February 13, 2014

The world's busiest airport -- not so busy today

By Kelly Yamanouchi
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Delta Air Lines typically operates nearly 2,000 flights a day to and from Atlanta, but the ice storm hitting the Southeast on Wednesday reduced that operation to just a few dozen flights.

And more cancellations are coming Thursday morning.

Atlanta-based Delta said it has canceled 1,785 flights scheduled for Wednesday, including both departures and arrivals. Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant said the airline plans to safely operate a few dozen departures, but the cancellations could grow depending on weather conditions.

Southwest Airlines and its AirTran Airways subsidiary canceled all of their flights Wednesday. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ajc.com/news/business/with-thousands-of-flight-cancellations-airlines-to/ndLqj/

February 12, 2014

Food Fights, Corporate Trade Agreements, and States' Rights: Democracy or Corporatocracy?

Food Fights, Corporate Trade Agreements, and States' Rights: Democracy or Corporatocracy?

Wednesday, 12 February 2014 13:04
By Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association | Report


Along with campaigns against fracking and climate change, perhaps the largest and most dynamic grassroots movement in North America today is the anti-genetic engineering, Millions Against Monsanto food movement.

Last May and October, as part of a global “March Against Monsanto,” over a million protestors, many for the first time, marched and picketed in hundreds of cities and towns across North America, calling for mandatory labels or bans on GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).

In Mexico, a massive coalition of over 300 urban, rural and indigenous organizations have successfully mobilized public opinion and the Federal courts to ban, at least temporarily, the commercial planting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn and other GMOs.

In Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Movement (CBAN), the organic food community and environmental groups are protesting against the spread of GM corn, canola, soy and sugar beets, and suing the government over the legalization of a new, highly controversial, genetically engineered salmon that threatens the livelihoods of traditional fishing and indigenous communities.

.....(snip).....

And without restoring and maintaining a balance of powers between nation states and transnational corporations; nation states and indigenous communities; federal governments, states and local home rule counties and municipalities; there can be no republic. Only a Corporatocracy, an unholy alliance and dictatorship of indentured politicians, media minions, and profit-at-any-cost corporations—driving us headlong toward climate catastrophe and economic collapse. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/21822-food-fights-corporate-trade-agreements-and-states-rights-democracy-or-corporatocracy

February 12, 2014

Are we there yet? New in-flight maps point to more fun on planes

(CNN) -- On a long flight, there is something tortuously satisfying about making frequent check-ins to the route map.

So much so that the moving map is actually the most popular feature on the in-flight entertainment system. Perhaps we can chalk it up to our inner child, who still demands to know "are we there yet?"

Despite their popularity, these cartographic progress reports have met with little innovation over the years, offering passengers barely more than the time to their next destination and current GPS coordinates. Seeing the untapped potential, some companies have started pushing the map to the next level.

This month, Singapore Airlines started trialing Hidden Journeys, a geo-entertainment program curated by The Royal Geographical Society with IBG and developed by software company Airborne Interactive. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/09/travel/flight-maps-the-newest-airline-moneymaker/index.html

February 12, 2014

Cheap, cheerful and cutthroat: Why Airbus and Boeing are cozying up to Asia's booming .........

[font size="1"]The A350 XWB performed its first ever airshow flyover at this year's Singapore Airshow[/font]


Cheap, cheerful and cutthroat: Why Airbus and Boeing are cozying up to Asia's booming budget airlines

By Charlotte Glennie, for CNN
February 12, 2014 -- Updated 0635 GMT


SINGAPORE (CNN) -- Of all the aircraft on display at the Singapore Airshow, the brand new, fuel-efficient Airbus A350 XWB is dominating attention.

Billed as the new generation wide-bodied jetliner and seen as a direct competitor to Boeing's Dreamliner, the A350 has been drawing crowds, taking part in aerial displays and opening its doors to select trade visitors. It's all part of a grand plan by Europe's Airbus to try to woo as many buyers as possible.

Inside the 40,000 square meters of airshow exhibition space, the plane's maker, Airbus, has also grabbed the limelight, announcing the first big deal of this biennial aerospace and defense trade show to a packed press conference on Tuesday -- the firm sale of 63 A320 Family single aisle aircraft to low cost Vietnamese carrier VietJetAir.

.......(snip).......

Battleground

As to who currently has the upper hand in Asia-Pacific, Airbus says in 2013 it won 80% of all new business in the region. But it's a more level playing field in terms of actual deliveries, with Airbus delivering 331 aircraft into Asia Pacific last year, representing 51% of all new carriers entering service here. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/11/business/singapore-air-show-airbus-boeing/

February 12, 2014

Civic Group Proposes Closing Parts of 20 Chicago Streets

IL: Civic Group Proposes Closing Parts of 20 Chicago Streets

Jon Hilkevitch
Source: Chicago Tribune
Created: February 12, 2014


Feb. 12--The idea of car-free streets might seem pointless to some, but if selected thoughtfully they are just the kind of peaceful havens that are in too-short supply in Chicago, a civic group says.

That group, which for years has advocated pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly Chicago streets, is releasing a proposal Wednesday for 20 car-free areas and public plazas across the city.

The Active Transportation Alliance's objective is to make downtown and the neighborhoods more attractive places to live and shop, and to help residents get around easily and safely by promoting more bicycling and walking while also reducing traffic accidents, officials at the alliance said.

"Chicago's shortage of parks and playgrounds away from the lakefront is well documented," said Ron Burke, the group's executive director, "but the city also comes up short for open space in the form of car-free public plazas and streets." .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/11309583/civic-group-proposes-closing-parts-of-20-chicago-streets

February 12, 2014

ATL

a reader-submitted photo from yesterday to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says it all:




http://www.ajc.com/gallery/news/local/reader-submitted-photos-weather-metro-area/gCHZ8/?icmp=ajc_internallink_textlink_homepage#4547740

February 12, 2014

Bus riders frozen out as fight over snow removal leaves many NJ Transit stops packed in ice

Commuters getting on and off NJ Transit buses along highways in Bergen and Passaic counties have been climbing over boulders of ice and snow for the past week because no one seemed to know who was supposed to plow the bus stops.

One woman hung onto an NJ Transit bus stop sign that poked out of a mound of packed snow on Route 3 east at Passaic Avenue in Clifton as she waited for a bus to New York City on Tuesday morning. Others, grumbling about conditions at the bus stop, walked around the ice and onto a shoulder of the road to wait for a bus, with rush-hour traffic passing just inches away.

“My husband has offered to shovel just so that I could have a safe path,” said Krystal Graves of Nutley, who is four months pregnant, as she exited a bus on Route 3 west at Passaic Avenue in the afternoon. “But it’s not his job.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.northjersey.com/clifton/Clifton_bus_riders_to_continue_to_stand_on_snow_jammed_shoulders_along_Route_3.html#sthash.kgw2uEwJ.dpuf

February 12, 2014

New Rules for Radicals

from In These Times:



New Rules for Radicals
How George Goehl is transforming community organizing.

BY David Moberg


As a hungry young drifter who had only recently (and barely) finished high school in the late 1980s, George Goehl (pronounced “gale”) got by with a little help from a free soup kitchen in Bloomington, Ind. A few years later, that kitchen served as the launching pad for his dynamic career as a community organizer. For the past six years, as executive director of the community-organizing network National People’s Action (NPA), Goehl has spurred a rapid growth. More important, he is spearheading a dramatic transformation of NPA’s strategy and goals—while helping to unleash more of the progressive potential of the large and uniquely American community organizing movement.

Goehl’s first political awakening came after he had returned to the soup kitchen as a volunteer in 1990. One day, it hit him that many of the patrons from years earlier were still regulars: The kitchen, part of our country’s tattered safety net, had kept them alive, but it had not reduced poverty, generally or individually. He began discussing the root causes of poverty with the kitchen’s patrons. Then, with tips from a mentor he met at a tenants’ organizing conference, he transformed the talkfest into the Coalition of Low-Income and Homeless Citizens. His work caught the attention of Shel Trapp, an organizer and a disciple of Saul Alinsky, the founder of modern community organizing.

Trapp recruited Goehl to study the craft in Chicago’s hard-pressed West Side neighborhoods in 1996. Goehl dutifully learned the commandments of traditional Chicago-style community organizing: Don’t talk ideology, just issues. No electoral politics. Build organizations, not movements. No coalitions: Protect organizational turf. Focus on neighborhoods and on concrete, winnable goals. Goehl quickly recruited hundreds of new members to Blocks Together, then an allied organization of National People’s Action, his first association with the multi-state network of community groups founded in 1972 by Trapp and the brilliant neighborhood leader Gale Cincotta.

NPA won widespread admiration for its 1977 success in getting Congress to pass the Community Reinvestment Act, which prevented banks from engaging in the practice known as redlining: disinvesting in poorer, seemingly riskier neighborhoods. But Goehl grew frustrated with the limits to his community organizing work. He thought that NPA had become too preoccupied with enforcing its landmark legislative victory and had failed to press onward to bigger goals, such as breaking up the banks or further regulating the industry. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16144/new_rules_for_radicals/

February 12, 2014

Another poor, oppressed, put-upon 1 percenter ............

Versailles Watch: John Mack Whines About How Badly Wall Street CEOs are Treated
Posted on February 12, 2014 by Yves Smith


You cannot make this stuff up. Reader Chris kindly sent this snapshot from a Google search:



.....(snip).....

The CNBC story flags the inflammatory portion, which starts at 5:23:

He (Mack) said he would love to see people “stop beating up on Lloyd and Jamie.” He added: “I think that would make a lot of sense, and I’m in favor of that.”

He said a debate over compensation was necessary and “healthy,” but he emphasized that chief executives should be judged according to their companies’ performance.

“As long as shareholders reward performance — what these companies have delivered — we can argue is it $10 million too much or $1 million too much,” Mr. Mack said.

Robert Peston, today writing about Barclays, by happenstance rebutted Mack’s efforts to off brush the fact that the leader of the banks that drove the global economy off the cliff were still employed at lavish pay levels:

The problem is that there is blank incomprehension from those not in the industry that the going rate remains so high for people widely seen as being more than walk-ons in the epic near-destruction of global financial capitalism just a short while ago.

The worst is that Mack and other members of his class (elite financiers and the 0.1%) really don’t get it. They live in such a cloistered world that the fact that they’ve gotten away with abject incompetence, malfeasance, and in the case of JP Morgan, almost certain criminal conduct (among other things, as we have discussed in considerable detail, Sarbanes Oxley violations and the criminal case that the DoJ settled rather than prosecuted), according to Mack, is perfectly kosher if investors don’t mind. And why should investors mind? Last I checked, crime and predatory conduct are very lucrative businesses if you can get away with it. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/versailles-watch-john-mack-whines-badly-wall-street-ceos-treated.html

February 12, 2014

You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi

You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi

Posted on Feb 11, 2014
By Julia Angwin, ProPublica




The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime.

But their spycraft—while incredibly invasive—was also technologically primitive by today’s standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obtained the above hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed.

The graphic appears to be shows forty-six connections, linking a target to various people (an “aunt,” “Operational Case Jentzsch,” presumably Bernd Jentzsch, an East German poet who defected to the West in 1976), places (“church”), and meetings (“by post, by phone, meeting in Hungary”).

Gary Bruce, an associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo and the author of “The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi,” helped me decode the graphic and other files. I was surprised at how crude the surveillance was. “Their main surveillance technology was mail, telephone, and informants,” Bruce said. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/you_know_who_else_collected_metadata_the_stasi_20140211