Twitter Inc.'s growing ambitions are making it harder to carry the Internet's free-speech banner.
Chief Executive Dick Costolo promotes Twitter as a protector of more than 200 million people who broadcast their lives, be it love for a new pop song or Tahrir Square protests. But increasingly, freewheeling tweets are clashing with divergent global laws and standards in markets where Twitter is spreading its wings.
"You have to abide by the rule of law in the countries in which you operate," the 49-year-old Mr. Costolo said in an interview at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. Defending free expression "gets more challenging for us as a company as we become an ever-growing global company, and have a presence and offices and people on the ground around the world."
In recent weeks, Twitter has found itself labeled a censor, an enabler of hate speech and a tool of Big Brother. It drew flak in July for turning over to French prosecutors information about users who tweeted anti-Semitic messages. Read more >>
Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet.
The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents.
The use of the equipment raises serious questions about eavesdropping without a warrant, particularly since recordings of passengers could be obtained and used by law enforcement agencies.
It also raises questions about security, since the IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city. Read more >>
Just over 100,000 of workers have left the Los Angeles labor force since the beginning of the year, according to seasonally adjusted data from the California Employment Development Department. The decline stands in stark contrast to other major metropolitan areas. New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco are all seeing their labor forces grow.
So what's going on in Southern California?
The real estate boom and bust hurt L.A. far more dramatically than those other cities, and a lack of construction jobs may partially explain why some workers have stopped looking for employment. Construction jobs have recently started to come back slowly, but in L.A. they're still off by about 50,000 jobs from 2007 levels. Read more >>
Occupy Wall Street, the global movement against inequality that ignited in Manhattan last year, will mark its first anniversary by trying to block traffic in the financial district and encircle the New York Stock Exchange.
Planning for the Sept. 17 protest, dubbed S17, follows months of internal debate and flagging interest, according to interviews with organizers. The morning action may include attempts to make citizens’ arrests of bankers, and some activists intend to bring handcuffs, they said.
“We are here to bring you to justice,” said Sean McKeown, a 32-year-old chemist and New York University graduate who’s helping organize the demonstration. “We’re offering you the chance to repent for your sins.”
Protests against income disparity, bank greed and corporate abuse sprouted from San Francisco to Hong Kong after demonstrators established an encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park last September. Police ousted them in November, and governments around the world used concussion grenades, gas, riot gear, pepper spray and arrests to disband camps and protests. Read more>>
Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating nearly half its streetlights.
As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken
and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed
board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would
create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce
the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be
contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.
Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Detroit’s plan goes further: It would leave sparsely populated swaths unlit in a community of 713,000 that covers more area than Boston, Buffalo and San Francisco combined. Vacant property and parks account for 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), according to city planners. Detroit’s dwindling income and property-tax revenue have
required residents to endure unreliable buses and strained
police services throughout the city. More...
Because after all, isn't that who the police really work for...
The world's biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said.
Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy's May Day planning committee.
Events are scheduled in more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week. More...
Tom Eley Anger among workers at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont, California, toward the United Auto Workers (UAW) exploded at a January 24 meeting discussing the imminent closure of the facility. Nearly 5,000 workers will lose their jobs when the plant, formerly a joint venture of General Motors and Toyota, closes on March 31. Four hundred or so workers were present at the meeting
Several attendees captured the eruption on video, which began during comments by UAW Local 2244 Bargaining Chairman Javier Contreras. Contreras was booed, jeered, and interrupted as he attempted to present details of the severance package. At one point an outraged older worker demanded to know “where the hell” the union official had been for the last six months. Contreras burst out, “Shut the f— up, you motherf——!” At that point, furious workers rushed to the front of the room. Contreras and other local UAW personnel were defended by a few union officials. Local union leaders pleaded for calm and called in the police in a bid to control the workers.
Workers present say that the yelling began because union officials would not allow them to speak. Workers are angry that they have been kept in the dark over UAW negotiations with NUMMI.
The video footage reveals that the UAW, on the one hand, and rank-and-file auto workers, on the other, make up two mutually hostile camps. The workers bristle with mistrust and contempt for the union; the UAW officials are defensive and thuglike. The episode exposes the UAW’s role in executing the layoff and wage cut dictates of business—as well as their unmistakable contempt for the workers they nominally represent.
General Motors ended its participation in NUMMI in June 2009 as part of its forced bankruptcy at the hands of the Obama administration. Toyota then announced it would no longer continue operations there as of March 2010, blaming GM’s unilateral withdrawal from the partnership.
The UAW, which played a critical role in the bankruptcy process for GM and Chrysler by imposing plant closures and wage and benefit cuts while stifling worker opposition, has fallen back on its usual stock-in-trade of chauvinism and jingoism. It has singled out Toyota for attack, recently organizing a nationalist rally in Washington, D.C., outside the Japanese consulate that was attended by a handful of officials and their hangers-on.
Many workers at NUMMI have emphatically rejected the anti-Japanese rhetoric. Speaking of the explosive meeting, a long-time auto worker, Ken Villegas, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “the general tenor of the rank-and-file complaints were that union leaders should go after GM, as well as Toyota,” along with complaints over secretive severance negotiations.
Another Chronicle report confirms that the anger at the union meeting stemmed in part from the one-sided attack on Toyota. “Rank-and-file members harangued leaders that day for conducting a campaign against Toyota over the impending closure while not going after General Motors,” it wrote.
A NUMMI worker, when asked by a reporter with the left publication Monthly Review about the UAW protest outside the Japanese consulate in Washington, expressed outrage. “That was these guys,” he said of the local union officials. “I don’t know what the hell that is! Why blame Toyota? One of the reasons they don’t blame GM—I don’t know what the percentage is—but they own a portion of GM. Are you going to shoot yourself in the foot? No, they’re not going to do that. The problem is the membership doesn’t have a voice.”
Another worker denounced the UAW and the Obama along similar lines. “If Toyota owes us doesn’t that mean General Motors owes us too?” he asked. “And does the fact that [UAW President Ron] Gettelfinger sold us out for 17.5 percent of General Motors stock have anything to do with violating our charter and the severe conflict of interest? How can you trust your representatives? They’ve got to look at both ledgers. They’ve got to make sure those 17.5 percent of shares grow—and at whose expense?”
“We know they’re going on trips to Palm Springs,” another worker said of the UAW officials. “There was a photograph circulating in the plant of them laying on lawn chairs and drinking margaritas.”
The UAW is trying to handcuff workers until the plant is shut down, while it seeks to secure more perks for union officials from Toyota. It is pushing a severance package that would bar workers from taking action in the plant’s last two months, a proposal that “would link workers’ departure payouts to the continued, smooth operation of the factory through its closing,” according to the Chronicle. Workers are also outraged that the UAW is demanding a share of whatever severance pay they receive.
Negotiations with NUMMI have been strung out by the UAW demand that the maximum severance package be increased to more than $60,000. This would benefit only a handful of workers and, of course, union officers. Union executives are also demanding a $72 million contribution from NUMMI to a health insurance program controlled by the UAW. “Most of the people working at the plant won’t even be eligible for it,” one worker told a reporter. “It’s mainly for the UAW as a whole rather than for the local.”
Local 2244 president Sergio Santos declared that if NUMMI does not meet the bureaucracy’s demands for cash, it “would be a slap in the face to American workers.”
The UAW has in fact done nothing to keep the plant open. In interviews, workers derided a local UAW petition drive, noting that while it was being circulated, machinery was being removed from the plant.
The NUMMI closure will lead directly to 1,400 more layoffs in the local parts industry, and indirectly to thousands more. This is in California, where the unemployment rate is already at 12.4 percent and where vital social services have been scaled back due to the worst of the nation’s state budget crises.
NUMMI’s suppliers have in recent days announced their own major layoffs. Johnson Controls has said it will close its Livermore plant, resulting in 321 layoffs, with 240 of these coming in late March, timed to coincide with the closure of NUMMI. In addition to the 4,700 jobs lost at NUMMI, Fremont will see an additional 314 parts and supply jobs vanish. The city of Hayward will lose 387 jobs after the closure of Injex Industries. Modesto will lose 186 jobs with the shutdown of Trim Master, Inc. Stockton will suffer 154 job losses after Kyoho Manufacturing closes, and Merced will lose 53 jobs after Arvin Sango shuts its doors.
Tom Abate, Chronicle San Francisco resident Elena Duran represents an unfortunate job trend that isn't reflected in the unemployment rate.
For years, Duran has been a full-time server at a downtown hotel. But the recession has cut so deeply into business that her hours were cut to half time in July.
"It's better than a layoff, but it still requires a lot of sacrifices," said Duran, who, along with her working husband, supports three sons.
Because she works, Duran doesn't count in California's 12.2 percent unemployment rate.
But her situation is captured by a broader measure, the underemployment rate, which, in addition to the jobless, includes people who could get only part-time work as well as those who want jobs but were too discouraged to look.
The state Employment Development Department estimates that this underemployment rate hit 21.9 percent in September.
That figure includes 1.9 million jobless Californians, 1.4 million people who had to work part time, and 865,000 adults loosely described as discouraged.
"Underemployment is at the highest level since we started keeping these records in 1994," said economist Sylvia Allegretto of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley.
The Employment Development Department, which publishes the state's jobless rate, has not typically calculated underemployment.
Dynamics of jobless recoveries
Paul Wessen, an economist with the department, said one reason is that the broader measure tends to rise and fall in concert with the traditional jobless rate, so both indicators provide the same signal.
"All the data tell us that this is the worst economic downturn since World War II," Wessen said.
But Allegretto said the underemployment rate is worth tracking because it helps explain the dynamics of so-called jobless recoveries - times when growing economic output does not bring a strong rebound in hiring.
Recessions since the early 1990s have been followed by relatively sluggish job recoveries.
Economist Amar Mann of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in San Francisco said the agency started to publish a national underemployment rate after the 1990s recession.
"A lot of researchers were asking for this data," he said. Fuller picture of market
San Francisco labor attorney Michael Bernick, a former head of the state Employment Development Department, said the underemployment rate offers a fuller picture of the modern labor market primarily because it captures how many workers are cut to part time when the economy is in recession.
Bernick said employers who need to cut costs often choose to reduce hours as an alternative to layoffs, which can be better for employees and presumably for the business because it retains trained workers.
But he said the practice may mean that the unemployment rate won't drop quickly as the economy recovers, because employers tend to bring part-timers back to full time before they make new hires.
Wessen said the department is considering putting more emphasis on the underemployment rate. "This measure has hit the radar more of late," he said. Californians' challenges
Meanwhile, Californians face difficulties that the statistics only begin to describe.
Santa Rosa resident Lori Houston used to put in 40 to 60 hours a week as a self-employed communications specialist. But since January, she has been working half as much because her clients have cut back in the face of their own financial woes.
Houston said she has been seeking contract or full-time work for months, to no avail.
"I've been turning over every stone," she said. "It's a tough market out there." Adding skills during search
Mark Gutierrez of San Jose, who has been looking for work in sales and distribution for more than a year, has fended off discouragement by adding new skills, such as Web design, while actively job hunting.
Gutierrez said he has a promising lead while he keeps an eye on his dwindling finances.
Jack D. Douglas Chuck Baldwin's excellent essay below gives some more details on recent moves by the Obama forces to seize direct control over U.S. police, quasi-private military forces, and to create new forces under control of the Party.
Bill Marina and I paid a great deal of detailed attention to Bush's explosive use of the Blackwater, etc., private armies in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. There are now a few good books on them. In general, these mercenaries – highly paid, mostly former Special Forces from the U.S., Israel, South Africa, etc. – outnumber the regular military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond. The statement that the U.S. forces in Afghanistan are 65,000 is a preposterous Big Lie to hide the reality and the vast costs. These forces are the ones that use hollow point sniper bullets for long-range murders of civilians, etc. They probably use other war crimes materials like white phosphorus against personnel, depleted uranium shells in Iraq, etc.
There is a long history of their use by the U.S. – going back certainly to the Privateers; but those operated under prize-taking rules that were international and provided incentives to minimize death and destruction, not maximize them. The U.S. Navy started a few decades ago using private, contracted ships working with the Navy ships to carry fuel, food, etc., to keep the official number of ships down, so the public would not know how huge the Navy really was when the contract ships were counted. [I started seeing gray painted ships in the San Diego harbor with colored stripes along their sides and found out from Navy men they were the contract ships. They looked like regular Navy ships except for the colored stripe, which was small and could only be seen up close.]
Bush started using secret Special Ops masquerading as employees of Big Corps., notably Halliburton's KBR, very early in Afghanistan, as we learned from a very close professional friend and co-worker of a very old friend of mine. He was a great sniper who was called up overnight and sent off to shoot peasants in Afghanistan suspected of being Taliban, etc. [The U.S. mercenaries guard Karzai in depth and are everywhere in Afghanistan and I expect are now used in Pakistan.]
Blackwater tried a few years ago to build a huge international training camp for their mercenaries in San Diego County. That led to a huge outcry and struggle. As far as I know, it remains on ice. The details of that are in The San Diego Union-Tribune archives.
I believe the crucial, secret part of McChrystal's New Plan is to vastly increase the use of drone Hellfires, Special Ops air strikes, and secret sniper murders in Afghanistan and Pakistan against suspected al-Queda and Taliban forces and sympathizers. McChrystal was the head of U.S. Special Ops "black ops" [murder squads of snipers, etc.] when Obama appointed him to be the head of all U.S. forces in Afpak. I believe Obama appointed him for the purpose of increasing the Murder Squad programs and this has led to an explosion of Afpak support for the guerillas and rage against Karzai and the U.S. Pakistan is fiercely resisting this, but that just means the U.S. has to vastly increase the bribes.
I just got an e-mail in response to one of my Afpak essays Lew Rockwell posted in which the writer says he is SF [Special Forces] and has worked in eleven countries propping up dictators for the U.S. [He objects to my calling these "black ops programs" of the Special Ops "Death Squads" – which has never been any official term used by anyone but is the unofficial term used since Vietnam, the CIA's vast Phoenix Program, John Kerry's "fast boats" running agents up the Mekong, etc.] I think most of these former SF mercenaries are totally cynical like mercenaries throughout history. They know it's all Big Lies and BS, but they get paid vast sums to sign up, reenlist, annual salaries, bonuses, expenses....
They are like the Condotierri in the Italian City States, totally mercenary and very dangerous.
The SF guy who wrote me was morally outraged that I oppose the SF executions by snipers. He insists that this is better than bombing the whole house or village but will not consider the possibility it might be best to work morally and legally to root out murderers on all sides. I told him about the U.S. military commander in San Francisco in 1906 who moved his 1,700 troops into the streets after the earthquake to maintain law and order, pushing aside the police trained to do these things. Some of his men wound up executing supposed looters and then doing the looting themselves.
I certainly think Obama's Civilian Defense Force is intended to be an auxiliary Party force, very similar to the Sturmabteilung [the infamous SA] of the Nazi's that grew out of the Freikorps and became the Party's private army, as Trotsky's Red Army was the private army of the Bolsheviki, not of the state. Hitler was himself eventually threatened by the SA and killed off the leaders and folded the troops into the new SS, which became the private army of Hitler, swearing allegiance to him personally in the Nuremberg Sportsplatz ceremonies, rather than being subject to the orders of the German General Staff, the Wehrmacht. The Soviet Party always maintained heavily armed special forces around Moscow responsible to the Party. They also had their own more loyal Spetznetz forces, very much like the US Special Forces, and the Party-controlled Cheka-NKVD-KGB, GRU, and MVD. Putin came from the KGB but controlled all of them in the new regime. [He still does informally.] The US Imperial President controls the 19 [plus secret-secret units] secret police from the FBI and CIA to DEA and BATF, but they do not have heavy weapons. They have more direct control of some of the Special Forces for that but I do not know the details of such secret matters.
The U.S. Constitution provides for the state-controlled reserves, national guards for emergencies, etc. The federal government is moving to take control of the state military forces upon command of the President.
Obama's military and secret police forces are moving very fast and across the entire spectrum of forces to get direct control of all major forces in the U.S. and around the world and to create new ones under direct control from the beginning of the Party. Hitler had to move slowly over several years because the General Staff hated him. The Obama police and military czars are moving extremely fast and across the whole spectrum of forces. They are running great risks of a catastrophic showdown with Iran and Pakistan and other nations to build their military image as Winners. Iran alone can shut down the Persian Gulf oil and cripple the U.S. economy already in Depression II. They have also seized control of all of the top of the vast U.S. financial system, plan to impose the Fed as a totalitarian czar over finance permanently, have seized the biggest insurer – AIG, the biggest manufacturer – GM, and are planning to seize the vast power industry, health care, education, the internet ["in times of emergency declared by Obama"], and no doubt any other great concentrations of power. All U.S. concentrations of power will be under the direct control of Obama through the Party political commissars, popularly known as "Czars" because they have under the Emperor totalitarian powers. Ravenwood may be fictional. These are brutal facts.
I assume Obama and The Party have only the "best of intentions." They apparently want to save us from all the agonies of real freedom and leave us only with the mundane choices among tooth paste brands manufactured by Big Corps. working under the direct Consumer Protection Czar in the White House.
Being an unregenerate, old-fashioned American I fear that all of their best intentions will not save us in the short run from the agonies of Imperial and bureaucratic tyranny and that in the long run they will discover as the Soviets did that central-planning does not work. Their goal, like that of Lenin, is Utopia Today, but I fear they will produce very soon the awful reality of Systemic Implosion and an American Armageddon. The Soviets had the U.S. and the Europeans to hold them up while they divested themselves of the most awful concentrations of central planning power, but the U.S. is too big to be held up. We will implode.
Pelosi warns of violence. "I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance," she said.
"I saw,"-- she said, choking back tears -- "I saw this myself in the late seventies in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave--it created a climate in which violence took place."
How pathetic. Nancy is confusing Washington with Hollywood, but wait, there's really no difference now is there? She'd love to substitute America's collective disgust of government with the Race Card. Deep down she senses the impeding collapse of the Federal Government and loss of power.
With more than 650,000 Americans exhausting all their unemployment benefits by September, America's streets will begin to swell with even greater numbers of the homeless and destitute. Learn what you -- or someone you may know -- need to do to survive on the street.
Picture the Homeless, a social justice organization founded and led by homeless people in New York City, has joined The Nation to come up with a list of things you need to know to live on the street--and ways we can all build movements to challenge the stigma of homelessness and put forward an alternative vision of community.
1 Be prepared to be blamed for your circumstances, no matter how much they may be beyond your control. Think of ways to disabuse the public of common misconceptions. Don't internalize cruelty or condescension. Let go of your pride--but hold on to your dignity.
2 There is no private space to which you may retreat. You are on display 24/7. Learn to travel light. Store valuables in a safe place, only carrying around what you really need: ID and documents for accessing services, a pen, etc. You can check e-mail and read at the library. You can get a post office box for a fee or use general delivery (free).
3 Learn the best bathroom options, where you won't be rushed, turned away or harassed. Find restrooms where it's clean enough to put your stuff down, the stalls are big enough to change in and there's hot water so you can wash up. If you're in New York City go to Restrooms in New York.
4 It's difficult to have much control over when, where and what you eat, so learn soup kitchen schedules and menus. Carry with you nuts, peanut butter or other foods high in protein. Click here to find a list of soup kitchens by state.
5 Food and clothing are easier to find than a safe place to sleep--the first truth of homelessness is sleep deprivation. Always have a blanket. Whenever possible, sleep in groups with staggered schedules, so you can look out for one another, prioritizing children's needs over those of adults.
6 Know your rights! Knowing constitutional amendments, legal precedents and human rights provisions can help you, even if they're routinely violated. In New York, for example, a 2003 court-ordered settlement strictly forbids selective enforcement of the law against the homeless. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement offers another resource, and the ACLU has cards, brochures, fact sheets and films.
7 Learn police patterns and practices. Be polite and calm to cops, even when they don't give the same respect. Support initiatives demanding independent police accountability. Link with groups from overlapping populations of nonhomeless and homeless people (i.e., black, Latino, LGBT groups) that are fighting police brutality and building nonpolice safety projects, like the Audre Lorde Project's Safe OUTside the System in Brooklyn. Organize your own CopWatch--and photograph, videotape and publicize instances of police abuse. Consider and support models like the Los Angeles Community Action Network or the People's Self Defense Campaign of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Brooklyn.
8 The First Amendment protects your right to solicit aid (panhandling), especially if your pitch or sign is a statement rather than a request. To succeed, be creative, funny, engaging ("I didn't get a bailout!"). Find good, high-traffic spots where the police won't bother you.
10 Don't go it alone! Always be part of an informal network of trust and mutual aid. Start your own organization, with homeless people themselves shaping the fight for a better life and world. Check out the Picture the Homeless Blog for news, updates and reports on homelessness in NY.
CONCEIVED by WALTER MOSLEY with research by Rae Gomes
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