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 the half brother and frequent accompanist of Big Bill Broonzy, blues singer Washboard Sam. Enjoy!
Washboard Sam - My Bucket's Got A Hole In It
“Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?”
-- Terry Pratchett
News and Opinion
Hamas Offers 10-Year Truce With Israel
The agreement is a major proposal, seeking an end to the crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip as well as the release of large numbers of Palestinian detainees held without charges by Israeli forces.
The big goal is to see the international airport in Gaza and the seaport eventually reopened, under the management of the United Nations to ensure that they aren’t being used for arms smuggling. In return Israel would commit to not sending warplanes into Gaza airspace for 10 years, nor barring Gazans from leaving the strip to go to the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel has not responded to the proposal, reportedly submitted through Egypt.
Occupation of Palestinian Territories Likely to Intensify in Coming Months
HALPER: [T]he message of Israel in general to the Palestinians, whether it's a military operation in the West Bank that really continues or whether it's the military operation in Gaza which continues is you have three choices: you can submit to us, you can get out of this country, or you can die. And in this equation, there is no more political process. Israel is disabusing the Palestinians of the illusion that they're a side, that they have anything to say, that they'll ever have a state. As a matter of fact, a couple of days ago Netanyahu finally came out and said, yes, there will never be a Palestinian state, so that this is all really a campaign to break the Palestinian resistance and to simply say, it's over, you are going to be imprisoned, there's no more peace process, it's over, and you can either submit or you can get out if you want to or you die. And those are the options--no more political options on the table.
Gaza fighting surges with no firm sign ceasefire near - Israeli Cabinet Minister calls for use of "iron fist"
Israeli leaders on Thursday played down prospects of a permanent Gaza ceasefire and fighting returned to a familiar pattern of Palestinian rocket salvoes and Israeli bombing after a five-hour humanitarian truce.
An Israeli official said earlier that senior Israeli negotiators in Cairo had approved a full truce, but a final decision lay with the security cabinet.
But Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has been advocating a move into Gaza to stop rockets being fired on Israel, said: "We are not familiar with the matter."
A Hamas spokesman also denied initial comments by the Israeli official that a full truce was slated to start at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Friday.
Naftali Bennett, Israel's hawkish economy minister, said time was running out for Hamas, the Islamist group dominant in Gaza.
"We are moving from Iron Dome to an iron fist," Bennett said, referring to an anti-missile system that has intercepted many of the rockets in 10 days of warfare. ...
Israeli aircraft bombed a house in Gaza City, killing three children, and another two youngsters died in separate attacks, said Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman of the Gaza health ministry. The Palestinian death toll rose to 229, mostly civilians, according to the ministry.
Horror on Gaza Beach: New York Times Photographer Witnesses Israeli Murder of 4 Palestinian Boys
Israelis murder 4 small boys at the beach in Gaza
On Wednesday, [a] sudden change of fortune came to four young Palestinian boys playing on a beach in Gaza City.
I had returned to my small seaside hotel around 4 p.m. to file photos to New York when I heard a loud explosion. My driver and I rushed to the window to see what had happened. A small shack atop a sea wall at the fishing port had been struck by an Israeli bomb or missile and was burning. A young boy emerged from the smoke, running toward the adjacent beach.
I grabbed my cameras and was putting on body armor and a helmet when, about 30 seconds after the first blast, there was another. The boy I had seen running was now dead, lying motionless in the sand, along with three other boys who had been playing there. ...
We arrived at the scene to find lifeless, mangled bodies. The boys were beyond help. They had been killed instantly, and the people who had rushed to them were shocked and distraught. ...
A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defense Forces’ intended targets. Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.
Israel Murders Four Children on Gaza Beach - Israeli Officials Insist It's Totally Hamas's Fault
The stark brutality of the ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip are in full view tonight, after Israeli warplanes pounded a group of four small children playing soccer on the beach, killing them all. ...
Even the so-called moderates within the Israeli government appeared quite comfortable with the news of the grisly deaths, with Finance Minister Yair Lapid declaring that the “whole world” understands that it was Hamas’s fault and would be fine with even further Israeli escalation against the tiny strip irrespective of such “unfortunate” incidents. ...
The Obama Administration, which has loudly cheered Israel’s offensive, was silent on the question of killing children at the beach. When pressed at today’s briefing, the State Department spokeswoman insisted the question simply never came up at the latest Obama Administration meetings, and that no comment was likely to ever come at all, beyond the general sense that the US believes whatever Israel is doing is probably fine.
'The Israeli military does not target civilians'
Gaza: this shameful injustice will only end if the cost of it rises
For the third time in five years, the world’s fourth largest military power has launched a full-scale armed onslaught on one of its most deprived and overcrowded territories. ... “No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Barack Obama declared, echoed by a mostly pliant media. Perhaps it’s scarcely surprising that states which have themselves invaded and occupied a string of Arab and Muslim countries in the past decade should take the side of another occupier they fund and arm to the hilt.
But the idea that Israel is responding to a hail of rockets out of a clear blue sky takes “narrative framing” beyond the realm of fantasy. In fact, after the deal that ended Israel’s last assault on Gaza in 2012, rocketing from Gaza fell to its lowest level for 12 years. ...
The idea that Israel is defending itself against unprovoked attacks from outside its borders is an absurdity. Despite Israel’s withdrawal of settlements and bases in 2005, Gaza remains occupied both in reality and international law, its border, coastal waters, resources, airspace and power supply controlled by Israel.
So the Palestinians of Gaza are an occupied people, like those in the West Bank, who have the right to resist, by force if they choose – though not deliberately to target civilians. But Israel does not have a right of self-defence over territories it illegally occupies – it has an obligation to withdraw. That occupation, underpinned by the US and its allies, is now entering its 48th year. Most of the 1.8 million Palestinians enduring continuous bombardment in Gaza are themselves refugees or their descendants, who were driven out or fled from cities such as Jaffa 66 years ago when Israel was established. ...
The conflict’s eruptions are certainly coming thicker and faster. Despite heroic Israeli efforts to fix the narrative, global opinion has never been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. But the brutal reality is that there will be no end to Israel’s occupation until Palestinians and their supporters are able to raise its price to the occupier, in one way or another – and change the balance of power on the ground.
'Living death' under blockade, Gazans see no point in ceasefire
Asked if a quick ceasefire with Israel might at least be welcome for saving lives, Abu Hashem simply scoffed.
"We're living death," he said. ...
"Israel has put us under siege for eight years, and the whole time we never felt we weren't at war. People here have been left with nothing, so what more do we have to lose now?"
Hamas and other militants have spurned an Egyptian truce deal to end nine days of fighting with Israel. That decision means bombs have continued to fall on the enclave. But many here support it anyway, saying their bleak peacetime life under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade was barely worth living. ...
Life in the densely-populated enclave has worsened in the last year since Egypt demolished hundreds of border smuggling tunnels which brought in weapons but were also the lifeblood of Gaza's struggling economy.
Over half of Gaza's 1.8 million people are on United Nations food aid. Electricity is cut for eight hours at a stretch. Building material to accommodate the mushrooming population is scarce. Taps spit out salty, often contaminated water.
Lack of fuel at sewage treatment plants has caked the beaches - one of the strip's few diversions - in toxic waste. ...
"[Israel] respects no agreements and breaks any deal to serve its own interests. Anything it does for us, it has to be forced," said Ameen Abu Al-Kas, a vegetable seller in Gaza City.
"We've seen them attack us and stop a hundred times and things still get worse. We're beyond tired, we're dead."
Binyamin Netanyahu: Hamas has 'shut the door' to diplomatic solutions
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has warned that Hamas "shut the door to a diplomatic solution" to the crisis in Gaza as his government was set to authorise the call-up of another 8,000 reserve soldiers in the escalating conflict.
Israel, however, did agree to a UN request to halt its bombardment for five hours on humanitarian grounds after its naval strikes killed four children on a beach. Hamas reportedly also agreed. ...
His comments on Wednesday came after another day of bloodshed in Gaza, where the death toll passed 200. An Israeli civilian was also killed on Tuesday. Israel said more than 1,200 rockets had been launched from Gaza since the start of the nine-day conflict and its forces had carried out more than 1,825 air strikes. ...
On Wednesday, US president Barack Obama backed Egypt's efforts to broker a ceasefire, offering Washington's full diplomatic support. He said that while he and the world were "heartbroken" by the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip, Israel had the "right to defend itself from rocket attacks that terrorise" its population.
The Periodic Slaughter of Palestinians
To the Israeli government, the periodic slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza is called “mowing the grass,” a chore that frequently needs repeating.
Since coming into existence in 1948, Israel has attacked Palestinian individuals and infrastructure thousands of times. Israeli conventional wisdom would claim that this has been done in self-defense and to dissuade the Palestinians from future attacks.
The self-defense rationale is misleading because Israelis have, from the beginning, been acting offensively: most of what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories was taken violently and then ethnically cleansed of most of its Arab inhabitants with the ongoing goal of setting up a religiously exclusive state. Palestinian violence has always been a reaction to Israeli aggression.
The argument that harsh retaliation against Palestinian acts of resistance would dissuade them from further resistance (that is, the Palestinians “only understand force”) proved long ago to be false. It has never worked, and yet too many Israelis have clung tenaciously to this lie (a small minority, such as the Israeli journalist Gordon Levy, know the lie for what it is and bravely keep proclaiming the truth). ...
One reason for Israel’s repetitive violence is that if Israelis admit it is a tactical failure and desist, they might have to negotiate a genuine peace treaty with the Palestinians. Many will immediately say that they have, repeatedly, tried to negotiate while always coming up against Palestinian intransigence.
However, if one takes a close and objective look at these efforts at negotiation, one finds that they are facades or false fronts behind which we find Israeli intransigence. As the liberal Zionist M. J. Rosenberg has pointed out, the Israelis have never negotiated in good faith.
When the Palestinians react to Israel’s bad faith, the Israelis break off negotiations and blame the Palestinians. Israel then returns to its pattern of repetitive violence.
In truth, negotiating in good faith means compromising Israel’s ambition to settle all of the land of Palestine, and that is something the hard-core Zionists will not do. As a consequence it is not the Israelis, but the Palestinians who have lacked a partner who will negotiate responsibly.
Somebod(ies) in Israel appear to have a guilty conscience:
Israeli media takes offense at rock star's call for peace
Eddie Vedder was apparently surprised by the furor over his remarks at an 11 July concert in Milton Keynes. "I swear to fucking God, there are people out there who are looking for a reason to kill," he said that night, mid-way through a performance of the song Daughter. "They’re looking for a reason to go across borders and take over land that doesn’t belong to them. They should get the fuck out and mind their own fucking business … We don't want to give them our taxes to drop bombs on children."
Although Vedder and Pearl Jam never overtly referenced Israel, Gaza, or even the Middle East, the Jerusalem Post branded his monologue a "harsh anti-Israel diatribe". Pro-Israeli fans flooded the Pearl Jam's Facebook page, criticising the speech, while Israeli rock DJ Ben Red published an open letter (since deleted) telling Vedder to stay away from Israel now that his "true face has finally being revealed".
On Wednesday afternoon, Vedder posted his own letter on the official Pearl Jam website. Once again he avoided any direct reference to the violence that has broken out between Hamas and the Israel Defence Force. "With about a dozen assorted ongoing conflicts in the news every day, and with the stories becoming more horrific, the level of sadness becomes unbearable," he wrote. "Some of us, after another morning dose of news coverage full of death and destruction, feel the need to reach out to others to see if we are not alone in our outrage."
"I don’t know how to process the feeling of guilt and complicity when I hear about the deaths of a civilian family from a US drone strike," Vedder went on. "When attempting to make a plea for more peace in the world at a rock concert, we are reflecting the feelings of all those we have come in contact with so we may all have a better understanding of each other."
Lawmakers challenge spending billions more on wars
WASHINGTON — Pentagon leaders faced a bipartisan barrage of skeptical questions Wednesday from lawmakers over President Barack Obama’s request for $58.6 billion in emergency funds for conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and beyond.
Republican and Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee said Americans are war-weary after almost 13 years of conflict in South Asia and the Middle East, fearful of being drawn into new wars and mistrustful of the Obama administration.
Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, said he opposed giving Afghanistan tens of billions in new money because so much U.S. aid over the last decade has been lost to corruption.
“I look at the absolute waste of life first and money second, and here you are asking for more money,” Jones told Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and other senior Pentagon officials. “American taxpayers are absolutely frustrated and broke because of these overseas activities. I do not understand how you can sit here today and ask for this money with such waste, fraud and abuse going on across Afghanistan.”
Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who lost both legs in November 2004 during combat in Iraq, criticized the funding proposal, called the Overseas Contingency Operations request, for coming to Congress just months after the Pentagon’s basic budget package and for having too few spending controls.
“It seems like this has become just another slush fund where you can just transfer money between accounts,” Duckworth said.
Ukraine crisis: At least 30 civilians killed in latest violence as government battles to control eastern regions
Yuri rips broken glass away from windows and then pounds his fists against the brick wall. He crouches to cradle the lifeless body of Ira, his ex-wife, to his cheek. Her blood is smeared across his face. Next to her, Ira’s teenage sister lies face down with her foot poking from beneath a blanket. In the courtyard their parents lie next to a children’s swing set. “I will slit these Ukrainian bastards’ throats,” he said.
The family from Petrovskiy, 10 miles from Donetsk city centre, are among the latest civilian victims of the indiscriminate use of artillery in eastern Ukraine as government forces battle Russian-backed rebels.
The increase in violence follows last week’s announcement by President Petro Poroshenko that Kiev’s “anti-terror operation” was entering a new phase aimed at “liberating” the eastern region’s two largest cities – Donetsk and Luhansk – from the pro-Russian rebels.
Since then fierce fighting has claimed the lives of at least a further 30 civilians. ...
The three-month siege of Slovyansk, the rebels’ headquarters, was broken by Ukrainian forces this month. Hundreds of civilians were killed and the city’s infrastructure was devastated by shelling before it was retaken.
Sanctions will drive Russia-US relations to dead-end
Vladimir Putin condemns latest US sanctions against Russia
Vladimir Putin lamented the latest round of US sanctions against Russia on Thursday after Barack Obama increased economic pressure over the Ukraine crisis.
The Russian president said the sanctions, announced late on Wednesday, were straining bilateral relations and hurting both Russian and US businesses.
Russia's benchmark MICEX plummeted 2.6% at opening on Thursday while Russia's biggest oil company, Rosneft, was nearly 5% down. ...
In televised comments on Thursday, Putin said the sanctions were "driving into a corner" relations between the two countries as well as the interests of US companies and "the long-term national interests of the US government and people".
Putin warned Washington that the sanctions would lead to a backlash against American companies working in Russia.
Next stop Russia for those fleeing rebel-held Donetsk
Kiev and the West blame Moscow for fuelling the fighting but those leaving the rebels' self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" say that joining the thousands of others who have already headed across the border into Russia is their only hope. ...
Since Ukraine's Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko tore up a ceasefire earlier this month, a lightning advance by Ukrainian troops has seen Kiev snatch back a string of key towns and military hardware wheeled to the doorstep of million-strong Donetsk after rebel fighters retreated there. ...
[A] convoy ... is being organised by the unrecognised rebel state's "committee for refugees" and officials claim that they have been helping hundreds of people to flee the threatened city on a daily basis.
"Each day there have been at least 450 people leaving," said Daria Morozova, the head of the committee, adding that there are "900 people" on a waiting list.
Those being taken out will go to the Rostov region across the frontier in southern Russian where they will first be put up in temporary camps.
Obama’s Failure to Rein in CIA and NSA
The political embarrassments for President Barack Obama coming from the intelligence community, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, continue to mount, but there is no sign whatsoever that the President is interested in reversing the pattern.
The German government’s unprecedented expulsion of the CIA station chief in Berlin because of the unnecessary recruitment of two German national security officials should have been the kind of shot across the bow that would lead to a response from the Obama administration. The fact that the President had no early warning of these awkward recruitments from CIA Director John Brennan and that Brennan’s initial forays with the Germans were so clumsy only added to the embarrassment. ...
There is little that President Obama can do about the intransigence of Israel, the sectarian fighting in Iraq, or the backwardness of Afghanistan. But with a stroke of a pen, he could force the resignation of CIA Director Brennan, appoint better leaders throughout the intelligence community, and demand the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary that documents the brutality of CIA’s interrogation techniques and exposes CIA lies to the White House, the Congress, and the American people about the so-called benefits of its renditions and detentions policies.
If the President wanted to roll back the misdeeds of the Bush administration, restore the rule of law at the CIA, and create the change that is needed, he must stop relying on senior officials such as John Brennan who endorsed the shameful acts of the past.
World Cup chants reveal true state of U.S.-German relations
As Germany basks in its World Cup victory, it’s easy to forget that one of the most telling geopolitical moments of the tournament came during the Germany-U.S. game. As American fans chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” the Germans countered with, “N-S-A! N-S-A! N-S-A!”
In the weeks since, relations have crumbled. After it learned that a German intelligence officer allegedly spied for the United States, Germany expelled the CIA station chief in Berlin — a rare move by a close American ally.
This isn’t a sudden reversal in relations. The fallout from surveillance scandals has been sharp and steady over the past year. In 2013, Germans grew wary about the extent of U.S. espionage after Edward Snowden leaked documents showing that the United States had been monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone since 2002. A German parliamentary committee asked Snowden to provide testimony for an inquiry on foreign intelligence activities. The request, which Snowden rejected, was sure to rankle the United States, but Germany pushed forward anyway: One country’s traitor was another’s key witness.
It’s no surprise that of all foreign countries, President Barack Obama’s approval rating has fallen the most in Brazil and Germany, two countries with leaders monitored by the National Security Agency.
Edward Snowden should not face trial, says UN human rights commissioner
The United Nations's top human rights official has suggested that the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, credited Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, with starting a global debate that has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data.
"Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them," Pillay told a news conference.
"I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation," she said. "We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information."
The United States has filed espionage charges against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person.
Pillay declined to say whether President Barack Obama should pardon Snowden, saying he had not yet been convicted. "As a former judge I know that if he is facing judicial proceedings we should wait for that outcome," she said. But she added that Snowden should be seen as a human rights defender.
'Perversion of Justice': Anti-Drone Activist and Grandmother Sentenced to One Year
A week after Mary Anne Grady-Flores, an Ithaca anti-drone activist and grandmother of three, was sentenced to one year in prison, supporters vow that the overly harsh terms will only galvanize those who "place their bodies on the line" in the name of peace.
On July 10, before a packed courtroom of her supporters in DeWitt, New York, Judge David S. Gideon sentenced Grady-Flores, 58, to one year at the Onondaga County jail for violating an order of protection when she photographed an anti-drone protest at the Hancock Air National Guard Base.
Issued on February 13, 2013 after Grady-Flores participated in a peaceful demonstration at the base the prior year, the order barred her from from going near one of the base's commanders. She allegedly violated the order during an Ash Wednesday peace action, which Grady-Flores photographed from a point beyond what she believed was the boundary of the Hancock base.
At a press conference before her sister's trial, Clare Grady said it was "obscene" that a law meant to protect victims of violence was now being used against those who "refuse to be silent" and "refuse to accept the normalization of killing, targeting as a matter of policy."
During the trial, Grady-Flores spoke about what she said were the "perversions of justice in her case."
The final perversion, she said, is "the reversal of who is the real victim here: the commander of a military base involved in killing innocent people halfway around the world or those innocent people themselves? Who are the real ones in need of orders of protection?"
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
Rightwing Opponents Target Shelter Sites for Migrant Children
Cities and towns across the country are responding to the influx of migrant children from Central America, with some offering safe haven and others saying: Not In My Backyard.
The federal government is reaching out to state officials, seeking places to safely house the tens of thousands of children coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. Some, like Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, are amenable to helping; others, like Iowa governor Terry Branstad, are not. ...
Such opposition has taken a frightening turn; protesters in Vassar, Michigan this week carried AR-15s and handguns as part of their demonstration. ...
Others have more humanitarian concerns, pointing out that some proposed shelter sites—such as a former Army Reserve Center in Maryland that lacks security or running water—are hardly "hospitable," as Kimberly Propeack, an attorney with the immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland, put it.
Meanwhile, the Texas-based Migrant Clinicians Network is advocating a different solution: Foster homes. "Care of these children is a humanitarian need that transcends political affiliations," a statement reads. "There is an urgent need for families to host these children in the foster system rather than to keep them in makeshift detention centers."
Hedges and Lessig on Money and Politics (3/3)
The New Budget Outlook Shows that Austerity Makes No Sense
The new long-term budget outlook from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, reaffirms that the national debt will remain stable over the medium term, while long-term debt projections have fallen dramatically over the past several years. Meanwhile, Congress has severely damaged the economy with deep spending cuts in a misguided attempt to solve a short-term debt crisis that simply does not exist. ...
To understand the impact of spending cuts on the overall economy, we can look at CBO’s changing estimates of potential GDP in the first quarter of 2014 and its estimate for potential GDP at the end of 2020. Relative to CBO’s estimates made in 2010 about the state of the economy, its most recent estimate shows growth of the U.S. economy’s supply-side potential is $351 billion smaller now after three years of spending cuts. CBO estimates also indicate the potential future growth path for the U.S. economy decreased by $633 billion through the end of 2020, following the austerity-burdened recovery.
Austerity is moving this key metric in the wrong direction, and CBO’s report shows this policy choice is costing the U.S. economy dearly. CBO forecasts for potential GDP fell as austerity took hold, illustrating the painful and unnecessary costs of cutting spending on public investments, education, nutritional assistance, emergency unemployment insurance benefits, and more. These humane economic policies would be a textbook response that provides targeted fiscal stimulus in a downturn to deliver a strong, stable recovery.
After this latest CBO report, it is clearer than ever that our ongoing experiment with austerity has failed, and it is long past time for Congress to focus on growing the economy instead.
Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz Hails New BRICS Bank Challenging U.S.-Dominated World Bank & IMF
Guitarist Johnny Winter dies at 70
American blues guitarist and singer Johnny Winter died Wednesday in a hotel room in Switzerland, his representative said Thursday. He was 70.
"His wife, family and bandmates are all saddened by the loss of their loved one and one of the world's finest guitarists," his spokeswoman, Lori Haynes, said.
Winter was in Zurich, Switzerland, as part of a tour of Europe, although he was scheduled to return to the United States for shows later in July, according to his official Facebook page.
Winter first gained national attention when Rolling Stone magazine featured the the Texas music scene in a December 1968 cover story. It captioned his photo: "Johnny Winter, Albino Bluesman." The article said guitarist Mike Bloomfield considered the young Winter the "best white blues guitarist he had ever heard."
The Evening Greens
Four things you should know about Detroit’s water crisis
[W]hat’s happening in Detroit isn’t just Detroit’s problem. It has larger implications for the rest of us. ...
Water is getting more expensive everywhere. This is true both internationally and in the U.S., where the cost of water has been rising faster than the rate of inflation.
There’s no federal policy to help people deal with the cost of water. ... [T]here are no federal programs to help people pay for the rising cost of water, the way that there are for fuel and electricity (or housing, for that matter). Detroit actually had a program that helped low-income residents pay their water bills. [The] money [was] raised by voluntary contributions from customers.
The infrastructure that was designed to keep us all hydrated is in trouble everywhere, not just Detroit. Detroit did most of its growing in the 30 years between 1920 and 1950 – the population nearly doubled, from 994,000 to 1,850,000 (It’s now about 685,000). This is the same time window during which much of America’s water infrastructure was being laid out: people were moving from the country to the cities, and there were generous federal subsidies that helped put those pipes in the ground.
Other cities that put in a lot of water infrastructure during this time, like Los Angeles and Chicago, can expect to see the same problems, since everything built during that 20-year period is going to break more or less all at once. ...
The EPA has been writing reports for years about how America’s water infrastructure is old, leaky, and generally unsafe, and how it’s going to take New Deal-style funding to get it back in shape. The bad news is that, as a country, we’re more excited about building new things than fixing old ones.
Colony collapse disorder real and metaphorical:
Keiser Report: Bees are Communists, Jihadists & Terrorists
Australia kills off carbon tax
Australia’s carbon price has been repealed, leaving the nation with no legislated policy to achieve even the minimum 5% greenhouse emissions reduction target it has inscribed in international agreements.
After eight years of bitter political debate, during which climate policy dominated three election campaigns and contributed to the demise of two prime ministers, after last week’s Senate drama in which the repeal was again defeated and this week’s lengthy last gasp debate, the Senate has now finally voted to make good Tony Abbott’s “pledge in blood” to “axe the tax”. ...
Leader of the government in the Senate and former climate change minister Penny Wong said repealing the bills meant “this nation will have walked away from a credible and efficient response to climate change”.
Wong said the prime minister Tony Abbott had “staked his political career … on fearmongering and scaremongering and that is what this debate has been about for years”.
“I think future generations will look back on these bills and they will be appalled … at the short-sighted, opportunistic selfish politics of those opposite and Mr Abbott will go down as one of the most short-sighted, selfish and small people ever to occupy the office of prime minister.”
Decision on Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline Delayed Until After Next Federal Election
Canada's National Energy Board (NEB) announced today that it is stopping the clock on the review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion due to the company’s new proposed corridor through Burnaby, B.C.— which will push a decision on the project back to after the 2015 federal election.
The board will take a seven-month timeout from its 15-month timeline between July 11, 2014, and Februrary 3, 2015, to allow Kinder Morgan time to file studies for its new corridor through Burnaby Mountain, according to a letter to intervenors sent today. ...
“The significant thing is that this decision now won’t be made until after the next federal election. It’ll be up to the next Prime Minister to make that call,” says Karen Campbell, staff lawyer with Ecojustice.
“From a campaign perspective, it certainly gives some wind in the sails of those who want to make sure this isn’t a fait accompli before the next election,” she says. ...
Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion would ship 590,000 barrels of oilsands bitumen to Burnaby each day, where it would be loaded onto 400 oil tankers each year.
Tar Sands Steaming Cause Of “Endless Spills”
Finally one of Canada’s leading independent tar sands producers has conceded that it is partly to blame for a series of leaks of bitumen in Alberta that have been going on for over a year.
The company concerned, Canadian Natural Resources, which is one of the largest independent crude oil and natural gas producers in the world, undertakes what is known as cyclical steam stimulation (CSS) to extract the tar sands. ... The process involves injecting thousands of gallons of boiling hot, high-pressure steam into deep underground reservoirs. This in turn liquefies the bitumen and creates cracks through which the bitumen flows. It is then pumped to the surface.
But now it seems the steam can also crack the so-called “cap rock” above the bitumen deposits, leaving a path open for the bitumen to reach the surface in an uncontrolled fashion. ... In a detailed report which has just been released, the company has conceded that its high-pressure steaming practices could have fractured the cap rock and be the cause of the spills.
The Pembina Institute points out that the admission that the shale “cap rock” could have been breached by CSS is really important, as the project only received regulatory approval on the basis it would not breach the cap rock.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
US Taxes Pay for Israeli War Crimes
Selling Israel’s War on Gaza
What Next For Gaza?
NSA Surveillance: What the Government Can’t See
Intercept: NBC News Pulls Top Reporter from Gaza After He Witnesses Israeli Attack on Children
Israeli Crowd Cheers As Missile Hits Gaza Live On CNN
A Little Night Music
Washboard Sam - Diggin' My Potatoes
Washboard Sam - River Hip Mama
Washboard Sam - Ladies Man
Washboard Sam - Evil Blues
Washboard Sam - Who Pumped the Wind in my Doughnut?
Washboard Sam - Maybe You'll Love Me
Washboard Sam - Let Me Play Your Vendor
Washboard Sam - Easy Riding Mama
Washboard Sam - I'm Gonna Keep My Hair Parted
Washboard Sam - Barbecue
Washboard Sam - Back Door
Washboard Sam - Soap And Water Blues
Washboard Sam - All By Myself
Washboard Sam - I Just Couldn't Help it
Washboard Sam - Gonna Hit The Highway
Washboard Sam - Phantom Black Snake
Washboard Sam - The Big Boat
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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