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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features jazz singer and bandleader Cab Calloway. Enjoy!
Cab Calloway - Jumpin Jive
“Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.
That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.”
-- Glenn Greenwald
News and Opinion
"Right Out of a Spy Movie": Glenn Greenwald on First Secret Meeting with NSA Leaker Edward Snowden
Who watches the watchers? Big Data goes unchecked
The National Security Agency might be tracking your phone calls. But private industry is prying far more deeply into your life.
Commercial data brokers know if you have diabetes. Your electric company can see what time you come home at night. And tracking companies can tell where you go on weekends by snapping photos of your car’s license plate and cataloging your movements.
Private companies already collect, mine and sell as many as 75,000 individual data points on each consumer, according to a Senate report. And they’re poised to scoop up volumes more, as technology unleashes a huge wave of connected devices — from sneaker insoles to baby onesies to cars and refrigerators — that quietly track, log and analyze our every move.
Congress and the administration have moved [is that what they call that lack of meaningful progress, movement? - js] to rein in the National Security Agency in the year since Edward Snowden disclosed widespread government spying. But Washington has largely given private-sector data collection a free pass. The result: a widening gap in oversight as private data mining races ahead. Companies are able to scoop up ever more information — and exploit it with ever greater sophistication — yet a POLITICO review has found deep reluctance in D.C. to exercise legislative, regulatory or executive power to curb the big business of corporate cybersnooping. ...
[F]ar from cracking down, the administration has floated several proposals for using data mining to advance its goals. The Pentagon, for instance, is considering tapping into commercial data banks to monitor the behavior of employees and contractors with top security clearances, so it can keep an eye out for bankruptcies, domestic violence charges or other signs of instability.
British Spies Face Legal Action Over Secret Hacking Programs
The United Kingdom’s top spy agency is facing legal action following revelations published by The Intercept about its involvement in secret efforts to hack into computers on a massive scale. ...
In a legal complaint filed on Tuesday, the London-based civil liberties group Privacy International alleges that the hacking techniques violated European human rights law and are not subject to sufficient safeguards against abuse. The complaint cites a series of details contained in a report published by The Intercept in March, which exposed how GCHQ was closely involved in the NSA’s efforts to rapidly expand its ability to deploy so-called “implants” to infiltrate computers.
GCHQ and the NSA have developed an array of the sophisticated surveillance implants, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, with each of the spy tools tailored for a different purpose. Some are used to compromise large-scale internet networks so that the spies can sweep up private data as it is passing through them. Others infect specific computers with malicious software that effectively gives the agencies total control of a target’s machine – enabling them to take covert snapshots using its webcam, record audio using its microphone, log what is being typed on the keyboard, collect data from any removable flash drive that is connected, and snoop its Web browsing history.
NSA reform: lawmakers aim to bar agency from weakening encryption
US legislators concerned about weaknesses in a major surveillance reform bill intend to insert an amendment barring the National Security Agency from weakening the encryption that many people rely on to keep their information secure online, or exploiting any internet security vulnerabilities it discovers.
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, told the Guardian that she and a group of colleagues want to prevent the NSA from “utilizing discovered zero-day flaws,” or unfixed software security vulnerabilities, and entrench “the duty of the NSA and the government generally not to create them, nor to prolong the threat to the internet” by failing to warn about those vulnerabilities.
Since the discovery of the Heartbleed bug afflicting web and email servers, the NSA has faced suspicions that it has exploited the vulnerability, which the agency has strenuously denied. Beyond Heartbleed, documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that the NSA has weakened online encryption, causing consternation among technology companies as well as privacy advocates.
Lofgren intends to attach the provision to the USA Freedom Act, increasingly the consensus bill to reform surveillance in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures. The bill, mostly favored by civil libertarians and expected to go for a vote on the House floor as early as next week, does not include language stopping the NSA from undermining encryption.
Justice Dept. Criticized on Spying Statements
Two Democratic senators accused the Obama administration on Tuesday of seeking to “ignore or justify” statements it made to the Supreme Court about warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, contributing to what they called a “culture of misinformation” by the executive branch.
In a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the senators, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, maintained that the Justice Department was not being forthright about what they portrayed as factual misrepresentations to the Supreme Court in 2012. The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a law permitting warrantless N.S.A. surveillance.
The senators’ message was a response to a letter that the Justice Department sent them in December defending its conduct in the surveillance case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, in part because certain aspects of N.S.A. spying had been classified at the time. The department’s letter had not been public, but Mr. Udall’s office provided it to The New York Times on Tuesday.
Together, the letters added to a growing public record of some of the legal frictions that have followed the increased scrutiny of N.S.A. surveillance practices set off by the leaks from the former contractor Edward J. Snowden.
The Justice Department was reviewing the senators’ letter and declined to comment further, said Brian Fallon, a spokesman.
Secret Military Device ‘Hailstorm’ Used By Michigan Police, FOIA Request By Detroit News Denied
‘HailStorm’ is a new device obtained by the Oakland County Sheriff with monies from a U.S. Homeland Security Grant and so far, there isn’t much information available on what exactly it can and cannot do. There were no questions asked when Oakland County commissioners unanimously approved the use of this cellphone tracking device previously used by the US military in Iraq.
Undersheriff Michael McCabe told The Detroit News that the federal Homeland Security Act bars him from discussing the Hailstorm device.
Many privacy advocates are questioning why one of the safest counties in Michigan needs the very powerful, super-secretive military device called ‘Hailstorm’. The Detroit News sought basic information about Hailstorm and the county denied their Freedom of Information Act request. ...
Recently, police in Florida were caught abusing a similar device over 200 times, called ‘Stingray’, without ever telling a judge or obtaining a warrant.
Chelsea Manning may be transferred to civilian prison for gender treatment
The Pentagon is trying to transfer Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison so that she can get treatment for her gender disorder. ...
Transgender people are not allowed to serve in the US military, and the defence department does not provide such treatment, but Manning cannot be discharged from the service while serving her 35-year prison sentence.
Some officials have said privately that keeping the soldier in a military prison and unable to have treatment could amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Last month, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, gave the army approval to try to work out a transfer plan with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which does provide such treatment, two Pentagon officials said. The two agencies were just starting discussions about prospects for a transfer, the officials said.
The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said: "No decision to transfer Private Manning to a civilian detention facility has been made, and any such decision will, of course, properly balance the soldier's medical needs with our obligation to ensure she remains behind bars."
Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Corporate Media is "Neutered, Impotent and Obsolete"
Jill Abramson forced out as New York Times executive editor
The executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, has been ousted by the newspaper's publisher, in an unexpected reshuffle at the top of the venerable publication.
In a move that sent shockwaves through the newsroom, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the publisher and chairman of the New York Times Company, announced that Abramson would be replaced by Dean Baquet, the paper's managing editor. He becomes the newpaper's first African American executive editor.
This is a must-read commentary, Pilger knocks one out of the park:
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. ... Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of "special units" from the CIA and FBI setting up a "security structure" that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by. ...
In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as "murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia's "undeclared war". For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.
A popular truism is that "the world changed" following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs "special operations" – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?
Ukraine agrees to talks on Moscow-backed plan for eastern regions
The Ukrainian government has agreed to launch discussions on giving more powers to the regions under a peace plan brokered by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – a roadmap backed by Moscow but regarded with scepticism by Kiev.
Ukraine's prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is to chair the first in a series of meetings that will include national MPs, government figures and regional officials in line with proposals drafted by the OSCE – a transatlantic security and rights group that includes Russia and the US. ...
In Brussels on Tuesday, Yatsenyuk thanked the OSCE for its plan but said Ukraine had its own proposals for ending the crisis and that the people of his country should settle the issue themselves. He disclosed no details of that plan.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk republic took its first tentative steps on the international stage on Tuesday, imposing sanctions on three individuals – the US president, Barack Obama, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and the EU foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton – who are banned from entering the territory as well as flying over it. The reason given is that they support the Kiev government's operation's against armed separatists in the east of the country.
Ukraine threatens Russia with gas trial, has no chances in court
Russia Bans Rocket Engine Sales to U.S. Military
Russia said it will no longer export rocket engines to the U.S. to launch military satellites, adding to a dispute in Washington that already pits the two biggest U.S. defense contractors against billionaire Elon Musk.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters in Moscow today that Russian engines can be used only to launch civilian payloads, amid tensions over Russia’s support for separatists in Ukraine and the U.S. and European economic sanctions that have followed.
The Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines are used by United Launch Alliance LLC, a joint venture of top contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) and Boeing Co. (BA) that’s the sole supplier of rocket launches for the Pentagon. The engines power Atlas V rockets.
Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has sued the U.S. Air Force, claiming it created an illegal monopoly for the military’s satellite launch business. ...
Rogozin, himself a target of U.S. sanctions, told reporters that Russia won’t extend its role in the International Space Station beyond 2020. He also said that Russia would close U.S. Global Positioning System satellites’ ground stations in Russia on June 1 unless the U.S. allows access to Russia’s competing Glonass system.
Global Capitalism, the US Empire and Russian Nationalism
Ukraine: The waiting game
Everything one needs to know about mediocre political elites allegedly representing the "values" of Western civilization has been laid bare by their reaction to the referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk.
The referendums may have been a last-minute affair; organized in a rush; in the middle of a de facto civil war; and on top of it at gunpoint - supplied by the Kiev NATO neo-liberal neo-fascist junta, which even managed to kill some voters in Mariupol. An imperfect process? Yes. But absolutely perfect in terms of graphically depicting a mass movement in favor of self-rule and political independence from Kiev.
This was direct democracy in action; no wonder the US State Department hated it with a vengeance. ...
The Empire of Chaos wants - what else - chaos. Crucially, the Empire of Chaos now blatantly supports the deployment of an "army against their own population"; this was strictly verboten - punishable by NATO bombs or NATO-enabled jihad - in Libya and Syria, but now is just the new normal in Ukraine.
In Libya and in Syria - they tried three times at the UN - this would be the ultimate pretext for R2P ("responsibility to protect"). But in Ukraine the "terrorists" - Dubya-era terminology included - are the population, and the good guys are the Kiev neo-nazi militias. US ambassador to the UN and top R2P cheerleader Samantha Power exceeded all her previous levels of batshit craziness when she depicted the NATO junta onslaught against civilians as "reasonable" and "proportional", adding that "any of our countries" would have done the same in face of such a threat.
Six Ukrainian soldiers killed in Donetsk ambush
A solution to the crisis in east Ukraine seemed as far away as ever on Tuesday, as six Ukrainian army servicemen were killed in an ambush by rebels and attempts to get Kiev and the armed separatists to negotiate came to nothing.
Ukraine's defence ministry released a statement saying that six of its soldiers had been killed and a further eight wounded during an ambush outside the town of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk region. The attackers used grenade launchers and automatic weapons to fire at the Ukrainian column, hitting an armoured personnel carrier.
More than 50 people have died in Donetsk region since Kiev began its "anti-terrorism operation" in the area, but Tuesday's attack represents the greatest loss of life for the Ukrainian army in a single incident.
The de facto separatist government in Donetsk repeated on Tuesday lunchtime that the Ukrainian army was now considered to be an "occupying force", and the ambush appeared to be a bloody restatement of their case.
Maidan Square activists urged to fight for Ukraine in the east
Andrei Vlasov admitted that it used to be more exciting. Since November the 33-year-old has been living in a tent in Kiev's Maidan, or Independence Square, the focal point for Ukraine's protest movement. ...
In a government office a few miles up the road the former commander of the protest camp's fighting wing, Andriy Parubiy, is now at the heart of the Kiev's attempts to counter the rebellion in the east. As head of the national security and defence council, he oversees Ukraine's security forces. ...
Officials are acutely aware of the potential threat posed by the large groups of men, many well-armed, that make up Maidan's self defence force. Extremist rightwing elements, which led much of the violence against the previous government, also have a prominent presence in the square. ...
Parubiy is spearheading attempts to co-opt Maidan activists into volunteer units that will fight alongside police, the army and special forces in the east.
Billboards across Kiev call for recruits for the re-formed national guard, which already has one battalion of about 400 volunteers deployed around the rebel-held town of Slavyansk. ...
The strategy is not without risk. Some volunteer groups under the official jurisdiction of the interior ministry have been accused of leading the deadly violence in Mariupol and Krasnoarmeisk last week that helped to push local people into the arms of the rebels.
Ethnic Russians Are People, Too
So what does the New York Times have against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians? While the newspaper has fallen over itself insisting on the “legitimacy” of the coup regime in Kiev, despite its collaboration with neo-Nazis who spearheaded the Feb. 22 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the Times editors can’t hurl enough insults at the ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the regime’s authority.
For weeks, the Times has called the eastern Ukrainian rebel leaders “self-declared” and ridiculed the idea that there was any significant backing for the rejection of the Kiev-appointed regional leaders; all the trouble was simply stirred up by Vladimir Putin. Now, however, the referenda in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk have demonstrated what even a Times reporter acknowledged was “substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas.”
The Times then suggests that violence that marred the referenda was the fault of the rebels, not the Kiev regime’s National Guard, which includes the neo-Nazi militias that threw fire bombs at police during the Maidan protests in February and are now carrying out the most lethal attacks against protesters in cities in the east and south.
Of course, according to the Times’ narrative, these neo-Nazis from western Ukraine don’t exist, so the violence must be palmed off on others or be treated like the natural occurrence of a spring thunderstorm. In Tuesday’s editorial, the Times wrote: “But the gathering rumble of violence accompanying the votes is serious and is driving the Ukrainian crisis in a direction that before long no one — not President Vladimir Putin of Russia, not authorities in Kiev, not the West — will be able to control.”
However, even the Times’ own field reporter noted that the violence during the referenda on Sunday was provoked by those new National Guard forces that attacked some polling places. The Times’ editors must assume that most of the newspaper’s readers aren’t paying close attention to the details.
ICC reopens probe into alleged British war crimes in Iraq
The Hague-based International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said on Tuesday she would reopen a "preliminary examination" into alleged war crimes by British soldiers.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement from the ICC that the decision followed new submissions alleging abuse by UK troops after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
"The new information... alleges the responsibility of officials of the United Kingdom for war crimes involving systematic detainee abuse in Iraq from 2003 to 2008," Bensouda said.
Bensouda's office said it had received documents from the Berlin-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in January. The information, jointly submitted by the Birmingham-based group Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), was based on interviews with more than 400 Iraqi detainees.
From Prisons to Black Sites, US Hand in Global Torture Exposed
Thirty years after ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture, the U.S. government has dodged accountability for perpetrating torture in domestic prisons and CIA black sites and embroiling foreign states in inhumane acts.
So finds a report on global torture released Tuesday by human rights organization Amnesty International. According to the study, torture and abuse have been reported in at least 141 countries around the world in the past five years.
A survey conducted by Amnesty found that 44 percent of people across the world are afraid they would be in danger of torture if taken into state custody in their country.
In the United States, 32 percent of respondents expressed such a fear—which, according to the report, has merit.
"In some maximum security isolation or segregation facilities across the USA, many thousands of inmates are held in solitary confinement in small cells for 22 to 24 hours a day. Many have little access to natural light or out-of-cell recreation time which amounts to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment," reads the study.
U.S. torture is not confined within its borders. "The U.S. government is also failing to ensure accountability for torture and enforced disappearances committed in the context of counter-terrorism operations. No one responsible for the use of interrogation techniques such as 'water-boarding,' prolonged sleep deprivation, and stress positions in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-run secret detention centres around the world has been brought to justice.
Clashes, violent protests in Turkey after mine blast kills over 240
Clashes have erupted across Turkey as residents rally in anger at a mining accident which killed 274 people in the western Turkish town of Soma on Tuesday. Eight hundred marched on Ankara’s energy ministry as police fired tear gas and water cannon.
Violent protests have been reported in Soma itself, where relatives of the dead miners are unleashing their anger at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
PM Erdogan visited Soma, the site of the disaster, on Wednesday. ... Rocks were thrown as crowd members accused Erdogan of being a murderer and a thief. Riot police used a water cannon on the demonstrators as they approached the ruling AKP party headquarters.
The Guardian adds:
Locals complained about haphazard practices at the mine, whose owners are linked to Erdoğan's governing Justice and Development party (AKP), and skirmishes broke out between youths and police outside the local AKP office. ... Coming in the wake of multiple scandals implicating the ruling party and Erdoğan's family over the past six months, as well as nationwide protests against his robust style of rule, there were prompt accusations that crony capitalism had contributed to the disaster, and allegations that local authorities had failed to enforce safety regulations and ensure decent working conditions . ...
Erdoğan vowed that the causes of the explosion would be scrupulously laid bare and his government claimed there had been regular safety checks on the mine in recent months. His party dismissed calls from a local opposition MP in recent weeks demanding an inquiry into safety and labour conditions at the mine.
The prime minister drew parallels with 19th-century Britain to declare: "This is what happens in coalmining. There is no such thing as accident-free work."
"Let me go back to the past in England," he said. "In a slide in 1862, 204 people died, in 1866, 361 people died, and in an explosion in England in 1894, 290 died. So let's please not say that these things never happen elsewhere in coalmines. These things happen. We do have something called an accident at work."
He also warned against "extremists" who would seek to exploit the disaster to tarnish his government.
Drone lobby takes flight on K Street
Lobbyists in Washington are mobilizing to help ensure that drones soon take flight across the United States.
With the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) racing to craft rules to incorporate unmanned aircraft into national airspace, lobby teams representing everyone from Hollywood studios to farmers are working to influence the outcome.
Firms that have both legal and advocacy arms say activity on drone regulations has exploded. ...
While Congress has directed the FAA to clear the way for the use of commercial drones by 2015, a federal agency watchdog said the deadline could be difficult to achieve.
Calvin Scovel III, the Transportation Department’s inspector general, told a House Transportation panel in February that there are “significant technological barriers” that stand in the way of integrating drones into airspace.
However, on Tuesday, the head of the FAA office tasked with integrating the unmanned aircraft said the agency is working with “several industries” to make way for a limited commercial drone fleet before the agency’s overall rules are finalized. ...
The expedited rules would be created for operators involved in “filmmaking, powerline inspection, precision agriculture and flare stack inspection,” according to a statement, with Williams saying those groups had approached regulators specifically about using drones. ...
One of the biggest backers of drones is Amazon, which in December announced a plan to incorporate drones into its operations, envisioning 30-minute delivery of products purchased off its site.
The online marketplace has reportedly doubled-down on that promise in recent months, saying that prototypes have gone through several stages of development and could be ready in as little as four years.
Another 90 Arrests As Strike Force’s Medicare Fraud Tally Hits $6 Billion
In the seventh “takedown” since the government formed a Medicare Fraud Strike Force in 2007, federal agents arrested 90 people on May 13th, including 50 in Miami, on charges they schemed to falsely bill taxpayers $260 million.
In what is becoming an annual affair, the latest figures offer a staggering picture of the extent to which fraudsters are preying on the huge health care program for the nation’s elderly.
Since their inception, Strike Force operations have prosecuted 1,900 people in nine locations on charges that they bilked the government for almost $6 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has removed over 17,000 providers from the Medicare program in the last three years alone.
Why is the Medicare program so vulnerable to fraud? Are there ways to prevent doctors, nurses and others in the health field from scamming taxpayers? Or is the program based so much on an honor system that it’s ripe for the plucking?
These are questions increasingly dogging the program as headlines about new health care fraud arrests and prosecutions seem to stream out of the Justice Department every week.
Geithner must give S&P documents in U.S. fraud lawsuit: filing
A federal judge ruled that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner must hand over documents to Standard and Poor's relating to the ratings agency's claim that the United States sued it in retaliation for downgrading government debt.
The U.S. Department of Justice brought a civil fraud lawsuit against S&P in 2013, accusing it of inflating ratings to win more fees from issuers, and then failing to downgrade debt backed by deteriorating mortgage-backed securities fast enough.
S&P, a unit of McGraw Hill Financial Inc (MHFI.N), has claimed the lawsuit was filed in retaliation for the downgrade, and should be dismissed. Its main rating agency rivals, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, were not sued.
U.S. District Judge David Carter denied both Geithner's request to set aside S&P's subpoena and a similar request made by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Terrence Checki, the bank's executive vice president.
Why Democrats Are Paying Attention to Piketty's Book on Inequality
San Francisco Rides the $15 Wave
It seems that Seattle has officially passed the $15 baton to San Francisco, and they’re running with it. On May 5th San Francisco had its first public organizing meeting to prepare for a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage to $15. The Labor movement and broader community organizations were well represented, and with them all the potential to achieve a great victory.
The San Francisco $15 proposal is stronger than the Seattle mayor’s version: the time line to get to $15 is shorter, and there are fewer exceptions.
San Francisco companies with more than 100 employees would have until 2016 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but they must lift wages to $13 an hour by next January. Businesses with fewer than 100 employees have until 2017 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but must raise them to $13 an hour by 2015 and $14 by 2016.
Polling has already indicated overwhelming support (59 percent) for the initiative.
The process that San Francisco is using also has other advantages over Seattle’s. The unions and community groups are working as a united front in San Francisco, whereas in Seattle there was constant tension between the socialist city council member Kshama Sawant and her $15 Now group of supporters versus the unions: Sawant wanted a strong version of $15 and several of the unions just wanted a deal, seemingly more interested in working with the mayor towards “consensus” between the unions and the corporations.
The Evening Greens
'Energy [R]evolution': Nearly 100% Renewable Is Doable, says Report
Dramatically reduce carbon emissions and the use of fossil fuels. Create millions of new jobs in the renewable energy sector and beyond. Democratize the energy system by increasing local control of production and resources.
Not only can all this be accomplished, say researchers and experts, it can be done with readily available technologies and on an expedited timeline that—if executed—would prove humanity capable of acting to address the crisis of planetary climate change before it's too late.
Produced by both Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council, which represents the international wind industry, a new report released Monday—titled Energy [R]evolution - A Sustainable USA Energy Outlook (pdf)—details how by 2050, renewable energy sources could be producing close to 97% of electricity in the U.S. and approximately 94% of the country's needs for heating and cooling homes and businesses.
The driving goal of the Energy [R]evolution," reads the report's introduction, "is stopping global climate disruption, which is caused primarily by burning coal, oil, and methane gas.
In Fracking Hotbed, a Muted Approach to Regulation
Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. Historically, the handling and disposal of that waste was barely regulated, with few requirements for how its potential contamination would be gauged, or how and where it could be transported and stored.
With the business of fracking waste only growing, legislators in 2013 had the chance to decide how best to monitor the state's vast amounts of toxic material, much of it being trucked into Ohio from neighboring states.
But despite calls to require that the waste be rigorously tested for contamination, Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature signed off on measures that require just a fraction of the waste to be subjected to such oversight. The great majority of the byproducts creating during the drilling process – the water and rock unearthed – still do not have to be tested at all. ...
The legislators acted with little in the way of public debate, and the new regulations they adopted appeared deep inside a 4,000-page state budget bill. As a result, both the measures first proposed by Kasich and those ultimately signed into law have infuriated environmentalists and residents with concerns about the risks of fracking in their state.
A ProPublica review of the legislature's actions shows that just a handful of parties testified before the oversight committees charged with examining the pros and cons of the proposed regulations. And interviews with legislative staffers make clear that the final language of the regulations, including changes that scaled back two measures proposed by the governor, was inserted into the budget bill at the last minute.
And so today, to the surprise of much of the public as well as some elected officials, Ohio's oversight of fracking waste remains much as it had been – limited and controversial.
Does decades-long fuel leak threaten Albuquerque's water?
This is an excellent article detailing the scope and scale of the carbon bomb awaiting the world in sunny Mexico.
"No Turning Back:" Mexico's Looming Fracking and Offshore Oil and Gas Bonanza
After generations of state control, Mexico’s vast oil and gas reserves will soon open for business to the international market.
In December 2013, Mexico’s Congress voted to break up the longstanding monopoly held by the state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos — commonly called Pemex — and to open the nation’s oil and gas reserves to foreign companies.
The constitutional reforms appear likely to kickstart a historic hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and deepwater offshore oil and gas drilling bonanza off the Gulf of Mexico. ...
Mexico sits on nearly 14 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves, according to Pemex. The Oil and Gas Journal pegged it at 10.2 billion barrels at the end of 2011. But that’s just what they know they have.
The country’s unexplored oil reserve potential is second only to the Arctic Circle, according to Bloomberg and others reporting on the reforms.
Pemex estimates, as reported by Bloomberg, that deep-water Gulf of Mexico prospects could be as large as 26.6 billion barrels of oil. Onshore, there are potentially 60 billion barrels yet untapped. ...
As part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 (Section 303), President Barack Obama signed off on U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement in December 2013, which “establishes a framework for U.S. offshore oil and gas companies and [Pemex] to jointly develop transboundary reservoirs.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Freedom Rider: America Brings Hell to Ukraine
Cold Water on the Neo-Cold War Hysteria
The Snowden Saga Begins: “I Have Been to the Darkest Corners of Government, and What They Fear Is Light”
Hey Bill, Here are Some Things You Could've Done About Inequality That Don't Involve Jailing People
A Little Night Music
Cab Calloway - Calloway Boogie
Betty Boop & Cab Calloway - The Old Man Of the Mountain
Cab Calloway & his Band - Geechy Joe
Cab Calloway - Zaz Zuh Zaz
Cab Calloway - Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Cab Calloway's - Jitterbug Party
Cab Calloway's - The Skunk Song
Cab Calloway - St. James Infirmary
Cab Calloway ~ Market Street Stomp
Cab Calloway - Hot Toddy
Cab Calloway - A Bee Gazindt
Cab Calloway on Sesame Street - Hi De Ho Man
Cab Calloway - Mama, I Wanna Make Rhythm
Cab Calloway - The Ghost of Smokey Joe
Cab Calloway - Some Of These Days
Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra - Reefer Man
Cab Calloway - Smoking Reefers
Cab Calloway - The Viper's Drag
Cab Calloway - Black Rhythm
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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