January 15, 2015

Why Eric Garner Couldn’t Breathe: The chokehold is only half the story of homicidal violence

from In These Times:


Why Eric Garner Couldn’t Breathe
The chokehold is only half the story of homicidal violence.

BY TERRY J. ALLEN




When New York City police arrested and subdued Eric Garner, he fit a profile: an uncooperative black man committing a petty crime. But the profile that police should have recognized—and the one that Garner fit perfectly—was of someone vulnerable to a dangerous combination of banned law enforcement practices used routinely across the country with impunity, and sometimes fatal results.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not the chokehold alone that killed Garner. And it was not solely Officer Daniel Pantaleo who was responsible for the homicide of the unarmed 43-year-old African-American man arrested for a “quality-of-life” offense under “broken windows policing” that encourages arrest for even the most trivial crimes—in Garner’s case, selling “loosies,” unpackaged cigarettes, on a Staten Island street.

The video of his death, which went viral and sparked protests, shows Pantaleo’s arm tightened around Garner’s neck. It also shows a cluster of officers, including Pantaleo, kneeling on Garner’s back and pressing his face, mouth and nose to the pavement as he lay facedown, hands cuffed behind him, pleading— at least 11 times—“I can’t breathe.”

The Office of the City Medical Examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide, citing both “compression of neck (chokehold) [and] compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17518/why_eric_garner_couldnt_breathe

January 15, 2015

Chris Hedges: Prison State America: Inmates becoming corporate slaves in for-profit facilities

Published on Jan 14, 2015

For-profit prisons have created a “neo-slavery” in the US, according to award-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Inmates work eight hours per day for major corporations such as Chevron, Motorola, Nordstrom’s and Target, yet only have the possibility of making up $1.25 an hour. In addition, companies that provide services like phone calls overcharge prisoners on even the most basic services, making hundreds of millions in profits annually. RT’s Ben Swann speaks to Hedges, who explains how this shadowy system came into existence.

January 15, 2015

Gar Alperovitz: New York Police Slowdown and the Classic Challenges of Alternatives to Capitalism

New York Police Slowdown and the Classic Challenges of Alternatives to Capitalism

Wednesday, 14 January 2015 11:26
By Gar Alperovitz, Truthout | Op-Ed


Quite apart from the political challenges it represents, the current New York City police slowdown illuminates a classic general issue that must be faced by those concerned with how to structure a next system that moves us beyond the problems of both traditional corporate capitalism and traditional state socialism.

While we may enjoy some satisfaction in the NYPD's attempt to enrage its critics by giving them exactly what they've been asking for - i.e. a drastic reduction in the criminalization of the lives of poor communities of color - it's important to confront the additional question of who should be able to make these kind of decisions and how, both now and in serious system-changing discussions. (If every decision about how the NYPD operates were left up to its workers, that would certainly not further the goal of real justice.)

A common position among some theorists is that the answer to the failures of state socialism, for instance, is simply to encourage worker-ownership and self-management of virtually all industry, instance by instance, case by case. Historically, this position was commonly termed "syndicalism."

The traditional "socialist" alternative placed ownership and control in a "community-wide" institution rather than in one that yielded power to "the workers" within any functioning unit. This meant municipal, state, regional or nationalized ownership and control. For syndicalists critical of the kind of top-down bureaucracy that has all too often been associated with socialist experiments, self-management by the workers presents what seems to be a compelling alternative based in freedom and participation. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28514-ny-police-slowdown-and-the-classic-challenges-of-alternatives-to-capitalism

January 15, 2015

Beware of the Tracking Cookie You Just Can’t Kill

This piece originally ran on ProPublica.


An online advertising clearinghouse relied on by Google, Yahoo and Facebook is using controversial cookies that come back from the dead to track the web surfing of Verizon customers.

The company, called Turn, is taking advantage of a hidden undeletable number that Verizon uses to monitor customers’ habits on their smartphones and tablets. Turn uses the Verizon number to respawn tracking cookies that users have deleted.

“We are trying to use the most persistent identifier that we can in order to do what we do,” Max Ochoa, Turn’s chief privacy officer, told ProPublica.

Turn’s zombie cookie comes amid a controversy about a new form of tracking the telecom industry has deployed to shadow mobile phone users. Last year, Verizon and AT&T users noticed their carriers were inserting a tracking number into all the Web traffic that transmits from a users’ phone – even if the user has tried to opt out. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/beware_of_the_tracking_cookie_you_just_cant_kill_20150115

January 15, 2015

Greece, Europe and the Neoliberal Nightmare: Is There a Way Out?

Greece, Europe and the Neoliberal Nightmare: Is There a Way Out?

Wednesday, 14 January 2015 11:05
By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout | News Analysis


In early 2010, Greece became the first among a number of peripheral member states in the euro area, the ultimate neoliberal zone throughout the entire capitalist universe, that fell victim to the global financial crisis of 2008 by being shut out of the international credit markets and subsequently having to end up in the arms of a rescue mechanism designed by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Union (IMF) in order to avoid an official default that would have caused a massive meltdown in Europe's banking system since it was mostly major German, French and Swiss banks that had recklessly loaned billions of euros to the Greek government and Greek businesses.

The EU-IMF rescue mechanism provided Greece in May 2010 with a massive loan package worth 110 billion euros (meant to cover the country's financial needs until June 2013) while a second one was extended in February 2012 worth 130 billion euros. The first bailout loan for Greece carried a usurious interest rate of 5 percent and demanded the enforcement of a scorched-earth policy aimed at reducing deficits and the debt-to-GDP ratio as well as improving the competitiveness of the Greek economy. Initially conceived more as a punishment rather than as a rescue policy, as it sought to implement a series of policies across Greek society that would have no bearing whatsoever on the above stated goals (such as sharp reductions in wages and salaries in both the private and public sector and creating medieval-like conditions in the labor market through the elimination of collective bargaining agreements and the enforcement of various other labor rights violations), the bailout plan ultimately became a sinister Machiavellian plot for institutionalizing a radical neoliberal economic setting.

In other words, the neoliberal European masters took the opportunity presented to them by the debt crisis to turn Greece (with the collaboration of the domestic political and corporate-financial elite) into a neoliberal laboratory and to transfer public wealth into private hands (all publicly owned assets were to be sold at bargain prices) and skim wealth from the many and transfer it to the few (whether in the form of shutting down thousands of small businesses to the benefit of large commercial enterprises or the opportunities presented to real estate investors by the free fall in property prices or simply through the barbarous exploitation of labor, which is highly underpaid and in many instances goes altogether unpaid even when employed).

Under the bailout terms imposed by the twin monsters of global neoliberalism, the EU and the IMF, the Greek economy and society experienced a traumatic situation which can only be compared to wartime conditions: GPD dropped by 20 percent in the course of four years; unemployment reached as high as 27 percent; one of three Greeks ended up either near or below the poverty line; many hospitals operated without basic medicine and equipment; school administrators in many parts of the country were unable to supply heating oil due to budget cuts; suicides became a rampant phenomenon in the first two to three years of the crisis, and the young with skills and higher education emigrated en masse, seeking job opportunities in Germany, the United Kingdom and other European countries. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28519-greece-europe-and-the-neoliberal-nightmare-is-there-a-way-out

January 15, 2015

Mike Huckabee has become the church lady

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has accused President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle of parenting by double-standard, in an interview published Tuesday, saying they shelter their daughters from some things but allow them to listen to the music of Beyoncé.

While promoting his new book, Huckabee told People magazine, "I don't understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school ... and yet they don't see anything that might not be suitable" in the lyrics and a Beyoncé choreography "best left for the privacy of her bedroom."

Huckabee described the Grammy Award-winning Beyoncé in his book as "mental poison." .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/13/mike-huckabee-obama-beyonce_n_6464978.html

January 14, 2015

"there’s reason to believe the link between falling unemployment and rising wages has been severed"

by Robert Reich


Why Wages Won’t Rise
TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2015


Jobs are coming back, but pay isn’t. The median wage is still below where it was before the Great Recession. Last month, average pay actually fell.

What’s going on? It used to be that as unemployment dropped, employers had to pay more to attract or keep the workers they needed. That’s what happened when I was labor secretary in the late 1990s.

It still could happen – but the unemployment rate would have to sink far lower than it is today, probably below 4 percent.

Yet there’s reason to believe the link between falling unemployment and rising wages has been severed.

For one thing, it’s easier than ever for American employers to get the workers they need at low cost by outsourcing jobs abroad rather than hiking wages at home. Outsourcing can now be done at the click of a computer keyboard. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://robertreich.org/post/107998491550

January 14, 2015

Chris Hedges on the Roots of Terrorism

January 14, 2015

SF Mayor Announces Major Expansion of Muni Light Rail Fleet

Mayor Edwin M. Lee on Jan. 13 joined by members of the Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced a major expansion of Muni’s fleet by purchasing an additional 40 Siemens light rail vehicles to improve reliability and safety. In addition to the 175 Muni next generation of light rail vehicles approved last year, this purchase will allow Muni to address capacity needs as San Francisco’s population and Muni ridership continue to grow, further improve transit reliability, and bolster the economy since Siemens will manufacture the vehicles in their Sacramento facility with the first cars operational by the end of 2016.

“Today, we are accelerating improvements to Muni by expanding San Francisco’s light rail fleet while we also replace the entire fleet with new, state of the art Siemens vehicles,” said Lee. “Expanding the fleet will make our City’s public transportation system more reliable, safer, easier to maintain, and ready to meet the demands of a growing City and growing ridership.”

The SFMTA Board of Directors voted last week to proceed with the contract option to purchase these 40 new light rail vehicles (LRV). Anticipated final actions by the SFMTA Board and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the coming weeks will secure funding. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/press_release/12034431/sf-mayor-announces-major-expansion-of-muni-light-rail-fleet

January 14, 2015

Chris Hedges on the Roots of Terrorism