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The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits in print – today’s nine most hellish news stories, including a bonus story on Chicago’s new boss, for Wednesday, January 4, 2012, are:

Is Mayor Rahm ‘waking the ghosts’ of 1968 Chicago police riots?

NYC cops bust up #OccupyWallStreet live feed

Courts mull future of leaky, controversial nuclear reactor

Court upholds $18 billion suit against Chevron for polluting Amazon

Rival militias control ‘fiefdoms’ throughout Libyan capital

Assad has agents in US spying on Syrian-Americans

IRS busts Swiss bank for hiding billions of American’s money

Dallas teen mistakenly deported still not home after more than a year

New evidence disputes court ruling Norway’s mass killer is psychotic

Is Mayor Rahm ‘waking the ghosts’ of 1968 Chicago police riots?
Chicago Sun-Times
(1/3/12)

Rahm Emanuel on duration of NATO-G8 rules: ‘I made a mistake. Real simple, OK.’

Mayor Rahm Emanuel made an admission on Tuesday: He “made a mistake” when he claimed that extraordinary security measures he proposed to handle protesters who descend on Chicago for the NATO and G-8 summits would be temporary and repealed after the events are over.

The mayor’s about-face apparently means the only thing temporary about the changes will be the power to purchase “goods, work or services” needed to host the May 15-22 event at McCormick Place without City Council approval.

But the other changes will be permanent. They include: dramatically higher fines for resisting arrest; more surveillance cameras; parks and beaches closed until 6 a.m.; sweeping parade restrictions and higher fees for those events and empowering Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to “deputize law enforcement personnel” and forge cooperative agreements with a host of state, federal and local law enforcement agencies.

That’s not what the mayor said last month when he introduced the changes at a City Council meeting. At that time, he emphatically stated that the changes he sought were “temporary,” “one-time only” and “just for this conference.”

“I made a mistake. Real simple, OK? I thought when I answered the question, I was answering the question about contracting, OK? So, if I made a mistake, I bear the responsibility,” the mayor said.

As he did last month, Emanuel flatly denied that the sky-high fines and 6 a.m. park and beach opening signaled an attempt to muzzle what’s expected to be an international onslaught of protesters …

“First Amendment rights will be protected. Public safety will be also protected, and I don’t see the two in conflict at all,” the mayor said.

That’s not what the protesters were saying before applying for a permit to stage a massive May 19 march from Daley Center plaza to McCormick Place.

They demanded that Emanuel roll back the changes or risk waking up the ghosts of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“I’m a veteran of 1968. I was one of the organizers when the whole world was watching, and I see some unfortunate parallels here,” said political consultant Don Rose.

“The more pugnacious the city behaves, the more pugnacious they can expect as a response. This can be done peacefully. But mass repression appears to be on the threshold, and the city should be well beyond that by now.”

(Past This is Hell! guest) Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the Coalition Against the NATO G-8 War and Poverty Agenda, branded Emanuel “Mayor One Percent” and argued that the mayor “lied” when he said the changes would be temporary — not permanent …

“Every single protest in the downtown area would be considered a ‘major parade’ with a whole series of ridiculous stipulations,” he said. “Every single piece of sound equipment would need to be registered with the city a week in advance. You can’t predict who’s gonna show up with a bullhorn. They are also insisting on a full lineup of [participants] a week in advance.

“This does not just affect G-8 and NATO protesters. Everyone who’s got a beef with the city or a private employer in this town is gonna be affected by this ordinance. They need to take this very seriously and say, ‘We do not want to go back to these ridiculous restrictions and thuggish behavior in response to protests.’ ”

Thayer said he expects the city to deny the permit, setting the stage for a court fight.

• The Chicago Sun-Times also reports, “Taxpayers the winners in recycling competition, Emanuel says.” Or suckers, depending on how you look at it:
  Chicago taxpayers have already saved $1 million three months into a high-stakes competition between city employees and private contractors for the right to collect household recycling, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday …
  No matter who wins the competition, Emanuel said one thing is certain: Chicago taxpayers have already won. By reducing the cost of household recycling, the city will be able to provide the service to 359,000 Chicago households without it, starting with 20,000 additional households by April 1.
  “Price is gonna be the big driver. In the first three months, they already did a dollar. I don’t think this is an impossibility. And they’re also working harder,” Emanuel said of city crews.
  “What happened in three months [to take it from] 22 crews to 16? What happened in three months that went from $4.77 to $3.75 a bin? Competition. The culture of competition has brought better services and better price. Prior to that competition, the work force was protected, and they did not have to work as hard, work as smart, work as efficient.”
  In the first quarter of the new year, Emanuel said he expects to launch a similar managed competition for seven other city services, including booting, towing and tree-trimming …
  Lou Phillips, business manager of Laborers Local 1001, said he is more confident than ever that city employees with their jobs on the line will win the competition.
  But Phillips argued that price should not be the deciding factor. If city employees come close, they should get the edge, he said.
  “If you get hit with a flood or a blizzard, who do you call? Do you contract somebody out or look for day manpower?” he said.
  “We do more than pick up garbage. We could go on recycling one day, garbage, rodent control, shoveling people out or cleaning up peoples’ basements from flood damage the next day. See if your Waste Management will do that for the cost we do or whether they’re gonna stick it to you. If it’s close, we should get the edge because of what they use us for.”
  Asked how he managed to reduce the cost by $1 a cart, Phillips said, “We just went back to the basics and re-routed the trucks in a more efficient way. We did it the old-school way — the way it should have been done from the get-go.”

NYC cops bust up #OccupyWallStreet live feed
the Atlantic
(1/3/12)

Occupy Wall Street’s Livestream Operators Arrested

Occupy Wall Street is in the middle of one of its day-long marches in New York Tuesday, protesting the National Defense Authorization Act, but for those following along on the Global Revolution livestream, the real action is happening in the broadcast studio itself. That’s because police have apparently just raided the Brooklyn studio of Globalrevolution.tv and taken some of the project’s key volunteers into custody.

The raid Tuesday follows a notice to vacate that police delivered to the Bushwick studio on Monday night. Victoria Sobel, a Global Revolution volunteer, said Vlad Teichberg and a guy named Spike, both of whom maintain the live feed aggregator, had been taken into custody by police, along with four or five others.

In Manhattan, about 100 Occupy protesters (according to Animal New York’s Twitter) marched to the offices of New York senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, where they told stories and made impassioned cases for the wrongness of the NDAA. They plan a final rally at Grand Central station at 5 p.m., which should make for some fun interactions with hurried commuters. Lots of people were watching the proceedings on live feeds operated by Globalrevolution.tv, but now that site has stopped broadcasting the New York protest and is showing footage of Occupy Maui.

If you were following along earlier today, you may have been startled at about 1:45 p.m. to see the live feed cut away from the street-level action and to the face of Vlad Teichberg, one of the main organizers of Global Revolution. The new shot showed a large, graffittied space where Teichberg and a couple of colleagues were confronting a man they identified as the landlord, who had apparently broken in their door. They put the camera on him, he threatened to call the police, they said he had no right to come into the space by force, and he eventually left.

But Sobel said that was just the start of the day’s conflict. Shortly after the confrontation, the police arrived. “Within the past hour, the police came in and removed people that were inside the studio,” she said. “I believe the police just began knocking on the door and saying they would kick the door down and saying they would arrest people on the spot.” The Global Revolution studio is now locked, Sobel said. The live feed has finished its Hawaiian broadcast and is playing a pre-recorded video. “The message is that even if they take the space, the [broadcast] will continue to be maintained,” Sobel said. But right now, it seems to be out of commission.

Police and buildings department officials had served the Buswhick, Brooklyn space with notices to vacate on Monday night, declaring it “imminently perilous to life.” The blog A Great Big City picked up this photo of the notice to vacate from the studio from the Twitter stream of Glass Bead Collective:

There is a handful of live streams that regularly cover Occupy events, such as Tim Pool’s The Other 99 and Spencer Mills’s OakFoSho. But Global Revolution is considered the main channel. It’s an aggregator of live streams worldwide, borne of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park. And this wouldn’t be the first time the headquarters had moved.

Courts mull future of leaky, controversial nuclear reactor
The Associated Press
(1/3/12)

Vt., Entergy await nuclear plant decision

Both sides in the lawsuit by Entergy Corp. over the company’s Vermont Yankee nuclear plant against the state say a federal judge’s decision is expected soon — possibly this week.

At issue is the future of Vermont’s lone nuclear plant, a 40-year-old boiling-water reactor in Vernon in the state’s southeast corner. Plagued during the past two years with leaks of radioactivity and questions about the truthfulness of plant managers’ statements to state officials, the plant has been given a green light to continue operating by the federal government but a red one by the state.

Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith was among those predicting a legal decision would come this week, and Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell expects a decision soon.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted plant owner Entergy Corp. a 20-year extension on its license in March. But the state had a law saying Vermont lawmakers also must approve for the plant to keep operating. A bill to grant legislative approval was defeated 26-4 in the state Senate in 2010 and the House has never acted.

The Senate vote came at what may have been the Vernon reactor’s political nadir in the state. Just a month earlier, it was revealed that tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, had been leaking from under the plant, and that plant officials had made misleading statements to state lawmakers and regulators indicating that Vermont Yankee did not have the sort of underground pipes that carried tritium — pipes it was later shown to have.

Entergy argued during a preliminary hearing and the trial that the state was moving to close Vermont Yankee out of concerns over plant safety, an issue that the state agreed is solely the jurisdiction of the NRC. The state maintained it had other reasons, including that Vermont Yankee didn’t fit into its energy plan and was likely to be increasingly unreliable as it aged.

Vermont Yankee’s initial 40-year license expires in March, and the debate and federal court case over the plant’s future were being watched closely both by the nuclear industry and anti-nuclear groups as a measure of whether a state in which nuclear critics have gained political control can close its lone reactor.

Whichever side loses at the U.S. District Court level is expected to appeal Judge J. Garvan Murtha’s decision to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That raises the stakes for a district judge, several lawyers following the case said.

Court upholds $18 billion suit against Chevron for polluting Amazon
The Associated Press
(1/5/12)

Ecuador court upholds ruling against Chevron

An appeals court in Ecuador upheld an US$18 billion ruling against Chevron Corp on Tuesday for oil pollution in the Amazon rainforest more than two decades ago.

The ruling confirmed a judgment in the case in February last year. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs said in a statement that the decision is based on scientific evidence presented at trial proving that waste had poisoned the water supply.

“The appellate court relied on a record that proved that Chevron has violated the rights of the communities where it operates,” the plaintiffs said in the e-mailed statement.

The lawsuit deals with pollution of the rainforest by energy company Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001.

Chevron denounced the appeals court’s decision and said it would continue to seek recourse in other courts outside Ecuador.

“Today’s decision is another glaring example of the politicization and corruption of Ecuador’s judiciary that has plagued this fraudulent case from the start,” Chevron said in a statement.

The San Ramon, California-based company has previously alleged fraud in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs have also accused Chevron of defrauding the Ecuadorian court to hide the scale of the oil contamination.

By the time of last year’s judgment, the case had been winding its way through US and Ecuadorian courts for more than 17 years.

Rival militias control ‘fiefdoms’ throughout Libyan capital
Reuters
(1/4/12)

Militias may drag Libya into civil war: NTC chief

Libya risks sliding into civil war unless it cracks down on the rival militias which filled the vacuum left by Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall, the head of the interim administration said after an outbreak of violence in the capital.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), issued the stark warning in response to a gun battle between militias in one of Tripoli’s busiest streets which killed four fighters.

More than two months after anti-Gaddafi fighters captured and killed the former dictator, Libya’s new rulers still struggle to exert their authority as rival militia leaders refuse to cede control of their fighters and hand in their arms.

“We are now between two bitter options,” Abdel Jalil told a gathering in the eastern city of Benghazi late Tuesday.

“We deal with these violations (clashes between militias) strictly and put the Libyans in a military confrontation which we don’t accept, or we split and there will be a civil war.”

“If there’s no security, there will be no law, no development and no elections,” he said. “People are taking the law into their own hands.”

The militias, drawn from dozens of different towns and ideological camps, led the nine-month uprising, backed by NATO air strikes, to end Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. Now though, they are reluctant to disband and lay down their arms.

They are vying with each other for influence, and believe that to ensure they receive their due share of political power they need to keep an armed presence in the capital.

The NTC has begun to form a fully functioning army and police force to take over the task of providing security. Abdel Jalil acknowledged though that progress has been too slow.

“We have no security because the fighters have not handed over their weapons despite the chances they’ve been given to do so through local councils,” he said. “The response has been weak so far, people are still holding on to their weapons.”

Tripoli is now an unruly patchwork of fiefdoms, each controlled by a different militia. Police are rarely seen – except when directing traffic – and there is no sign of the newly created national army.

Although their presence on the streets significantly declined toward the end of last month, militias still occupy security compounds previously used by Gaddafi’s forces. Their presence increases in the streets of Tripoli as night falls.

Tripoli has two main home-grown militias. One is led by Abdel Hakim Belhadj, an Islamist who spent time in Taliban camps in Afghanistan and now runs his militia from a suite of rooms in a luxury Tripoli hotel. The other is headed by Abdullah Naker, a former electronics engineer who is openly disdainful of Belhadj.

There are also the militias from outside town. Fighters from Zintan, an anti-Gaddafi bastion south-west of the capital, control the international airport.

Militias from the city of Misrata, east of Tripoli, have mostly withdrawn from central Tripoli but keep a presence in the eastern outskirts of the city. Fighters from the Berber, or Amazigh, ethnic minority mark out their territory with their blue, green and yellow flags.

Another set of fighters from the east of Libya, the original heartland of the anti-Gaddafi revolt, add to the mix. The closest to the NTC’s leaders, their ambitions to form the core of the new national army irk their rivals.

Until Abdel Jalil issued his warning about the militias, most senior government officials preferred to avoid the issue.

“What militia?” Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib told Reuters this week when asked about the rival groups.

“Look around you! … We’re building the Libyan National Army and we want to guarantee that this army is effective when we need it,” he said.

Assad has agents in US spying on Syrian-Americans
PBS Newshour
(1/3/12)

Are Syrian Spies on U.S. Soil?

Syrian spies are operating in the United States, keeping tabs on Syrian-Americans who oppose President Bashar al-Assad, according to a federal indictment filed in October and PBS NewsHour interviews with Syrian-Americans.

Anti-Assad protesters in the United States have long suspected they were being watched by Syria’s spy agency, the Mukhabarat. When Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid of Leesburg, Va., was indicted in October of gathering intelligence on those who oppose the Syrian government, those fears were further documented.

The indictment below alleges that Soueid “would collect video and audio recordings” of people who “protested against the government of Syria and President al-Assad and provide those recordings and information to the government of Syria … all at the direction and control of the government of Syria and Syrian officials.” It also alleges that others were acting at Soueid’s direction.

IRS busts Swiss bank for hiding billions of American’s money
Agence France Presse
(1/3/12)

US charges Swiss bankers for hiding $1.2 billion

Three Swiss bankers were indicted in the United States Tuesday, accused of hiding $1.2 billion in assets of US clients seeking to avoid declaring their full wealth to tax authorities.

The bankers, Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei and Roger Keller, were accused of “conspiring with US taxpayers and others” in a massive tax fraud scheme.

In an indictment, the three bankers were said to have been client advisers at the Zurich branch of an institution identified only as “Swiss Bank A.”

They allegedly conspired with their US clients to hide the existence of bank accounts and the income they generated from the Internal Revenue Service, which collects taxes and requires US citizens to declare their holdings both at home and abroad.

Swiss banks, which have a longstanding practice of offering clients secrecy, have come under steady attack by US authorities, highlighted by a probe into banking giant UBS which led to a deal between US and Swiss authorities.

The service by “Bank A” was allegedly ramped up in 2008 and 2009 “in an effort to capture business lost by UBS AG and another large international Swiss bank in the wake of widespread news reports that the IRS was investigating UBS for helping US taxpayers evade taxes and hide assets in Swiss bank accounts,” New York federal prosecutors said in a statement.

They “allegedly told various US taxpayer-clients that their undeclared accounts at Swiss Bank A would not be disclosed to the United States authorities because Swiss Bank A had a long tradition of bank secrecy.”

The three accused bankers live in Switzerland. If convicted in the United States they would face maximum term of five years in prison.

In the UBS case, some 4,000 case files on American clients of UBS were handed over to the United States in 2010, after Washington dropped a summons against the bank over tax evasion.

US tax authorities had started their offensive against UBS in 2008 after questioning a former banker, prosecuting the bank through US courts and forcing it to pay a $780 million fine and hand over client names.

Dallas teen mistakenly deported still not home after more than a year
WFAA Fort Worth/Dallas
(1/3/12)

Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported

“It’s very frustrating,” Lorene Turner said.

She has spent hours on Facebook trying to find her granddaughter, Jakadrien.

“Once I get home I am up until 3 or 4 in the morning searching and looking,” Turner said. “It’s all I can think about. Finding my baby.”

Turner has been searching for Jakadrien since the fall of 2010, when she ran away from home. She was 14 years old and distraught over the loss of her grandfather and her parents’ divorce.

Turner searched for months for a clue.

“God just kept leading me,” she said. “I wake up in the middle of the night and do whatever God told me to do, and I found her.”

Turner said with the help of Dallas Police, she found her granddaughter in the most unexpected place – Colombia.

Where she had mistakenly been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April of 2011.

“They didn’t do their work,” Turner said. “How do you deport a teenager and send her to Colombia without a passport, without anything?”

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.

News 8 has learned ICE took the girl’s fingerprints, but somehow didn’t confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.

“She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was,” Turner said.

Through her granddaughter’s Facebook messages, Turner says she tracked Jakadrian down.

U.S. Federal authorities got an address. U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia asked police to pick her up.

But that was a month ago, and the Colombian government now has her in a detention facility and won’t release her, despite her family’s request.

New evidence disputes court ruling Norway’s mass killer is psychotic
CTV News
(1/4/12)

Experts dispute Norway mass killer Breivik’s insanity

Three psychologists and a psychiatrist say confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is not psychotic, contradicting a court-appointed mental evaluation that declared him legally insane.

Norway’s TV2 channel reported Wednesday the experts believe Breivik is fit for prison and doesn’t belong in psychiatric care. They were appointed by the prison after Breivik was declared insane to find out what possible care he may need in pretrial detention.

The conclusion contrasts with the Nov. 29 finding that said Breivik was insane during the July 22 bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people.