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 Chicago blues piano player Little Johnny Jones and doo wop singer Earl "Speedo" Carroll (Cadillacs). Enjoy!
Little Johnny Jones - Chicago Blues
"Happening Now: Obama just said he fully expects the Ukrainian government to allow protesters to assemble peacefully. ...Really? You're going to say that after the violent crackdown on Occupy? After watching peaceful protesters hit with pepper spray, arrested, and beaten? But NOW you're threatening to step in if people don't abide by the rules our country blatantly tramples?"
-- Lee Camp
News and Opinion
This is a must read article. It's really not that long:
Engineering Failed States: The Strategy of Global Corporate Imperialism
Imperialism has long been a collective disease for humanity. In its current perverse capitalist incarnation, imperialism’s methods have become even more brutal and ruthless. If the physical destruction of a country’s infrastucture is still in the foreground, this is used in conjunction with the creation or revival of civil wars, ethnic or bloody sectarian conflicts in previously stable national entities. Corporate imperialism aims to break the national spirit. The few remaining sovereign nations are the final obstacles to the looming threat of a global transnational corporate empire. Corporate imperialism’s only concern is the bottom line: it is on a permanent quest to maximize profit. It is not about bringing the supposed gift of civilization to savages anymore, unlike the old-fashioned imperialist adventures. In this context, why bother to rebuild the shattered countries when the only goal is to plunder resources, either natural or human? Public resources are allocated to reconstruction, but these resources usually disappear in black holes of corporate war profiteers such as Halliburton in the US. Wrecked countries are never rebuilt because they are easier to exploit while they are in a shambles.
The model for transnational corporate imperialism was set up in Iraq, then applied to Libya. This global imperialist strategy is in the works in Syria, the Ukraine, Mali, Central African Republic, and Venezuela. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) usually acts as the armed fist for this process, but sponsored proxy agents such as Jihadists in Syria or fascist factions in the Ukraine and Venezuela are also used to destabilize governments. ... The new strategy is to fuel ethnic or sectarian conflicts as much and as long as possible, and ideally maintain a permanent state of low-intensity civil war. In the Central African Republic, the clashes between the majority Christian population and the 15 percent Muslims gave France the perfect opportunity to send 2,000 troops. French troops are still in Mali to protect mining interests. In Iraq, the low-level sectarian warfare is a disaster for Iraqis but has worked well for corporate interests. The oil is flowing, and of course, just like in Syria, weapons dealers, mercenaries, and “reconstruction” contractors are making a killing. ...
Many awful things have been said about the former KGB Colonel [Vladimir Putin], but nobody can claim that he is not the man at the helm of Russia. One might like it or not, but Putin is clearly in charge of his country, which, if nothing else, at least gives people a sense of clarity. Unlike the so-called “leader of the free world,” there are no puppet masters behind Putin. ... Putin also understood, that in order to maintain Russia’s national sovereignty against the United States and the European Union, he had to forge strategic and economic alliances, especially with China; BRICS was created in this context and for this reason. ...
[W]hat global corporate imperialism abhors the most is “resource nationalism,” i.e. the nationalization of prime resources such as oil by sovereign states, as is currently the case in Venezuela. National sovereignty is not about nationalism; it is instead an expression of different cultural identities. National and cultural specificity are getting in the way of the end game of corporate imperialism.
A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup
Ukraine violence: dozens killed as protesters clash with armed police
Scores of people have been killed and many more injured in what has become the bloodiest day in modern Ukrainian history.
The violence started shortly before 9am when protesters armed with axes, knives, truncheons and corrugated iron shields advanced on to a bridge in the centre of the Ukranian capital and drove riot police back from Independence Square.
Within an hour, the area surrounding the Ukrania hotel, which had been under the control of riot police, fell to the protesters. The police lines dissolved as they were bussed away to be replaced by the feared "Berkut" special forces. Kiev soon became a battleground. ...
Agence France-Presse estimated at least 60 people have been killed. "More than 60 protesters died today. They all have gunshot wounds," a co-ordinator for opposition medics EuroMaidan Medical Centre told AFP.
On Thursday afternoon, Ukraine's acting interior minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, issued a statement confirming that police had been armed with combat weapons.
White House ‘outraged’ by Ukraine forces ‘firing automatic weapons on their own people
The White House urged Ukraine’s president on Thursday to immediately withdraw security forces from downtown Kiev and respect the right of peaceful protest after a truce fell apart there and the death toll mounted.
“We are outraged by images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.
The death toll from two days of clashes in Kiev has climbed past 50.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich should immediately withdraw his security forces from downtown Kiev an respect the right of peaceful protest, and “we urge protesters to express themselves peacefully,” said Carney.
Have Ukraine's protests been taken over by this ultra-right-wing group?
Pravy Sektor, or Right Sector, the ultra-right-wing movement, described by some as fascist, whose hundreds of soldiers (they call themselves an army) have become the sharp edge of the two-month-old protest movement that has upturned the politics of Ukraine, cost several lives and forced President Viktor Yanukovych to dismiss the government and promise to reform the constitution.
The great majority of the hundreds of thousands of “EuroMaidan” protesters – who have rallied against Mr. Yanukovych’s rejection of a European Union treaty and his moves toward a deal with Russia – appear to be either supporters of conventional, centrist or liberal opposition political parties, or pro-European citizens without much interest in party politics at all.
But the physical organization of these protests, the building of barricades around squares, much of the camp construction and policing, and the pitched and sometimes deadly battles with police are almost entirely the work of the extreme right. In some of Ukraine’s smaller cities, the local protests and seizures of government buildings appear to have been entirely the work of Pravy Sektor. ...
Despite their history of extreme intolerance, Pravy Sektor has won the admiration of a surprising number of mainstream protest organizers. “The real extremists are on the government side – some see the Pravy Sektor people as being too extreme, but we need them now,” says Andrey Dzyndzya, a founder of AutoMaidan, which started as a car owners’ protest group against highway-police corruption and became a major organizing force in the protests. “We need their kind of radicalism to support the revolution.”
There is a paradox here, Mr. Skoropadsky acknowledges. The EuroMaidan (literally “Euro Square”) protests began as, and continue to be dominated by, a call for closer relations with the EU Union, yet Pravy Sektor’s members are opposed to foreign influence and, like many on the far right, distrust Brussels.
“If you ask me which is better, Russia or the EU, I’d go with the EU – Russia is a tyrannical empire,” he says. “But we don’t think everything’s okay with the EU. We are Christians, and we share Christian values, and we don’t want the things we see in the EU, such as the idea that gays should have the same rights as everyone.”
He would prefer, he says, a “close dialogue and an alliance” with Europe.
Venezuela opposition leader charged as violence continues
Violent protests in Venezuela continued overnight as a court ordered the detention of an opposition leader blamed for triggering a week of turmoil.
A judge ruled early on Thursday that there was enough evidence to hold Leopoldo López, who surrendered to authorities before thousands of cheering supporters this week, on charges that include arson and criminal incitement stemming from a huge rally on 12 February. ...
In the hours before the decision, President Nicolás Maduro had suggested that López would remain in custody and face criminal charges. The government has accused the former mayor and the leader of the Popular Will party of attempting to foment a coup.
"I said send him to jail, and that's what happened, and that's what will happen with all of the fascists," Maduro said in a two-hour speech broadcast nationally. "I won't allow him to challenge the people of Venezuela, the constitution."
Venezuelan Protests: Another Attempt By U.S.-Backed Right-Wing Groups To Oust Elected Government
Iran demands to see secret nuclear weapons ‘proof’
Iran said on Wednesday it would not accept long-standing allegations that its nuclear programme once had a military dimension without seeing the secret documents on which the charges are based.
“We will not accept any of the (International Atomic Energy) Agency allegations unless its documents are proven and the person who presented them clarifies on what basis we have been accused,” Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
“We told the agency it is not acceptable that you accuse us based on a piece of torn paper submitted by some people.”
The IAEA has said documents showing a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear programme were presented to it in 2005 by a “member state” and “participants in a clandestine nuclear supply network.”
The documents are widely believed to have been supplied by the United States, which suspects Iran of covertly seeking nuclear weapons, charges denied by Tehran.
NSA considers expanding bulk surveillance — claiming it’s because they’re being sued
Don’t laugh.
The National Security Agency is considering expanding its trove of phone records of Americans’ telephone calls and data, saying they’d be doing so to protect themselves from lawsuits, according to officials who spoke anonymously to the Wall Street Journal in an article published Thursday.
“No final decision has been made to preserve the data, officials said, and one official said that even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and not be subject to searches,” the paper’s Devlin Barrett and Siobhan Gorman reported. “The government currently collects phone records on millions of Americans in a vast database that it can mine for links to terror suspects. The database includes records of who called whom, when they called and for how long.” ...
“It’s difficult to understand why the government would consider taking this position, when the relief we’ve requested in the lawsuit is a purge of our data,” the American Civil Liberties Union’s Patrick Toomey said. ...
But officials are apparently serious. The concern is that in order to bring lawsuits, plaintiffs need to prove they’ve been spied upon. If records are deleted, it will limit the agency’s ability to prove that privacy groups don’t have standing or that they weren’t targeted.
Department of Homeland Security cancels national license-plate tracking plan
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative.
The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of license-plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Officials said the database was intended to help apprehend fugitive illegal immigrants, but the plan raised concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.
Germany Considers Counterespionage Against US
Unsatisfied with the lack of answers provided by Washington in the NSA spying scandal, officials in Berlin are considering a new approach. Germany might begin counterespionage measures aimed at allies.
The stubbornness of the Americans, who have answered few relevant questions from Germany during the National Security Agency spying scandal, has angered the new government, comprised of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Now, pressure is growing for Germany to find its own answers to the questions Washington has been ignoring. "They're like cowboys who only understand the language of the Wild West," sources in Merkel's party say, referring to the Americans' intractability. ...
Last week, US President Barack Obama himself rejected any form of a "no-spy agreement". "There's no country where we have a no-spy agreement," Obama said in a press conference during a visit by French President François Hollande. ... Between the White House and the Capitol Building, people seem to be rolling their eyes at the Germans. They say they've had enough of the moaning. Sources close to Secretary of State John Kerry, especially, are pushing to move forward from the spying scandal. "Let's turn the page," Kerry reportedly said during private meetings with Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
A new chapter is coming, but it won't be quite as Kerry envisioned it. The Social Democrats are increasingly irritated by the Americans' apparent ignorance over just how sensitive Germany is regarding the NSA affair. "The Iraq war was tiddlywinks compared to the blow to our relations suffered through the NSA affair," says Dietmar Nietan, a member of the German parliament who has been active on the issue of German-American relations for years now.
The plans for monitoring allies are already well developed. Section 4 in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, where just 100 specialists had been employed, is to be significantly expanded. In addition, a form of "observation-light" is planned: Western partners won't be the targets of the full spectrum of intelligence tools available, such as telephone monitoring, source acquisition or direct observation. But German authorities will do all they can to keep an eye on the goings on at embassies and consulates, learn more about who works there and determine the extent of their technical capabilities. In short, they want to know, for example, if German government offices are being monitored by the US Embassy in Berlin.
Web Mirage: 'No believable plan for creating secure Euro network'
McCain Vows New Fight Over Control of US Armed Drone Program
A senior US lawmaker intends to renew his fight to require the Obama administration to fully shift its armed drone program from the CIA to the Defense Department.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a senior Armed Services Committee member, told Defense News on Wednesday, just before Congress left for a weeklong recess, that he will push the issue when the panel crafts its 2015 Pentagon policy bill in coming months.
“We’re going to have that debate,” McCain said in a brief interview. “There is no doubt about it.”
McCain’s comments come weeks after he expressed disgust with language reportedly inserted into the classified portion of a Pentagon-funding section of an omnibus spending bill blocking the shift of the drone program from the CIA to the military.
Matt Taibbi to lead First Look's next digital publication
First Look Media, the news organization created by Pierre Omidyar, today announced that acclaimed journalist and New York Times best-selling author Matt Taibbi will launch First Look’s second digital magazine. Taibbi will help assemble a top-notch team of journalists and bring his trademark combination of reporting, analysis, humor and outrage to the ongoing financial crisis – and to the political machinery that makes it possible. The magazine will launch later this year.
Taibbi comes to First Look from Rolling Stone, where he served as a contributing editor for the past 10 years. During his tenure, he built a large and devoted following that has grown to rely on his in-depth and irreverent reporting on Wall Street and Washington. Whether busting Goldman Sachs for market manipulation or revealing the hidden roots of the student loan crisis, Taibbi has exposed and explained the most complicated financial scandals of the day with a fresh and compelling approach to journalism that has enraged and inspired millions of readers.
“Matt is one of the most influential journalists of our time,” said Eric Bates, executive editor of First Look Media. “His incisive explorations of the financial crisis – and Wall Street’s undue influence over our political system – have played a key role in helping to inform the public and transform the national debate. He is a journalist who can explain what a credit default swap is and why it’s important – and, make you bust out laughing while he’s doing it. I look forward to having him on our team and helping him launch a dynamic new site unlike any other.”
Something Everybody Struggling To Get By MUST Remember
Trouble finding work? How about a career in the exploding field of guarding rich people's ill-gotten gains?
One Nation Under Guard
Another dubious first for America: We now employ as many private security guards as high school teachers — over one million of them, or nearly double their number in 1980.
And that’s just a small fraction of what we call “guard labor.” In addition to private security guards, that means police officers, members of the armed forces, prison and court officials, civilian employees of the military, and those producing weapons: a total of 5.2 million workers in 2011. That is a far larger number than we have of teachers at all levels.
What is happening in America today is both unprecedented in our history, and virtually unique among Western democratic nations. The share of our labor force devoted to guard labor has risen fivefold since 1890 — a year when, in case you were wondering, the homicide rate was much higher than today.
When we look across advanced industrialized countries, we see the same pattern: the more inequality, the more guard labor. ... [T]he United States leads in both.
Is our Obama learning? Despite Alan Grayson's best efforts and those of other Democrats, Obama is still pushing the 1% agenda on trade.
The Trans Pacific Partnership is in trouble on Capitol Hill
At the White House, Obama heard an earful from from Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), two outspoken liberals with close ties to the labor movement and other liberal constituencies.
Kaptur said she had a simple request for Obama: Let Congress and the public see the details of the TPP before Congress is asked to give him fast track authority.
"He did not say yes," she said in a recent interview. "That means that we would be faced with a fast-track vote that would lock our ability to amend without even knowing what’s in the agreement. I can’t do that. Not when we have $9 trillion of accumulated trade deficit, which is the reason for our budget deficit, because we’re losing middle-class jobs in our country and we’ve outsourced millions of our jobs, a third of our manufacturing base is gone."
Grayson said he wanted to remind Obama that the U.S. faces hundreds of billions of dollars in trade deficits with other countries.
In response, Obama "didn’t give me any sense that, any reason to believe that these free trade agreements that are being negotiated now are going to be any different than the ones we’ve negotiated in the past," Grayson said in a recent interview. "They’ve consistently, and almost to an unbelievable extend, exacerbated our trade problems. I told the president specifically this: That what’s actually happening is that we’re buying goods and services from foreigners and creating jobs in their countries and they are not buying our goods nor our services. What they are doing is buying our assets and driving us deeper and deeper into debt. So we lose twice, we lose because those jobs go overseas and because we go deeper and deeper into debt."
Despite the Democratic opposition, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that “we’re going to continue to press" for fast-track authority.
'Tres Amigos' Mexico Summit Advancing Neoliberal Reforms
NOOR: So, Jeff, you know, we just passed the 20th anniversary of NAFTA. And one of the main priorities of the summit in Mexico is to bring the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. together on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP. Critics have called the TPP NAFTA on steroids. What's your response?
FAUX: Well, it certainly is. NAFTA has been the model for trade agreements for the last 20 years, and it's set the example, it's set the model for elites and corporations from each country, trading off the interests of their workers in favor of the profits for their multinational corporations. This is the model of globalization we've been following, and NAFTA set the template.
Right now Obama's worried because his TPP program is in trouble in Congress. People are getting, after 20 years, that NAFTA hasn't worked and these trade agreements haven't worked. In NAFTA, the American people were promised more jobs. We got less jobs. They were promised higher wages. Wages went down. And they were promised less illegal immigration from Mexico, and what NAFTA did was disrupt the agricultural sector and small business sector of Mexico so badly that, as we know, illegal immigration exploded. So you got a national crisis. No matter how you look at NAFTA, it hasn't worked, and people are beginning to get that.
The United States of Poverty and Inequality
New report shows that no matter which state you live in, the 1% are making even more gains as the rest fall back
Over the last three decades the wealth of the nation's very richest 1% has grown ten times that of the average worker and over that time period that same tiny elite has captured more than half of the entire income increases, leaving the bottom 99% to divide the remaining gains.
This is all based on a new state-level study, The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, which looks at how inequality has seized hold of the national economy both in the generation leading up to the great recession of 2008 and in the several years following where a so-called "recovery" was experienced by the financial elite while the majority of U.S. population continues to claw its way back.
“The levels of inequality we are seeing across the country provide more proof that the economy is not working for the vast majority of Americans and has not for decades,” said Mark Price, an economist at the Keystone Research Center, who co-authored the report on behalf of the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). “It is unconscionable that most of America’s families have shared in so little of the country’s prosperity over the last several decades.”
Check out the interactive state-by-state map on inequality generated by the study's authors.
Backrooms of Old: Inside Wall-Street's Secret '1% Society'
The Evening Greens
How BP’s Oil Damaged Fish
According to the Financial Times, in filings to the US court in New Orleans, BP believes there is “extensive evidence that the environmental harm was far less than the US or others feared” and that the “environmental recovery is well under way”. ...
However, just as BP argues the impact of the spill is less than people thought, new science is still being published showing evidence of harm. The latest to be published examined the spill’s effects on the hearts of tuna fish.
The Deepwater oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred just at the worst time for the tuna. It occurred at the peak spawning season of the western Atlantic population of bluefin tuna in the Gulf.
During the disaster, tuna embryos and larvae were exposed to the crude oil, causing a significant decline in the tuna population, with the latest estimate undertaken in 2012 that the population was just 36% of the baseline 1970 value.
Now scientists from Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA) have discovered that the crude oil interferes with fish heart cells, preventing them from beating effectively and leading to a reduced heart rate. This can lead to heart attacks and death, they argue writing in the journal Science.
Duke Energy will try to make ratepayers pay to clean up coal ash disaster
Duke Energy’s executives want you to know they’re sorry for the tens of thousands of tons of coal ash they spilled into the Dan River in the third-largest disaster of its kind in US history. They’re sorry for the water that officials now admit is tainted with arsenic and is unsafe even to touch, no less for swimming, boating or fishing.
They’re sorry for the little animals — the clams, mussels and crustaceans — that form the base of the river’s ecosystem and are suffocating in a river of sludge. They’re sorry for the big ones — the birds, fish and turtles – that eat those little things. And most of all they’re sorry to the people living near the Dan who depend on all of it, directly or indirectly, for much of their local economy (and, as anyone who’s ever lived near a river knows, for much more than that.)
They’re just not sorry enough to pay to clean it up.
According to the AP, George Everett, Duke’s director of environmental and legislative affairs, told state legislators on Monday:
that the company is sorry for the spill and will be accountable. Any costs incurred because of the cleanup will likely be passed on to ratepayers, not shareholders, he said.
“We have paid absolutely no attention to costs, to this point,” Everett said, responding to a lawmaker’s question about who will pay. “We’re focused on stopping the discharge and initiating the remediation of the river. But when costs do come into play, when we’ve had a chance to determine what those costs are, it’s usually our customers who pay our costs of operation.”
It takes audacity to say with one breath “we will be accountable” and also “but we won’t pay for it.”
Investigation into NC coal ash spill widens
RALEIGH, N.C. — Federal prosecutors widened their investigation triggered by a massive coal ash spill in North Carolina, demanding reams of documents and ordering nearly 20 state environmental agency employees to testify before a grand jury.
The subpoenas were made public by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Wednesday. They also ordered state officials to hand over any records pertaining to investments, cash or other items of value they might have received from Duke Energy or its employees. Charlotte-based Duke also confirmed it was served with a new subpoena ...
The 20 subpoenas disclosed by the state agency follow two Feb. 10 subpoenas, which were issued the day after a story by The Associated Press raised questions about a proposed deal between state officials and Duke that would have fined Duke $99,111 to settle violations over toxic groundwater contamination at two facilities.
The settlement came about after a coalition of citizen groups tried to use the U.S. Clean Water Act to sue Duke in federal court last year. The state agency intervened three times to use its authority to issue violations over the pollution and take the case to state court, where the agency quickly negotiated the proposed settlement that included no requirement Duke actually clean up its past pollution or prevent further contamination.
The citizens groups opposed the deal, saying it shielded Duke from far harsher penalties it might have faced in federal court had the state not intervened. The state put the settlement on hold last week, the day after the AP reported on it.
Nebraska law that allowed Keystone XL struck down
A Nebraska judge on Wednesday struck down a law that allowed the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed through the state, a victory for opponents who have tried to block the project that would carry oil from Canada to Texas refineries.
Lancaster County Judge Stephanie Stacy issued a ruling that invalidated Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman's approval of the route. Stacy agreed with opponents' arguments that the law passed in 2012 improperly allowed Heineman to give Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. the power to force landowners to sell their property for the project. Stacy said the decision to give TransCanada eminent domain powers should have been made by the Nebraska Public Service Commission, which regulates pipelines and other utilities. ...
Stacy's decision could cause more delays in finishing the pipeline, which is critical in Canada's efforts to export its growing oil sands production. It also comes amid increased concerns about the dangers of using trains to transport crude oil after some high-profile accidents — including a fiery explosion in North Dakota last month and an explosion that killed 47 people in Canada last year.
A spokesman for pipeline developer TransCanada said company officials were disappointed and disagreed with the decision, which came in a lawsuit filed by three Nebraska landowners who oppose the pipeline. The company planned to review the ruling before deciding how to proceed.
Toxic Legacy: Uranium Mining in New Mexico
Most people are unaware that the third-largest nuclear disaster in world history occurred in New Mexico.
Less than four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979, three times as much radiation was released when a spill at a uranium mill at Church Rock, New Mexico, dumped 94 million gallons of mill effluent and more than 1,000 tons of acidic, radioactive sludge into an arroyo that emptied into the Puerco River.
The only two nuclear disasters that have released more radiation were those at Fukushima and Chernobyl.
The Navajo Nation, where the spill occurred, is riddled with 521 abandoned uranium mines across the three states included within the reservation, according to the EPA; 450 of those mines and eight former uranium mill sites are in New Mexico, and three of these are designated superfund sites. These sites are the source of contamination for tens of millions of gallons of groundwater and countless acres, the brunt of which is on Navajo land. ...
Navajo families have bathed in, showered in, washed clothes in, played in and drunk radioactive water. Their men worked in the mines while breathing carcinogenic gasses then spread radionuclides throughout their families simply by returning home from work. But it wasn't until the spill was designated as a superfund site in 1983 that the Navajo who were being irradiated and sickened for more than 30 years learned the truth.
New highly radioactive leak at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant
The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant said on Thursday that 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water had leaked out of a tank, the worst incident since last August, when a series of radioactive water leaks sparked international alarm.
Tokyo Electric Power Co told reporters the latest leak was unlikely to have reached the ocean. But news of the leak at the site, devastated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, further undercut public trust in a utility rocked by a string of mishaps and disclosure issues.
“We are taking various measures, but we apologize for worrying the public with such a leak,” said Masayuki Ono, a spokesman for the utility, also known as Tepco. ...
Tepco said water overflowed from a large storage tank at the site late on Wednesday after a valve had remained open by mistake and sent too much contaminated water into a separate holding area.
A really interesting read:
Alive in the Sunshine
There’s no way toward a sustainable future without tackling environmentalism’s old stumbling blocks: consumption and jobs. And the way to do that is through a universal basic income.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Documenting Darkness: How a Thug State Operates
"Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."
A Little Night Music
Little Johnny Jones - I May Be Wrong
Little Johnny Jones - Dirty By The Dozen
Little Johnny Jones - Big town Playboy
Little Johnny Jones - Shelby County Blues
Little Johnny Jones - Worried Life Blues
Little Johnny Jones - Hoy Hoy
The Cadillacs - Speedo
The Cadillacs - Yea Yea Baby
The Cadillacs - Woe Is Me
Speedo and the Cadillacs - Mr. Lucky
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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