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 jazz and blues pianist and bandleader Buddy Johnson. Enjoy!
Buddy Johnson & His Orchestra - Walk 'Em
“How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.”
-- Salman Rushdie
News and Opinion
Terrorism poses no existential threat to America. We must stop pretending otherwise
One of the most unchallenged, zany assertions during the war on terror has been that terrorists present an existential threat to the United States, the modern stateand civilization itself. This is important because the overwrought expression, if accepted as valid, could close off evaluation of security efforts. For example, no defense of civil liberties is likely to be terribly effective if people believe the threat from terrorism to be existential.
The notion that international terrorism presents an existential threat was spawned by the traumatized in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York at the time, recalls that all “security experts” expected “dozens and dozens and multiyears of attacks like this” and, in her book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer observed that “the only certainty shared by virtually the entire American intelligence community” was that “a second wave of even more devastating terrorist attacks on America was imminent”. Duly terrified, US intelligence services were soon imaginatively calculating the number of trained al-Qaida operatives in the United States to be between 2,000 and 5,000.
Also compelling was the extrapolation that, because the 9/11 terrorists were successful with box-cutters, they might well be able to turn out nuclear weapons. Soon it was being authoritatively proclaimed that atomic terrorists could “destroy civilization as we know it” and that it was likely that a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States would transpire by 2014. ...
Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham have insisted for months that Isis presents an existential threat to the United States. An alarmed David Brooks reported that financial analysts have convinced themselves that the group has the potential to generate a worldwide “economic cataclysm.”
And General Michael Flynn, recently retired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been insisting that the terrorist enemy is “committed to the destruction of freedom and the American way of life” while seeking “world domination, achieved through violence and bloodshed.” It was reported that his remarks provoked nods of approval, cheers and “ultimately a standing ovation” from the audience.
Thus even the most modest imaginable effort to rein in the war on terror hyperbole may fail to gel.
War Party Mobilizes for Election Season
WASHINGTON — Gruesome killings by the Islamic State, terrorist attacks in Europe and tensions with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are reshaping the early Republican presidential race, creating anxiety among party voters and sending potential candidates scrambling to outmuscle one another on foreign policy.
Doubts that crept into the minds of conservatives about engagement abroad after George W. Bush’s presidency and the protracted war in Iraq are dissipating, and members of the Republican Party are increasingly pressing for more action against the Islamic State.
Nearly three-quarters of Republicans now favor sending ground troops into combat against the Islamic State, according to a CBS News poll last week. And in Iowa and South Carolina, two early nominating states, Republicans said military action against the group was, alongside economic matters, the most important issue in the 2016 election, according to an NBC survey released last week.
“There’s a lot of fear out there,” said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, noting that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had become a regular topic of discussion at his regular breakfast spot in Columbia, the Lizard’s Thicket. “The waitresses and managers and everybody there has a notion about ISIL. People understand who this group is now.”
Kerry Makes Clear AUMF Language Won’t Stop Ground War
Speaking to the Senate Appropriations Committee today, Secretary of State John Kerry once again made clear that President Obama’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS won’t seriously limit the ground war.
The language of the nominal ban on ground combat only applies to “enduring offensive combat operations,” which includes so many exclusions that almost anything could be allowed.
Kerry insisted that “enduring” combat only meant “weeks and weeks of combat,” and wouldn’t cover any operations which are meant to assist Iraqi or other forces on the ground. ...
The White House also made this clear earlier, in trying to get hawks to support the bill, saying the limitations were all so deliberately vague that they wouldn’t limit much of anything.
Torture on wane in Afghan detention centres but still widespread
The use of torture in Afghan detention centres is on the wane but still widespread, the UN has said.
In particular, the country’s intelligence services and the national police continue to use torture systematically in several detention centres around the country, the report found.
“Torture is a very serious crime, for which there can be no justification. The international prohibition is absolute,” the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement accompanying the publication of the report on Wednesday.
The report is the third of its kind in four years, and is based on interviews with almost 800 detainees who had been held in 221 different detention facilities. Most of the detainees were suspected or convicted of crimes related to the armed conflict.
35% of the interviewed prisoners had experienced torture or ill-treatment, a 14-point drop from 2013, when UN last issued a similar report.
Syria has used barrel bombs in hundreds of locations, says rights group
Human Rights Watch said it used satellite imagery, witness statements and video and photographic evidence to identify at least 450 locations in rebel-held towns and villages in Daraa, and more than 1,000 in Aleppo, where the regime used large air-dropped munitions including the so-called barrel bombs and other conventional explosives. ...
The attacks documented by the group occurred between 22 February 2014 and 25 January 2015, the period since the passage of resolution 2139, which demanded the end of indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas by all parties in Syria, including the use of the barrel bombs – improvised explosives usually dropped from helicopters. ...
The use of barrel bombs has been condemned under international law because the explosives are often pushed off planes or helicopters and cannot be used accurately to attack military targets.
HRW urged the security council to enforce an arms embargo on the Syrian regime and rebel groups, some of whom have used car bombs in regime-held areas. But Russia is unlikely to permit further action in the security council against the Assad regime, a key ally.
UK military training in Ukraine: symbolic move that risks Russian ire
Britain’s decision to dip its toe into the Ukraine crisis is hardly likely to have a decisive impact on the outgunned and struggling Ukrainian army, but it serves the symbolic purpose of taking a stake in the country’s defence.
The 75 British trainers bound for Ukraine in the coming days will provide instruction in command procedures, tactical intelligence, battlefield first aid and logistics, and assess the national army’s infantry training needs. The overall aim, said UK defence sources, was to “improve the survivability” of Ukrainian troops who have been pummelled by heavy artillery, reportedly from weapons such as self-propelled howitzers supplied by Russia in support of the separatists, some of which appear to have been being fired from Russian soil.
The British trainers will be deployed well away from the frontlines, in western Ukraine, to eliminate the risk of British and Russian soldiers inflicting casualties on each other. But it is likely the move will be seized on in Moscow as proof of President Vladimir Putin’s claims that the Russian-backed separatists are fighting a Nato ‘foreign legion’.
American advisers will be arriving in spring to train four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard at the Yavoriv training area near the Polish border. The British effort appears to be coordinated with that mission, and by getting its soldiers on the ground first, David Cameron’s coalition government will seek to counter recent criticism that it has been marginalised in the international diplomacy aimed at stopping the war.
Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?
In a recent interview with Canada’s CBC Radio, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine — we’ve lost so many people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”
Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin] somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia. ...
Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime, the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.
But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra.
According to the Western “group think,” the post-coup Ukrainian government “shares our values” by favoring democracy and modernity, while the rebellious ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are “Moscow’s minions” representing dark forces of backwardness and violence, personified by Russia’s “irrational” President Putin. In this view, the conflict is a clash between the forces of good and evil where there is no space for compromise.
Yet, there is a craziness to this “group think” that is highlighted by Prystaiko’s comments. Not only does the Kiev regime display a cavalier attitude about dragging the world into a nuclear catastrophe but it also has deployed armed neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage a dirty war in the east that has involved torture and death-squad activities.
Iran's Intent is the Real Issue, Says Former IAEA Inspector
The number of centrifuges or the amount of uranium Iran may have is not what matters; there is evidence, however, that the U.S. has forged documents
KELLEY: ... Israel was going to complain no matter what they decided. What we see is that if you go back to George W. Bush, Bush 43, they made the decision even at that time that giving Iran no enrichment capability was a nonstarter. So, since then it's just been a question of what the numbers would be. What you see now is Kerry and his counterparts are two guys in a suit arguing over the price of the carpet, and eventually they'll come to some numbers that they can both agree to, and go home happy. These numbers are really quite meaningless. We hear them expressed as numbers of centrifuges without the period of time for them to be used. It's just the politicians playing the numbers. They will come up with a number, and Israel would object, whatever that number is. ...
I mean, we're talking about numbers where someone says, well, they'll make enough material in one year to make one bomb. Then someone else says, well, let's change it so it's enough material in two years to make one bomb. Well, one bomb doesn't make a stockpile. You're going to need ten bombs or something like that to even be considered a nuclear power, or you'll just be a nuclear target if you have one bomb. So the whole thing is really arguing about angels on the head of a pin. This is not a mature technical argument. This is a purely political one.
Netanyahu Admits Sabotage of Iran Talks His Primary Mission
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Tuesday that the purpose of his upcoming visit to Washington, D.C. is to do "everything I can" to prevent a nuclear deal between global powers and Iran—an admission that critics say reveals he is pushing for military escalation and potentially war.
"This agreement, if indeed it is signed, will allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state," Netanyahu declared in a statement released Tuesday, according to media reports. "It is my obligation as prime minister to do everything that I can to prevent this agreement."
"Therefore," he continued, "I will go to Washington... because the American Congress is likely to be the final brake before the agreement."
Saudis ‘would let Israeli jets use their air space to attack Iran’
Kingdom merely wants ‘some sign of progress’ on Palestinian issue, according to unnamed senior European source in TV report
Saudi Arabia is prepared to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace if it proves necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli TV station reported Tuesday, highlighting growing ties in the shadow of Tehran’s nuclear drive.
Riyadh’s only condition is that Israel make some kind of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, Channel 2 reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed senior European source.
“The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” the European official in Brussels said.
Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of coordination between them against the common enemy of Iran, a partnership that may ramp up should the world powers reach a reportedly emerging deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching some uranium.
Binyamin Netanyahu turns down invitation to meet Democrats on US trip
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has turned down an invitation to meet US Senate Democrats next week during his visit to Washington, saying the session “could compound the misperception of partisanship” surrounding his trip.
Angering the White House and Democrats, Netanyahu accepted an invitation from Republican leaders to address a joint meeting of Congress on 3 March and speak about Iran. The Republican leaders did not consult the Obama administration, which the White House called a breach of protocol.
Democratic senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein on Monday invited Netanyahu to meet in a closed-door session with Democrats during his visit. He declined the invitation on Tuesday and expressed regret about the politically fraught tone of his trip.
Tensions Rise as Head of France’s Top Jewish Group Makes Anti-Muslim Remark
French President François Hollande met today with the heads of France's leading Jewish and Muslim organizations in an attempt to quell a public quarrel that erupted between the two men on Monday over a public statement that all violence against Jews is caused by Muslims.
The rift occurred hours before the two men were scheduled to sit down together at the annual dinner of the French Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF) — a 30-year-old tradition, which draws some of the country's top political and religious figures. The row began when CRIF President Roger Cukierman told the host of a popular morning radio show on Monday that "all [anti-Semitic] violence today is committed by young Muslims," before adding that, "Of course, it is a tiny minority of the Muslim community." ...
Later in the day, French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) President Dalil Boubakeur called the comments "unacceptable," and announced that he would boycott the CRIF's 30th annual dinner — which over the last few decades has become a symbolic event on the French political calendar.
Other Muslim leaders responded favorably to the invitation, such as Hassen Chalghoumi, the Imam of the Drancy mosque on the outskirts of Paris, who in 2010 stood out in support of the government's veil ban. Speaking to French daily Libération on Tuesday, Chalghoumi said that, "Considering what France is going through, now is not the time to argue. On the contrary, we need to learn to live together."
Chalghoumi also addressed Cukierman's controversial comments, pointing out that the teens who desecrated a Jewish cemetery and vandalized a monument to Holocaust victims in the rural town of Sarre-Union last week were not Muslim.
Obama wants to work with telecom companies. He should stop hacking them
Why would any company – or anyone – trust a government that is willing to steal from them?
The US government has been harping on increased cooperation between tech and telecom companies to combat the supposed grave cybersecurity threat. President Obama even visited Stanford University last week to deliver that message personally to some of the internet’s most well-known tech companies. But why would any company – let alone the rest of us – trust a government that is so willing to hack them?
The Intercept published a blockbuster story on Thursday detailing how the British spy agency GCHQ, with help from the National Security Agency, hacked Gemalto, the biggest manufacturer of Sim cards in the world in 2010 and 2011, which allowed the agencies to steal millions of security keys that control the encryption on phone calls for providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and 450 companies around the world. These keys can let the US and UK spy agencies listen in on virtually any cell phone conversation without informing the user, the phone company, or the government of the country where the phone call is made.
Gemalto, a Dutch company, even has a contract with the US government for manufacturing the sensors in US passports, but apparently even that didn’t stop the spy agencies from hacking the company without their knowledge. It’s much like when the NSA secretly siphoned millions of persons’ data from Google and Yahoo from overseas cables behind the companies’ back. How, exactly, are these companies are supposed to believe when the government says Trust us?
As for how all of this is legal, good luck getting an answer. The NSA refused to comment on the Intercept story at all and the UK government just repeated their stock answer, which they give to literally every Snowden story: all GCHQ’s activities take place within “strict legal and policy framework.” Oh, really? If cyberstalking the personal emails and Facebook accounts of completely innocent employees at a telecom company that was never accused of a crime - in an attempt to steal massive amounts of data - is “within their legal framework”, is there anything that isn’t?
Canadian Spies Collect Domestic Emails in Secret Security Sweep
Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents.
The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. ...
Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure — a loophole that the Snowden documents show is being used to monitor the emails.
The latest revelations will trigger concerns about how Canadians’ private correspondence with government employees are being archived by the spy agency and potentially shared with police or allied surveillance agencies overseas, such as the NSA. Members of the public routinely communicate with government employees when, for instance, filing tax returns, writing a letter to a member of parliament, applying for employment insurance benefits or submitting a passport application....
In a top-secret CSE document on the security operation, dated from 2010, the agency says it “processes 400,000 emails per day” and admits that it is suffering from “information overload” because it is scooping up “too much data.” ...
The agency notes in the document that it is storing large amounts of “passively tapped network traffic” for “days to months,” encompassing the contents of emails, attachments and other online activity. It adds that it stores some kinds of metadata — data showing who has contacted whom and when, but not the content of the message — for “months to years.”
Julian Assange appeals to Sweden's supreme court over arrest warrant
Julian Assange is taking his appeal to Sweden’s highest court in a final attempt to persuade a Swedish judge that the arrest warrant against him should be lifted.
His lawyers will ask Sweden’s supreme court on Wednesday to agree that the “severe limitations” on Assange’s freedoms since he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to escape extradition to Sweden are unreasonable and disproportionate to the case.
In August 2010, the WikiLeaks founder and campaigning journalist was accused by two women of rape and sexual molestation, but he has not been charged because the prosecutor insists she is unable to interview him about the allegations.
Prosecutor Marianne Ny has declined invitations by Assange to do so in London, where he has taken refuge in the embassy to avoid a perceived threat of extradition to the US for publishing military secrets. Assange denies all the charges.
In November, Stockholm’s appeal court rejected Assange’s case, saying there was a risk he would evade legal proceedings should the detention order be lifted. The court also ruled that his confinement to the embassy was voluntary.
However, in the ruling, senior appeal court judge Nicklas Wågnert noted the deadlock in the case and criticised the prosecution for failing to move the investigation forward.
Students Launch Historic Debt Strike, Refusing to Pay Back Predatory College Loans
Chicago 'black site': former US justice officials call for Homan Square inquiry
Two ex-senior Justice Department officials say allegations about police operation are ‘very disturbing’ and raise serious questions about constitutional violations
Sam Bagenstos, who during Barack Obama’s first term was the Justice Department’s No 2 civil rights official, said that the Guardian’s exposé of the Homan Square police warehouse raised concerns about “a possible pattern or practice of violations of the fourth and fifth amendments” that warranted an inquiry.
William Yeomans, who worked in the civil rights division from 1981 to 2005, and served as its acting attorney, said the allegations about off-the-books interrogations and barred access to legal counsel reported by the Guardian merited a preliminary investigation to confirm them, a first step toward a full civil rights investigation.
“I would certainly call on them to take a look at it, yes,” Yeomans said. ...
At Homan Square, a nondescript warehouse on the city’s west side, police arrest or detain people for hours without booking or otherwise posting public notifications of their whereabouts, preventing their relatives knowing where they are.
Numerous lawyers reported difficulties getting basic information about their clients from Homan Square, with three saying they had personally been turned away by police from entering the building even as their clients were inside. Police denied access to a Guardian reporter who showed up at the facility to seek answers.
“It certainly raises the very serious question about whether there is a pattern of practice of constitutional violations, of excessive force, denial of right to counsel, coercive interrogations,” said Bagenstos, now a law professor at the University of Michigan.
“This is definitely the kind of practice that you would expect the Justice Department to look into.”
The Justice Department did not return a request for comment by press time.
DOJ: No Federal Charges for George Zimmerman in Trayvon Martin Case
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday closed its investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin without filing hate crime charges against his killer, George Zimmerman.
"Though a comprehensive investigation found that the high standard for a federal hate crime prosecution cannot be met under the circumstances here, this young man’s premature death necessitates that we continue the dialogue and be unafraid of confronting the issues and tensions his passing brought to the surface," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The death of Trayvon Martin was a devastating tragedy. It shook an entire community, drew the attention of millions across the nation, and sparked a painful but necessary dialogue throughout the country," Holder stated.
Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in 2013. He claimed he had acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Martin on February 26, 2012, maintaining that the boy had attacked him, while others said he targeted the black teenager on purpose.
Video Shows Orlando Cop Kneeing Handcuffed Suspect and Rupturing His Spleen
The Orlando Police Department is under scrutiny after video footage surfaced showing an officer kneeing a handcuffed prisoner in a holding cell and rupturing the man's spleen as well as an artery.
Video of the incident in August was obtained by local news station WFTV, and shows 40-year-old Robert Liese sitting in the cell with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was reportedly arrested for not paying a bar tab. The footage picks up Liese's audio as he sits on a bench and appears to talk to someone outside of the cell before standing up and hitting his head against the door, apparently breaking a small window in the process. As Liese returns to the bench to sit down, Officer Peter Delio enters and swiftly knees Liese in the stomach, saying, "Let me help you."
Delio tells Liese to "stop resisting" as he easily lifts the prisoner up and places him face down on the floor. He then orders Liese to get up, calling him a scumbag as he pulls him to his feet and escorts him out of the cell.
According to WFTV, the suspect was moved to a different cell, where Delio bound his ankles together. "Understand if you stand up, you will fall, and we will not retrieve you," Delio told Liese, who was soon squirming on the floor.
Two hours passed before police called for medical help. Liese's attorney, William Ruffier, said that the officers told the responding EMTs that Liese had complained of chest pains. At the hospital, they allegedly told medical staff that he had fought with them and had been injured in the chest. Liese was determined to have a ruptured spleen in his abdomen, however, which had to be removed.
Marijuana Is About to Be Legal — and Virtually Unregulated — in Washington, DC
Pot smokers in Washington, DC, are about to face a dizzying predicament. Come Thursday, residents of the US capital will be able to legally possess two ounces of marijuana and grow up to six plants. They can also trade or gift up to an ounce in pre-rolled joints, blunts, and the like. But they won't be able to buy any of that weed legally.
The unusual situation is the result of political maneuvering by Congress to block Initiative 71, a ballot initiative to make marijuana possession legal for adults 21 and over that was approved in the November 2014 midterm election by 70 percent of DC voters.
A month after the initiative was approved, Congress, which controls DC's budget, intervened by adding a "rider" to a massive federal spending bill. This small additional clause, that is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the spending bill, tried to prevent local officials from using federal funds to implement the initiative. Paradoxically, the same legislation also contained another amendment to stop the federal government from interfering with state medical marijuana industries. ...
For the past 30 days, DC's legalization plan has been undergoing a congressional review, which concludes Thursday. The end result will likely be that pot becomes legal but virtually unregulated in DC, meaning people will be trading — or "gifting" — their weed in a hazy zone of legal uncertainty.
Could a Former Activist Unseat Mayor 1%? Rahm Emanuel Faces Chicago Runoff Despite Vast Outspending
Rahm Emanuel faces Chicago mayoral runoff after falling short of majority
The Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, must face a runoff election after failing to capture a majority vote for a second term.
The former White House chief of staff under Barack Obama easily led the five-way race in Tuesday’s contest. However, because he failed to get more than 50%, he and Cook county commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia will run against each other in April for the job. ...
Garcia told supporters: “Nobody thought we’d be here tonight.”
“They wrote us off, they said we didn’t have a chance, they said we didn’t have any money while they spent millions attacking us. Well, we’re still standing. We’re still running. And we’re going to win,” he said.
“We have something to say to all those big corporations and all those special interests who spend all those millions to install their own mayor: we want change.”
The reality of a run-off election is a significant defeat for Emanuel, who raised more than $16m during the campaign – far more than competitors who included Chicago alderman Bob Fioretti, businessman Willie Wilson and community organizer William “Dock” Walls. Not only did the incumbent raise the most money, which helped him dominated local airwaves and flood mailboxes with direct mail literature, he also summoned the star power of several of his surrogates, including Obama himself who arrived in town last week to help stump on Emanuel’s behalf.
Polls over the last year showed Chicagoans growing dissatisfied with Emanuel, with the star power that helped him return to Chicago and become mayor clearly tarnished. Last August his approval rating bottomed out to 35% from 50% a year earlier. The greatest disapproval came from black and Latino people.
Obama Administration Continues Pitch to Steamroll Corporate-Friendly Trade Deal
The Obama administration is continuing its push for controversial legislation that would fast track trade deals including the massive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), now nearing the end stages. ...
The latest pitch for the power came Monday from the nation's top trade authority, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, in his remarks to the National Association of Counties.
Froman called the TPP "the most ambitious trade agenda in American history" and said that "the finish line for TPP negotiations is in sight."
He called the trade deal "our main tool for leveling the playing field for American workers and businesses," and, in contrast to arguments made by watchdog groups, said the TPP "gives us the opportunity to protect workers, to protect the environment, and to tackle a number of issues that have never been addressed."
Froman said Fast Track is "the way Congress gives direction to the President about what to negotiate, how to consult with Congress before and during the negotiations and how Congress will decide at the end of the day—after an extensive public debate—whether to support or reject a trade agreement. "
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature an article from the United Mine Workers Journal on how the Commission on Industrial Relations "smoked the elder Rockefeller to a beautiful and ham like brown."
Tune in at 2pm!
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Majority of Germans: We Don't Have a Real Democracy
Over 60 percent of Germans said their country did not have a true democracy because business has a bigger say than the electorate, the survey by the Emnid polling institute for the Free University of Berlin found.
The finding echoes results of a previous study in the U.S. that found a similar percentage opposed the 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending on elections, and said that the voices of the electorate were being drowned out by big-moneyed interests.
Twenty percent of the German respondents also said that improved living conditions will be achieved through revolution, not reforms, and a third of respondents said that capitalism was the root of hunger and poverty.
Keiser Report: Sovietization of capitalism + David Graeber interview
The Evening Greens
Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Bill, But Fight over Climate-Threatening Oil Pipeline Isn’t Over
Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Legislation — But White House Says Approval Still Possible
"The Presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously. But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people," Obama wrote in a two-paragraph communication to Congress. "And because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest — including our security, safety, and environment — it has earned my veto."
Obama has long pledged to send back to Congress the Keystone bill while the State Department continues to evaluate the merits of the project, a process that is now in its sixth year. The administration's lengthy review has drawn the ire of Republicans and some Democrats in Congress. ...
Neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives can currently muster the two-thirds majority necessary for overturning the President's veto. The Senate remains four votes short, the House remains 11 votes shy. ...
But just as environmentalists began to celebrate outside the the White House, administration spokesperson Josh Earnest ensured continued speculation over the ultimate fate of the pipeline.
When asked if the Obama administration might approve the pipeline following its executive branch review, Earnest said: "That possibility still does exist."
Lester Brown: 'Vast dust bowls threaten tens of millions with hunger'
Over his 50-year career, Lester Brown has become known for his accurate global environmental predictions. As he enters retirement, he warns the world may face the worst hunger crisis of our lifetimes
Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarfs the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned.
Over 50 years, the writer Lester Brown has gained a reputation for anticipating global trends. Now as Brown, 80, enters retirement, he fears the world may be on the verge of a greater hunger than he has ever seen in his professional lifetime.
For the first time, he said tens of millions of poor people in countries like Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Peru could afford to eat only five days a week. Most of the world was exhausting its ground water because of overpumping. Yields were flatlining in Japan. And in northern and western China, and the Sahel region of Africa – an area already wracked by insurgency and conflict – people were running out of land to grow food. Millions of acres of were turning into wasteland because of over-farming and over-grazing.
“We are pushing against the limits of land that can be ploughed and the land available for grazing and there are two areas of the world in which we are in serious trouble now,” Brown said.
“One is the Sahel region of Africa, from Senegal to Somalia. There is a huge dust bowl forming now that is actually stretching right across the continent and that dust bowl is removing a lot of top soil, so eventually they will be in serious trouble,” he said.
In areas of China, villagers were abandoning the countryside because the land was too depleted to raise flocks or grow food. “At some point there will be a reckoning,” he said. “They will be abandoning so much land, both for farming and for grazing, that it will restrict their efforts to expand food production.”
Spy Cables: Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo Targeted by Intelligence Agencies as "Security" Threat
São Paulo – anatomy of a failing megacity: residents struggle as water taps run dry
In São Paulo, drinking water is used flush toilets, bathe and, until very recently, to wash cars and even hose down city pavements, as porters use jets of crystalline water to shift those last specks of grime. In Brazil, a land of immense natural riches and home to around 12% of the world’s fresh water, the very idea of a water shortage is hard for people to conceive of. Yet despite the state government’s prevarication over possible imminent rationing – consisting of two days of water followed by four days without – in reality, millions are now getting just a few hours of water per day, with many struggling with none at all for days on end.
The São Paulo water crisis, or “hydric collapse” as many are calling it, has left this city of 20 million teetering on the brink. Though domestic use accounts for only a fraction of the water consumed in the state of São Paulo – where extensive agriculture and industry places intense pressure on available resources – for paulistanos, as the city’s residents are called, learning to use water wisely is suddenly the most pressing need of all.
The sudden nature of the crisis has left people struggling to cope with the reality of the taps running dry. The state governor Geraldo Alckmin has insisted repeatedly that the water will continue to flow as usual, and no state of emergency has yet been declared, though some experts believe such a declaration well overdue. In the meantime, residents of São Paulo are making their own arrangements: storing water at home, and in some cases drilling homemade wells. In part a result of badly stored water, instances of dengue fever spread by mosquitoes almost tripled in January, compared with the previous year.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Chicago’s Homan Square 'black site': surveillance, military-style vehicles and a metal cage
From Torture to Drone Assassination, How Washington Gave Itself a Global Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
Weaving Reality: Coming to a temporary(?) end
A Little Night Music
Buddy Johnson - Shufflin & Rollin'
Buddy Johnson - A Pretty Girl, A Cadillac & Some Money
Buddy Johnson - Boogie Woogie's Mother in Law
Buddy Johnson - Crazy 'Bout A Saxophone
Buddy Johnson - It's Obdacious
Buddy Johnson & Ella Johnson - When My Man Comes Home
Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra - If I Ever Find You, Baby
Buddy Johnson - You got to walk that chalk line
Buddy Johnson - Down Yonder
Buddy Johnson - Doot Doot Dow
Buddy Johnson and his Band - Jammin' in Georgia
Buddy Johnson - Shake 'em up
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