November 6, 2014

Evidently the GOP victories have completely eradicated Ebola...

Because it disappeared from the U.S. news cycle real quick

November 6, 2014

Matt Taibbi's first new Rolling Stone piece:

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.

"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"

Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing.

Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations.

Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview."

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106

No wonder Pierre and Glenn didn't want to go anywhere near this story...Now Rolling Stone is getting more mouse clicks in a week than the Intercept gets in a couple of months...

November 5, 2014

True test for the manliest of masculine MEN amongst men...

Still think women are the weaker sex? Men hooked up to machine which simulates the pain of childbirth – and are reduced to tears within minutes



The old maxim goes that if men rather than women had to have babies, the human race would have died out long ago.

Now those birthing pains are being felt by men in China.

A hospital in the city of Jinan in eastern China's Shandong Province is hooking men up to a childbirth simulator to see what their partner's go through.

A hospital in the city of Jinan in eastern China's Shandong Province is hooking men up to a childrbirth simulator to see what their partners go through.

Technicians at the hospital use the device to stimulate muscles in the male abdomen with electric shocks to make it contract and at the same time simulate the pain endured by mothers during childbirth.
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Most of the volunteers are partners of pregnant women.

The hospital said they want to show men how much women suffer through childbirth, and to give men greater respect for what women go through.

'The event was aimed at creating awareness and more respect for childbearing women, especially highlighting the entire laborious nine-month process leading up to birth,' a hospital spokesman told CEN.

To recreate the contractions and pain of childbirth, hospital technicians used machines to stimulate the men's abdomens with electric shocks to make it contract.

Some men seemed reluctant— having been dragged there by their partners— while others were more enthusiastic, CEN reported.

'My wife is expecting a baby in three months, and we had a row when I told [her] not to make such a fuss,' father-to-be Guang Liao, 29, told CEN.

'When she found out about this project, she told me had to sign up for it, so I also know what is was all about.'

Many of the participants were reduced to tears by the experience, and could only last a few minutes

The hospital said they want to show men how much women suffer through childbirth, and to give men greater respect for what women go through.

'I must admit I was curious and if what I experienced is really what she goes through, then I have to say I have changed my attitude.

'It was really incredibly painful and I only had it for a few minutes.

'If it went on for hours I don't know if I'd be able to bear it,' he told the news agency.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2820945/Fathers-hooked-machine-simulates-pain-childbirth.html

November 4, 2014

I didn't believe the women accusing Jian Ghomeshi, and I'm ashamed

Last week I came face to face with my own bias and I was left with a deep sense of regret and shame. I consider myself an ardent supporter of women’s rights and being a survivor of sexual violence myself, one would think that I would have rushed to believe the women that Jian Ghomeshi allegedly sexually assaulted. But I did not. In fact, I doubted their credibility. And for this, I am ashamed.


When I read Ghomeshi’s Facebook post, I sided with him, believing that this 20-something-year-old woman was in fact, as he described, “a jilted ex-girlfriend.” It is no secret that Jian is a powerful, wealthy Canadian celebrity and I imagined a scorned ex-lover with an agenda to destroy his reputation.


I pictured her as a beautiful model or a socialite, maybe someone who didn’t get her way and was now spewing defamatory material to get back at him. Maybe she wanted a relationship. Maybe she wanted money. When other women anonymously reported similar sexual attacks by Ghomeshi, I dismissed their claims, largely because they were anonymous and their anonymity somehow made their statements less real and less credible, at least in my mind.


Then we heard from Canadian Actress Lucy DeCoutere, who came forward with details of her alleged assault by Ghomeshi. I started to become more skeptical of my own previous presumptions. On Thursday I read the piece by author and lawyer Reva Seth, who gave insight into what a sexual encounter with Jian was like, writing that “it was like he became a different person . . . He was super angry, almost frenzied and disassociated.”


I remember turning to my housemate and saying, “It’s not looking good for Jian. I think he might be guilty.” He inquired, “Why do you think that now?” I responded, “Because this lawyer who was clearly more powerful than him back in the day has no reason to lie. She is happily married with kids, and she is coming out and saying what he did to her. And what about that actress? She clearly doesn’t need fame or money. She already has those things. She doesn’t really have a reason to lie.”


And then it struck me. I chose to believe an actress and a lawyer but not the anonymous women who were likely brutalized by Jian Ghomeshi. Why? Because the actress and the lawyer came from professions associated with fame, money and power. Their occupations, marital status and lack of anonymity gave them more credence. And that is when an unsettling feeling consumed me. I was part of the problem.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/11/02/i_didnt_believe_the_women_accusing_jian_ghomeshi_and_im_ashamed.html

November 4, 2014

Verizon, AT&T tracking their users with ‘supercookies’

Verizon and AT&T have been quietly tracking the Internet activity of more than 100 million cellular customers with what critics have dubbed “supercookies” — markers so powerful that it’s difficult for even savvy users to escape them.

The technology has allowed the companies to monitor which sites their customers visit, cataloging their tastes and interests. Consumers cannot erase these supercookies or evade them by using browser settings, such as the “private” or “incognito” modes that are popular among users wary of corporate or government surveillance.

Verizon and AT&T say they have taken steps to alert their customers to the tracking and to protect customer privacy as the companies develop programs intended to help advertisers hone their pitches based on individual Internet behavior. But as word has spread about the supercookies in recent days, privacy advocates have reacted with alarm, saying the tracking could expose user Internet behavior to a wide range of outsiders — including intelligence services — and may also violate federal telecommunications and wiretapping laws.

The stakes are particularly high, privacy advocates say, because Verizon’s experimentation with supercookies is almost certain to spur copycats eager to compete for a larger share of the multibillion-dollar advertising profits won by Google, Facebook and others.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/verizon-atandt-tracking-their-users-with-super-cookies/2014/11/03/7bbbf382-6395-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

I guess the Intercept's crack reporting staff was too busy this past week to dedicate any coverage to this...

November 4, 2014

The Surveillance State and You

Citizenfour is about surveillance. But its also about what surveillance does to you. How does authority's gaze change us? In a world where every keystoke is potentially watched, and every heartbeat potentially counted, does knowledge of that change how you act? Will you still allow yourself to question? How can you organize against power when you live entirely in its sight?

While Snowden's NSA revelations are most associated with the internet, "online surveillance" is a bit of a misnomer. The web long ago bled into meatspace. A CCTV camera could easily capture your face, then link that up to your Facebook profile, your purchases, your friends. You shed data like strands of hair. You're both made up of data and more than the sum of it, like DNA.

Critics sometimes chide the American anti-surveillance movement for the whiteness and maleness of its public faces. While women and people of color have done brilliant, under-recognized work against surveillance, this perception might be no coincidence: White men are the last people in America who thought they had privacy.

"Invasive spying and government surveillance in the name of fighting terrorism is hardly news for Arab and Muslim-American communities," wrote Anna Lekas Miller in the Guardian last year when Snowden's leaks went public. Since 9/11, the US government has flooded Muslim communities with informants. FBI and NYPD plants haunted mosques and bookshops, sometimes trying to pressure innocent men into making plans, or even expressing sentiments, that could get them charged with terrorism.

The history of black people in this country is one of even more intimate-and bloody-state intrusions. Think of the FBI infiltrating black power groups, of the government blackmailing MLK. America's prison system disproportionately cages the black and brown, capturing not just the incarcerated, but their families, in its nets. Those visiting loved ones at Rikers must submit to fingerprinting, lift up their tongues and shake out their bras in front of a prison guard. Outside the cages, this lack of privacy is reinforced by police who grope and question black youth just for walking-is it any wonder that young men in these communities are finely attuned to the movements and whims of the police? That they internalize a fear of authority that's proven expert at wielding fear as a tool.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-surveillance-state-and-you-crabapple-100

November 4, 2014

‘Then you need to go back to Africa!’

A request to relocate a Confederate flag from outside a Virginia museum to a display indoors prompted an angry showdown between local residents, some of whom don’t want the divisive symbol moved.

State law, however, appears to be on the flag supporters’ side.

The director of the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History asked the City Council to remove the flag from a monument outside and relocate it as part of an indoor exhibit.

Confederate heritage organizations protested the request, while civil rights groups described the flag as a “gang or Klan sign” of hatred little different than a Nazi flag.

“The Confederate flag has been used by many in acts of hate in the process of hate crimes,” said the Rev. Avon Keen, president of the Danville/Pittsylvania County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

However, the city manager said last month that Danville lacks the authority to remove the monument – although museum director Cara Burton said she asked only to relocate the flag.

Burton said a new three-year strategic plan calls for a Confederate exhibit including the flag inside the museum, which is located inside the historic Sutherlin Mansion.

The city took over ownership of the dilapidated mansion in 1914 with $20,000 contribution from the Anne Eliza Johns Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The museum leased the renovated mansion in 1983, and in 1994 the Historic Preservation Association installed a seven-foot granite obelisk and flagpole flying the third national flag of the Confederacy to celebrate the building’s Civil War history.

“Jefferson Davis was in that building right there when he got news that Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox,” said Frank Harvey, the commander of the local chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. “They could do the last days of the Confederacy right here in Danville and bring a lot of tourism to this area.”

But opponents of the flag argue that its display harms the town’s reputation and economy, and they could ask the U.S. Attorney General to become involved in a legal challenge.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/virginians-clash-over-removal-of-confederate-flag-then-you-need-to-go-back-to-africa/#.VFkR1j4FxTA.twitter

November 3, 2014

African migrants in Russia describe 'hell on Earth'

First they spat angry words at Remy Bazie. Then they struck him in the face with an iron bar, knocking him unconscious..

The men who jumped the Ivory Coast migrant at a crowded Moscow train station last November did not rob him. But they damaged his jaw to the degree that doctors had to install a metal plate to hold it in place. It took Bazie four months to raise the $3,600 to undergo surgery.

"Most of the time I'm harassed, but this was the worst experience," Bazie, 28, said recently as he sat at a parish community center in Moscow where African migrants often seek refuge.

His story is not uncommon, Russian civil and human rights leaders say. African migrants face widespread hostility and racism that usually go unpunished.

According to the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, a Moscow-based advocacy group and think tank, 177 acts of violence against blacks have been reported in Russia since 2010.

But rights advocates said interviews with Africans living in the capital, as well as anecdotal evidence, indicate that a far higher number have been victims of racial attacks and experienced race-based harassment. Most, however, never report the assaults, the advocates said.

"Living here in Russia is like living in hell on Earth," said Osman Kamara, 35, a Liberian who fled civil conflict in his homeland 10 years ago, only to fall victim to a skinhead attack in Moscow. "They don't like our color. Going out is a problem. Maybe if you go out, you might not return."

Some Africans say that after arriving here, they heard the Russian word "obezyana" directed at them so often that they initially thought it meant "black person." It means "monkey."

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-russia-africans-20141102-story.html#page=1

November 3, 2014

Alabama school system paid former FBI agent $157,000 to spy on black students: critics

Huntsville City Schools (HCS) paid a former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent $157,000 to direct security last year, but critics contend that the system he implemented is designed to monitor the social media activity of black students, according to AL.com.

Chris McRae, the agent in question, was brought in to oversee the Students Against Fear (SAFe) program, which works by allowing students and teachers to provide anonymous tips to security personnel, who then scour social media sites like Facebook to determine the credibility of the threat.

Over 600 Huntsville City School students had their social media presence monitored last year. Of the students expelled last year for reasons related to social media, 86 percent were African-American. The school system as a whole is 40 percent black — but 78 percent of all students expelled are black.
Madison County Commissioner Bob Harrison said that the policy “is effectively targeting or profiling black children in terms of behavior and behavioral issues.”

Last month, Superintendent Casey Wardynski told AL.com that “our SAFe program is really about bringing information together. Often we’ll find on Facebook things going on right now, kids are posting from inside school or on Twitter. Here’s a kid with a pistol on Facebook. These are his buddies, each with a gun. We’re instantly interested in that.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/alabama-school-system-paid-former-fbi-agent-157000-to-spy-on-black-students-critics/#.VFfOiD8OECY.twitter

November 3, 2014

Edward Snowden and the Justice League: A review of Citizenfour

We’re living in strange times, and we have the films to prove it. Today’s exhibit: Citizenfour, a movie about…well, I don’t know what. I’m baffled.

Citizenfour seems to present itself as a documentary that’s been awkwardly welded to a political thriller “starring” Edward Snowden as himself—a pale, nerdy political martyr urging film director and journalist Laura Poitras to spare others by “nailing me to the cross” and revealing to the public his leaked documentation of the NSA massive domestic and international surveillance programs. It co-stars Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill as, respectively, the obnoxious career-obsessed newshound who manipulates the naïve Snowden for his own purposes, and the old mensch journalist who tries to inject a note of common sense into the bizarre proceedings. The female lead is played by Poitras herself, a shadowy narrator figure behind the camera who shares an intense communion with Snowden and whose point of view defines Snowden for us. In a supporting role, William Binney, by far the most likable character, plays the tough old codger who’s already paid a heavy price for being an NSA whistleblower and is refreshingly practical and unself-pitying.

But it ends up turning into a ponderous thriller indeed, mostly filmed in a hotel room in Hong Kong, where Poitras was holed up with Snowden for eight days. There she records extended interviews in which he tells her, Greenwald, and MacAskill his story, discusses the journalists’ rollout of his NSA documents, frets, stares out the window, and awaits discovery.

It’s a strange interlude in that hotel room. It’s speciously informative as we hear Snowden tell the journalists who he is and, broadly, what he’s handing over to them, as well as conveying his own sense of himself as a man with a mission, sacrificing himself for a highly moral cause. Only the details of how Snowden went about leaking the information are new to anyone who’s been halfway paying attention, as many critics have observed. The film contains no major revelations about NSA and other government surveillance programs that haven’t already been widely reported.

But you can’t help asking a lot of awkward questions about “character motivation” while you’re stuck in that hotel room with Poitras and Snowden. For example, what possessed Snowden to allow this whole super-secret process to be filmed in the first place? Snowden is so worried about being “viewed” that he drapes a towel over his head and his laptop while typing a message, lest there be a hidden camera planted behind him in the headboard of his bed. Didn’t he worry about being “viewed” as the hero of a film?

And despite all the time we spend in that hotel room, watching Snowden, we never find out what triggered the key plot-turn of this thriller: Snowden’s decision to flee, rather than offer himself up to the authorities after he’s handed over the documents to Greenwald and Poitras, as originally planned. Did Greenwald persuade him to take a new course of action, at some point that remains off-screen? We certainly see Greenwald urge Snowden not to “do their work for them” by identifying himself to as the leaker and surrendering. But Snowden seems set on his “locked plan.” Greenwald then agrees with Snowden that, by surrendering, Snowden would send the message that “I’m not hiding for one second!”

No one in the room seems to see the humor of that message, coming from a man who’s sequestered himself in a hotel room for days, and who turns ashen and round-eyed at the sound of a hotel fire alarm test which might be a ruse designed to force him out of hiding.

http://pando.com/2014/11/02/edward-snowden-and-the-justice-league-a-review-of-citizenfour/