Category Archives: Cascade

Big Money Is Fleeing the Republican Party

by PhillipM93 Posted on October 14, 2016

Mother Jones

Donald Trump is right: American elites really do have it in for him. With 25 days to go until an epic bloodbath, rich Republican donors are demanding that the RNC disavow him:

To an elite group of Republican contributors who have donated millions of dollars to the party’s candidates and committees in recent years, the cascade of revelations related to Mr. Trump’s sexual conduct is grounds for the committee to cut ties with the party’s beleaguered standard-bearer, finally and fully.

“At some point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly justify support for Trump to your children — especially your daughters,” said David Humphreys, a Missouri business executive who contributed more than $2.5 million to Republicans from the 2012 campaign cycle through this spring and opposed Mr. Trump’s bid from the outset.

Bruce Kovner, a New York investor and philanthropist who with his wife has given $2.7 million to Republicans over the same period, was just as blunt. “He is a dangerous demagogue completely unsuited to the responsibilities of a United States president,” Mr. Kovner wrote in an email, referring to Mr. Trump.

Aside from outright repudiation, these guys are already getting most of what they want. The RNC isn’t providing any money to the Trump campaign, and from what I can tell it’s not providing much of anything else, either. When Election Day finally arrives, it’s likely that Hillary Clinton’s ground game will give her an extra point or two on top of an already lopsided victory.

And then it will be time for yet another Republican “autopsy” about what went wrong. The answer, of course, will be both familiar and obvious: as Sen. Lindsey Graham put it four years ago, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Donald Trump put Graham’s theory to a destruction test this year, and it turned out to be absolutely right. The hard part is figuring out what to do about it. How do you attract more non-white votes without actually embracing any of the usual policy positions that would attract them?

It’s a really hard question. In the meantime, there’s one thing that Republicans still agree on: they hate Hillary Clinton, and from Day 1 they will be united in an effort to oppose everything she does. There will be no Obamacare fixes, no infrastructure bank, no debt ceiling hikes, and no maternity leave plans. They might be having second thoughts about their angry-white-guy strategy, but they still haven’t figured out that pure obstruction isn’t much of a winner either. If they were smart, they’d do a bit of logrolling in the upcoming Congress and rack up a few actual accomplishments they could take home to their supporters. But even after this year’s dumpster fire of an election, I don’t think they’re quite there yet.

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Big Money Is Fleeing the Republican Party

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How to Talk About Consent Like a Porn Star

by KittyKau60802 Posted on December 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the past several years, porn star James Deen has been at the top of his industry. Known for his mainstream crossover appeal and popularity among women, Deen once told reporter Amanda Hess it was his “nonthreatening, everyday look” that gave him a leg up in the industry. (Indeed, one woman called him “the Ryan Gosling of porn” on Nightline in 2012.) Though he doesn’t identify himself this way, lady mags and news outlets alike labeled him a feminist.

Then, on November 28, porn actor and producer Stoya tweeted that Deen, her former boyfriend, had raped her. The revelation rocked the relatively small adult-film community, and sparked a Bill Cosby-like cascade of allegations—some of which involved on-set incidents. At least 13 women have shared stories so far, ranging from excessive roughness to rape; Deen has since denied the claims.

American pornography, an estimated $10 billion industry, has years of knowledge to contribute to the cultural and legislative debate over how to define sexual consent: According to sexologist Carol Queen, porn has been grappling with these questions for decades. This week, as porn’s practices have come under scrutiny following the allegations against Deen, we decided to ask adult actors, researchers, and advocates about how they handle consent. Here’s what they had to say.

How does the porn industry talk about consent? “There is a more developed everyday conversation about consent that goes on in the industry than you can find anywhere else,” says Constance Penley, who teaches a class on the history of porn at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

The conversation starts during contract negotiations, Penley says, when actors, often represented by agents, agree to the number and gender of partners, the kind of sexual acts, and how much they’ll be paid for a shoot. The formality of the arrangement tends to increase with the size of the production company, ranging from verbal agreements on minor shoots to the three-page “limits” packet that performers fill out for Kink.com, a major producer of BDSM pornography.

Still, consent in a contract is just paperwork. Sovereign Syre, who’s been in the business for six years, says that before every shoot she’s done, she also has talked to her co-stars about boundaries and preferences. The conversation continues throughout the scene. Even directors she’s known for years, Syre says, will ask before tucking in the label on her underwear or rearranging her hair. If, during filming, things get too intense, actors on BDSM shoots use agreed-upon safe words. To stop, “red.” To slow down, “mercy.”

“Being on a porn set, there should be far more room for you to convey those boundaries,” says Cyd Nova, a porn performer, producer, and the program director of the St. James Infirmary, a sex-worker-friendly clinic in San Francisco. Even if someone doesn’t say no or use the safe word, professional adult actors are better equipped to notice when their partners are bothered or unenthusiastic, Nova says. “You’re paid to understand and engage with people sexually.”

Doesn’t money change things? Of course. The mental, emotional, and physical calculus that most people use to determine their sexual boundaries shifts on set, where adult actors also have to consider their income. When they’re under financial pressure, they might feel as if they can’t afford to have a strict “no list.” “When you’ve got $1,000 on the line, there’s a psychology at play that says, ‘I’m willing to do it because I need the money,'” Syre says. Still, “that doesn’t mean that they deserve to be abused.”

It helps to be able to say no. Newcomers to the industry might not know they have that power, or they might be concerned about losing work, explains Conner Habib, vice president of the Adult Performers Advocacy Committee. (APAC is the closest thing porn actors have to a union. Deen resigned from its board after the allegations began to surface, though it’s still headed by his girlfriend). In part, it depends on the director: Most are receptive when performers ask to stop or change the scene, while Habib says others have asked him to reconsider his limits. A few are more insistent. “I’ve said no and had a director be like, ‘You’re not the director,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care,'” Habib says.

Performers also may agree try new sex acts on camera, signing up for more extreme shoots to make extra money, only to realize later that they felt traumatized by whatever they agreed to do, Syre says. “There’s this larger dialogue going on about how can you consent to an act that is dynamic,” she says. “There have been jobs I’ve gone on where I went home and I said, ‘I don’t want to do that again, or I don’t like that person.’ I don’t think I’ve been traumatized by it. But I see that potential.”

Habib says his consent has been violated on camera—it’s just not anything he would label as rape. “I’ve definitely done scenes where I had a performer who just kept sticking his thumb up my ass,” Habib says. He stopped the scene and told the man to quit it. “And then he did it again.” Habib walked away for a few minutes. “When I came back, he said, ‘I just totally forgot.'” They finished the scene, but Habib created what he calls an “inward boundary”: If the man did it again, Habib would quit the shoot. “In my opinion, he’s someone who shouldn’t have worked in porn because he wasn’t able to listen.”

What are porn actors’ options for reporting rape? For now, there’s no protocol for reporting rape aside from going to authorities outside the industry. One obvious option is law enforcement—not an attractive choice for many people facing the stigma of sex work. Tori Lux says she decided not to tell the police that Deen raped her on set because of the common belief that women in porn can’t be assaulted. Likewise, Nicki Blue told the Daily Mail that she was afraid the police wouldn’t believe her story about Deen: “When you’re an adult actress, especially in BDSM, and you go to a cop and say, ‘Oh I’ve been raped by this guy after doing a scene,’ they are not going to take you seriously, like if you were a normal person.”

Alternatively, actors could file reports with the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates reports of workplace sexual assault (the industry is based in the San Fernando Valley, with 60 to 70 percent of US adult films shot in Los Angeles county). But several performers told us that battles over mandatory condom regulations have alienated workers from the agency, and Cal/OSHA has not received any sexual-assault complaints from the adult entertainment industry in the last 10 years.

Still, actors who consider reporting sexual assault to their producers and directors may be afraid of backlash, Habib says. A woman identifying herself by her initials, T.M., told LAist that she was afraid talking about Deen would hurt her career; Kora Peters says her agent at the time of her alleged rape told her she should be “honored” that Deen wanted her. The fear of blacklisting isn’t far-fetched, according to Nova: “If you say that you’re assaulted at work, some producers may decide they don’t want to work with you because they see you as a liability.”

In the absence of mechanisms for reporting and accountability on set, performers try to warn each other about actors who push limits—the same kind of rumors some performers reported hearing about Deen. According to Syre, some circles of performers have successfully shut out men who became known for abusing their girlfriends. But for those who are new to the industry or lack connections, word of mouth is “not very foolproof,” Nova says.

How will the Deen allegations affect porn moving forward? It’s difficult to say for sure, though at APAC’s last meeting of performers, directors, and producers, attendees discussed designing a possible industry-wide reporting system. What is clear is that just because porn has its own “best practices” doesn’t mean that people follow them. Even with Kink.com’s limits checklist, Ashley Fires, Nicki Blue, and Lily LaBeau all allege that Deen assaulted them under its supervision. There are rules, and then there are rule breakers—just as in any industry, Penley says. “This does not represent porn,” said Joanna Angel, a prominent alt-porn director and actor who spoke about her past relationship with Deen to radio host Jason Ellis last week. “This represents a specific individual, and I do not want the public to blame porn for anything.”

Yet several industry-specific factors, from the lack of reporting options or the stigma that keeps women from talking to the authorities—or convinces them that speaking out would invite attacks on their community—work to keep many sexual-assault victims in porn silent. “In the absence of people’s legitimate issues being taken seriously and addressed,” Queen says, “people tweet and write blogs and go to the court of public opinion.”

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How to Talk About Consent Like a Porn Star

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Watch this insanely cool simulation of deep Antarctic water

by maciao85 Posted on November 24, 2015

Watch this insanely cool simulation of deep Antarctic water

By on 24 Nov 2015commentsShare

We begin with Raijin, the Shinto god of thunder, lightning, and storms.

No, seriously — that’s what Australian researchers named the supercomputer that they used to make this incredibly detailed simulation of what’s going on at the bottom of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. That cold, dark abyss — no, not that one — may seem remote and hard to understand, but it’s actually a key player in Earth’s response to climate change.

It should come as no surprise that the surface water around Antarctica is very cold. What might be more surprising is that it’s also very salty. That’s because, when sea ice forms, it rejects salt back into the surrounding water. The resulting cold, salty water is very dense and thus cascades down to the bottom of the ocean, where it spreads out. Here’s more from a press release about why this matters:

The movement of this dense water is vital. It is the most oxygenated water in the deep ocean and its extreme density and coldness drive many of the significant currents in the major ocean basins connected to the Southern Ocean.

The distinctly different densities of water that move around Antarctica also make it important in regards to climate change. Because the most dense water forms near the surface, close to Antarctica before descending to the ocean floor, any warming that occurs near the surface can be drawn down into the deep ocean.

Importantly, this drives more heat and more carbon into the deep ocean that would otherwise have returned to the atmosphere.

It took Raijin seven hours to process every one second of this nearly four-minute animation. According to Andy Hogg, a professor of earth sciences at Australia National University and lead researcher behind the simulation, it was well worth the computing power: “Being able to actually see how the bottom water moves in three dimensions rather than just looking at numerical, two-dimensional outputs has already opened new areas for scientific research,” he said in the press release.

Personally, my favorite part of the simulation comes at the 3:05 mark, where it looks like South Africa is blowing smoke rings. But really, the whole thing is pretty cool and will surely help scientists understand this largely mysterious part of the world. It seems only fitting that such a simulation would come from Raijin, a deity who in Japanese mythology is both feared and respected for his control over nature.

Japanese mythology also says that children should cover their belly buttons during thunderstorms, lest Raijin eat their tummies. Do with that what you will.

Source:

Big data reveals glorious animation of Antarctic bottom water

, ARC Center of Excellence for Climate System Science.

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Watch this insanely cool simulation of deep Antarctic water

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Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

by LaurenSylvester Posted on September 1, 2015

Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

The burners may have left for Black Rock City, but there’s still a lot burning on the West Coast. From Central Washington’s blazes to the wildfires ravaging the tinderbox we call California, the Pacific Coast is on fire. Across the U.S., wildfires have claimed over 8 million acres of land. When combined with water restrictions and severe drought, the fires can be devastating — especially for anyone whose livelihood depends directly on the land. Which brings us to another type of burner: weed farmers.

While some growers haven’t been affected by the fires, “others haven’t been so fortunate,” writes Madeleine Thomas (a former Grister!) over at Pacific Standard. In Northern California, many budding bud operations are starting to feel the burn:

Timothy Anderson, the purchasing manager for Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary based in Oakland, California, says most of his suppliers are located in the lower end of the the Emerald Triangle, an area comprising three counties at the tip of Northern California. The Emerald Triangle’s economy is largely dependent on marijuana growers, who have a reputation for producing some of the country’s best bud, including sought-after strains like Mendocino Purps and Humboldt Headband.

Some of Anderson’s suppliers haven’t been able to get their product to market due to road closures. Others are situated in the midst of the blaze’s danger zone, but, according to Anderson, remain reluctant to leave their farms to nature’s mercy just yet. Evacuating runs the risk of losing a farm not only to wildfire, but to neglect. No one is around to check key irrigation lines or reservoirs, he says—daily reminders that the state is still in the midst of one of the worst droughts in memory. Water isn’t just a lifeline for most marijuana growers these days; it’s also a luxury.

“I had one of my contract farmers, with whom we work with very closely, who lost an entire farmstead,” Anderson says. “He lost a house, a barn, an outbuilding, and had to lay off his employees at that facility for the season as well.”

East of the Cascades in Washington, where the dry climate is a double-edged sword (“prime not only for weed farming, but also for massive wildfires,” writes Thomas), the story is much the same. And as the poorly contained fires creep closer and closer to weed fields, growers have begun to voice concerns about the indirect effects of the wildfires, as well. Residual smoke can seep into a marijuana plant’s flowers — altering the smell and taste of the weed — and light-blocking smoke and haze can cause plants to flower early, triggering the need for an early harvest.

A burning marijuana field won’t get you high, though, unless you’re standing right at the edge of one and actively “gulping up smoke.” In which case, you know, it might be time to look at your choices.

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West Coast Weed Farms Are Lighting Up

, Pacific Standard.

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Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

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Winter Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect Around the Country.

by ElishaRicketts Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

There’s a silver lining to all this talk of a super mega record-breaking Godzilla El Niño: The seasonal weather outlooks for this fall and winter will be some of the most accurate ever issued.

Last spring I profiled what El Niño—a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean—means for 60 places across the globe. Now that the event is in full swing, we have an even better idea of how US weather will be affected over the next nine months. That’s because El Niño acts like a heat engine that bends weather in a predictable pattern worldwide. Typically, the stronger El Niño is, the more predictable its influence. And this year’s event is on pace to be one of the strongest ever recorded. By some measures, it already is.

“We’re correct more than the usual proportion of the time when there’s an El Niño,” said Tony Barnston, chief forecaster at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, in a video statement. Barnston and his team—which actually invented successful El Niño prediction—recently issued an astounding forecast that essentially locks in a strong El Niño through next spring.

Globally, it’s now virtually certain that 2015 will be the hottest year in history. That’s a pretty remarkable thing to be able to say with more than four months of the year remaining. Last week data from NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency confirmed that last month was the hottest July on record, joining every month so far this year except February and April as the warmest ever measured, according to calculations from Japan. As of mid-August, the Pacific Ocean had configured itself into an unprecedented temperature pattern, with record-setting warm water stretching from the equator all the way northward to Alaska. Thanks to the pattern’s expected persistence, we can already piece together a pretty good guess of the implications—months ahead of time.

So, without further ado, Here’s what to expect this winter:

Will California get some drought relief?

To answer everyone’s question, yes, this winter will likely bring above-normal rainfall to California. To answer a related question, no, it won’t end the drought. After a record-breaking four-year stretch, California has racked up a mind-boggling rainfall deficit: San Francisco is more than 31 inches behind—meaning this winter would have to feature a year and a half of extra rainfall during the six-month rainy season to break even. That very likely won’t happen, and even if it did, flooding and mudslides would create an even bigger problem than another year of drought would.

What’s more, there’s an especially big caveat this winter. Current temperatures off the West Coast are already far warmer than anything ever measured. The placement of that huge mass of warm water—cutely called “the blob” by local scientists—tends to work against heavy rainfall in California, and it’s a big reason why the drought has been so bad there the last couple of years. This’ll be an epic battle between dueling masses of warm water (El Niño vs. “the blob”) all winter long on the high seas of the North Pacific (and in the atmosphere above it), but as of now, it looks like California will indeed get some desperately needed rain—enough to matter, just not enough to end the drought.

Will the Pacific Northwest get some drought relief?

One place that probably won’t benefit from this winter’s El Niño is the Northwest. It’ll be another low-snowpack year, putting additional pressure on salmon, hydroelectricity, and ski resorts in the Cascades. Local officials are treating the current “wet drought”—in which rain and high temperatures have replaced snow for many parts of the Northwest—as a possible preview of global warming. Officials in Washington state, for example, are modifying river flows as a last-ditch effort to provide cooler water for migrating salmon. As this year has proved, a dearth of snow has lasting implications for several months—including an increased risk for huge wildfires come summer. Expect more of the same next year.

Sorry, Pacific Northwest. What about ski conditions in Colorado?

In sharp contrast to the Northwest, this winter could bring a good snowpack to the southern Rockies, a boon to tourism and a continuation of relatively recent drought-free conditions in Colorado.

A heavy snowfall would also be a significant boost to the fragile Colorado River basin, which is inching toward first-ever mandatory water restrictions after decades of over-allocation have pushed Lake Mead to record low levels. Lots of snow this winter in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico could help delay Arizona’s inevitable droughtpocalypse by another year or two.

Back to droughts. How are things looking for South Florida?

The driest spot east of the Rockies right now is in southern Florida, where this summer’s rainy season has been the worst in 70 years. That’s a big problem, because as sea levels rise, the Miami area needs a steady supply of freshwater as a counterforce against saltwater intrusion and as a salve for Everglades restoration. Ultimately, this is a battle the region cannot win, but for now southern Florida is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new pumps to keep the sea at bay.

The polar vortex last winter was brutal. Will it be bad again?

If the last two years are any indication, winters in the east are getting weirder. There are lots of theories for this, including the exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean and melting Arctic sea ice, as well as plain old natural variability. A broad signal for further rounds of extreme cold air outbreaks, especially for the Southeast, is present again this winter.

Should everyone in Boston move?

There’s good and bad news for Boston and other East Coasters. It almost certainly won’t be as cold as last year in the Northeast, but fierce Nor’easters could be commonplace, bringing a return of heavy snowstorms.

Back in 2012, in my New York City weather column in the Wall Street Journal, I did a quick analysis that showed El Niño winters brought an additional 10 inches of snowfall to the Big Apple, all else being equal. To get especially strong winter storms in the Northeast, the large-scale El Niño signal (which increases the amount of wintertime moisture available along the East Coast) needs to coincide with a weak and wavy jet stream. That’s a recipe for heavy snow, even if temperatures aren’t as brutally cold as the last two winters. Watch for big dips in the North Atlantic Oscillation (a rough approximation for jet stream strength) this winter for signs a big storm could be on the way.

Update: You forgot the entire middle part of the country! What’s going to happen in Texas and in the Midwest?

Sorry! After a very rainy summer, drought has reappeared in eastern Texas. But since El Niño tends to bring above normal rainfall to the South during the winter months, the current dry spell should quickly come to an end.

Further north, the coming winter should be warmer than average in the Upper Midwest. That’s got to be welcome news: The region has endured exceptionally cold stretches leading to record-setting ice cover on the Great Lakes in recent years, but snowfall should be below normal this time around, giving cities like Chicago and Minneapolis a well-deserved break.

It’s August. How the heck did you come up with this forecast?

To make the above predictions, I took a blend of the most recent North American Multi-Model Ensemble, my go-to source for seasonal forecast information, and a blend of the large-scale weather during four past El Niños that I think are particularly close fits with the current one. Those four El Niños are: 1957–58, 1986–87, 1987–88, and 1997–98. Each of those El Niños peaked at least at “moderate” strength (more than 1 degree Celsius above normal in a key section of the tropical Pacific) and at the same time, each of those four El Niños also featured a strongly positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation—more than 1 degree Celsius above normal across a specific region of the north Pacific off the west coast of North America.

Got any weather maps?

You can find the raw seasonal forecast maps I used to make this forecast here.

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Winter Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect Around the Country.

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Growers Are Making Bank on This Green, Fragrant Bud. No, Not That One.

by JermainFsm Posted on February 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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In 2011, Jan-Erik Paino, a former construction worker and grape-picker, launched a new craft beer company in Sacramento inspired by Captain Frank Ruhstaller, a Swiss immigrant who owned several of the city’s hundreds of breweries in the late 1800’s. Paino wanted to make a beer to carry on Ruhstaller’s legacy.

Ruhstaller’s JE Paino Maddie Oatman

Paino’s first recipe, a malty red ale called “1881,” sold pretty well right away, especially to one local grocer, Darrell Corti, who ordered 10 cases, and then soon after, 12 more. When Paino paid a visit to Corti at his store in East Sacramento, “I was expecting a pat on the back,” says Paino. Instead, Corti “gave me a stern look. He said, ‘you don’t deserve the words Ruhstaller and Sacramento together if you aren’t using hops grown in Sacramento.'”

Hops are the fluffy green buds whose oils give beer its bright and bitter flavor. They grow on bines, and always clockwise. Up until World War II, Sacramento was a hop-growing empire. Corti grew up in California’s capital, and remembers the days when miles and miles of these cone-shaped flowers still lined the riverbanks. “Corti had this intensity I couldn’t ignore,” says Paino. To truly make beer in the spirit of Ruhstaller, he realized, he would need to become a hop farmer.

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Growers Are Making Bank on This Green, Fragrant Bud. No, Not That One.

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The FBI Just Arrested an Alleged Russian Spy Who Wanted to Know How to Trigger an Economic Meltdown

by Opal04Epbqih Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, federal prosecutors in New York filed a complaint accusing three men, Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev, and Victor Podobnyy, of spying for Russia. Buryakov, who was arrested in the Bronx on Monday, allegedly posed as a Russian bank official while working for Russia’s intelligence service, the SVR. According to the 26-page complaint, which was unsealed Monday, Buryakov had a good reason to choose that cover: He was interested in learning about high-speed Wall Street trading, automated trading algorithms, and “destabilization of markets.”

This is a real threat. As I reported in 2013, markets have become dramatically faster in the years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Automated trading algorithms can buy and sell financial products in less time than it takes you to blink. Markets move way too fast for regulators to monitor. On August 1, 2012, rogue computer code at Knight Capital ran for 45 minutes before anyone at the firm could stop it. By the end of the day, the company was insolvent. And that was just “a canary in the mine,” says Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and former regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The big worry is trading algorithms causing “a series of cascade failures,” warns Bill Black, another former regulator. “If enough of these bad things occur at the same time, financial institutions can begin to fail, even very large ones.”

So is it possible Russian spies are trying to find out how to purposefully unleash this chaos? The complaint doesn’t make clear whether the alleged spies were trying to find out how to destabilize US markets or worried about Russian markets being destabilized. But “fears of algorithmic terrorism, where a well-funded criminal or terrorist organization could find a way to cause a major market crisis, are not unfounded,” John Bates, a computer scientist who, in the early 2000s, designed software behind complicated trading algorithms, wrote in 2011. “This type of scenario could cause chaos for civilization and profit for the bad guys and must constitute a matter of national security.”

According to the complaint, the FBI learned of the alleged spies’ interest in market destabilization by eavesdropping on a May 2013 phone call between Buryakov and Sporyshev, a Russian trade representative. Sporyshev was the person “responsible for relaying assignments from Moscow Center to Buryakov,” according to the complaint; Podobnyy was mostly responsible for “analyzing and reporting back to Moscow Center about the fruits of Buryakov’s intelligence-gathering efforts.” (Sporyshev and Podobnyy, who were protected by diplomatic immunity, were not arrested and have left the country.) Buryakov and Sporyshev usually met in person, but on that day they didn’t have time. On the phone, Sporyshev asked Buryakov what questions an unnamed Russian news organization should ask New York Stock Exchange executives that would be useful to Russian intelligence, according to the complaint. Buryakov allegedly suggested the news organization inquire about high-frequency and automated trading systems.

According to the complaint, Buryakov was especially interested in Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), which are baskets of financial products that are combined and bought and sold like stocks. Many Americans might assume the Russians were interested in destabilizing American markets, but “it might be the other way around, where they are concerned with us attacking them,” says Eric Hunsader, who runs Nanex, a market data firm that tracks high-speed trading. On April 23, 2014, Hunsader’s company tracked extremely unusual movement in trades of RSX, RUSL, and RUSS—three ETFs that are based on the Russian stock index. “It was something that was definitely manipulated,” Hunsader says. “You don’t generally see that kind of movement go on…Maybe they’re concerned about us screwing with them.”

But here’s another fear: If foreign intelligence services are looking into algorithms, high-speed trading, and destabilizing financial markets, nonstate actors are probably not that far behind.

Here’s a relevant excerpt from the complaint:

dc.embed.loadNote(‘//www.documentcloud.org/documents/1509342-buryakov-et-al-complaint/annotations/200527.js’);

Read the rest of the complaint against the alleged Russian spies here.

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The FBI Just Arrested an Alleged Russian Spy Who Wanted to Know How to Trigger an Economic Meltdown

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The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

by Jeramy66Jmllpv Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

One World Trade Center, or the “Freedom Tower,” as it was formerly known, soars above New York City, finally filling a void left by the 9/11 terror attacks. The brilliant blue-silver facade glints no matter where you are in the city—nothing less than a “beacon of hope, just like the Statue of Liberty,” says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the site in a joint venture with real estate giant the Durst Organization.

The tower is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. And it’s also supposed to be one of the greenest—a first on its scale to aim for the US Green Building Council’s LEED gold certification, a coveted prize for sustainable building design. One World Trade Center features lighting that reacts to sunshine, rain harvesting, and a state-of-the-art onsite fuel cell installation, one of the largest of its kind in the world. In 2008, then-New York Gov. David A. Paterson praised this “space-age energy technology,” adding, “I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important.”

Then came Sandy.

A 26-page trove of internal documents obtained by Climate Desk from the Port Authority reveals for the first time a substantial hit to the project’s green ambitions: Superstorm Sandy caused critical damage to the World Trade Center’s $10.6 million clean-power sources—those world-class fuel cells—a third of which went unrepaired and unreplaced, in part because of a costly flaw in the main tower’s design, and pressure to honor a billion-dollar deal with Condé Nast, the global publishing powerhouse and high-profile anchor tenant.

What happened in the basement of One World Trade Center after Sandy is a previously untold—and as yet unresolved—chapter in the site’s redevelopment, already dogged by false starts, political squabbling, and cost overruns, involving some of the biggest names in New York City’s world of corporate real estate.

Breaking the Port Authority’s Green-Energy Promise?
In 2007, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency created in the aftermath of 9/11 to coordinate rebuilding efforts, introduced aggressive green standards for the Freedom Tower and its surrounding complex—”unprecedented in their scope and depth,” according to the building’s architects. The World Trade Center towers would be required to attain LEED gold certification, achieve net zero CO2 emissions (by purchasing green-energy credits), and operate with at least 20 percent more energy efficiency than the state’s current building code. “Every day is Earth Day at the World Trade Center,” claimed the Port Authority.

Another key requirement in the agreement was a fleet of fuel cells, which work by converting natural gas into electricity using an energy-efficient electrochemical process, rather than by burning it. They’re also cleaner because they don’t emit greenhouse gases or soot on location; the heat and water they generate as a byproduct can be used for cooling and heating the tower.

And so, in 2008, the Port Authority helped orchestrate a $10.6 million dollar deal with Connecticut’s UTC Power to provide nine fuel cells to supply power to three main towers at the site, including One World Trade. In Tower One, the fuel cells would provide up to 10 percent of the building’s electricity source, according to the fuel cell manufacturer; in towers Three and Four, they would supply a combined 30 percent.

Then, three years later, Sandy hit. Some 200 million gallons of water cascaded into the lower levels of the site, flooding the National September 11 Memorial Museum with at least five feet of water, according to the New York Times. What no media outlets reported, though, was that the flood also destroyed all nine fuel cells.

And while towers Three and Four now have new fuel cells, the main tower’s have never been replaced. The building opened without them—despite the fact that they were required in the original agreement.

So why didn’t the Port Authority replace the fuel cells? Evidence suggests that the reason had to do with financial pressure.

Pleasing High-Profile Tenants—and a Costly Design Flaw
In May 2011, the publishing giant Condé Nast signed a $2 billion deal to become the tower’s anchor tenant. Built into the terms of the lease was a move-in deadline: The Port Authority would be liable for penalties or lost earnings if Condé Nast was forced to wait beyond January 1, 2014, to begin the process of moving in. (Climate Desk contacted Condé Nast, but the company did not respond on the record.)

But the fuel cell disaster created the real possibility that the Port Authority and Durst were not going to make that deadline, a potential financial disaster. Part of the problem was a well-documented mistake in the building’s design: A temporary underground structure serving an existing train station was preventing builders from finishing the tower’s giant underground loading dock—the central piece of infrastructure used to haul masses of equipment up into the tower. Without the loading dock, there was no way for tenants to start moving their equipment into the building. And once a new loading dock went in—budgeted to cost $18.4 million—it would be all but impossible to remove and replace the dead fuel cells. Nevertheless, with the tight deadline, Port Authority decided to build the new loading dock. That meant the fuel cells had to come out fast—and finally, after several months, they did.

The Port Authority’s director of environmental and energy programs, Christopher Zeppie, warns of construction delays if the fuel cells aren’t removed in this March 2013 letter. Earlier, in December 2012, Zeppie told officials that “we need to get the damaged fuel cells out ASAP.”

Today, more than two years after Sandy, the new loading dock still blocks access to the one window through which the fuel cells could possibly be replaced. Durst admits in a statement to Climate Desk that “in order to replace the fuel cells that were destroyed by Super Storm Sandy, One World Trade Center’s interim loading dock needs to be disassembled,” but did not say if or when that might occur.

With no new fuel cells, the Port Authority needed to figure out how the main tower was going to reach the 20 percent energy efficiency goal stipulated in the rules. According to Durst, the building has now met the goal, but the company did not detail exactly how the building now makes up energy savings, except to say it “has been achieved through a number of means,” including the use of LED lighting. Focusing on the fuel cells is “missing the forest” for the trees, said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Durst.

But that leaves a key part of the green deal in limbo: The rule that states that fuel cells must be built “into the towers.” Durst did not deny that the building was currently in a state of noncompliance with the original 2007 agreement. Neither the Port Authority nor Durst would confirm which organization in the joint venture is ultimately responsible for replacing the fuel cells. The Port Authority declined to be interviewed or to answer a series of questions for this story, instead referring us to Durst.

The 2007 environmental standards include the requirement to build fuel cells “into the towers.”

Richard Hankin, the director of 16 Acres, a documentary that charts the deeply convoluted progress at the site, says this confusion over who’s in charge of final sign off is typical of the site in general. “Over the years, the sheer size and complexity of the bureaucracy has often made it impossible to figure out who’s responsible for any given area or ultimate oversight,” he said.

Hankin found that complications at the World Trade Center stemmed from the tremendous number of invested parties—developers, architects, insurance companies, and victims’ groups—combined with the high turnover in top positions at the agencies responsible. “It’s that classic situation: The right arm is unaware of what the left arm is doing, compounded by the fact that it’s often a new left arm,” he said.

Future Questions About WTC’s LEED Certification
In addition to potentially flouting the original agreement, it remains unclear whether or not the fuel cell fiasco will undermine the tower’s LEED certification efforts. The US Green Building Council listed the gold certification as “projected” as recently as May 2014 in its magazine. But, says Marisa Long, the communications director at the US Green Building Council, “if the calculations for the LEED certification included a component like fuel cells, and damage to that component forces a change in calculations, the number of points earned to achieve LEED will be based on the new calculations.” Those calculations appear to be based on the original 2007 deal, which contains a variety of standards, not simply those concerning energy efficiency. Durst says it will still meet LEED gold certification.

Despite the setback for the building, those involved continue to publicly laud the project’s green cred. Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, opened the building earlier this month by saying the building “sets new standards of design, construction, prestige, and sustainability.” Kenneth A. Lewis, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, told the USGBC magazine: “We want to open it up and have the LEED plaque on the door.”

While there’s still time to get the building across the line, Lewis’ hope for a grand LEED-certified opening has vanished. For now, the doors are wide open, without the plaque, and without a clear solution to the alternative energy demands of the tower.

“If one thing is delayed or goes wrong, it very much has a domino effect with all the other parts,” Hankin said. “It can result in a lot of finger-pointing.”

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The Freedom Tower Was Supposed To Be the Greenest Building in America. So What Went Wrong?

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Red Dawn: The GOP’s Growing Monopoly on State Government

by pitery Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s never been a worse time to be a Democrat in a red state. Republicans now hold all the reins of power—the governorship and both houses of the state legislature—in 23 states. That’s up from just nine before the 2010 elections. There are now more states under single-party control than at any time since 1944. And without even token Democratic opposition, Republicans have busted unions in Michigan and Wisconsin, passed draconian tax cuts in Kansas, and enacted sweeping new abortion restrictions across the nation.

This November, more Americans could find themselves living under single-party GOP rule. There won’t be nearly as many states flipping to single-party rule as in 2010’s GOP romp, but Republicans are hoping to add Arkansas and Iowa to the list of states where they can implement their agenda free of Democratic resistance. In Arkansas, Republicans won the state House and Senate in 2012 and hope to add the governorship this year. And in Iowa, a razor-thin two-seat Democratic Senate majority is all that has held back a wave of conservative legislation.

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Red Dawn: The GOP’s Growing Monopoly on State Government

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The Climate Change Movement Is Not Wishful Thinking Anymore

by RaquelKeaton Posted on October 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Less than two weeks have passed and yet it isn’t too early to say it: the People’s Climate March changed the social map—many maps, in fact, since hundreds of smaller marches took place in 162 countries. That march in New York City, spectacular as it may have been with its 400,000 participants, joyous as it was, moving as it was (slow-moving, actually, since it filled more than a mile’s worth of wide avenues and countless side streets), was no simple spectacle for a day. It represented the upwelling of something that matters so much more: a genuine global climate movement.

When I first heard the term “climate movement” a year ago, as a latecomer to this developing tale, I suspected the term was extravagant, a product of wishful thinking. I had, after all, seen a few movements in my time (and participated in several). I knew something of what they felt like and looked like—and this, I felt, wasn’t it.

I knew, of course, that there were climate-related organizations, demonstrations, projects, books, magazines, tweets, and for an amateur, I was reasonably well read on “the issues,” but I didn’t see, hear, or otherwise sense that intangible, polymorphous, transformative presence that adds up to a true, potentially society-changing movement.

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The Climate Change Movement Is Not Wishful Thinking Anymore

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