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Paul Merrell

Alternate Unemployment Charts - 0 views

www.shadowstats.com/...unemployment-charts

economy U.S.-unemployment stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 15 - Cached
  • Alternate Unemployment Charts The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. Unemployment Data Series   (Subscription required.)  View  Download Excel CSV File   Last Updated: April 3rd, 2015 The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for January 2015 is 23.2%.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 15
     
    Real unemployment in the U.S. now roughly matches that during the Great Depression, 23.2 per cent.
Paul Merrell

US and Israel try to rewrite history of UN resolution declaring Zionism racism - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...resolution-declared-zionism

war & peace Zionism SCR-3379 U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” reads UN General Assembly Resolution 3379. The measure was adopted 40 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, and the majority of the international community backed it. 72 countries voted for the resolution, with just 35 opposed (and 32 abstentions). Although little-known in the US today (it is remarkable how effectively the US and its allies have rewritten history in their favor), UN GA Res. 3379, titled “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” made an indelible imprint on history. The geographic distribution of the vote was telling. The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.
  • The resolution also cited two other little-known measures passed by international organizations in the same year: the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity’s resolution 77, which ruled “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure”; and the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism a “racist and imperialist ideology.” When the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog — who later became Israel’s sixth president, and the father of Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s opposition — famously tore up the text at the podium. Herzog claimed the measure was “based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance,” insisting it was “devoid of any moral or legal value.” Still today, supporters of Israel argue UN GA Res. 3379 was an anomalous product of anti-Semitism. In reality, however, the resolution was the result of international condemnation of the illegal military occupation to which Palestinians had been subjected since 1967 and the apartheid-like conditions the indigenous Arab population had lived under as second-class citizens of an ethnocratic state since 1948.
  • In 1991, resolution 3379 was repealed for two primary reasons: One, the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference. At the UN on Nov. 11, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized the late Herzog and forcefully condemned the resolution on its 40th anniversary. In his 2,500-word statement, Kerry mentioned Palestinians just once, and only then as an extension of Israelis. In her remarks, Power did not mention Palestinians at all.
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  • In his speech, Kerry smeared resolution 3379 as “anti-Semitic” and “absurd.” Kerry called it “a bitter irony that this resolution against Zionism was originally a resolution against racism and colonialism” and lamented that “reasonableness was detoured by a willful ignorance of history and truth.” Sec. Kerry insisted “we will do all in our power to prevent the hijacking of this great forum for malicious intent” — a fascinating claim, considering how incredibly often the US itself hijacks the UN against the will of the international community, in the interests of both itself and Israel. Kerry warned about “the global reality of anti-Semitism today” (he made no mention whatsoever of the global reality of rampant, rapidly accelerating, and viciously violent anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Black racism), and implied that the “terrorist bigots of Daesh [ISIS], Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and so many others” are part of this larger anti-Semitic trend. One could argue Sec. Kerry downplayed the severity of the present political situation by characterizing these fascistic groups’ violent extremism as rooted in anti-Semitic bigotry, rather than in radicalization under conditions of intense oppression, bitter poverty, and brutal tyranny.
  • UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined Kerry, Power, and Netanyahu in the echo chamber, albeit with a bit more subtlety. “The reputation of the United Nations was badly damaged by the adoption of resolution 3379, in and beyond Israel and the wider Jewish community,” he said. Unlike the others, Ban condemned not just anti-Semitism, but also “wide-ranging anti-Muslim bigotry and attacks [and] discrimination against migrants and refugees.” Although the Israeli government accuses the UN of bias, the evidence demonstrates the opposite. Secret cables released by whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks revealed that the US and Israel worked hand-in-hand with the UN and Sec.-Gen. Ban in order to undermine investigation into and punitive action on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
  • In her speech at the UN, Power, like Kerry, conflated the heinous Nazi attacks on Jewish civilians in the Kristallnacht with UN GA Res. 3379. Both speakers cited the abominable horrors of the Holocaust several times as reasons to support Zionism, glossing over the fact that Zionism was created in the late 19th century and that the Balfour Declaration dates back to 1917, decades before World War II. Amb. Power — a serial warmonger and veteran blame-dodger — did what she did best: rewrote history in the favor of US imperialism. She called the resolution “1975 smearing of Jews’ aspirations to have a homeland” and insisted multiple times that resolutions like 3379 “threaten the legitimacy of the UN.” Like Kerry, Power conveniently forgot to mention that, when it comes to the halls of the UN, there is no other rogue state as blunt as the US, which regularly spits in the face of the international community, defying UN resolutions, violating the UN Charter, and breaking international law when it sees fit. Power’s speech exposed the fault lines in the contentious (to put it mildly) relationship between the US and the UN — that is to say, between the US and the international community. Such tensions are not the fault of the UN; the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Washington, with its doctrinal “American exceptionalism” and the flagrant disregard for international law that so frequently accompanies such imperial hubris.
  • In their speeches, both Kerry and Power also thanked Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was described by an Israeli Labor Party lawmaker as “a right-wing extremist with the diplomatic sensitivity of a pit bull” and who proposed legislation that would, in his own words, have the Israeli government “annex the West Bank and repeal the Oslo Accords.” Amb. Danon insists that God gave the land of historic Palestine to the Jewish people as an “everlasting possession” (while forsaking the US). He also told the Times of Israel that the “international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want.” Netanyahu addressed the session with a video message. He claimed that Israel, which has for years led the world in violating UN Security Council resolutions, “continues to face systemic discrimination here at the UN.” In a January 2013 statement submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, the Russell Tribunal calculated Israel had defied a bare minimum of 87 Security Council resolutions. The Russel Tribunal also crucially noted “that Israel’s ongoing colonial settlement expansion, its racial separatist policies, as well as its violent militarism would not be possible without the US’s unequivocal support.” The tribunal pointed out that Israel “is the largest recipient of US foreign aid since 1976 and the largest cumulative recipient since World War II” and that, between 1972 and 2012, the US was the lone veto of UN resolutions critical of Israel 43 times.
  • The US secretary of state extolled “Zionism as the expression of a national liberation movement.” The national liberation movements of Vietnam, Korea, China, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Congo, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and so many more nations, however, did not get such approval from Washington; au contraire, they were mercilessly crushed under the iron fist of American empire. Traditionally, only right-wing and settler-colonial “national liberation movements” have garnered the US’s official approval. “Why do we Americans care so much about the rights of others being respected?” Kerry asked unprovoked. “Because, in an interconnected world, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He should tell that to the victims of US-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Brunei, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and, once again, so many more nations. “Times may change, but one thing we do know: America’s support for Israel’s dreaming and Israel’s security, that will never change,” Kerry proclaimed.
  • The real victim of the 40th anniversary event was the truth — and, of course, as it was four decades ago, the Palestinians. Yet, while UN GA Res. 3379 was repealed, the truth cannot be revoked. Zionism was and remains an unequivocally racist movement — just like any other hyper-nationalist and ethnocratic movement. None other than the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recognized this elementary fact. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes — a diamond magnate and white supremacist British colonialist with oceans of African blood on his hands — Herzl, writing of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” requested help colonizing historic Palestine. “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial,” Herzl wrote. “I want you to… put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan.”
Gary Edwards

Just 62 people control more wealth than half the world's population: study - CSMonitor.com - 1 views

www.csmonitor.com/...f-the-world-s-population-study

oxfam Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Oxfam argues that there are several reasons for why the disparity between rich and poor has become so vast, including what the report terms “the global spider’s web of tax havens and the industry of tax avoidance, which has blossomed over recent decades.”Oxfam estimates that nearly $7.6 trillion, or more than twice the combined GDP of the United Kingdom and Germany, is currently being held offshore.
  • The Oxfam study also suggests that the global economy’s push on the importance of capital over labor is another reason for widening inequality. This not only concentrates national incomes in the hands of those few that control it, Oxfam says, but has implications for private companies as well. It increases pay for executives while preventing many workers in the very lowest-paying jobs at the bottom from earning higher wages.
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 16
     
    "A recent study conducted by Oxfam International indicates that just 62 people, 53 of them men, now control over half the world's wealth. The study, 'An Economy for the 1 Percent,' was released ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The study from the anti-poverty NGO calculated that 62 people held the same amount of wealth as the world's 3.6 billion poorest citizens in 2015.  That's a huge drop from the estimated 388 people who controlled that amount of wealth in 2010, and the concentrated amount of wealth that those 62 people possess has increased by 44 percent over that same five-year period, to $1.76 trillion dollars. It is true that global poverty has declined substantially since 1990, according to Oxfam. However, the study found that at the same time that global wealth rose dramatically among the world's richest 1 percent, the relative wealth of those living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically since 2010, by approximately $1 trillion."
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Jan 16
     
    The divide between the haves and the have-nots has been deepening for decades and is well known. This year, the topic has become part of presidential election politics thanks to Bernie Sanders. But while the situation has no public defenders, we have yet to see a single piece of legislation submitted to remedy the situation. That leaves the situation as a talking point rather than the focus of remedial action, which leads to the conclusion that those who talk about it don't care enough about it to do anything to reverse the situation. Example, since the financial crash of 2007 we have no bill to reintroduce Glass\Seagall, no bill to break up the too-big-to-fail banks (which are no bigger than before), no bill to back the U.S. out of the trade agreements that have shipped millions of American jobs overseas, no bill to increase taxes for the wealthy, etc. Instead, we see a majority of members of Congreess voting to maintain the status quo, which is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The cure? Step 1 is adoption of the We the People Amendment to get corporations and money out of the election process. https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment
Paul Merrell

See How Well Your Neighbors Have Recovered From the Recession | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...recession-census-income

economy U.S. median-income stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The recession may have officially ended in mid-2009, but millions of working Americans have seen their income remain frustratingly stagnant since the economy collapsed. New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau confirm that the median household income in the U.S. was $53,482 between 2010 and 2014, down from $56,568 between 2005 and 2009 when adjusted for inflation—a drop of 5%. By the same metric, just 1,038 of 3,142 counties have a higher median income than they did five years ago. The following map shades every county by its growth or decline in median income since 2009.
  • Data for 2009 comes from the American Community Survey’s five-year sample from 2005-2009 in 2009 dollars, while data for 2014 is from the ACS five-year survey for 2010-2014. (Five-year samples are necessary to get data for every county.) The 2009 figures in these maps and charts are adjusted up by 10% using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.
Paul Merrell

Because the 'Time for Climate Action Is Now,' Oslo Makes Landmark Move to Ban Cars | Co... - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...o-makes-landmark-move-ban-cars

environment climate-change Oslo

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • As part of a plan to rein in carbon emissions, Oslo's new city council announced this week that the city's center would be car-free by 2019. Ars Technica reports that the move, which aims to help the city halve greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, "will make Oslo the first European capital where cars are permanently banned, plus it's a strong indicator that similar bans may be enacted in other major cities across the continent." To make the shift, the Norwegian capital will boost its investment into public transportation and add roughly 37 miles (60 kilometers) of bike lanes, Reuters reports 
  • The new coalition running the city, made up of the Labor Party, the Socialist Left, and the Greens, additionally said that it would divest its pension fund from fossil fuels.  "Divestment," Nguyen Berg added, "sends a strong message to the world prior to the Climate Change Conference in Paris that we need a strong agreement that will ensure that we avoid dangerous global warming."
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15
     
    Can you imagine a major U.S. city with no cars allowed in the city center? 
Paul Merrell

Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars ... - 0 views

endoftheamericandream.com/...less-than-30000-dollars-a-year

U.S. economy jobs income inequality unemployment stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying.  According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year.  Let that number sink in for a moment.  You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out.  And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month.  In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today. You can find the report that the Social Security Administration just released right here.  The following are some of the numbers that really stood out for me… -38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year. -51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year. -62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year. -71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
  • That first number is truly staggering.  The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year. If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000.  This should tell you something about the quality of the jobs that our economy is producing at this point. And of course the numbers above are only for those that are actually working.  As I discussed just recently, there are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.
  • So many people that I know are barely scraping by right now.  Many families have to fight tooth and nail just to make it from month to month, and there are lots of Americans that find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into debt. If you can believe it, about a quarter of the country actually has a negative net worth right now. What that means is that if you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of the entire country.
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  • As a nation we are flat broke and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck.  It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four in the U.S. today, and so the fact that 71 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner. Needless to say, a tremendous squeeze has been put on the middle class.  In many families, both the husband and the wife are working as hard as they can, but it is still not enough.  With each passing day, more Americans are losing their spots in the middle class and this has pushed government dependence to an all-time high.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month. Sadly, the trends that are destroying the middle class in America just continue to accelerate.
  • With a huge assist from the Republican leadership in Congress, Barack Obama recently completed negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  Also known as Obamatrade, this insidious new treaty is going to cover nations that collectively account for 40 percent of global GDP.  Just like NAFTA, this treaty will result in the loss of thousands of businesses and millions of good paying American jobs.  Let us hope and pray that Congress somehow votes it down. Another thing that is working against the middle class is the fact that technology is increasingly taking over our jobs.  With each passing year, it becomes cheaper and more efficient to have computers, robots and machines do things that humans once did. Eventually, there will be very few things that humans will be able to do more cheaply and more efficiently than computers, robots and machines.  How will most of us make a living when that happens?…
  • For decades, we have been training our young people to have the goal of “getting a job” once they get out into the real world.  But in America today there are not nearly enough good jobs to go around, and this crisis is only going to accelerate as we move into the future. I do not believe that it is wise to pin your future on a corporation that could replace you with a foreign worker or a machine the moment that it becomes expedient to do so.  We need to start thinking differently, because the paradigms that worked in the past are fundamentally breaking down.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 15
     
    From a website with the same title as this Diigo group.
Paul Merrell

JFK Assassination Plot Mirrored in France: Part 2 - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...plot-mirrored-in-france-part-2

war & peace CIA JFK France coup-attempts

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.
  • As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy. And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent CranorThis is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Go here to see Part 1. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, and here.
  • When the coup against de Gaulle began three months later, Kennedy was still in the dark. It was a tumultuous time for the young administration. As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.
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  • It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end — a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.The CIA’s support for the coup was one more defiant display of contempt — a back of the hand aimed not only at de Gaulle but at Kennedy.JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Hervé Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official US involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum — the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”
  • But at eight o’clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air, as nearly all of France gathered around the TV, and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his long public career. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. But he had put on his soldier’s uniform for the occasion, and his voice was full of passion.De Gaulle began by denouncing the rebellious generals. The nation had been betrayed “by men whose duty, honor and raison d’être it was to serve and to obey.” Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. “In the name of France,” de Gaulle shouted, thumping the table in front of him, “I order that all means — I repeat all means — be employed to block the road everywhere to those men!”De Gaulle’s final words were a battle cry. “Françaises, Français! Aidez moi!” And all over France, millions of people did rush to the aid of their nation. The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the putsch. Led primarily by the left, including labor unions and the Communist Party, the mass protest won broad political support.Over ten million people joined the nationwide demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Paris, carrying banners proclaiming “Peace in Algeria” and shouting, “Fascism will not pass!” Even police officers associations expressed “complete solidarity” with the protests, as did the Roman Catholic Confederation, which denounced the “criminal acts” of the coup leaders, warning that they “threaten to plunge the country into civil war.”
  • In the wake of the crises in Cuba and France provoked by his own security officials, Kennedy began to display a new boldness. JFK’s assertiveness surprised CIA officials, who had apparently counted on Kennedy to be sidelined during the French coup.Agency officials assured coup leaders that the president would be too “absorbed in the Cuban affair” to act decisively against the plot. But JFK did react quickly to the French crisis, putting on high alert Ambassador Gavin, a decorated paratrooper commander in World War II who could be counted on to keep NATO forces in line. The president also dispatched his French speaking press spokesman, Pierre Salinger, to Paris to communicate directly with Élysée Palace officials.As Paris officials knew, the new American president already had something of a prickly relationship with de Gaulle, but he had strong feelings for France — and they made sure to absolve JFK of personal responsibility for the coup in their leaks to the press. French press accounts referred to the CIA as a “reactionary state within a state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.
  • But it was de Gaulle himself, and the French people, who turned the tide against the coup. By Sunday, the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. “I am surprised that you are still alive,” the president of France’s National Assembly bluntly told de Gaulle that morning. “If I were Challe, I would have already swooped down on Paris; the army here will move out of the way rather than shoot…. If I were in the position Challe put himself in, as soon as I burst in, I would have you executed with a bullet in the back, here in the stairwell, and say you were trying to flee.” De Gaulle himself realized that if Challe did airlift his troops from Algiers to France, “there was not much to stop them.”
  • This admission of presidential impotence, which Alphand reported to Paris, was a startling moment in US foreign relations, though it remains largely unknown today. Kennedy then underlined how deeply estranged he was from his own security machinery by taking the extraordinary step of asking Alphand for the French government’s help to track down the US officials behind the coup, promising to fully punish them.“[Kennedy] would be quite ready to take all necessary measures in the interest of good Franco-American relations, whatever the rank or functions of [the] incriminated people,” Alphand cabled French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville.
  • Hundreds of people rushed to the nation’s airfields and prepared to block the runways with their vehicles if Challe’s planes tried to land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack. André Malraux, the great novelist turned minister of culture, threaded his way through one such crowd, handing out helmets and uniforms. Meanwhile, at the huge Renault factory on the outskirts of Paris, workers took control of the sprawling complex and formed militias, demanding weapons from the government so that they could fend off rebel assaults.“In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relived its great revolutionary past Sunday night and Monday — the past of the revolutionary barricades, of vigilance committees and of workers’ councils,” reported The New York Times.
  • De Gaulle’s ringing address to the nation and the massive public response had a sobering effect on the French military. Challe’s support quickly began melting away, even — humiliatingly — within the ranks of his own military branch, the air force. Pilots flew their planes out of Algeria, and others feigned mechanical troubles, depriving Challe’s troops of the air transport they needed to descend on Paris.Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who were involved in the coup. Police swooped down on the Paris apartment of an army captain who was plotting pro-putsch street riots, and de Gaulle’s minister of the interior seized the general in charge of the rebel forces that were gathered in the forests outside Paris. Deprived of their leader, the insurrectionary units sheepishly began to disperse.By Tuesday night, Challe knew that the coup had failed. The next day, he surrendered and was flown to Paris. Challe emerged from the plane “carrying his own suitcase, looking crumpled and insignificant in civilian clothes,” according to Time. “He stumbled at the foot of the landing steps, [falling] heavily on his hands and knees.” It was an ignominious homecoming for the man who had fully believed that, with US support, he was to replace the great de Gaulle.
Paul Merrell

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people | US news | The Gu... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...o-police-disappeared-thousands

police Chicago-PD Homan stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.
  • From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”. The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
  • “The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.” According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. That percentage aligns with Chicago police’s broader practice of providing minimal access to attorneys during the crucial early interrogation stage, when an arrestee’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination are most vulnerable. But Homan Square is unlike Chicago police precinct houses, according to lawyers who described a “find-your-client game” and experts who reviewed data from the latest tranche of arrestee records obtained by the Guardian.
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  • The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist. Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.
  • But those documents do not tell the entire story of Homan Square. Chicago police have not disclosed any figures at all on people who were detained at Homan Square but never ultimately charged. Nor has it released any information about detentions or arrests before September 2004, claiming that information is burdensome to produce because it is not digital. (Chicago purchased the warehouse in 1995.) “It’s hard to believe that 7,185 arrests is an accurate number of arrestees at Homan Square,” said the University of Chicago’s Futterman. “Even if it were true that less than 1% of Homan arrestees were given access to counsel, that would be abhorrent in and of itself.”
  • 11.8% of detainees in the Homan Square logs were Hispanic, compared with 28.9% of the population. 5.5% of the detainees were white, compared with 31.7% of the population. Of the 68 people who Chicago police claim had access to counsel at Homan Square, however, 45% were black, 26% were Hispanic and another 26% were white.
  • Twenty-two people have told the Guardian that Chicago police kept them at Homan Square for hours and even days. They describe pressure from officers to become informants, and all but two – both white – have said the police denied them phone calls to alert relatives or attorneys of their whereabouts. Their accounts point to violations of police directives, which say police must “complete the booking process” regardless of their interest in interrogating a suspect and must also “allow the arrestee to make a reasonable number of telephone calls to an attorney, family member or friend”, usually within “the first hour” of detention. The most recent disclosure of Homan Square data provides the scale behind those accounts: the demographic trends within the 7,185 disclosed arrests at the warehouse are now far more vast than what the Guardian reported in August after launching the transparency lawsuit – but are consistently disproportionate in terms of race and constitutional access to legal counsel. 82.2% of people detained at Homan Square were black, compared with 32.9% of the Chicago population.
  • Despite the lack of booking and minimal attorney access at Homan Square, it is not a facility for detaining and interrogating the most violent of Chicago’s criminals. Drug possession charges were eventually levied in 5,386 of the disclosed Homan Square arrests, or 74.9%; heroin accounted for 35.4% of those, with marijuana next at 22.3%. The facility’s use by police has intensified in recent years. Nearly 65% of documented Homan Square arrests since August 2004 took place in the five years since Rahm Emanuel, formerly Barack Obama’s top aide, became mayor. (The Guardian has filed a Foia request with Emanuel’s office to disclose the extent of its involvement in Homan Square.) The 68 documented attorney visits are actually slightly higher, statistically speaking, than the extremely minimal legal access Chicago police provide suspects in custody during the initial stages of their arrest. The 2014 citywide total at declared police stations, according to First Defense Legal Aid, was 0.3%. On face value, the lawyer visit rate at Homan Square, according to the newly disclosed documents, was 0.9% over nearly 11 years.
  • Chicago attorneys say they are not routinely turned away from police precinct houses, as they are at Homan Square. The warehouse is also unique in not generating public records of someone’s detention there, permitting police to effectively hide detainees from their attorneys. “Try finding a phone number for Homan to see if anyone’s there. You can’t, ever,” said Gaeger. “If you’re laboring under the assumption that your client’s at Homan, there really isn’t much you can do as a lawyer. You’re shut out. It’s guarded like a military installation.”
  • “Often,” Futterman continued, “prisoners aren’t entered into the central booking system until they’re being processed – which doesn’t occur at Homan Square. They’re supposed to begin that processing right away, under CPD procedures, and at Homan Square the reality is, that isn’t happening or is happening sporadically and inconsistently, which leads to the whole find-your-client game.”
  • According to police, when they took a woman the Guardian will identify as Chevoughn to Homan Square in May 2007 regarding a theft, they allowed her attorney to see her. Chevoughn says that never happened. “I was there a very long time, maybe eight to 10 hours,” said Chevoughn, who remembered being “petrified”, particularly as police questioned her in what she calls a “cage”. “I went to Harrison and Kedzie,” Chevoughn said, referring to the cross streets of central booking. “That’s where I slept. It’s where they did fingerprinting, all that crap. That’s when my attorney came.”
  • Police arrested another man, whom the Guardian will call Anthony, in 2006 on charges of starting a garbage fire, and moved him to Homan Square. Police identified him as receiving an attorney there. But Anthony told the Guardian: “That’s not true.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15
     
    It's good to see The Guardian following through on this story.
Paul Merrell

Richard Branson: A.I. will make universal basic income necessary - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...al-basic-income-necessary.html

AI employment basic-income Musk Zuckerberg Branson Gates

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson says cash handouts will eventually be required to keep people from becoming homeless in the US. "I think with the coming on of AI and other things there is certainly a danger of income inequality," Branson tells CNN's Christine Romans in a piece published Thursday. The inequality will be caused by "the amount of jobs [artificial intelligence] is going to take away and so on," Branson says. "There is no question" technology will eliminate jobs, he says. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates echoed this sentiment recently. "AI is just the latest in technologies that allow us to produce a lot more goods and services with less labor," says Gates, speaking with "Hamilton" composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his wife, Melinda, at Hunter College in New York City earlier in February. "AI will bring us immense new productivity."
  • So new jobs will have to be created, says Branson. But also, a "basic minimum earnings," or a universal basic income, should be instituted "so that there is nobody that is having to sleep on the street," Branson tells CNN. "One hundred percent, I think that is really important." Universal basic income is a cash handout, distributed irrespective of employment status.
  • Billionaire SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk told CNBC in 2016 that he expects cash handouts will be necessary too. "There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," says Musk to CNBC. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen." Additionally, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg promoted the idea of universal basic income during his commencement speech to Harvard in May. "Now it's our time to define a new social contract for our generation. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," says Zuckerberg.
Paul Merrell

State witness turning point in Netanyahu corruption case | The News Tribune - 0 views

www.thenewstribune.com/...article201259459.html

Israel Netanyahu corruption prosecution

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Now that one of Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants has turned state witness, according to Israeli media reports Wednesday, it may mark a turning point for the beleaguered prime minister facing a slew of corruption allegations that could topple him from power. The testimony by Shlomo Filber, a long-time Netanyahu aide, is the latest in a dizzying series of developments and scandals that have engulfed the prime minister, his family and his inner circle. Police would not confirm whether Filber would testify against Netanyahu, but all the major Israeli media outlets said a deal to do so had been reached. Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of the Haaretz daily, wrote Wednesday that "these are the final days of Benjamin Netanyahu's rule" and that "Netanyahu's leadership has been dealt a harsh blow, apparently a mortal one."
  • Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a bitter rival of Netanyahu, told Channel 10 TV "there is no way back" for the premier. "This chapter in the political history of Israel is about to end," he said. Barak said he closely knows Netanyahu and believes he "understands that this is the end of the story" but will try and postpone the inevitable in different ways. Other leading Israeli columnists on Wednesday suggested that if Filber told all he knew, Netanyahu was probably more worried about avoiding prison than staying in office. "When so many dark clouds accumulate in the sky, the chances of rain increase," wrote Nahum Barnea in Yediot Ahronot. "His appearance lent the fight he is waging the dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy. This isn't the end. It isn't even the beginning of the end. But it cannot have a different end."
  • Filber, the former director of the Communications Ministry under Netanyahu, is under arrest on suspicion of promoting regulation worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel's Bezeq telecom company. In return, Bezeq's popular news site, Walla, allegedly provided favorable coverage of Netanyahu and his family. The reports came shortly after another bombshell allegation that a different Netanyahu confidant attempted to bribe a judge in exchange for dropping a corruption case against Netanyahu's wife. Nir Hefetz, a longtime media adviser to Netanyahu and his family, remains in custody. The prime minister, who held the communications portfolio until last year, has not yet been named a suspect, though he may soon be questioned. Netanyahu has denied all the charges, calling them part of a media-orchestrated witch hunt that has swept up the police and prosecution as well, and has vowed to carry on. Still, the string of accusations appears to be taking its toll. Senior Cabinet ministers from Netanyahu's ruling Likud party, who until just recently have marched out dutifully to defend him, have largely gone silent. Netanyahu himself appeared ashen in a video released late Tuesday calling the claims "total madness."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Avi Gabbay, head of Labor Party, said he was preparing for elections. "The Netanyahu era is over," he said. "These are not easy days. Netanyahu's personal battle for survival has been accompanied by the corrupting of the public service and the harming of the free press." The latest probes come days after police announced that there was sufficient evidence to indict Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two separate cases.
Paul Merrell

Americans Show "Enormous Increase In Support" Of Universal Basic Income | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...support-universal-basic-income

basic-income polls stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • As automation and AI destroy millions of middle-income jobs, permanently forcing (primarily male) workers from the workforce, Americans are beginning to reconsider their attitudes toward a radical policy tool that's popular among some segments of the left: Universal Basic Income. According to CNBC, a recent poll conducted by Northeastern University and Gallup found that 48% of Americans support the measure. In an association that's hardly a coincidence, the poll also showed that three-quarters of Americans believe machines will take away more jobs than they'll generate...
  • Unsurprisingly 65% of Democrats want to see a universal basic income and 54% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 do. In comparison, just 28% of Republicans support UBI.
Paul Merrell

For most Americans, real wages have barely budged for decades | Pew Research Center - 0 views

www.pewresearch.org/...have-barely-budged-for-decades

wages stats economy income-inequality

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year. But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
  • The disconnect between the job market and workers’ paychecks has fueled much of the recent activism in states and cities around raising minimum wages, and it also has become a factor in at least some of this year’s congressional campaigns.
  • After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.
Paul Merrell

Israeli Comptroller Report Reveals 2014 Gaza Massacre Was A War Of Choice - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...225549

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have criticized an Israeli report on the country’s 2014 military operation against the besieged coastal enclave. The report was released by Israeli state comptroller Yosef Shapira on Tuesday. “I understand from the report that Gaza was merely the setting for an Israeli war game, with no objective but to destroy and murder indiscriminately,” said Basman Alashi, executive director of the El-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation and Specialized Surgery Hospital. The hospital, formerly located in the Shujaya neighborhood by the separation barrier with Israel east of Gaza City, was repeatedly shelled by Israeli forces during the 51-day offensive before it was evacuated under fire on July 17, 2014.
  • “The overall impression it leaves is this: ‘Netanyahu, You didn’t do a good job of destroying Gaza, do it better next time,’” Alashi said of the report. Others said the document contained useful information about Israel’s behavior during the offensive, even if its conclusions remained incomplete. “The report shows that Israel follows a systematic policy of humiliating Palestinians, especially through careless targeting of civilians,” said Ramy Abdu, founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Abdu’s Geneva-based agency has conducted investigations of Israel’s military conduct, including an Oct. 30, 2014 report stating that its forces had “deliberately targeted locations with concentrations of civilians” during operations earlier that year. “What the report has failed to cover is to cite careless targeting of civilians as a consistent failure of the Israeli forces, with almost no serious actions to do something about it,” Abdu said in regard to the Israeli comptroller’s findings.
  • It also claimed the cabinet had not only failed to consider diplomatic alternatives to military action, but also to set any clear strategy concerning Gaza. Once the operation began, it said, Israeli forces largely failed to meet their objective of thwarting tunnels dug by Palestinian resistance groups, destroying only half of them over weeks of a bloody ground invasion that produced many casualties. The comptroller did not appear to consider the goals of an earlier military operation, launched by Israel in the West Bank on June 13, 2014. These goals were to weaken Hamas, obstruct an agreement by Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and recover three young settlers captured by Palestinians.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The resulting deaths, along with the demands of an impoverished population and weeks of Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, ultimately spurred Palestinian resistance groups into action and forced their armed wings to respond. By the time its guns fell silent on Aug. 26, Israel had achieved the first two of its three goals for its West Bank operation. The third had always been questionable, as Netanyahu knew from the outset that the three settlers were likely dead. Along with the weakness of Israel’s strategy in the Gaza Strip, where its forces quickly found themselves unprepared to face the threat of resistance tunnels, the mixed results raise questions about which objectives were the real ones. Military operations in Gaza and the West Bank made 2014 the most lethal year for Palestinians under occupation since 1967, when Israeli forces seized Palestinian enclaves over six days of war with neighboring Arab states. As the report shows, even senior figures in Israel’s security establishment now acknowledge their government’s responsibility for the loss of life. After its release, Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Israeli Labor Party head of the opposition Zionist Union, called for Netanyahu to resign over its charges, saying “Netanyahu must draw his conclusions and hand in the keys.”
  • But Netanyahu’s re-election, along with the seating of an even more right-wing governing coalition only seven months after the Gaza offensive, shows that Palestinian bloodshed is not a liability in Israeli politics, even at the cost of Israeli lives. Israel’s continued tightening of its Gaza closure, even as the country’s comptroller finds it to have been a key cause of the 2014 carnage, demonstrates that while its government may not seek immediate conflict with the Strip, it does not prioritize its avoidance.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Mar 17
     
    This report is causing a political firestorm in Israel. This article does an excellent job of tying all the major Israeli press reports together. The report will obviously be handed off quickly to the International Criminal Court by Palestinians because it clearly establishes intent to commit war crimes.
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