Why bail out the banks? As my grandma used to say, it's like bringing coals to Newcastle*.

why not bail out the people who, through no fault of their own, have gotten screwed and are in the most pain...

Cenk Uygur: Iceland Shows Bailing out Middle Class Works, Not Bailing Out Banks

On The Young Turks yesterday, Cenk Uygur spoke about two different approaches to the economic bailout.

There's the US m.o., where we gave "everything to the banks, and nothing to the homeowners" and are, predictably, still struggling. Then there's the divergent example of Iceland, where initial efforts at complete deregulation failed and the government switched course by indicting those who had "caused the mess" and bailing out the middle class instead.

Take a look at what they did, and how it worked.

*Coals to Newcastle - Something brought or sent to a place where it is already plentiful; it is a reference to the English town of Newcastle upon Tyne, historically a major coal exporter.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Bradley Manning nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

yes, i'm liking it...

from rt...

The name of Private Bradley Manning - a U.S. soldier accused of passing classified material to the whistle blowing website Wikileaks has consistently made it into the headlines, mostly in connection with his trial. But now his name is now on a different list - that of over 200 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. His nomination was put forward by the parliamentary group called "The Movement" in the Icelandic Parliament. One of its members Birgitta Yonsdottir says Manning deserves the nomination because it's not a crime to blogger-whistle on war-crimes.

if anyone sees this report on any traditional u.s. news outlet, please let me know...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The only reason we know about the Wikileaks Twitter subpoena is because it was ordered unsealed [UPDATE]

which begs the question...

glenn...

And the key question now is this: did other Internet and social network companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) receive similar Orders and then quietly comply? It's difficult to imagine why the DOJ would want information only from Twitter; if anything, given the limited information it has about users, Twitter would seem one of the least fruitful avenues to pursue. But if other companies did receive and quietly comply with these orders, it will be a long time before we know, if we ever do, given the prohibition in these orders on disclosing even its existence to anyone.

i think there's only one logical answer to glenn's question... since the twitter subpoena was issued on december 14 and ordered to be kept sealed (it "barred the company from notifying anyone, including the users, of the existence of the Order") and, only at twitter's request, was ordered unsealed on january 5, it seems entirely likely that those other companies have received the same order but have not chosen to request that their orders be unsealed... as glenn points out, "had Twitter not so requested, it would have been compelled to turn over this information without the knowledge of its users"...

also, given that the twitter subpoena includes "a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee [of Iceland's Parliament] and the NATO parliamentary assembly" (Birgitta Jónsdóttir) it appears that our government has gotten itself into some seriously deep shit on this matter to say nothing of dramatically escalating its war against transparency...

p.s. on reflection, i'm somewhat puzzled at why the government is even bothering with a subpoena when i'm reasonably positive that massive government "sniffer" programs routinely capture in real time any and all data transmissions of any and all services that utilize public networks... could it be that they only want to make the appearance of a legitimate legal effort...? then, otoh, "making an appearance" would suggest that secrecy wouldn't have been mandated for the order... is there something about accessing twitter data in particular that makes a subpoena necessary...?

[UPDATE]

from the guardian...

WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.

Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wide-ranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure.

[...]

The specific clause of the Patriot act used to acquire the subpoena is one that the FBI has described as necessary for "obtaining such records [that] will make the process of identifying computer criminals and tracing their internet communications faster and easier".

The subpoena itself is an unusual one known as a 2703(d). Recently a federal appeals court ruled this kind of order was insufficient to order the disclosure of the contents of communication. Significantly, however, that ruling is binding in neither Virginia – where the Twitter subpoena was issued – nor San Francisco where Twitter is based.

[...]

Gonggrijp [Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp ... (is one of the) "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache: a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalists in Baghdad] praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the US had subpoenaed his details. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."

i'm glad they're trying to force this stuff out in the open...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 1 comments

Off to Glasgow and the Hebrides tomorrow

the short time in london has been terrific but tomorrow the real adventure starts... we fly to glasgow, meet my daughter, pick up a car and head off for the outer hebrides... can't wait... the ash cloud is mostly impacting southern spain and morocco in north africa right now so there shouldn't be any volcano-caused flight delays, knock on wood...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

I'm outta here [UPDATE]

for those few who may be paying attention, you'll notice i haven't posted since last wednesday... i periodically lose motivation and/or momentum when i can no longer abide the dearth of good news... well, that's not entirely true... there's always good news when i bother to find it but it generally is good news on a micro, very personal scale... that doesn't make it any the less significant or valuable but, being the big-picture guy that i am, i'm looking for the BIG good news stories and those seem to be damn few and far between...

so, with the motivation and momentum problem, i'm now tossing in another reason for a lack of posting... this afternoon, my son and i are headed to london where we'll meet up with a london-based friend and colleague to spend a few days kicking around things like westminster abbey, the tower of london and other such tourist attractions... but the big deal starts on wednesday when the three of us fly to glasgow where my daughter and her roommate are flying in from the u.s.... there we pick up a car and set off to explore the outer hebrides islands of scotland for two weeks before swinging back inland through inverness and edinburgh... i visited the latter two cities many years ago and have very pleasant memories but i'm really pumped about the hebrides... something about the far northern latitudes, the long, long days and the spiritual quality of the air and the light i think will make it a most special time...

stay tuned for pics but pro'ly not very many posts...

p.s. the volcanic ash cloud spewing forth from iceland is currently causing transatlantic flight delays as planes are re-routed further north or south, adding as much as an hour to flight times... our route from san fran to london follows a far north route anyway so i'm not anticipating a problem at this point, but we'll see won't we...?



[UPDATE]

so much for "no problem"... the flight from san fran to london is on a 5-hour delay and that's on top of the 4-hour layover that was already built in to the original schedule... sigh... 9 hrs. sitting on our butts in san fran... guess we oughta consider taking the bart into town...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The Iceland volcano at night

amazingly cool...

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano had been dormant for nearly two centuries before Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson, 51, flew to the scene on March 21 to photograph its first stirrings. Mr. Sigurdsson returned to the scene and made these dramatic photographs Saturday night and Sunday morning.

mr. sigurdsson...

This is not my first volcano, I’ve been shooting them for 30 years. We have an average of one eruption every five years but these eruptions are different from the rest. The first one in March, which stopped a few days ago, had very beautiful lava fountains and I could go very close and take beautiful pictures. It was what we call here a tourist eruption.

This one, last week, was different. It started underneath a glacier nearby the first eruption. It melted down a lot of ice and we had huge floods. When the lava hits the water you have a huge explosion and it explodes into thin dust . You cannot go close to this eruption because it’s on top of a mountain and the explosions are huge. The hole is about 5,000 meters wide and 2 kilometers long.

Standing in front of it at night is magnificent because you can really see the lightning that is at the center of the eruption. It’s incredibly exciting. The adrenaline flows and I was shouting ‘wow look at that’ over and over. I’ve never seen something like this before.

I just love volcanoes and the Northern Lights. I’m very happy to live here in Iceland even though we’re broke. We’re poor, with beauty.

ya gotta love that last quote...

(thanks to bro in mpls...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Iceland may become investigative journalism haven spurred by surveillance campaign against Wikileaks

if this can be pulled off, it would be major cool...

here's some of the scoop... read more at raw story...

In an extraordinary editorial, the whistleblower site WikiLeaks has demanded that the United States "stop spying" on its operations.

"Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations," founder Julian Assange writes. "We've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest. But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive."

On Tuesday evening, followers of the WikiLeaks Twitter feed were startled to read, "WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation." This was followed a few minutes later by "If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible." A succeeding message warned, "We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."

Friday's editorial finally fills in the background of those cryptic messages. Assange apparently believes that his group is under close surveillance by US intelligence because of its planned release of "a classified U.S. military video showing civilian kills by U.S. pilots" under the command of General David Petraeus.

Most of the incidents that he cites, however, have occurred in Iceland, where WikiLeaks representatives have been holding discussions with members of the Icelandic parliament about the possibility of turning that nation into a haven for investigative journalism.

we need more people like assange out there, particularly as our super-rich elites and their government stooges move to grab more and more control over information flow...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

¡Que se vayan todos!

¡Que se vayan todos! (All of them must go!)

naomi klein opines that the disgust with capitalism that toppled four presidents in succession here in argentina may at last be spilling over to the rest of the world...

The stoic Icelandic matriarchs beating their pots flat even as their kids ransack the fridge for projectiles (eggs, sure, but yogurt?) echo the tactics made famous in Buenos Aires. So does the collective rage at elites who trashed a once thriving country and thought they could get away with it. As Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old Icelandic office worker, put it: "I've just had enough of this whole thing. I don't trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the political parties and I don't trust the IMF. We had a good country, and they ruined it."

[...]

Similar demands can be heard these days in Latvia, whose economy has contracted more sharply than any country in the EU, and where the government is teetering on the brink. For weeks the capital has been rocked by protests, including a full-blown, cobblestone-hurling riot on January 13. As in Iceland, Latvians are appalled by their leaders' refusal to take any responsibility for the mess. Asked by Bloomberg TV what caused the crisis, Latvia's finance minister shrugged: "Nothing special."

But Latvia's troubles are indeed special: the very policies that allowed the "Baltic Tiger" to grow at a rate of 12 percent in 2006 are also causing it to contract violently by a projected 10 percent this year: money, freed of all barriers, flows out as quickly as it flows in, with plenty being diverted to political pockets. (It is no coincidence that many of today's basket cases are yesterday's "miracles": Ireland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia.)

Something else Argentina-esque is in the air. In 2001 Argentina's leaders responded to the crisis with a brutal International Monetary Fund-prescribed austerity package: $9 billion in spending cuts, much of it hitting health and education. This proved to be a fatal mistake. Unions staged a general strike, teachers moved their classes to the streets and the protests never stopped.

[...]

The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with an acceleration of that same discredited agenda will not survive to tell the tale. As Italy's students have taken to shouting in the streets: "We won't pay for your crisis!"

unfortunately, argentina's outburst only produced a temporary stay of execution... today, you can find the same elites, dressed in their faux populist finery, still lining their pockets and feeding from every available trough... the good news is that it's happening without imf and world bank debt... the bad news is that the poor are still poor and getting massively poorer by the day...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments