Slog
News & ArtsSaturday, December 15, 2012
News Saturday Morning News: North Korean Lock-Up, Beer Monopoly, Hugo Chavez
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 8:00 AM
Posted by news intern Al Jacobs
Locked Up Abroad: Swedish diplomats are on the hook to help free a Lynnwood man arrested in North Korea for leading tours of the pathologically ass-backward country.
Soot: The EPA announced it wants to regulate soot, the result of which might reduce premature respiratory deaths.
March Like an Egyptian: Protesters flooded the streets before the country votes on a new constitution.
Hugo Chavez is recovering "satisfactorily" after his cancer surgery in Cuba.
Syria Going HAM: NATO alleges that Syrian Scud missiles hit close to Turkey. Meanwhile, soon-to-be-former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has a raging civil war on his hands.
Cleared: A Joint Base Lewis-McChord pilot was found not guilty in the 2011 death of a paratrooper.
Hanukkah Resignation: Israeli Foreign Minister resigns amid "breach of trust" charges stemming from alleged money laundering.
Mmmm, Beer: Craft brewers battling a beer monopoly want the US Department of Justice to take a look.
Lest we forget the superlative fucked-up-ness of the Connecticut elementary school massacre.
1
I know the intern is an unpaid intern but in the Ravenna 'hood of Seattle..there's little flakes of white stuff coming down from the sky. It's not much but to keep our minds off of other horrible things.....
SNOWPOCOLYSE!!!!!!!!!
SNOWPOCOLYSE!!!!!!!!!
2
Speaking of superlative fucked-up-ness, the quality of reporting on the Newtown massacre so far is pathetic. Various sectors of the press have been all but making up shit to fill the void. Law enforcement sources have been leaking bits and snippets, half of which turn out to be wrong, and all kinds of shit is getting into the news that is totally wrong, either factually, ethically, or both.
Do we have to wait for the New Yorker or Rolling Stone to do a properly-researched in-depth article on this story? What the fuck is wrong with daily journalism today?
This was a horrible event of local and national significance. The public deserves a clear, factually-correct account of it. Sourcing unofficial speculation from unnamed "law enforcement sources" does no one a service, especially when it's wrong. After spending a couple hours yesterday flipping local news channels here in New York, all of which covered the aftermath through the entire day, my head was spinning with all the conflicting "information" and bullshit.
Today we read that shooter's (who was originally named as his brother) mother was not, in fact, a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary at all. Yesterday, every channel was echoing each other in reporting that not only was she, but she was shot in "her classroom" at the school.
Local television news has always been a septic tank of pretty "communications majors," but the print media has usually been better. As of today, I'm convinced that there aren't many professionals worthy of the name "journalist" working in the business anymore.
Important, tragic story. For God's sake, somebody, get it fucking right!
Do we have to wait for the New Yorker or Rolling Stone to do a properly-researched in-depth article on this story? What the fuck is wrong with daily journalism today?
This was a horrible event of local and national significance. The public deserves a clear, factually-correct account of it. Sourcing unofficial speculation from unnamed "law enforcement sources" does no one a service, especially when it's wrong. After spending a couple hours yesterday flipping local news channels here in New York, all of which covered the aftermath through the entire day, my head was spinning with all the conflicting "information" and bullshit.
Today we read that shooter's (who was originally named as his brother) mother was not, in fact, a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary at all. Yesterday, every channel was echoing each other in reporting that not only was she, but she was shot in "her classroom" at the school.
Local television news has always been a septic tank of pretty "communications majors," but the print media has usually been better. As of today, I'm convinced that there aren't many professionals worthy of the name "journalist" working in the business anymore.
Important, tragic story. For God's sake, somebody, get it fucking right!
3
@2, Journalism died years ago. The only the media can come up with are the typical parade of victims and their families (you gotta exploit them for ratings you know) and not even half assed researched information from specialists living on the other side of the country.
4
obviously the media love gun massacres tragedies, great for ratings, and the gun owners an gun lovers love them too, as they "prove" the need for them to own guns in their sick fantasies, 45% of americans own guns, and it's they who profit off this sickness, psychologically and otherwise. let's be more clear. we in america? we love this shit. it's no tragedy, it's the planned and deliberate obvious result of having all these guns all over. do you think if in japan they went from basically no guns to say 60 million guns they wouldn't see this shit too? yes, they would, so yes, the guns are to blame, so yes, the gun owners who block gun control are to blame. the "cause" of the incident is the ez access to guns. it's a wonderful political movement, first you sell half o fall americans guns, then you load them up with message point lies and pride that somehow they are like 1776 revolutionaries, what a fantasy, or defending thehome or some shit like that, this stokes them to fight gun control, and voila! we havelots of murders and massacres leading to demand not for gun control -- that's effectivcely shouted down -- but more demand for guns! man, america sure can put together a great business political model, right? works like a charm. only problem is it also results in all these avoidable deaths. but hey who gives a shit as long as you can go enjoy your glock. certainly YOUR son or nephew would never steal it. right? so blame others, not yourselves.
5
Part of me wishes tragic stories could be embargoed by the media for two weeks or more to allow time for undistracted investigations and reduce publicity for perpetrators, which of course will never happen.
Another part of me tries to charitably understand our ravenous hunger for DETAILS! as 1) a way to learn from experience, to make choices in our own lives that will prevent getting into similar situations, and 2) a wish to internalize as much of the event as possible in order to feel empathy for those involved and thus figure out what we could do to help.
But maybe we're just horrible, insatiable voyeurs.
Another part of me tries to charitably understand our ravenous hunger for DETAILS! as 1) a way to learn from experience, to make choices in our own lives that will prevent getting into similar situations, and 2) a wish to internalize as much of the event as possible in order to feel empathy for those involved and thus figure out what we could do to help.
But maybe we're just horrible, insatiable voyeurs.
6
@2 and @5, yesterday left us all not just horrified but frightened, not just we readers/viewers/citizens but the journalists and pundits and politicos too. Most of us lose our shit at least a little under the influence of fear, and make absurd choices, and a lot of us did that yesterday.
Looking over yesterday's Slogorrhea, one person's reaction was super shiny to me - Cienna Madrid's. Not just as a writer but as a person navigating her response and trying to shed a little light rather than just add heat, even from way over here in the corner.
Those posts talking to local NRA members and interviewing her schoolteacher friend - they were an unforgettable part of how that day unfolded, at least to me, and represent the best of what Slog can still offer sometimes.
Looking over yesterday's Slogorrhea, one person's reaction was super shiny to me - Cienna Madrid's. Not just as a writer but as a person navigating her response and trying to shed a little light rather than just add heat, even from way over here in the corner.
Those posts talking to local NRA members and interviewing her schoolteacher friend - they were an unforgettable part of how that day unfolded, at least to me, and represent the best of what Slog can still offer sometimes.
9
#2
The mother apparently had no active connection with the school and was never a teacher there. Adam Lanza reportedly was a genius who did high school in one year (and then spent his life at home, as a goth...). So why target a school and a class of students that had nothing to do with his own life?
And no one is talking about the new breed of early 20s shooter. What trauma could possibly be happening to a person living only 2 decades to make them behave as if there is no tomorrow and everyone from a 1st grader on up is a 2 dimensional target on an LCD?
The mother apparently had no active connection with the school and was never a teacher there. Adam Lanza reportedly was a genius who did high school in one year (and then spent his life at home, as a goth...). So why target a school and a class of students that had nothing to do with his own life?
And no one is talking about the new breed of early 20s shooter. What trauma could possibly be happening to a person living only 2 decades to make them behave as if there is no tomorrow and everyone from a 1st grader on up is a 2 dimensional target on an LCD?
10
@6 I'll heartily second that. Cienna's writing was splendid. It was an important addition to the coverage of the event, it added perspective, it underlined the politics, pointed focus at some of the points and players in our national debate and was thoughtful. She also reported first-hand, with attribution, the results of actual interviews.
In short, it had all of the elements lacking from the four licensed television broadcast stations who produced yesterday's rumor-fest here in New York.
In short, it had all of the elements lacking from the four licensed television broadcast stations who produced yesterday's rumor-fest here in New York.
12
@9 I wasn't disagreeing. Sorry about the phrasing. Didn't mean to imply that the print media was wrong about the mom today, just that EVERYBODY was wrong about it yesterday.
13
Sweet Déjà Vu
From the Wall Street Seventeen to the LIBOR Sixteen, the history of the banking cartel
(It's called a criminal conspiracy, stoopid! And yes, Virginia, conspiracies do exist!)
LIBOR 16
The LIBOR rate fixing, which has finally received a bit of publicity, is truly mind-boggling enormous in the extent of the global thievery involved. An outstanding explanation can be found at this link below:
http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2012/7…
but suffice to say, the effects cover everything from structured finance loans favoring private equity leveraged buyout firms (the private banksters), to mortgage rates and ARMs, interest rate swaps and an extraordinary gamut of financial products too extensive to list here.
Even the Queen of England has made mention of it:
The Queen Of England Asks Economists – ‘Why Did Nobody Notice?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla…
The "official" authorities in London are finally acting, as some are also in the USA. Some analysts are now mentioning that this rate fixing not only goes back some years in the past decades but may go back to the early 1990s.
But does it really just begin there? Was it simply one discrete event, as those clueless pundits, who can never locate their own genitals, would have us believe once again, along with those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
The Wall Street Seventeen
In the aftermath of the Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, a number of intensive congressional investigations took place. Some would later explain how Rockefeller secretly shipped oil to the Nazis, the financial connections between the Mellons, du Ponts and I.G. Farben and the Third Reich, Morgan's financing of the fascist Mussolini's invasion of Libya (oil resources), etc., but one would be most important, the TNEC study (The National Economic Committee study), which would uncover the extreme concentration of corporate control by a select number of banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_N…
This study eventually led to an antitrust lawsuit against 17 Wall Street banks (U.S. v. Morgan et al.), alleging a criminal conspiracy among those banks dating back to 1915.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat….
This is a most interesting date, as that was the year when the super-rich in American really began moving their wealth and ownership and investment instruments over to foundations and trusts which had been accorded tax-exempt status (to effectively hide their wealth and owernship, and for tax evasion and avoidance), along with other financial changes, in legislation passed in 1913, along with the Federal Reserve Act, the 16th Amendment (allowing for collection of taxes to repay interest from private loans to gov't due to the Federal Reserve Act), and the oil depletion allowance.
The antitrust suit was dismissed, thanks to the Eisenhower administration coming to power and replacing the antitrust team with others who would perform in a most lackadaisical manner.
Now, please don't assume that the 17 banks were owned by 17 separate entities; there was quite a bit of concentration there as well.
While the names of the banks have changed, and consolidation has taken place, the overall ownership remains essentially the same, and it's called a "cartel" --- and a criminal conspiracy.
The Debt Creators
In response to the global mega-rigging of financial markets, the debt creators, erroneously referred to as highly productive "wealth creators" ad nauseum (by those aforementioned pundits), have amassed their wealth by the gargantuan creation of debt and debt instruments, which they sold, and then socialized said debt --- moving it into the public sector, and claiming the masses must experience never-ending austerity to pay off their debt.
An excellent article by Mijin Sha at Demos partially illustrates this point:
http://www.demos.org/publication/why-was…
Some interesting links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/11…
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/wright…
More...
From the Wall Street Seventeen to the LIBOR Sixteen, the history of the banking cartel
(It's called a criminal conspiracy, stoopid! And yes, Virginia, conspiracies do exist!)
LIBOR 16
The LIBOR rate fixing, which has finally received a bit of publicity, is truly mind-boggling enormous in the extent of the global thievery involved. An outstanding explanation can be found at this link below:
http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2012/7…
but suffice to say, the effects cover everything from structured finance loans favoring private equity leveraged buyout firms (the private banksters), to mortgage rates and ARMs, interest rate swaps and an extraordinary gamut of financial products too extensive to list here.
Even the Queen of England has made mention of it:
The Queen Of England Asks Economists – ‘Why Did Nobody Notice?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla…
The "official" authorities in London are finally acting, as some are also in the USA. Some analysts are now mentioning that this rate fixing not only goes back some years in the past decades but may go back to the early 1990s.
But does it really just begin there? Was it simply one discrete event, as those clueless pundits, who can never locate their own genitals, would have us believe once again, along with those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
The Wall Street Seventeen
In the aftermath of the Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, a number of intensive congressional investigations took place. Some would later explain how Rockefeller secretly shipped oil to the Nazis, the financial connections between the Mellons, du Ponts and I.G. Farben and the Third Reich, Morgan's financing of the fascist Mussolini's invasion of Libya (oil resources), etc., but one would be most important, the TNEC study (The National Economic Committee study), which would uncover the extreme concentration of corporate control by a select number of banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_N…
This study eventually led to an antitrust lawsuit against 17 Wall Street banks (U.S. v. Morgan et al.), alleging a criminal conspiracy among those banks dating back to 1915.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat….
This is a most interesting date, as that was the year when the super-rich in American really began moving their wealth and ownership and investment instruments over to foundations and trusts which had been accorded tax-exempt status (to effectively hide their wealth and owernship, and for tax evasion and avoidance), along with other financial changes, in legislation passed in 1913, along with the Federal Reserve Act, the 16th Amendment (allowing for collection of taxes to repay interest from private loans to gov't due to the Federal Reserve Act), and the oil depletion allowance.
The antitrust suit was dismissed, thanks to the Eisenhower administration coming to power and replacing the antitrust team with others who would perform in a most lackadaisical manner.
Now, please don't assume that the 17 banks were owned by 17 separate entities; there was quite a bit of concentration there as well.
While the names of the banks have changed, and consolidation has taken place, the overall ownership remains essentially the same, and it's called a "cartel" --- and a criminal conspiracy.
The Debt Creators
In response to the global mega-rigging of financial markets, the debt creators, erroneously referred to as highly productive "wealth creators" ad nauseum (by those aforementioned pundits), have amassed their wealth by the gargantuan creation of debt and debt instruments, which they sold, and then socialized said debt --- moving it into the public sector, and claiming the masses must experience never-ending austerity to pay off their debt.
An excellent article by Mijin Sha at Demos partially illustrates this point:
http://www.demos.org/publication/why-was…
Some interesting links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/11…
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/wright…
14
Today, another one of you responsible gun owners shot up a hospital in Alabama. These stories will be daily now?
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/police-gu…
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/police-gu…
15
I think part of the reason we want details is so we can convince ourselves that our situations are different and something this horrific will never happen to us.
16
the demand for details is part of the nra strategy to obscure the simple truth: the availa bility of a few hundred million guns in hands of legit owners, puts them in reach of crazies and criminals, and is the cause of this crime. it's very simple. this does not happen in japan. where they got no guns. it's less likely in europe. where guns are tightly limtied and controlled. it's less likely than in australia where they took back guns. the legal ownership of guns in america when this means 45% of us have guns means guns are within reach of ANY crazy person and criminal, and it's that simple. the search for details is to feed the nra loving trolls so they can pretend it's not this simple. guns kill, when you put 200 million guns around your nation, you get massacres. often. as if you were planning it. oh wait! the gun worshipping industry does plan it, they use each incident like this as a way to spike gun purchases get that gun ownership rate up even higher, why weren't teachers armed, etc. more guns is the answer, and it is the cause, this is a great fucking business model with the benfit of keeping right wingers in congress. golly do ya think it's not planned?
17
@14, I bet there'll be another huge shooting this next week, though probably not in a school because of Christmas break. My m-16 owning, father of 3 children, "Obama's gonna take my guns" uncle lives in Alabama, and I'll be fascinated to see how his view evolves after that hospital shooting following so closely after the school shooting.
19
A former school board official in Newtown called into question earlier reports that Nancy Lanza had been connected to Sandy Hook Elementary School, possibly as part of the teaching staff.
“No one has heard of her,” said Lillian Bittman, who served on the local school board until 2011. “Teachers don’t know her.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/12/…
The mystery deepens.
What's the connection between the Lanzas and the school?
20
5pm 18th and union
Candlelight Vigil
24th and Roy, Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Federal Building, 2nd and Madison, Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Mt. Baker Park near S. McClellan St., Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Greenlake, Seattle at 5:30 PM—RSVP
These are today.
Candlelight Vigil
24th and Roy, Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Federal Building, 2nd and Madison, Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Mt. Baker Park near S. McClellan St., Seattle at 5:00 PM—RSVP
Candlelight Vigil
Greenlake, Seattle at 5:30 PM—RSVP
These are today.
21
@14: A responsible gun owner does not shoot up a hospital. Once again you pontificate without thinking.
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