Haim Saban: Ay Yi-Yi-Yi Yi !!!

I have been waiting over three years for a scandal involving the Israeli-American neoconservative billionaire Haim Saban, the man who made a fortune single-handedly bringing Japan's Super Sentai craze to the U.S. (re-dubbed Power Rangers). I am also thankful this scandal is funny.

Well, That Jim Cramer / Jon Stewart Thing Happened

For anyone looking for the take-away message from the Jon Stewart / Jim Cramer interview this is it:

It was uncomfortable and somewhat breathtaking to watch. What I hope people get from this interview, though, is not just that CNBC is a really shitty journalistic institution. This is how ALL cable news works (and most websites, and some newspapers). Access is so difficult to find that journalists end up being mouthpieces for different points of view rather than arriving at some kind of truth. I have no idea how this problem gets solved, but until it does it seems to me that cable news does more harm than good.

[Via Some Gawker Commenter]

I Want This To Get Ugly

If you've been following the recent Jim Cramer / Jon Stewart feud, you're probably already aware that Cramer will be appearing on The Daily Show Thursday for the title bout.

Now, up until this point, Stewart has mostly hit three honest and unassailable points:

1. By a luxurious margin, neither CNBC nor Jim Cramer live up to their marketing slogans.
2. Their failure to do so makes them at least as dumb as Rick Santelli's "losers" who took on mortgages they couldn't afford.
3. Like Stewart's last famous cable news target, Crossfire, many of CNBC's shows have titles (Squawk Box, Mad Money, Fast Money) that betray a serious contempt for the viewers' intelligence, while actually attempting to convey a smirking, insouciant camaraderie with the audience.
   

There's a good chance Cramer's appearance will be a gentle ribbing on par with Bill O'Reilly's appearance. However, it would be really great if Stewart and the team ambushed Cramer on the long circulating accusations of his illegal activity and market manipulation.

Here's one example of what I'd like to hear come up, taken from former Columbia Journalism Review editor Mark Mitchell's long expose on a still developing short-selling scandal:

Not long before [Jim] Cramer announced his SEC subpoenas, Rocker sold all of his shares in TheStreet.com. Cramer sold around $2 million of his own shares. If Cramer knew about the SEC investigation before he sold his shares, which was almost certainly the case, he was trading on insider information - another jailable offense.

But Cramer don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. And Herb thinks the SEC investigation is an outrage. So Herb and Cramer have commandeered CNBC. They are live on CNBC. Herb has jabbered something about a conspiracy - a conspiracy to get Herb.

And now Cramer is going to show us something.

He’s pulled out a big, red magic marker. Veins are popping, rope-like, from his bald cranium. And he’s snarling. Cramer is actually snarling while he uses the big red magic marker to scribble something on a piece of paper.

He holds the paper up to the camera.

It’s...it’s his government subpoena...Cramer has vandalized his government subpoena! On live TV... in big red letters...

It says, "BULL!"

[This and more via Daily Kos diarist TocqueDeville]

Out For Blood (or at least anwsers)

A new Gallup Poll claims that the majority of American want—at the very least—some kind of investigation into potential criminal activities by the Bush Administration.

While I agree with them, I also understand that navigating this current economic crisis means all hands on deck and that alienating the whiny babies in the GOP is a luxury we can't afford yet. [via TPM DC]

The Rutgers Mess

Thank God this New York Times editorial is coming days before Thanksgiving, when all of us have to hear about Rutgers football from relatives who, frankly, no nothing of the insane waste of resources behind our team's non-meteoric, "You didn't even get what you paid for" rise in the rankings:

Rutgers, the biggest and most important public university in New Jersey, has spent millions of dollars furthering its ambition to become a major football power that might otherwise have been devoted to academics. It has done so during a period of rising tuition and budgetary cutbacks in academic departments, and, worse, without any real oversight from the university’s president, Richard McCormick, and its Board of Governors.

A review committee appointed by Mr. McCormick has now issued a scathing report accusing him of being “too passive in exercising his authority” over the athletic department and football program. The report suggests that he and the board turned a blind eye while the university’s athletic director, Robert Mulcahy, signed the football coach to multimillion-dollar contracts and employed a sports marketing firm that once hired Mr. Mulcahy’s son. It also criticizes a secret side deal engineered by Mr. Mulcahy in which the marketing firm paid the football coach an extra $250,000.

[...] But while Mr. McCormick did not create the mess, he did nothing to clean it up. If he knew what was going on with the football program, he was negligent by not stepping in; if he didn’t know, he should have. This leaves him a choice: put the brakes on the stadium project and immediately clean house at the athletics department or resign and make way for someone who will.

[Thanks, Marcus!]

Jerk Behavior, Explosion-Related, Oil Companies

With the past few years of record profits, you'd expect oil firms to be able to responsibly deal with massive explosions that ruin people's homes. The fact that your instincts are so totally, flagrantly wrong is why no one pays you the big bucks:

[Via Josh Spear. Found on BeepBoop.] Nearly three years ago, Ian Silverstein, one of my dear friends and guest contributors to this site was simply minding his own business, asleep, when his home and everything in it was destroyed by Britain’s largest peacetime explosion.

His life would never be the same.

It’s now known as the Buncefield Depot explosion, and little has been done to remedy the situation for the people affected by this massive incident. Ian lost everything, his beautiful home, all of his belongings, and years later he suffers from symptoms caused by the blast. Frankly, he’s lucky to be alive– and he knows it, but deserves closure and help from the companies that caused it.

Literally, nothing has been done to help him with his situation — or anybody for that matter. The local authorities have failed him, the governments have failed him, insurance has failed him, and the companies that operated the facilities — Total and Chevron — have ducked blame entirely. The massive companies made more than £18 billion in cash last year, but can’t help a few people out when a leak in their tanks caused massive and catastrophic damage to dozens of people’s lives.

Pradeep Sharma's Close Encounters Of The So-Corrupt-You're-Fired Kind

The Mumbai Encounter Squad has always been something of a mystery to me. Since the 1980's, it has seemingly been an entire police outfit dedicated to provoking action-packed shootouts with gangsters.

While critics have blasted Encounter Squad for Dirty Harry-style vigilantism and have accused the police of concluding that this method was more efficient than court, a substantial portion of the public and the media in India continue to portray them as heroes. At over 112 confirmed kills (they keep score like American GI's in Vietnam), Pradeep Sharma was the most famous Encounter Squad member and now he has been fired due to corruption allegations. Unlike the rest of Mumbai's 39,000-strong police force—who detained 1,290 gangsters legally and without being dramatized in Bollywood movies—Sharma (pictured) is now following fellow MES officer Daya Nayak on the infamy downslope.

Fittingly, Sharma is being fired rather than charged with these crimes because it is ultimately "more efficient" than making those accusations stick:

A senior police officer corroborated his chief’s version, saying the decision was based on a variety of factors, including Sharma’s role as a middleman between gangster Chhota Shakeel and the builder mafia. “Telephonic interceptions have revealed that Sharma used to negotiate extortion threats received by builders and businessman. He also used to negotiate land deals. We wanted to put an end to this,’’ he said. Another officer said Sharma “is worth over Rs 3,000 crore’’. Although convinced about his underhand activities, the police knew that it would be difficult to prove them in court. Therefore, the government invoked Article 311 of the Indian constitution whereby an officer can be dismissed without holding an inquiry in such situations. This is also one of the rare cases in which the deputy chief minister took an active interest in ensuring the dismissal of a police inspector.

I'm sure Sharma is going to have no trouble finding an employer for his talents in the private sector, maybe even in construction.

[Via The Times of India]

What Do U.S. Prisoners Make For Below Minimum Wage?

Guess What? It's hard to decriminalize drug possession and our country's scandalously high incarceration rate when it's supplying a cheap labor force for corporations operating in the U.S. — especially when those corporations fund lobbyists, think tanks and university grants. What ever happened to those Halcyon days when all prisoners had to make were shivs and Pruno, clocks out of popsicle sticks and spit-Papier-mâché chessboards?

Forget about illegal immigrations, blue-collar America. This is where you( and you)r jobs are going:

Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor. Here's a sampling of what they make, and for whom.

Eating in: Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens). Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup "entirely consistent with our mission statement."

Around the Big House: Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips. Bullwhips?

Windows dressing: In the mid-1990s, Washington prisoners shrink-wrapped software and up to 20,000 Microsoft mouses for subcontractor Exmark (other reported clients: Costco and JanSport). "We don't see this as a negative," a Microsoft spokesman said at the time. Dell used federal prisoners for PC recycling in 2003, but stopped after a watchdog group warned that it might expose inmates to toxins.

[via Mother Jones]

A Walking Tour Of The Homes Of Washington DC's Plutocratic Overlords

[Thanks, Emily Z.!]

UN Diplomats Using Immunity Status For Human Trafficking, Cooking, Cleaning and the Dishes

Meet Lauro Baja: a former UN Ambassador with a smile like some Filipino Rupert Murdoch. Baja's a defendant (along with his wife Norma, their adult daughter and the family-owned Labaire Travel Agency) in 15 civil charges including trafficking, forced labor and racketeering. After filing a motion motion to dismiss all 15 civil charges last July, Baja is now invoking the Vienna Convention and is seeking the shelter of diplomatic immunity.

While most of these specific charges stem from the Baja's escaped housekeeper, Marichu Baoanan, the practice seems to be scandalously widespread with upwards of 42 separate allegations noted by the Government Accounting Office. Worse still, the U.S. State Department keeps no record of abuse allegations accusing foreign diplomats—probably for the same reason that the Department of the Interior is toking up, snorting blow and having sex with oil industry reps. But let's take these scandals one at a time:

Baoanan, 39, a nurse, came to New York from Manila to the United States to earn money for her family. According to a federal lawsuit filed in June, she paid $5,000 to Baja and a travel agency run by Baja's wife for a promised nursing job.

But she ended up working full-time as the Baja's personal maid and was paid only $100 for three months of work, including cooking, doing laundry and cleaning the four-level ambassador's residence in Manhattan, she said.

[...] besides long hours with low pay, Baoanan was forced to sleep in the basement with only a sheet, her employers refused to buy proper shoes and clothes, and she was called "stupid" and "slow."

During one incident, she said the former ambassador "just stared" and did nothing as Facundo's 5-year-old son hit her with a broom, spat and kicked her in the face.

"My eyes became blurry ... from crying every night," she said, breaking down. "They did not treat me like a person."

After three months, she eventually escaped with the help of a fellow Filipina, lawyers for Baoanan said.

In the Bajas' defense, they do throw a nice cotillion:


[Via The Phillipine Reporter, The Epoch Times and the activist blog, End Trafficking]

The Truculent Hilarity of 4CHAN Conservatives

The above animated GIF reminded me recently of this actual RNC ad that was running after Barry O.'s speech in Berlin:



I'm slightly weirded out by the crass, low-budget sophistication in both cases; how they appeal on the visceral, gut-level of an internet meme without discussing anything directly — in the first instance Obama-as-Zoolander-scale-pretty-boy-doofus (with iced lattes! Talking Point Bonus!) and in the second instance Obama-as-cocky-pretty-boy-doofus-Leonardo-Decaprio (with internationalist "King of the World" delusions! Another TPB!).

The second also seems to focus on painting Obama's supporters as Far Left, Eurotrash morans — in a way that is intentionally unfair, hilarious and basically what the Daily Show and Sascha Baron Cohen have been doing for over a decade now. This leaves me with the sinking feeling that after several botched attempts, we are coming closer to a world with a successful conservative Daily Show.

A la Greg Sargent's recent analysis — there is also the possibility that this ad was meant to work in some amazing way I never could have imagined.

Nephew of Mumbai Underworld Don Extorts Chandelier Industry

It's sort of embarrassing hilarious that Sachin Shete, the nephew of infamous crime figure Gurunath Narhari "Guru" Satam (whose mugshot is on the right), is going after interior decoration companies:

According to the complaint filed by Joseph Alex Thomas, 41, Shete has been threatening his sister Rita to hand over her chandelier business to him.

Rita had started the business a few years ago and Shete had forced her to make him a partner. [...]

Senior inspector Ambadas Gadade said, “When Rita refused to hand over the business to him, Shete told her that he would call up his uncle Guru Satam and get her killed.”

Ignoring how totally 3rd-grade that threat is, Shete should know that gangsters with chandeliers are asking for trouble:


[Via Daily News & Analysis and the Times of India]

Batmobile To The Dark Side

It looks like political jerks have figured out my main qualms with The Dark Knight and are touting them all as a good thing. For example, the WSJ's Andrew Klavan:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Thanks, doofus. Remember that time Bush personally put himself in harm's way? Oh, wait he didn't ever.

Mumbai Police Gun Down Anand "Tarzan" Patil In Suburban Shootout

and then they put some guns on bubble wrap for the press to photograph. Your guess is as good as mine:

Patil was a member of the Hemant Pujari gang and wanted in at least eight cases, which were registered against him.

He had given extortion threats to a businessman living in that area. Using this information only crime branch laid a trap. [...]

"We warned him and asked him to surrender but instead he started firing. We started firing in defence. He was injured during the firing. We rushed him to the nearby hospital but he was declared dead on arrival," said DR Sankhe, Sub Inspector, Oshiwara Police Station.

In other words, it looks like the late 80's and early 90's are also back in Mumbia's criminal underbelly!

[Via NDTV]

Alleged Photo Of A Young Banksy From 1989

Is Robin Gunningham (seen below in his 1989 class photo from Hogwarts) the radical chic enigma and guerrilla graffiti artist known as Banksy?



The UK's Daily Mail thinks so — as does the YouTube commenter who beat them to this scoop 9 whole months ago. (Ctrl+F for "Robin" on the YouTube thread until you get to it.)

The Gold Toilet Stays [Brokedown Palace]

As Cryptogon says, the rise in gold prices is reaching a "palpable insanity factor"

Hong Kong entrepreneur Lam Sai-wing [...] has spent the past decade constructing a palace of gold, decked out in six tons of the precious metal. In recent years, the palace has become an attraction mainland Chinese tour groups couldn’t miss, and a boon for Mr. Lam’s retail jewelry business, Hong Kong-listed Hang Fung Gold Technology. Since gold prices hit four-digit territory earlier this year, Mr. Lam has been taking apart his hall of gold as quickly as he once raced to construct it. He is melting down golden chandeliers, armchairs and armored knights and selling gold by the ton to fuel growth plans that include hundreds of new retail outlets in mainland China. But even with the selloff, one thing is certain: The toilet stays. “I don’t care if gold hits $10,000 an ounce,” Mr. Lam says. “I’m not melting it down.”

[Via Wall Street Journal]

Queen Song About My Favorite Billionaire Saudi Arabian Arms-Dealer And Businessman

In addition to allegedly having once hired Paul McCartney's ex-wife Heather Mills as an escort, Adnan Khashoggi also has a song written about him (and a party on his boat) by Queen:



Khashoggi's rockstar credentials is one of the many reasons Bond movies suck. Attn screenwriters: read more nonfiction!

I'm Out for Justice, Steven Seagal!

Steven Seagal must think he is Above the Law. Anthony Pellicano—the private investigator on trial for wiretapping and racketeering charges that stem from duties he reportedly performed for clients like Seagal—has been accused of threatening journalists. And yet the direct-to-DVD action star and friend of mystical dogs remains Out of Reach.

Pellicano is alleged to have had Anita M. Busch (a reporter who was working on an article about Mr. Seagal for The Los Angeles Times) Marked for Death—placing a fish and a rose in her car along with a bullet-size hole in the windshield. (It's unclear whether Pellicano made the threat of Attack Force personally or via a hired Shadow Man.) Bernard Weinraub, a journalist for the The New York Times who has worked with Busch, was reportedly Under Siege by associates of Mr. Pellicano, as well, but the Flight of Fury doesn't stop there. Two months after the Busch incident, Ned Zeman, a reporter working on another article about Mr. Seagal, this one for Vanity Fair, found himself Under Siege too, Dark Territory for any journalist. According to The New York Times, while Zeman was driving, a man pulled up, aimed a gun at him, said, “Stop,” and pulled the trigger. Not Out for a Kill, the man's gun was empty, but he did say, “Bang," suggesting Zeman would not be Hard to Kill.

Mr. Pellicano has not been charged in connection with the Zeman incident, leading me to suspect that Seagal may be the crazy idiot responsible for all these threats. Shame on you, Steven Seagal!

ALSO. One particularly strange footnote to the whole proceeding, as reported by the Times, is that Pellicano's former audio technician and close associate, Wayne Reynolds, told the court he now works for Vanity Fair publishers Condé Nast. The NYT's David Carr writes:

I later checked and, indeed, Mr. Reynolds has a Condé Nast phone number in New York (he did not return my call) and is listed in the company directory. Now, Mr. Reynolds may be a whiz with technology — he testified with a great deal of specificity about the black boxes used to record intercepted calls — but his testimony raised a troubling question: why would Condé Nast hire him?

This one is duh: To protect themselves from Steven Seagal!

Mumbai Don Divas

Bangalore-based journalist and international studies Ph.D., Sudha Ramachandran has filed an amazing story with the Asia Times on the return of gangland style violence to Mumbai's underworld, which is said to be "younger, deadlier, and more ambitious and tech savvy." They're also evidently more progressive on gender roles:

The new dons' molls seem to share little with "Mona darling", the quintessential vamp in Hindu movies of the 1970s and '80s, who did little beyond dance for the don and pour his whiskey. Now they are the dons' partners in crime, actively involved in the business of extortion and trafficking. A new generation of gangsters is making its mark in the underworld.

Intelligence officials say the new dons are keen to make their presence felt and want to carve a name for themselves. They are seeking to wrest control over turf from their older associates. This will mean an increase in intra-gang warfare and bloodletting in the coming years.