Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Don Flemons, who bills himself as 'The American Songster'. Enjoy!
Don Flemons - Polly Put the Kettle On
A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.
Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux
News and Opinion
Sunday: Three Million in Paris Unity Rally; 'Largest in French History'
Up to 3 million join in historic Paris march
The French Interior Ministry said Sunday evening that today's Paris rally for unity against extremism is the largest demonstration in France's history.
Calling the rally "unprecedented," the ministry says the demonstrators are so numerous they spread beyond the official march route, making them impossible to count.
French media are estimating that up to 3 million are taking part, reportedly more than the numbers who took to Paris streets when the WW II Allies liberated the city from the Nazis. Demonstrations were also held in cities around France and around the world.
Leaders from more than 40 nations were among those at the march Sunday, organized to show unity against extremism and to honor the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre – seen as an attack on free speech and freedom of the press.
But Reporters Without Borderssays many of the heads of state and high-ranking ministers participating in Sunday's rally represent countries that have highly questionable records when it comes to free speech -- from the suppression of demonstrations to the imprisonment of journalists.
Nine Questions About the Paris Attacks
Mainstream media are busily promoting a familiar narrative for last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris. As usual this narrative demonizes Islam, calls for a reduction in civil rights, and bolsters existing military aggressions. However, a growing number of serious questions have arisen about the attacks. Until such questions are answered, citizens must consider that these events might be another pretext for an ongoing political agenda.
The Paris attacks are reported to have occurred in two parts. The first was the January 7th shooting of twelve people in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a tabloid that often published offensive cartoons including some about the Prophet Mohammad. The second attack occurred the next day and was said to be the work of Amedy Coulibaly, a 32-year old Senegalese Frenchman who began shooting police officers at the scene of an accident and then took hostages in a Kosher grocery.
Some parts of the story have already proven to be inaccurate. For example, FOX News and NBC falsely reported that two of the suspects were in custody, based on information from “two consistently reliable U.S. counterterrorism officials.” One 18-year old widely reported to be a suspect turned himself in (145 miles away) and was released 50 hours later due to insurmountable contradictions.
Questions that remain unanswered include the following.
Read more.
Did U.S. Foreign Policy Create Charlie Hebdo Gunmen?
University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole discusses how the West allies with religious fundamentalism, creating the space for extremist to flourish - January 11, 2015
Submitted: by mimi
French killings: Security failing?
An al-Qaeda offshoot in Yemen says it masterminded the deadly attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The fallout from the attack on a French magazine which published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has spread to Yemen, with further implications for France, the US and Britain.
An offshoot of al-Qaeda in Yemen says it was behind the shooting of 12 people at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
According to US intelligence, at least one of the brothers involved in the attack trained or even fought in Yemen. A third suspect is said to have claimed allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
French elite forces shot dead all three men on Friday in separate sieges, in which four hostages were killed.
A member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said France was targeted for its "obvious role in the war on Islam".
Al-Jazeera leak reveals staff split over response to Charlie Hebdo killings
Emails show some journalists branded French satirical magazine racist while others defended Muhammad cartoons
Submitted by: NCTim
Leaked emails from the Middle Eastern television channel al-Jazeera reveal that staff were divided on how to respond to the fatal attack on the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Some journalists and editorial staff branded the publication as “racist” and “extremist” while others defended the right to publish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
The emails, published in full by the National Review, begin with one sent to staff by Salah-Aldeen Khadr, the London-based editor and executive producer, on Thursday suggesting a list of questions that should guide their coverage of events.
He said it should be “the best it can be” but asked staff to question whether the terrorist attack was “really an attack on free speech”, asking if an “attack by 2-3 guys” on “a controversial magazine” was equal to a “civilizational attack on European values”.
He suggested that the massacre could be viewed as a “clash of extremist fringes” – implying Islamic fundamentalists were on one side and staff at the magazine on the other.
German newspaper attacked 'over cartoons'
Daily tabloid Hamburger Morgenpost targeted in arson attack after reprinting French magazine Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
A German newspaper in the northern port city of Hamburg that reprinted caricatures of Prophet Muhammad from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was the target of an arson attack, according to police.
The regional tabloid daily, the Hamburger Morgenpost, was attacked on Sunday after it had splashed three Charlie Hebdo cartoons on its front page after the massacre at the Paris publication, running the headline "This much freedom must be possible!"
"Rocks and then a burning object were thrown through the window," a police spokesman told AFP news agency. "Two rooms on lower floors were damaged but the fire was put out quickly".
No one was hurt in the attack, which police said occurred at about 01:20 GMT. Two people were detained, while state security has opened an investigation, police said.
Hamburg police have detained two suspects of the attack.
Paris massacre possible prelude to wave of Europe-wide attacks – media citing NSA
The deadly events that unfolded in France over the last week may be the first in a wave of attacks to strike Europe, a German daily reports, citing NSA intercepts of communications between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) leaders.
Paris was marked as the first in a series of European cities to be attacked, including Rome, the report in the German tabloid Bild read. However, the article didn’t furnish details of a concrete plan to launch an attack.
The US National Intelligence Agency (NSA) also reportedly had information that Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who carried out the mass shooting at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, had contacts in the Netherlands.
Police were said to have been put on high alert after intelligence learned that Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed a policewoman on Thursday in Paris and another four people in a kosher supermarket in Vincennes on Friday, may have activated sleeper cells which aim to attack law enforcement, CNN reported.
Is This Country Crazy?
Inquiring Minds Elsewhere Want to Know
Submitted by: Don midwest
Americans who live abroad -- more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) -- often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.
In my long nomadic life, I’ve had the good fortune to live, work, or travel in all but a handful of countries on this planet. I’ve been to both poles and a great many places in between, and nosy as I am, I’ve talked with people all along the way. I still remember a time when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world for way too many reasons to go into here.
That’s changed, of course. Even after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I still met people -- in the Middle East, no less -- willing to withhold judgment on the U.S. Many thought that the Supreme Court’s installation of George W. Bush as president was a blunder American voters would correct in the election of 2004. His return to office truly spelled the end of America as the world had known it. Bush had started a war, opposed by the entire world, because he wanted to and he could. A majority of Americans supported him. And that was when all the uncomfortable questions really began.
In the early fall of 2014, I traveled from my home in Oslo, Norway, through much of Eastern and Central Europe. Everywhere I went in those two months, moments after locals realized I was an American the questions started and, polite as they usually were, most of them had a single underlying theme: Have Americans gone over the edge? Are you crazy? Please explain.
US-led forces launch air strikes against Isis targets in Syria and Iraq
US military said the coalition carried out 19 strikes and all the attacks took place between Saturday and Sunday morning
American-led forces launched 19 air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria and Iraq, the US military said on Sunday.
Of the 10 air strikes in Syria, nine hit Isis targets near the town of Kobani on the Turkish border, a statement said. The other Syria strike hit an Isis position near Albu Kamal, close to Iraq.
The nine air strikes inside Iraq hit Isis forces near Arbil, Mosul, Sinjar and al Asad, the statement said. All the air strikes took place between Saturday morning and Sunday morning.
Also on Sunday, a video was released in which Amedy Coulibaly, one of the gunmen killed by French police after terrorist attacks which claimed 17 lives this week, appears to claim allegiance to Isis. In Lebanon, the interior minister said a double suicide attack that killed eight people at a cafe in Tripoli was carried out by Isis.
South Korea deports American over positive N. Korea comments
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Korea Immigration Service decided to deport Shin Eun-mi, a California resident, after prosecutors determined that her comments violated South Korea's National Security Law, agency official Kim Du-yeol said.
Shin departed the country on a flight to the U.S. on Saturday evening, another immigration official said on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.
"Frankly speaking, I feel like I'm betrayed by someone who I have a crush on," Shin told reporters before her departure.
She said she hopes to be able to return to both Koreas.
The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war, split along the world's most heavily fortified border, because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. In South Korea, praising North Korea can be punished by up to seven years in prison under the National Security Law.
Deaths in Nigeria child suicide bombings
At least six people die in blast in Potiskum in northeastern Yobe state, in latest assault involving young girls.
At least six people have been killed after two suspected child suicide bombers blew themselves up in a market in northeast Nigeria, witnesses say.
Sunday's assault was the second attack involving young girls strapped with explosives.
The blasts struck around mid-afternoon at an open market selling mobile handsets in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, one of three northeastern states after Adamawa and Brorno that have been hit by the armed group Boko Haram.
A trader at the market said the bombers were about 10 years old.
"I saw their dead bodies. They are two young girls of about 10 years of age ... you only see the plaited hair and part of the upper torso," he said.
Global outrage at Saudi Arabia as jailed blogger receives public flogging
Kingdom stays silent as protesters contrast its opposition to Paris attacks on free speech with its own attacks on free speech
Saudi Arabia is remaining silent in the face of global outrage at the public flogging of the jailed blogger Raif Badawi, who received the first 50 of 1,000 lashes on Friday, part of his punishment for running a liberal website devoted to freedom of speech in the conservative kingdom.
Anger at the flogging – carried out as the world watched the bloody denouement of the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket jihadi killings in Paris – focused on a country that is a strategic ally, oil supplier and lucrative market for the US, Britain and other western countries but does not tolerate criticism at home.
Badawi was shown on a YouTube video being beaten in a square outside a mosque in Jeddah, watched by a crowd of several hundred who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and clapped and whistled after the flogging ended. Badawi made no sound during the flogging and was able to walk back unaided afterwards.
“Raif was escorted from a bus and placed in the middle of the crowd, guarded by eight or nine officers,” a witness told Amnesty International.
We Are a Chickenhawk Nation, Blindly Worshiping the Military; Wasting Enormous Amounts on Useless Military Hardware
A new fleet of F-35 fighter jets will cost the equivalent of the entire Iraq war.
It’s common knowledge that the U.S. devotes more money to our defense budget than any other industrialized nation. But just how much we spend is remarkable. This year, the nation is on track to spend over $1 trillion on national security, after factoring in nuclear weapons funding, military pensions and “overseas contingency funds,” in addition to the Pentagon’s $580 billion operating budget. In total, this figure accounts for about 4 percent of the United States’ income—double what most other countries spend. Yet all of this budgetary bloat has done nothing to advance our strategic interests in countries like Syria and Iraq. In an investigative piece in the most recent Atlantic, James Fallows explains why.
“The Tragedy of the American Military” convincingly makes the case that the deepening divide between the military and the American public is the reason we spend such absurd sums on the tools and technology of war. We have, Fallows argues, become a “chickenhawk” nation: blindly supportive of our troops and perma-ready to deploy them, yet distantly removed from the consequences of these costly geopolitical games. The vast majority of Americans don’t have personal ties with any service members, and politicians are petrified of the political risks of seeming unsupportive of the military (the House Armed Services Committee passed the most recent defense budget by a vote of 61-0). According to Fallows, this potent combination of emotional distance and hero worship means we avoid “the caveats or public skepticism we would apply to other American institutions, especially ones that run on taxpayer money.”
The problem isn’t just how much money we spend on national security, but what we spend it on. In a tightly bound circle of favors, the military asks for a tremendous amount of funding, congressional leaders eager to gain new defense contracts in their districts grant it, and the contractors whose livelihoods depend on selling massive amounts of new weaponry rake in millions. This is why so much is allocated toward developing updated models of existing technologies, despite the Pentagon's lack of adequate funding for veterans’ care, training and pensions.
One such example is the F-35 fighter jet. The F-35 is intended to replace the A-10, a durable, inexpensive plane that has been used by the American military since the Vietnam War. There’s no urgent need to phase out the A-10. These planes have proven to require minimal upkeep, and we already have thousands stockpiled. So why are we on track to spend $1.5 trillion—the same estimated cost as the entire Iraq war—to replace them with the expensive and unreliable F-35? Because top military brass insists the A-10s are outdated. Because 1,200 defense contractors received commissions to develop this new technology. And because, as Fallows points out, “the general public doesn’t care.”
Authoritarianism, Class Warfare and the Advance of Neoliberal Austerity Policies
Right-wing calls for austerity suggest more than a market-driven desire to punish the poor, working class and middle class by distributing wealth upwards to the 1%. They also point to a politics of disposability in which the social provisions, public spheres and institutions that nourish democratic values and social relations are being dismantled, including public and higher education. Neoliberal austerity policies embody an ideology that produces both zones of abandonment and forms of social and civil death while also infusing society with a culture of increasing hardship. It also makes clear that the weapons of class warfare do not reside only in oppressive modes of state terrorism such as the militarization of the police, but also in policies that inflict misery, immiseration and suffering on the vast majority of the population.
Capitalism has learned to create host organisms and in the current historical conjuncture one of those organisms is young people, who are forced to live under the burden of crushing debt. Moreover in the midst of a widening inequality in wealth, income and power, workers, single mothers, youth, immigrants and poor people of color are being plunged into either low-paying jobs or a future without decent employment. For the sick and elderly, it means choosing between food and medicine. Austerity now drives an exchange relationship in which the only value that matters is exchange value and for students that means paying increased tuition that generates profits for credit companies while allowing the state to lower taxes on the rich and mega corporations.
Under this regime of widening inequality that imposes enormous constraints on the choices that people can make, austerity measures function as a set of hyper-punitive policies and practices that produce massive amounts of suffering, rob people of their dignity and then humiliate them by suggesting that they bear sole responsibility for their plight. This is more than the scandal of a perverted form of neoliberal rationality; it is the precondition for an emerging authoritarian state with its proliferating extremist ideologies and its growing militarization and criminalization of all aspects of everyday life and social behavior. Richard D. Wolff has argued that “Austerity is yet another extreme burden imposed on the global economy by the capitalist crisis (in addition to the millions suffering unemployment, reduced global trade, etc.).” He is certainly right, but it is more than a burden imposed on the 99%; it is the latest stage of market warfare, class consolidation and a ruthless grab for power waged on the part of the neoliberal, global, financial elite who are both heartless and indifferent to the mad violence and unchecked misery they impose on much of humanity.
According to Zygmunt Bauman, casino “capitalism proceeds through creative destruction. What is created is capitalism in a ‘new and improved’ form - and what is destroyed is the self-sustaining capacity, livelihood and dignity of its innumerable and multiplied ‘host organisms’ into which all of us are drawn/seduced one way or another.” Creative destruction armed with the death-dealing power of ruthless austerity measures benefits the financial elite while at the same time destroying the social state and setting the foundation for the punishing state, which now becomes the default institution for those pushed out of the so-called promise of democracy. Both neoliberal-driven governments and authoritarian societies share one important factor: They care more about consolidating power in the hands of the political, corporate and financial elite than they do about investing in the future of young people and expanding the benefits of the social contract and common good.
Code Pink Brings ‘Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour’ To Dick Cheney’s Door
Submitted by: NCTim
What has former Vice President Dick Cheney ever done to anyone? You’d think the guy orchestrated a false war, tortured innocent people, and shot a guy in the face or something.
Twenty demonstrators from the anti-war organization Code Pink went straight up to Cheney’s McLean, Virginia home to knock on the door Saturday as part of the “Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour.” It’s been 13 years since the lovely Cuban timeshare opened its doors.
Many in the group simulated Guantanamo vacationers by wearing bright orange jumpsuits as they approached Cheney’s home, but police quickly arrived to break up the scene. The demonstrators were, of course, asked to leave the premises, according to Fairfax County police spokesperson Roger Henriquez; however, two demonstrators were arrested after refusing to leave. They are currently facing disorderly conduct and trespassing charges.
You’re probably already wondering how many dreadlocks these two characters who refused to leave have and how many squirts of patchouli they douse themselves with in the morning in order to cover up the weed and b.o., but police have since identified the two adamant peaceniks as 57-year-old Tighe Barry and 83-year-old Eve Tetaz. Both hail from the heart and soul of Uncle Sam, himself, Washington D.C.
David Petraeus: From military rock star to possible prosecution
David Petraeus, the distinguished US Army general and former CIA director might have been headed for high political office. But an extramarital affair tarnished his reputation, and now federal prosecutors are considering whether to bring criminal charges against him over the handling of classified information.
Submitted by: NCTim
To many, US Army General David Petraeus was a rock star in uniform.
Distinguished West Point grad with a Princeton PhD. The top US military officer in Iraq and then Afghanistan, where he seemed to turn things around in those two unpopular wars, facilitating a US exit. Appointed head of the CIA when he retired to civilian life. Mentioned as a possible presidential or vice-presidential candidate.
But all of that was overshadowed by scandal when he resigned as CIA director in disgrace in 2012, admitting to an extramarital affair he attributed to “extremely poor judgment.”
That important asterisk would always remain part of the four-star general’s biography.
In Pictures The Petraeus affair: the players
Photos of the Day Photos of the weekend
Still, he said in a speech a few months later, “One learns after all that life doesn't stop with such a mistake. It can and must go on."
View video here.
White House to hold global security summit Feb 18: U.S. official
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will invite allies to a Feb. 18 security summit in Washington to try and prevent violent extremism, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday after meeting his European counterparts in Paris.
The gathering of justice and interior chiefs came as France mourned 17 victims of Islamist gunmen this week in the worst assault on its homeland security in decades.
"We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this violent extremism that exists around the world," Holder told reporters.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after the meeting that European interior ministers had agreed to boost cooperation in an effort to thwart further jihadist attacks.
AirAsia black box found by divers: Indonesia ministry
Rescue teams fail to retrieve instrument stuck under debris from main body of plane
Submitted by: NCTim
Jakarta: Indonesian divers on Sunday found the crucial black box flight recorders of the AirAsia plane that crashed in the Java Sea a fortnight ago with 162 people aboard, the transport ministry said.
But they failed to retrieve it immediately from the seabed because it was stuck under debris from the main body of the plane, the ministry added.
"The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in finding a very important instrument, the black box of AirAsia QZ8501," said Tonny Budiono, a senior ministry official.
The recorders were at a depth of 30-32 metres, he said in a statement.
Divers will on Monday try to shift the position of the wreckage to access the black box.
Fitch downgrades Russia’s credit rating to 1 notch over junk level
The international ratings agency has knocked Russia’s credit rating down a peg, while warning that ‘growth may not return until 2017,’ as the national economy struggles amid sanctions and tumbling oil prices.
Fitch Ratings Inc, with dual headquarters in New York and London, downgraded Russia’s credit rating to BBB- from BBB, which is just one step away from the non-investment field.
While not yet the worst rating, Fitch nevertheless predicted a rough road ahead for the Russian economy, which has witnessed a dramatically weakened ruble together with steadily declining oil prices
Fitch said Russia’s Gross Domestic Product will decrease by four percent this year, which is significantly worse than the 1.5 percent decline it had anticipated.
"Growth may not return until 2017," Fitch warned.
Major oil traders book tankers for stockpiling crude at sea – report
A continuous fall in global oil prices has prompted major oil traders to start hiring supertankers as they can benefit from stockpiling crude oil at sea.
The oil giant Shell and energy traders Trafigura and Vitol have booked crude tankers for up to 12 months, said Reuters, referring to the fixture lists provided by tanker brokers and oil traders.
Traders reportedly use the vessels to store excess crude at sea until prices stabilize as in 2009, when more than 100 million barrels were stockpiled this way. Then the news caused outrage over oil “speculators” supposedly waiting to sell oil at higher prices in future.
Shell has reportedly booked two vessels, and Vitol, the world's largest independent oil trader, has booked the TI Oceania Ultra Large Crude Carrier, one of the biggest ocean going vessels with a three million barrel capacity.
The move can be explained by the market phenomenon known as “contango”, when spot or current prices fall below the cost of future shipment. It has happened for the first time since 2009 as spot prices fell by more than 50 percent in the last six months. This gives traders more reason to buy oil now, store it in tanks and benefit when demand recovers.
Why is the financial industry so afraid of this man?
Joseph Stiglitz has won a Nobel Prize for economics. So why has he apparently been blacklisted by regulators?
If the government were creating a new panel to advise on financial regulation, it would make sense to include a Nobel Laureate considered one of the most influential living economists. Yet Joseph Stiglitz has been barred from such a panel, telling Bloomberg he was out because “they may not have felt comfortable with somebody who was not in one way or another owned by the industry.”
The fight to keep Stiglitz off the panel is indicative of a much deeper problem — how the financial industry manipulates the regulatory system. The financial industry does not want Stiglitz on the panel for a simple reason: he has committed the crime of advocating for a modest financial transaction tax. Stiglitz argues that while financial markets normally serve the important function of capital intermediation, some forms of trading, like high-frequency trading, make markets less stable and amount to making money by moving money around. To reduce the incentives for such trading while raising revenue, he has put forward the possibility of a tax on some forms of short-term trading. Such a proposal has gained traction within academia and is already being implemented in Europe. (And it actually used to exist in various forms in the United States.)
Instead of preeminent financial reform experts like Stiglitz, many key regulatory and advisory positions are taken by those who loosen the leash on the financial industry. A perfect exampleis the recent nomination of Antonio Weiss to be the treasury undersecretary for domestic finance. Weiss has merger and acquisition experience, but as Simon Johnson notes, no domestic regulatory experience — illustrating in dramatic terms the revolving door between Wall Street and government. Research by Sophie Shive and Margaret Forster finds that this practice is pervasive and increasing. They write that, “the number of ex-regulators employed at financial firms increases by more than 55 percent” from 2001 to 2013. A 2010 CBS analysis finds more than four dozen former Goldman Sachs employees had high-level positions in government. This revolving door is part of what led us to the last financial crisis.
The influence of finance over policy goes deeper than simply revolving-door politics. Nicholas Carnes tells Salon that, “when members with finance backgrounds vote on roll calls, they seem to vote against labor more often than other members.” He finds that for every 100 bills related to labor issues, members of Congress who used to work in finance vote against workers on 3.5 more bills than their colleagues (a statistically significant difference). The rise of finance over politics has had important political consequences: Christopher Witko writes, “financial deregulation was one policy translating the political power of these actors into economic outcomes.” This political power was facilitated by the rise of money in politics, although research by Nomi Prins suggests that cozy relationships between powerful financiers and politicians have existed for decades
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature an article from a Chicago newspaper regarding a new movement being launched by various labor organizations advancing a plan to reorganize the labor unions of the United States upon the principle of class struggle.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Paypal co-founder becomes first multi-million-dollar marijuana investor
Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel is investing millions of dollars in a Seattle-based company that owns a popular marijuana venture. Under America’s federal laws, however, marijuana is still considered illegal throughout most of the country.
The Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, confirmed it is taking a minority stake in Privateer Holdings – a company that invests in a Canadian medical marijuana growing operation – and Leafly.com, a Yelp-type review website for marijuana dispensaries. Privateer was looking for a $75 million funding round, but Thiel’s firm has not disclosed how much they’ve contributed beyond “multi-millions” of dollars.
Investing in the cannabis business is still considered controversial, though public opinion on the matter has been turning in favor of legalization advocates. Recreational pot use is legal in four states and the District of Columbia, and has been approved for medical use in 24 states. Still, Founders Fund said it is not an unusual move for them.
The investment “is just a slightly more extreme version of something we’ve shown in our other investments that we’re comfortable with,” Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis told the Guardian. “We’re fine with investing in businesses with regulatory ambiguity, because we believe that regulation follows public sentiment.”
Pastor’s Disgusting Story About Time He Punched A Kid For Not ‘Taking The Lord Serious’
Submitted by: NCTim
If you’re a “bright” kid, you may want to avoid being near this pastor. He’s not bright, but he is dangerous.
In a sermon that reads more like a swaggering brag after a bar fight, a pastor tells his congregation about the time he had enough with a kid who was too smart to properly respect God, and the pastor’s violent reaction.
The pastor says that while working at a youth group in Calgary, he came across a “smart aleck” kid who irked him. “He was a nice kid, but he was one of those kids who was a real smart aleck,” the pastor begins, already making mock punches in the air, as if reliving the moment. “He was a bright kid, which didn’t help things, right? It made him more dangerous.”
According to the pastor, one day the kid was really pushing his buttons and “not taking the Lord serious,” and so the pastor did what any reasonable adult in a position of authority would do – provided that adult had major anger issues and was in need of professional help: He punched the kid “as hard as [he] could” in the chest. Showing no signs of remorse, the pastor says that he “crumpled” the kid and then stood over him, lecturing him about taking God more seriously.
Curiosity Rover Photo Suggests That Life May Have Existed On Mars
A study published in the journal Astrobiology states that some prominent sedimentary rocks shown in Mars Curiosity photos have a remarkable similarity to structures created by life on Earth.
According to geobiologist Nora Noffke, the images of the Mars Curiosity Rover at the Gillespie Lake outcrop, situated in the Gale Crater, are similar to structures and shapes left by carpets of microbes that colonize drying lakebeds. Similar signs were used last year to date the oldest known life on Earth — in 3.48 billion-year-old rocks on the West Australian Dresser Formation.
Noffke studied an image that was taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover at the Gale Crater. She concluded that the rock structures in the ancient lake bed looked very similar to patterns found in Australia, which were made by life forms. She stated that she hasn’t found proof of ancient Mars life, only that her hypothesis provides a compelling explanation for the formation processes behind the shapes in the surface of Mars sedimentary rock at Gale Crater.
Nofkke said, “All I can say is, here’s my hypothesis and here’s all the evidence that I have, although I do think that this evidence is a lot. In one image, I saw something that looked very familiar. So I took a closer look, meaning I spent several weeks investigating certain images centimeter by centimeter, drawing sketches, and comparing them to data from terrestrial structures.”
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor - Agathena
Stanford professors urge withdrawal from fossil fuel investments
Faculty members call on university to recognise urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies
Three hundred professors at Stanford, including Nobel laureates and this year’s Fields medal winner, are calling on the university to rid itself of all fossil fuel investments, in a sign that the campus divestment movement is gathering force.
In a letter to Stanford’s president, John Hennessy, and the board of trustees, made available exclusively to the Guardian, the faculty members call on the university to recognise the urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies.
Stanford, which controls a $21.4bn (£14.2bn) endowment, eliminated direct investments in coalmining companies last May, making it the most prominent university to cut its ties to the industries that cause climate change. Months later, however, the university invested in three oil and gas companies.
Campus divestment campaigns have spread to about 300 universities and colleges over the last few years, but are largely dominated by students. The Stanford letter was initiated by faculty, and signed by the first female winner of the prestigious Fields prize in mathematics, Maryam Mizarkhani, as well as the Nobel laureates Douglas Osheroff and Roger Kornberg, Paul Ehrlich, a population analyst, Terry Root, a biologist and UN climate report author, and others – 300 faculty members in total.
Federal agency says Arctic drilling would likely cause disaster. Here’s what you can do
Submitted by: NCTim
Polar bear cubs’ warm coats ruined by crude oil. Seal dens crushed by icebreakers. Whales inhaling toxic fumes. These aren’t just scary scenarios from environmental groups. They’re analysis from our own federal government.
A recent report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) declared that there is a 75% chance of a large spill if Shell drills for oil in the Arctic. You read that right. If oil is found in the Arctic, there’s a 75% chance of disaster.
What kind of disaster?
According to the analysis, a large oil spill would cause hypothermia on polar bears with oil-soaked pelts as well as ingestion of oil leading to ulcers, liver damage, and brain damage.
Exposure to crude oil would be lethal for beluga whales. A large spill would disrupt the October migration for bowhead whales.
Towards a Green Economy: Green Growth or No Growth? - Robert Pollin on RAI
On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Pollin says no GDP growth is unrealistic and unnecessary as the way to achieve carbon emission targets; green economists must be advocates of more jobs - January 11, 2015
The year ahead: Top clean energy trends of 2015
For the past 13 years, Clean Edge has published the annual Clean Energy Trends report that has sized the global market for solar, wind and biofuels and tracked everything from venture capital and stock market activity to total global investments. In the report, we also pick our top trends to watch for the coming year. Here are the trends that will matter in 2015:
- Moves toward 100 percent renewables will expand
- Energy storage will carve out a competitive advantage
- Low-cost oil could affect clean transportation, but not clean electricity
- Other regions will follow New York's fracking ban
Let’s take a closer look at the top trends and how they are likely to affect markets in 2015.
Moves toward 100 percent renewables will expand. Naysayers will tell you that renewables will remain a niche offering that’s unable to provide large amounts of total electricity supply. But in 2014, the trend toward bucking this myth was on full display. In less than two years, Apple went from primarily fossil fuels to 100 percent renewables,and Amazon.com (at least for its data center operations) recently joined other tech leaders such as Facebook and Google in announcing plans to get to 100 percent renewables.
Denmark reaffirmed its commitment of getting to 100 percent renewables for all of its energy supply, including transportation, by 2050; it’s already close to reaching its goal of 50 percent renewables on its electricity grid by 2020. Late in the year, NextEra Energy announced its plan to acquire Hawaiian Electric. While its subsidiary NextEra Energy Resources is a leader in U.S. wind and solar development, its other subsidiary Florida Power & Light has been less than a stellar supporter of renewables deployment. The next year will tell which direction NextEra plans to take Hawaiian Electric, which already had plans to reach 65 percent of its electricity sales from renewable resources by 2030.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hellraisers Journal: Alva Adams Inaugurated, "The earliest hour is the best hour for doing right."
From Berlin, Germany, with Love
Character Development
More badmouthing of Democrats: Thomas Frank weighs in again
The Road To War With Russia – We’re not only on it; we’ve already arrived
Another sickening story of the criminal injustice system, this time as accomplice to inmate's murder
A Little Night Music
Dom Flemons - Po' Black Sheep
Dom Flemons - Fishing Blues
Dom Flemons - Milwaukee Blues
Dom Flemons and Pokey LaFarge - Going Back to Arkansas
Dom Flemons and Pokey LaFarge - San Francisco Baby
Dom Flemons - But They Got It Fixed Right On
Dom Flemons - 'Til The Seas Run Dry
Dom Flemons - Can You Blame The Colored Man?
Dom Flemons - Can't Do it Anymore
Dom Flemons - Too Long (I've Been Gone)
Dom Flemons - In the Jailhouse Now
Dom Flemons - Bubblegoose (Ms. Jackson)
John Dee Holeman & Dom Flemons - John Henry
Dom Flemons - How to Play Bones
Dom Flemons - How to Play Quills
Dom Flemons - Harmonica Fiddle
Dom Flemons - My Little Lady