January 12, 2015

Human Rights Campaign under fire for corporate shilling

(Truthout) Chevron. Goldman Sachs. Monsanto. None of these are brands that we tend to associate with bringing justice into the world. And yet these three corporations, along with many other Fortune 1000 companies, were awarded a "100 percent" rating in the 2015 "Equality Index" put out by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Even if you're not familiar with the name, you've probably seen the HRC's stickers - a yellow equal sign against a blue background - on a bumper or in the window of a coffee shop somewhere. The campaign claims to be the biggest gay rights organization in the country and is a self-appointed voice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people everywhere.

The HRC is the de facto organization journalists call when they need an "LGBT viewpoint" on a topic. It has the ears of high-profile politicians - even deeply conservative ones like Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, who credited an HRC postcard for causing her to vote with "The Gays." And the campaign is one of a few large LGBT nonprofits that hog political advocacy funding for the community's issues.

However, lots of people from the increasingly fractured "community" (often, white, wealthy gays vs. the rest) don't want to support an organization that devotes a good deal of its resources into making certain big corporations look like they're on the right side of history. Different LGBT people have different values - and even the stalwart HRC is beginning to see this, recently giving lip service to the issue of intersectionality. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/28430-human-rights-campaign-under-fire-in-lgbt-community

January 12, 2015

I was watching "Jaws: The Inside Story" .............

........ which chronicles the making of "Jaws", and there was a segment about the actress who played the mother of the boy eaten by the shark while she was sitting on the beach -- the one who slapped Roy Scheider. ....... She said multitudes of people have come up to her and asked her to slap them.

Movie fans can be an odd lot.

January 12, 2015

Juan Cole: After Paris attacks, could David Duke style Racist Parties Sweep to Power in Europe?

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) —

Anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia was already raging through Europe before the Kouashi al-Qaeda Cell targeted the staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli in Paris. Although President Francois Hollande insisted that the attacks had nothing to do with the religion of Islam (and rightly so), many Europeans hold a dissenting view.

From an American point of view, where public discourse was profoundly altered by the Civil Rights Movement, the way some European politicians speak sounds eerily like the unrepentant racists in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era. A whole gaggle of politicians not very different in their views from David Duke are poised to take power.

The Dutch so-called “Party of Freedom” already called for all mosques in the Netherlands to be closed. The party is the most popular in the country in current opinion polls. In response to the Paris attacks, POF leader Geert Wilders demanded that immigration be halted altogether. He said he wanted less Islam in his country, and that the attacks were “an act of war.” Wilders not so long ago got a Dutch crowd to chant, “less Moroccans.” He has been indicted for hate speech and will face a trial this spring. He was acquitted of similar charges in 2011 on the grounds that he hadn’t said anything racist, but had only criticized a religion, which is not illegal. But the recent crack about Moroccans is about an ethnic group. Wilders is playing the sympathy card with the public. Will he be the next prime minister of the Netherlands, the country of Spinoza and Erasmus?

In a combative interview, Channel 4 News more or less called Wilders a Nazi.

The Netherlands have about 1 million Muslims in a population of roughly 17 million. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/attacks-racist-parties.html

January 12, 2015

As a Lions fan ...... Cowboys fans can .....

about bad officiating.

January 11, 2015

Protesters arrested outside the 9th Circle of Hell

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Two protesters were arrested at the McLean, Virginia, home of former Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday after 20 demonstrators, some in orange prison jumpsuits, walked onto his property to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay prison.

The protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink walked up to the house before police arrived and asked them to leave, said Fairfax County police spokesman Roger Henriquez. Two members who refused to go were arrested on trespassing charges, he said.

Police identified the two as Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, both of Washington DC. The pair face misdemeanor charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct, police said.

Another Code Pink group demonstrated without incident outside the home of CIA Director John Brennan, also in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, as part of its "Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour." ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/10/dick-cheney-torture-protesters_n_6449352.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

January 11, 2015

Smoke and Mirrors Will Not Save Us From Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

Smoke and Mirrors Will Not Save Us From Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

Saturday, 10 January 2015 10:46
By Robert James Parsons, Truthout | Op-Ed


With 2015 billed as the make-it-or-break-it year for climate control, in anticipation of next December's Paris conference, and in the midst of much vehement - if not downright virulent - controversy, it is worth proposing some perspective beyond what most of the media deign to serve up to us.

In an article that appeared in mid-November in the French online journal A l'encontre, Daniel Tanuro analyzed the "unprecedented" and "historic" agreement between the United States and China resulting from Barack Obama's encounter with Xi Jinping just before the November G20 conference in Brisbane.

The insufficiency - to put it mildly - of this agreement, in comparison with the warnings issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent report, is unbridgeable, he points out.

Citing the reduction of 26% promised by Obama for 2025, which ought to lower United States emissions to 5.368 gigatonnes (Gt), he notes: "According to the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States signed but never ratified), Uncle Sam should have reduced his emissions by 8% by 2012, relative to 1990. That means that the emissions should have dropped from 6.233 Gt (1990 figure) to 5.734 Gt – instead of which, they increased 0.2% per year, on average, to reach 6.526 Gt. In other words, Obama has committed the United States to reaching by 2025 a target that is almost no better than than the one that the United States was supposed to have reached two years ago." ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28443-smoke-and-mirrors-will-not-save-us-from-acd

January 11, 2015

EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid

EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid
Posted on January 6, 2015 by Ellen Brown


Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”

A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25th, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent over the harsh austerity measures Athens was forced to accept in return for a €240 billion bailout.

Austerity has plunged the economy into conditions worse than in the Great Depression. As Professor Bill Black observes, the question is not why the Greek people are rising up to reject the barbarous measures but what took them so long.

Ireland was similarly forced into an EU bailout with painful austerity measures attached. A series of letters has recently come to light showing that the Irish government was effectively blackmailed into it, with the threat that the ECB would otherwise cut off liquidity funding to Ireland’s banks. The same sort of threat has been leveled at the Greeks, but this time they are not taking the bait. ...........................(more)

http://ellenbrown.com/2015/01/06/eu-showdown-greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid/

January 11, 2015

Most Annoying: The Gecko, The Pig, Flo or That Guy

January 11, 2015

EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid

EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid
Posted on January 6, 2015 by Ellen Brown


Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”

A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25th, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent over the harsh austerity measures Athens was forced to accept in return for a €240 billion bailout.

Austerity has plunged the economy into conditions worse than in the Great Depression. As Professor Bill Black observes, the question is not why the Greek people are rising up to reject the barbarous measures but what took them so long.

Ireland was similarly forced into an EU bailout with painful austerity measures attached. A series of letters has recently come to light showing that the Irish government was effectively blackmailed into it, with the threat that the ECB would otherwise cut off liquidity funding to Ireland’s banks. The same sort of threat has been leveled at the Greeks, but this time they are not taking the bait. ...........................(more)

http://ellenbrown.com/2015/01/06/eu-showdown-greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid/

January 10, 2015

The Promises and Limits of Progressive Cities

from Dissent magazine:


Introduction: The Promises and Limits of Progressive Cities
Michael Kazin ▪ Winter 2015


For liberal Democrats and their allies, this is the winter of their discontent—and foreboding. The most right-wing Congress elected since the 1920s has embarked on a mission to weaken or repeal federal programs that benefit neither its corporate funders nor its Tea Party base. A majority of justices on the Roberts court may ease that task by striking down the Affordable Care Act and several other laws they regard, clairvoyantly, as betrayals of the sacred wishes of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other periwigged designers of the Constitution.

Barack Obama, whom Republicans attacked quite savagely and quite effectively as both tyrannical and inept, will protest some of what conservatives at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue say and do. He will probably back up his words with a handful of vetos and executive orders. The president will also retain the affection of millions of Americans, if not their confidence in his leadership. Indeed, his administration, after it’s gone, will probably not appear as futile as it does in the wake of the midterm debacle. But, for now, most of the media as well as elites in both parties have turned the page.

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

However, to dwell solely on the grim events in Washington is to neglect a more complicated and, potentially, a more hopeful reality. Just as Michael Harrington noted in the mid-1970s, the United States is “moving vigorously left, right and center, all at once.” Last fall, voters in the solidly Republican states of Alaska, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Nebraska enacted boosts in the minimum wage. Marriage equality is now the law in thirty-two states and the District of Columbia. The same country where a denier of climate change now chairs the Senate environment committee is also a country where the movement to stop environmental disaster can mobilize a march of 400,000 people and where student groups at hundreds of campuses have called on their colleges to divest from companies that produce fossil fuels. The same country where the Tea Party is the powerful and well-financed bulwark of the party that runs Congress is also a country where, despite the weakness of unions, increasing numbers of fast-food and Wal-Mart workers are demanding a living wage and where a growing number of people on both the right and left advocate humane alternatives to mass imprisonment.

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

In Los Angeles, as Manuel Pastor explains, activists for immigrant rights have spearheaded coalitions dedicated to building unions as well as to help undocumented men and women gain legal status. In Seattle, as James Gregory describes, older networks created by labor insurgents and environmentalists undergirded the recent electoral victories of a string of progressive Democrats and one charismatic, unabashed socialist. Joshua Freeman argues that whatever good Mayor Bill de Blasio manages to accomplish in New York will depend both on the persistence and unity of his local base and on his administration’s ability to galvanize national support for what he is struggling to achieve. Sarah Jaffe offers a personal story, both anguished and hopeful, about tenants in one Brooklyn neighborhood who demanded a rent freeze from landlords who failed to heat their freezing apartments. Jennifer Klein examines the rise in New Haven of an alliance between organizers in the Latino community and their counterparts among health workers and Yale graduate students. This alliance helped elect progressives to run the city and is waging an innovative campaign to create more jobs that pay decent wages. Finally, in the impoverished city of Reading, Pennsylvania, Abby Scher discovers a black mayor and his band of talented advisors who are making a sophisticated effort to refashion a local economy that would be both just and green. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/introduction-the-promises-and-limits-of-progressive-cities