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 guitarist and sideman Luther Tucker. Enjoy!
Luther Tucker - Mean Old World
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
-- George Orwell
News and Opinion
This has got to be the most lame attempt at diversion ever:
Senators’ Iran letter was meant to be lighthearted, aides say
Complain Administration Has 'No Sense of Humor'
An open letter to Iran signed by 47 Republican senators warning that a nuclear deal with the US may not stick was meant as a tongue in cheek reminder of Congressional power, several GOP aides reportedly said Tuesday, as some in the party distanced themselves from the missive amid intense anger over the move from across the aisle.
Two Republican congressional aides quoted by the Daily Beast in an article published Tuesday described the letter as “cheeky,” while others said the note was a lighthearted attempt as asserting Congressional power vis-a-vis the high stakes talks over a nuclear agreement with Iran.
“The administration has no sense of humor when it comes to how weakly they have been handling these negotiations,” a senior Republican aide was quoted as saying in the Daily Beast.
Democratic leaders, including President Barack Obama, have expressed deep annoyance over the letter, drafted by Freshman senator Tom Cotton and signed by 47 of the Senate’s 54 Republicans.
Ex-U.S. Official: With Iran Letter, "Reckless" GOP Places Middle East Hegemony over Security
UN torture expert refused access to Guantánamo Bay and US federal prisons
Juan Méndez says he has been waiting more than two years for access to a range of state and federal prisons and asks: ‘Is the United States hiding something?’
The United Nations’ top investigator on the use of torture has accused Washington of dragging its feet over his requested visits to prisons and refusing to give him access to inmates at Guantánamo.
Juan Méndez said he had been waiting for more than two years for the United States to provide him access to a range of state and federal prisons, where he wants to probe the use of solitary confinement.
Méndez told reporters in Geneva he wanted to visit federal prisons in New York and Colorado and state prisons in New York, California and Louisiana, among others.
He said the US state department had been working to help him gain access to the state prisons, but after two years of discussions he had yet to receive a positive answer.
“And in one of my last conversations they said that federal prisons were unavailable,” he said. ...
Méndez also harshly criticised Washington for not providing him with “acceptable” access to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, and to the 122 detainees still being held there.
Behold what American Humanitarian Interventionism hath wrought in your name:
The worst place in the world? Aleppo in ruins after four years of Syria war
In the east of Syria’s largest city, where entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed, the few remaining residents face a Darwinian fight for survival
Aleppo had withstood more than six millennia of pillage and insurrection, but the past three years have damaged more of its civilisation and displaced more of its people than perhaps all its earlier conflicts.
The ancient metropolis, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, is now split into two halves: the Syrian regime runs the west and the armed opposition controls the east.
Western Aleppo has had by far the better of the war, with civic services still functioning in most neighbourhoods and war damage minimal. Much of the east, though, is ravaged and empty. ...
Those who remain in eastern Aleppo, roughly 40,000 from a prewar population estimated at about a million, have been without electricity or running water for more than a year.
Supplies of heating fuel were drastically short this winter and last, even with demand being markedly lower.
Almost all public parks have been stripped of trees, which were harvested for firewood. When there were no more trees, families begun cutting up school desks and chairs to stay warm. Comparisons with the siege of Leningrad are no exaggeration in a city that must be a strong contender for the worst place in the world.
Life goes from bad to worse for Syrians after Lebanon tightens border controls
UN warns of humanitarian tragedy in country where one in four is a refugee and tens of thousands of babies are being born stateless
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are facing a crisis of “staggering proportions”, humanitarian officials have warned, with border closures breaking up families and tens of thousands of children being born stateless as well as homeless.
Refugees face a wide range of restrictions, and funding shortfalls are leaving many of them destitute, subject to extreme deprivation and exposed to exploitation, particularly women and children.
Lebanon has been largely left to fend for itself since refugees began arriving from Syria; its infrastructure is stretched to breaking point and its delicate sectarian balance upended.
“It’s the largest humanitarian tragedy of our time,” said Ninette Kelley, the UN high commissioner for refugees’ representative to Lebanon.
Lebanon has more than 1.1 million refugees – one in every four people living in Lebanon is a Syrian who fled the war. The country’s population is almost at the levels predicted for 2050.
The UNHCR says no country in living memory has taken in as many refugees in proportion to its size. “The sheer volume of the influx was staggering and over a prolonged period of time, and it came into a country that was already very fragile politically and security wise, and also economically,” Kelley told the Guardian. “It’s a very big burden on a small country.”
'Dirty Brigades': US-Trained Iraqi Forces Investigated for War Crimes
U.S.-trained and armed Iraqi military units, the key to the American strategy against ISIS, are under investigation for committing some of the same atrocities as the terror group, American and Iraqi officials told ABC News. Some Iraqi units have already been cut off from U.S. assistance over "credible" human rights violations, according to a senior military official on the Pentagon's Joint Staff.
The investigation, being conducted by the Iraqi government, was launched after officials were confronted with numerous allegations of “war crimes,” based in part on dozens of ghastly videos and still photos that appear to show uniformed soldiers from some of Iraq's most elite units and militia members massacring civilians, torturing and executing prisoners, and displaying severed heads.
The videos and photos are part of a trove of disturbing images that ABC News discovered has been circulating within the dark corners of Iraqi social media since last summer. In some U.S. military and Iraqi circles, the Iraqi units and militias under scrutiny are referred to as the "dirty brigades."
As Iraq Invades Tikrit, ISIS Moves Against Ramadi
As Iraqi troops, backed by Iranian artillery and Shi’ite militias, launch a major invasion of the city of Tikrit, ISIS is seeking to emphasize their ability to continue attacks across the nation even amid a siege, hitting the city of Ramadi hard today.
The contested Anbar capital, Ramadi has been partly under ISIS control for over a year now, Today, they launched 21 car bomb attacks across the city, wounding scores of security officials.
The New York Times' obsession with discredited allegations about Iran's past nuclear work
On Feb. 19the New York Times ran a piece by David Sanger and William Broad titled “Inspectors Say Iran Evading Questions as Nuclear Talks Enter a Crucial Stage.” These “questions” refer to 12 allegations – the so-called “Possible Military Dimensions” (PMD) file – that Iran may have conducted nuclear weapons-relevant research in the past. They are based, in part, on information provided to the IAEA by intelligence agencies of Israel and the U.S. It has long been known that some of the information is suspect and likely fabricated and planted. Exaggerating the importance of these unauthenticated allegations – like the New York Times is doing – only hands ammunition to those working to subvert a nuclear deal and precipitate a military confrontation with Iran.
Ex-IAEA Director Hans Blix says he has long believed there is “as much disinformation as information” on the alleged weaponization efforts. And Mohammed El Baradei, who followed Blix's directorship – and held the post for 12 years thereafter – was also skeptical about the purported Iranian documents passed to the IAEA, writing in his 2011 memoir, “No one knew if any of this was real.”
In fact, exactly a day after the Feb. 19 New York Times report, Bloomberg reported that IAEA “inspectors in Vienna will probably review intelligence they received about Iran as a result of the revelations...[that] the CIA passed doctored blueprints for nuclear-weapon components to Iran in February 2000...”
Unfortunately, this did not stop the New York Times from running a news “analysis” piece two weeks later again omitting to mention how several experts and former IAEA directors have serious doubts about the IAEA's PMD dossier.
Trailing with days to go, Likud frets over possible defeat
With Likud polling at least three seats behind the Zionist Union, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced concern Wednesday at the possibility of a left-wing government forming after next week’s elections.
Speaking at a Likud party rally in the coastal city of Netanya, the prime minister said that if the gap between the ruling party and its center-left rival isn’t closed in the six days remaining before the country goes to the ballot box, “there’s a real chance that [Zionist Union leaders] Tzipi Livni and [Isaac] Bouji Herzog will be the next prime ministers of the state of Israel, with the support of the Joint [Arab] List.” ...
Netanyahu also told the right-wing Makor Rishon newspaper Wednesday that “there’s a chance of a political revolution” in next week’s elections, and placed the blame for his party’s decline in the polls on an “effort organized by a massive cash injection and by a savage and unprecedented campaign by various media sources.”
Netanyahu, who initiated the elections two years early by firing Livni as justice minister and Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) as finance minister three months ago, had told supporters Monday that there was “a tremendous effort, worldwide, to topple the Likud government.”
For Palestinians, Israel's election offers bleak horizon
As Israelis prepare to elect a new government next week, the view from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza is not one of hope.
The decades-old conflict has barely featured in the campaign, leaving Palestinians with the sense that whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secures a fourth term in office or the centre-left opposition pulls off a victory, as the latest polls suggest, little is likely to change.
Peace talks broke down in April 2014, after nine months of negotiations led by the United States, with the long-standing goal of a two-state solution -- Israel and an independent Palestine side-by-side -- no closer.
"The two-state solution is no longer on the table," said Gaza-based political analyst Talal Okal.
"Israel is moving towards isolating and confiscating all of Jerusalem," he said, while Gaza, a 40-km-long strip of land on the Mediterranean coast, remains blockaded by Israel and Egypt, the movement of people and goods closely monitored.
In the West Bank, which Israel has occupied along with East Jerusalem since the 1967 Middle East war, Okal said the military was tightening its grip, citing recent exercises in which 13,000 Israeli troops were mobilised.
This is probably one of my favorite Jen Psaki moments, I love the incredulous expressions on the faces of the journalists present:
State Department Announces New "Long-standing" Policy Against Backing Coups
Maybe Obama’s Sanctions on Venezuela are Not Really About His “Deep Concern” Over Suppression of Political Rights
The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.
Today, one of the Obama administration’s closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that country’s few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on “terrorism” charges. That is completely consistent with that regime’s systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers, executions of those with minority religious views, and exploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics.
Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis — nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s. ... But what’s not too obvious to point out is what the U.S is actually doing in Venezuela. It’s truly remarkable how the very same people who demand U.S. actions against the democratically elected government in Caracas are the ones who most aggressively mock Venezuelan leaders when they point out that the U.S. is working to undermine their government. ...
Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success.
If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.
US Sanctions May Save Venezuelan Govt
Earlier this week, President Obama tried to cut out what’s left of Venezuela’s support by declaring them a “threat to national security,” with an eye on imposing a new round of economic sanctions.
For Maduro, the timing couldn’t be better, as it has brought the attention off the economy, and turned it instead onto foreign relations. It has given Maduro a new lease on life, railing against American “imperialism.”
While that doesn’t fix the economy, the imposing of US sanctions will give the government a convenient excuse, and an external enemy to rally their own supporters against.
'Kleptrocrats who run Ukraine economy will grab IMF cash & run'
Associated Press sues US State Department over Clinton emails
Legal action follows repeated requests filed under the US Freedom of Information Act and comes one day after Clinton broke her silence
The Associated Press sued the US State Department on Wednesday to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
The legal action follows repeated requests filed under the US Freedom of Information Act that have gone unfulfilled. They include one request the AP made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013. ...
The Foia requests and the suit seek materials related to her public and private calendars; correspondence involving aides likely to play important roles in her expected campaign for president; and Clinton-related emails about the Osama bin Laden raid and National Security Agency surveillance practices.
“After careful deliberation and exhausting our other options, the Associated Press is taking the necessary legal steps to gain access to these important documents, which will shed light on actions by the State Department and former Secretary Clinton, a presumptive 2016 presidential candidate, during some of the most significant issues of our time,” Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel, said.
AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll added: “The Freedom of Information Act exists to give citizens a clear view of what government officials are doing on their behalf. When that view is denied, the next resort is the courts.”
UK Needs Complete Revamp of Surveillance Laws, Official Report Finds
Sweeping new laws are needed to govern the investigative powers of Britain's spying agencies, the parliamentary committee that oversees intelligence services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ has said.
Controversially, the landmark report released on Thursday by the Intelligence and Security Committee backed the right of intelligence agencies to carry out bulk interceptions of data such as emails, as well as to monitor communications between lawyers and their clients.
But it said that lawful bulk interception of data and interception of legally privileged material must be clearly enshrined within a single parliamentary act.
Finding that existing laws have not been broken, the committee said in a statement that UK intelligence agencies "do not seek to circumvent" the rules.
However, current legislation is "unnecessarily complicated," and should be replaced by a single act of parliament, concluded the committee's 149-page report — the product of an 18-month inquiry into the legal framework governing the powers of Britain's intelligence agencies.
The report also stated that agencies must be able to intercept legally privileged client-lawyer communications.
Greece sours German relations further with demand for war reparations
Greece’s strained relations with Germany took a turn for the worse on Wednesday when Athens’ leftist-led government raised the spectre of seizing German assets for war reparations that it claimed Berlin has stubbornly refused to honour. ...
The issue of war reparations has long dogged Greek-German ties but Athens’ decision to again bring the matter to centre stage comes at a particularly sensitive time. Negotiations to keep the debt-stricken nation afloat are at a critical stage with Greece’s ability to stay solvent, and in the eurozone, almost entirely dependent on Berlin – the provider of the vast bulk of its €240bn bailout programme. ...
Anti-Greek sentiment is said to be growing by the day among German lawmakers. But anti-German feeling in Greece also appeared to have climbed as senior members of the Tsipras government railed against Berlin’s hegemony of Europe.
“Germany’s Europe has finished, [the Europe] where Germany forbids and all the other countries execute orders is over,” fumed Dimitris Stratoulis, the minister in charge of social security. “In November, when [Spain’s anti-austerity party] Podemos is elected things will be even worse for them,” he said.
Nazi occupation of Greece was among the most brutal on the continent. More than 300,000 starved to death as a result of famine, some 130,000 were executed in reprisals, while the country’s ancient Jewish community perished, almost in its entirety, in gas chambers.
CrimAdvisor - Plan Your Perfect Getaway
The Surveillance State's Greatest Enemy? The U.S. Constitution
When The Washington Post reported that 63 percent of Americans are "willing to give up personal privacy to let the federal government investigate terror threats," the polling data seemed like bad news for privacy activists and civil libertarians. But Reihan Salam argues that the 32 percent of Americans who oppose giving up privacy in the name of national security are winning. "They don’t need a majority of the electorate to embrace their position in order to achieve their goals," he writes. "They merely need a vocal, well-organized minority."
To support that analysis, he points to the experience of gun owners, who've defeated various firearms restrictions even when a majority of Americans favored them. The intensity of their pro-gun views helps them to succeed, he observed, as do their strong social bonds, facilitated by pastimes like hunting and going to gun shows, where they see other gun owners, spread political information, and channel their intense views. Gun control advocates have no equivalent social ties. ...
The NRA's most significant advantage is the 2nd Amendment. With its adoption, the Framers decided that the right to bear arms should be protected even in a future instance when a majority of the public and the legislature might feel otherwise.
Surveillance policy is comparable: 63 percent of Americans may be willing to sacrifice privacy in the War on Terrorism, but they lack the power to overturn the Fourth Amendment. Many seem to have forgotten its actual text, so here it is in full:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That is the law of the land. And the NSA is violating its letter and spirit, no matter how many times its defenders use dubious legal reasoning to argue otherwise.
In Turnaround, Swedish Supreme Court to Hear Assange Appeal
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday was granted a hearing with the Swedish Supreme Court, where his lawyers will appeal to lift an arrest warrant against the whistleblower which has kept him confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London under political asylum since June 2012.
Assange has repeatedly argued that extradition to Sweden will allow him to be sent to the U.S., where he faces espionage and conspiracy charges for his role in publishing a cache of military and State Department documents in 2010. Former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning is currently serving 35 years in prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for her part in the leak.
Assange has also said that his confinement to the embassy, now approaching three years, is a violation of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees fundamental liberty and security of person.
The court's decision on Tuesday was a turnaround from a previous appeal court ruling in November, which found that lifting the warrant would risk allowing Assange to flee legal proceedings and that his confinement to the embassy was self-imposed.
How Chicago police used marijuana to disappear young people at Homan Square
The story of Marc Freeman’s disappearance inside Chicago’s Homan Square police warehouse on a marijuana offense last year exists between the lines of his arrest report – as his time in custody was not logged on the books until he surfaced at a police station seven hours after his arrest.
At 3.35pm on 22 October 2014, Chicago police arrested Freeman for possession of about two pounds of marijuana. From there, the police report states, Freeman was “transported to Homan for further processing”. The report specifies nothing about Freeman’s time at the secretive compound save for a seeming arrival at 4.10pm, only to note that he arrived in nearby district 11 lockup at 10.32pm.
During the intervening hours, Freeman was lost to the outside world – denied, by police, any phone calls, attorney visits or a record of where he was. Shackled inside Homan Square, Freeman told the Guardian, as have 10 others, he was neither booked nor otherwise processed at a facility some have likened to the domestic equivalent of a CIA ‘black site’.
“Stephanie” encountered a similar circumstance in 2010. Even after police got all they needed from her, she recalled in interviews with the Guardian, they still cuffed her to a metal bar inside a cell at Homan Square for nearly half a day while other officers initially told her frantic siblings they didn’t know her whereabouts. ... The 12-hour ordeal for Stephanie – who did not wish to speak on the record or use her real name for fear of jeopardizing her job prospects – took place after police found one ounce of marijuana in her car.
These two stories, four years apart, indicate how police units operating out of Homan Square hold people incommunicado for hours on non-violent marijuana offenses to get them to confess or implicate others. Freeman’s experience, just five months old, contradicts Chicago police assurances that all Homan Square detentions and interrogations are sufficiently documented – and reveals what a disappearance inside the police warehouse sounds like when translated into the bureaucratic language of an arrest report.
Madison: protesters march over Tony Robinson's death
About 1,000 people have marched to the gates of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s mansion to protest about the death of 19 year-old Tony Robinson, who was shot dead by police in Madison last Friday. The protests marked the fifth day of continuous action since Robinson’s death.
The crowd briefly shut down traffic on Madison’s busy East Washington Avenue and stopped outside the Wisconsin corrections department head office in a protest that remained peaceful throughout.
Members of Robinson’s family were present on the march. The 19-year-old’s grandmother, Sharon Irwin, described him as “great, he was goofy, he was funny, he was loving and he was kind’.
“This is a very hard time for us,” she added.
His mother, Andrea Irwin, also addressed the crowd, which had first gathered at Worthington Park before making the three-mile trip to Walker’s mansion at the village of Maple Bluff, just outside the state capital.
“My son was never a violent man. And I don’t want violence done in his name,” she said.
“I want to make a change. I don’t want my son to have died in vain.”
Eyewitness to Ferguson Police Shooting: Gunfire Did Not Come from Area of Nonviolent Protest
Ferguson police duo shot during protest were seriously injured, officers say
Two police officers have been shot in Ferguson, Missouri, as a small demonstration wound down in the city gripped by unrest since the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old last year.
One officer from St Louis County and another from Webster Groves were struck soon after midnight on Wednesday as they stood outside the Ferguson police headquarters, St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said at a press conference early on Thursday morning.
“These police officers were standing there and they were shot, just because they were police officers,” said Belmar, who added that the officers sustained serious gunshot wounds.
The Webster Groves officer, a 32-year-old who has worked in the department for five years, was shot in the face, according to Belmar. The St Louis County officer, who is 41 and a 17-year law-enforcement veteran, was shot in the shoulder, he said.
Unjust Public Policies Drive the Massive Racial Wealth Gap in America: Study
The yawning racial wealth gap in the United States is no accident, but rather, driven by unjust public policy decisions—from the re-segregation of education to the redlining of home ownership to poverty wages, according to a new analysis by Brandeis University and the public policy organization Demos.
Inequalities are vast, note the researchers. For example, Census data shows that, in 2011, median white households in the U.S. held $111,146 in wealth, compared to a mere $7,113 for Black homes and $8,348 for Latino ones.
These disparities emerge from historical choices on the political and policy levels, the researchers note.
"The racial wealth gap is large because we instituted it in public policy historically and continue to make public policies that exacerbate the problems," said report coauthor Catherine Ruetschlin, a senior policy analyst at Demos, in a press statement. Therefore, it is vital "to find new opportunities to address the way that we’re constantly perpetuating this disparity between black, white and Latino families," Ruetschlin continued.
Off the Deep End: The Wall Street Bonus Pool and Low-Wage Workers
The financial industry’s 2014 bonuses were double the combined earnings of all Americans who work full-time at the federal minimum wage.
Wall Street banks handed out $28.5 billion in bonuses to their 167,800 employees last year, up 3 percent over 2013, according to new figures from the New York State Comptroller. These annual bonuses are an extra reward on top of base salaries in the securities industry, which averaged $190,970 in 2013. ...
The $28.5 billion in bonuses doled out to Wall Street employees is double the annual pay for all 1,007,000 Americans who work full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Wall Street bonuses rose 3 percent last year, despite a 4.5 percent decline in industry profits. The size of the bonus pool was 27% higher than in 2009, the last time Congress increased the minimum wage. ...
The bonus pool is so large it would be far more than enough to lift all 2.9 million restaurant servers and bartenders, all 1.5 million home health and personal care aides, or all 2.2 million fast food preparation and serving workers up to $15 per hour.
Wall Street bonus season may coincide with an uptick in luxury goods sales, but a raise in the minimum wage would give America’s economy a much greater boost. To meet basic needs, low-wage workers tend to spend nearly every dollar they make. The wealthy can afford to squirrel away more of their earnings.
All those dollars low-wage workers spend create an economic ripple effect. Based on standard fiscal multipliers established by Moody’s Analytics, every extra dollar going into the pockets of a high-income American only adds about $0.39 to the GDP. By contrast, every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers adds about $1.21 to the national economy.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature from the Masses: an article by Jack Reed, "The Worst Thing in Europe"
Tune in at 2pm!
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With TPP at 'Make-or-Break Point,' Fast Track Foes Prepare for Battle
The 12-nation, corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership "is at a make-or-break point," according to Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, who said that if the U.S. is able to overcome opposition from leading figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the deal could be inked within weeks. ...
Stakeholders in the U.S. who have lined up against the agreement also see the next few weeks as a critical turning point in the fight over Fast Track and the so-called "free trade" deals that authority is designed to promote.
"We are going all out to oppose it: phone banks, leaf letting, door knocks in various congressional districts and Senate states in informing the general public, and we will continue this until we are successful in defeating it," AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said during a reporter roundtable on Tuesday.
Should the trade agreement go through despite vociferous public opposition, "It will adversely affect the way working people view this administration and all those in the Democratic Party for a long time," Trumka said. Democrats under pressure from the White House to support it should remember that the president won't be on the ballot in 2016, he added. "He isn't running again, they are."
Bernie Sanders Blasts “Robin Hood in Reverse” Subsidies to the Rich, Calls for Full Employment
Sanders called for an end to socialism for the rich, or what he calls “Robin Hood in reverse” and demanded the government do more to promote job creation and better wages.
The fact that a speech like this is noteworthy is a testament to how the Democratic party has become a pro-corporate venture which generously allows women, gays, Hispanics, and people of color to join in the looting.
The Evening Greens
Water shortages are coming. It's time for us to act
Most Americans take water for granted. It’s a resource that people assume will always be accessible, available, and consumable. For most people in this country, whether they’re at a public drinking fountain, a restaurant or at home, water is a commodity considered to be at our constant beck and call – but for how much longer?
America’s water supply is in crisis and, if we don’t act now, we face an imperiled future. The latest news last week, that California faces its fourth year of drought, illustrates this point powerfully. California is witnessing year-on-year drought conditions with decreasing precipitation and increasing heat. This is a potential death knell for fisheries, the agricultural industry, and municipal water supplies. Other states may soon face similar conditions.
America is entering a new phase of “peak water”, the point at which freshwater is being consumed faster than it is replenished. Already, 40 state water managers expect water shortages to occur in their states over the next 10 years.
Nearly one in 10 watersheds, an area of land where water drains into one place, are stressed by the impact of arid conditions. Over 80% of continental US is abnormally dry and, with 2014 going down as the hottest year on record, we can expect even drier conditions to become more common. ...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that increased collaboration between federal, state, and local water authorities would strengthen state water management activities. ... The Cartwright Peak Water Resolution has been introduced in the House of Representatives in response to the GAO report. It calls for prioritizing the National Water Availability and Use Assessment program, provisioned in the Secure Water Act, with the same sense of urgency that characterized our mission to put a man on the moon. ...
The possibility that we are approaching the point of peak water is real and demands quick action.
Four Years After Fukushima Disaster, Radiation Dangers Remain Unknown
Four Years Since Fukushima, Calls Grow for Nuclear-Free World
Four years since disaster struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011—with nightmare yet to abate—the call for a future beyond nuclear power also continues.
In the wake of the three reactor core meltdowns, which were triggered when the plant was hit by a tsunami stemming from a 9.0 earthquake, widespread nuclear contamination remains. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, continues to wrestle with how to contain increasing amounts of radioactive water, which was pumped in to cool the melted fuel rods within the reactors.
Roughly 500,000 tons of tainted water needs to be disposed of, threatening unknown environmental impacts in the region, while radioactive water continues to seep, and is dumped, into the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, 250,000 Japanese citizens remain in temporary housing. Despite this, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues to insist that nuclear energy is an essential part of the country's energy future.
Kendra Ulrich, global energy campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, argues that instead of pushing to restart its reactors, the Japanese government should look to its own country as an example of how "we do not need to accept this dirty, dangerous, and outdated technology—neither to keep the lights on nor to meet carbon reduction targets."
"As of the fourth Fukushima Daiichi disaster anniversary, the country will be nearly a year and a half without a single reactor online—and not a single blackout or brownout as a result," Ulrich notes.
Refinery product spilled in Manitoba CN train derailment
Thirteen cars on a Canadian National Railway Co train went off the tracks in rural Manitoba on Wednesday night and spilled some petroleum product on the ground in the company's third derailment in a week.
There were no injuries and no threat to the public from the latest derailment, CN spokesman Brent Kossey said on Thursday. The train was carrying refinery cracking stock, which spilled from one car.
Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt used the accident to reiterate her calls from earlier in the week that the company should be called to answer questions before a parliamentary committee.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hungry in Cleveland: if the economy's improving, where's all the food?
The battle to be Israel’s conscience
'They come, they photograph, but don’t help': how ecotourism in the Amazon shortchanges the locals
Stop the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical safety for the 21st Century Act
Fox News "doctor" calls transpeople bullies -- State Legislators reveal the real bullies
A Little Night Music
James Cotton w/ Luther Tucker - Eyesight to the Blind
Snooky Pryor w/Luther Tucker - Fire, Fire
Luther Tucker - Luther's Tribute To Elmore
Charlie Musselwhite, Luther Tucker, Bobby Murray - Roll Me Mama
Charlie Musselwhite, Luther Tucker, Bobby Murray
Louis Myers, Luther Tucker, Dave Myers, Al Duncan and Honey Piazza - Tribute Little Walter - Mean Black Spider
Louis Myers, Luther Tucker, Dave Myers, Al Duncan, Rod and Honey Piazza - Tribute Little Walter - Crazy 'Bout You Baby
Jimmy Rogers, Louis Myers, Luther Tucker, Dave Myers, Al Duncan, Rod Piazza and Honey Piazza - You So Sweet
Eddie Taylor w/ Luther Tucker - Bad Boy
Jimmy Rogers, Luther Tucker & James Cotton - Walking By Myself
Luther Tucker - Sweet Home Chicago
Little Walter w/Luther Tucker - It Aint Right
Little Walter w/Luther Tucker - You Don't Know
Luther Tucker - War Boy
James Cotton w/ Luther Tucker - Blow wind
Little Walter w/Luther Tucker - Worried Life
Sonny Boy Williamson w/Luther Tucker - Fattening Frogs for Snakes
Snooky Pryor w/Luther Tucker - Boogie Twist
Luther Tucker - Keep On Drinking
James Cotton w/Luther Tucker - Off The Wall
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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