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 Chicago blues singer Valerie Wellington. Enjoy!
Valerie Wellington - Down in the Dumps
"I'm sure that by the end of the day, the dust will have already settled into the usual ruts. The Hard Right -- and its pork-laden publicists -- will denounce the investigation and continue to champion torture, as they have done in the weeks running up to the release. The somewhat Softer Right that constitutes the "liberal" wing of the ruling Imperial Party (and its outriders in the "progressive" media) will wring their hands for a bit -- as they did during the multitude of previous revelations about systematic torture, White House death squads, Stasi-surpassing surveillance programs, war profiteering, military aggression and so on. Then they will return to what is always their main business at hand: making sure that someone from their faction of the Imperial Party is in the driver's seat of the murderous War-and-Fear Machine that has now entirely engulfed American society."
-- Chris Floyd
News and Opinion
What happens after the torture report?
Everyone expected the Senate’s CIA torture report to be shocking. But I’m not sure anyone – except maybe the torturers and the tortured – was really prepared for the depravity and sheer lack of humanity laid out in the 580 pages released on Tuesday morning in Washington. It is, in many ways and in the starkness of all those footnotes, the most disturbing scandal in recent American history.
The amount of different crimes committed by the CIA and documented by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s committee is truly extraordinary. Not only does the report detail the systematic torture of dozens of detainees – which included sexual assault, rape and homicide – but the amount of times the CIA allegedly obstructed justice, committed perjury and made false statements is hard to even count. The breaking of laws almost catches up with the breaking of bones, minds and bodies.
But it’s not enough to feel sick to your stomach, to say this is American history now and there’s nothing we can do about it. Now, the question for everyone who read this essential textbook of CIA wrongdoing, even for those who never will, is: Where do we go from here? Transparency can’t possibly be the only punishment for an agency which has broken the law so systematically.
For the cowardly Obama administration, the CIA scandal can’t end fast enough. The Guardian’s Dan Roberts reports that the White House thinks it’s “inappropriate” to comment on the report’s conclusions. The New York Times’ Peter Baker says the administration won’t even “take sides” on whether torture works – despite the black-and-white evidence in the report that torture doesn’t work – let alone commit to bringing charges against those responsible for the disgusting acts.
Instead, Obama spent Tuesday praising CIA employees as “patriots” to whom “we owe a profound debt of gratitude” for protecting the country after 9/11. He failed to reference the charges of “rectal rehydration”, starvation, beatings, “rectal rehydration” and hypothermia that CIA officers and contractors inflicted on detainees. “Brutal” was the only quasi-critical word the president could muster.
"These Are Crimes": New Calls to Prosecute Bush Admin as Senate Report Reveals Brutal CIA Torture
Obama: America "Exceptional" So We Don't Prosecute Torturers
In his first official remarks following Tuesday's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the torture program conducted by the CIA during the presidency of George W. Bush, President Barack Obama on Tuesday night indicated that the abuses detailed in the report conducted in the name of the American people—described as "horrific," "ruthless" and "much more brutal than previously thought"—should not be followed by further inquiries or prosecutions as many have long urged.
In his remarks, Obama acknowledged that "no nation is perfect," but argued that "one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better."
Backed by his interpretation of "American Exceptionalism," Obama suggested that the release of the report—which his administration fought tirelessly to restrict—was all that was necessary in order for the nation to move forward.
Obama says we broke the law, so get over it, already.
Obama Calls on Country not to “Refight Old Arguments” in Wake of Torture Report
President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation programme showed that he was right to formally end it when he took office nearly six years ago, but he called on the country not to “refight old arguments.”
In a written statement, Mr Obama sought to avoid alienating the CIA by praising its employees as “patriots” to whom “we owe a profound debt of gratitude” for protecting the country after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Obama's Reaction to the Senate Report: Torture is Good
... Speaking of the Machine, what has been the reaction of the current driver, the belaurelled prince of progressivism, Barack Obama? He sent out the present head of the CIA, John Brennan, an "Obama confidant," as the Guardian notes, to … defend the use of torture.
You see, one of the main points of the report was that the abominable practices ordered at the highest levels of the American government and used far more widely than previously admitted were not even effective. This, of course, is the most damning criticism one can make of the soul-drained technocrats who staff the Empire. Morality and humanity be damned; the real problem was that torture didn't work. It produced reams of garbage and falsehood from hapless victims who, like torture victims the world over, from time immemorial, simply regurgitated what they thought their tormentors wanted to hear.
So in the end, the torture regime was not only ineffective, it was counterproductive: this is the report's conclusion. But it is this that the Technocrat-in-Chief cannot bear. And so he sent his confidant Brennan out to refute this heinous charge. Brennan actually got up in public and said, openly, that torture did work and that it's a good thing:
“Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day,” Brennan said.
"EIT" is, of course, the technocratic euphemism for the systematic brutalization of helpless, captive human beings by wretched cowards armed with the power of the state. Brennan -- Obama's confidant -- says, in the name of the president, that torture "saved lives." What's more, he admits that Obama is still using the fruits of the torture program to "inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."
Let's say this again: the conclusion of the Barack Obama administration is that the use of torture is a good thing, and that it is still "informing" its Terror War operations "to this day."
CIA torture report is likely to gather dust in Congress
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report Tuesday on the CIA’s use of torture is unlikely to trigger major policy changes or even official introspection, but it ignited a new uncivil war of words between Republicans and Democrats in Congress that’s likely to last through the 2016 election campaign.
Senators traded insults and charges as they learned of the findings. “It’s absolutely irresponsible,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said of the report. “This study ensures that the truth about the CIA’s brutal torture program finally comes out,” countered Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.
There was little appetite for new legislation. President Barack Obama banned the controversial practices when he came into office in 2009, and torture itself has been illegal for decades under U.S. law and international treaties that the U.S. has signed.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who will become the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman next month, said he planned no further action.
“I just don’t know what you would accomplish with hearings,” he said. Asked whether he saw any kind of follow-up, Burr said, “No. Put this report down as a footnote in history.”
CIA Torture Report Incomplete as Key Documents Remain Withheld
Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler says the Obama administration is using the CIA to protect itself and Bush-era officials from being legally implicated in war crimes.
Because it might work: the CIA rationale for torture
The Central Intelligence Agency is no longer arguing that torture worked. At least not exactly. Its current position, prompted by a damaging report by its Senate overseers released on Tuesday, is that it’s impossible to know whether torture yielded critical intelligence – so the Senate is wrong to say it didn’t.
The CIA’s shift contrasts with the continued insistence by many of the torture program’s architects at the agency that without the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) the agency used from 2002 to 2007, the US would have experienced another catastrophic terrorist attack, or perhaps not found Osama bin Laden.
The discrepancy, along with the CIA’s fervent belief that the Senate report sold the agency out, introduces new ambiguity about whether Langley’s abandonment of torture and secret prisons will outlast President Barack Obama.
Civil Rights Groups Call for Prosecution of Torture Architects
In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, civil rights organizations are calling for those responsible to face immediate legal accountability. The 600-page executive summary of the report released today documents in excruciating detail episodes of sexual torture, beatings, and other forms of physical and mental abuse committed against detainees. ...
“Even though we previously knew many details about the torture program, the brutality this landmark report documents is breathtaking,” the ACLU’s Hina Shamsi told The Intercept. “The release of this report is a call to action for the Justice Department, Congress, and the White House. We cannot make a clean break from this nation’s history of state-sanctioned torture without accountability for the terrible human rights violations committed in our name.” ...
Lawyers at the Center for Constitution Rights are dubious, however, about the prospects of the Obama Administration pursuing criminal charges against those responsible for torture, calling instead on international courts to take steps to ensure accountability. “[I]f the [U.S.] government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under the principles of universal jurisdiction,” the group said in a statement.
ACLU: The Justice Department Should Appoint a Special Prosecutor
To ensure that the investigation of the torture program is comprehensive and insulated from political interference, Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a special prosecutor from within the Justice Department and transfer to that special prosecutor all of his authority to investigate and prosecute crimes relating to the program. A special prosecutor would be able to make prosecutorial decisions without having to seek the attorney general’s permission.
The special prosecutor’s mandate should be broad. It should include the authority to investigate and prosecute decisions to approve torture, to carry it out, and to conceal it. The special prosecutor should also examine CIA efforts to impede or improperly access the Senate’s investigation of CIA torture. ...
Multiple federal statutes supply the Justice Department with authority it could use to hold accountable those who used or authorized torture and abuse. These include:
- The federal torture statute, which makes it a crime to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering on another person with specific intent if the conduct takes place outside the United States. The statute also criminalizes conspiracy to commit torture.
- The war-crimes statute, which criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions, including torture and cruel or inhuman treatment.
- Section 804 of the Patriot Act, which provides federal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes such as murder or assault committed by U.S. nationals in certain locations overseas, including U.S. military bases.
- The federal conspiracy statute, which supplies independent authority to prosecute those who entered into agreements to commit federal crimes, such as like murder or assault, so long as at least one member of the conspiracy acted to further the conspiracy.
Liability for federal crimes also extends to those who aided and abetted the crimes or counseled, commanded, induced, procured, or willfully caused another to commit the crimes. If officials endeavored to cover up torture in order to evade oversight, other criminal statutes — such as those relating to making false statements or obstructing justice, for example — may be implicated.
The Architect of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Program
How the torture report could unravel prosecution of alleged 9/11 masterminds
Lawyers for detainees including Walid bin Attash and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed argue that CIA methods render evidence invalid
Cheryl Bormann can finally say the CIA hung her one-legged client from his wrists.
Bormann represents Walid bin Attash, one of the accused 9/11 conspirators who face the death penalty in a Guantánamo Bay military commission. While classification rules bar Bormann from revealing what the agency did to Bin Attash during his years in its secret prisons, the release of the Senate intelligence committee’s landmark report into torture chips away at an edifice of secrecy – an erosion that has major implications for the viability of the government’s long-desired prosecution.
By torturing the five men now being tried in the 9/11 military commission, the CIA may have jeopardized the US government’s ability to seek the death penalty, and perhaps jeopardized the case entirely.
Bin Attash, the declassified sections assert, was deprived of sleep by forcing him to stand for 70 hours, allowed to sleep for four, and then returned to a standing position for another 23. He was kept naked and on a restricted diet, the report said. The CIA often accomplished “standing sleep deprivation” by chaining a detainee’s arms in front of him, so falling asleep would be too painful.
His remaining left leg swelled, the Senate report said in a footnote, prompting his captors to switch to “seated sleep deprivation” for another 20 hours.
But Bin Attash experienced much more at the CIA’s hands, Bormann said.
“I can tell you he was hung from his wrists for days on end, pursuant to page 117,” she said. “I cannot tell you a lot of other things that happened to Mr Bin Attash.”
Rectal rehydration and standing on broken limbs: the CIA torture report's grisliest findings
The full horror of the CIA interrogation and detention programmes launched in the wake of the September 11 terror attack was laid bare in the long-awaited Senate report released on Tuesday.
While parts of the programme had been known – and much more will never be revealed – the catalogue of abuse is nightmarish and reads like something invented by the Marquis de Sade or Hieronymous Bosch.
Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.
Prisoners were subjected to “rectal feeding” without medical necessity. Rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”. The report highlights one prisoner later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”.
The report mentions mock executions, Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee’s mother, sexually abuse another and threatened prisoners’ children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.
[There's more at the link of what Obama refuses to bring accountability for. - js]
Malala Yousafzai accepts Nobel peace prize with attack on arms spending
The Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai has used her Nobel peace prize acceptance speech to launch a searing attack on “strong” governments that had the resources to begin wars but not to enable universal education.
Speaking at the Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo she said: “Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy, but giving books is so hard?”
Raising her voice in the silent room, where she was given a rousing standing ovation at both the beginning and end of her speech, she added: “We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago, and maybe we will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century we must be able to give every child a quality education.”
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Dies After Confrontation With Israeli Soldiers at West Bank Protest
A senior Palestinian cabinet minister has died following a West Bank protest during which Israeli soldiers were seen shoving him and grabbing his throat.
Ziad Abu Ein, who had responsibility for the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory, was rushed away in an ambulance following the incident at Wednesday's protest, but died on the way to the hospital in the city of Ramallah.
His death immediately stirred anger in the West Bank, where Palestinian shopkeepers in Ramallah shuttered their businesses and young men threw stones at Israeli soldiers guarding a settlement near the city.
It also drew a swift condemnation from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who described it as "a barbaric act which we cannot be silent about or accept." Announcing three days of national mourning, he vowed that his administration would take the "necessary steps" following an investigation into the incident.
Amnesty: Israeli strikes on Gaza buildings 'war crimes'
Israeli air strikes on four high-rise buildings in the final days of this summer's conflict in Gaza amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International says.
Evidence suggested the destruction was "carried out deliberately and with no military justification", a new report by the human rights group found.
It called for an independent and impartial investigation to be opened.
Amnesty accuses Israel of war crimes, Foreign Affairs Min calls it 'Hamas propaganda'
As US Occupation Drags on, Afghanistan Suffering at Record High
As U.S. officials tout progress they say occupation forces have brought Afghanistan, people in that country are offering a much more bleak view. According to a new Gallup World Poll, Afghans are expressing record suffering, and have given record-low ratings to their own lives.
The poll, which calculated responses from face-to-face interviews with roughly 1,000 adults, uses the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. That metric allows respondents to give a self-assessment of their well-being, using a scale of 0 - 10. Gallup groups the numbers into the following categories: "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering."
The poll found that 61 percent of Afghans gave their lives a rating in the suffering category—a figure Gallup says is the highest figure ever recorded for any country since it started the assessment in 2005. It surpasses the record 55 percent Gallup found in Afghanistan last year.
As in the 2013 poll, this year's results show that zero percent of respondents gave their lives a rating that could be categorized as thriving.
Black poverty is state violence, too: Why struggles for criminal justice and living wage are uniting
For the second time in a week, the swelling protests against police brutality and an unequal criminal justice system coincided with planned labor strikes at low-wage employers yesterday, and for the second time, protesters joined forces, combining the struggle for a living wage with the struggle for the right to live free of police violence.
“Today felt different because we were doing it for the Mike Brown situation and trying to show people the significance between injustice in our workplaces and injustice in our communities,” says St. Louis Burger King worker Carlos Robinson, who has been organizing for $15 an hour and a union for about seven months. “It’s a bigger difference when you’re doing it for more than one reason but for the same cause.”
Labor struggles have a long, checkered history with struggles for racial justice and particularly against violence. In his book Hammer and Hoe, historian Robin D.G. Kelley tells the story of the struggles of the Depression-era Alabama Communist Party—at the time one of the few left-wing organizations committed to organizing black workers—to build worker organizations. Their efforts to challenge the economic oppression of black people were too often met with lynching and state violence. Black workers’ unions were central to the Civil Rights movement, from the Pullman porters to the Memphis sanitation workers Martin Luther King, Jr. was supporting when he was shot. Their struggle—remember the “I Am a Man” signs carried by the workers in Memphis—was always about more than just wages. It was and is about being seen as humans worthy of respect, respect they would demand if it was not freely given.
The Ferguson protests targeted Walmart and other retail outlets over Black Friday weekend, making explicit the connection between the “business” part of “business as usual” and the devaluing of black lives. The workers of the Fight for $15, in turn, included tributes to Brown and Garner in their actions and got support in return. Robinson says, “The reason everybody came out is because they know just as well as we do that there’s injustice in our communities and there’s injustice in our fast food places and we need to do something about it. They’re willing to show us support because they know that one day they had to take a stand for what they believed in, and now they see we’re doing it and they believe in us.”
From Athletes to Environmentalists, a Universal Call for Racial Justice Emerges
With the nation's streets still filled with protesters and a plan for thousands to march on Washington brewing, the call for justice for Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and other black victims of police violence has only grown stronger. In the days and weeks since two grand juries failed to indict the police officers who killed the two men, expressions of solidarity have poured in from all corners—from professional athletes to fast food workers, education leaders and environmental groups, with the message that an injustice against one is an injustice against us all. ...
"We cannot lead a meaningful fight for the environment without first taking steps to address the unequal valuation of life within it," Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica wrote in a statement this weekend. "The preventable deaths of Mike Brown, Darrien Hunt, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Jones, Oscar Grant and dozens of others bespeak not just a systematic injustice, but of a cancer in our national consciousness that seems to place little value on the lives of black and brown people." ...
Following the Ferguson grand jury decision last month, 350.org Executive Director May Boeve issued a call to the climate movement to stand in solidarity with the protesters there, saying, "their fight is fundamentally linked with ours for a healthy and livable future for all. It’s past time to replace the broken system that continually devastates communities of color, and reform the bankrupt laws that put over-reactive self-defense above the dignity of life."
And Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune agreed, saying: "These issues are not separate."
Protests continue for fourth night in Berkeley and Oakland
For the fourth night in a row, protesters took to the streets in the San Francisco Bay Area, the latest in a wave of emotionally charged demonstrations after high-profile grand jury decisions that brought no charges against the white police officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Early on Tuesday evening, hundreds joined a march in Berkeley that filled the streets and spanned several city blocks. The diverse group marched down Telegraph Avenue to Oakland, where they briefly congregated at Oakland city hall. The protest continued past midnight.
Erika Fournier, from Oakland, was near the front of the march. “There have been a staggering amount of black lives stolen by police brutality,” she said. “So when is the right time to make some noise about this? This is why we’re here. We want justice for those lives stolen, we want to see all lives matter in this country, and we’re also here because we want to see reform. The system is broken.”
Exonerated after 40 years: Ohio man says 'I could have been Barack Obama'
Having just exonerated Kwame Ajamu, Judge Pamela Barker stepped down from the bench on Tuesday, leaned across the defense table and gave him a hug.
It had taken nearly 40 years, but Ajamu was no longer a convicted murderer.
Moments earlier, Barker had dismissed his charges and county prosecutor Tim McGinty had conveyed a message through an assistant that Ajamu; his brother, Wiley Bridgeman; and their friend Ricky Jackson “have been the victims of a terrible injustice”.
The three had been convicted and sentenced to death in the slaying of a businessman outside on a corner store on a warm spring day in 1975. The case against them unraveled last year when the prosecution’s star witness recanted his testimony.
The witness, Eddie Vernon, was 12 when Harry Franks was killed and 13 when he testified against the three men at their trials in 1975. Vernon said in court last month and in an affidavit that he had been coerced by Cleveland police. ...
Ajamu said he hoped one day to meet with Eddie Vernon, who is now 52, so he can tell him he understands what happened and has no ill will toward him. Ajamu said his full exoneration finally makes him feel free to go anywhere he wants, anytime he’d like.
“I can even go back to being Ronnie Bridgeman, but I’m not,” he said. “They killed Ronnie Bridgeman. They killed his spirit. They killed everything he believed in, everything he ever wanted. I wanted to be something, too. I could have been a lawyer possibly. I could have been Barack Obama. Who knows?”
Georgia man executed despite lawyer being impaired by alcohol at trial
A Georgia man has been executed for the 1995 killing of a sheriff’s deputy, who was slain minutes after a convenience store robbery. ... The Georgia supreme court refused to stay the execution and the US supreme court also declined to intervene. ...
Even in a capital system that has seen its fair share of incompetent and negligent legal representation, the story of Holsey’s 1997 trial stands out as particularly egregious. His attorney, Andy Prince, had a history of heavy drinking since the age of 14.
Every night during the trial he drank the equivalent of more than 20 shots of vodka. He was also under police investigation at the time for having stolen more than $100,000 from a client – a theft for which he was convicted soon after Holsey’s trial ended, sentenced to 10 years in prison and disbarred from practising the law.
As a further indication of his mind not being entirely focused on Holsey’s life-and-death legal struggle, shortly before trial Price was arrested for disorderly conduct and accused of threatening to shoot three black neighbours to whom he was shouting racial slurs. Price was white and his capital client defendant black. ...
Holsey’s current lawyer, Brian Kammer, has argued that Price’s alcohol-sodden incompetence was not merely academic – it effectively put Holsey on death row.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature reports on testimony by and about Sheriff Jeff Farr, King of Huerfano County, Colorado: the hiring and deputizing of hundreds of coal company gunthugs from Dec 11, 1914.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Wall Street Moves In For The Kill
It’s been six years since Wall Street’s recklessness and criminal fraud caused trillions of dollars in economic damage and nearly shattered the global economy. The 2008 financial crisis opened millions of Americans’ eyes to the widespread corruption and mismanagement in the financial industry, and built public support for stronger bank oversight. Initial steps were taken in that direction, primarily in the Dodd/Frank financial reform bill, and more remains to be done.
But today Wall Street is on the offensive. Banks are expanding their political influence, fighting to roll back the measures already in place and working to block further reforms. In our money-driven political system, they have plenty of ammunition with which to wage their battle. ...
This week its allies were trying to kill a Dodd/Frank provision designed to reduce the need for future big-bank bailouts. Negotiators seeking to avert a government shutdown had inserted a provision into the compromise agreement which would once again allow the country’s too-big-to-fail banks to gamble on derivatives – the exotic financial instruments which helped precipitate the last crisis – with funds that are insured by taxpayers. ...
Bankers have had many political victories since their moment of financial failure, but those victories have been incomplete — until now. Has their hour come around at last?
If there’s one thing bankers understand, it’s timing. Wall Street isn’t just trying to get another friend into a powerful position and win back its taxpayer guarantees. It wants to make its own agenda appear inevitable. It wants to crush an incipient populist resistance before it gains more momentum. It’s moving in for the kill.
Congress strikes $1.1tn budget deal
With barely 48 hours left to avert another government shutdown, US congressional leaders have struck a $1.1tn federal budget deal that avoids most of the threatened Republican attacks on the Obama administration but leaves open a potential future challenge on immigration. ...
Among [the riders attached to the bill] is a provision to prevent the District of Columbia enacting marijuana legalisation measures that Washington voters had backed during November’s election.
Wall Street lobbyists also succeeded in watering down elements of the Dodd-Frank banking reforms with technical changes to rules governing financial swaps that will relax their use in hedging and structured finance deals, although other concessions sought by banks do not appear in the final text.
A related but separate National Defence Appropriations Act contained similar evidence of corporate tinkering attached to must-pass legislation, this time in the shape of a controversial deal backed by the Arizona senator John McCain that allowed the mining group Rio Tinto to carry out copper mining on Native American tribal land.
Further such riders may emerge on Wednesday in the main budget omnibus as lawmakers and journalists pore over the fine print of the mammoth bill but conservative Republicans are mostly angry that more is not being done to block Obama’s controversial immigration reforms.
The Evening Greens
From South America to Africa, "Capitalist" Solutions to Climate Change Seen as Path to Catastrophe
Lima climate talks on track for record carbon footprint
The current UN climate talks will be the first to neutralise all the greenhouse gas pollution they generate, offset by host country Peru’s protection of forest reserves, organisers say. The bad news: the Lima conference is expected to have the biggest carbon footprint of any UN climate meeting measured to date.
At more than 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the negotiations’ burden on global warming will be about one and a half times the norm, said Jorge Alvarez, project coordinator for the UN Development Programme. ...
Eleven football fields of temporary structures arose for the 13-day negotiations from what three months ago was an empty field behind Peru’s army’s headquarters. Concrete was laid, plumbing installed, components flown in from as far as France and Brazil.
Standing in the midday sun here can get downright uncomfortable, but the Lima sun is not reliable. That’s one reason solar panels were not used.
For electricity, the talks are relying exclusively on diesel generators.
Organisers had planned to draw power from Peru’s grid, which is about 52% fed by non-polluting hydroelectric power. “We worked to upgrade transformers and generators but for some reason it didn’t work,” said Alvarez.
Peru’s hydroelectric power could be in danger by mid-century, anyway. Much of that water comes from glaciers that are melting at an accelerated pace. Peru is hardly on a green trajectory. Though it emits in a year the greenhouse gases that China spews in three days, it has doubled its carbon output in the past decade.
As U.N. Summit Enters High-Level Talks, Protesters Gather for Historic Climate March in Lima
There's a Big Energy Story Unfolding and It's Not About Cheap Oil
A few hundred solar panels here, a few hundred there, and pretty soon you're talking about a bona fide source of electricity generation. While most consumers have been eagerly watching oil prices plummet in the last several months, little attention has been given to the potentially even more significant developments in the solar sector.
With utility-scale projects leading the way, the US solar power industry grew sharply in the past quarter and is on track to see a 36 percent jump in new capacity in 2014, according to the latest report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the industry's major trade group.
By year's end, the trade association predicts, Americans will have installed enough solar generation to produce 6.5 billion watts of electricity by the end of December, bringing the total US solar capacity to about 17.5 gigawatts. That's enough energy to power about 3.5 million homes, SEIA spokesman Ken Johnson told VICE News.
"In terms of carbon emissions reductions, that's the equivalent of 19.8 metric tons a year that's not being spewed in our environment," Johnson said. "That's the equivalent of taking about four and a half million cars off the road or shuttering a half-dozen coal-fired plants." ...
And as capacity has shot up sharply, in the past decade, solar prices have plummeted. The average price of installed home systems has dropped from about $9 per watt in 2007 to $4.69 in 2013, the Department of Energy reported in September. Utility-scale project costs fell from about $4 per watt to about $3 over the same period. ...
Meanwhile, Australian researchers announced this week that they have managed to produce solar cells that turn more than 40 percent of the light energy they absorb into electricity — a milestone that points to still-cheaper solar installations in the future, Johnson said. Most of the solar cells currently in the market are between 20 to 30 percent efficient. The researchers predict efficiency could rise to 45 percent in just another couple of years.
Exxon forecaster says US will dominate world oil production by end of decade
North America, once a sponge that sucked in a significant portion of the world’s oil, will instead be supplying the world with oil and other liquid hydrocarbons by the end of this decade, according to ExxonMobil’s annual long-term energy forecast.
And the “almost unspeakable” amount of natural gas found in recent years in the U.S. and elsewhere in North America will be enough to make the region one of the world’s biggest exporters of that fuel by 2025, even as domestic demand for it increases, according to Bill Colton, Exxon’s chief strategist.
“The world has such an improved outlook for supplies,” Colton said in an interview. “Peak oil theorists have been run out of town by American ingenuity.”
[American ingenuity. Heh. Too clever by half? - js]
In a forecast that might make economists happy but environmentalists fret, Exxon says its two chief products, oil and natural gas, will be abundant and affordable enough to meet the rising demand for energy in the developing world as the global middle class swells to 5 billion people from 2 billion people and buys energy-hungry conveniences such as cars and air conditioners. ...
Scientists say if Exxon’s vision comes to pass, the world’s climate system will become dangerous and chaotic, and some environmental economists suggest that economies will be forced to stop burning fossil fuels at such high rates to prevent catastrophic climate change.
“Exxon’s vision of a fossil fuel-driven future is one in which carbon dioxide levels rise well beyond the dangerous limit, where we will witness fundamental threats to food, water, land, our economy, national security, and our environment,” Mann says. “Let us hope, for the sake of us and our planet, that this is not our future.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Freed from Guantanamo, Six Detainees Begin New Life in Uruguay
Hayden’s testimony vs. the Senate report
Shock and anal probe: reading between the redactions in the CIA torture report
10 Truly Terrible Things the CIA Did In Our Names, Because Freedom
Thank You for Making War!
#FergusonNext: Here's how to end the school-to-prison pipeline, starting now
Transgender Lives
A Little Night Music
Valerie Wellington - Cold, Cold Feeling
Valerie Wellington - A Fool For You
Valerie Wellington - Independent Blues
Valerie Wellington - Wasted Life Blues
Valerie Wellington - How Blue Can You Get
Valerie Wellington - Bad Avenue
Valerie Wellington - Kitchen Man
Valerie Wellington - Steal Away
Valerie Wellington - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
Valerie Wellington w/Billy Branch - Got My Mojo Workin'
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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