Undernews For 5th Feb

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Why Jordan shies away from reform

Nisreen El-Shamayleh, Al Jazeera - Almost half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin. But Palestinian representation in parliament has never exceeded 20 per cent since 1989 and is currently at its lowest 12 per cent...

In any real democratic election in Jordan, the Palestinian and Islamist majorities will win more control. While that could affect Jordan’s moderate reputation in the international arena, it also gives neighboring Israel an excuse to make a proposition. Israel would be the first to capitalize on such a political outcome by claiming that with so many Palestinians governing Jordan, the West Bank can re-federate with Jordan and there will be no need for an additional Palestinian state. The Palestinian problem is solved without a two-state solution.

Although these are odd Israeli voices that violate every single international law, they still manage to make Jordan’s appointed leaders and Bedouin population cringe. Political reforms in Jordan may only minimal be at this stage because so much is at stake. But if the opposition continues to protest to achieve changes at the grass-roots level, then Jordan may find itself up against a real political challenge

Obama broke pledge over handling bankruptcies

Pro Publica - Before he took office, President Obama repeatedly promised voters and Democrats in Congress that he’d fight for changes to bankruptcy laws to help homeowners¬a tough approach that would force banks to modify mortgages. “I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes,” Obama told supporters at a Colorado rally on September 16, 2008, the same day as the bailout of AIG.
Bankruptcy judges have long been barred from lowering mortgage payments on primary residences, though they could do it with nearly all other types of debt, even mortgages on vacation homes. Obama promised to change that, describing it as exactly “the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense.”

Instead, the administration has relied on a voluntary program with few sticks, that simply offers banks incentives to modify mortgages. Known as Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, the program was modeled after an industry plan. The administration also wrote it carefully to exclude millions of homeowners seen as undeserving.

The lobbying by the community banks and credit unions proved fatal to the measure, lawmakers say. “The community banks went bonkers on this issue,” said former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). With their opposition, he said, “you don’t win much.”

The measure faced stark conservative opposition. It was opposed by Republicans in Congress and earlier by the Bush administration, who argued that government interference to change mortgage contracts would reduce the security of all kinds of future contracts.

Gitmo prisoner, nine years in a cage, dies without ever being charged

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - A 48-year-old Afghan citizen and Guantanamo detainee, Awal Gul, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Gul, a father of 18 children, had been kept in a cage by the U.S. for more than 9 years -- since late 2001 when he was abducted in Afghanistan -- without ever having been charged with a crime. While the U.S. claims he was a Taliban commander, Gul has long insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack because, as his lawyer put it, "he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse." His death means those conflicting claims will never be resolved; said his lawyer: "it is shame that the government will finally fly him home not in handcuffs and a hood, but in a casket." This episode illustrates that the U.S. Government's detention policy -- still -- amounts to imposing life sentences on people without bothering to prove they did anything wrong.

Redskins' owner threatens paper that made fun of him with extinction

Paul Farhi, Washington Post - The war between Redskins owner Dan Snyder and Washington City Paper just got a little hotter.` Snyder filed suit late Wednesday against the weekly newspaper and its parent company, Atalaya Capital Management, in New York state court, seeking $2 million in general damages plus unspecified punitive damages and court costs.

Snyder alleges in the suit that City Paper libeled and defamed him in a series of articles dating to 2009. . .

"Mr. Snyder has more than sufficient means to protect his reputation," said the Nov. 24 letter, which was written by David Donovan, the Redskins' chief operating officer and general counsel, and posted on City Paper's Web site Wednesday afternoon. "We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed, the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.". . .

Snyder's public relations representatives also released a statement from the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles condemning the cover image City Paper used with the article: a photograph of Snyder doctored with scribbled-on horns and facial hair.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the center, which is named for the famed Nazi hunter, said it is "inappropriate and unacceptable when a symbol like this - associated with virulent anti-Semitism going back to the Middle Ages, deployed by the genocidal Nazi regime, by Soviet propagandists and even in 2011 by those who still seek to demonize Jews today - is used on the front cover of a publication in our Nation's Capital against a member of the Jewish community."

Snyder's representatives said they solicited the statement from Cooper on Wednesday.

Progressive Review - There are approximately 67 million devil images listed by Google for a large variety of purposes including the successful sale of recording. This is roughly the same as Rabbi Cooper accusing Jon Stewart of being anti-black for having a Michael Steele puppet.

If the Redskins are successful in driving City Paper out of business it would not only affect Washington but other cities with weeklies owned by Atalaya Capital Management. According to the most recent list we could find, this would include Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina; and Tampa and Sarasota, Florida.

Twitter comes to defense of paper under attack from Redskins' Dan Snyder

Excerpts from tweets on the Snyder Libel site

Dan Snyder voted for KFC in that Zagat survey. #snyderlibel

Dan Snyder Punches Kittens

Dan Snyder plans to appease his critics by renaming his team the Landover Honkies.

Dan Snyder introduced trickle-down economics.

All those nickels from DC's bag tax actually go to Dan Snyder.

Dan Snyder never tips the pizza guy.

Dan Snyder financed and personally installed all the red light cameras in the DC Area.

Dan Snyder drinks milk right from the carton.

Dan Snyder wants to buy The City Paper and use it as his personal mouthpiece.

Snyder wants to sell ad space in the gap between Michael Strahan's teeth.

While everyone is watching Super Bowl XLV, Dan Snyder will be chopping down trees between his house and the river.

Dan Snyder wants a Wall-mart at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Immigration officer puts wife on no-fly list

Lowering the Bar - According to the Daily Mail Online, an immigration officer who worked for the UK Border Agency managed to get his wife out of his hair for three years by putting her name on the no-fly list while she was visiting the in-laws overseas. Officials confirmed on January 30 that the man had confessed to adding his wife's name to the list after she left for Pakistan, with the result that she was not allowed to get on a plane to come home.

Airline and immigration authorities refused to explain to her why she was not being allowed to travel, although I imagine she put two and two together after her immigration-officer husband stopped answering his phone. As you might expect, the husband was smart enough to tamper with immigration databases but not smart enough to avoid getting caught. Or, at least, it appears that at some point during the three years he forgot he had exiled his wife, and that he had done so by putting her on a list of people considered potentially dangerous.

He later applied for a promotion, which required a new background check, which showed that, lo and behold, he was married to somebody on a terrorist watch list. That raised some eyebrows, and the officer then admitted he had tampered with the list. He has been fired, and boy is he going to be in the doghouse when Mrs. Immigration Officer gets home after three years in Pakistan. Man, he better have some flowers waiting, is all I can say.

Ambassador leaves demoralized embassy

TPM Muckracker - The now-former U.S Ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum, had members of the small staff of the embassy spend the majority of their time on the important task of finding her a temporary residence that met her high standards; made refurbishing the bathroom at the ambassador's residence a top personal priority; told them that she could snoop on their e-mails; and left her office so demoralized that some top staffers volunteered to serve in two war zone embassies rather than continue to work under her leadership.

That's all according to a State Department Inspector General report, which concludes that Stroum's "confrontational management style, chronic gaps in senior and other staffing caused by curtailments, and the absence of a sense of direction have brought major elements of Embassy Luxembourg to a state of dysfunction."

Most employees described Stroum to inspectors as "aggressive, bullying, hostile, and intimidating, which has resulted in an extremely difficult, unhappy, and uncertain work environment.". . .

News 352, Luxembourg - Former ambassador Stroum was described as being "aggressive, bullying, hostile and intimidating," in a State Department inspector general report which is available to the public online. "The mood in the U.S. mission in the Grand Duchy is so bad that some people even asked for a transfer to Iraq and Afghanistan to escape the harassment of their boss."

The report alleges misuse of government funds, too. "The embassy purchased $3,400 in wine and liquor a day before the 2010 budget year ended in an effort spend as much of its annual entertainment funds as possible. The booze did not arrive until the next fiscal year and State Department rules say embassies are not allowed "to use excess year-end funds" to buy items unless they are used in that year."

Stupid state official tricks

News Observer, NC -David N. Cox says he was merely exercising his right to petition the government, but a state Department of Transportation official has raised allegations that Cox committed a misdemeanor: practicing engineering without a license. Cox and his North Raleigh neighbors are lobbying city and state officials to add traffic signals at two intersections as part of a planned widening of Falls of Neuse Road.

After an engineering consultant hired by the city said that the signals were not needed, Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners' Associations responded with a sophisticated analysis of their own.
The eight-page document with maps, diagrams and traffic projections was offered to buttress their contention that signals will be needed at the Falls of Neuse at Coolmore Drive intersection and where the road meets Tabriz.

It did not persuade Kevin Lacy, chief traffic engineer for the state DOT, to change his mind about the project. Instead, Lacy called on a state licensing agency, the N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, to investigate Cox. . . Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report "appears to be engineering-level work" by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.

Word: Daniel Snyder

Dave Ziinn, Nation - [Daniel] Snyder has a twelve-year track record of utter incompetence, with a dash of contempt for anyone in his line of vision. It was team legend John Riggins who once said that Snyder had a “dark heart.” He said it for good reason. This was, after all, a man whose club has taken grandmothers to court and bankrupted them for not being able to afford their season tickets and who has starred in a host of other incidents that boggle the mind in their small-mindedness. Snyder has done this while lording over a franchise with the most racist name in sports, a name that harkens back to team founder George Preston Marshall’s segregationist and proudly racist politics.

New Orleans population down 29%

Guardian, UK - Figures released this week show that there are 343,839 residents of New Orleans, down 29% from the previous count of 485,000 in 2000. The current population is also substantially depleted from the 455,000 people believed to have been living in the city just before hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The powerful storm overpowered the city's levees and caused flooding that forced about 200,000 residents to flee.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was famously an overwhelmingly black city, with African Americans making up 67% of the population. That figure has dropped to 60% in the 2010 census, which reveals 118,000 fewer black residents. While the black population has declined, the white population has crept up to 30%, and there has been an increase in the Hispanic presence too, a result of the influx of workers needed for the city's reconstruction.

One of the most worrying statistics shows almost 60,000 fewer children in the city than in 2000, a drop of about 44%. New Orleans has always prided itself in its youthful vibrant culture, but that figure suggests its long-term vitality may be in doubt.

Peter Peterson now out to miseducate school children about Social Security & Medicare

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism - It’s not a pretty spectacle when a very rich man tells little people they ought to get by with less, particularly when his firm benefitted handsomely from the pump and dump operation that led to the financial crisis.

Pete Peterson, one of the two founders of the Blackstone Group, has had a longstanding campaign against Social Security and Medicare. . .

The Peterson Institute’s new ruse is to avoid grownups with fully formed opinions, since they are not amenable to short-form reprogramming. Instead, they are targeting high school students with an anti-deficit “education” program, on the assumption if they can inculcate a belief system, the desired policy choices will follow.

From Remapping Debate:
|||| No one has done more than the billionaire private-equity investor Peter G. Peterson to stir America’s anxiety over deficits, debt, and what Peterson (among others) considers out-of-control entitlement-program spending. Those same concerns now lie at the heart of a “fiscal responsibility” curriculum being developed for America’s high schools. The curriculum bears the stamp of Columbia University’s prestigious Teachers College, but reflects the focus suggested by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which provided $2.4 million in funding for the project.

Teachers College gave Remapping Debate access to a set of 24 lessons set to be test-taught in four states this spring prior to a wider roll-out in 2011-12. Heavily weighted toward the themes and arguments of Peterson and other deficit hawks, the trial lessons could be seen as part of an effort by one of the country’s wealthiest men, now 82, to spread his gospel to coming generations…

The trial lessons repeatedly point toward two core ideas of Peterson’s long crusade: first, that America’s future is threatened by deficit spending, and, second, that Social Security and Medicare have helped put our economy on an “unsustainable course." |||

Andrew Fieldhouse, one of several economists asked by Remapping Debate to review parts of the 409-page curriculum, objected strenuously to what he said was a loaded discussion of the debt and deficit, one designed both to fuel alarm and to put undue focus on the spending rather than the revenue side of things. . .

Robert Prasch, an economics professor at Middlebury College, voiced similar complaints about the way the curriculum deals with Social Security. “No effort is made to explore whether, and to what extent, there may or may not be a fiscal crisis facing Social Security,” Prasch said. “It is presumed or taken as an unimpeachable fact.”

Word

Chad Stone, Center for Budget Policy & Priorities - Due to depressed labor force participation and high unemployment, the percentage of people aged 16 and older with a job stands at 58.4 percent – 4.3 percentage points lower than the 62.7 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007 (see chart). If this employment-to-population ratio were the same 62.7 percent it was in late 2007, over 10 million more people would be working.

NBC still doesn't know how the Internet works

When NBC found out which of its employees had uploaded this 1994 video of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric mulling over this strange thing called the Internet, it fired the guy. Help NBC figure out how the Internet works by spreading this video as far as possible.

LINK

Obama blames God for Afghanistan, the economy, and Gitmo

"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, I ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and our people," Obama said later. "And when I go to bed at night, I wait on the Lord and I ask him to forgive me my sins and to look after my family and to make me an instrument of the Lord." - Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast

The National Prayer Breakfast is organized by the right-wing Christian extremist group, The Family, which among many other Christian sins is involved with Uganda's anti-gay campaign.

Dutch bike path to be built on solar panels

Only a quarter of those with post grad degrees believe in evolutionary science

Kenneth Cole makes even Glenn Beck look good

Shop talk

We better brag about it now, because it won't last long, but at the moment Undernews has a better Alexa ranking among U.S. readers than Rupert Murdoch's much ballyhooed The Daily. 56,576 for Undernews and 60,140 for The Daily.

Overheard in New York

40-something tourist to friend: I wonder if there is a Panda Express around here... -- Chinatown

Enraged suit on cell: Virgil's Barbecue? Virgil's Barbecue?! Where the hell is that? How the fuck am I supposed to find a place called Virgil's Barbecue in the middle of the night?! I don't even know if that shit exists! -- Outside Virgil's BBQ, W. 44th

Tourist on cell: Yeah I'm hungry, I'm tryin' to find an In-N-Out but I can't. (pause) Wait, what? (pause) You're kidding me. Are you serious? (raising voice) How could they not have one here? (screaming) Not even a Sonic? And this is supposed to be a world class city! -- Times Square

Teenage girl on phone with boyfriend: You know you shouldn't eat at White Castle so much because that kind of food can give you all kinds of diabetes: Like sugar diabetes, salt diabetes... You know, all the kinds. --Penn Station

Word

Delicate balance - As applied to American policy towards Egypt, it means replacing a dictatorial regime that did what the U.S. told it with a democratic regime that will do what the U.S. tells it. - Josiah Swampoodle

Murdoch's new Daily isn't much

Alan Mutter, Newsosaur - The inaugural edition of The Daily was a dud. Unless it suddenly gets a whole lot better, we all can save the 99 cents it hopes to collect each week from subscribers.

The only thing not lightweight about The Daily is the amount of bandwidth required to download it. “The application is over 20 MB,” said a warning screen when I tried to acquire the app over AT&T’s wheezing 3G network. “Connect to wifi or use a computer to access it.”

Once The Daily was installed, I discovered that the day’s “news” report – which was not updated 12 hours after being introduced with great fanfare at mid-day in New York – was exactly four stories deep.

In addition to adequate but increasingly stale pieces on the turmoil in Egypt and the epic snowstorm in the Midwest, the other two stories on the “news” menu included a video on life behind bars at the Angola prison in Louisiana and an article on New York’s “doggie disco,” which was limned as “a hot spot for all kennel clubbers.”

The lack of intellectual heft makes The Daily feel more like the Etch A Sketch edition of Us Magazine than the ground-breaking news platform it purports to be.

Word

Roses to Ben Smith & Byron Tau of Politico for the sly dig of the day:

"When [Rick] Scott, a former health care executive with a crisp demeanor and a familiarity with the Fifth Amendment began his term as governor last month, he and his team made an early priority of restoring some sense of order to a statehouse . . .

Back story:

Wikipedia - On March 19, 1997, investigators from the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services served search warrants at Columbia/HCA facilities in El Paso and on dozens of doctors with suspected ties to the company. Following the raids, the Columbia/HCA board of directors forced Scott to resign as Chairman and CEO.[19] He was paid $9.88 million in a settlement. He also left owning 10 million shares of stock worth over $350 million.

In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, Columbia/HCA plead guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a $600+ million fine in the largest fraud settlement in US history. Columbia/HCA admitted systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care agencies, and by filing false data about use of hospital space. They also admitted fraudulently billing Medicare and other health programs by inflating the seriousness of diagnoses and to giving doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. They filed false cost reports, fraudulently billing Medicare for home health care workers, and paid kickbacks in the sale of home health agencies and to doctors to refer patients. In addition, they gave doctors "loans" never intending to be repaid, free rent, free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.

In late 2002, HCA agreed to pay the U.S. government $631 million, plus interest, and pay $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims.[23] In all, civil law suits cost HCA more than $2 billion to settle, by far the largest fraud settlement in US history.

It's Canada, not Egypt, so what do you expect, but it's still pretty impressive

Richard J. Brennan, Star - A controversial CRTC decision that effectively imposed usage-based Internet billing on small service providers will be reversed, the Toronto Star has learned. “The CRTC should be under no illusion ¬ the Prime Minister and minister of Industry will reverse this decision unless the CRTC does it itself,” a senior Conservative government official said Wednesday. “If they don’t reconsider we will reverse their decision.”. . .

The CRTC decision has sparked outrage across the country with Canadians rushing to sign petitions asking the Conservative government to reverse it. Industry Minister Tony Clement has received tens of thousands of emails requesting that it be struck down.

Major providers charge customers extra if they download more than the monthly limits they set, typically between 20 and 60 gigabytes. Small providers, however, offer plans with 200 gigabyte ceilings and even unlimited use. The issue came to a head last week, when the CRTC denied independent service providers the right to continue offering unlimited Internet plans.

Carter sued for not agreeing with five readers

Stephen Lowman, Washington Post - More than four years after its publication, five disgruntled readers have filed a class-action lawsuit against President Jimmy Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that his 2006 book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” contained “numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author's agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised.” The five plaintiffs named in the lawsuit are seeking at least $5 million in compensation. The hard cover edition cost $27.

You can help Jimmy Carter pay for his law suit by buying a copy of his book

Furthermore. . .

Mediaite - The BBC and Survival International have released footage from one of the last human tribes to be completely untouched by [modern] society. The tribe exists around the border of Peru and Brazil and the footage is absolutely breathtaking. The video was taken as a collaboration and will be used in both the upcoming series Human Planet as well as the documentary Uncontacted Tribes. It was taken from a helicopter using a camera with an extreme zoom so as to minimize the disturbance to the tribe.

The Hill - The Treasury Department said Wednesday the government is close to breaking even on reviled bank bailouts made under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. . . In addition, it anticipates taxpayers will ultimately earn a $20 billion profit on TARP's overall bank assistance.

Tree Hugger - The first-ever comprehensive review of the state of the world's shellfish has just been released by The Nature Conservancy and the prognosis really isn't good. In fact, when oysters are concerned it's downright awful.Globally, about 85% of the world's oyster reefs have vanished and in many areas oyster reefs are functionally extinct. The report says that the main factors in the decline of oyster reefs are: Destructive fishing practices, coastal over-development, the effects of upstream activities such as altered river flows, dams, poorly managed agriculture, and poor water quality. . . [Oysters] act as natural water filters and improve water quality, proved food and habitat for fish, crabs and birds. And perhaps of increasing importance is the fact that they also as natural coastal buffers, helping to protect shorelines and keep coastal wetlands intact, thereby protecting coastal communities against storm surges and sea-level rise.

Huffington Post - A quarter of all federal student loan borrowers at for-profit colleges defaulted on their loans within three years of beginning to repay them--more than twice the rate of their counterparts at non-profit institutions, according to data by the Department of Education. In addition, students taking out loans at for-profit schools were responsible for nearly half of all federal student loan defaults within the three-year time frame, even though students enrolled at such institutions made up less than 15 percent of college students nationwide.

Seven other dictators the U.S. backs to the hilt

Spokesman for Scientologists refuses to reveal that they believe

Mitt Romney's campaign funding hustle

The student loan scandal

The John Boehner story we told you was coming out on Thursday

List of exposes by Wikileaks

ENDS

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