Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, known as the 'Nato Three'. Photograph: AP/Cook County sheriff's office.
All were arrested, put in an "off-the-books" interrogation compound in Chicago and denied access to lawyers. This goes on every day. People are beaten and threatened.
It's all part of the alleged war on terror. I prefer to call it "War of Terror".
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago's west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.
Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:
Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases. Beating by police, resulting in head wounds. Shackling for prolonged periods. Denying attorneys access to the "secure" facility. Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room" and later pronounced dead.
Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the "Nato Three", was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.
"Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told the Guardian on Friday. "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you."
Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
"It's sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can't find a client in the system, odds are they're there," said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.
When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. "This is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be standing here," said the man, who refused to give his name.
"They just disappear," said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, "until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street."
Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012, he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours – and an unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage – before he was finally charged with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.
Church's left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those restraints for about 17 hours.
Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of "active searching", Sarah Gelsomino, Church's lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a "major stink" with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.
After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of "mob action".
Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a shooting and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.
An officer told her, "Well, you can't just stand here taking notes, this is a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you're making people very nervous," Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return in an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after "12, maybe 13" hours in custody.
On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found "unresponsive inside an interview room", and pronounced dead. After publication, the Cook County medical examiner told the Guardian that the cause of death was determined to be heroin intoxication.
"Back when I first started working on torture cases and started representing criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they'd been taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where they were tortured," said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge. "And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions from them."
Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.
"The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects," Siska said.
"They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That's how we ended up with a black site in Chicago."
There's much more in the Guardian report. Read it. I am so infuriated by this I am at a loss for words.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Last year, Russia shut off gas deliveries to Ukraine for lack of payment. Most of the flow through Ukraine goes to Europe, but Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas without paying for it.
In December, Ukraine agreed to prepay for gas. The flows resumed, but a major dispute has recently arisen.
Gas Dispute
Yesterday, Ukraine complained it has not received gas it paid for.
Today, Russia complains it has not been paid for gas delivered.
I have called in the meter maid to investigate these claims and counterclaims.
Russia will completely cut Ukraine off gas supplies in two days if Kiev fails to pay for deliveries, which will create transit risks for Europe, Gazprom has said.
Ukraine has not paid for March deliveries and is extracting all it can from the current paid supply, seriously risking an early termination of the advance settlement and a supply cutoff, Gazprom's CEO Alexey Miller told journalists. The prepaid gas volumes now stand at 219 million cubic meters.
"It takes about two days to get payment from Naftogaz deposited to a Gazprom account. That's why a delivery to Ukraine of 114 million cubic meters will lead to a complete termination of Russian gas supplies as early as in two days, which creates serious risks for the transit to Europe," Miller said.
Last week, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the energy minister and the head of Gazprom to prepare proposals on fuel deliveries to the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) after Kiev had cut off the delivery pipeline into the southeastern regions. Ukraine's Naftogaz said it had halted gas supplies to eastern regions due to broken pipelines.
Russian Gas to Europe
Russia supplies 30% of the European continent, and 55% of Russian gas flows through Ukraine.
Ukraine Says Russia Not Sending Gas Paid in Advance
After cutting off Ukraine's gas for six months, Moscow resumed supplies in late-2014 when the two sides signed an interim agreement, under which Kiev would pay off some debt for past deliveries and pre-pay for supplies for the winter.
Naftogaz said the Russian firm had broken this deal by delivering only 47 million cubic metres (mcm) of a 114 mcm order that Kiev had paid for in advance last Thursday.
Last week Ukraine cut back supplies of gas to regions held by pro-Russian rebels, and Moscow began supplying gas to the separatist regions directly for the first time.
A Gazprom spokesman said at the time that the supplies to the rebel regions were being shipped under the contract with Naftogaz.
Russian natural-gas giant Gazprom is threatening to cut off supplies to Ukraine entirely as early as February 26, a move the Russian company says could result in a suspension of supplies to Europe.
The European Commission helped broker a deal last October between Moscow and Kiev that was meant to ensure Ukraine received gas during the winter and that supplies of Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine were not disrupted.
Under that agreement, Ukraine promised to pay off arrears for gas received and to prepay for future gas shipments, while Gazprom agreed to lower the price. That deal is valid until the end of March.
Gazprom said it is supplying gas to the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine that are controlled by pro-Russian separatists -- since Kiev stopped supplying them. Gazprom said it considers those two regions as being part of the contract with Naftogaz for supplies to Ukraine though the Russian company conceded that Naftogaz "does not take these volumes into account, as a result...estimates of how much prepaid gas has been supplied differ."
Lovely Rita Meter Maid
While pondering the claims and counterclaims, I offer this musical tribute.
I am pleased to note that "Lovely Rita" just pinged me with a rhetorical question as well as her official opinion.
Rita asks "If pipelines to the Eastern regions are broken, how is it that Russia can use them, but not Ukraine?"
Rita says "It's pretty easy to see what has happened. One does not even need a meter. Ukraine is broke and does not want to pay for gas delivered to Eastern Ukraine."
Last Friday, reader John told me the "street rate" for currency in Ukraine was not the reported 28 Hryvnias per US$ but rather on the order of 32 per US$.
I asked John where he got his information. He replied, "from my sister who lives in Lviv".
Lviv is a beautiful city in Western Ukraine.
John did not know what the "street rate" was yesterday, but he informed me the "interbank rate" was 31.50 to 32.50. The interbank rate is higher still today.
Meanwhile, Investing.Com shows a jump today to 32.487 today from 28 yesterday.
click on chart for sharper image
Interbank Rate is 33.5/USD
The above chart is closer, but still not correct.
On February 14, a researcher from Johns Hopkins Institute asked me where I got my rates from. I did not have an official source then, but today I have one.
Hryvnia exchange rate on the interbank foreign exchange market trading results on Tuesday, February 24, fell to 33.5 UAH / USD from 32,00 UAH / USD a day earlier. The top value today reached 33.80 UAH / USD.
Quotes hryvnia against the euro amounted to 36.2432 / 37.9354 UAH / EUR, RUR - 0.5072 / 0.5315 USD / ruble.
At the beginning of 2015 the hryvnia on the interbank market was about 19,00 UAH / USD.
February 24: The official hryvnia strengthened to 28.29/USD. National Bank Chairman Valery Hontaryeva explained the collapse of the hryvnia shock of transition to a free exchange rate . "We believe that the demand and supply of currency must find a balance, and hence the importance of adequate price" - said Hontaryeva.
Official vs. Interbank vs. Street
Note the "official" rate is still 28.29/USD. One cannot buy dollars at the "official" rate anywhere. And while the foreign exchange rate is 33.5/USD. I strongly suspect the "street" rate is worse yet.
Budget Rate
As long as we are discussing various rates, let's also consider the "2015 Budget Rate".
Thus, Ukraine's budget is a farce. The move from 21.7 to 33.5 is a decline of 35.22%. That's how far off Ukraine's budget is ... and worsening weekly, if not daily.
Exchange Rates
2015 Budget: 21.1
Official: 28.29
Interbank: 33.5
Street: Unknown but assuredly higher
At the beginning of 2014, the exchange rate was 8.21 per dollar. From 8.21 to 33.5 is a decline of 75% in just over a year!
And it's going to get worse.
Full Scale War
Ukraine's deputy foreign minister announced a "Full Scale War" on Saturday.
Last week, we learned that Wal-Mart was giving the lowest paid of its hourly employees a raise. In a blog post, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said that as of April, the company will pay a minimum of $9 an hour. That is $1.75 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, which has been unchanged for almost six years. Next February, Wal-Mart's lowest hourly rate will rise to $10. All told, about a half-million Wal-Mart workers in the U.S. will be affected.
In the years since the last federal minimum-wage increase, many of Wal-Mart's employees had fallen below the poverty level and the strengthening economy has made it harder to attract and retain employees.
Although many factors contributed to the move, the simple reason for the increase is because Wal-Mart has stopped growing. Same-store sales have been little changed or declining for some time now. When we look at the underlying causes, the company's workforce, and how it is managed, are the prime suspects.
Cutting on salary and benefits, however, didn't necessarily lower costs. About 44 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly staff turns over each year. That's a lot of people, because the company employs 2.2 million workers worldwide. Hiring replacements is a costly and time consuming process.
Consider competitors such as Costco: It has average hourly wages of $20 and a turnover rate of "17% overall and just 6% after one year's employment," according to the Harvard Business Review.
Staff Turnover
Barry goes on and on with some things I agree with and many other things I don't. However, I believe we can all reasonably assume that staff turnover was a major factor in Wal-Mart's decision.
If so, what does that say?
It says that the free market wage for Wal-Mart employees is $10.00 an hour, not $9.53, not $12.28, not $15.00, not any pulled out of the hat government mandate.
Wal-Mart decided on its own accord it could not attract the quality of people it needs at $7.25. That says nothing about Costco or McDonald's.
Simply put, the free market worked, not pressure from protesters, not whining from Obama.
Costco has a tiny number of SKUs in a huge store -- and consequently, has half as many employees per square foot of store. Their model is less labor intensive, which is to say, it has higher labor productivity. Which makes it unsurprising that they pay their employees more.
Trader Joe's is also private, but we do know some stuff about it, like its revenue per-square foot (about $1,750, or 75 percent higher than Wal-Mart's), the number of SKUs it carries (about 4,000, or the same as Costco, with 80 percent of its products being private label Trader Joe's brand), and its demographics (college-educated, affluent, and older).
In other words, Trader Joe's and Costco are the specialty grocer and warehouse club for an affluent, educated college demographic. They woo this crowd with a stripped-down array of high quality stock-keeping units, and high-quality customer service. The high wages produce the high levels of customer service, and the small number of products are what allow them to pay the high wages.
Minimum Wage Nonsense
The idea that government can dictate the right minimum wage that maximizes overall employment is nonsensical.
Wal-Mart decided on its own that its turnover was too high and/or the quality of its employees too low. Perhaps McDonald's makes the same decision, perhaps not.
Almost 7m US part-time workers are seeking full-time work in spite of a strong recovery in the jobs market.
Rising insecurity is driven by sophisticated technology that allows retailers and restaurant chains to adjust work rotas at short notice to respond to their own needs.
Zara and Urban Outfitters, the retailers, and Popeye's, a fast-food restaurant, are among those to come under fire for the notice employees are given on hours. Starbucks, the coffee chain, responded to a New York Times story detailing how workers were given schedules just days in advance with promises of improved working conditions.
Kory Lundberg of Walmart, which has witnessed protests from workers over pay and conditions, insists employees are given their schedules at least two-and-a-half weeks in advance "so they can plan their lives".
Part-timers who want additional work can sign up for extra hours online, Mr Lundberg adds. While this system has been praised by some workers' groups, others complain that shift availability varies from store to store.
Meddle Here, Cause Problems There
A primary cause of the rise of part-time hours (and more recently, uneven part-time hours and a rise in manager hours) is none other than government regulation called Obamacare.
In the last two years, hours worked by managers at discount and department stores are up 86% while hours worked by nonsupervisor employees is down.
Why? Supervisors, don't get paid overtime. It's yet another artifact of Obamacare.
I believe this is the first time in history a union group rallied to protest against a wage hike.
All in all, it should be perfectly clear that the minimum wage hike to $15 that McDonald's workers seek is absurd. Actually, any government mandated minimum wage is absurd.
Those who don't like their job can find another. If enough do, then wages will go up naturally, just as they did at Wal-Mart.
Crash Course for Ritholtz
Barry, please throw away your Soviet-style central planning model where governments set prices of wages, interest rates, crops, etc. It doesn't work.
Instead, embrace something that does work. It's called the free market. This economy would not be in such miserable shape, and wage inequality would actually be far less if we had more of a free market!
Crash Course on Income Inequality
For a discussion on the real cause of wage inequality ....
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