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JPMorgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD

Jonathan Moormann
Politicology
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:51 UTC
Image
© n/a
Not the best time for a donation.
While I can't say how effective the Occupy Wall Street protests have been at accomplishing... whatever their goal is, they have managed to do one thing: make the NYPD look bad. Which is fair, really, because the NYPD have handled this situation about as poorly as possible. From Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna macing some women to yesterday's mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge, the NYPD have come out of the last few weeks looking like the villains. Then, just in case you had any doubts, JPMorgan Chase made the largest donation in the history of the New York City Police Foundation. Not the best PR move, guys.

EDIT: I had the timing of the donation incorrect, it did occur a few months back. I believe the general theory of the piece holds (that JPMorgan Chase might not want to publicize the large amounts of money it's giving to police right after they've made some questionable arrests) but I was probably too harsh on both the banks and the NYPD. I'm leaving the original text of the story up with this edit so that you can form your own opinion.
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Eye 1

US: New York State Senators Say We've Got Too Much Free Speech; Introduce Bill To Revise 1st Amendment


techdirt
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 08:30 UTC
We've been pointing out a variety of attempts to push back on the First Amendment lately. One fertile ground for such attacks are local politicians carrying the "cyberbullying" banner, in various attempts to magically outlaw being a "jerk" online, usually by making it illegal to offend someone online. Of course, making someone's action illegal based on how someone else feels about it is all kinds of crazy. It also would seem to violate the very principles of the First Amendment, which bar Congress (and local governments) from passing any laws that take away one's right to free speech.

In the past, lawmakers pushing these laws have tended to simply ignore the First Amendment issue, and focus on screaming "protect the children!" as loudly as possible (never mind the fact that kids seem much less concerned about "bullying" than all these adults seem to think). However, it appears that some state Senators in NY are trying a new line of attack: going directly after the First Amendment and suggesting that current interpretations are way too broad, and it's not really meant to protect any sort of free speech right. In fact, it sounds as though they're trying to redefine the right to free speech into a privilege that can be taken away. Seriously:
Proponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege - a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.

Comment: Can it be any more obvious the United States is an overt dictatorship that 'hates your freedom'? In a ponerized world where words are turned upside down, you can be sure this bill would be used against normal people coming together to free themselves of pathological influence. What these Senators are proposing is not protection from cyber-bullying but a protection for it. Freedom of Association is clearly a threat to the pervasiveness of pathology in our social systems.

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Snowman

Winter Wonderland in October?! Snow hits West Virginia, US

Meghan Evans
accuweather.com
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:58 UTC
Image

Snow falling at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia on Oct. 1, 2011. Photo from the ski resort's facebook page.
Parts of the Appalachians looked like a winter wonderland during the few two days of October with snow and gusty winds howling.

Elevations of 3,000 to 3,500 feet in West Virginia got 1-3 inches of snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia picked up nearly 4 inches of snow through Sunday afternoon!

Other snow totals across the Appalachians include: 1 inch in Ebensburg, Pa., 1.2 inches in Philipsburg, Pa., and 0.7 inches at Laurel Summit, Pa.

More snow will continue through this evening at the highest elevations, but little additional accumulations are expected with the ground still remaining warm this time of year.

Snow also whitened some mountains all the way down to North Carolina late on Friday and early on Saturday morning.
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Play

ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons: A conversation with author James Delingpole


ReasonTV
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:28 UTC
James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it's green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the "watermelons" of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

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Igloo

Coldest Arctic Start To Autumn Since 1996


Robert Felix
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:23 UTC
Image

Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002.
Temperatures north of 80N have been normal to below normal for five months,obliterating global warming theory.

"The early and fast start to winter in the Arctic is due to cold temperatures not seen since 1996," says this article on Real-Science.com

Source of graph

See real-science.com

Thanks to Marc Morano for this link
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Butterfly

Palestine State Quest Wins First Victory in UNESCO Vote

Gabriela Calotti
Agence France-Presse
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:28 UTC
palestine
© unknown
Palestine won a first diplomatic victory in its quest for statehood on Wednesday when the UNESCO executive committee backed its bid to become a member of the cultural body with the rights of a state.

Palestine's Arab allies braved intense US and French diplomatic pressure to bring the motion before the committee's member states, which passed it by 40 votes in favour to four against, with 14 abstentions.

The Palestinian bid will now be submitted to the UNESCO general assembly at the end of the month for final approval, a victory for a territory already seeking recognition as a state from the United Nations Security Council.

This request, which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas presented to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on September 23, is being studied by council members, who are expected to vote in the coming weeks.

The United States wields a veto on the Security Council, and has said it will veto any statehood bid before Palestine comes to an agreement with US ally Israel over their longstanding territorial standoff.
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Stormtrooper

Human Rights Going Downhill in Britain

Ismail Salami
Press TV
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:34 UTC
police
The UK, which used to boast of being a cradle of democracy and human rights, has in recent months witnessed a terminally downward trend in human rights on internal and international planes.

True to God, the Old Imperialist could have seen better days. Until recently, the history of human rights abuse in Britain pertained to its impish role in other countries but the violation of human rights in recent months has sufficed to put Britain high on the black list of countries with deplorable human rights abuse.

The first instance of such violation is the brutal crackdown on the peaceful student protests against the inconsiderate Tory-Liberal Democrat cuts and the massive cuts to third level education which shoved the British government closer to the verge of collapse as far as human rights are concerned. Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London in November 2010 and protested against plans by the government to raise tuition fees by up to three times. However, the protests were received with the heavy-handed brutality of the British police who used the notorious technique known as kettling. Also known as containment or corralling, kettling is a violent tactic used by British police for controlling protesters. The tactic consists of forming large cordons of police officers who move onto the crowd to limit their movement or escape to the extent that the protestors are denied access to toilet, water or food.
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Star of David

US Walks Out After Syria Charges Genocide


Press TV
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:40 UTC
Image
© unknown
Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari
Syria has bluntly alleged that the US manipulates its veto power at the UN Security Council (UNSC) chiefly to protect the Israeli regime, prompting the American UN envoy to lead a walkout from the chamber.

The incident took place Tuesday, following the opposition of UNSC permanent members Russia and China to the US-led anti-Syria draft resolution, which triggered the openly-displayed US outrage.

Officially, the anti-Damascus resolution was drafted by US and Israeli allies, France, Britain and Germany, threatening sanctions against Syria over an alleged crackdown on protesters within the country.

The nine affirmative votes for the anti-Syria move were cast by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Colombia. While permanent UNSC members China and Russia opposed the motion, effectively vetoing it, South Africa, Brazil, Lebanon and India abstained from voting.

Following the vote, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari accused the Western countries that perpetrated the UNSC effort of turning a blind eye on Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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Hourglass

Oil sands imports could be banned under EU directive

Fiona Harvey
The Guardian
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:12 UTC
Tar Sands
© Veronique De Viguerie/Getty
Oil sands projects have proved controversial as they produces greater greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling.
Oil from controversial and environmentally destructive tar sands is likely to be all but banned from Europe after a decision on Tuesday. The move also casts doubt on the future of other controversial energy sources such as shale gas.

Tar sands (also known as oil sands) have been a target of green campaigners for several years, as the extraction of low quality oil from sands - chiefly in Canada to date - produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling operations, and requires vast quantities of water. The exploitation of tar sands has also led to the destruction of swaths of forest and is blamed for water and air pollution.

In a victory for Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate change commissioner, the commission has decided to back a new directive on fuel quality. This will set minimum environmental standards for a range of fuels, including tar sands, coal converted to liquid and oil from shale rock.
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Attention

Ignore David Cameron - dealing with our UK debt would be disastrous

Jonathan Portes
The Guardian
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:56 UTC
Cameron
© Phil Noble/Reuters
David Cameron is to urge the public to pay off its credit card and store card debts.
In 1931 Andrew Mellon, then the secretary of the US treasury, advised President Herbert Hoover thus: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate ... it will purge the rottenness out of the system."

To our ears that sounds both callous and wrong. But that's partly hindsight - Mellon was speaking before Keynes wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. David Cameron has no such excuse. He is set to tell us today in his conference speech that "the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store card bills".

But with fiscal policy set on what Martin Wolf has rightly described in the Financial Times as "kamikaze tightening", the UK needs the private sector to pick up the slack. If all sectors - the government, firms and households - increase saving simultaneously, in an effort to reduce debt, it will further depress domestic demand, reduce output and jobs, and we will end up in a downward spiral. This is what Keynes described as the paradox of thrift.
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