CITIZENS DEMAND INQUIRY WITH TEETH

CITIZENS DEMAND INQUIRY WITH TEETH

Public tells Toronto Police Services Board a G20 inquiry must find out why rights violated and by whom

One small step for dog

One small step for dog

A Russian high-altitude pressure suit for dogs has gone on display the National Space Centre in Leicester as part of it's newly completed Space Race exhibition.

As the exhibit is unpacked from its protective box, Kevin Yates, space communications manager, explains how Moscow's strays helped put Yuri Gagarin in outer space

Speaking of... Frogs, with William Andregg

William Andregg, founder of Halcyon Molecular, speaks with Cyan Banister about curing aging, dissecting frogs, and growing up in rural Arizo...

What an Astounding World of theFuture

PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME

Bio

Danny Schechter, "The News Dissector," is a former network TV producer, radio newscaster, and edits MediaChannel.org. He has written nine books on media themes. His latest, 'Plunder', was inspired by his latest film, In Debt We Trust: America Before The Bubble Bursts




Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. Danny Schechter "the News Dissector" has a new film out. It's called Plunder: The Crime of Our Time. And it opens with the demonstration of activists going to the home of John Mack, who at the time was the president of Morgan Stanley. Here's a look at that.

[clip plays]
JAY: Now joining us is Danny Schechter. He's, as I said, the director of the film Plunder. Thanks for joining us.
DANNY SCHECHTER, TV PRODUCER AND FILMMAKER: Pleasure, Paul.
JAY: So the title of the film is Plunder: The Crime of Our Time. The demonstrators went to the home of Mack and singled him out. So talk a bit about this question of why is this the crime of our time, and if it is, what's being done about the criminals.
SCHECHTER: Well, you know, the idea of a crime narrative to explain the financial crisis is something which is slowly coming into media view. It's been sort of denied. It's been ridiculed. It's been—until a number of things began to happen. First, the FBI found that there had been an epidemic of mortgage fraud in America, that the subprime loans were actually being sold fraudulently and in a criminal way, and there have been a lot of people arrested and convicted of that and of related bank frauds.
~~~
ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: Through this operation, more than 400 defendants have been charged, and we have obtained 173 convictions in crimes that accounted for more than $1 billion in estimated losses.
~~~
SCHECHTER: Secondly, Senator Kaufman recently went on the floor of the Senate and talked about fraud as being at the very foundation of the financial crisis, the first senator to say so. The Justice Department has asked for criminal complaint or investigation in its early stages against Goldman Sachs after the SEC filed, you know, a civil complaint against Goldman Sachs. And so there's been an upswing of interest in, you know, the alleged criminality or lack of criminality of the key Wall Street players. Were they doing all of this intentionally or not? My argument in my film is they were doing it intentionally, but it wasn't just the finance industry. It was finance in, basically, complicity with real estate and insurance, the fire economy, as it's known. And together, these different players in these industries worked together to defraud the American people and to lose trillions of dollars that have vanished as a result of the financial crisis.
JAY: Now, the issue of whether it's criminal or fraud, to some extent the charging of Goldman Sachs, whether that charge ever amounts to a conviction or not, is still a big question. A lot of people have come out and said maybe it was wrong, but it wasn't criminal. Even Bill Clinton said that the other day. But the issue of the structural underpinnings of all of this, even if they convict a few people, what gives rise to such parasitism is at the very roots of how the economy's organized. And does the criminal narrative to some extent take people's eyes off the structural problem?
SCHECHTER: Well, I don't think so, because if we're going to reach the American people with concerns about this financial crisis and fight back, we have to speak to the gut, to the gut sense of people who feel that they've lost their homes, they've lost their jobs, they've lost their hopes because they've been robbed, basically. And a gut issue is what's missing, certainly in the progressive response, which sounds like, you know, a Berkeley economics seminar, you know, where people talk about credit default swaps and derivatives and all this other stuff, which leads people to—their eyes to glaze over. They can't really follow it. So we need to deal with people's guts and a sense of economic fairness and economic justice.
JAY: But the FBI is not going to solve this.
SCHECHTER: No, the FBI won't solve it. Putting some CEOs in jail won't solve it. But it—.
JAY: So what will solve it, if you're talking to ordinary people?
SCHECHTER: It will—no, but if—I wouldn't dismiss it, though, because people have a desperate desire to see that the people who caused this situation, the destruction of their jobs, the destruction of their homes, the destruction of our economy, have to pay a price. They have to be held accountable, or there can be no faith in government or even in the economy.
JAY: But maybe there shouldn't be. Maybe there shouldn't be faith.
SCHECHTER: Well, you know, there is a lot of disenchantment, disillusion, anger, outrage, and the rest of it. Americans want to see, as Reuters reported recently, big guys with stakes in their head, you know, essentially. This is the attitude of people. They want to see payback. And I think we have to demand a fraud investigation. I think we have to challenge all this crime. It's interesting. Alan Greenspan said there was no fraud. Now he's saying it was extensive fraud, there needed to be more enforcement. The reason the laws are the way they are is that they were changed by the lobbying of the financial services industry. They spent millions of dollars to deregulate, to decriminalize the whole environment, to, you know, basically decrease the size of the enforcement agencies. This was done deliberately to create a situation so that they couldn't be prosecuted the way bankers were prosecuted after the S&L [savings and loan] crisis with over 1,500 going to prison.
JAY: But that happened, and all of this happens after that. In other words—and I'm not arguing against convicting these people or—I think what they did was criminal, but the idea of an economy based on deliberately created bubbles that you know is going to burst and you're going to make money on the upside, you're going to sell short before the burst to make money on the burst, that's happened over and over again, not just in real estate.
SCHECHTER: It is true. You need structural reform here, not these tinkering-around little rule changes that are being proposed by the Obama administration. That's the appearance of financial reform, not the reality of financial reform. And all the compromises which are part of the whole congressional process will guarantee that this will happen again. In fact, it seems to be happening in the aftermath of what's happened in Greece and in Europe—people are talking about a second recession, if not something worse. So, you know, we're not out of the woods yet by any means.
JAY: Okay. So for ordinary people, they're going to have to vote this time, and there's congressional elections coming up [inaudible] presidential election. And if something's going to change, people are going to have to start voting for people that want to stop a bubble economy. So what would be a set of criteria you might say, if you're going to choose a candidate, here are some of the things they'd better stand for, or else it's not real?
SCHECHTER: Well, unfortunately, the libertarians and the right seem to have appropriated the gut issues. And, you know, they've convinced their public, their constituencies, that the government is to blame for everything. And the government certainly has been complicit, because the government has been in a sense captured by these financial interests and taken over, by and large, with all the money that's been poured into political campaign and all the corruption that's there. So we have to try to do something about that and we have to support candidates who are willing to raise these issues and call for not only accountability but fundamental change.
JAY: But what are two or three things that you think need to be called for, that you would ask somebody running, "Are you for this or not?"
SCHECHTER: Well, I mean, for one thing, you know, accountability is a very critical issue. But also, you know, we need to change and control, you know, hedge funds, which are unregulated right now and a part of a shadow banking system. We need to bring them under the scrutiny, you know, of the government. We need to limit the use of derivative products, which, you know, allow so much flexibility for these financial, you know, buccaneers to be successful. Moreover, we need a full investigation of who profited from this whole financial crisis. That has yet to happen. We still don't know who's making all the money and who—we know who isn't, you know, and that's mostly the working people, you know, of our country. We need jobs, we need, you know, economic security for people. That's not going to happen unless there are these structural changes.
JAY: And the structural change they're talking about after spending trillions in increasing the size of the deficit and now creating the idea that the deficit is the big problem facing us, and now they're going to talk about a value-added tax so they can actually get ordinary people paying the cost of the crisis.
SCHECHTER: Well, I think you're going to see that happening, because, you know, the states are bankrupt. Many states are bankrupt right now. There's been a tremendous shredding of the social safety net, cutbacks in education, cutbacks in social services. So money has to come from somewhere, and they're going to try to soak the people to provide it through a new form of taxation. I think that's—.
JAY: And at the same time they want to get rid of the inheritance tax.
SCHECHTER: I think that's obvious. On the other hand, we have to make Wall Street pay, if you will. We have to demand, you know, that they be held accountable. And I don't mean just being put in jail, but actually with financial taxes on financial transactions, you know, that would be helpful. That would generate a lot of money. Basically, we have to rearrange the way things are going. The way they're going is that they're enriching the rich, and they're leading to more stratification, more class divide, more anger on the part of ordinary people. We've got to reverse that, and we need, you know, politicians who will stand up for these principles. And so far they're very few and far between.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Danny.
SCHECHTER: Thank you.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And you can find out more about Plunder the film at—tell us.
SCHECHTER: Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.
JAY: There you go. And you can buy it there and you can get it on iTunes and other places. Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.
End of Transcript

MEXICO'S DISAPPEARING MEZCAL WORMS

Across Mexico, and in many world capitals, people are increasingly raising a glass of mezcal, a traditional Mexican liquor. Connoisseurs of the strong drink say it tastes best when served the traditional way-- with a worm in it. But the worm population is being pushed into decline, due to the drink's growing popularity. Franc Contreras reports from Oaxaca state in southern Mexico.

PERU POVERTY DRIVES ILLEGAL MINING

As the international price of gold continues to soar, thousands of people in Peru have moved to gold mining areas in the hope of striking it rich. Along with the unregulated digging comes a trail of deforestation and chemical contamination that is damaging one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. In addition to the negative environmental impact, there are also many social problems in the boom towns that have emerged. Al Jazeera's Craig Mauro reports.

Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves

http://www.ted.com Tan Le's astonishing new computer interface reads its user's brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects, and even physical electronics, with mere thoughts (and a little concentration). She demos the headset, and talks about its far-reaching applications.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Kevin Stone: The bio-future of joint replacement

http://www.ted.com Arthritis and injury grind down millions of joints, but few get the best remedy -- real biological tissue. Kevin Stone shows a treatment that could sidestep the high costs and donor shortfall of human-to-human transplants with a novel use of animal tissue.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Haiti Earthquake Update: AIDG's Catherine Lainé, live from Haiti (BB Video)

Watch on YouTube | Download MP4 | Dotsub (with foreign language translations)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, I speak with Haitian-American blogger and sustainable tech development activist Catherine Lainé (photo at left from earlier this year). She was working in Haiti when the catastrophic earthquake struck earlier this week. Catherine spoke to us via Skype video from Cap-Haïtien, where she is working out of a space shared with AIDG (Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group) and a kindred nonprofit known as SOIL.

A number of her family members live in Haiti. At the time of this interview, all were safely accounted for, except for her brother, who resides in the devastated capital city of Port-au-Prince. He is currently still missing. Catherine is trying to get into the city to locate him, as I publish this blog post.

Among the observations she shares: aid groups are running out of body bags, and corpses are piling up so fast that the morgues have no space. The internet is a vital form of communication, as are cellphones—when they work—and she is seeing people in Haiti using social networking services as a means to try and locate missing loved ones within Haiti. The environment is so chaotic and roads so badly damaged that even in-country, mobile technology and web-based social networking services like Facebook are playing a vital role in the reconnection process. Don't assume that because Haiti is so poor, nobody's using the internet. She says cell service has been spotty, with certain carriers performing better than others. She connected to us using WIMAX, and the degree to which that service has performed during the disaster makes her a real believer in the promise of that particular wireless technology.

Edited video transcript after the jump (recorded at 1130pm ET on Jan. 14, 2010), along with Catherine's suggestions on how to help.

BOING BOING: Where are you right now?

CATHERINE LAINÉ: About 100km outside the capital, about a six hour drive given the current road conditions.

BB: What has the connectivity been like since the quake hit?

CATHERINE: Pretty difficult. Everyone got on the phone at the same time to talk to their families, one of the major cellphone companies here—their towers collapsed. But communications are normalizing, and I've heard from relatives via cellphone today.

BB: How do you go about trying to find someone there, given all of the chaos, and how difficult it is to get from one place to another with damaged roads?

CATHERINE: People are relying a lot on cellphone calls. Travel within the country is extremely difficult. I'm hearing a lot of people using social networks, posting pictures of lost loved ones on Facebook or CNNn's ireport site. Right now it seems that the internet is one of the more resilient forms of communication.

It's surreal. People are used to hearing about Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and because of this the idea that some of these people in Haiti are using internet-based technology to find loved ones might be surprising. But I'm shocked and happy that companies like Access Haiti are able to keep their services up and operational. WIMAX has been trying to get off the ground in US cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, and I'm definitely a bigger fan of that technology now in terms of disaster coping, after this experience.

Most of the cell providers are down. One of the largest companies is an Irish company, Digicell. Typically they're among the best service in the country and their engineers are having such a difficult time coping. Voilá, another popular mobile provider, is just barely starting to get calls through, it's a shock when phone calls get through, it's like magic when the phone rings right now.

BB: What are AIDG and other sustainability NGOs that you collaborate with focusing efforts on right now?

CATHERINE: We're coordinating with civil engineers to come to the capital and do risk assessment. One thing we're going to try and do is help with translation and logistical support, helping to coordinate the incoming volunteers from various organizations, to help put people coming in from outside to work in the most effective ways possible, because we are very familiar with the country and with the needs here. So, a lot of coordination help.

BB: What do people need to understand about this current crisis that they don't understand?

CATHERINE: I think one of the things people forget about natural disasters is that after the immediate disaster falls out of the news, the need is still there. When they're opening their hearts right now, they also need to think about a long term giving strategy. Put it in your Google calendar, and give again in a year. When the reconstruction starts, we're going to need another outpouring. Reconstruction is a long process and we're going to need their help for a long time.

People need to realize it's not going to turn around overnight, but that they should not lose hope for Haiti.

BB: Many watching this may not be familiar with Haiti. When we hear about Haiti we think about this poor country cursed with a history of violence and natural disasters. What would you say to someone who thinks of Haiti as a problem?

CATHERINE: People need to think about the way they frame news stories... referring to Haiti all the time as "the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere," it's just an example of journalistic laziness. In any story, there is a backstory that doesn't sell papers, that doesn't get traffic. The story we hear about Haiti is always about its poverty, and not about its beauty.

What's so heartbreaking about this particular tragedy is that just when Haiti is at this point of such hope, Bill Clinton running the Clinton Global Initiative and saying this is the time in history when Haiti has the biggest chance for positive change... people don't know that, the typical person in America hasn't seen the amazing richness and beauty of the country.

My family's here, so it's hard for me not to come here, but the energy, the language, the people... the first time I came here was in 2006, and it felt like coming home. It's like Marmite, you love it or you hate it. Once Haiti gets under your skin it's there for life.

I think it's good that more Haitian-Americans are reporting about the news, in this news cycle. They can give a different sense about the country than someone who's just going there for the first time and is not of the culture. There's a sense of a different tone with which people talk about Haiti, a different flavor who are either from Haiti or have had experience in developing countries, they have a different understanding. When people talk about Haiti, there are a lot of arts and culture in different parts of the country.

Haiti isn't just a basket case. I think people need to understand the other social, economic, and political factors that have conspired to make Haiti the way it is right now. You need to think about those to understand why Haiti has come to the point it is right now. Haiti has not become almost a failed state by accident.

For instance, consider the difference in how the Carter and Reagan administrations dealt with human rights during the Duvalier regime. During the Carter administration, the rights of journalists and activists in Haiti were respected a little more because of the pressure from the US. But when Reagan took office, that all changed because of America's focus on "fighting Communism," and journalists and human rights workers here felt the pressure immediately. Haiti does not exist in a vacuum.

BB: Catherine, are there some final thoughts you'd like to leave our viewers with?

CATHERINE: Being here, it's been incredible to see the outpouring of support and emotion that people have put forth... If there is any good thing you can get... from a disaster like this.... it's that people can be.... so kind and generous. [pauses, in tears.] I would say more, but...

There are so many bodies on the street, the morgues are full, the Red Cross has run out of body bags... just the thought of all the people who are still buried under the rubble... right now, it is overwhelming.

Catherine suggests that those who wish to help the people of Haiti consider donating to the following organizations:

Mardi Gras 1956: "Through my father's lens" (Boing Boing Video)

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video features rare and historic film from Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1956. Artist Mar Dore stumbled on a box of slides in her family's home in Texas a few years back, and inside, discovered photographs that her father, John Mizenko, took of the parades back in the era of "Mad Men." That box of slides was like a time capsule, Mar says, and opened a door into history—the history of New Orleans, and of her own family.

I've blogged one of his photographs here on Boing Boing before (you can buy prints now), but in today's Boing Boing Video, we explore the personal story behind them, and we travel back in time through "found" video footage of that same parade.

Below and after the jump, Mar (who, it should be noted, is a member of my family) shares the story behind this video:

South Park's 200th, litigious celebs and Mohammed: Matt Stone and Trey Parker (BB Video)

In this Boing Boing Video exclusive, South Park co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker speak with Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin on the eve of the 200th episode of the hit Comedy Central series. Stone and Parker reveal their plans to revisit battles over the boundaries of what can and cannot be done on television—including a quest to see just how many celebrities they can manage to piss off in a single episode, and whether Comedy Central will once again try to stop them from depicting the image and voice of a cartoon version of the Muslim prophet Mohammed on the show.

The 200th episode airs Wednesday, April 14 at 10pm on Comedy Central. Fan tributes here: South Park 200 (southpark200.com)

Rich Fulcher's Tiny Acts of Rebellion: BB Video Interview

Comedian Rich Fulcher is best known for his multiple character roles on the hit BBC comedy series "The Mighty Boosh"—the most notorious of whom is Eleanor—and for his dark sketch comedy show "Snuffbox."

I caught up with him on a Venice Beach rooftop to discuss the release of his very funny new book, Tiny Acts of Rebellion, and to roast s'mores beneath the stars. The resulting Boing Boing Video episode includes gutbusting fits of laughter, and melted marshmallows coated with gravel and cat-hair. Fulcher's a lot better at comedy than he is at cooking campfire treats.

LA folks: Fulcher will be performing this Friday, May 28, at Largo in Los Angeles, with a terrific lineup including Chris Hardwick, Har Mar Superstar, and Neil Hamburger. Maybe Eleanor will make an appearance?

Poster with details below, tickets here, and proceeds benefit a Nashville flood disaster response fund. More Fulcher (and Eleanor) shows in LA and other US cities to follow...

iPhone 4: How does it perform for video recording?

I took the new iPhone 4 out for a Venice Beach bike ride, to test the smartphone's new high-res video recording capabilities. All footage in this video shot with iPhone 4.

Remember that the iPhone allows you to tap an icon on-screen to switch the camera orientation from one face to another. For some portions (while riding my bike), the iPhone was strapped on to my left hand with rubber bands (I call this The Rubber Band Steadicam™), and the iPhone camera was facing out one direction with medium-res video recording. In other sections of this video (skaters skating, orchids, ocean, and interview with skater Kiko, age 8) the iPhone camera was activated in the other direction and captured high-resolution video.

You can see the difference, but the verdict in short form is this: iPhone 4 outperforms other smartphones and handheld ultra-mobile digital video camcorders, and I've tried nearly all of 'em for web video production while on the road. When it comes to video recording in a smartphone (and in "Flip" class devices), iPhone 4 is the one to beat.

Again you do have to be mindful of that camera orientation switch option noted above: when you shoot video out of one side of the device, you get lower-resolution 640 x 480 footage, and when you shoot out of the other side, you get far higher-res 1280 x 720. You can tap an area to focus in and balance exposure and hue, even while you are shooting. Video is saved and exported as h.264 QuickTime, and you can email, MMS, or publish to YouTube right from the iPhone. Editing on the device is possible with iMovie for iPhone ($5 in the Apple App store).

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Speaks!

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Speaks!
Kara Swisher interviews Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of local business review site, Yelp about a range of issues

NEW FINANCE BILL WILL NOT PREVENT ANOTHER CRISIS

GOLDMAN 'TOO BIG TO PROSECUTE'

Bill Black: SEC fine against Goldman is no deterrence, it will all happen again






NEW FINANCE BILL WILL NOT PREVENT ANOTHER CRISIS

Bill Black: Administration and Congress not willing to break up big banks or control exec. compensation

← BACK

PRODUCTIVITY IS UP SO WHY CUT SOCIAL PROGRAMS?

दार्थ वादर कॉल अबाउट iphone4

Hearst Ponders an iPad Premium For Its Magazines

Hearst Ponders an iPad Premium For Its Magazines
The publisher says it will charge at least as much for the iPad versions of its magazines as it does for its paper and ink version. And in the case of at least one title, it may ask for more.

IPhone 4 Press Conference Reaction

IPhone 4 Press Conference Reaction
Apple held a press conference to discuss "Antennagate" and the iPhone 4. Eric Savitz from Barron's gives his first impressions right after the event.