❖ The UN General Assembly has finally approved “the first global arms trade treaty by 154 votes to three [Iran, North Korea, Syria], with 23 abstentions” including Russia and China.

❖ Nourished by Austerity, “Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions.”

❖ Big turn of the old revolving door as Mary Schapiro, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission joins Promontory Financial, whose founder says “Mary is an outstanding advocate for investors”. While others are expressing some–ahem–concern, Yves Smith lays it all out.

❖ Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has decided to not advance the “talking filibuster” since he’s is trying “to avert a partisan showdown”.

❖ Seattle clergy have written a letter “decrying as ‘shockingly insensitive’ a pro-gun rally scheduled at ‘high noon’ in Olympia [WA], during the weekend of the national holiday honoring assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.”

❖ As one woman was entering the clinic for removal of the baby who had died en utero, the children’s choir assembled on the sidewalk sang “Happy Birthday Dead Baby”. Many other scenes from the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives” in Huntsville.