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 jump blues singer, pianist and songwriter Mercy Dee Walton. Enjoy!
Mercy Dee - Red Light
“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.”
-- Arundhati Roy
News and Opinion
Despite Ceasefire, Humanitarian Crisis Continues in Gaza with 500,000 Displaced & 10,000 Injured
Against the war: the movement that dare not speak its name in Israel
Gideon Levy doesn't want to meet in a coffee bar in Tel Aviv. He is fed up with being hassled in public and spat at, with people not willing to share the table next to him in restaurants. And now he is fed up with the constant presence of his bodyguards, not least because they too have started giving him a hard time about his political views. So he doesn't go out much any more and we sit in the calm of his living room, a few hundred yards from the Yitzhak Rabin Centre. Rabin's assassination by a rightwing Orthodox Jew in 1995 is itself a sobering reminder of the personal cost of peacemaking in Israel.
In his column in Haaretz, Levy has long since banged the drum for greater Israeli empathy towards the suffering of the Palestinians. He is a well-known commentator on the left, and one of the few prepared to stick his head above the parapet. Consequently, he is no stranger to opposition from the right. But this time it is different. Yariv Levin, coalition chairman of the Likud-Beytenu faction in the Knesset, recently called for him to be put on trial for treason – a crime which, during wartime, is punishable by death.
"It is time we stop regarding despicable phenomena like this with tolerance," Levin said of Levy. Soon after that interview, Eldad Yaniv, a former political adviser to ex-prime minister Ehud Barack, wrote on his Facebook page: "The late Gideon Levy. Get used to it."
Levy's unpardonable crime is vocal opposition to the war and to the bombing of Gaza. According to recent polls, support for the military operation in Gaza among the Jewish Israeli public stands somewhere between 87% (Channel 10 News) and 95% (Israel Democracy Institute). Even those who are secretly against the war are cautious about voicing their opinion openly.
Israeli Deputy Speaker Calls For Concentration Camps In Gaza, Sending Palestinians To Other Countries
Writers for The Times of Israel are not the only ones looking to obliterate the Palestinians in Gaza. Moshe Feiglin, the Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, has said it is time for Israel to take all of Gaza, destroy Hamas and all of their supporters, and send the Palestinians to concentration camps on the Sinai border until Israel can find countries willing to accept them.
It is apparently not enough that Israel has blockaded Gaza and has now killed over 1,800 Palestinians in Operation Protective Edge, the Deputy Speaker wants no Palestinians there at all. The start of this theoretical operation would include shutting down Gaza’s power and water before it was “shelled with maximum fire power.” In other words, kill as many Palestinians as you can before you ship those still alive to the camps. ...
No word yet on whether Prime Minister Netanyahu liked Feiglin’s plan.
Deputy Speaker of Israeli Knesset Calls for Expulsion and Jewish Reoccupation of Gaza
JAY: So the debate, when you look at the sort of debate in the Israeli press, one of the things jumped out at us. This is a piece by Moshe Feiglin, he has an article he just wrote, an op-ed, where he said his plan for Gaza. And it more or less comes down to let the people of Gaza know that the attack is coming and give one warning; allow people out, in other words let people leave and go to Sinai, but I thought the Egyptians would have something to say about that, and in his piece he doesn't mention that; and then flatten the place, more or less. And then occupy the place completely and essentially ask people to leave, encourage people to leave, give people money to leave, and then occupy Gaza with Jewish settlers and claim Gaza a fully as a piece of Israel. In other words, a forced expulsion, that's his strategy for Gaza, and bomb the hell out of the place to get there. How serious a position is this within Isreali discourse?
BLUMENTHAL: Well, before the assault on Gaza began in earnest, before Operation Protective Edge as was announced, Feiglin, who is one of the deputy speakers of the Knesset, called for Israel to cut off electricity and water to the Gaza Strip. There are signs around Israel which are calling for this in public streets, saying it's the moral thing to do. And this is very mainstream right now.
The Israeli army has done just that. They attacked Gaza's only power plant. They've refused to restore electricity to the Gaza Strip from outside. And 90 percent of the Gaza Strip is without water because the attacks on the sanitation system have been so thorough. So plan Feiglin is really--it's come to fruition through Operation Protective Edge.
Now, during Operation Protective Edge there's a sense of frustration in Israeli society that they didn't quite finish the job. The sense is that, okay, oh, 1,800 people have been killed, all the Israelis I've been speaking to are aware of the level of civilian casualties. Over 300 children have been killed in the last month, most of them under 12 years old. But the soldiers are very frustrated, Israelis are frustrated, that they feel like in another year or two there'll be another operation like this and 2,800 will be killed, nd how long will they have to live with the Gaza Strip? How long will they have to live with rockets and tunnels? They want to finish the job. And Feiglin is catering to that mentality by calling for this plan of expulsion and reoccupation. ...
But beyond that is there's the genocidal aspect of Feiglin's remarks. And genocide, incitement to genocide, is incredibly common right now in Israeli political discourse. It's not just Feiglin. There's Giora Eiland, who was one of the heads of the Institute for National Security Studies, which consults for the Israeli military. He's a former national security adviser, someone who's deeply embedded in the military intelligence apparatus. And today he published a piece in Yedioth Ahronoth, which is the main newspaper in Israel, pretty much calling for genocide in the Gaza Strip, or at least justifying it. He's basically making the case that there are no civilians in the Gaza Strip because they elected Hamas as Germans elected Hitler. This is the same rationale that Osama bin Laden used to justify the 9/11 attacks and the indiscriminate slaughter of Americans, because they had elected governments which had attacked the Middle East, which had attacked Muslim nations. So you're hearing this from mainstream figures, not just from crazy old Feiglin, who's willing winning lots of fans and followers with this kind of rhetoric, who's really keeping up a public profile.
Ayelet Shaked is another figure who's called for genocide. She is a rising star in the Jewish Home Party, which is the third most popular party in Israel, a senior partner in Netanyahu's governing coalition. She called for exterminating Palestinian mothers to prevent them from giving birth to, quote-unquote, "little snakes".
How Israel Used Its Own Civilians as Human Shields While Assaulting Gaza
Throughout the ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, perhaps no phrase has featured as prominently or persistently in the lexicon of Israeli propaganda as “human shields.” Repeated in stentorian fashion by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a heavily regimented army of 10,000 public relations flacks, the phrase has been ruthlessly deployed to shield Israel from responsibility for the bloodbath it has caused in Gaza. Israel has killed 1,800 civilians in a matter of weeks, including some 430 children, but it was Hamas that forced them to do it.
Like so many Zionist accusations against Palestinian society (“They only understand force,” “They teach their children to hate,” “They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”) the human shields slander is a projection. Israel is the most militarized society on earth, with soldiers and military installations honeycombed throughout its civil society. With full military conscription for all men and women and reserve duty required for all Jews until they reach their 40s, Jewish Israelis alternate constantly between the role of civilian and soldier, blurring the line between the two.
Within one of Tel Aviv’s most densely populated neighborhoods sits Ha’Kirya, the army’s headquarters, a gigantic complex of monolithic buildings that house the offices where attacks on Gaza are planned. The uniformed officers and soldiers who work inside take lunch in the cafes and shop in the malls surrounding their offices, embedding themselves among the civilian population. A military base is nestled in the middle of the campus of Haifa University while Hebrew and Tel Aviv Universities offer military officers free tuition, encouraging their enrollment and allowing them to carry weapons on campus. It is hard to find a henhouse, flophouse, or fieldhouse anywhere in Israel without some kind of military presence.
"A Hideous Atrocity": Noam Chomsky on Israel’s Assault on Gaza & U.S. Support for the Occupation
Ban Ki-moon calls for end to Gaza ‘nightmare’, as charities launch appeal
UN secretary general says conflict has shamed the world
A coalition of British charities is launching an appeal to help the people of Gaza recover from what the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has called the “nightmare of the last four weeks”.
According to the DEC [the Disasters Emergency Committee comprises 13 UK charities], 65,000 people in Gaza have seen their homes severely damaged or destroyed, while tens of thousands urgently need food, water, household items and medical care.
The committee’s chief executive, Saleh Saeed, said the fighting had left Gaza “on the edge”.
He added: “Even before the conflict began the people of Gaza were close to breaking point. Now we are seeing a humanitarian emergency affecting virtually every man, woman and child in Gaza..” ...
In a strongly worded address to the UN general assembly, Ban said the conflict in Gaza – which has left 67 Israelis and more than 1,800 Palestinians dead – had “shocked and shamed the world”.
He added: “Perhaps nothing symbolised more the horror that was unleashed on the people of Gaza than the repeated shelling of United Nations facilities harbouring civilians who had been explicitly told to seek a safe haven there. These attacks were outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable.” ...
“The senseless cycle of suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in Israel, must end,” he said. “Do we have to continue like this: build, destroy, and build, and destroy? We will build again, but this must be the last time to rebuild. This must stop now. They must go back to the negotiating table.”
'Absolute Disaster': Medical aid like a lottery for Palestinians in shaky Gaza ceasefire
UK Protesters Arrested After Occupying Factory Supplying IDF Drone Engines
The nine UK protesters occupying a factory that supplies drone engines to the Israel Defense Forces were all arrested on the roof of the building on Wednesday evening after remaining on top of it for over 36 hours in a standoff with local police and successfully shutting the factory down during that time.
It's not clear what prompted the arrests, as police had previously vowed to find a "peaceful resolution" to the standoff.
The group London Palestine Action chained the factory gates shut and chained themselves to the roof of the UAV Engines Limited factory in Shenstone, England, around 5 a.m. Tuesday, saying they had enough food to stay a week.
18 Ukrainian Soldiers Killed in Fights With Eastern Rebels
The Ukrainian military has continued its fight against eastern rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts today, reporting multiple battles which left 18 soldiers dead and 54 wounded.
The Ukrainian military spokesman reported the casualties spanned several battles in both oblasts, including a four-hour battle along the Luhansk-Russia border, during which they claimed to have been fired on from rebels on both sides of the border.
Russia Strikes Back: Bans products from EU, US, Australia, Norway, Canada
Russia publishes list of banned western foods in response to sanctions
Russia has banned fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, milk and dairy imports from the US, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway, Russia's prime minister told a government meeting on Thursday.
Dmitry Medvedev said the ban was effective immediately and would last for one year.
Russian officials were on Wednesday asked to come up with a list of western agricultural products and raw materials to be banned.
The agriculture minister, Nikolai Fyodorov, said on Thursday that greater quantities of Brazilian meat and New Zealand cheese would be imported to offset the newly prohibited items. He added Moscow was in talks with Belarus and Kazakhstan to prevent the banned western foodstuffs being exported to Russia from the two countries.
The Kremlin's move comes in response to the grounding of the budget airline subsidiary of Aeroflot as a result of EU sanctions over Moscow's support for rebels in Ukraine.
Medvedev also said officials were considering a ban on European airlines flying to Asia over Siberia
MH17: Dutch prime minister calls halt to search for victims
The Netherlands' prime minister has called a halt to the search for remains of victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 disaster in Ukraine, saying it is too dangerous to continue. ...
Mark Rutte ... said that information from a Ukrainian military doctor who had overseen operations in the days immediately following the crash "has changed the recovery team's perception of an earlier effort undertaken by local authorities". ...
He said that it appears "fortunately, more was done after the disaster than we thought until now."
40,000 Iraqis stranded on mountain as Isis jihadists threaten death
Tens of thousands of members of one of Iraq's oldest minorities have been stranded on a mountain in the country's north-west, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay.
UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.
At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.
Sinjar itself has been all but emptied of its 300,000 residents since jihadists stormed the city late on Saturday, but an estimated 25,000 people remain. "We are being told to convert or to lose our heads," said Khuldoon Atyas, who has stayed behind to guard his family's crops. "There is no one coming to help."
Another man, who is hiding in the mountains and identified himself as Nafi'ee, said: "Food is low, ammunition is low, and so is water. We have one piece of bread to share between 10 people. We have to walk 2km to get water. There were some air strikes yesterday [against the jihadists], but they have made no difference."
Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of crimes against humanity and jailed for life
A UN-backed war crimes tribunal has found the Khmer Rouge’s Brother No 2 Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced the two elderly men to life imprisonment, in a move heralded by human rights groups as a “historic victory” for the nation.
The verdict comes nearly 40 years after the regime led by Pol Pot ended its murderous four-year reign over Cambodia, during which time nearly 2 million people – a quarter of the population – were died from starvation, exhaustion, execution or lack of medical care as a result of the communist “utopia” experiment.
Khieu Samphan, 83, known as “Mr Clean” for his reported incorruptibility, and Nuon Chea, 88, the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologue, were both charged with crimes against humanity, homicide, torture, genocide and religious persecution during a regime that forced Cambodia into “a state of terror”, according to the tribunal’s chief judge Nil Nonn.
The defendants, both of whom have been in hospital at times since the trial began in November 2011, were described by prosecutor William Smith as “dictators who controlled Cambodians by brutal force and fear”. ...
Lawyers for the two said they would appeal.
The CIA is getting away with keeping every important secret about torture
At this point, is there anything the Central Intelligence Agency thinks it can’t get away with?
To recap: the CIA systematically tortured people, then lied about it. Destroyed evidence of it, then lied about that. Spied on the US Senate staffers investigating the agency for torture, then lied about that. Now, after somehow being put in charge of deciding what parts of the Senate’s final report on that torture should be redacted, the CIA has predictively censored the key evidence of the litany of all of those transgressions. ...
But it’s what the CIA blacked out that makes it even worse. ...
- The names of countries that helped the CIA torture people, despite the fact that many of the countries involved have been widely reported for years;
- The pseudonyms of the CIA officials who directly took part in the torture (not even their real names!);
- Specific torture techniques used by CIA employees, particularly those who went beyond what the Bush administration lawyers approved;
- Already-public information released in 2009 by the Senate Armed Services committee;
- Exaggerations and misleading statements by the CIA about the value of information received through torture;
- Proof that valuable information once presented as gleaned from torture was actually gained through other avenues.
How did the CIA justify that? By claiming the agency must keep secret “sources and methods” – an increasingly amorphous phrase the government seems to have applied in recent months to virtually anything Langley wants to keep classified. Yes, legitimate, active intelligence sources and methods are one of the few methods that the government should use the classification system for. But here, the “method” the CIA is protecting is torture, which is prohibited by law, and the “sources” are people and governments who have systematically lied to the public about violating that law.
Obama Defends CIA Chief John Brennan Amid Resignation Demands
As CIA chief John Brennan faces calls for resignation from critics in Washington, President Barack Obama has continued to give him his steadfast support.
According to The Hill, Obama's strategic friendship with Brennan, which began during Obama's first presidential campaign, is likely to withstand the backlash against the CIA director that arose in response to revelations that the agency spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee. ...
Obama said during a press conference on Friday that he has "full confidence" in Brennan, who was in charge of the CIA when the agency spied on senators who were investigating the government's upcoming torture report.
NYC Police Union Chief Defends NYPD's Killing of Eric Garner
After the chief medical examiner of New York City officially declared Eric Garner's death a homicide, police union chief Patrick Lynch vehemently defended the New York Police Department, holding a press conference on Tuesday to deny the findings and the video evidence of Garner's assault by NYPD officers.
"It was not a chokehold," Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the largest NYPD labor union, told reporters at the assocation's headquarters. "It was bringing a person to the ground the way we're trained to do to place him under arrest."
Garner died in police custody on July 17 after a group of NYPD officers, led by Daniel Pantaleo, restrained him during an arrest by putting him in a chokehold, dragging him to the ground, and slamming his chest and head onto the concrete. The assault was captured on video.
The chokehold is an illegal move that has been banned by the police department since 1993. Garner, who was unarmed, was being placed under arrest for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes on the street, an example of the NYPD's tactic of focusing on petty misdemeanors as a method to stop larger crimes. The so-called "broken windows" policy has been highly criticized in the past.
Shocking Videos of Police Brutality Put Bratton and NYPD on Defensive
Days after Staten Island resident Eric Garner was choked to death by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, footage emerged of an NYPD officer choking a pregnant woman because of a barbeque grill improperly placed on a sidewalk. The day after a medical examiner declared Garner’s death a homicide, someone uploaded video of a dozen NYPD officers dragging a naked woman out of her apartment, amid screams from her family and neighbors, for allegedly hitting her 12-year-old daughter.
The current spike in NYPD abuse is not new, but our ability to record and expose it is. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton now confronts a media landscape that is considerably more complex and decentralized than the one he mastered in the '90s. How he guides the NYPD through the current round of scandals will have important implications for how police everywhere try to control the narrative of police violence in the digital age. Bratton would have us believe that recent cases were the work of a few bad-apple cops in a barrel of good ones, but the repeated occurrence of brutality this summer reveals a systemic problem rooted in a race- and class-based approach to policing.
Russia grants Snowden 3-year residence permit
Edward Snowden given permission to stay in Russia for three more years
Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, has been given permission to stay in Russia for three more years and will be allowed to travel abroad for three-month stints.
His Russian lawyer told reporters that Snowden, whose temporary asylum ran out on 1 August, has received a three-year residence permit.
"The decision on the application has been taken and therefore starting 1 August 2014 Edward Snowden has received a three-year residential permit," said Anatoly Kucherena.
But the former NSA contractor has not been granted political asylum, which would have allowed him to stay in Russia permanently. However, Kucherena said Snowden would be able to extend his residency permit for a further three years when it runs out and after five years would be eligible to apply for Russian citizenship, but he did not know if Snowden intended to do so. ...
The residency permit will allow Snowden for the first time to travel out of Russia, so long as he does not stay outside the country for more than three months at a time, Kucherena said. The lawyer said he could not say which country Snowden might visit.
Bank of America agrees to pay $16-17bn in US deal with regulators source says
Bank of America has tentatively agreed to pay between $16bn and $17bn to settle an investigation into its sale of mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis, a source directly familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. ...
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced, cautioned that some details still needed to be worked out and that it was possible the agreement could fall apart. But the person said the two sides reached an agreement in principle following a conversation last week between attorney general Eric Holder and Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan.
[No word on whether any banker is going to jail. We can probably safely assume not. - js]
Feds stop public disclosure of many serious hospital errors
The federal government this month quietly stopped publicly reporting when hospitals leave foreign objects in patients' bodies or make a host of other life-threatening mistakes.
The change, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) denied last year that it was making, means people are out of luck if they want to search which hospitals cause high rates of problems such as air embolisms — air bubbles that can kill patients when they enter veins and hearts — or giving people the wrong blood type.
CMS removed data on eight of these avoidable "hospital acquired conditions" (HACs) on its hospital comparison site last summer but kept it on a public spreadsheet that could be accessed by quality researchers, patient-safety advocates and consumers savvy enough to translate it. As of this month, it's gone. Now researchers have to calculate their own rates using claims data.
The Evening Greens
Boss Who Ordered Employees to Dump Fracking Waste in River Hit With Prison Sentence
The owner of a Youngstown, Ohio-based company was sentenced on Tuesday to over two years in prison for ordering his employees to repeatedly dump toxic fracking waste into a local waterway.
Between Nov. 1, 2012 and Jan. 31, 2013, employees of Hardrock Excavating LLC, which provided services to the oil and gas industry including storing fracking waste, made over 30 discharges of fracking waste into a tributary of the Mahoning River. Sixty-four-year old Benedict W. Lupo, then-owner of Hardrock Excavating, directed his employees to dump the waste, which included benzene and toluene, under the cover of night into the waterway.
According to reporting by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "employees tried to talk Lupo out of it, but he refused. [The judge] also pointed out a prosecutor's pictures that detailed six weeks of clean-up in an oil-soaked creek." ...
In addition to a 28-month prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent fined Lupo $25,000. The maximum sentence would have been three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Corporate Victory Will 'Screw' Local Farmers as Amendment Passes in Missouri
ALEC-modeled constitutional amendment protects industrial farmers' right to pollute
Agribusiness giants scored a victory in Missouri on Tuesday when voters narrowly approved a corporate-backed state constitutional amendment that critics say will threaten animal rights, remove checks and balances around food safety, and make it more difficult to regulate industrial farming practices.
The ballot question, which was supported by big-ag players like Monsanto and Cargill, asked: "Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural and ranching practices shall not be infringed?" With all precincts reporting, the measure passed 498,751 to 496,223 — a margin of just 2,528 votes, or less than one percentage point.
This makes Missouri the second state in the nation, after North Dakota, to adopt such a provision. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been promoting similar legislation in state capitols for almost two decades.
While supporters of the so-called "Right to Farm" amendment described it as "a way for us to push back a little bit" against environmental groups and animal welfare organizations, opponents said it would open the door for foreign-owned factory farming in Missouri and "strip most local governments of their ability to stop foreign companies from polluting and contaminating our land."
Joe Maxwell, former lieutenant governor of Missouri and head of the group that opposed the amendment, told Kristofor Husted of Mid-Missouri Public Radio that the amendment could shield factory farming operations from existing laws and regulations related to food safety, fertilizers and pesticides, genetically modified organisms, animal rights, and waste disposal.
The Toxic Algae Are Not Done With Toledo. Not By a Long Stretch
Last weekend, Toledo's 400,000 residents were sent scrambling for bottled water because the stuff from the tap had gone toxic—so toxic that city officials warned people against bathing their children or washing their dishes in it. The likely cause: a toxic blue-green algae bloom that floated over the city's municipal water intake in Lake Erie. On Monday morning, the city called off the don't-drink-the-water warning, claiming that levels of the contaminant in the water had fallen back to safe levels. Is their nightmare over?
I put the question to Jeffrey Reutter, director of the Stone Laboratory at Ohio State University and a researcher who monitors Lake Erie's annual algae blooms. He said he could "almost guarantee" that the conditions that caused the crisis, i.e., a toxic bloom floating over the intake, would recur this summer. But it's "pretty unlikely" that toxins will make it into the city's drinking water. That's because after the weekend's fiasco, a whole crew of public agencies, from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to the US Environmental Protection Agency to the City of Toledo, have been scrambling to implement new procedures to keep the toxins out. ... Reutter added that he "anticipated" that the new system for protecting Toledo's drinking water would be more expensive than the current one. Back in January, local paper the Blade reported that Toledo "has spent $3 million a year battling algae toxins in recent years, [and] spent $4 million in 2013."
And those hard realities highlight a hard fact about our way of farming: It manages to displace the costs of dealing with its messes onto people who don't directly benefit from it. The ties between Big Ag and Toledo's rough weekend are easy to tease out. "The Maumee River drains more than four million acres of agricultural land and dumps it into Lake Erie at the Port of Toledo," the Wall Street Journal reports. More than 80 percent of the Maumeee River watershed is devoted to agriculture, mainly the corn-soy duopoly that carpets the Midwest. Fertilizer and manure runoff from the region's farms feed blue-green algae blooms in the southwest corner of Lake Erie, from which Toledo draws its water.
And those blooms don't just tie up oxygen in water and push out aquatic life, creating dead zones. They also often contain the compound that triggered the water scare: microcystin, a toxin that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe headaches, fever, and even liver damage.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The CIA Must Tell the Truth About My Rendition At 12 Years Old
The 3 big lies supporting Israel's war in Gaza
A Letter to the World...from a transgender tween
Pentagon denies US bombing in Iraq
A Little Night Music
Mercy Dee Walton - One Room Country Shack
Mercy Dee Walton - My Woman And The Devil
Mercy Dee Walton - Romp and stomp blues
Mercy Dee Walton - Bird Brain Baby
Mercy Dee Walton - Pauline
Mercy Dee - Have You Ever Been Out In The Country
Mercy Dee - Stubborn Woman
Mercy Dee And Lady Fox - Get to gettin'
Mercy Dee Walton - Please Understand
Mercy Dee Walton - The Main Event
Mercy Dee - Lonesome cabin blues
Mercy Dee And Lady Fox - Rent Man Blues
Mercy Dee - My Woman Knows the Score
Mercy Dee - Danger Zone
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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