January 2012
61 posts
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Spontaneous Combustion
Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings Ltd. collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation.
As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so...
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“U.S. diplomacy with Tehran will only work if it is based on the same foundations...”
– Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, “The Soft Side of Regime Change: Trita Parsi’s A Single Roll of the Dice.”
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Freddie Mac Bets Against American Homeowners -... →
Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.
Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.
No evidence has emerged that...
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“At oral argument last term, the justices speculated that a state might simply...”
– From “Big Brother Buys a GPS” by Pam Karlan
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The Original 99%
Smedley Butler from Louis Proyect on Vimeo.
We are divided, in America, into two classes: The Tories on one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 per cent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came. That class hasn’t any privileges except...
Will Israel Really Attack Iran? →
garysick:
The real answer is no, they will not. But you would never figure that out by reading the New York Times.
The sensationalist article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (Jan. 29) adds to the hysteria surrounding U.S. and Israeli relations with Iran. Ronen Bergman, a columnist with the leading Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, concludes that Israel will probably attack Iran this...
Police use smoke grenades on Occupy Oakland... →
solitaryforager:
Police fired what appeared to be smoke grenades on Saturday at a group of hundreds of Occupy Oakland protesters who tore down a chain-link fence as they tried to gain entrance to the city’s shuttered convention center.
The scuffles marked the latest confrontation between police and Occupy protesters seeking to regain lost momentum in their movement against economic...
“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized...”
– Fidel Castro Calls Republican Field a ‘Competition of Idiocy’ - NYTimes (via brooklynmutt)
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“…that’s what Dodd-Frank accomplished. It rearranged regulatory offices and...”
– Dodd-Frank Made No Structural Changes to Banking System | Matt Stoller (via theamericanbear)
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UK Censorship and Libel as Oppression
“Where writers in the United States are used to having their articles cross-referenced by fact-checkers for accuracy, journalists in Britain have our work picked over by lawyers. I found myself blushing when I explained to fellow writers covering police brutality at Occupy Wall Street that where I come from, it does not matter whether or not what you write is true so much as whether or not...
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In 2010 Mitt #Romney made 12 times more money than... →
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Citizen Philosophers
Claudionor Jr. Ascom / SEC
Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that’s what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever...
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Florida Foreclosure Folies
Linda Green’s “signature” appears on hundreds of thousands of mortgage assignments and is listed as an officer of dozens of banks and mortgage companies …
How does she do it all?
[Source: 2010 PowerPoint presentation by the Florida Office of Attorney General’s Economic Crimes Division, via Reality Check.]
The New York Times' interview with Chris Dodd... →
shortformblog:
But slow pacing gave the Internet and free speech advocates time to wake up and mobilize, turning what might have been a relatively simple exercise for Mr. Dodd and his allies into a bitter struggle. The delays violated a cardinal rule among professional lobbyists, who generally believe the worst enemy of a proposed law is the legislative clock.
Mr. Dodd said that the entire...
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“Exotic cars, designer clothing, and extravagant jewels … most luxuries...”
– Private Islands Online. (Be sure to see the commercials.)
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“The chief accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street won’t be a new party or new...”
– Ari Paul, “The Return of Inequality: How the Occupy Movement Shifted Electoral Politics”
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The Brown Majority
Click on chart to enlarge …
According to U.S. Census projections, from 2000 to 2030 the Hispanic share of population of the United States will nearly double, from 13 percent to 23 percent. In the same period, the non-Hispanic white population is expected to drop from 69 percent of the total to 53 percent. The Census Bureau forecasts that by 2042 whites will be a plurality of the...
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“I could not care less if it’s a mosque or a temple filled with idols
Where my...”
– Zarin Pareshan (a Pashtun poet)
Government could strip citizenship from Americans... →
cultureofresistance:
When Barack Obama inked the National Defense Authorization Act on New Year’s Eve, the president insisted that he wouldn’t use the terrifying legislation against American citizens. Another new law, however, could easily change all of that.
If the Enemy Expatriation Act passes in its current form, the legislation will let the government strike away citizenship for anyone...
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On Civil Rights and Racial Justice
Michael C. Dawson, “The Future of Black Politics,” with responses by William Julius Wilson, Lani Guinier, Robin D.G. Kelley and others. (Jan/Feb 2012)
James Forman, Jr. “Harm’s Way” (Jan/Feb 2011)
Stephen Steinberg, “Poor Reason” (Jan 2011)
Glenn C. Loury, “Call of the Tribe” (Nov/Dec 2008)
- - -. “Why Are So Many...
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The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the...
The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States: charts
View more presentations from White House
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How Occupy Has Raised Class Consciousness
Source: Pew Research Center, “Rising Share of Americans See Conflict Between Rich and Poor.” (h/t: Boots Riley)
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“With no broad-based, progressive black movement to challenge it, neoliberalism...”
– Robin D.G. Kelley in response to Michael Dawson’s essay “The Future of Black Politics.”
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The Future of Black Politics
People who live at the bottom of the social order, especially at the bottom of more than one of its hierarchies, are frequently condemned to a life of crippling disadvantage. The existence of such mutually reinforcing power hierarchies calls the social order itself into question as a matter of justice. Political movements need to disrupt these hierarchies to overcome injustice.
In the...
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“At a post-Christmas party Dec. 29, former [MF Global] employees took turns...”
– MF Global Employees Take a Whack at Corzine
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iExploit
According to oekom research AG’s Position Paper “Working Conditions in the Supply Chain,” the electronics industry violates labor rights more than any other industry.
For more, read Technology Review and Green Biz.
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Watchjayrosen:
Möbius Strip Journalism
I do my share of complaining about horse race reporting in politics. Well, more than my share. (Quick definition: horse race journalism is news about politics in which the only question that counts is: who’s gonna win?) But there’s a reason I complain about it. Sometimes the crazy passes by so quickly we don’t notice how fantastic it is that people get paid to...
