Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 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 is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features guitarist Charlie Hunter. Enjoy!
Charlie Hunter - St. Louis Blues
Custer is said to have boasted that he could ride through the entire Sioux Nation with his Seventh Cavalry, and he was half right. He got half-way through.
Vine Deloria Jr.
News and Opinion
Gitmo2Chicago: Activists demand probe of ‘secret interrogation facility’
Activists in Chicago are demanding a thorough investigation into Homan Square, a local detention facility which is being compared to a CIA black site. Several dozen protested on Saturday after police denied the accusations.
Organized by Anonymous, Occupy, and Black Lives Matter, as well as a number of other groups, the 'Shut Down Homan Square' protest gathered around 200 people outside the detention facility in the city’s West Side.
Braving Saturday's below-zero temperatures, the activists held banners and chanted slogans such as "Shut it down" and "Freedom first," as well as "Indict, convict, send the torturers to jail.” They demanded a probe and changes at the facility after a report in the Guardian claimed it is used by Chicago police as a “secret interrogation facility.”
“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,’” said Travis McDermott, one of the organizers of the protest, as quoted by the Guardian.
Protestors Demand Chicago Police Close Homan Square Facility
Submitted by: NCTim
CHICAGO (CBS) – Accusations by a British newspaper of brutality at a West Side Chicago police facility prompted about 75 to protest and demand its closure, reports WBBM’s Bob Roberts.
The Guardian newspaper calls the Homan Square narcotics investigation facility a “black site”at which those arrested are beaten and denied access to lawyers and others. Police have denied the allegations.
The protestors want Homan Square shut down and a thorough investigation of Chicago police detention and interrogation policies. Protestor Andy Thayer focused his wrath on Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“I’m sorry Mr. Mayor, but you’ve lied to us about enough other things that we’re not just going to take your word for it that things are just fine and hunky dory in the building behind us here,” Thayer said.
Mike Holmgren of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network says the Chicago Police Department has a problem.
‘Shut Down Homan Square’: Anonymous, Black Lives Matter swarm Chicago police ‘black site’
Submitted by: NCTim
The Chicago police facility Homan Square was becoming the focus of an organized protest movement this weekend, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous and organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement seized on allegations of unconstitutional abuse at the secretive warehouse.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top adviser to Barack Obama suddenly facing a runoff for re-election, remained at the political fulcrum of a mounting campaign both on social media and the streets of Chicago, where demonstrations were planned for Saturday outside what coordinated campaigners described as mirroring a CIA “black site”.
Organizer Travis McDermott said Saturday’s “Shut Down Homan Square” protest was one of several being planned as far away as Los Angeles.
“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,” he said.
Russia ready to repel any nuke strike, retaliate – missile forces command chief
Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces are ready to react to any nuclear strike even if it is lightning fast, SMF Central Command chief said. A retaliatory strike would take place in all circumstances, “without hesitation,” he added.
“If there’s a challenge to repel a lightning-fast nuclear in any given conditions – it will be done in fixed time, that’s dead true,” the Strategic Missile Forces Central Command’s chief, Major-General Andrey Burbin, told Russian News Service on Saturday.
Russia’s strategic missile forces are positioned geographically in such a way that no global strike can knock them out completely, Burbin said.
In case an order is given to carry out a nuclear strike, Russian nuclear weapons operators will fulfill it, he added.
“There would be no hesitation, the task would be executed,” he said.
Ukraine's new US-born finance chief enduring baptism by fire
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — War-torn Ukraine is a long way from Wood Dale, Illinois.
But Natalie Jaresko, the country's new finance minister who was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, says she feels just as much at home here as she takes on a daunting task: overhauling a Soviet-era economy at a time when public finances are being drained by war.
It's been a baptism of fire for the 49-year-old former banker, who only got her Ukrainian citizenship the day she was appointed minister in December but has lived in the country for over two decades. She hopes the fact she is not part of the entrenched political elite will help as she attempts a root-and-branch reform of the economy.
"I don't see myself as a politician," she told The Associated Press at her office in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. "I'm a technocrat minister and I don't have a political career ahead of me. I'm not running for office."
The job is as big as it is urgent.
Moscow confirms India considering free trade zone with Eurasian Economic Union
India has proposed creating a free trade zone with the Eurasian Economic Union of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, said Alexey Pushkov, head of the International Committee of Russian State Duma.
"The question was raised by India, which is now considering a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. This is a new level in our relationship. The possibility is being discussed," he told reporters Friday during an official visit to New Delhi.
On Thursday TASS reported that India will start negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement with the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan within the next six months.
The Eurasian Economic Union of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia started functioning in January 2015.
After year of conflict, Ukrainians believe they’re fighting for survival
KIEV, Ukraine — Mykola Tokar stood at attention in his camouflaged fatigues at a news conference while a video recorded a year ago played of him standing at a podium that’s marked, then as now, with the words “Ukrainian Crisis.”
In the video, he can be seen in the casual uniform of those who’d volunteered to defend protesters on Independence Square in the wake of three days of intense violence. Back then, he spoke of the deaths of 100 anti-regime activists in violence over three days that began Feb. 18, 2014, and the importance of making sure they didn’t die in vain. In the video, he is proud, convinced that the actions of the protesters and his own will make a difference, make his nation a better place.
But today, as the video ended, he stepped forward in his new camouflaged fatigues, the uniform of his battalion of fighters in the Anti-Terrorist Operation, as the battle against Russian separatists and Russian troops in southeastern Ukraine is called. He spoke on one of the few days in recent months that none of his fellow soldiers had died. Overall, it’s estimated that almost 6,000 have been killed.
Unlike the hopeful man in the video, Tokar was subdued.
“In Ukraine, we are at war, and things became more difficult,” he said to a small gathering of mostly Ukrainian news media. “Many things that mattered never came true.”
Russia barges into the EU tent
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The significance of the agreement signed in Moscowon Wednesday to let Russian navy ships to stop at ports in Cyprus may lend itself to exaggerated notions of a military pact between the two countries, which it certainly is not. On the other hand, the profound meaning of the agreement in political terms– and the visit of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades to Moscow – cannot be lost on Washington and the European capitals, especially Brussels where the European Union is headquartered.
In strategic terms, the deal doesn’t mean that Russia is about to establish naval bases in Cyprus. The agreement merely provides legal underpinning to the Russian navy ships making regular port calls at Cyprus. In military terms, however, Russian navy is getting such access on an assured basis at a time when its only maintenance base happens to be Tartus, Syria, which is caught up in deep turmoil with no end in view. Simply put, the Black Sea Fleet’s Mediterranean operations will be on a sound footing with the backup in Cyprus.
Equally, Russia is establishing military cooperation with a country where Britain maintains a military base. There are reports that China too may be talking with Cyprus for similar facilities as Russia has secured.
However, much more than Russian-Cypriot military cooperation is involved here. Anastasiades’s Moscow visit also has a huge geopolitical backdrop where many crosscurrents are at work. For a start, Cyprus is a EU member country and it is deepening its ties with Russia, which happens to be currently the target of EU sanctions. Anastasiades, in fact, has defiantly questioned the rationale of western sanctions against Russia.
Russian Opposition: Putin Did NOT Assassinate Opposition Leader
U.S. media is quick to blame Putin for the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.
But Itina Khakamada – a top ally of Nemtsov in the opposition – said the killing was “clearly not in Putin’s interest. It’s aimed at rocking the situation.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agrees.
The bidding war for Iran
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The world now anticipates that the US will reach a strategic agreement with Iran. Russia and China are responding by offering their own deals to Tehran. A possible game-changer is Russia's offer of the Antey-2500 air defense system to Iran.
After canceling the planned delivery of the older, shorter-range S-300 system in 2010, Russia has now escalated drastically by proposing to sell Iran a much more effective system.
Western air forces have never engaged the Russian system, so we don't know how exactly good it is. No-one I know in the military wants to find out; by Western estimates, the Russian systems are extremely good. It is possible that Russia's unwelcome intervention might make Iran effectively impregnable from attack by Israel.
As Netanyahu Heads to DC, CodePink Tries to Shut Down AIPAC
As Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is crossing the Atlantic heading to Washington to deliver Tuesday's controversial speech to Congress on Iran, activists are spending Sunday trying to shut down the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
AIPAC has been called “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel,” and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US.
At least 5 CodePink activists had been arrested by early Sunday afternoon:
Netanyahu left Israel's Ben Gurion airport Sunday morning telling reporters: “I’m going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission."
Gaza Rebuild Effort Could Take 100 Years: Oxfam
'Only an end to the blockade of Gaza will ensure that people can rebuild their lives.' —Catherine Essoyan, Oxfam
Submitted by: NCTim
Despair and destruction continue to envelop the blockaded Gaza strip, where the rebuilding of vital structures could take up to a century, Oxfam International has warned.
The organization's statement comes six months after a ceasefire agreement ended Israel's 50-day assault on Gaza, which left over 2,100 Palestinians dead, decimated thousands of structures, and weakened already damaged infrastructure systems.
Oxfam is one of 30 international aid agencies that operate in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), to issue a joint statement Thursday expressing alarm at the slow pace of reconstruction and worsening living conditions for Gaza's residents.
Among the families hit by the destruction this summer was that of Abdel Momen Abu Hujair, who farms in Johr El-Diek. His wife, Um Mohammed, told the Norwegian Refugee Council:
Is this what our lives have come into? Living in a shack after we invested all what we had to build a house? I am very depressed and feel unable to take care of my children. I used to help them with their studies; their performance at school is now deteriorating. I feel no hope for the future or reconstruction. I am afraid we will spend the rest of our lives in this shack, in suffering and despair
Saudi blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes may face death penalty – wife
Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger already sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, is to undergo a retrial for apostasy. If found guilty, he will face the death penalty, his wife told The Independent.
Ensaf Haidar, Badawi’s wife, said she heard from
“official sources” that Saudi judges in the country’s
criminal court want Badawi to have a retrial for apostasy.
In 2013, a judge threw out a charge of apostasy against the
31-year-old liberal blogger after he proved to the court that he
was a Muslim. The case against him included an allegation that he
“liked” a Facebook page for Arab Christians.
Badawi is already in prison after being sentenced to 10 years and
1,000 lashes for criticizing Saudi Arabian clerics in his liberal
blog.
Venezuela president Maduro announces diplomatic sanctions against US
*President says in public speech: ‘Conspirator meetings are over’
*Adds that ‘capture of American pilot’ inspired visa move
In a further deterioration of diplomatic ties between Venezuela and the US, President Nicolás Maduro announced on Saturday that he will curb the number of US diplomats allowed to work in the country and will impose mandatory visas for Americans travelling to the socialist nation.
Maduro also said that any meetings between US diplomats and Venezuelans would have to be “authorised” by the Venezuelan government.
The president said he decided to require visas for US citizens after the capture of an American pilot of Latin American descent in the state of Táchira, in western Venezuela. He said the pilot, whom he did not identify, was suspected of spying – though he did not provide details.
Maduro has accused the US of working with groups critical of his government to plot a coup against him, charges Washington has denied.
Jihadi John' known to MI5 since 2008, but they let him escape – report
Mohammed Enwazi, the Islamic State terrorist known as “Jihadi John,” was identified by British intelligence but allowed to escape to Syria. It was also revealed that he had links to the failed 21/7 attacks in London, the Observer reports.
The British intelligence service MI5 had been keeping track of
Emwazi since 2008, three years after the attempt by a group of
western militants on July 21, 2005 to carry out terrorist attacks
on British soil, the report revealed.
Emwazi was a “person of interest” for MI5 as he was a
member of a London based jihadi cell that had been set up to
recruit militants. Security services were aware that Emwazi had a
telephone conversation with Hussein Osman on the day of the 21/7
planned attacks, who was later jailed for life for planting a
bomb in a London underground station.
The planned assaults came just two weeks after the worst
terrorist attacks to have hit the UK, when 52 people were killed
on July 7, 2005.
Many South Sudan boys 'kidnapped to be child soldiers'
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Hundreds of boys in South Sudan have been kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, the United Nations children's agency says.
The figure is a big increase on the 89 child abductions reported by Unicef last month.
Their latest statement blamed a militia group allied to the government.
South Sudan is in a state of civil war with forces loyal to President Salva Kiir pitted against rebels led by former Vice-President Riek Machar.
The campaign group Human Rights Watch has accused both sides of using child soldiers.
You would’ve hated your heroes: Why history’s great men seem so morally deficient
Winston Churchill was racist. Albert Einstein was a chauvinist. And that's not even the half of it!
In Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” the film’s protagonist finds himself transported back in time to the Paris of the 1920s, where he rubs shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Picasso. Thrilling, right? Who wouldn’t love traveling into the past, and meeting one’s heroes?
In truth, you’re much better off not meeting your idols from past decades or centuries — for the simple reason that, in all likelihood, they were probably assholes.
More precisely: Your historical heroes would have seen the world very differently from you and me. In particular, they probably harbored an array of unpleasant prejudices:
Idolize Winston Churchill for standing up to Nazi Germany? Great, but best to ignore his views on those further to the east: “I hate Indians,” he wrote. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” Virginia Woolf is a literary hero – but better not dwell on what she said about Jews (despite being married to one): “I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh.” Love John Lennon for his music, and admire him for his pacifism? Great — but we must now cringe at the way he mocked the mentally and physically handicapped while onstage (painfully captured in surviving concert footage). On the other hand, he stopped short of D.H. Lawrence, who fantasized about constructing “a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace” for disposing of “the sick, the halt, and the maimed” (who, he imagined, “would smile me a weary thanks” for disposing of them). And what about Albert Einstein? When he wasn’t inventing relativity, he was fighting for nuclear disarmament and speaking out for human rights. (All terrific, of course.) But you really don’t want to see the demeaning letters he wrote to his first wife in the months leading up to their divorce.
Conservative Audience Laughs as Former NSA Chief Refers to Himself as an ‘Unrelenting Libertarian’
Submitted by: NCTim
For a second year in a row, the Conservative Action Political Conference hosted a debate on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
This morning, in a stinging rebuke similar to audience jeering of former Gov. Jim Gilmore’s seething criticism of Ed Snowden at last year’s CPAC, former NSA director Michael Hayden received an earful when he awkwardly declared that he is a libertarian.
Referring to his co-panelist Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano as an “an unrelenting libertarian,” Hayden continued, “So am I.”
As Mediaite pointed out, Hayden was quickly mocked by the audience with sustained booing and at least two people yelling, “no, you’re not!”
The rise of fascism is again the issue
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness.
Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.
"To initiate a war of aggression…," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.
US sells prisoners to the highest bidders
Submitted by: NCTim
On Feb. 20 prisoners at the Willacy County Correctional Center refused to work and eat breakfast, to protest inadequate medical care at the for-profit Texas tent prison. The situation soon escalated into a riot, with inmates setting fire to some of the tents and at least three injuries. Guards used tear gas to quell the uprising.
A day later, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said the Willacy facility, which houses mostly undocumented immigrants — many held for illegal border crossing and low-level offenses — was uninhabitable and its 2,800 prisoners would be moved to other facilities.
The Willacy prison fiasco highlights the problems of privatizing prisons and prison services across the U.S. Instead of protecting their limited rights, state and federal governments are selling prisoners to the highest bidder.
Criminal alien requirement (CAR) prisons such as Willacy only magnify the routine abuses of private prisons. CAR prisons are almost entirely filled with low-security immigrant prisoners serving time before being deported. The overwhelmingly majority of Willacy prisoners were convicted only of illegal re-entry into the United States. Most of the other prisoners are there for low-level drug crimes.
American mass transit is dying
Three of the four largest systems in the country have been crippled this winter — and the worst is yet to come
The great transit systems of the Eastern Seaboard are in crisis.
In New York, the Metropolitan Transit Authority is operating a subway system strained by record ridership and storm damage, where the increasing regular delays have been supplemented by a series of recent snafus that have stranded tens of thousands of New Yorkers. A meager capital funding plan is in limbo, threatening the progress of long-awaited projects like the Second Avenue Subway.
In Washington, ridership on Metrorail is down 11 percent since 2009. Mechanical failures smoked straphangers out of underground stations on three occasions… last weekend alone. In January, a third-rail malfunction near the National Mall caused a smoke-storm that killed one woman and sent 84 commuters to the hospital.
And in Boston, a record month of snow has spawned a transportation catastrophe with few modern equivalents. “It’s like a war, we’re taking this back station by station, line by line, switch by switch,” said T chief Beverly Scott. Some parts of the system were shut for days; replacement buses, when they ran at all, created block-long lines in the cold. The city’s tempo shifted into half-time.
Wisconsin progressives size up political landscape after union defeats
As Scott Walker’s support for ‘right-to-work’ bill is seen as another blow to blue-collar workers, labor movement and activists ask ‘what happens now’?
“The solidarity sing-a-long has maintained free speech rights at the capitol,” Nicole Desautels said, as she stood behind singers who were belting out progressive favorites.
Desautels and others from the Wisconsin Citizen Media Cooperative have been monitoring police harassment and arrests of the singers since they began they their daily noontime chorus at the state capitol in the heat of Governor Scott Walker’s famous battle with organised labor, four years ago. While so much singing had ensured that protesters against the governor’s policies could enter the building with their signs on Saturday, in order to chant and dissent, it seemed one small victory in a dismal line of losses for progressive politics in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s latest “right-to-work” legislation is expected to pass next week, further weakening unions in the state governed by Republican 2016 hopeful Scott Walker, in this case in the private sector. The state’s proposed budget, before the Republican-controlled state legislature, will decimate public education and citizen oversight of agencies such as the department of natural resources.
Faced with such defeats, many Wisconsin progressives are asking themselves: “What happens now?”
‘I am not a terrorist’: Wisconsin workers come out in force after Gov. Walker’s ISIS jibe
Five-thousand Wisconsin trade unionists braved freezing weather to protest an anti-union law that Republicans are pushing through the state legislature – and to take potshots at Gov. Scott Walker’s comments in which he compared them to terrorists.
Unionists surrounded the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, in the week's third and biggest demonstration against the right-to-work legislation, which would make it illegal for private company trade unions to demand collective dues from employees who are not trade union members themselves.
The demonstrators held placards reading “Kill the union death bill” and “I am not a terrorist.”
After an eight-hour debate on Wednesday – during which observers were ejected by police – the bill was passed by a narrow margin of 17 to 15. It will now go to the upper chamber next week. The Assembly, which enjoys a wide Republican majority, is expected to rubber-stamp it. It will be enacted as soon as it is signed by Governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Scott Walker.
NYC ID program starts off with a bang
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
NEW YORK (AP) — A municipal ID program that city officials thought would draw a few hundred thousand people in its first year has been much more popular than anticipated, with New Yorkers waiting hours in line and months for appointments to register.
City officials have scrambled to keep up with the demand as residents have made more than 260,000 appointments in just the first month since the city IDs became available. In the first couple of days before the online system was up, people waited hours for their turn.
"To see this kind of response ... is remarkable in a positive way and I think has a lot of lessons to teach us," said Nisha Agarwal, the city's commissioner for immigrant affairs.
The card, dubbed IDNYC, is aimed at those who do not currently have a government-issued identification including the elderly, homeless and an estimated 500,000 immigrants in the city who live in the U.S. without legal documentation. Cardholders are eligible for free memberships at many of the city's signature cultural institutions as well as other discounts.
Anti-Israel divestment push gains traction at US colleges
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
NEW YORK (AP) — The lecture hall had filled quickly. Several students wore keffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian headscarves, while another sat draped in the Israeli flag.
It was time for a ritual that has become increasingly commonplace on many American college campuses: A student government body, in this case at the University of California, Davis, would take up Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and decide whether to demand their school divest from companies that work with the Jewish state.
In the United States, Israel's closest ally, the decade-old boycott-divestment-sanctions movement, or BDS, is making its strongest inroads by far on college campuses. No U.S. school has sold off stock and none is expected to do so anytime soon. Still, the current academic year is seeing an increasing number of divestment drives on campus. Since January alone, student governments at four universities have taken divestment votes.
While the campaigns unfold around resolutions largely proposed by chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, outside groups have become increasingly involved — from American Muslims for Palestine and the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee, on one side, to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, on the other. At some campuses, candidates for student government are being asked their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The heated rhetoric has led to claims of anti-Semitism and of infringement on free speech.
UNC Board of Governors eliminates poverty center, student protests disrupt meeting
Submitted by: NCTim
CHARLOTTE – The University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors opted Friday to eliminate an academic center concentrated on poverty and run by a controversial professor.
The Board of Governors, meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, voted unanimously to accept recommendations to shut down three centers on three different campuses – the Center for Biodiversity at East Carolina University, the Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change at N.C. Central University and the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Student protestors, who came to the meeting in Charlotte from several different campuses, nearly shut down the meeting.
Friday’s meeting also included a vote to allow campuses to raise tuition and fees over the next two years at its campuses, cost increases that range from 2 to 7 percent for in-state students. (Click here to read a previous post about this.)
Gene Nichol's statement on closing of UNC poverty center
Submitted by: NCTim
I have no words to match the gratitude I feel for the astonishing support the poverty center has received, in recent weeks, from thousands across North Carolina and the nation. Students, faculty, alumni, engaged citizens, activists, social services providers, political, religious and institutional leaders and, perhaps most movingly, Tar Heels living at or below the edge of poverty have raised their voices and banners in protest.
Whether pressing for research on economic justice or more broadly for university-defining traditions of academic freedom, their words and actions have seared my heart and, not infrequently, moistened my eyes. They are not to be forgotten.
On an otherwise dark day for the University of North Carolina, I am happy to announce that, in response to the censorship efforts of the Board of Governors, an impressive array of foundations and private donors has stepped forward to assure that the work of the center, if not the center itself, will continue and markedly expand. Generous grants and donations will allow for the creation of a North Carolina poverty research fund at the law school to support our efforts to describe, document and combat the wrenching challenges of Tar Heel poverty.
The fund will allow us to hire student, faculty and post-doctorate scholars to assist me in probing the causes of, and solutions to, economic injustice. We will carry forward the work of the center within the halls of the university, but with greater flexibility and increased resources. North Carolinians are not easily cowered. They react poorly to petty tyrants. They always have. If the Board of Governors moves to block the creation of such a research fund - a turn that is not unlikely - I will be eager to join them in federal court.
Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity
Submitted by: NCTim
On Feb. 18, a working group of the UNC Board of Governors recommended that the Poverty Center be "discontinued." The full board voted to close the Poverty Center, along with two others, at its Feb. 27 meeting in Charlotte.
Documents and articles related to this decision.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature a report from the Chicago Day Book on the push by the Illinois Federation of Labor for "Big Battle for New Child Labor Law."
Tune in at 2pm!
|
New round of snow could push Boston to season record
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
BOSTON (AP) — After cold and snow that set February records, southern New England is entering March with another round that could push Boston over its 20-year-old snowfall record.
With 102 inches, Boston needs 5.7 more to break the 1995-1996 record of 107.6.
Snowfall of 4 to 6 inches was expected by early Monday across the area, with up to 8 inches in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Less is expected in northern Massachusetts and New York state, and on Cape Cod.
"We have come this far, we might as well break the record," said William Babcock, National Weather Service meteorologist in the Taunton, Massachusetts office. "We have a couple of storms to push us over the record. Once that is done we won't complain if we don't get any more snow."
Since it's early March, "we still have plenty of time," he said.
Canada's wild fur trade returns
Submitted by: NCTim
THUNDER BAY, Ontario — The land dwarfs Mark Deans as he stands in the center of a frozen lake, gloves on his hands, a beaver hat on his head. While the bulk of his salary comes from his work at a northern gold mine, Deans and his family supplement their income through trapping. For the last 10 years, they have run a registered trapline in the wilds of northern Ontario, Canada.
To many, the trade is a wistful, often nostalgic idea, occupying the iconography of the past alongside birchbark canoes and trading posts. There is perhaps no industry as wedded to the Canadian narrative of national identity as fur.
After all, it was hundreds of years ago, in 1670, that the British crown chartered the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) as a way of expanding further into what is now Canada, hot in pursuit of the rich, abundant fur pelts. Three hundred and forty-five years later, both HBC and the trade still exist, albeit in different forms. In 2013, Industry Canada valued the export of fur at more than $950 million (all dollar figures are in U.S. currency). While the majority of this fur is farmed, a shift in the markets has buoyed demand for Canadian wild fur, the country’s founding industry. The main players have changed, but a relentless appetite for furs still remains.
"I’ve always had a strong connection to the outdoors. Trapping was another reason to be out there,” says Deans. Much of his life and career has been spent in the boreal forest. During his university years, he studied resource management, and he later worked in the forestry industry before making the move to mining. Over the years, he has been drawn to jobs that helped maintain and strengthen his close connection to nature.
Azerbaijan devaluation deals shock to nation
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
For thousands of Azerbaijanis like 58-year-old high-school teacher Nargiz, the Azerbaijani national currency's precipitous plunge on February 21 wiped out more than their savings. It popped a bubble of belief that Azerbaijan was protected from the kind of financial instability that has shaken other Eurasian states.
Azerbaijan's Central Bank on February 21 devalued the manat 33.5% against the dollar and 30% against the euro. That move cost Nargiz, who would give only her first name, the equivalent of US$4,500, a decade's worth of savings. It also amounts to her official salary for nearly the past three years from a secondary school in the capital, Baku.
"This is a big loss for my family," she said. "My daughter warned me that this could happen, but I did not listen to her. Now I regret it so much."
Nargiz could be understood for believing that the manat, and the Azerbaijani economy, would always hold its own. Authorities had offered repeated and plentiful reassurances that all was well. Though oil prices dipped below $50 a barrel in January, President Ilham Aliyev had stressed that the fall had had "no negative impact" on the manat. "On the contrary, the AZN [manat] is even stronger," Azerbaijani news outlets quoted the president as saying on January 28.
Seeing Is Believing as Scientists Trace Greenhouse Effect
LONDON—Government scientists in the US say they have directly observed for the first time the greenhouse effect in action, while monitoring the way carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere absorbed increasing amounts of thermal radiation from the surface.
Their measurements, taken over a period of 11 years in Alaska and Oklahoma, confirm predictions made more than 100 years ago, and repeatedly examined: there is a greenhouse effect, and the greenhouse gas that most helps the world warm is carbon dioxide.
The phenomenon is known in climate science shorthand as radiative forcing, which happens when the Earth absorbs more energy from solar radiation than it emits as thermal radiation back into space.
<!-- end arts_culture_bookbox -->
The sun shines through the greenhouse gases as if they were glass, and warms the rocks. The rocks emit infra-red waves, but the transparent gases now keep the heat in, as if they formed the glass roof of a greenhouse.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Using satellites to monitor forest health
Scientists for the first time have simultaneously compared widespread impacts from two of the most common forest insects in the West – mountain pine beetle and western spruce budworm – an advance that could lead to more effective management policies.
By combining data from satellites, airplanes and ground-based crews, the researchers have shown in unprecedented detail how insects affect Western forests over decades.
In the past, forest managers relied on airplane surveys to evaluate insect damage over broad areas. However, satellites can reveal patterns at a much finer scale. By combining both types of data, scientists are refining estimates of damage and showing how they may relate to other factors that determine forest structure and composition.
“This is the first time anyone has compared the impacts from these two insects in consistent units of change going all the way back to 1970,” said Garrett Meigs, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vermont. Meigs conducted his analysis while he was a Ph.D. student in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. He worked with Robert Kennedy, an expert in landscape analysis and an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
U.S. scientists spot 3rd orca born recently to imperiled pod
SEATTLE — U.S. scientists following endangered killer whales from a research vessel have spotted a baby orca off the coast of Washington state, the third birth documented this winter but still leaving the population dangerously low.
The research crew observed the calf Wednesday with other whales in the L-pod, one of three families of southern resident killer whales that frequent inland Washington waters, said Brad Hanson, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.
Encouraging sign
The baby looks great and was very active when it was seen about 15 miles west of Westport, Wash., Hanson said Thursday while the agency’s research vessel, Bell Shimada, was briefly at port.
It’s the third baby born to the whale pods in recent months and is an encouraging sign for the Puget Sound endangered population, though their numbers remain low at 80. The whales are struggling because of pollution, lack of food and other reasons.
The births are great news, but there also has not been a successful birth in the population for more than two years, said Ken Balcomb, senior scientist at the Center for Whale Research that keeps a census of the orcas.
Air in Delhi is world's worst, 13 other Indian cities aren't far behind
India is ending years of denial about its air quality, while the US Embassy in New Delhi plans to give daily accurate measures of air quality for tourists and expatriates.
New Delhi — China’s dirty air often grabs global headlines with photos of its cities swathed in smog.
But it is India where air quality has been plummeting for years and is now the worst in the world. The cost of India’s economic growth is partly recorded in the fact that 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India, according to the World Health Organization. New Dehli, India’s capital, is now number one on the list of the most polluted.
For many Indians, that news comes as a surprise. For years the Indian government has not shared data on air quality and has not initiated any serious public awareness about the rising problem. Debates on air pollution were largely dismissed as Western propaganda aimed at curtailing India's growth.
Few Indian cities have purchased or deployed the kind of monitoring equipment necessary to measure the levels of air quality, says Delhi-based environmentalist Sunita Narain. “We just don’t know how bad is the air we breathe,” he says.
The biobattery: Turning sewage sludge into electricity and engine oil
Sewage sludge, green waste, production residue from the food industry, straw or animal excrement -- with the biobattery's modular concept a much larger range of biomass can be utilized for energy recovery than previously. Researchers show that they can convert organic residues into electricity, heat, purified gas, engine oil and high quality biochar using this process.
Biogas plants are an important element for decentralized energy supply. They produce electricity from renewable resources and can compensate for highly fluctuating wind and solar energy. There are already 8,000 plants in operation in Germany with an electrical output of 3.75 gigawatts in total, that is the equivalent to roughly three nuclear power plants. However, the plants have several disadvantages too: they only process a limited range of organic substances and are in competition with the cultivation of food plants.
Producing electricity, oil, gas and biochars
Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Energy and Safety Technology UMSICHT have now succeeded in considerably improving the efficiency of biogas plants. The biobattery process developed by them not only supplies electricity and heat but also high quality products such as gas, oil and vegetable carbon. These can be utilized as required, for example to produce electricity, as marine or aviation fuel, as an admixture for fuels or as a fertilizer. If further processed they even provide basic substances for the chemical industries.
The biobattery is modular and consists of a pool of environmentally-friendly technologies such as biogas plants, thermal storage, carburetors and engines to produce electricity. The heart of the concept is thermo-catalytic reforming (TCR®). With this the experts convert carbons out of organic material, for example fermentation residues from biogas plants and bioethanol production, industrial biomass waste, sewage sludge, straw, scrap wood or animal excrement. The result: oil, gas and biomass cokes. "The particular advantage of the biobattery is that we can utilize a number of raw materials which would otherwise have to be disposed of often at great cost," explains Professor Andreas Hornung, Director of UMSICHT at the Institute Branch in Sulzbach-Rosenberg.
Bill would double federal funds to restore S.F. Bay
WASHINGTON — San Francisco Bay is big, beautiful and beset by environmental problems, but it gets nowhere near the federal aid bestowed on other big bodies of water such as the Great Lakes or Chesapeake Bay.
California lawmakers led by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer introduced legislation last week to double the amount of federal grants to restore the bay, the largest estuary on the West Coast, to $10 million a year.
That still comes nowhere near the $300 million spent annually to restore the Great Lakes, or the $70 million spent on Chesapeake Bay.
One explanation is that Democrats control the congressional districts that ring San Francisco Bay and hold the state’s two Senate seats, while Republicans have controlled the House for several years and now run all of Congress. The other problem is that the bay and its watershed are in just one state.
The Great Lakes are surrounded by eight states, with 16 senators in both parties.
Greenland is melting – the past might tell what the future holds
A team of scientists lead by Danish geologist Nicolaj Krog Larsen have managed to quantify how the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to a warm period 8,000-5,000 years ago. Back then temperatures were 2-4 degrees C warmer than present. Their results have just been published in the scientific journal Geology, and are important as we are rapidly closing in on similar temperatures.
While the world is preparing for a rising global sea-level, a group of scientists led by Dr. Nicolaj Krog Larsen, Aarhus University in Denmark and Professor Kurt Kjær, Natural History Museum of Denmark ventured off to Greenland to investigate how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to past warming.
With hard work and high spirits the scientists spent six summers coring lakes in the ice free land surrounding the ice sheet. The lakes act as a valuable archive as they store glacial meltwater sediments in periods where the ice is advanced. That way is possible to study and precisely date periods in time when the ice was smaller than present.
It has been hard work getting all these lake cores home, but is has definitely been worth the effort. Finally we are able to describe the ice sheet’s response to earlier warm periods, says Dr. Nicolaj Krog Larsen of Aarhus University, Denmark.
Panda Population Grows Nearly 17 Percent
It’s good news for the furry black and white bear that has come to symbolize wildlife conservation. China announced the results of its Fourth National Giant Panda Survey, which WWF supported with financial and technical expertise.
*1,864 estimated minimum population of wild pandas
*16.8% increase in wild panda numbers over the past decade
*11.8% increase of giant panda geographic range since 2003
“The rise in the population of wild giant pandas is a victory for conservation and definitely one to celebrate,” said Ginette Hemley, Senior Vice President of Wildlife Conservation at WWF. “This is a testament to the commitment made by the Chinese government for the last 30-plus years to wild panda conservation. WWF is grateful to have had the opportunity to partner with the Chinese government to contribute to panda conservation efforts.”
Wild giant pandas, a global symbol of wildlife conservation, are found only in China’s Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. There are currently 67 panda nature reserves in China, an increase of 27 since the last survey. The survey found that 1,246 wild giant pandas live within nature reserves. The approximately 33.2% that live outside protected areas face higher risks to their survival as major infrastructure projects cause large-scale habitat loss.
Saving wild pandas
Giant panda conservation efforts benefit many other rare species of animals and plants in the southwest China biodiversity hotspot. The giant panda’s habitat is also home to species such as the takin, golden snub-nosed monkey, red panda and serow. Forests within the giant panda’s habitat feature major freshwater conservation areas that benefit millions of people.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Meta-Study On Genetically Modified Food: Virtually All Independent Scientists Are Concerned
Our Middle Eastern “Allies” Fund Terrorists Abroad So They Won’t Attack Them At Home
How Toxic Are the Food Colorings in What You Eat?
The Media Know That Spreading the Fear of Terrorism Sells
The impending Battle of Tirkrit
Hellraisers Journal: Work Not Charity-Why Starve In The Midst Of Plenty-Hunger Knows No Law
Take a Leek for Saint Davy
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happinefs
Climate Action Hub: Flying Solo
A Little Night Music
Charlie Hunter - Green Chimneys
Charlie Hunter - Common Ground
Charlie Hunter - Untitled Improvisation #1
The Charlie Hunter Trio - Greasy Granny
Charlie Hunter Quartet - Ashby Man
Charlie Hunter - Porter Hayes
Charlie Hunter Trio - Funky Niblets
Charlie Hunter Quartet - Talkin' Blues
Charlie Hunter - Percussion Shuffle
Charlie Hunter Trio - Come As You Are
Charlie Hunter - High Pockets and a Fanny Pack
Charlie Hunter - Gentlemen, I Neglected To Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid
The Charlie Hunter Trio - Bullethead
Charlie Hunter, Chinna Smith, Ernest Ranglin - One Foundation
Norah Jones & Charlie Hunter Quartet - More Than This
Charlie Hunter - Two For Bleu