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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features r&b singer Roy Brown. Enjoy!
Roy Brown - Good Rockin' Tonight
"For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends."
-- Aeschylus
News and Opinion
New Zealand Launched Mass Surveillance Project While Publicly Denying It
Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the [New Zealand] government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders. Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key, who said the law was merely designed to fix “an ambiguous legal framework” by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years, that it “isn’t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders,” and the law “isn’t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations.” ...
Over the weekend, in anticipation of this report, Key admitted for the first time that the GCSB did plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens, but claimed that he ultimately rejected the program before implementation. ... But the documents indicate that Speargun was not just an idea that stalled at the discussion stage. It was a system GCSB actively worked to implement. ...
That legislation arose after it was revealed in 2012 that the GCSB illegally surveilled the communications of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a legal resident of New Zealand. New Zealand law at the time forbade the GCSB from using its surveillance apparatus against citizens or legal residents. ... A subsequent government investigation found that the GCSB not only illegally spied on Dotcom but also dozens of other citizens and legal residents. ... The government’s response to these revelations was to refuse to prosecute those who ordered the illegal spying and, instead, to propose a new law that would allow domestic electronic surveillance.
Based on Key’s assurances, the New Zealand Parliament narrowly voted to enact the new law on August 21 of last year, by a vote of 61-59. ... Revelations of illegal GCSB spying prompted the creation of the anti-surveillance Internet Party, which formed an alliance with the left-wing, indigenous Mana Party and is predicted to win several seats in Parliament. The party is funded by Dotcom, and has organized a “Moment of Truth” event for this Monday to discuss revelations of surveillance and other secret government actions.
Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange address New Zealanders:
The Moment of Truth
Snowden: New Zealand’s Prime Minister Isn’t Telling the Truth About Mass Surveillance
Like many nations around the world, New Zealand over the last year has engaged in a serious and intense debate about government surveillance. The nation’s prime minister, John Key of the National Party, has denied that New Zealand’s spy agency GCSB engages in mass surveillance, mostly as a means of convincing the country to enact a new law vesting the agency with greater powers. This week, as a national election approaches, Key repeated those denials in anticipation of a report in The Intercept today exposing the Key government’s actions in implementing a system to record citizens’ metadata.
Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched. At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called “XKEYSCORE.” It allows total, granular access to the database of communications collected in the course of mass surveillance. It is not limited to or even used largely for the purposes of cybersecurity, as has been claimed, but is instead used primarily for reading individuals’ private email, text messages, and internet traffic. I know this because it was my full-time job in Hawaii, where I worked every day in an NSA facility with a top secret clearance.
The prime minister’s claim to the public, that “there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance” is false. The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.
The NSA and GCHQ Campaign Against German Satellite Companies
Treasure Map is a vast NSA campaign to map the global internet. The program doesn’t just seek to chart data flows in large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. Rather, it seeks to identify and locate every single device that is connected to the internet somewhere in the world—every smartphone, tablet, and computer—”anywhere, all the time,” according to NSA documents. ...
The Treasure Map graphics contained in the Snowden archive don’t just provide detailed views of global networks—they also note which carriers and internal service provider networks Five Eyes agencies claim to have already penetrated. In graphics generated by the program, some of the “autonomous systems”—basically, networks of routers all controlled by one company, referred to by the shorthand “AS”—under Treasure Map’s watchful eye are marked in red. An NSA legend explains what that means: “Within these AS, there are access points for technical monitoring.” In other words, they are under observation.
Deutsche Telekom, of which the German government owns more than 30 percent, is one of the dozen or so international telecommunications companies that operate global networks—so-called Tier 1 providers. In Germany alone, Deutsche Telekom claims to provide mobile phone services, internet, and land lines to 60 million customers.
It’s not clear from the documents how or where the NSA gained access to the networks. Deutsche Telekom’s autonomous system, marked in red, includes several thousand routers worldwide. It has operations in the U.S. and England, and is part of a consortium that operates the TAT14 transatlantic cable system, which stretches from England to the east coast of the U.S. “The accessing of our network by foreign intelligence agencies,” said a Telekom spokesperson, “would be completely unacceptable.”
The fact that Netcologne is a regional provider, with no international operations, would seem to indicate that the NSA or one of its partners accessed the network from within Germany. If so, that would be a violation of German law and potentially another NSA-related case for German prosecutors, who have been investigating the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
Treasure Map: The NSA Breach of Telekom and Other German Firms
According to the logic of the undated Treasure Map documents ... the NSA and its partner agencies are perhaps not only able to monitor the networks of these companies and the data that travels through them, but also the end devices of their customers. Where exactly the NSA gained access to the companies' networks is not made clear in the graphics. The red-marked AS of Deutsche Telekom by itself includes several thousand routers worldwide. ...
Several weeks ago, SPIEGEL shared a GCHQ document with both companies in order to give them an opportunity to look into the alleged security breaches themselves. The security departments of both firms say they launched intensive investigations but failed to find suspicious mechanisms or data streams leaving the network.
Telekom and Netcologne are not the first German companies to have been successfully hacked by Anglo-American intelligence agencies, according to their own documents. In March, SPIEGEL reported on thelarge-scale attack by the British agency GCHQ on German satellite teleport operators Stellar, Cetel and IABG. Such providers offer satellite Internet connections to remote regions of the world. All three companies are marked red on the Treasuremap graphic, meaning that the NSA and its partner agencies have, according to their documents, internal "Collection Access Points."
SPIEGEL reporters visited Stellar at its offices in Hürth, near Cologne, and presented passages of the documents in question to the CEO as well as three other employees cited by the British. A video of the visit can be seen here:
You'd think that the Obama administration would get its story straight. Whether the administration is making war or not would seem to be an important question.
Is US Waging War? Top Obama Admin Officials Give Conflicting Answers
Obama administration officials late this week made conflicting statements about the critical question of whether the United States is at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL).
The White House and Pentagon on Friday used the word "war" to describe U.S. military actions in Iraq and Syria.
"In the same way that we are at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates around the globe, we are at war with ISIL," declared White House press secretary Josh Earnest in briefing to reporters on Friday.
"What I said was this is not the Iraq war of 2002. But make no mistake, we know we are at war with ISIL in the same way we're at war and continue to be at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates," said Real Admiral John Kirby in a Department of Defense press briefing, also on Friday.
But in numerous media interviews on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized that the U.S. is not at war with ISIL.
"I think war is the wrong terminology and analogy but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity," Kerry told CBS Reporter Margaret Brennan in an interview from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where Kerry is currently traveling in a bid to build a coalition against ISIL..
World leaders vow to use 'whatever means necessary' to defeat Isis threat
Leaders and diplomats from more than 30 countries have pledged to use "whatever means necessary" including military action to defeat the global threat of Islamic State (Isis), after a crisis meeting in Paris.
The emergency talks were held on Monday as France began reconnaissance flights over Iraq after announcing it was ready to join American air strikes and the prospect of Britain joining military action moved closer.
Speaking after the conference, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, ruled out military coordination with Iran in any US-led campaign against Isis – a statement that chimed discordantly with an announcement made earlier on Monday by the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claiming that Tehran had privately refused US requests for cooperation.
Jen Psaki, Kerry's spokesperson, said in a statement that while the US "are not and will not" coordinate militarily with Iran, it has not ruled out the possibility of future talks with the Iranian leadership. "There may be another opportunity on the margins in the future to discuss Iraq," Psaki said.
Is There a Diplomatic Solution to ISIS Crisis? U.S. Could Turn to Aid, Arms Embargo & Engaging Foes
Lessons of Libya cast shadow on Syria strategy
As occurred in Libya, U.S. intervention to remove an anti-U.S. regime could lead to another failed state and more instability in the Middle East.
President Obama's plan involves partnering with pro-Western elements of the Syrian opposition. They would provide ground troops, bolstered by U.S. training and air power, to defeat the Islamic State. The opposition's main goal, however, is to defeat Assad, who Obama has said must go.
The strategy is similar to the one used in Libya in 2011, when a U.S.-led bombing campaign with NATO and Qatar saved anti-government militias from being overrun in the city of Benghazi and helped them overthrow an erratic dictator who ruled for 42 years. That effort also relied on partnering with supposed moderates so U.S. ground forces would not be needed.
Holy hand grenades, Batman! How are we going to get them to fight ISIS when they're busy making non-aggression pacts with them?
‘Moderate’ Syria Rebels Sign Non-Aggression Pact With ISIS
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that moderate and Islamist rebels had signed a ceasefire deal for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus.
“The two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found, and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy” to be Assad’s government and his forces. ...
Charles Lister, an analyst at the Brookings Institute, reported that the alliance on the rebel side was made up of four distinct groups, among them the US-backed Syria Revolutionary Front.
Islamic State originally fought alongside the rebels but soon began attacking rival groups, before officially splitting with the Nusra Front earlier this year. Since then the two sides have been clashing frequently, allowing Assad's forces to regain momentum.
Obama's 'Moderate' Syrian Rebels Are Nowhere to Be Found
DESVARIEUX: So, Patrick, you've done a lot reporting on the ground in Syria. And these so-called moderate Syrian rebels that President Obama keeps on referring to, I need to get a sense of who they are. Who are they actually?
COCKBURN: Well, they aren't is the answer to that. They scarcely exist on the ground. That's one of the extraordinary things about the plan that was announced this week to combat ISIS, the Islamic State, is that in Syria the main opponent of the Islamic State is to be the Syrian armed moderates. But nobody can find them on the map. The main military force in Syria is the Syrian army, the Syrian government. The main opposition force is ISIS. Then there are a series of other jihadi groups. Like, there's one called Jabhat al-Nusra. It's pretty powerful. It's also the Syrian affiliate of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. So the jihadis dominate that. So it's kind of saying that everything will depend on these moderates who are to be vetted and trained in Saudi Arabia, and then these poor guys are going to fight not only ISIS, the most ferocious guerrilla group in the world, but the Syrian army. So this is really not a policy. It's kind of make-believe.
US Bypasses Security Council on Impending Invasion of Syria
The U.N. Security Council (UNSC), the only international body empowered to declare war and peace, continues to remain a silent witness to the widespread devastation and killings worldwide, including in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Ukraine. ...
Obama is scheduled to preside over a UNSC meeting when he is in New York in late September since the United States holds the presidency under geographical rotation among the 15 members in the Council. ...
In his address to the nation early this week, Obama said, “I will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to further mobilise the international community around this effort” (“to degrade and destroy ISIS”, the rebel Islamic militant group inside Iraq and Syria).
Still, the proposed strike inside Syria is not part of the Council’s agenda – and certainly not under the U.S. presidency.
Obama also said intelligence agencies have not detected any specific ISIS plots against the United States.
ISIS is still a regional threat that could ultimately reach out to the United States, he said, justifying the impending attacks.
Several Arab countries offer to join air campaign on Islamic State, say U.S. officials
Several Arab countries have offered to join the United States in air strikes against Islamic State targets, U.S. officials said on Sunday, indicating a possible widening of the air campaign against militants who have seized parts of Iraq and Syria.
The officials declined to identify which countries made the offers. But they said they were under consideration as the United States begins to identify country roles in its emerging coalition against jihadists who have declared a caliphate or Islamic state ruled under Sharia law in the heart of the Middle East.
The addition of Arab fighter jets could strengthen the credibility of the American-led campaign in a region skeptical of how far Washington will commit to a conflict in which nearly every country has a stake, set against the backdrop of Islam's 1,300-year-old rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
Iraqi President: No Need for Arab Nations to Strike ISIS
Iraq Not Happy With US Coalition Partnership
The Obama Administration’s efforts to cobble together a coalition of nations for the new war on ISIS has netted a handful of Sunni Arab nations willing to conduct airstrikes inside Iraq, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and by some accounts Egypt.
The big problem is that no one asked the Iraqis if they were okay with this, and President Fuad Massoum today made clear that the Iraqi government considers such nations “unnecessary,” which is a polite way of saying extremely unwelcome. ...
Massoum’s comments came in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, in which he also expressed “regret” that the US was not allowing Iran, the primary nation currently involved in the fight against ISIS in Iraq, to even attend the coalition meeting in Paris.
Britain Resists Pressure to Join US Airstrikes Against Islamic State After Beheading
Britain has resisted calls to join a US coalition to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State, even in the hours after the terror group released a gruesome video showing the beheading of UK citizen David Haines.
The US State Department confirmed Sunday that several Arab nations had moved to join the US air campaign against the militants, but British Prime Minister David Cameron remained cautious in his statement condemning the Haines execution.
While Cameron promised to "drive back, dismantle, and ultimately destroy ISIL and what it stands for," in a televised statement from Downing Street on Sunday, he also said that Britain would "do so in a calm, deliberate way." ...
Before any sort of air campaign can be approved, Cameron would first need to reconvene parliament, currently in recess, and he has so far made no moves to do so. Lawmakers previously rejected the prime minister's proposed airstrikes in Syria last year. ...
Cameron said he had not ruled out any options against the militants — save for a ground force incursion — but with his priorities directed toward more immediate domestic issues, such as the upcoming Scottish referendum for independence, decisive military action abroad may not be forthcoming.
'We Will Kill Them as Soon as the Cameras Aren't Here': Anti-Arab Sentiment On Rise In Iraqi Kurdistan
The Islamic State (IS) militants that overran the majority Kurdish town of Makhmour, northern Iraq in August had help. Local residents say that a number of local Sunni Arabs helped the extremists in the lead up to the attack, supplying them with information on terrain and security forces in the area as well as with food and fuel.
IS are now gone. Kurdish forces retook the town a few days later, and it is once again controlled by local peshmerga militia. Resentment over this betrayal, however, is still strong. On a tattered sofa in courtyard of a base which IS had briefly occupied, one grizzled peshmerga fighter smoked cigarettes in the harsh sunlight and calmly explained to VICE News that he and others would like to expel all Arabs from the region in the most ruthless way possible.
"90 percent of Kurds are now dedicated to the same brutality towards Arabs as they showed to us... We want the destruction of those dogs. We will kill them as soon as the cameras aren't here," he said referring to the influx of media that descended on the region when IS launched a shock offensive into Kurdish territory.
The fighter's resentment towards his Arab neighbours was not new. He said he had battled the troops of former Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and rolled up his sleeves to show scars from where they had tortured him. The latest collaboration with IS, however, was insufferable. "We tolerated them before… but now we will take our revenge… We will kick all Arabs out. A war of ethnic identities is approaching."
Who Pays the Pro-War Pundits? Conflicts of Interest Exposed for TV Guests Backing Military Action
The war on ISIS already has a winner: The defense industry
It’s far too soon to tell how the American escalation in the sprawling, complex mess unfolding in Iraq and Syria will play out. But this much is clear: As our military machine hums into a higher gear, it will produce some winners in the defense industry.
New fights mean new stuff, after all. And following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan—and the belt-tightening at the Pentagon imposed by steep budget cuts—military suppliers are lining up to meet a suddenly restored need for their wares. Presenting his vision for expanding the confrontation with the terrorist group ISIS in a speech to the nation on Wednesday night, President Obama outlined a program of intensified airstrikes designed to keep American troops away from the danger on the ground. So defense analysts are pointing to a pair of sure-bet paydays from the new campaign: for those making and maintaining the aircraft, manned and unmanned, that will swarm the skies over the region, and for those producing the missiles and munitions that will arm them. ...
American military operations targeting ISIS have cost some $600 million since mid-June, with the U.S. now spending more than $7.5 million a day on the conflict by the Pentagon’s own accounting. [Pentagon Comptroller during the George W. Bush administration, Dov] Zakheim estimates that this figure could conceivably double as the operations intensify and the theater widens to Syria, with a significant chunk of the expenditures going to munitions.
The total price tag for the open-ended conflict, expected to be measured in years rather than months, is anybody’s guess. In the immediate term, however, the White House is pressing Congress to approve $500 million to fund the training and equipping of pro-Western rebel groups in Syria. That alone could mean extra work for a wide array of prime defense contractors, according to Gursky. In the longer run, one defense appropriations lobbyist predicts—a hopeful note in his voice: “we’re going to have to bust through the budget caps” imposed on the military by the sequester cuts. “We can’t fight this on the cheap,” he says.
Ukraine Ceasefire in Jeopardy as NATO Ships Arms
Heavy fighting today in the rebel capital city of Donetsk put the ongoing eastern Ukraine ceasefire in serious jeopardy, with both sides claiming the other fired first. The move comes just a day after Ukrainian Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk talked up the “state of war” between his nation and Russia. ...
Ukrainian Defense Minister Valery Heletey reported NATO is so eager to see that ceasefire collapse that they’ve started direct shipments of weapons under a sideline deal he claims was made at the Cardiff summit two weeks ago.
Scottish independence: the Queen makes rare comment on referendum
The Queen made a rare intervention on the political stage when she expressed the hope that voters will "think very carefully about the future" before the Scottish independence referendum on Thursday.
As David Cameron prepares to issue a warning in Scotland that a vote for independence will lead to a permanent split from the UK, campaigners for the union welcomed the Queen's remarks as a reminder of the monumental decision facing voters in Scotland.
The comments by the Queen came as she left Crathie Kirk near her Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire after the Sunday morning service. The Queen told a well-wisher: "Well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future."
The Queen's remarks were interpreted by no campaigners as helpful to their cause. They were seen to tally with a warning the prime minister will deliver in Scotland on Monday, on his final visit north of the border before Thursday's vote, that a vote for independence would lead to an irrevocable break with the UK
Polarized: Sweden's far-right & center left post big election gains
Free-market era in Sweden swept away as feminists and greens plot new path
A poll at the start of last week from Sweden's leading pollsters, Sifo, showed a late surge in support for the three main left-of-centre parties, giving them a six-point lead over the centre-right alliance that has ruled Sweden for eight years.
But at the makeshift row of election huts that has sprung up in the main square of Malmö, each a variant on a traditional Swedish summer cottage, it is the huts of the Green party and the new feminist party, Feminist Initiative, rather than their Social Democrat allies, that are doing most business.
Gustav Fridolin, 31, the Greens' clean-cut joint leader, puts this down to what he calls the "red-green wind" sweeping Sweden. "People are tired of the government … The common feeling is enough. Enough of privatisation, enough of big profit within the school system and within the health system."
The last four years have seen a string of scandals at privately run, state-funded care homes and kindergartens, the bankruptcy of one of Sweden's largest free school chains, and the plummeting performance of Sweden's students as ranked by the OECD's Pisa study, all of which have helped turn the country against the centre-right and its reforms.
An opinion survey by Gothenburg University's SOM Institute found last year that seven out of 10 Swedes believed the country's experiment with letting private companies profit from public welfare had been a mistake.
Canadian media warn travellers about US police:
American shakedown: Police won't charge you, but they'll grab your money
There’s a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in uniform.
Across America, law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public’s cash as they can; “hand over fist,” to use the words of one police trainer.
It usually starts on the road somewhere. An officer pulls you over for some minor infraction — changing lanes without proper signalling, following the car ahead too closely, straddling lanes. The offence is irrelevant.
Then the police officer wants to chat, asking questions about where you’re going, or where you came from, and why. He’ll peer into your car, then perhaps ask permission to search it, citing the need for vigilance against terrorist weaponry or drugs.
What he’s really looking for, though, is money.
And if you were foolish (or intimidated) enough to have consented to the search, and you’re carrying any significant amount of cash, you are now likely to lose it. ...
In places like Tijuana, police don’t make any pretense about this sort of thing. Here in the U.S., though, it’s dressed up in terms like “interdiction and forfeiture,” or “the equitable sharing program.”
Authorities claim it’s legal, but some prosecutors and judges have called it what it is: abuse.
In any case, it’s a nasty American reality.
Wealth Gap Siphoning Money from Public Services
Rising income inequality is undermining state tax revenues, according to a Standard & Poor’s report released Monday, hindering states' abilities to fund education, infrastructure, and social programs while weakening the rate of economic recovery overall.
The report, "Income Inequality Weighs on State Tax Revenues," found that in the 31-year span from 1980 through 2011, the portion of total income going to the top percentile doubled from about 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Meanwhile, during the same time period, the annual average rate of state tax revenue growth declined by half, to below 5 percent from nearly 10 percent. ...
"Even as income for the affluent has accelerated, it's barely kept pace with inflation for most other people," the Associated Press reports. "That trend can mean a double-whammy for states: The wealthy often manage to shield much of their income from taxes. And they tend to spend a lower percentage of it than others do, thereby limiting sales tax revenue."
Sales tax revenue—which has also taken a hit from the online retail boom—accounts for 30 percent of all state revenue, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, with personal income tax accounting for another 36 percent. The remainder comes from excise taxes (on gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol); corporate income and franchise taxes; and taxes on business licenses, utilities, insurance premiums, severance, property, and several other sources.
That money, in turn, is spent on public schools, highways, Medicaid, and a wide array of public services.
High Cost of Housing Forcing Elderly Americans to Cut Back on Food and Healthcare: Study
The high cost of housing is making it difficult for older Americans to pay for vital needs, including healthcare and food, and forcing them to live in financial insecurity into their old age, finds a recent report by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Entitled "Housing America’s Older Adults—Meeting the Needs of An Aging Population," the study notes that the population of older adults in the U.S. is rapidly growing, with those aged 50 and over expected to reach 132 million by 2030. But housing for this population, which the report states is "central to quality of life," is already proving excessively expensive, inaccessible, and "ill-suited" to meet the unique needs of elderly people.
In 2012, one third of adults 50 and over were "cost burdened," meaning that they pay more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing—a rate that rises to 37 percent when the population aged 80 and over is considered. Nearly half of this cost burdened population faces a "severe burden," meaning they pay more than 50 percent of their incomes on housing. Older adults of color are hit hardest: in 2012, 29 percent of older white households were cost burdened, compared to 39 percent of older Asian, 43 percent of older Hispanic, and 46 percent of older black households, the study finds.
The high cost of housing forces older Americans to cut back spending on fundamental needs. According to the study, "severely cost-burdened households aged 50 and over in the bottom expenditure quartile spend 43 percent less on food and 59 percent less on health care compared with otherwise similar households living in housing they can afford."
Federal Judges Roll Back Wisconsin Voters' Rights
In what critics say is a blow to voters' rights, a federal appeals court on Friday gave the state of Wisconsin the green-light to require voters to provide identification as a condition of casting a ballot.
Opponents of the rule say it imposes an unnecessary and often prohibitive requirement that disproportionately prevents people of color and low-income communities from voting. “This is a terrible, undemocratic ruling,” said Common Cause President Miles Rapoport.
The decision was issued in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago by a panel of three judges, all of them appointed by republicans. "The State of Wisconsin may, if it wishes... enforce the photo ID requirement in this November's elections," they ruled. The Associated Press describes the decision as "stunningly fast" and likely orchestrated in time for the November elections.
The Evening Greens
Richard Branson failed to deliver on $3bn climate change pledge
Richard Branson has failed to deliver on his much-vaunted pledge to spend $3bn (£1.8bn) over a decade to develop a low carbon fuel.
Seven years into the pledge, Branson has paid out only a small fraction of the promised money – “well under $300m” – according to a new book by the writer and activist, Naomi Klein.
The British entrepreneur famously promised to divert a share of the profits from his Virgin airlines empire to find a cleaner fuel, after a 2006 private meeting with Al Gore. ...
“So the sceptics might be right: Branson’s various climate adventures may indeed prove to have all been a spectacle, a Virgin production, with everyone’s favourite bearded billionaire playing the part of planetary saviour to build his brand, land on late night TV, fend off regulators, and feel good about doing bad,” Klein writes in This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate.
Klein uses Branson and other so-called green billionaires – such as the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg – as case studies for her argument that it is unrealistic to rely on business to find solutions to climate change
The Guardian has an excellent, long essay by Naomi Klein:
Naomi Klein: the hypocrisy behind the big business climate change battle
If we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, major cities will drown, ancient cultures will be swallowed by the seas; our children will spend much of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. Yet we continue all the same.
What is wrong with us? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things needed to cut emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have struggled to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck, because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and benefit the vast majority – are threatening to an elite minority with a stranglehold over our economy, political process and media.
That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our collective misfortune that governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 1988 – the exact year that marked the dawning of "globalisation". The numbers are striking: in the 1990s, as the market integration project ramped up, global emissions were going up an average of 1% a year; by the 2000s, with "emerging markets" such as China fully integrated into the world economy, emissions growth had sped up disastrously, reaching 3.4% a year.
That rapid growth rate has continued, interrupted only briefly, in 2009, by the world financial crisis. What the climate needs now is a contraction in humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature.
Clarke & Dawe on Alternative Power
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 97% v the 3% – just how much global warming are humans causing?
Wages of Millions Seized to Pay Past Debts
James Foley Is Not a War Ad
Scahill: ISIS Disaster Has Failed 'War on Terrorism' Blowback Written All Over it
Chris Hedges: Sacrificing the Vulnerable, From Gaza to America
Transgender student named Homecoming Princess in Colorado Springs
On War Games Without “Live Firing of Weapons,” “Non-lethal Assistance,” and “Ceasefires”
A Little Night Music
Roy Brown - Mighty Mighty Man
Roy Brown - Cadillac Baby
Roy Brown & his Mighty-Mighty Men - Boogie At Midnight
Roy Brown - Rainy Weather Blues
Roy Brown - Dreaming Blues
Roy Brown - Party Doll
Roy Brown - Big Town
Roy Brown - I'm A Rockin' Man, Everything's Alright
Roy Brown - Hurry Hurry Baby
Roy Brown - Butcher Pete
Roy Brown - 'Long About Midnight
Roy Brown - Black Diamond
Roy Brown - Hard Luck Blues
Roy Brown - Fannie Brown Got Married
Roy Brown - Whose Hat Is That
Roy Brown - Roy Brown Boogie
Roy Brown - Shake èm up Baby
Roy Brown - Saturday Nite
Roy Brown - Hip Shakin' Baby
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!
|