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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 blues singer and harmonica player Big Daddy Kinsey. Enjoy!
Big Daddy Kinsey - Mannish Boy
“The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil possessed of U.S. citizenship have become “Americanized” the racial strains are undiluted. It then follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today. There are indications that these were organized and ready for concerted action at a favorable opportunity. The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken...”
-- Lt. General John L. DeWitt’s Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942, and the government’s brief to the Supreme Court defending Ex. Order 9066.
News and Opinion
Top officials charged with violating constitution with 9/11 detainee abuse
A US appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a claim against former attorney general John Ashcroft and other justice department officials, stemming from the abuse of Arab and Muslim men and others detained for months in New York and New Jersey after the September 11 attacks.
The unusual decision cleared the way for once-anonymous plaintiffs to advance charges that the top officials in the justice department had violated their constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. The suit seeks class-action status for all detainees similarly abused.
A lower court had found that Ashcroft and his co-defendants, former FBI director Robert Mueller and former INS commissioner James Ziglar, had not been sufficiently linked to the abuse of detainees to support the plaintiffs’ claims.
In its reversal of that decision, the US court of appeals for the second circuit asserted that the justice department officials had put policies into place that were conducive to the abuse, that they knew the abuse was happening and that they knew the detainees weren’t terrorism suspects.
“It might well be that national security concerns motivated the defendants to take action, but that is of little solace to those who felt the brunt of that decision,” the court wrote. “The suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were caught up in the hysteria of the days immediately following 9/11 is not without a remedy.”
Hayden Mocks Extent of Post-Snowden Reform: “And This Is It After Two Years? Cool!”
Former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden on Monday marveled at the puny nature of the surveillance reforms put in place two years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed a vast expansion of intrusive U.S. government surveillance at home and abroad.
Hayden mocked the loss of the one program that was reined in — the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata information about domestic phone calls — calling it “that little 215 program.”
And he said if someone had told him two years ago that the only effect of the Snowden revelations would be losing it, his reaction would have been: “Cool!”
Here is the video and the full text of his remarks.
New Senate Bill Would Require Warrants for Federal Aerial Surveillance
A bill intended to reassert individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to aerial surveillance operations was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday.
The Protecting Individuals From Mass Aerial Surveillance Act, introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Dean Heller, R-Nev, would require federal agencies to obtain a warrant before conducting aerial surveillance operations.
Any unlawfully collected information would be inadmissible in court and the government would be prohibited from identifying individuals who show up incidentally in aerial surveillance coverage unless there is probable cause to believe those individuals have committed a crime.
As the Associated Press reported June 2, the FBI alone has flown at least 50 surveillance planes in 11 states since late April for ongoing investigations without court approval.
Congressional Intel Sharing Ban Would Prevent German NSA Probe
A new notice from the Office of Management and Budget is objecting strongly to language in the newest intelligence funding bill which would ban any intelligence sharing with foreign countries, saying the language imperils foreign relations on several fronts.
The biggest near-term problem would be the Obama Administration’s intentions to share certain documents with the German government to facilitate their probe of NSA spying on German companies and officials. Thebill would effectively prevent the White House from sharing anything with them.
U.S. Counter-Terrorism and the Saudi-Turkish-Israeli Strategic Alliance to Overthrow Assad
House Rejects Vote Calling for End to ISIS War
Last week, theHouse rejected the Schiff Amendment, which would’ve forced a vote by March 31 of next year. Today, in a 139-288 vote, the House rejected another resolution, this time from Rep. Jim McGovern (D – MA) which, failing a vote approving the war would’ve required the Obama Administration to follow US law and end the war by the end of this year.
With both rules votes failing by fairly wide margins, it seems increasingly probable that the ISIS war will never get even a token vote in the US Congress, but that the president will continue to be allowed to illegally continue it without any objections from the legislative branch.
The White House insists that they fulfilled their obligations, more or less, by asking Congress to approve a resolution on the war which they openly bragged was so deliberately vague as to allow them to do anything. That resolution never got much support in Congress, and never got out of committee.
Carter, Dempsey paint bleak picture of Iraq situation
America's two top defense officials presented a dismal outlook on the situation in Iraq Wednesday during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, even addressing possible U.S. policy if the country's current borders dissolve.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter conceded that the U.S. did not move quickly enough to arm Iraqi Security Forces in their struggle against ISIS, and disclosed that the U.S. will train just 7,000 of the 24,000 Iraqi troops it had expected to by the fall due to a lack of recruits. Meanwhile, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned skeptical committee members that there are limits to what America can do to stabilize a country torn by sectarian strife and the advances of ISIS, also known as ISIL. ...
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the panel's top Democrat, asked aloud if a unified Iraq was still salvageable.
"The cow has left the barn," Smith said. "You can make a pretty powerful argument that Iraq is no more."
Sanctions not much of a blow to Russia
Why Arming Ukraine Is a Really Bad Idea
Renewed fighting in Ukraine has in turn renewed calls to arm Ukraine, including in the United States Congress. Yet there is an enormous and largely unacknowledged flaw in the argument to provide the Kiev government with lethal weapons.
Advocates of this approach assert that sending anti-tank missiles, mortars and other arms to Ukraine will help Ukrainian forces to kill more of the Russian troops fighting alongside separatist forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. Since Russian president Vladimir Putin and other senior officials have repeatedly denied that Russian soldiers are in the country, they say, he must be trying to hide Moscow’s involvement from the Russian people because he fears political opposition from soldiers’ mothers (a significant political constraint during the first war in Chechnya, not to mention in Afghanistan a decade earlier) and others. If we can only kill enough of Putin’s troops, they continue, Putin will no longer be able to conceal the scale of Russia’s engagement in the conflict and will face public pressure to limit it or even to withdraw. ...
If the United States arms Ukraine—and announces that the policy is an explicit effort to kill more Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine—its impact on Russian public opinion is likely to be the opposite of what advocates say they intend. Indeed, it could transform the war there from a popular but essentially optional effort to help separatist forces and civilians in eastern Ukraine into a necessary conflict against a hostile American proxy. At the same time, for most Russians, it will probably confirm their government’s overheated rhetoric about U.S. ambitions in Ukraine and alleged American plans to force Russia to its knees or overthrow its government. Taken together, these shifts might increase Russians’ tolerance of battlefield deaths and injuries rather more rapidly than new U.S. arms will (or can) increase Russian casualties.
Moreover, the idea that more Russian deaths in Ukraine will “expose” Moscow’s role in the fighting is ludicrous. While Vladimir Putin and others may deny that Russian troops are in Ukraine in official meetings and statements, commentators on government-controlled television channels discuss Russia’s assistance to the separatists extensively. If the Kremlin were truly trying to conceal its participation, surely the Russian government would start by limiting this. On the contrary, Moscow’s denials are a diplomatic position in communicating with foreign audiences—a polite fiction—and are widely understood as such inside the country. ...
Advocates of lethal arms supplies to Ukraine have not yet met the first requirement of policy making—demonstrating with reasonable confidence that their proposed course of action will produce the results they want and expect, rather than something worse. Taking into account Washington’s frequent and unpleasant encounters with the unintended consequences of its choices over the last two decades, Americans should insist on a much stronger case.
Russia to construct new gas pipeline to Germany, EU direct supplies to double
Your tax dollars at work - American imperialism is helping to create a human crisis of enormous proportions:
The Global Refugee Crisis Is Unprecedented and Getting Worse
The number of people forced from their homes from violence, persecution or war has reached record levels, the United Nations warned on Thursday, with Syria overtaking Afghanistan to become the country more people flee from than any other.
The number of people forced from their homes by conflicts worldwide rose to 59.5 million last year, up from 51.2 million in 2013 — the equivalent to 42,500 per day, or one in every 122 people on the planet. If those 59.5 million people lived in one nation, noted the UN, that country would have the 24th largest population in the world.
More than half those displaced were children.
"We are witnessing a paradigm change," said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, "an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before."
Pointing to crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Burundi, and elsewhere, Guterres said he didn't expect any improvement in 2015.
One in every 122 people is displaced by war, violence and persecution, says UN
War, violence and persecution left one in every 122 humans on the planet a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum at the end of last year, according to a stark UN report that warns the world is failing the victims of an “age of unprecedented mass displacement”.
The annual global trends study by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, finds that the level of worldwide displacement is higher than ever before, with a record 59.5 million people living exiled from their homes at the end of 2014.
The UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said that although the world was experiencing “an unchecked slide” into an era of massive forced global displacement, it seemed unwilling to tackle the causes.
“It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is [a] seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” he said.
The report also notes that the wealthy countries are relying overwhelmingly on poorer states to take in those who have been forced to abandon their homelands: in 2014, 86% of refugees were in regions or countries deemed economically less developed.
Twenty years ago, developing regions hosted about 70% of the world’s refugees; last year, countries ranked least developed by the UN were home to 3.6 million refugees – or 25% of the global total.
Hong Kong parliament defies Beijing's insistence and rejects 'democracy' plan
Proposal that would have allowed election of leaders, but only from candidates vetted by Communist party hierarchy, is defeated in key vote
Pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong have defeated attempts to bring “fake democracy” to the former British colony by voting down a controversial Beijing-backed plan that sparked mass demonstrations in 2014.
The proposal – which China insisted represented true universal suffrage – would have seen Hong Kong’s five million voters granted the right to directly elect their future leaders – but only after candidates had been screened by a pro-Beijing committee.
The “political reform package” was rejected on Thursday with 28 legislators in Hong Kong’s parliament voting against it. Eight lawmakers voted for the proposal. There are 70 members in all but more than two dozen pro-government politicians walked out of the session without voting in an apparent attempt to halt proceedings.
Pro-democracy lawmakers and activists celebrated the result, even though it means the current system – under which Hong Kong’s chief executive is chosen by a 1,200-member pro-establishment “election committee” – will remain in place.
Palestinian unity government resigns
The Palestinian unity government formed only a year ago has resigned after President Mahmoud Abbas said it was unable to operate in the Gaza Strip.
The resignation came after it emerged that the Gaza Strip's rulers Hamas held separate indirect talks with Israel.
An official said that Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah had handed his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday afternoon, and Abbas had ordered him to form a new government.
Various Palestinian factions, including Hamas, are to be consulted before a new government is formed. ...
Hamas officials confirmed the exchange of indirect verbal messages between Hamas and Israel through European Union, Turkish, and Qatari mediators.
The messages concern a possible long-term, extendable ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, under which Israel would allow the construction of a floating sea port linking the Gaza Strip with the rest of the world.
A win for academic freedom: Steven Salaita awarded back-to-back victories against university that fired him
The first part of June has awarded back-to-back victories to a professor who last year was dismissed from his post at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nearly a year ago Steven Salaita was fired for posting some tweets that were considered by some to be beyond the pale of proper academic discourse; the context for many of these tweets was the ongoing, devastating attack on Gaza by Israel. What makes this case especially interesting, and what the recent court decision and a critical vote by the largest confederation of U.S. professors in the country shows, is the undue and improper interference of wealthy donors on the internal affairs of public educational institutions. ...
The aspect of neoliberalism that we find in the Salaita case is the power of donors to override both the professional procedures and ethos of faculty governance, as well as the academic independence of a public institution of higher education. Even without getting into the specific and critical issue of the censorship of critics of Israeli state policies, what happened at the University of Illinois, and in a separate case at the University of Wisconsin, is drawing the concern and criticism of even “non-political” bodies, such as the courts and mainstream academic organizations.
Something does appear shady in the way UIUC behaved last summer. After a local newspaper ran a story disclosing the objectionable tweets, the university did as it should have: It issued a public statement defending Salaita’s free speech rights and his right to academic freedom. But then wealthy donors began complaining vociferously to Chancellor Phyllis Wise. Shortly after, the university made an abrupt about-face, and suddenly Salaita was out of a job.
After his dismissal, Salaita filed a lawsuit against not only the University of Illinois and its trustees, but in a unique twist, also the donors who Salaita asserts exerted undue influence to get him fired. Of course, to ascertain whether they actually did, one would need evidence to that effect, and Salaita filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, asking for all the emails from the university administration that dealt with his case.
On June 12 the court found in his favor: “The judge said that previous scandals at the university – including the so-called ‘clout list’ that gave preferential admission to politically-connected applicants – were examples of why the public had a right to know the information Salaita was seeking.” In other words, the university’s betrayal of the public trust had already happened once, where it had discarded its normal admissions process in order to pay back its powerful connections and maintain their loyalty. Affirmative action for the wealthy and influential, in other words, the law of the market in place of the commitment to the public good. ...
Salaita’s second victory came just one day later, on June 13, when the Association of American University Professors, representing some 47,000 professors on 450 campuses nationwide, voted emphatically to censure the University of Illinois for its actions regarding the Salaita case.
All 50 US states fail to meet global police use of force standards, report finds
Amnesty International report describes ‘shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life’ as nine states have no laws to deal with police force
Every state in the US fails to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, according to a report by Amnesty International USA, which also says 13 US states fall beneath even lower legal standards enshrined in US constitutional law and that nine states currently have no laws at all to deal with the issue.
The stinging review comes amid a national debate over police violence and widespread protest following the high-profile deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; 43-year-old Eric Garner in New York; 50-year-old Walter Scott in South Carolina; and 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – all unarmed black men killed by police within the past 11 months.
Amnesty USA executive director Steven Hawkins told the Guardian the findings represented a “shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life”.
“While law enforcement in the United States is given the authority to use lethal force, there is no equal obligation to respect and preserve human life. It’s shocking that while we give law enforcement this extraordinary power, so many states either have no regulation on their books or nothing that complies with international standards,” Hawkins said.
The analysis, which Hawkins said he believed was the first of its kind, compared state statutes on law enforcement’s use of lethal force with international legislation, including the enshrinement of the right to life, as well as United Nations principles limiting lethal use of force to “unavoidable” instances “in order to protect life” after “less extreme means” have failed. Further UN guidelines state that officers should attempt to identify themselves and give warning of intent to use lethal force.
Amnesty found that in all 50 states and Washington DC, written statutes were too broad to fit these international standards, concluding: “None of the laws establish the requirement that lethal force may only be used as a last resort with non-violent means and less harmful means to be tried first. The vast majority of laws do not require officers to give a warning of their intent to use firearms.”
Why we need police reform: some law enforcement tactics are simply racist
Departments across the country have policies and practices that breed a culture resulting in killings – like those of Williams and Russell, and of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, Mike Brown and many, many others. For example, a lot of cities, including New York, use broken windows policing that calls for criminalizing people for small offenses in hopes of preventing more serious crimes. Garner, tackled to the ground and killed by police in Staten Island, was allegedly selling loose cigarettes. The incredible number of arrests stemming from these policies is disconcerting; a full 1.2m New Yorkers have outstanding warrants, and many of them are African American.
Even before the arrests, these policies can give officers the impression that it’s not just okay, but even their duty to hassle people of color. Mike Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, said that Ferguson, Missouri Officer Darren Wilson shouted at them to get on the sidewalk using profanity-laced language. In the video showing Garner dying in a police chokehold, he is heard asking the officers to stop bothering him. In Baltimore and Washington DC, police use jump-outs, where they engage in a surprise stop-and-frisk by driving up to pedestrians in an unmarked car, jumping out (often in street clothes) and searching them.
This behavior must stop being acceptable. We need to get rid of policies that create and sustain bad relationships between police and the communities they serve. Stop-and-frisk, broken windows and jump-outs are used as social control mechanisms that create a climate of fear and terror in communities of color. These policies are a rubber stamp for racial profiling and nourish an already-broken and overzealous criminal justice system.
Bank withdrawals surge, revenue slumps as Greece defies creditors
Bank withdrawals accelerated and government revenue slumped as Greece defied its international creditors on Thursday, escalating a debt crisis that may reach a climax at a European Union summit next week.
Savers pulled out some 2 billion euros between Monday and Wednesday, senior banking sources told Reuters, double the amount that the European Central Bank granted Greek banks in extra emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for the whole week.
The IMF meanwhile dashed any hope that Greece could avert default if it fails to repay a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) loan by the end of June, piling pressure on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who showed no sign of yielding to the lenders.
If deposit flight continues to outpace ELA, it could force Greece to impose capital controls, as Cyprus did in 2013, to ration cash withdrawals and stop money fleeing the country.
The 2 billion euros taken out in just three days represents about 1.5 percent of total household and corporate deposits of 133.6 billion euros held by Greek banks as of end-April.
Before this week, withdrawals had been running at 200-300 million euros a day.
Merkel accuses Greece of breaking pledges despite 'unprecedented help'
Angela Merkel has delivered an unusually sharp rebuke to the Greek government, accusing it of failing to implement necessary structural reforms while insisting a last-minute deal was still possible to keep it in the eurozone.
In a parliamentary speech she said that although Greece had received “unprecedented help from its partners”, it had failed to honour commitments it made to lenders. She quoted from agreements Athens had signed earlier this year, saying they had been broken. ...
Gregor Gysi, of the far-left Die Linke (the Left party), accused Merkel’s grand coalition of “total failure” in its handling of the Greek crisis. “You are endangering the euro ... and with that European integration,” he told parliament. Gysi said the Greek government had inherited a financial “mess” from his social democrat and conservative predecessors, but had nevertheless managed to repay a total of €7bn (£5bn) of debt to creditors.
“The Greek government is prepared to save – but just not there where you would like them to,” Gysi said, pointing a finger at Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
Goldman Sachs restricts intern workday to 17 hours in wake of burnout death
The benevolent firm introduced new work hours for summer interns after Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern died from seizure induced by all-nighters
Go home before midnight, and don’t come back before 7am. Goldman Sachs – one of Wall Street’s toughest firms – has told interns they have got to work hard, but not too hard.
The new rules, introduced for this summer’s crop of investment banking interns, have been introduced “to improve the overall work experience of our interns”, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said. All of its summer interns across the world were informed of the new working hours rule on their first day in the office earlier this month.
Wall Street’s shift to caring capitalism comes in the wake of the death of a 21-year-old Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern who had regularly pulled all-nighters in a desperate bid to impress his bosses.
How Walmart Spun an 'Extensive and Secretive Web' of Overseas Tax Havens
Walmart has built a vast, undisclosed network of overseas tax havens—accounting for more than $76 billion of assets—that allows the multinational corporation to shirk public disclosure laws as well as its fair share of both foreign and U.S. taxes, according to a groundbreaking report published Wednesday by Americans for Tax Fairness.
All told, the retail behemoth has established at least 78 subsidiaries in 15 offshore tax havens, none of them publicly reported before. The stunning revelations are based on research conducted by the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union, using publicly available documents filed in various countries by Walmart and its subsidiaries. ....
The analysis, titled The Walmart Web: How the World's Biggest Corporation Uses Tax Havens to Dodge Taxes (pdf), shows that Walmart has no fewer than 22 shell companies in Luxembourg—20 established since 2009 and five in 2015 alone. According to the study, Walmart has transferred ownership of more than $45 billion in assets to those subsidiaries since 2011, but reported paying less than 1 percent in tax to Luxembourg on $1.3 billion in profits from 2010 through 2013.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report from Chicago: Mother Jones, the agitator, has a luncheon with the New York society woman, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, the only woman to serve on the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Hat tip JayRaye:
25 Years Later: Lessons From The Organizers Of Justice For Janitors
On June 15, 1990, the Los Angeles Police Department viciously attacked immigrant janitors who were striking for the right to organize in Century City, Los Angeles. In a story that is now all too familiar, the police claimed they were defending themselves. Only later, when TV news footage exposed the police clubbing non-violent strikers, was the self-defense claim discredited. Two women miscarried, dozens were hospitalized, and 60 strikers and supporters were jailed.
After the violence, the workers regrouped in a nearby park where one of the strikers said, “What they did to us today in front of the TV cameras, is the way the police treat us every day.” Another woman striker told a reporter, “I wasn’t robbing a bank or selling drugs, I’m simply asking for an increase in pay but the police beat us as if we were garbage.” ...
Over the next weeks, public outrage at the police helped galvanize support for the strikers. Janitors in Century City won their union, doubling their pay and benefits. Century City also proved a tipping point for the Justice for Janitors campaign. Many in the labor movement had argued that janitors were impossible to organize—they were undocumented, part-time, subcontracted, workers of color—but the campaign demonstrated clearly that not only could these workers organize, they could win.
Emboldened by success in Century City, Janitors in Washington, D.C. blocked the 14thStreet Bridge with school buses, effectively shutting down the nation capital’s rush hour commute.
At the University of Miami, Janitors fasted for weeks as part of their lengthy and winning strike. Workers in wheel chairs, weakened by the fast, surrounded the university’s president, Donna Shalala and chanted in Spanish, “Union or death!” In Houston, 5,000 Janitors won a first-time union contract in a “right-to-work” state, despite the fact that bail was set at more than $20 million for people arrested for non-violent acts of civil disobedience in the city. Workers in cities across the nation went on strike in support of the Houston Janitors, and allies in Europe occupied buildings. Finally, pension fund trustees in charge of $1 trillion in workers’ pension fund capital adopted “responsible contractor” procedures—committing to invest only in office buildings where janitors were treated fairly.
The Justice for Janitors campaign succeeded because it relentlessly went after the building owners and financiers at the top of the real estate industry—the people who truly had power over the janitors’ livelihood—not the cleaning companies who were powerless subcontractors.
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Clinton Campaign Fundraises With Pro-TPP Lobby Firm As Congress Reschedules Trade Vote
While Hillary Clinton continues to hedge her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the related issue of trade promotion authority, her campaign is partnering with a pro-TPP/TPA law and lobby firm to raise cash.
The House Rules Committee held an “emergency meeting” at 4:40 p.m. on Wednesday to plan how to move forward with TPA.
At 5:00 p.m., the Clinton campaign was holding a Washington, D.C., fundraiser with the McGuireWoods law firm’s PAC. According to lobby registration documents, the firm’s McGuireWoods Consulting subsidiary is lobbying on behalf of Smithfield Foods to help pass both the TPP and TPA.
4 subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways the media undermines Bernie Sanders
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been in the race for over a month, but to the casual media consumer you’d hardly notice. His candidacy has largely been dismissed by the mainstream media as a “protest” campaign or a means of “moving Clinton to the left” (whatever that means). It’s a stunted worldview that presumes it’s the media’s job to vet “serious” candidates before the voters get to have any say in the matter. And because fundraising precedes voting, it inevitably becomes a power-serving and harmful tautology: the media insists Sanders is not a “serious” challenger because Clinton has big money support; they then internalize this conventional wisdom, and before a single vote is cast, dismiss him. It’s a perverse feedback loop that puts undue influence in the hands of early power signifiers and bears little resemblance to a healthy democracy.
[Here are the four categories: -js]
1. Ignoring Sanders outright.
2. Discussing his candidacy entirely in the context of Hillary Clinton.
3. Six months before the first primary vote, insisting he can’t win despite rising poll numbers.
4. Presenting Sander’s entirely mainstream views as fringe.
The Evening Greens
Pope Francis: "Bold Cultural Revolution" Needed to Save Planet from Climate Change & Consumerism
Pope Francis throws down, here's a taste:
Pope Francis: The Earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth
The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilised in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected.
These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. To cite one example, most of the paper we produce is thrown away and not recycled. It is hard for us to accept that the way natural ecosystems work is exemplary: plants synthesise nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard.
The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. ... Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.
Pope Francis’s encyclical is published in full by the Vatican here
Demockery in action:
Texas city repeals historic fracking ban under legal and political duress
An underdog Texas city that tried to ban hydraulic fracturing bowed to heavy political and legal pressure Tuesday night and repealed its landmark ordinance after seven months.
Denton made headlines last November when voters in the university city of 125,000 on the Barnett Shale near Dallas decided to prohibit fracking amid concerns about the impact of its 280 wells on health and the environment. It became the first city to ban fracking in the heavily Republican, oil-industry friendly state. Denton had already issued a moratorium on new gas drilling permits in May last year.
But victory for fracking opponents was short-lived. A trade body, the Texas Oil and Gas Association (TXOGA), filed a lawsuit the next day alleging that the city had exceeded its powers. A state agency, the Texas General Land Office, also took legal action against Denton. Then last month Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a bill known as HB 40 which establishes that state laws trump local laws on oil and gas activities - in effect, banning Denton’s ban.
After waiting for a couple of weeks and considering its options as construction trucks rolled back in and fracking resumed, the city council voted 6-1 to repeal the ordinance on Tuesday in the hope of reducing legal costs, a day after the TXOGA and Land Office amended their lawsuits in the wake of HB 40’s passage.
The city said in a statement: “As this ban has been rendered unenforceable by the State of Texas in HB 40, it is in the overall interest of the Denton taxpayers to strategically repeal the ordinance.”
Showdown at Sea: Greenpeace Puts Boats and Bodies Between Shell and the Arctic
By boat, by raft, or by swimming through frigid northern waters, the people will not back down against drilling in the Arctic.
That was the message Wednesday morning as about 30 environmental campaigners on Greenpeace vessels—including Musqueam First Nation activist Audrey Siegl, featured in a video on Tuesday preparing for the action—chased down oil giant Shell's Arctic drilling rig, the Polar Pioneer, as it moved past Vancouver Island toward its final destination in Alaskan waters. ...
As of Wednesday morning, the Polar Pioneer had barreled down on the swimmers, forcing them to move out of the way, but two smaller boats of activists are still facing off with the vessel.
What Drought? Oblivious Rich People Whine About Brown Golf Courses, Normal People Drought-Shame Them
Despite dramatic new NASA studies finding that the world is running out of water and the historic drought now ravaging California, irritated rich people are having none of this alarmist nonsense, defending their innate right to use obscene amounts of our natural resources because, as one aggrieved woman actually put it, "What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our houses?" As those with massive California holdings watch their lush green estates wither and their "prices plummet from $30 million to $22 million," the rich and sometimes famous are arguing, in the words of one Steve Yuhas, that "no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.” Yuhas lives in southern California's uber-rich gated enclaveof Rancho Santa Fe, which guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average and which, in a memorable ask-us-if-we-care gesture last April, actually increased its usage by 9% after Gov. Jerry Brown called for cutting water use. The indignant Yuhas says he pays big property taxes and people “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” because that would be way harsh and anyway why did he bother making and/or inheriting all that money if he couldn't have nicer stuff than you?
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
While Baltimore Police Idle, Black Lives Perish
Colombia's pipes to nowhere: villagers die of thirst as corruption stalls dam project
Fresh Faces
A Little Night Music
Big Daddy Kinsey & Sons - Going to New York
Big Daddy Kinsey - For The Love of a Woman
Big Daddy Kinsey & Sons - Can't Let Go
Big Daddy Kinsey - Tippin' on in
Big Daddy Kinsey - Good Mornin' Mississippi
Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report - Bad Situation
Big Daddy Kinsey - Little Red Rooster
Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report - Slow Down
Big Daddy Kinsey and his Son - Gary, Indiana
Big Daddy Kinsey - These Kinda Blues