Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues and funk guitarist Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Enjoy!
Johnny Guitar Watson - Space Guitar
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
-- Thomas Paine
News and Opinion
Pakistan court says former CIA station chief will face charges over drone strike
Islamabad high court orders murder charges be brought against Jonathan Banks and former CIA lawyer John A Rizzo for 2009 strike that killed at least three
The former head of the CIA in Pakistan should be tried for murder and waging war against the country, a high court judge ruled on Tuesday.
Criminal charges against Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, were ordered in relation to a December 2009 attack by a US drone which reportedly killed at least three people.
Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad high court also ruled charges should be brought against John A Rizzo, formerly the top CIA lawyer who gave the legal green light for drone strikes.
Banks’s name was first dragged into the public domain in 2010 when a tribesman called Karim Khan began legal action against the supposedly undercover spy chief over an attack by an unmanned aircraft on his home in North Waziristan which he said killed his brother and son.
The extraordinary unmasking of a sitting station chief forced Banks to quit his post and leave the country. ...
With no chance of either of the two Americans travelling to Pakistan to face their day in court, the case is unlikely to go anywhere.
Diego Garcia: UK Delays Publication of Flight Records Which May Hold Truth About CIA Activities
The UK Foreign Office (FCO) has further delayed publication of flight records for Diego Garcia, following disclosures by a senior Bush administration official that interrogations took place at a CIA black site on the British island.
FCO officials are "still assessing the suitability of the full flight records for publication", nine months after they were first requested from the government by human rights NGO Reprieve.
Campaigners believe that the logs — written records of all flights landing on and leaving the atoll — could provide crucial, previously undisclosed details of flights involved in the intelligence agency's post-9/11 rendition and torture program.
Wrong About Iraq, Wrong About Iran
US steps up arms deliveries to Saudi-led coalition in Yemen
Washington deepened its involvement in the Saudi-led air war in Yemen on Wednesday, as aid agencies scrambled to deliver help to civilians caught up in the campaign now heading into its third week. ...
The Red Cross has warned of a “catastrophic” situation in the main southern city of Aden, where militia loyal to the fugitive president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi have been holding out against Shia-backed Houthi rebels and their allies within the security forces. ...
The main Shia power, Iran, which has strongly opposed the Saudi-led intervention, stepped up its efforts for a negotiated settlement with a visit to the Saudi ally Pakistan by foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Islamabad has so far deflected appeals by Riyadh to join the coalition of nine, mainly Sunni, Arab countries intervening in Yemen, for fear of deepening sectarian divisions at home and across the Muslim world.
Iran also sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, establishing a military presence off the coast of Yemen. The destroyer and support vessel sailed from Bandar Abbas on a mission to protect Iranian shipping from piracy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said in comments cited by Press TV.
The US deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken said Washington was stepping up weapons deliveries and intelligence-sharing in support of the Saudi-led coalition.
Saudi Airstrike Hits Yemeni School, Kills at Least Two Students
Adding to the civilian death toll in the Saudi-led war on Yemen, Saudi warplanes attacked a military base in the city of Ibb today and hit a nearby school, killing at least two, and according to some accounts three students.
Five bombs were reportedly dropped near the base, which was 500 meters from the school. There were no casualties on the base, and apparently everyone hit was students at the school.
Cracks in Iran deal: Sanction lift, monitoring, enrichment
US Struggles to Find Sunni Tribal Allies in Iraq
US officials seem to have agreed with the Iraqi government that, in the wake of taking most of the city of Tikrit, they need to start trying to make gains in the Anbar Province, the largest province in Iraq.
The question is how, with Iraqi officials eager to just copy the Tikrit model of using Shi’ite militias to do all the heavy lifting in the offensive against ISIS-held Sunni towns.
The US, however, doesn’t see this as a great idea, and rather is pushing for Iraq to use mostly Sunnis in the offensive. The problem is that they don’t have significant Sunni allies to do that.
‘IDF raid & arrest prominent Palestinian politician, imprison without charge or trial
Russians hacked White House computers, new report says
Russians are responsible for infiltrating the State Department and White House computer systems in recent months, CNN reported Tuesday.
The report says the hackers had access to non-classified, sensitive information, such as the president's schedule, by first breaking into the State Department.
God No, the U.S. Air Force Doesn’t Need Another Curtis LeMay
On March 27, the U.S. senate confirmed Air Force general Robin Rand as the next leader of Global Strike Command. He’s the first four-star general in GSC history to take on the role — and that’s just what the flying branch wants.
Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said he appointed Rand because he hopes that a four star general in charge of America’s nuclear command will give the flyers greater influence over the country’s nuclear policy. ...
But what Welsh said next is troubling — and serves as a reminder why the Air Force doesn’t have a greater say in the nuclear debate.
“I told Robin Rand … go become the next Curtis LeMay,” Welsh said. “Bring this nuclear mission … back to the front edge of Air Force attention every single day.”
That’s a terrible idea. The last thing the Air Force — to say nothing of America as a whole — needs is another Curtis LeMay. He was a brilliant strategist who helped win World War II with overwhelming and brutal force. But he also pushed America close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union and crafted policies that led to almost all the military’s major nuclear disasters.
Without LeMay, America may have never pursued a Cold War strategy based on preemptive strikes and it may never have lost dozens of nukes.
Political Smears in U.S. Never Change: the NYT’s 1967 Attack on MLK’s Anti-War Speech
I defy anyone to listen to any Democratic apparatchik insinuate that Snowden is a Russian agent and identify any differences with how Nixon apparatchiks smeared Ellsberg (or, for that matter, how today’s warnings from Obama officials about the grave harm coming from leaks differ from the warnings issued by Bush and Nixon officials). The script for smearing never changes — it stays constant over five decades and through the establishments of both parties — and it’s one of the reasons Ellsberg so closely identifies with Snowden and has become one of his most vocal defenders.
A reader this morning pointed me to one of the most illustrative examples of this dynamic: an April 1967 New York Times editorial harshly chastising Martin Luther King for his anti-war activism. That editorial was published three days after King’s speech on the Vietnam War at the Riverside Church in New York City, which, as I have written about many times, was one of the most powerful (and radical) indictments of American militarism delivered in the 20th century. ...
The attack of the NYT editors on King for that speech is strikingly familiar, because it’s completely identical to how anti-war advocates in the U.S. are maligned today. It begins by lecturing King that his condemnation of U.S. militarism is far too simplistic: “the moral issues in Vietnam are less clear cut than he suggests.” It accuses him of “slandering” the U.S. by comparing it to evil regimes. And it warns him that anti-war activism could destroy the civil rights movement, because he is guilty of overstating American culpability and downplaying those of its enemies.
DEA sued over secret bulk collection of Americans' phone records
Drug agency hoovered up billions of records of Americans calls without a warrant – which lawsuit says tested government’s surveillance powers to the limit
Human rights campaigners have prepared a federal lawsuit aiming to permanently shut down the bulk collection of billions of US phone records – not, this time, by the National Security Agency, but by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Human Rights Watch, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed their lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday morning to stop the DEA from hoovering up billions of records of Americans’ international calls without a warrant.
The reach of the program, exposed by USA Today, lasted for two decades and served as a template for the NSA’s gigantic and ongoing bulk surveillance of US phone data after 9/11.
Though US officials insist the DEA is now out of the bulk-collection business, the revelation of mass phone-records collection in the so-called “war on drugs” raises new questions about whether the Obama administration or its successors believe US security agencies continue to have legal leeway for warrantless bulk surveillance on American citizens, even as officials forswear those powers publicly. ...
According to a USA Today, Republican and Democratic US presidents George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama permitted the DEA to monitor and store call data surrounding “virtually all telephone calls” from the US to 116 countries – most of the world – linked to drug trafficking. Its existence was first disclosed in January.
According to the paper, attorney general Eric Holder ended USTO in September 2013 out of fear of scandal following Snowden’s disclosures. ... Holder, who had first backed USTO as a Clinton administration deputy attorney general, shut it down in secret.
FBI would rather prosecutors drop cases than disclose stingray details
Not only is the FBI actively attempting to stop the public from knowing about stingrays, it has also forced local law enforcement agencies to stay quiet even in court and during public hearings, too.
An FBI agreement, published for the first time in unredacted form on Tuesday, clearly demonstrates the full extent of the agency’s attempt to quash public disclosure of information about stingrays. The most egregious example of this is language showing that the FBI would rather have a criminal case be dropped to protect secrecy surrounding the stingray.
Relatively little is known about how, exactly, stingrays, known more generically as cell-site simulators, are used by law enforcement agencies nationwide, although new documents have recently been released showing how they have been purchased and used in some limited instances. Worse still, cops have lied to courts about their use. Not only can stingrays be used to determine location by spoofing a cell tower, they can also be used to intercept calls and text messages. Typically, police deploy them without first obtaining a search warrant.
Malaysia Reintroduces Indefinite Detention to Stop 'Terrorists' — and Maybe to Quell Opposition
Malaysia's parliament have voted to reintroduce indefinite detention for individuals perceived as a threat to the country's security, a measure critics say is authoritarian and a blow to human rights in the country.
Lawmakers voted late on Monday night to bring in the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2015, widely described as a revival of the feared Internal Security Act, a colonial era law abolished in 2012 amid talk of a new dawn for Malaysian civil liberties.
The debate lasted more than 10 hours, resulting in 79 votes to 60 in favor of approving the bill. The law must still be passed by the country's senate, but with the chamber dominated by the ruling party, it is expected to be quickly approved. ...
However, the power they give to state authorities has alarmed human rights activists and proponents of free speech who worry about the way they will be utilized.
Under the anti-terrorism law, an individual can be detained without trial for as many as 59 days at the discretion of the police. After that, detentions must be approved by a "terrorism board," but can continue for two years, after which extensions may be granted. A judiciary or open court never factors in these decisions.
Youth of SYRIZA: More Radical on Debt, Grexit and Redistribution in Greece
Putin Meets With Alexis Tsipras of Greece, Raising Eyebrows in Europe
Welcoming the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, to Moscow at a time of badly strained relations between Russia and Europe, President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday declared that the visit “could not have come at a better time.”
Mr. Tsipras, who is in tough negotiations with fellow European leaders over international financial assistance that Greece needs to avoid bankruptcy, arrived here on Tuesday night. His visit has raised eyebrows across the Continent because of a perception that he may be trying to gain leverage by cozying up to Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin said Wednesday that Mr. Tsipras had not asked for direct financial assistance from Russia.
At a joint news conference at the Kremlin, the two leaders said that their discussion had focused on economic issues, including trade and tourism. They also said they talked about energy issues and Russia’s plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Turkey to Europe, in which Greece could play a crucial link. ...
Mr. Tsipras, at the news conference following the meeting, reiterated his previous criticism of Western sanctions against Russia. “We have repeatedly declared our disagreement,” he said. “This is our point of view that we constantly express to our colleagues in the E.U. We don’t think that this is a fruitful decision. It’s practically an economic war.”
“It will lead to cold war relations between the West and Russia,” he added. “We are working with the E.U. in this direction in the framework of our capabilities, with the aim of promoting dialogue, diplomacy and understanding.”
Such public criticism is particularly sensitive for European leaders because the sanctions against Russia automatically expire on July 31, and a unanimous decision by the European Council is needed to extend them. So far, senior Western officials have generally said that there has not been sufficient progress in resolving the crisis in eastern Ukraine to warrant a rollback in sanctions.
Russia hints at lifting embargo on food imports from Greece
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hinted that Moscow could lift its embargo on food imports from Greece, which has been hurt by the ban and is embroiled in crucial talks with its European creditors. ...
In retaliation against Western sanctions, Russia last year banned selected food imports including vegetables and cheese from the European Union, which has hit Greek imports particular hard. ...
A deal could potentially restore millions in profits that Greek farmers used to make on the Russian markets.
Video Shows White Police Officer Shooting Black Man in the Back; Cop Will Be Charged With Murder
A white police officer from North Charleston, South Carolina is in custody and will face murder charges after firing upon and killing a 50-year-old black man named Walter Scott as Scott ran away from him after a Saturday traffic stop, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. Video taken by a bystander and obtained by more than one outlet shows the officer, Michael Slager, firing at a retreating Scott.
A previous statement issued by an attorney representing Slager said that Scott took Slager’s stun gun before the officer fired at him; the video may or may not show this taking place, but it also appears to show Slager dropping the stun gun next to Scott's body after the shooting.
What if There Was No Video? White SC Officer Charged With Murder of Fleeing African-American Man
No federal charges to be brought against police officer who killed Danroy Henry
No federal civil rights charges will be brought in the 2010 shooting death of a college football player by a suburban New York police officer who says he shot him in his moving car when he failed to stop, a prosecutor said on Tuesday. ...
Prosecutors said in a release that a thorough review of evidence in the 18 October 2010 shooting of the Pace University football player did not show that a law enforcement officer acted with deliberate and specific intent to break the law. ...
Henry was shot in his car as he drove through a parking lot away from a disturbance that spilled out of a bar on Homecoming Day. Henry was black; Officer Hess is white. Prosecutors said the officer shouted for Henry to stop and then stepped in front of Henry’s car. They said there were inconsistencies in witness accounts, but that it appeared Henry’s car was braking when it struck the officer, who wound up on the car’s roof. The officer then fired through the car’s windshield, wounding one passenger and killing Henry, the government said. ...
“While portions of isolated testimony from certain of the witnesses at the scene might suggest that the Pleasantville officer acted with bad intent, there is not enough consistent, credible witness testimony to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer acted with the requisite willfulness to deprive Mr Henry of his constitutional rights,” prosecutors said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel Wins Chicago Runoff, But Progressives Show a Force That Can No Longer Be Ignored
1% win, big money continues to rule Chicago.
Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel wins second term
With nearly all precincts reporting results, Obama’s former chief of staff had about 56% of the vote compared to around 44% for his rival Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia
Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel held on to his office – and his city career – on Tuesday night beating his rival, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, in the city’s first-ever mayoral runoff. ...
Garcia, a Mexican-American county commissioner and former legislator, had been betting on large turnout from both Hispanic and African-American voters. Since the first election night 7 February, over 20,000 additional Chicagoans registered to vote, many in the city’s predominately white wards where Emanuel fared well in both election rounds.
Garcia’s loss also marks a defeat for several of the city’s largest unions who supported the Mexican-American candidate, including the local branch of the Service Employees International Union and the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the city’s public school workers and which pumped over $300,000 in campaign donations into Garcia’s campaign.
The Chicago Teachers Union has decried both the city’s nearly $20bn in unpaid pensions and its use of an appointed process to select Chicago Public Schools’ Board of Education – a process Emanuel is dead set against changing. When asked if he thinks Emanuel will yield on those issues, civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson Sr – who publicly threw his support behind Garcia – said he “doesn’t know”.
“The election’s over, but the problems are not over,” Jackson Sr said on Tuesday night. “The cards are stacked in Rahm Emanuel’s favor. But there is no plan for capital development, there’s no housing plan, there’s no plan for hospitals and construction, so the suffering continues.”
Emanuel Wins in Chicago, Garcia Fails to Ignite Black Vote
Once fiery black teachers union leader Karen Lewis pulled out for medical reasons, Garcia would not critique the Democratic Party and President Obama's neoliberal education policies as Lewis was willing to do
DIXON: I think that Chuy did about as well as any Democrat would have done, as any centrist Democrat would have done. Any Democrat, period, would have done. What Chuy didn't do, perhaps felt that he couldn't do, was he couldn't denounce the mayor's educational policies as part and parcel of the national bipartisan elite consensus on privatizing education in poor black and brown communities. Chuy couldn't do that because of course he, too, is a career Democrat.
Chuy couldn't denounce these things in the way that Karen Lewis might have been able to. Chuy couldn't advance a critique of the entire black political establishment, which almost unanimously -- almost -- came out for Rahm Emanuel. And these are things that Karen Lewis, an outsider, is more likely to have been able to do, had she chosen to. ...
JAY: Now, Garcia ran as if he was not part of the machine. He was supposed to be a man of the people. He was supposed to be like a working-class candidate. Why didn't that create more excitement amongst African-Americans? Because that's -- the African-Americans that did come out did more or less vote for the machine, which meant most people stayed home.
DIXON: Well, that, that being a Democrat but not being part of the machine was the story of maybe 20 or 25 years of my life and a lot of people's careers, and in fact it just doesn't work. There were some people who, revealingly, were portraying this on the national level as a fight for the soul of the Democratic party.
But in fact, the Democratic party has no soul, and if there ever was a fight for it it's a fight that was decided almost a generation ago. And as long as you're running as a Democrat, and the president, the biggest Democrat in the country is out here campaigning for your opponent, you better be something other than a Democrat in order to call that into question. If you're still a Democrat, and your president is coming in campaigning against you, that's got to say something.
'Mayor 1%' Retakes Chicago Office, But Grassroots Groundswell Here to Stay
Chicago's historic mayoral runoff vote, which became a nationwide symbol of the contest between the political machine and people power, ended late Tuesday in a second term for the man dubbed "Mayor One Percent"—and with vows from grassroots groups that, far from being defeated, their organizing will only grow from here. ...
"We are coming out of this election with the attitude that now more than ever we need to build a mass movement," Frank Chapman, field organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, told Common Dreams on Wednesday morning, "We need to go into full swing to stop police crimes in our city. This election has given the powers that be a firmer grip on their political lackeys but not a firm grip on the people."
Rick Perlstein told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that, despite the Emanuel's reelection, this election has "silver linings."
"One of the strategies of Rahm Emanuel was to exacerbate tensions between the Hispanic community in Chicago and the Black community in Chicago," said Perlstein, who explained that this maneuver didn't work. Instead, he said, "you see a galvanized Hispanic population united with the African American population united with the white left and that is not going to go away."
Many say that the hotly contested election and big grassroots showing have pushed political discourse to the left and shaken up the firmly entrenched political establishment.
Change in Ferguson Continues as Record Turnout Adds 2 Black Members to City Council
Two black candidates elected to Ferguson city council
Half of the six-member city council – in a town where two-thirds of the 21,000 residents are black – will now be African American
Two black candidates were among three people elected to the Ferguson city council, tripling African American representation in the St Louis suburb. ... The lone black incumbent councilman was not up for re-election. The mayor, who could break any tie votes, is white.
Voter turnout increased substantially from the previous election following a strong get-out-the-vote effort from unions and other national organisations. The town that drew only 12.3% of registered voters last April had 29.4% turnout on Tuesday, according to the St Louis County board of elections. That was about double the overall turnout in St Louis County, where Ferguson is located.
Unofficial results showed that Wesley Bell defeated another black candidate to win in the 3rd Ward. Ella Jones defeated another black candidate and two white candidates in the 1st Ward. Brian Fletcher, a former mayor who is white, won a 2nd Ward race against another white candidate.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature reports from the Chicago Day Book on testimony before the Commission on Industrial Relations given by R. W. Bell, secretary of the Federation of Pullman Conductors and Porters, Testimony given by employes of the Pullman will also be covered.
Tune in at 2pm!
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War on Women Continues With 'Atrocious' New Anti-Choice Law in Kansas
Flanked by anti-choice advocates and large photos of human fetuses, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback on Tuesday signed into law the nation's first ban on an abortion procedure often considered the safest termination option for some pregnant women.
The new law, which takes effect on July 1, bans the dilation and evacuation (known as D and E) procedure commonly used during a pregnancy's second trimester, and thus effectively bans abortion as early as 14 weeks post-fertilization. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, D and E is the safest means of performing an abortion after that time.
The legislation, which the Republican governor signed during a closed meeting with anti-choice lobbyists, was drafted by the national anti-choice group the National Right to Life Committee and specifically terms the method as "dismemberment abortion."
Corporations cannot muzzle whistleblowers with secrecy agreements any longer
Corporations intent on blunting the whistleblower reforms embodied in the Dodd-Frank Act have long been muzzling their employees with non-disclosure agreements. ... Numerous companies have developed broadly worded non-disclosure agreements that restrict the release of confidential information to the company’s legal department as a condition of employment – though the exact number is unknown. When leaving the company, employees who have threatened to file a whistleblower claims were also forced to accept non-disclosure requirements as a condition of a settlement or before they could obtain a severance payment after they were fired or laid off.
These agreements explicitly prohibit employees from communicating with anyone, except attorneys hired by the company. Some go as far as explicitly barring communication with regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We have seen numerous companies require employees questioned by the government to secretly provide them with insights into the scope of the investigation. ... What’s even more Kafkaesque is that almost every non-disclosure agreement strictly prohibits the employee from telling the government of the existence of these secrecy agreements, and the restrictions placed upon them.
But that’s about to change. On 1 April, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined the mammoth defense contractor, KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root), for requiring employees to sign restrictive non-disclosure agreements. ... This is the first time that a government regulatory agency has sanctioned a corporation for executing agreements that “chilled” an employee’s ability to report financial crimes to the Justice Department, to Congress, to the SEC and to other regulatory agencies.
The Evening Greens
Study suggests chemical used in BP oil spill cleanup capable of injuring people and wildlife
Nearly five years after the worst offshore spill in U.S. history, a new study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests that an oil dispersant widely used during the cleanup of the BP disaster is capable of causing damage to humans and marine animals alike.
In the study, published in PLOS ONE on April 2, scientists focused their attention on a dispersant called Corexit EC9500A.
Nearly two million gallons of Corexit were sprayed atop the oil spill to help break down the petroleum. But in their study, the UAB scientists found that the dispersant can seriously damage epithelial cells, such as those in the lungs of humans or the gills of marine animals.
“The evidence that Corexit causes structural and functional abnormalities in airway tissue includes dispersant-induced cell detachment, edema, contraction in cell diameter and increased permeability,” Prof. Veena Antony, M.D., the paper’s senior author, said in a UAB news release. ...
The UAB study is one of several to be published in preparation for the disaster’s fifth anniversary. A wider-ranging study from the National Wildlife Federation linked the 2010 oil spill to a four-fold increase in dolphin deaths along the Louisiana coast as well as dwindling populations of sea turtles, trout and pelicans. The NWF report, “Five Years and Counting: Gulf Wildlife in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster,” looks at how no less than 20 species are faring after the massive oil spill.
“Wildlife from sperm whales to marsh ants are still feeling the effects of the disaster,” said Ryan Fikes, the NWF’s Gulf of Mexico restoration scientist.
One could take Mr. Obama's campaign against climate change more seriously if he wasn't at the same time campaigning for corporate profits by allowing drilling in the arctic and expanding offshore drilling on the east coast, expediting pipeline growth and a host of other climate-challenging corporate activities.
Obama emphasises threat to public health as part of climate change push
Barack Obama on Tuesday highlighted the impact of climate change on public health, hours after the White House unveiled an initiative targeting adverse health effects caused by extreme weather and greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are a whole host of public health impacts that are going to hit home,” Obama said at a roundtable discussion with health professionals at Howard University in Washington DC, citing rising asthma rates and the prospects of nontraditional insect-borne diseases soon moving to North America. “Ultimately ... all of our families are going to be vulnerable. You can’t cordon yourself off from air or from climate.”
The event marked the latest effort by the president to raise the spectre of climate change and use the bully pulpit to defend steps his administration has taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Brewing Human Rights Crisis In Baltimore As City Threatens Mass Water Shutoffs
Residents warn move is part of global trend 'towards the commodification of our basic needs'
In what residents warn is a mounting human rights crisis, the city of Baltimore has commenced sending 25,000 notices, the vast majority to city and county residents, threatening to shut off water if delinquent bills are not paid within ten days.
The organization Food & Water Watch estimates that 75,000 residents are under immediate threat of having their taps turned off, in a city beset with rising water rates and housing costs, where nearly one out of four people live below the federal poverty line. ...
"A lot of renters we work with are angry but also tired, because they see more and more of the costs of having a place to live getting further out of reach," said Jessica Lewis, co-founder of the Right to Housing Alliance. "This is part of a continuing trend towards the commodification of our basic needs." ...
While it is not yet apparent whether the city's massive purge is part of a drive to privatize the city's water, residents say there are reasons to be concerned. Last year, labor, church, and community leaders with the coalition One Baltimore United organized to keep the water system public, in response to an increasingly cozy relationship between water corporation Veolia and the city.
The fight for access to water is a global flashpoint, as corporations around the world attempt to seize control of this vital good, and communities from Detroit to Dublinfight back. In 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights explicitly recognized water as a human right, saying it is "indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Iran and the Recurrent Fear of Arms Control
Six Things You Didn’t Know the U.S. and Its Allies Did to Iran
Judith Miller’s Blame-Shifting Memoir
Israel’s Unsavory New ‘Allies’
Resurrecting Newburgh, the once-grand American city that had its heart torn out
Stipe, John condemn treatment of transgender prisoners
A Little Night Music
Johnny Guitar Watson - Big Bad Wolf
Johnny Guitar Watson - Three Hours Past Midnight
Johnny Guitar Watson - Deana Baby
Johnny Guitar Watson - That's The Chance You've Got To Take
Johnny Guitar Watson - Cuttin' In
Johnny Guitar Watson - Motor Head Baby
Johnny Guitar Watson - Gettin Drunk
Johnny Guitar Watson - Half Pint A Whiskey
Johnny Guitar Watson - Those Lonely, Lonely Nights
Johnny Guitar Watson You Can't Take It With You
Johnny Guitar Watson - Gangster Of Love
Johnny Guitar Watson - Hot Little Mama
Johnny Guitar Watson - Telephone Boogie
Johnny Guitar Watson - Highway 60
Johnny Guitar Watson - Too Tired
Johnny "Guitar" Watson - I Want To Ta Ta You Baby
Johnny Guitar Watson - A real mother for ya
Johnny "Guitar" Watson - There´s A Recession Going On
Johnny Watson - Cold Cold Heart
Johnny Guitar Watson - 1977 Concert on German TV Show: Musikladen
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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