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 Texas bluesman Juke Boy Bonner. Enjoy!
Juke Boy Bonner - Mojo Hand/Rock Me Mama/I'm A Bluesman
"FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real"
-- unknown origin
News and Opinion
No Actual Threat, But US Ratchets Up Security for July 4th
While conceding there is no specific threat, nor evidence of any ongoing plot, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are both issuing warnings about terrorist plots on the Fourth of July, and Rep. Michael McCaul (R – TX) predicted several “small scare ISIS attacks” that day.
Terrorists have not used July 4 as a particular date to carry out attacks in the past years of the over decade-long terror war, and officials offered no particular reasoning for why this year should be any different,though some maintained that the 4th is such a “powerful”holiday ISIS would be desperate to attack it.
Not that officials are going to let the lack of evidence spoil their security crackdown, as the FBI sets up command centers across the country to prepare for increased police deployments nationwide, just in case.
Bulk Phone Surveillance Lives Again, to Die in a More Orderly Fashion in Five Months
A federal judge with the top-secret surveillance court on Monday breezily reinstated the NSA bulk domestic surveillance program that was temporarily halted a month ago, allowing the agency to go back to hoovering up telephone metadata for five months while it unwinds the program for good.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Michael W. Mosman wrote in his ruling, using the French phrase that means “the more things change, the more they stay the same” to summarize the legislative and judicial back-and-forth that led to the temporary reinstatement.
By failing to agree on how to reauthorize certain sections of the Patriot Act, the Senate on May 31 engaged in a rare act of rebellion against the surveillance state, forcing the National Security Agency to shutter the program that had collected telephone metadata — information about who called who, and for how long — for more than a decade, until NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed its existence in 2013.
Two days later, however, the Senate passed a milquetoast surveillance reform bill that ordered the bulk collection program phased out by November 29, to be replaced by one in which the NSA has to request specific records, and explain why.
That led to Monday’s paradoxical decision to revive bulk collection so it can die again, theoretically in a more orderly fashion.
Hillary Clinton’s Failed Libya ‘Doctrine’
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fancied the violent 2011 “regime change” in Libya such a triumph that her aides discussed labeling it the start of a “Clinton Doctrine,” according to recently released emails that urged her to claim credit when longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was deposed. And Clinton did celebrate when Gaddafi was captured and murdered.
“We came; we saw; he died,” Clinton exulted in a TV interview after receiving word of Gaddafi’s death on Oct. 20, 2011, though it is not clear how much she knew about the grisly details, such as Gaddafi being sodomized with a knife before his execution.
Since then, the cascading Libyan chaos has turned the “regime change” from a positive notch on Clinton’s belt and into a black mark on her record. That violence has included the terrorist slaying of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. diplomatic personnel in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, and jihadist killings across northern Africa, including the Islamic State’s decapitation of a group of Coptic Christians last February.
It turns out that Gaddafi’s warning about the need to crush Islamic terrorism in Libya’s east was well-founded although the Obama administration cited it as the pretext to justify its “humanitarian intervention” against Gaddafi. The vacuum created by the U.S.-led destruction of Gaddafi and his army drew in even more terrorists and extremists, forcing the United States and Western nations to abandon their embassies in Tripoli a year ago.
One could argue that those who devised and implemented the disastrous Libyan “regime change” – the likes of Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power – should be almost disqualified from playing any future role in U.S. foreign policy. Instead, Clinton is the Democratic frontrunner to succeed Barack Obama as President and Power was promoted from Obama’s White House staff to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations — where she is at the center of other dangerous U.S. initiatives in seeking “regime change” in Syria and pulling off “regime change” in Ukraine.
The Defense Department’s Indefensible Position on Killing Human Shields
The Defense Department apparently thinks that it may lawfully kill an unlimited number of civilians forced to serve as involuntary human shields in order to achieve even a trivial military advantage. According to the DOD’s recently released Law of War Manual, harm to human shields, no matter how extensive, cannot render an attack unlawfully disproportionate. The Manual draws no distinction between civilians who voluntarily choose to serve as human shields and civilians who are involuntarily forced to serve as human shields. The Manual draws no distinction between civilians who actively shield combatants carrying out an attack and civilians who passively shield military objectives from attack. Finally, the Manual draws no distinction between civilians whose presence creates potential physical obstacles to military operations and civilians whose presence creates potential legal obstacles to military operations. According to the Manual, all of these count for nothing in determining proportionality under international law. ...
The Manual cites no basis in treaty, custom, or scholarship for its position. Nor could it do so. As is well known, Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions immediately follows its prohibition on the use of human shields with an unequivocal statement that “[a]ny violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population.” Yet, according to the Manual, if a defending force violates the prohibition on using civilians as involuntary human shields then the attacking force is, in effect, released from its obligation not to inflict excessive incidental harm on those civilians.
Of course, the United States is not a signatory to Protocol I. However, the United States is bound by customary international law, one principle of which is that international humanitarian law (IHL) applies unconditionally to each party to an armed conflict irrespective of the conduct of opposing parties. If the DOD thinks that unlawful conduct by our adversaries releases us from our obligations under customary international law, it is badly mistaken.
Killing civilians to vanquish Isis will only make besieged people hate us
Advocates for even more war in the Middle East apparently have a new strategy for defeating Isis: allow the US military to kill more civilians. If you think I’m exaggerating, just read their deranged and pathological arguments for yourself.
It began in late May when the New York Times reported that both Iraqi and American officials started complaining the US was too worried about killing civilians, suggesting that the Obama administration shouldn’t be worried that indiscriminately killing innocent people might turn the Iraqi population even more against the US than it already is. (Nevermind that it could be considered a war crime.) As the Times’s Eric Schmitt wrote: “many Iraqi commanders and some American officers say that exercising such prudence with airstrikes is a major reason the Islamic State, also known as Isis or Daesh, has been able to seize vast territory in recent months in Iraq and Syria.”
US News and World Report’s Paul Shinkman took this to a new extreme this week in an article entitled “Iraqi Civilians Will Die: US Must Get Used to It, Experts Say.” Shinkman quoted multiple “experts” who were apparently upset the US military was investigating one of its own bombings due to credible reports that civilians were killed. Given the US government took months to admit that they had killed even one civilian in Iraq or Syria, the fact they are willing to investigate it at all should tell you something about its validity. Admitting the US cares about civilian deaths only “complicate[s] the war effort,” he writes. Shinkman ended his piece – after claiming that the firebombing of Dresden and the millions of civilians killed in Vietnam were merely “part of the cost of waging warfare” – by essentially lamenting that US military members are attempting to avoiding collateral deaths:
For now, it seems clear to some that no pilots are willing to venture beyond their strict orders to find and kill the enemy.
“In this environment, nobody wants to get investigated, nobody wants to be on the wrong side of the rules of engagement,” Harmer says. “The pilots are only going to want to attack a target that has been clearly identified by somebody else.”
If only pilots would stop focusing on killing the enemy and start carpet-bombing entire cities, then we could get somewhere!
US fight against ISIS nears $3 billion
The U.S. has spent nearly $3 billion in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Pentagon said in an update Tuesday.
As of June 18, the total cost of operations since last August is $2.91 billion, Pentagon spokesman Bill Urban said.
The average cost per day of $9.2 million has ticked up slightly since the last updatein early June, Urban added. At that time, the average daily cost was about $9.1 million.
Turkey Planning Next Move After ISIS Commits Massacre in Kobani
Ban urges global community to help Syria end ‘cataclysmic conflict’
The international community should be ashamed that three years since the adoption of the Geneva Communiqué on Syria, the Middle Eastern country’s “cataclysmic conflict” continues unabated, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.
In a statement released by his spokesperson’s office this afternoon, the Secretary-General lamented the lack of movement by global actors towards resolving the four year-long civil war in which more than 200,000 Syrians have been killed and millions more displaced.
“The suffering of the Syrian people continues to plumb new depths,” Mr. Ban declared.
US churches vote on joining BDS movement targeting Israel
The international movement to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians has received backing from one of the largest Protestant churches in the US, as two other major denominations prepare to vote on whether or not to divest money from the Jewish state.
The United Church of Christ’s general assembly on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of divesting funds at its synod in Cleveland. Further votes by the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Church USA were expected on Tuesday night and Wednesday.
Inspired by the sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa, the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) campaign, encourages organizations and institutions such as universities and churches to divest from Israel until “the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel” have been recognized.
Is Puerto Rico America’s Greece? U.S. Commonwealth Seeks Bankruptcy Help in Face of Crushing Debt
Obama Tries to Soften European Creditors’ Stance to Salvage a Deal
President Obama said Tuesday that he was trying to prod European leaders to salvage a deal to keep Greece in the eurozone, even as his government was bracing for the possible consequences of a once unimaginable divorce.
“It is an issue of substantial concern,” Mr. Obama said just hours before Greece missed a debt payment to the International Monetary Fund of 1.5 billion euros, or about $1.72 billion. “I’ve spoken to my European counterparts, encouraging them to find a path towards a resolution.”
The comments reflected escalating efforts by his administration — which is on the sidelines of the Greek debt crisis but is increasingly anxious about its ramifications — to prevail on European leaders to relax some of their demands on Greece in the interest of finding a resolution.
Things are likely to get worse for Greece before they get any better
Decisions that will shape Greece's future are being made in Frankfurt
When Alistair Darling was faced with the hair-raising news in autumn 2008 that Royal Bank of Scotland was on the brink of being forced to close Britain’s cash machines, there was never a serious doubt that, whatever Mervyn King’s moral qualms, the Bank of England’s job was to underpin the UK’s financial system as “lender of last resort”.
Yanis Varoufakis and his colleagues in Athens have also faced the prospect of a total financial collapse this week – but key decisions about whether, and on what terms, to prop up its struggling banks are being taken thousands of miles away in Frankfurt. ...
Bank branches are already closed, a powerful symbol to Greek citizens of a government that has lost control of events. But Tsipras and Varoufakis know that without support from the European Central Bank, capital controls and withdrawal limits would just be the start. The Syriza government faced presiding over total financial collapse.
As the Greek bank run continued in recent weeks, the ECB had repeatedly extended the ceiling for its crisis loan scheme, known as emergency liquidity assistance (ELA), which permits the Greek central bank to prop up Greek lenders.
When the ECB opted to leave the ELA ceiling unchanged on Sunday, it didn’t amount to pulling the plug on the banks, but it sent the message that Frankfurt – and by extension Brussels – would be willing to watch the Greek banking sector fail.
Tsipras Signals Greece May Accept Bailout Terms
An unexpected new effort by Greece to compromise with its creditors on a bailout package prompted a cool response from most of the rest of Europe on Wednesday as the financial pressures on Athens intensified and efforts to find a way out of the crisis remained chaotic.
On another day of twists and turns, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government reversed course and said it would be willing to accept many of the terms of a bailout package that it had previously rejected, if they are part of a broader deal to address the country’s funding needs for the next two years.
While reviving hopes for a deal to end Greece’s latest financial crisis, the seeming reversal by Mr. Tsipras further underscored the confusion over his strategy as well as over where the monthslong muddle of negotiations now stood. The sudden turn of events raised questions about what offer was actually still on the table for Greece, whether Mr. Tsipras would still go ahead with a referendum scheduled for Sunday on a deal and, if so, what deal Greeks would actually be voting on.
Greek debt: Merkel dismisses Tsipras's last-ditch compromise plan
Germany has dismissed a last-ditch compromise plan from Greece that bowed to some key demands of its creditors.
In an address to the Bundestag, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated her stance that there was no point in having talks with the government of Alexis Tsipras before a referendum in Greece on an EU bailout plan.
“The door to talks with the Greek government has always been, and remains, open,” she said, but added that talks could not take place before Sunday’s poll. ...
Greece is insolvent and almost bankrupt after five years of €240bn (£170bn) in European bailouts dried up at the stroke of midnight and it became the first EU member to default on its creditors. On Tuesday, Greece missed a deadline to make a €1.5bn (£1.1bn) payment to the International Monetary Fund, dealing a blow to a Europe committed to the irreversibility of its 16-year-old single currency.
Shortly before it slid into default, Greece wrote to its creditors to elaborate on an earlier request for a two-year €29bn loan from the eurozone’s €500bn crisis fund. The Tsipras government indicated it was ready to accept a large part of its creditors’ demands, but asked for concessions on VAT reform and pensions.
Greece sticks with bailout referendum with fiscal lifeline talks in the balance
Greece’s prime minister vowed Wednesday to stick with plans for a referendum on the cuts demanded to receive a financial rescue, even as powerful lenders led by Germany insisted that all talks are frozen until the outcome of the vote.
The renewed commitment to holding the planned Sunday plebiscite came amid sharply mixed messages from the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, that could further frustrate European partners and deepen rifts in Greece as the financial blows mounted. ...
Tsipras appeared to open room for significant concessions in the cash-for-cutbacks standoff, suggesting he could agree with the painful belt-tightening measures he once scorned.
But at the same time, he stood behind his plans for the referendum and urged Greeks to reject the European Union’s demands, which include raising taxes and further trimming pensions.
Greece, he said in an afternoon address to the nation, will be back at the negotiating table after the referendum, seeking “better terms for the Greek people.”
Greek pensioners queue at dawn as banks allow a €120 withdrawal
Greek pensioners began queuing before dawn at up to 1,000 banks around the country which opened on Wednesday to let them collect the €120 (£85) they will be allowed this week.
Hours after Greece’s bailout programme with its creditors expired and the country became the first in the developed world to miss an IMF loan repayment, Greek pensioners without debit cards were at last able to withdraw some cash. ...
Banks are due to remain closed all week after the Greek government imposed capital controls following the decision by the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, to call a referendum on Sunday on whether to accept the demands that lenders insist must be met before they will release fresh bailout funds to stop a Greek default.
Long queues formed through the night on Sunday as anxious Greeks withdrew their cash. ATMs had been replenished and reopened by Monday afternoon, but Greek account holders are now limited to withdrawals of €60 a day (in practice, many are finding it hard to take out more than €50 because of a growing shortage of €20 notes).
Large numbers of pensioners, however, do not use bank cards and rely instead on deposit books – so have been unable to withdraw any money at all. Many were further frustrated by a string of finance ministry announcements, each reducing the amount they would be allowed to take out.
Keiser Report: Greece! Start Fresh
Why I set up the Greek bailout crowdfund - Thom Feeney
I set up the crowdfunding campaign to support the Greek bailout because I was fed up with the dithering of our politicians. Every time a solution to bail out Greece is delayed, it’s a chance for politicians to posture and display their power, but during this time the real effect is on the people of Greece.
I wondered, could the people of Europe just have a crack at fixing this? Less talk, more direct action. If we want to sort it, let’s JFDI (just effing do it)! On Tuesday, between leaving for work and returning home, the crowdfunding page had raised over €200,000 in around six hours, which was incredible. This isn’t just about raising the cash, though. In providing the perks, we would be stimulating the Greek economy through trade – buying Greek products and employing Greeks to source and send the perks out.
The way to help a struggling economy is by investment and stimulus – not austerity and cuts. This crowdfunding is a reaction to the bullying of the Greek people by European politicians, but it could easily be about British politicians bullying the people of the north of England, Scotland and Wales. I want the people of Europe to realise that there is another option to austerity, despite what David Cameron and Angela Merkel tell you.
The reaction has been tremendous, I’ve received thousands of goodwill message and as I write almost €630,000 has been pledged by more than 38,000 donors. Many Greek people are messaging me to say how overjoyed they are to hear that real people around Europe care about them. It must be hard when you think the rest of the continent is against you.
After Marriage Equality & Obamacare, Mixed Results from SCOTUS on Abortion, Pollution, Executions
US police killings headed for 1,100 this year, with black Americans twice as likely to die
Police in the United States are killing people at a rate that would result in 1,100 fatalities by the end of this year, according to a Guardian investigation, which recorded an average of three people killed per day during the first half of 2015. ...
In total, 478 of those people were shot and killed, while 31 died after being shocked by a Taser, 16 died after being struck by police vehicles, and 19 – including 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – have died after altercations in police custody.
When adjusted to accurately reflect the US population, the totals indicate that black people are being killed by police at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic or Latino people. Black people killed by police were also significantly more likely to have been unarmed. ...
The US government does not currently keep a comprehensive record of people killed by police. Instead the FBI runs a voluntary program for law enforcement agencies to submit numbers of “justified homicides” if they choose.
Forecasting how the total number of officer-involved deaths will stand at the end of 2015 and how this compares with past years is complicated by the fact that a comprehensive count for an entire year, taking into account seasonal changes and other variables, has not yet been produced.
Farewell to America
For the past couple of years the summers, like hurricanes, have had names. Not single names like Katrina or Floyd – but full names like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Like hurricanes, their arrival was both predictable and predicted, and yet somehow, when they landed, the effect was still shocking.
We do not yet know the name that will be attached to this particular season. He is still out there, playing Call of Duty, finding a way to feed his family or working to pay off his student loans. He (and it probably will be a he) has no idea that his days are numbered; and we have no idea what the number of those days will be.
The precise alchemy that makes one particular death politically totemic while others go unmourned beyond their families and communities is not quite clear. Video helps, but is not essential. Some footage of cops rolling up like death squads and effectively executing people who posed no real threat has barely pricked the popular imagination. When the authorities fail to heed community outrage, or substantively investigate, let alone discipline, the police, the situation can become explosive. An underlying, ongoing tension between authorities and those being policed has been a factor in some cases. So, we do not know quite why his death will capture the political imagination in a way that others will not.
But we do know, with gruesome certainty, that his number will come up – that one day he will be slain in cold blood by a policeman (once again it probably will be a man) who is supposed to protect him and his community. ... Another season of black parents grieving, police chiefs explaining and clueless anchors opining. Another season when America has to be reminded that black lives matter because black deaths at the hands of the state have been accepted as routine for so long. A summer ripe for rage.
Cornel West on Bernie Sanders, Michael Eric Dyson, Trans Rights, and B.B. King
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on Day 5 of the Convention of Industrial Unionists.
Tune in at 2pm!
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The American housing crisis threatening to put us all on the streets
On Monday, New York City took a dramatic step that highlights just how out of control rental housing costs have become in the Big Apple and in many cities nationwide. For the first time, New York froze rents for one-year leases on a million rent-stabilized apartments. ...
Landlords balked and citicized City Hall, calling the move an “unconscionable, politically driven decision.” But Rent Board chair Rachel Godsil was having none of it. Her staff had found that landlord incomes had grown for nine years in a row, including by 3.4 percent last year, while costs only grew by 0.5 percent. In contrast, a majority of most stabilized renters faced continuing income stagnation.
New York City’s struggle with affordable rental housing is part of a nationwide trend that has seen rental housing costs skyrocket in recent years as the housing market has mostly recovered from the 2008 recession, which was in part fueled by real estate speculation and Wall Street aggressively repackaging and reselling risky high-interest mortgages.
According to a new study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, vast stretches of the county are facing a rental housing crisis marked by big rent spikes. “The number of cost-burdened renters [paying more than 30 percent of incomes]… set a new high in 2013 of 20.8 million, totaling just under half of all renter households,” Harvard researchers found. “Although the number of severely burdened renters edged down slightly, the number of moderately burdened renters climbed by a larger amount.”
Most low to moderate income households are feeling a very big pinch. The researchers said that 80 percent of households with annual incomes under $15,000, three-quarters of renters with incomes up between $15,000 and $29,999, and 45 percent of households earning up to $44,999, are all “severely burdened,” with non-whites and single mothers facing the greatest financial stress.
SCOTUS Case Could Bring "Right to Work" to All 50 States
The Supreme Court has decided to take up a case that could have major repercussions for public sector unions. In the case Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association the plaintiffs are arguing for the overturning of a current law that requires workers to pay fees for union representation even if they are not members. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, the public sector jobs sector nationwide could become, quote-unquote, a right to work.
Hat tip Besame:
Flatworm Reproduces by Using its Penis to Inject Sperm Into its Head
The flatworm, Macrostomum hystrix, is able to use this reproductive strategy as they have both male and female sex organs. Though this produces ‘inbred’ offspring, it’s still better than not being able to reproduce at all, researchers suggest.
Normally, these flatworms reproduce by exchanging sperm with others using their stylet – a sharp, needle-like protrusion – to penetrate their partner’s outer body membrane in a process that scientists describe as ‘traumatic insemination.’
Denouncing 'Corporate Democrats,' Labor Leader Joins Sanders' Campaign
Larry Cohen, the labor leader and outgoing president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), is officially backing Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign—at least in part thanks to Hillary Clinton.
Cohen will reportedly serve as an unpaid volunteer for the U.S. senator from Vermont, who is running on a platform of progressive issues like workers' rights and campaign finance reform, among others.
Cohen told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that he made his choice after Clinton, who is currently the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, continued to evade questions from the media and consumer watchdogs over her stance on Trade Promotion Authority, also known as Fast Track—a bill that gives President Barack Obama expanded power to push pro-corporate agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress without input or amendments from lawmakers.
[For more, see bobswern's diary. - js]
The Evening Greens
It's Official: New York State Bans Fracking
The state of New York officially banned fracking on Monday, following up on promise made by Governor Andrew Cuomo last December to prohibit use of the controversial drilling technique. ...
The state's Department of Environmental Conservation conducted seven years of review of the economic and environmental impacts of fracking. The agency concluded that fracking could diminish freshwater resources, cause soil erosion, contaminate groundwater supplies, disturb wildlife, and result in higher greenhouse gas emissions. The report also found that the expected employment, income, and tax brought about by natural gas development in the state would be substantially less than originally projected, especially when taking into account the mitigation efforts that would be required to balance environmental damage.
The southern part of New York sits atop a portion of the Marcellus Shale formation, the largest natural gas field in the country, extending from Ohio and West Virginia into Pennsylvania and New York.
Alberta's New Climate Plan Seen as a Meaningful First Step
Tar sands' carbon emissions will continue to rise, but the province's new government signals a change in direction.
The newly elected government in the Canadian province of Alberta announced what it called "important first steps" to rein in the province's growing emissions of greenhouse gases. It vowed to tighten its existing regulations, raise its carbon price modestly, and promised new rules governing the oil and gas sector.
But it appears that the new approach, like the old one that was about to expire, would allow carbon dioxide emissions from Alberta’s gigantic tar sands operations to keep rising, at least for the time being.
Tar sands emissions are the main reason for Canada's failure to achieve its past promises to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists have said that tar sands are so dirty that almost all reserves ought to be left in the ground if the world is going to stay within a carbon budget keeping global warming within relatively safe limits.
Once Alberta's new rules are phased in, tar sands oil producers (and other large industrial polluters) would have to cut their per-barrel emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent or pay a fine of $30 on each ton of excess carbon dioxide.
Previously, the emissions goal was 12 percent and the fee was $15. Companies that do better than their target can earn credits and sell them to others.
This kind of formula is not as strict as a true carbon tax like British Columbia's, which imposes a $30 levy on every ton of pollution, nor as rigorous as a cap-and-trade approach which sets an absolute limit on the amount of pollution and lowers it over time.
Alberta's next steps, officials said, would come after a few months of consultations led by Andrew Leach, a university professor specializing in energy economics.
He called the province’s tightening "a meaningful increase in stringency."
The government said its new rules would be expanded in time for Canada to present them to international negotiators before the climate talks in Paris in December.
Following Dutch Footsteps, Activists to Sue Aussie Government on Climate
Signaling the global implications of last week's historic Dutch court ruling—the first in the world to use human rights as a legal basis to protect citizens against greenhouse gas emissions and global warming—environmentalists in Australia are reportedly preparing to launch a similar legal challenge against Prime Minister Tony Abbott's government for its notorious inaction on climate change.
In response to a lawsuit filed by the Amsterdam-based environmental nonprofit Urgenda Foundation along with over 800 Dutch citizens, the Hague District Court ruled last Wednesday that the government has a legal duty to reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2020. It marked the first time a court has determined the appropriate emissions-reduction target for a state, based on the duty of care owed to its people. ...
Abbott is facing calls for increased climate accountability from many fronts. On Monday, a coalition of environmental, public health, labor, business, and socially responsible investment groups known as the Australian Climate Roundtable came together to declare: "Australia should play its fair part in these efforts while maintaining and increasing its prosperity."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Fear Alert: US Press Unquestioningly Spread Predictions of ISIS Attacks on July 4th Holiday
Does Clinton Rival Martin O’Malley Have an Email Scandal of His Own?
Hat tip mimi:
Higher education wears the cloak of liberalism, but in policy and practice, it's a cutthroat system of exploitation
EuroZone Profiteers: How German and French Banks Helped Bankrupt Greece
Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default
The most basic brand of respect
A Little Night Music
Juke Boy Bonner - Running Shoes
Juke Boy Bonner - Houston, The Action Town
Juke Boy Bonner - Gimme Some Boone's Farm
Juke Boy Bonner - Struggle Here In Houston
Juke Boy Bonner - Mr Downchild
Juke Boy Bonner - Well Baby
Juke Boy Bonner - Life Gave Me A Dirty Deal
Juke Boy Bonner - Talkin' About Lightnin'
Juke Boy Bonner - Live My Trouble On Down
Juke Boy Bonner - Ridin' The Greyhound Bus Again
Juke Boy Bonner - Let's boogie
Juke Boy Bonner - Going Crazy Over You
Juke Boy Bonner - Life's Journey
Juke Boy Bonner - Sad, Sad Sound
Juke Boy Bonner - Rock With Me Baby