Alfred Woody's Kewl Blog [ 椼森 ]

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Egyptians march from Tahrir Square to support Occupy Oakland protestors

As they vowed earlier this week to do, Egyptian pro-democracy protesters marched from Tahrir square to the U.S. Embassy today to march in support of Occupy Oakland—and against the type of police brutality witnessed in Oakland on Tuesday night, and commonly experienced in Egypt.

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In this post, photos from Egyptian blogger Mohammed Maree, who is there at the march live-tweeting these snapshots. He is a journalist with Egytimes.org, a human rights activist, and a veterinarian; all photos are his.
The larger demonstration back at Tahrir was about issues closer to home: Egyptians are demanding that the military transfer power quickly to a representative civilian government, after the death by torture of a 24-year-old political prisoner named Essam Ali Atta. As the Guardian reports, critics say his death proves that the junta is failing to dismantle Mubarak's brutal security apparatus:

Essam Ali Atta, a civilian serving a two-year jail term in Cairo's high-security Tora prison following his conviction in a military tribunal earlier this year for an apparently "common crime", was reportedly attacked by prison guards after trying to smuggle a mobile phone sim card into his cell. According to statements from other prisoners who witnessed the assault, Atta had large water hoses repeatedly forced into his mouth and anus on more than one occasion, causing severe internal bleeding. An officer then transferred Atta to a central Cairo hospital, but he died within an hour.

His funeral took place today. Follow live tweets from the memorial at #esamatta. Journalist Reem Abdellatif, who is there, tweets:

His sister just passed out screaming they took my brother from me. [photo]. The scene is devastating at the morgue #essamatta's mom and sister keep calling out to him like he's still alive. Essam was 24.

As some protesters noted, that is exactly the same age as Scott Olsen, the US vet injured at Occupy Oakland. They see both men as victims of state brutality.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/28/tahrir.html

by via Xeni Jardin Friday Oct 28th, 2011 11:36 AM

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http://boingboing.net/2011/10/28/tahrir.html

by via Xeni Jardin Friday Oct 28th, 2011 11:36 AM

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http://boingboing.net/2011/10/28/tahrir.html

New Veterans Hit Hard by Economic Crisis

After a mortar sent Andrew Spurlock hurtling off a roof in Iraq, ending his Army career in 2006, the seasoned infantryman set aside bitterness over his back injury and began to chart his life in storybook fashion: a new house, a job as a police officer and more children.

“We had a budget and a plan,” said Mr. Spurlock, 29, a father of three, who with his wife, Michelle, hoped to avoid the pitfalls of his transition from Ramadi, Iraq, to Apopka, Fla.
But the move proved treacherous, as it often does for veterans. The job with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office fell through after officials there told Mr. Spurlock that he needed to “decompress” after two combat tours, a judgment that took him by surprise. Scrambling, he settled for a job delivering pizzas.
Mr. Spurlock’s disability claim for his back injury took 18 months to process, a year longer than expected. With little choice, the couple began putting mortgage payments on credit cards. The family debt climbed to $60,000, a chunk of it for medical bills, including for his wife and child. Foreclosure seemed certain.
While few Americans are sheltered from the jolt of the recent economic crisis, the nation’s newest veterans, particularly the wounded, are being hit especially hard. The triple-whammy of injury, unemployment and waiting for disability claims to be processed has forced many veterans into foreclosure, or sent them teetering on its edge, according to veterans’ organizations.
The problem is hard to quantify because there are no foreclosure statistics singling out veterans and service members. Congress recently asked the Veterans Affairs Department to find out how badly veterans were being affected, particularly by foreclosures. The Army, too, began tracking requests for help on foreclosure issues for the first time. Service organizations report that requests for help from military personnel and new veterans, especially those who were wounded, mentally or physically, and are struggling to keep their houses and pay their bills, has jumped sharply.
“The demand curve has gone almost straight up this year,” said Bill Nelson, executive director for USA Cares, a nonprofit group that provides financial help to members of the military and to veterans. Housing, Mr. Nelson said, “is the biggest driver in the last 12 months.”
Congress has recently taken small steps to help, banning lenders from foreclosing on military personnel for nine months after their return from overseas, up from three months, and ensuring that interest rates on their loans remain stable for a year. Another relief bill to prevent certain injured veterans from losing their homes while they wait for their disability money was signed into law in October. The protection is good for one year.
“We owe these men and women more than a pat on the back,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who introduced one of the bills.
But the short-term measures do little to address the underlying economic difficulties that new veterans face, beginning with the job hunt. Veterans, particularly those in their 20s, have faced higher unemployment rates in recent years than those who never served in the military, though the gap has shrunk as the economy has worsened. (Veterans traditionally have lower unemployment rates than nonveterans.)
Recently discharged veterans, though, fared worst of all. A 2007 survey for the Veterans Affairs Department of 1,941 combat veterans who left the military mostly in 2005 showed nearly 18 percent were unemployed as of last year. The average national jobless rate in October was 6.5 percent.
A quarter of those who found jobs failed to make a living wage, earning less than $21,840 a year.
“You fill out a job application and you can’t write ‘long-range reconnaissance and sniper skills,’ ” said Mr. Spurlock, who searched a year for a better-paying job than delivering pizza, finally finding one as a construction supervisor.
The situation is especially troubling for the injured, whose financial problems begin almost immediately.
“The wife drops everything to be by his bedside,” said Meredith Leyva, founder of Operation Homefront, a nonprofit group that provides emergency money and aid to 33,000 military families a year, including the Spurlocks. “She stays at the nearest hotel to make sure he is alive. They live that way for months. She either has to quit her job or she is fired. This bankrupts people.”

My pay is very low, moans advertising tycoon with a basic salary of £1 MILLION a year

One of Britain’s highest paid executives prompted outrage last night by insisting that his £1million basic salary is 'very low’.
Sir Martin Sorrell, head of advertising giant WPP, rejected criticism of executive pay in the wake of a study showing it rose by almost 50 per cent in the past year.
David Cameron described the huge increases commanded by bosses at a time when ordinary workers have had their incomes squeezed as 'disturbing’.

High flying: Sir Martin Sorrell, pictured with his wife Lady Cristiana, said his pay as head of advertising giant WPP is very low

And Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it was a 'slap in the face’ for employees, seizing on the astonishing rise as evidence that tax cuts for the low paid should take priority over scrapping the 50p top tax rate.
But Sir Martin, 66, said his bumper income, which rose by 83 per cent to £4.2million last year, was fully justified and was mostly linked to the firm’s performance.
He added that he considered his basic salary, of just over £1million, to be 'very low’.

Condemnation: Nick Clegg (left) and David Cameron have both said bumper pay rises for Britain's top bosses are unacceptable

But his comments astonished MPs and infuriated union leaders. Labour education spokesman Karen Buck described the huge rise in executive pay as 'grotesque’, adding: 'What planet do these people live on?’
Deborah Hargreaves, chair of the High Pay Commission which is looking into executives’ remuneration, said the performance-related pay deals enjoyed by executives 'don’t really work’.

My pay is very low, moans advertising tycoon with a basic salary of £1 MILLION a year

Commenting on the study by the research group Income Data Services, she added: 'I think it is very hard to justify these sorts of pay increases when we have seen companies’ share prices go down, profits down, companies laying off staff, and when average wages are going up 1 or 2 per cent, not even keeping up with price rises.’
But in an interview with the Daily Mail, Sir Martin angrily defended his bumper pay packet.
He said: 'The only planet I am living on is looking at our company in terms of the competition – that’s the planet. We need to maintain a competitive position. The UK only accounts for 12 per cent of our business. We have more Brazilians, Russians, and Indians than we have Americans and Brits.
'In 2009 it was a tough year for us and compensation across the board fell. In 2010 we delivered record profit.
'People are not distinguishing between fixed pay and incentive pay. I don’t sell my stock. Other people, including our competitors, do. The value of the business has grown from £1million to £8.5billion over its life.’
However, there was little sympathy for him among ordinary workers outside WPP’s offices in West London last night.
One of the firm’s delivery men, who declined to give his name, said: 'To say that his salary is not very much is really insensitive. I’m not earning that much, no one is.’

Julian Chambers, a street cleaner working next to the building, said: 'I work here every day on minimum wage and I work weekends just to pay the bills. It’s been really hard even finding work during the past few years. It just shows how out of touch he must be.’
Yesterday’s report by the IDS showed pay among directors of Britain’s FTSE 100 companies had risen by 49 per cent last year. It now averages £3.8million.
The Prime Minister said the increase was 'not okay’ when millions were facing pay freezes and called for 'transparency, proper accountability and a sense of responsibility from boardrooms’.
And Bob Crow, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union, said: 'The same top bosses demanding wage restraint and attacks on workers’ rights on the shop floor have been caught stuffing their own pockets in the boardroom.’

British families are £6,000 worse off than 3 months ago

Soaring energy bills, dwindling house prices and high cost of groceries take their toll on households' wealth

The average family lost almost £6,000 in the past three months, Daily Mail figures reveal.
Savers with large pension pots were the worst hit after the stock market collapsed in August.
But soaring energy bills, dwindling house prices and the high cost of groceries have also taken their toll on households’ total wealth.

Worrying times: Domestic financial woes are set to inflict further misery on households, who have lost almost £6,000 in three months

And with inflation of 5.2 per cent eating into savings, domestic financial woes are set to continue.
Between June and September, the average family will have lost £5,736, according to figures produced by the Daily Mail.
At the same time, a respected report shows families’ total wealth suffered the biggest three-month fall ever recorded.
The findings by the investment company Alliance Trust take into account household budgets, family earnings and wider economic conditions.
The company said the third quarter – between June and September – saw the biggest fall on its index since it began reporting in 1997.
‘Higher inflation continues to cause higher basic goods prices and a loss of real spending power which is hitting household budgets,’ said the report’s author, Linsey Thomson.
‘On top of this, economic activity has slowed and we have seen a rise in the unemployment rate which makes conditions even tougher.’

Stress: The effect of soaring energy bills and the high cost of groceries is increasingly disheartening

She added the squeeze would continue into next year. ‘The key thing is the labour market, and once we start to see that improving, then things will begin to look up for families.’ The hardest hit across the period were savers and pension holders.
Figures compiled by the Daily Mail show anyone who had managed to squirrel away £60,000 in a pension scheme will have seen the value of their savings diminish to the tune of £5,370 – leaving them with just £54,630.
Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown, the independent financial adviser, said: ‘When you have big drops in pension values, it’s not surprising that savers are disheartened.
‘And it’s unfortunate but inevitable that it’s going to be hard for many people who face wage freezes, economic uncertainty and rising inflation to keep on saving into a pension.
‘But the longer term is what matters here, and it’s vital for those affected to accommodate all the financial difficulties in order to keep on saving for the future.’
House prices were down 0.1 per cent in the three months, according to Nationwide, meaning a £250,000 family home would now be worth £250 less.
Over the summer energy bills rose by more than £100 per household as every major supplier hiked prices by up to 19 per cent.
This left households facing an average gas and electricity bill of £1,250, and threatened to leave millions more in fuel poverty.
Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at the price comparison website uSwitch, said: ‘Families are coming under enormous financial pressure from every direction and two rounds of energy price hikes in a year are going to push some even closer to the edge this winter.
‘The facts speak for themselves: almost 7million households living in fuel poverty, a third of people saying energy is already unaffordable in the UK and over a quarter already struggling to afford their bills.’
Although the cost of a family shop actually fell slightly across the period – now £1.15 cheaper than in June – the average remains high at £49.96.
James Ford, spokesman for the shopping website mySupermarket, said: ‘In the past year alone, shoppers have been subject to double-digit price hikes to the contents of their shopping trolley.
‘It is imperative consumers shop around for the best deals, and it’s easy too – savvy shoppers can switch to cheaper budget products and supermarket own labels to make their budgets stretch.’
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘This fall in household income is dragging down growth.
‘You can’t build a recovery on the back of people getting poorer.
‘Life for millions of people in and out of work is now just as tough, if not worse, than at the height of the recession.
‘Ministers must do all they can to ease the squeeze for hard-pressed families, rather than blaming everything on Europe.’

Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund Sold All U.S. Mortgage Bonds

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Norway's $570 billion sovereign wealth fund sold all its holdings in U.S. mortgage-backed securities as part of a shift of its fixed-income portfolio.

The fund holds no mortgage bonds issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S.-controlled mortgage financiers, and an "insignificant" amount of private home loan-backed bonds, said Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management, today in an interview in Oslo.

"We've reduced our holdings of mortgage-backed securities," he said. "MBS has been taken out of our internal policy benchmark. This means that we don't have mortgage-backed securities issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae any longer."

The debt was sold primarily because of the refinancing risk, he said. In the U.S., when a borrower refinances a mortgage it can cut short the maturity of the bond backed by the loan and reduce the expected interest over time, so-called prepayment risk. The fund held 36 billion kroner ($6.6 billion) in bonds from Fannie Mae at the end of the second quarter and 11.5 billion kroner from Freddie Mac at the start of the year.

The change doesn't include European covered bonds, Slyngstad said.

Pimco Positive

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage bonds fell earlier this week as the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency announced changes to guidelines for the government-supported companies' refinancing program affecting so-called underwater borrowers.

The decline prompted Pacific Investment Management Co., manager of the world's biggest bond fund, to call for investors to buy the bonds. Pimco boosted mortgage securities to 38 percent of assets in its $242 billion Total Return Fund in September, the most since January, from 32 percent the prior month, according to data on the firm's website.

Fannie Mae's 6 percent 30-year mortgage bond fell today. The yield rose 2 basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 2.38 percent while the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell 2 basis points to 2.38 percent. Yields move inversely to price.

The fund announced today it has changed its internal benchmark portfolio, reducing it to 4,000 bonds from 11,500 bonds and keeping primarily corporate and government debt. The fund also weighted its euro government bond holding according to gross domestic product rather than the size of the market, which it had earlier proposed as a way of reducing its holdings in nations with increasing debt.

The investor, which is part of the central bank and gets guidelines from the government, held 55.6 percent in stocks, 44.1 percent in bonds and 0.3 percent in real estate at the end of the quarter. It's mandated to hold 60 percent in stocks, 35 percent in bonds and 5 percent in real estate, which it first bought this year.

Infusion

It got its first capital infusion in 1996 and has been taking on more risk as it expands globally, raising its stock portfolio from 40 percent in 2007. It first added stocks in 1998, emerging markets in 2000 and this year real estate to boost returns and safeguard wealth.

Norway, a nation of 4.9 million people, generates money for the fund from taxes on oil and gas, ownership of petroleum fields and dividends from its 67 percent stake in Statoil ASA, the country's largest energy company. Norway is the world's second-largest gas exporter and the seventh-biggest oil exporter. The fund invests outside Norway to avoid stoking domestic inflation.

--With assistance by Meera Bhatia in Oslo and Jody Shenn in New York, Editors: Jonas Bergman, Tasneem Brogger

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Police In Riot Gear Remove 'Occupy SD' Protesters

Occupy San Diego Protesters Removed For Unlawful Assembly

SAN DIEGO -- A legion of officers in riot gear cleared Occupy San Diego protesters out of their unauthorized urban squatters' camp at Civic Center Plaza early Friday, arresting dozens of activists who refused to cooperate with the predawn expulsion.

The dismantling of the downtown tent community, deemed an unlawful assembly by the city, began about 2 a.m. and lasted roughly 45 minutes, according to San Diego police. There were no reports of injuries as 40 people were taken into custody, though two of the detainees resisted and had to be forcibly subdued, SDPD public affairs Lt. Andra Brown said.

During the sweep, overseen by Police Chief William Lansdowne and his highest-ranking department heads, some of the demonstrators relocated south to Children's Park. Since that recreation area is closed daily between midnight and 6 a.m., officers cleared it, as well, taking 11 more people into custody in the process.Participants in the three-week-old rally -- part of a loose-knit nationwide movement against perceived corporate greed and government corruption -- reassembled later in the morning for a solidarity march. They wound up at SDPD headquarters on Broadway just as a news conference on the law enforcement crackdown was getting under way.Inside a conference room, Assistant Police Chief Boyd Long addressed reporters to the sounds of dozens of protesters chanting and beating drums in an adjacent courtyard. Among the slogans shouted by the group was "Let them out!" referring to their jailed comrades.Those arrested -- 37 men and 14 women, ranging in age from 18 to 50 -- will face charges of illegal lodging, unlawful assembly, resisting police and encroachment on public property, Long said."The department supports the rights of those who choose to peacefully protest," he said. "However, we must balance those rights to (ensure) that they do not impede upon the rights of others or allow for violations of the law."As the downtown encampment remained set up in recent days despite clean-up orders, city officials deemed it a public nuisance."We'd received complaints from the (concourse) facility staff regarding human and animal feces, urination, drug use, littering and damage to city property," Long said.The police personnel who showed up at the civic center en masse Friday morning gave the demonstrators ample opportunity to remove their things, and most of the campers complied, according to the assistant chief."Officers then began moving slowly across the plaza, providing an exit for those wishing to leave," he said.Long discounted reports that police had stepped on or walked over a tent while demonstrators slept inside."That is not true, to my knowledge," he said. "The chief, I and other members of the command staff were watching the entire event. Those officers were slow; they were methodical."Mayor Jerry Sanders praised the police department's handling of the volatile situation."I thought our officers did an excellent job," he said while attending a late-morning San Diego Association of Governments board meeting downtown.Regarding the timing of the sweep, the mayor said Lansdowne appeared to have chosen the dead of night as "the least confrontational time.""We don't care if (the demonstrators) go anywhere," he said. "They have a legitimate right to protest wherever they want. They just have to follow the guidelines."Noting that the squatters had been asked dozens of times, in a non-confrontational manner, to remove their shelters and other trappings from the plaza, Sanders said the lingering assembly had raised safety concerns as well as potential sanitary problems."They shouldn't have been shocked that this happened," he said.Occupy San Diego members can return to the concourse any time to express their free-speech rights as long as they do not set up camp again, Long said.Shortly after daybreak, workers began giving the courtyard a thorough cleaning as a group of protesters stood behind a row of police officers at the nearby corner of Third Avenue and B Street. Watching the crew spray down the pavement with high-powered hoses, one of the ousted dissidents yelled, "Thank you for washing my house!"By mid-afternoon, about 30 demonstrators had returned to the plaza and were milling around next to the Civic Theatre, with roughly the same number of police officers posted nearby.Protesters first converged on the site Oct. 7 to take their assorted stands against purported misdeeds of banks, corporations and politicians. The movement began in New York last month and has since spread nationwide.The local rally has been largely free of confrontation, with the major exceptions being this morning's sweep and an Oct. 14 scuffle during which officers pepper-sprayed about a half-dozen protesters and arrested two of them while clearing camping gear from the public space next to City Hall.In defiance of city officials' orders to keep the concourse clear of shelters, sleeping bags and other large personal items, demonstrators began erecting tents there again earlier this week.Participants in the ongoing social-justice rally have vowed to remain in the downtown area until their demands -- including meaningful action addressing joblessness, poverty and political corruption -- are met or at least seriously considered.

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