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

January 13, 2015

Washington DC: 1 dead, dozens hurt after Metro car fills with smoke

from the WaPo:



It was a commuter’s worst nightmare: a Metro train abruptly stops, goes dark and fills with smoke in a tunnel in downtown Washington. Before it was over, one woman was killed and more than 80 passengers were suffering from respiratory problems and other health issues.

But a day after Monday’s ordeal aboard a Virginia-bound Yellow Line train, commuters returned to the rails.

"I have no fear of getting on the train this morning," said Martin Cullen, 37, a Jessup resident who works in data collections at the Smithsonian's American History Museum, as he walked to the Greenbelt Metro Station on Tuesday. "I've been riding the train for years and this is the first time something like that has happened."

And authorities now believe they know why the train, which had just left the L’Enfant Plaza station, came to a halt about 800 feet into the tunnel. The National Transportation Safety Board said “an electrical arcing event” occurred about 1,100 feet in front of the train. The event filled the tunnel with smoke, the NTSB said. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/1-dead-dozens-hurt-on-metro-car-filled-with-smoke/2015/01/12/e832c0f0-9aa8-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?hpid=z1

January 13, 2015

How Free Is Free Speech in America?

from truthdig:


How Free Is Free Speech in America?

Posted on Jan 13, 2015
By Bill Blum


If the terror attacks in Paris have a silver lining, it is that they have sparked an outpouring of support for freedom of speech across the globe and across the ideological spectrum. According to The Associated Press, even Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has weighed in on the side of enlightenment, saying “that radicals have done more to disparage the Muslim prophet than journalists who published satirical cartoons mocking Islam.”

Here in the U.S., the outrage has been virtually nonstop, expressed by media outlets, satirists and comedians, and in a marked display of solidarity, by Republican and Democratic party leaders.

As a nation, we are rallying around the First Amendment. To quote Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman from an Op-Ed published Friday:

“We in Western societies almost always defer to the wisdom of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who said the basis of the First Amendment is ‘not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.’ ”

.....(snip).....

The uncomfortable truth is that here, as elsewhere around the world, freedom of expression has never come easily and is nearly always threatened in one way or another. From the Salem witch trials of the 1690s to the Red Scares of the mid-20th century and the Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the early 1970s, we have persecuted and prosecuted those whose ideas we fear. Intolerance and suppression of speech—along with the promotion of views favorable to dominant elites—have been hallmark American traditions.

.....(snip).....

3. Prosecuting Whistle-Blowers: The prosecution of whistle-blowers did not end with Ellsberg. Indeed, it will continue this month with the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused under the Espionage Act of leaking information to New York Times reporter James Risen that the CIA provided flawed nuclear weapons data to Iran in 2000. As The Guardian and other publications have noted, “Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama.”

Chelsea Manning was convicted under the act in 2013. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden awaits a similar fate should he return to the U.S. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_free_is_free_speech_in_america_20150113

January 13, 2015

Dan Gilbert: More big-name retailers coming to Detroit

from the Freep:


Local billionaire Dan Gilbert dropped hints today that a few more "big-name retailers" are ready to come to downtown Detroit.

"We're going to make a couple announcements in the next couple weeks," Gilbert told reporters this afternoon inside Cobo Center while checking out the North American International Auto Show. "A couple pretty big-name retailers."

The Quicken Loans founder declined to name any of the big names. But he did say these retailers would be near the forthcoming John Varvatos store that's set to open this spring in a Gilbert-owned building at 1500 Woodward Ave. The Varvatos store was announced in October.

"Since that announcement there's been a lot of stepped-up interest," Gilbert said. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/michigan/2015/01/12/gilbert-says-big-names-coming-detroit/21653433/