Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Pregnant #OccupySeattle Protester Miscarries After Being Kicked, Pepper Sprayed

By David, Crooks and Liars

November 22, 2011 08:00 AM

Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.

“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'”

She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.

“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.

…

While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.

“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.

When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.

“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.

“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”

Yup.  Culture of Life.  Fetuses are people too, except when Corporate ‘People’ use their Police to kill them.

Dirty Fucking Hippy.

We interrupt your regular programming…

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Que lastima.

Egyptian generals to cede power early

By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post

Updated: Tuesday, November 22, 1:21 PM

CAIRO – Egypt’s military chief announced Tuesday that the embattled armed forces leadership would hand over power to an elected president no later than July 1, 2012 – earlier than previously expected – even as he defiantly defended the military’s handling of mounting opposition protests.

In his first address to the nation since he took power in February, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi appeared angry, accusing protesters of “insulting” the military despite its efforts to govern the nation during a difficult transitional period. He warned  that “any other efforts aimed at hitting us and destroying our spirits and the trust between the armed forces and the people will not be helpful.”

…

“We never killed a single Egyptian, man or woman,” Tantawi said in his speech. “The Egyptian military believes it is part and parcel of the Egyptian people.”

…

As his speech ended, many protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square responded in unison with loud chants of “Get out! Get out! We will not leave! He will leave!”

…

The pledge to hand over power to a civilian leadership was first announced by presidential hopeful Mohammed Salim al-Awaa after a meeting with the ruling generals. The promise marked the biggest concession by the military leadership since anti-government protests began last weekend, mushrooming into a national revolt.

…

Awaa told the state-run news agency MENA that the generals agreed to halt the bloody clashes that have left at least 33 people dead, try individuals responsible for violence against protesters and release dozens of people arrested in the past four days.

…

After emergency meetings with civilian political leaders, the military council also said it would accept the resignation of Egypt’s caretaker cabinet and institute a national salvation government, MENA quoted Awaa as saying.

The cabinet, which offered to resign Monday to protest the crackdown by security forces, is still waiting for a written response from the generals, a spokesman said.

Think it can’t happen here?  USA!  USA!

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Promises fall short, Keystone XL pipeline’s foes say

Keystone projections don’t match revenue reality for counties

Cody Winchester, Sioux Falls Argus Leader

11:51 PM, Nov. 19, 2011

When TransCanada was pushing to build an oil pipeline in eastern South Dakota back in 2007, the company’s marketing strategy included newspaper ads that promised counties along the route more than $9 million in tax revenue.

But four years later, in the pipeline’s first year of operation, tax records show that the 10 counties crossed by the Keystone oil pipeline received just one-third of this amount.

…

(F)or fiscal 2010 taxes collected this year, the company paid only $2.95 million to counties and school districts, according to figures provided by county auditors and treasurers. This does not count tax revenue TransCanada paid directly to the state, some of which was refunded under an incentive program for large projects.

A look at what TransCanada promised selected counties in estimated annual tax payments and the actual tax payment in fiscal 2010:

• Marshall County: $937,804.50 promised; $286,280.98 actually paid;
• Clark County: $1,369,565,98 promised; $359,646.04 paid;
• Miner County: $1,140,855.42 promised; $391,047.39 paid;
• Hutchinson County: $1,140, 264.64 promised; $424,504.72 paid.
• Yankton County: $837,988.68 promised; $247,965.58 paid.

“That was the big sell on this, the amount that would come to our local governments,” said state Senate Minority Leader Jason Frerichs, a Democrat from Wilmot. He called the discrepancy “further evidence that there are many unanswered questions about the pipeline.”

…

Frerichs, meanwhile, has broader concerns: “If we couldn’t take their word for the property taxes … how do we know for sure they’re going to be there for the cleanup?”

So we lied.  Tough Shit.

Blaise Emerson, executive director of Black Hills Community Economic Development, has tesified in favor of Keystone XL at state and federal hearings. He said the relatively lower tax receipts from Keystone in the east does not trouble him, because taxes are only one reason to support Keystone XL.

“How I look at it, and hopefully the way most people look at it: Don’t cry over the fact that you didn’t get quite as much as you wanted,” he said. “Maybe the estimate was a little bit high, but you wouldn’t have that revenue at all if it wasn’t coming through.”

You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up… you trusted us!

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Foreclosure Firm Steven J. Baum to Close Down

By PETER LATTMAN, The New York Times

November 21, 2011, 2:51 pm

On Saturday, Joe Nocera, The Times columnist who originally wrote about the firm’s Halloween party, published another column about the controversy. In it, he quoted an e-mail that Mr. Baum had sent him last week.

“Mr. Nocera – You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC,” said the letter. “It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.”

Good.  Mr. Baum, you are a heartless sack of shit and your firm and its employees are lying perjurers.  I hope you rot in a cell for the rest of your life, penniless and forgotten like the scum you are.

24 dead in 3 days of Cairo anti-military protests

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press

34 minutes ago

The night before saw an escalation of the fighting as police launched a heavy assault that tried and failed to clear protesters from the square. In a show of the ferocity of the assault, the death toll leaped from Sunday evening until Monday morning. A constant stream of injured protesters – bloodied from rubber bullets or overcome by gas – were brought into makeshift clinics set out on sidewalks around the square where volunteer doctors scrambled from patient to patient.

…

(T)he vote has been overshadowed by mounting anger at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which will continue to hold power even after the vote. Activists accuse the generals of acting increasingly in the same autocratic way as Mubarak’s regime and fear that they will dominate the coming government, just as they have the current interim one they appointed months ago.

…

“What does it mean, transfer power in 2013? It means simply that he wants to hold on to his seat,” said a young protester, Mohammed Sayyed, referring to the head of the Supreme Council, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi.

…

“I will keep coming back until they kill me,” he said. “The people are frustrated. Nothing changed for the better.”

CLGC Memo (.pdf)

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U.C. Davis Calls for Investigation After Pepper Spraying

By BRIAN STELTER, The New York Times

November 19, 2011, 7:44 pm

In one of the videos, the officer steps over a line of seated protesters, holds the pepper spray bottle in the air, then sprays it in the protesters’ faces in a coordinated fashion as eyewitnesses gasp and shout, “Shame on you.” Most of the protesters remain seated; police officers then forcibly remove and arrest them.

In a video taken from another direction, two officers can be seen dousing protesters with pepper spray at the same time. Though not visible in the videos, the operator of the Facebook page for the Occupy U.C. Davis organization claimed that one police officer “shoved a pepper spray gun down a student’s throat and pulled the trigger.” On Saturday afternoon, the Facebook page announced that protesters would be working with attorneys to pursue legal action.

…

A spokesperson for the U.C. Davis police did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. Annette Spicuzza, the U.C. Davis police chief, told The Sacramento Bee that the officers used pepper spray on Friday because the police were surrounded by students. “There was no way out of that circle,” she told the newspaper. “They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.”

The videos, however, show officers freely moving about and show students behaving peacefully. The university reported no instances of violence by any protesters.

Eyewitnesses uploaded their recordings late Friday. In a statement on Saturday that acknowledged the role of the eyewitnesses in raising awareness about the police’s behavior, the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, said she was saddened by “the events.”

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

You see, it’s all about easing dependence on “foreign” (brown people) oil-

Canada pipeline firms sprint to end U.S. oil glut

By Anna Driver and Scott Haggett, Reuters

22 hrs ago

The companies are racing to unlock a glut of crude in the U.S. Midwest, which has built up over the year due to rising supplies from Canada and North Dakota. They aim to ship it to the Gulf Coast where it will fetch a hefty premium.

It may end a period of dramatic upheaval in the U.S. oil market that handed Midwest refiners an unexpected windfall of cheap feedstock, robbed northern producers of richer profits, revived an era of rail-oil freight, roiled airline efforts to hedge fuel costs and threatened to erode the U.S. futures contract’s preeminence as the world’s most-traded benchmark.

Lies.  It’s all about extracting more money from the pockets of the middle class.