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 jazz singer Arnold "Gatemouth" Moore. Enjoy!
Gatemouth Moore - I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby
"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
-- John Perry Barlow
News and Opinion
GCHQ gets its freak on - in a necessary, proportionate, and legal way, of course:
GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images
Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".
GCHQ does not have the technical means to make sure no images of UK or US citizens are collected and stored by the system, and there are no restrictions under UK law to prevent Americans' images being accessed by British analysts without an individual warrant. ... Unlike the NSA, GCHQ is not required by UK law to "minimize", or remove, domestic citizens' information from its databases. However, additional legal authorisations are required before analysts can search for the data of individuals likely to be in the British Isles at the time of the search.
There are no such legal safeguards for searches on people believed to be in the US or the other allied "Five Eyes" nations – Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
GCHQ insists all of its activities are necessary, proportionate, and in accordance with UK law.
NSA robots are 'collecting' your data, too, and they're getting away with it
Increasingly, we are watched not by people but by algorithms. Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream, and suggest other books and movies based on our habits. Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say, and show us advertisements based on our behavior. Google even modifies our web search results based on our previous behavior. Smartphone navigation apps watch us as we drive, and update suggested route information based on traffic congestion. And the National Security Agency, of course, monitors our phone calls, emails and locations, then uses that information to try to identify terrorists.
Documents provided by Edwards Snowden and revealed by the Guardian today show that the UK spy agency GHCQ, with help from the NSA, has been collecting millions of webcam images from innocent Yahoo users. And that speaks to a key distinction in the age of algorithmic surveillance: is it really okay for a computer to monitor you online, and for that data collection and analysis only to count as a potential privacy invasion when a person sees it? I say it’s not, and the latest Snowden leaks only make more clear how important this distinction is. ...
Back when Gmail was introduced, this was Google’s defense, too, about its context-sensitive advertising. Googles computers examine each individual email and insert an advertisement nearby, related to the contents of your email. But no person at Google reads any Gmail messages; only a computer does. In the words of one Google executive: “Worrying about a computer reading your email is like worrying about your dog seeing you naked”.
But now that we have an example of a spy agency seeing people naked – there are a surprising number of sexually explicit images in the newly revealed Yahoo image collection – we can more viscerally understand the difference.
To wit: when you’re watched by a dog, you know that what you’re doing will go no further than the dog. The dog can’t remember the details of what you’ve done. The dog can’t tell anyone else. When you’re watched by a computer, that’s not true. ... When a computer stores your data, there’s always a risk of exposure. There’s the risk of accidental exposure, when some hacker or criminal breaks in and steals the data. There’s the risk of purposeful exposure, when the organization that has your data uses it in some manner. And there’s the risk that another organization will demand access to the data. The FBI can serve a National Security Letter on Google, demanding details on your email and browsing habits. There isn’t a court order in the world that can get that information out of your dog.
NSA reform advocates oppose White House proposal to hand data to FBI
Advocates for the curtailment of bulk surveillance are pre-emptively opposing a reform proposal presented to the White House under which responsibility for the National Security Agency’s vast database of US phone records would be handed over to the FBI.
That proposal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is one of several options under internal consideration for revamping the NSA’s mass collection of phone data, all of which are fiercely contested for varying reasons by spies, privacy groups, phone companies and legislators.
Privacy advocates took the four ideas that have been presented to the White House as an indication of how strongly the NSA and its allies are fighting to preserve their powers in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about surveillance.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican who authored the USA Freedom Act, a bill to end bulk domestic surveillance, said he was “unwavering” in his stance after hearing of the new options the administration is considering.
“While I am willing to sit down with President Obama and my colleagues in Congress to negotiate certain aspects of the bill, my stance to end bulk collection of innocent Americans’ data is unwavering,” Sensenbrenner told the Guardian on Wednesday.
“Bulk collection has never been authorized by Congress and I intend to stop this blatant abuse of the law.”
DOJ Still Ducking Scrutiny After Misleading Supreme Court on Surveillance
In October 2012, United States Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. was in a tight spot.
Seeking dismissal of a legal challenge against an NSA warrantless electronic surveillance program, the Department of Justice had taken the position that the rabble-rousers represented by the ACLU had no standing to sue because they couldn’t prove they had been subjected to surveillance. But who, if anyone, could prove they were harmed by a program cloaked in secrecy?
Verrilli was ready with an answer: those criminals who had been caught by the program. In both written and oral arguments, the solicitor general assured the Supreme Court that the DOJ was bound by law to notify defendants when the program was used against them, stating that if the government planned to use evidence derived from the surveillance in court, “it must provide advance notice to the tribunal and the person.” It was an effective argument and one the Court ultimately found persuasive.
The Supreme Court accepted Verrilli’s argument and Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a 5-4 majority, cited the notice requirement in his opinion rejecting the challenge based on standing. But questions had already started to emerge about whether Verrilli’s statement was accurate. ... According to the New York Times, Verrilli himself was eventually troubled enough to question national security prosecutors about whether they were, as he had claimed, actually providing notice. They weren’t. ... In late 2013, the Department of Justice finally began providing notice of warrantless surveillance to defendants.
Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a November 2013 letter, called upon Verrilli to provide more information, stating their concern that “the Justice Department has not gone far enough to correct incomplete or misleading representations that we believe were made by the government to the Supreme Court in Clapper v. Amnesty.” A Justice Department spokesperson informed The Intercept that the Office of Legislative Affairs replied on Verrilli’s behalf on December 24, 2013. The DOJ declined to release the letter, but indicated it had no objection if the senators chose to do so. Among the lawmakers, only Senator Udall’s office was willing to confirm receipt of the DOJ’s response. Despite possessing the letter for two months, a spokesperson for Udall declined to release it, saying it would be shared in the coming weeks along with a response from the senator.
Venezuela Opposition Boycotts Maduro-Backed Peace Conference As Unrest Continues
Margaret Kimberley calls it what it is, imperialism. Apparently Obama is the sort of guy that believes that free trade works best at gunpoint.
America vs. the World
The word imperialism fell into disuse in recent decades. If it seems slightly retro, that is only because there aren’t enough Americans committed to telling the ugly truth about their government. ...
Barack Obama has succeeded in expanding America’s influence in ways that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could only dream about. The neo-conservative project for a new American century has reached full fruition under a Democratic president, who now has many notches on his gun. ... George W. Bush made efforts to overthrow the democratically elected Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela when he plotted with the opposition against the late Hugo Chavez. Obama is clearly more committed to violence than his predecessor and has helped to stir up right wing Venezuelans who want to rid themselves of Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has been weakened by the ginned up protests and is now forced into talks with an opposition that won’t be satisfied until he is dead and gone too.
The Venezuelan people have voted for their revolution numerous times. The U.S., a country that never ceases to call itself a democracy, has thwarted their clearly expressed will time and time again. But that is the essence of empire after all. ...
Every invasion, occupation and disruption in recent years can be laid at the feet of the United States and its allies. Iraq has been destroyed quite literally, Iran has been destroyed economically. Libya was taken out and Syria is on the brink.
The United States quite openly makes it clear that it wants to have its way in the world. If Russia attempts to use its influence then it is vilified and caricatured as a cruel dictatorship controlled by a tyrant. No matter how many elections Chavez and now Maduro won, they are called dictators by American talking heads.
A superpower can foment conflict anywhere it wants to at anytime it chooses. Venezuelans must knuckle under or face the prospect of more turmoil and violence. Ukraine must sign onto economic policies which have already proven disastrous. The United States leaves its fingerprints in these and many other places and that is the essence of imperialism. It is all about control with the rawest brute force available.
John Kerry says your job and financial well-being depends on US aggression overseas. Imperialists and neocons always bring up
the "I" word when people start to realize that they are being ripped off by the deep state's ambitions.
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
John Kerry answers that question with his remarks here:
John Kerry slams 'new isolationism' and says US behaving like poor nation
US secretary of state John Kerry decried what he called a “new isolationism” in the United States on Wednesday and suggested that the country was beginning to behave like a poor nation.
Speaking to reporters, Kerry inveighed against what he sees as a tendency within the United States to retreat from the world even as he defended the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts from Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There’s a new isolationism,” Kerry said during a nearly one-hour discussion with a small group of reporters.
“We are beginning to behave like a poor nation,” he added, saying some Americans do not perceive the connection between US engagement abroad and the US economy, their own jobs and wider US interests.
He also said that the US had an obligation to pursue nuclear negotiations with Iran before it considered going to war with Tehran to force it to give up its nuclear activities – a strong hint that the Obama administration would seriously consider a strike on Iran if the diplomatic talks fail.
It looks like neocon tool Victoria Nuland got her "Yats."
This article from the Kyiv Post gives a valuable "who's who" of the newly powerful in Ukraine and offers some biographical information:
The not-so-revolutionary new Ukraine government
The Cabinet of Ministers brought to the helm by the EuroMaidan revolution, is a motley crew indeed: A combination of old faces tainted by allegations of corruption, newly emerged revolutionary heroes and appointees who are able to make a difference.
The new government, most of which was appointed by constitutional majority, be an interesting one to watch, but can hardly be called a technocratic one.
The newly approved Cabinet has 21 members, and is heavy on members of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party.
Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform is not represented after turning down offers. Their exclusion highlights the growing rift between UDAR and Batkivshchyna, whose leaders will most likely compete in the early presidential election on May 15.
Svoboda, the ultra-nationalist party, received several key positions in the government on top of the general prosecutor's office, which it already oversees.
The appointment of Arseniy Yatseniuk as prime minister was not a surprise. He was offered the job by overthrown President Viktor Yanukovych last month, but turned it down. The 39-year-old career politician and former businessman has held a number of top posts before: head of the National Bank of Ukraine, foreign minister and Verkhovna Rada speaker.
Hagel warns Russia to be "transparent"
Vladimir Putin can inflict a costly revenge on Ukraine (without resort to military intervention)
Russia's simplest instrument of control is economic. As Andrew Wilson of the European Council of Foreign Relations puts it in a new briefing paper, Ukraine is on the verge of economic collapse. Ironically, he notes, this dire situation is "entirely self-inflicted". Foreign reserves are dwindling fast. The Ukrainian currency, the hryvna, is tumbling precipitously against the dollar, the graph of the two currencies resembling a ski-slope. But it isn't trade sanctions from Moscow that have taken Ukraine to the brink. Rather, Wilson argues, it was corruption by Yanukovych and his entourage, which sucked an estimated $8bn to $10bn from the economy between 2010 and 2013.
As a result, Ukraine is now staring into a fiscal black hole. Last December, Russia promised to bail out Ukraine with a $15bn bond-buying scheme plus a 30% cut in the country's gas price. In return Yanukovych scrapped plans to enter into a trade association with the EU, a move that sparked the street demonstrations which led to his overthrow two months later. Only $3bn of the loan was ever delivered. Moscow won't now pay the rest. ...
"Ukraine is now broke and Russia can hit it hard," Wilson writes. "In the new situation, with Russian leaders already questioning the legitimacy of the new authorities, the most likely levers of Russian economic pressure – higher gas prices, reduced lending, call-back of loans and export restrictions – can cause immense damage. At this stage, Russia is weighing which options to use, but the pressure will undoubtedly be felt soon."
The Kremlin's most significant weapon is gas. Twice, in 2006 and 2009, Moscow halted the supply of gas exports to Ukraine in bitter disputes with the country's then pro-western orange leadership. Russia's Gazprom could now demand that Ukraine settles its outstanding gas import bills – about $1.6bn so far for 2014 and 2013. It could also insist that Ukraine pays its bill promptly, or in advance.
Moscow might also justifiably claim that Kiev has broken the controversial contract agreed by the then prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2009, which commits Ukraine to paying for huge volumes of gas – 34bn cubic metres a year – whether it uses it or not. This winter it has used significantly less.
Ukraine's Yanukovich says he's still president, asks Russia to ensure his safety
Armed men seize Crimea parliament and hoist Russian flag
Armed men have seized the government buildings in the capital of the Ukraine’s Crimea region and hoisted a Russian flag over a barricade.
The men occupying the parliament building in the regional capital, Simferopol, early on Thursday did not come out to voice any demands. They wore black and orange ribbons, a Russian symbol of the victory in World War II. The men also put up a sign saying “Crimea is Russia.”
They threw a flash grenade in response to a journalist’s questions. Phone calls to region’s legislature rang unanswered, and its website was down.
Ethnic Tatars who support Ukraine’s new leaders and pro-Russia separatists had confronted each other outside the regional parliament on Wednesday.
Interfax quoted a local Tatar leader, Refat Chubarov, as saying on Facebook: “I have been told that the buildings of parliament and the council of ministers have been occupied by armed men in uniforms that do not bear any recognisable insignia.”
“They have not yet made any demands,” he said. ...
The Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group, were victimised by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in World War Two and deported en masse to Soviet Central Asia in 1944 on suspicion of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
Tens of thousands of them returned to their homeland after Ukraine gained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.
Ukraine warns Russia after gunmen seize Crimea parliament
Armed men seized the parliament in Ukraine's Crimea region on Thursday and raised the Russian flag, alarming Kiev's new rulers, who urged Moscow not move troops out of its navy base on the peninsula.
Crimea, the only Ukrainian region with an ethnic Russian majority, is the last big bastion of opposition to the new leadership in Kiev since President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted at the weekend and provides a base for Russia's Black Sea fleet.
"I am appealing to the military leadership of the Russian Black Sea fleet," said Oleksander Turchinov, Ukraine's acting president.
"Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory (the base) will be seen by us as military aggression," he said, a day after 150,000 troops in western Russia were put on high alert.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry summoned Russia's acting ambassador in Kiev for consultations as the face-off between Moscow and the West revived memories of the Cold War.
Ukraine hopes IMF will arrive next week, discuss $15 bln aid package
Ukraine's new finance minister said on Thursday he hoped an International Monetary Fund mission would visit Ukraine next week to work on a new aid package of at least $15 billion for the former Soviet republic.
"Today we requested the IMF send a mission and we hope that it will be here next week," the minister, Oleksander Shlapak, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Last government robbed Ukraine of about $70 bln - Yatseniuk
"About $70 billion has been withdrawn from Ukraine's financial system to offshore accounts over the last three years. Now it's clear that they withdrew the funds that were raised as loans under state guarantees and stolen by representatives of the previous government," [Arseniy Yatseniuk, newly confirmed PM] said from the parliament's rostrum on Thursday.
This is an interesting article that I cannot do justice by excerpting it. It is excellent reading for folks interested in what's going on in Ukraine now and in other places that the US is working to "promote democracy" by destabilizing democratically elected governments. Here's an interesting section of the article about the US cultivation of the fascist movement that has provided the militia to back the current overthrow:
Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine
There’s also a curious history behind U.S. attitudes toward ethnically divided Ukraine. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency – as he escalated Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union – one of his propaganda services, Radio Liberty, began broadcasting commentaries into Ukraine from right-wing exiles.
Some of the commentaries praised Ukrainian nationalists who had sided with the Nazis in World War II as the SS waged its “final solution” against European Jews. The propaganda broadcasts provoked outrage from Jewish organizations, such as B’nai B’rith, and individuals including conservative academic Richard Pipes.
According to an internal memo dated May 4, 1984, and written by James Critchlow, a research officer at the Board of International Broadcasting, which managed Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, one RL broadcast in particular was viewed as “defending Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of the SS.”
Critchlow wrote, “An RL Ukrainian broadcast of Feb. 12, 1984 contains references to the Nazi-oriented Ukrainian-manned SS ‘Galicia’ Division of World War II which may have damaged RL’s reputation with Soviet listeners. The memoirs of a German diplomat are quoted in a way that seems to constitute endorsement by RL of praise for Ukrainian volunteers in the SS division, which during its existence fought side by side with the Germans against the Red Army.”
Erdogan recordings appear real, analyst says, as Turkey scandal grows
ISTANBUL — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip Wednesday on the judiciary and the Internet in an effort to tamp down a corruption scandal that’s rattled his government and now appears to implicate his immediate family and him.
Evidence mounted that a series of audio recordings in which Erdogan can be heard instructing his son, Bilal, to get rid of enormous sums of money are authentic, with the government firing two senior officials at the state scientific agency responsible for the security of encrypted telephones and a U.S.-based expert on encrypted communications, after examining the recordings, telling McClatchy that the recordings appear to be genuine.
Erdogan on Tuesday called the five purported conversations an “immoral montage” that had been “dubbed.” But he acknowledged that even his secure telephone had been tapped.
The only apparent “montage” was combining the five different conversations into one audio file, said Joshua Marpet, a U.S.-based cyber analyst who has testified in court on the validity of computer evidence in other Turkish criminal cases. He said there was no sign that the individual conversations had been edited.
“If it’s fake, it’s of a sophistication that I haven’t seen,” he said.
Court hearing on Guatemala’s attorney general draws hundreds
Hundreds of supporters of Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz rallied outside Guatemala’s highest court Wednesday as the justices inside heard final arguments on whether the human rights champion should be allowed to stay in office until December or be forced to step down in May.
The legal issues surrounding whether Paz y Paz is entitled to serve a complete four-year term or must step down when the term of the man she replaced would have ended are complicated. The Constitutional Court, in a decision earlier this month, ruled preliminarily that her appointment was legally flawed and that the shorter term was in order.
But the case is also tied up with the bitter, lingering politics of Guatemala’s three-decades-long civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Paz y Paz became a divisive figure because of her prosecution of human rights cases stemming from that war, including the genocide conviction of former President Efrain Rios Montt, which the Constitutional Court threw out less than two weeks after it was delivered.
After hearing the final arguments, the court said it would review the evidence and issue its ruling next week.
Public Broadcasters Relying More and More On Corporate Funding
In fact, there was once a documentary, a great one, called Out at Work. It was about discrimination on the job against gay employees. And public TV explicitly rejected it because it was partly funded by a couple of labor unions and a lesbian rights group. So they wouldn't accept a program on discrimination in the workplace, because labor unions were involved. And when public TV executives were confronted, they admitted that they will not accept any money from labor unions to fund programming about workers or the workplace. But they continuously accept money from big corporations to do programming or segments or specials about the subjects that those corporations have a direct interest in.
So if they wanted to have different money coming in, they would be more accepting of certain nonprofit groups and certain labor unions. But they're absolutely not. Public TV executives have chosen to favor big corporations in their programming.
George Takei on Arizona’s Anti-Gay Bill
The Evening Greens
Heh, and the US has the nerve to call other governments corrupt:
Investigation Shows 'Dirty Dealings' Just Business as Usual for Oil Industry
The findings of a State Department investigation into the conflict of interest between contractors hired to perform the environmental review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline reveal the inherent flaws of the process, say environmental campaigners, who add that nothing in the Inspector General's report negate the fact that President Obama has all the information he needs to reject the tar sands pipeline project once and for all.
Conducted by the office of the Inspector General, the report—released late Wednesday—found that that the firm hired to carry out the review, London-based Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and a dues-paying member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), followed all the necessary guidelines as it won and carried out the contract to review the pipeline project proposed by Transcanada on behalf of the State Department.
To the extent that's true, said climate campaigners and opponents of the pipeline, the IG's findings simply show how dysfunctional this kind of privatized review process has become.
“Far from exonerating the State Department of wrongdoing, the Inspector General report simply concludes that such dirty dealings are business as usual,” said 350.org Policy Director Jason Kowalski. “While allowing a member of the American Petroleum Institute to review a tar sands oil pipeline may technically be legal, it’s by no means responsible."
Co-founder of the group, Bill McKibben, added: “The real scandal in Washington is how much is legal. This process has stunk start to finish."
North Carolina: Where the Politics are as Murky as Coal-Polluted Water
Earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh issued subpoenas to Duke Energy and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), demanding all documents related to the Dan River spill.
The probe was expanded last week, when subpoenas were issued to 18 state water-quality officials calling for all communications with Duke going back to 2009 as well as any payments and gifts from the company. Further, NCDENR received another subpoena for "ash-related records for all 14 of Duke’s active and retired coal-fired plants in the state," the Charlotte Observer reports. ...
"These close ties between industry and government, we see that a lot throughout Appalachia," Eric Chance, water quality specialist for the environmental watchdog Appalachian Voices, told Common Dreams. In coal producing states, he continued, "environmental regulatory agencies are pretty much there to do the bidding of the industries they are supposed to regulate."
Chance added that he was glad the ties between government and industry were "getting some attention" with the North Carolina investigation.
Big Oil and Bad Air: Report Exposes Link Between Fracking and Toxic Air Emissions in Texas
Documents Say Navy Knew Fukushima Dangerously Contaminated the USS Reagan
A stunning new report indicates the U.S. Navy knew that sailors from the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan took major radiation hits from the Fukushima atomic power plant after its meltdowns and explosions nearly three years ago. ...
The Reagan had joined several other U.S. ships in Operation Tomodachi (“Friendship”) to aid victims of the March 11, 2011 quake and tsunami. Photographic evidence and first-person testimony confirms that on March 12, 2011 the ship was within two miles of Fukushima Dai’ichi as the reactors there began to melt and explode. ...
In the midst of a snow storm, deck hands were enveloped in a warm cloud that came with a metallic taste. Sailors testify that the Reagan’s 5,500-member crew was told over the ship’s intercom to avoid drinking or bathing in desalinized water drawn from a radioactive sea. The huge carrier quickly ceased its humanitarian efforts and sailed 100 miles out to sea, where newly published internal Navy communications confirm it was still taking serious doses of radioactive fallout. ...
Officially, Tepco and the Navy say the dose levels were safe.
But a stunning new report by an American scholar based in Tokyo confirms that Naval officers communicated about what they knew to be the serious irradiation of the Reagan. Written by Kyle Cunningham and published in Japan Focus, “Mobilizing Nuclear Bias” describes the interplay between the U.S. and Japanese governments as Fukushima devolved into disaster.
Cunningham writes that transcribed conversations obtained through the Freedom of Information Act feature naval officials who acknowledge that even while 100 miles away from Fukushima, the Reagan’s readings “compared to just normal background [are] about 30 times what you would detect on a normal air sample out to sea.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia
What if Americans Demanded the Ouster of This Government?
Coup in Ukraine: A warning to the international working class
These fake photos could be fanning the flames of protest in Venezuela
The NSA may not be listening to your private phone calls, but it has been watching your private parts
Breaking: DC Mayor clarifies what nondiscrimination in health care means
A Little Night Music
Gatemouth Moore - Did you ever love a woman
Gatemouth Moore - Beale Street Ain't Beale Street No More
Gatemouth Moore - Boogie Woogie Papa
Gatemouth Moore - Somebody's Got To Go
Gatemouth Moore - Goin' Down Slow
Gatemouth Moore - Everybody has their turn
Gatemouth Moore - My Mother Thinks I'm Something
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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