protesters in the streets of Tripoli throwing stones at billboards of Muammar Gaddafi while police used teargas to try to disperse them.

“People are in the street chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) and throwing stones at photos of Gaddafi,”an expatriate worker told Reuters by telephone from Tripoli. “The police are firing teargas everywhere, it’s even getting into the houses.”

There was also plenty of protesting going on in other Middle Eastern countries:

Libya’s extraordinary day overshadowed drama elsewhere in the region. Tensions eased in Bahrain after troops withdrew from a square in Manama occupied by Shia protesters. Thousands of security personnel were also deployed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to forestall an opposition rally. Elsewhere in the region unrest hit Yemen, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait and Algeria.

At Asia Times Online, Pepe Escobar wrote a couple of days ago that the protests in Bahrain could soon spread to Saudi Arabia. That is one fascinating article.

In Wisconsin, protesters say they aren’t going anywhere.

“We’ll be here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — as long as it takes,” Gary Lonzo, a union organizer and former Wisconsin corrections officer, said Sunday as he watched protesters banging drums and waving signs here for a sixth day in a row. “We’re not going anywhere.”

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow, some lawmakers suggested that a compromise might yet be possible over the cuts that Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has proposed. A spokesman for Dale Schultz, a moderate Republican senator, said that Mr. Schultz supported Mr. Walker, particularly in his assessment that the state budget situation was dire, but that Mr. Schultz also hoped to work to preserve collective bargaining rights.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators are staying in Illinois until further notice.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Either I missed this story completely, or the US corporate media ignored it. An exiled religious leader, Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has returned to Egypt after 50 years and may be trying to “stealing the revolution,” according to a retweet from Mona Eltahawy (h/t, Wonk the Vote). Quaradawi made a speech to more than a million people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday. During the rally,

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt’s uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

Ghonim, who was angered by the episode, then left the square with his face hidden by an Egyptian flag.

Uh oh….

Remember Raymond Davis, who was arrested in Pakistan for shooting two Pakistani men on the street? He was more or less outed as a CIA agent during his trial. The U.S. has been trying to save him from murder charges by claiming he had diplomatic immunity. But the trial has gone on anyway, and now it’s definite that he’s CIA.

Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.

Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an “administrative and technical official” attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. The revelation may complicate American efforts to free Davis, who insists he was acting in self-defence against a pair of suspected robbers, who were both carrying guns.

[….]

The Pakistani government is aware of Davis’s CIA status yet has kept quiet in the face of immense American pressure to free him under the Vienna convention. Last week President Barack Obama described Davis as “our diplomat” and dispatched his chief diplomatic troubleshooter, Senator John Kerry, to Islamabad. Kerry returned home empty-handed.

Many Pakistanis are outraged at the idea of an armed American rampaging through their second-largest city. Analysts have warned of Egyptian-style protests if Davis is released.

Oh dear, another diplomatic nightmare for our indecisive President to deal with. BTW, has he said anything about the bloody massacres in Libya yet?

The New York Post has a nasty takedown of Mitt Romney by Josh Kosman, author of a book on how private equity firms could cause the next economic crisis.

…the former private equity firm chief’s fortune — which has funded his political ambitions from the Massachusetts statehouse to his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2008 — was made on the backs of companies that ultimately collapsed, putting thousands of ordinary Americans out on the street. That truth if it becomes widely known could become costly to Romney, who, while making the media rounds recently, told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work,” implying he was that person.

Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.

Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.

Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again.

I’m going to leave you with this video from The Ed Show live in Madison, Wisconsin.

What are you reading and blogging about today?

US Claims “National Security” to Cover Up Embarrassing Deal with Con Man

Posted: February 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: income inequality, Psychopaths in charge, Social Security, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

According to the politicians running things in our country these days, paying fair salaries to teachers, social workers, and firefighters is irresponsible because it runs up the deficit. Paying Social Security to old folks is driving the country into bankruptcy. But when the feds pour millions of dollars down the drain because they get duped by a con man, that’s a national security secret.

Dennis Montgomery, Con Man

From The New York Times:

For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret.

In fact, the Justice Department has argued in court that if they had to reveal the embarrassing details of what happened, it would damage national security. That could be true if revealing how dumb our public officials and “intelligence” experts are puts our country in danger….

Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.

Get this, Montgomery convinced U.S. intelligence wizards that he had designed some software that could detect secret Al Qaeda messages concealed in Al Jazeera broadcasts! ROFLOL! That’s reminds me of the days when religious nuts used to claim they could detect Satanic messages in rock ‘n’ roll music by playing it backwards.

Montgomery also told the CIA that his magic software could “identify terrorists from Predator drone videos” and pick up sounds from submarines. And the CIA geniuses bought Montgomery’s tale hook, line, and sinker. As a result of the government’s involvement with this grifter, there was

…an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003.

The software led to dead ends in connection with a 2006 terrorism plot in Britain. And they were used by counterterrorism officials to respond to a bogus Somali terrorism plot on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, according to previously undisclosed documents.

OMG, my sides are splitting from laughter! And on top of all that,

C.I.A. officials…came to believe that Mr. Montgomery’s technology was fake in 2003, but their conclusions apparently were not relayed to the military’s Special Operations Command, which had contracted with his firm. In 2006, F.B.I. investigators were told by co-workers of Mr. Montgomery that he had repeatedly doctored test results at presentations for government officials. But Mr. Montgomery still landed more business.

In 2009, the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology, even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical about the software, according to e-mails obtained by The New York Times.

Angelo Mozilo, Fraudster

Hold onto your wallets, I think President Obama is going to have to ask us “small people” to “sacrifice” some more to make up the difference. Meanwhile, Mr. Montgomery will very likely get away with his fraud, just like Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo, formerly of Countrywide, and every other fraudster and bankster who comes down the pike. Don’t worry, though, “sacrifice” is good for you, your parents, and your children and grandchildren.

Live Blog: Libya in Chaos

Posted: February 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 27 Comments

If you don’t have something else pressing to do this afternoon, I suggest watching Al Jazeera English to follow the fast-moving events in Libya. You can also follow Al Jazeera’s Libya live blog here.

Unarmed protesters who have been peacefully protesting in the streets there have been fired upon by Gaddafi’s government forces with machine guns and from helicopters. Funeral processions have been fired and mourners killed. Hundreds of people have died and many more are injured, filling hospitals beyond capacity.

The latest reports are that the military has stood down and refused to continue carrying out Gaddafi’s orders to fire on protesters.

The US has told embassy staff to leave Libya, and US citizens are being warned against traveling there.

Here are some recent news updates and I’ll add more as I get them. Feel free to discuss the protests that are taking place in multiple other countries, including the U.S.

NYT: Protesters Die as Crackdown in Libya Intensifies

…the escalating violence in Libya — a cycle of funerals, confrontations, and more coffins — has made the revolt there the bloodiest in a wave of uprisings sweeping the region since the ouster of strongmen in Tunisia last month and Egypt last week.

Under Mr. Qaddafi’s four decades of idiosyncratic rule, Libya has become a singular quasi-nation, where the official rhetoric disdains the idea of a nation-state, tribal bonds remain primary even within the ranks of the military, and both protesters and the security forces have reason to believe that backing down will likely mean their ultimate death or imprisonment.

“The most dreadful crime against humanity is taking place in this city,” said Abdel Latif Al Hadi, a 54-year-old Benghazi resident whose five sons are out protesting. “In the eastern region, there is no going back after this bloodbath.”

Several residents of Benghazi described an ongoing battle for control of the city, Libya’s second-largest, with a population of more than half a million. By Sunday, thousands of protesters had occupied a central square in front of the courthouse, which some call their Tahrir Square after the epicenter of the Egyptian revolt, and they were chanting the same slogans that echoed through the streets of Tunis and Cairo, “The people want to bring down the regime.”

CNN: Clashes erupt at Libyan funeral procession, military camp

New clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in Libya killed another 25 people Sunday as protesters used an explosives-laden car and a tank to attack a military camp in Benghazi, witnesses reported.

The attack followed a clash between troops and marchers in a funeral procession in Libya’s second-largest city. Sunday’s violence left 25 people dead, according to a doctor at Benghazi’s Al Jalla Hospital, bringing the toll in the recent unrest to 209.

Thousands of mourners, some carrying coffins above their heads, crowded into Benghazi streets Sunday in a funeral procession honoring those killed Saturday. The clashes occurred as the procession passed by the Alfadeel Abu Omar military camp, where one man told CNN uniformed troops opened fire on the mourners.

The clashes escalated after the incident, centered around the military camp. Protesters packed at least one car with explosives Sunday and sent it crashing into a compound wall at the camp, eyewitnesses said. Security forces then fired on the protesters as they attempted to breach the camp.

I’m not sure if CNN has reporters on the ground or if they are getting telephone updates. They say have talked directly to witnesses.

Reuters: Libya protesters seize streets, Bahrain mood eases

Libyans protesting against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule appeared to control the streets of Benghazi on Sunday, even though the security forces have killed scores in the bloodiest of multiple revolts now rocking the Arab world.

Witnesses said Libya’s second city was in chaos, with government buildings ransacked and troops and police forced to retreat to a fortified compound, from where they picked off demonstrators with sniper and heavy-weapons fire.

“The security forces are in their barracks and the city is in a state of civil mutiny,” one witness told Reuters.

The Guardian UK: Libya defiant as hundreds of protesters feared dead

Libya is defying growing international condemnation of a bloody crackdown that saw troops and mercenaries firing at unarmed demonstrators as the death toll rose to more than 200.

The most violent scenes so far of the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world were seen in its most repressive country as Muammar Gaddafi appeared to be relying on brute force to crush what began last week as peaceful protests but may now threaten his 41-year rule.

the eyes of the world were on Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya where shocked witnesses talked of “massacres” and described corpses shot in the head, chest or neck piling up in hospitals running short of blood and medicines.

Estimates of the total number of fatalities over six days of unprecedented unrest ranged from 173 to 285. Some opposition sources gave figures as high as 500.

Gaddafi’s sons, Khamis and Saadi, and intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi were reportedly commanding efforts to crush the protests in Benghazi, the country’s second city, where buildings were ransacked and troops and police forced to retreat to a compound to pick off demonstrators with sniper and artillery fire.

A little tech news from ZDNet: Libya turns of the internet and the massacres begin.

First, Libya blocked news sites and Facebook. Then, beginning Friday night, according to Arbor Networks, a network security and Internet monitoring company, announced that Libya had cut itself off from the Internet. Hours later the Libyan dictator’s solders started slaughtering protesters. As of Sunday afternoon, U.S. Eastern time the death toll was above 200 in the city of Benghazi alone.

Welcome to 2011. While dictators in the most repressive regimes, such as North Korea and Cuba, have long kept Internet contact to the world to a bare minimum, less restrictive dictatorships, such as Egypt and Libya left the doors to the Internet cracked open to the public. Now, though, realizing that they could no longer hide their abuses from a world a Twitter tweet away, the new model autocracies, such as Libya and Bahrain have realized that they need to cut their Internet links before bringing out the guns.

As in Bahrain, Libya’s Internet is essentially owned and controlled by the government through a telecommunication company Libya Telecom & Technology. Its chairman is the dictator’s Moammar Gadhafi’s eldest son. Mobile phone services in Libya are also under the control of the government. So far though the government doesn’t seem to have cut international phone services off-perhaps because that’s harder to do without cutting off local telephone service.

Unlike Egypt or Bahrain though, Libya is the home domain of a well-known Internet service, the bit.ly URL tracking and shorting service. Bit.ly, which is operated by the U.S. company of the same name, is used in the popular social network client Tweetdeck.

Well, I think I can survive without Tweetdeck….

Please use the comments to share any new that you are hearing or reading. This is an open thread for discussing anything related to the worldwide protests.

Will 2011 “Rock the World” Like 1968 Did?

Posted: February 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Iraq, Middle East, Tunisia, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, worker rights, Yemen | Tags: , , , | 27 Comments

Paris, May 1968

For the past few weeks, as the protests in Tunisia spread to Egypt and then to several other countries, I’ve been reminded of the worldwide political uprisings that took place back in 1968, “the year that rocked the world.” Now that we are even seeing Americans protesting in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin and Columbus, Ohio, I wonder: could it happen again?

In case you weren’t around in 1968 or your memory is fuzzy, the Guardian published a summary of some of the events of that unbelievable year back in 2008. Sean O’Hagen describes how in May 1968, Paris

…was paralysed after weeks of student riots followed by a sudden general strike. France’s journey from ‘serenity’ to near revolution in the first few weeks of May is the defining event of ‘1968’, a year in which mass protest erupted across the globe, from Paris to Prague, Mexico City to Madrid, Chicago to London.

[….]

These rebellions were not planned in advance, nor did the rebels share an ideology or goal. The one cause many had in common was opposition to America’s war in Vietnam but they were driven above all by a youthful desire to rebel against all that was outmoded, rigid and authoritarian. At times, they gained a momentum that took even the protagonists by surprise. Such was the case in Paris, which is still regarded as the most mythic near-revolutionary moment of that tumultuous year, but also in Mexico City, Berlin and Rome.

In these cases, what began as a relatively small and contained protest against a university administration – a protest by the young and impatient against the old and unbending – burgeoned into a mass movement against the government. In other countries – like Spain, where the Fascist General Franco was still in power, and Brazil, where a military dictatorship was in place – the protests were directed from the start against the state. In Warsaw and Prague, the freedom movements rose up briefly against the monolithic communist ideology of the USSR. And in America, capitalism was the ultimate enemy, and Vietnam the prime catalyst.

Those protests, along with revolutions in music, art, fashion, and mores truly changed the world. Could it be happening again? Have we really reached a tipping point?

I thought I’d just put up some links to the important events that have taken place today in the many ongoing protests. You can add your own links in the comments (if anyone else is still awake).

More below the fold….

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