Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Baby Face Leroy Foster. Enjoy!
Leroy Foster - Locked Out Boogie
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
-- John F. Kennedy
News and Opinion
Congressman Explains Why His Fellow Lawmakers Couldn’t Be Trusted with NSA Oversight
Congressmen who asked about oversight of NSA mass surveillance and domestic spying in 2013 could have “compromise[d] security” and were denied the records they sought because of concerns they lacked formal government security clearance, a former member of the House Intelligence Committee says in a newly-released video.
The footage, from an August 29, 2013 town hall meeting, sheds new light on why lawmakers were denied key rulings and reports from the secret courts overseeing the National Security Agency — even as the Obama administration and intelligence officials claimed that all NSA programs were subject to strict congressional oversight and therefore could be held accountable. ...
Grayson says he was ultimately denied the information about NSA surveillance activity that he sought. “The Republicans on the Intelligence Committee were unhappy that I discussed the Guardian coverage of the Snowden revelations on the floor of the House,” he says in an interview.
Grayson noted that the House Intelligence Committee maintains rules requiring lawmakers not on the committee to obtain permission from them to view classified information. “The committee has no authority to make those kinds of distinctions,” says Grayson. “They’ve created two tiers for members of Congress,” he adds. “I’m not aware of any statutory authority for such a distinction; but it’s just a power grab as members of Intelligence and I have the same constitutional authority.” ...
“Let’s remember that what Mr. Grayson and Mr. Griffith and others were seeking access to was information on programs that they were asked to cast votes on,” adds Patrick Eddington, a former senior policy advisor to Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., and a former CIA analyst. “These revelations from Mr. Snowden and potentially other sources … should have sparked the creation long ago of a Joint Congressional Investigative Committee to explore all of this stuff, and it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s just another example of the collapse of congressional oversight.”
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance
John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden, interview starts at about 16 minutes into feature:
Asked by Veteran to Apologize for Horrors of Iraq War, Karl Rove Says No
Karl Rove may be a lot of things, but being sorry for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is not one of them.
A 32-year-old Iraq war veteran confronted Rove at the University of Connecticut this week, calling on the former senior advisor to President George W. Bush to apologize for the horrors of that war and its lingering effects both at home and abroad.
"I've taken responsibility for my actions and dealt with my demons while advocating for a peaceful resolution for a war that was an act of aggression with no clear goal," said Ryan Hemowitz, who said he served as a medic with the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Infantry Regiment, at an event sponsored by the UConn College Republicans. "Can you take responsibility and apologize for your decision in sending a generation to lose their humanity and deal with the horrors of war, which you have never had the courage to face? Will you apologize to the millions of fathers and mothers who lost their children on both sides of this useless war?"
Rove, who helped lead the disinformation campaign that led to the 2003 Iraq invasion, refused to say he was sorry.
"We should be proud of what we were able to achieve in Iraq," Rove said, citing the alleged dangers posed by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein—the same justification war hawks offered in the lead up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Peace with Iran Could Limit Ability to Bomb It, Warns McCain
Shortly after world powers successfully negotiated a nuclear-framework agreement with Iran, Sen. John McCain warned that a lasting peace with the Middle Eastern nation “could greatly limit our ability to bomb it.”
“President Obama is hailing this framework as something that could enhance the prospects for peace in the Middle East,” McCain told reporters at the United States Senate. “For those of us who have looked forward to bombing Iran for some time now, that would be a doomsday scenario.”
CIA Officials Knew Rendition Victim Was 'The Wrong Guy,' Kiriakou Reveals
CIA insiders objected to the arrest, rendition, and torture of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar, but high-ranking officials ignored concerns that they were punishing an innocent man, according to former spy and whistleblower John Kiriakou in an interview with the Canadian Press.
After serving two years behind bars, Kiriakou—the only government official to be punished in connection with the U.S. torture program—was released from Loretto Prison in Pennsylvania in February, under orders to finish the remainder of his 30-month sentence at home. ...
Reporting on his interview with Kiriakou, who was a branch chief within the CIA's Counterterrorism Center at the time of the Arar episode, Panetta writes:
Kiriakou expressed disgust with his country's role in sending the engineer to be tortured in his native Syria, and with its continuing failure to issue an apology like Canada has.
He described a dynamic within the agency in which one mid-to-high-level officer ignored repeated objections from her subordinates, and insisted on pushing ahead.
"I can tell you that a lot of people inside the CIA objected to this," Kiriakou said.
"(They said), 'This is the wrong guy. He hasn’t done anything'." Arar was grabbed during a New York airport layover and flown to a notorious Syrian prison. He has described a year-long ordeal that included being beaten and stuffed into a body-sized slot in a windowless dungeon. Arar likened it to being buried alive.
This Might Finally Be Palestine’s Year at the United Nations
Late last year, ambassadors from the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council shuffled into the Council's chamber to vote on the future of Palestine. After months of negotiations, the Arab states threw caution to the wind when Jordan introduced a text that called for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory within three years. The resolution fell one vote short of passing, and Palestinian ambitions were squashed yet again.
Three months later, much has changed. The day after the December 30 vote, over loud objections from the US and Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ratified the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute. In January, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda launched a preliminary inquiry into possible crimes committed in Palestinian territory, possibly leading to eventual prosecutions for everyone from Hamas fighters to Israeli settlers and soldiers. ...
Now, a more Palestine-friendly cast of elected Security Council members, along with the permanent five members — the US, UK, China, France, and Russia — are once more looking toward a resolution on resolving a Middle East peace process that has dragged on for more than half a century.
France has been the most publicly outspoken member of the Council, doubling down on efforts to put forward an updated version of a resolution they floated last year that was ultimately vetoed behind the scenes by the US.
But observers say France's outspoken stance belies Council dynamics that, in many respects, haven't shifted since last year. The US still ultimately holds the reins, and, for now, the Americans appear content to let rumors fly on their potential vote, or involvement in drafting a two-state resolution. Asked about French plans, a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told VICE News "we are aware of Foreign Minister Fabius' comments, but I am not going to speculate on a hypothetical resolution."
Barack Obama fights back against Israeli critics of Iran nuclear deal
Barack Obama has answered continuing Israeli criticism of the framework agreement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, telling the New York Times the deal is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table”. ...
Earlier in the day the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who has consistently warned against international accommodation with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, appeared on three US news shows to say the agreement was “a very bad deal”. ...
Obama, however, said the Iran deal was part of a broader strategy of engagement, as pursued by his administration with regards to Burma and Cuba.
“If it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes,” Obama said, “we can adjust our policies. The same is true with respect to Iran, a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of US citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defence budget is $30bn. Our defence budget is closer to $600bn.
“Iran understands that they cannot fight us … You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”
US vets launch anti-UAV ads campaign
Yemen conflict: 'This war has killed everything that was beautiful'
According to the World Health Organisation, 549 people have been killed and 1,707 injured in violence in Yemen since 19 March, a week before the air campaign began. As the humanitarian situation worsens, the International Committee of the Red Cross received approval on Sunday from the military coalition that controls Yemen’s ports and air space for an aid flight to deliver medical supplies, but on Monday said “logistical problems” were delaying its departure.
Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of trying to spread its influence in the Middle East through the Houthi rebels.
“This is not the first war I’ve witnessed, but it is the worst by far,” Jamal, a sociologist, told the Guardian. “It seems that the older we get, the less tolerant we become with the sounds of blasts. We end up fearing more than we did when we were children.”
While Jamal endures the air raids in the capital, her family in Aden has had no electricity or water for days, and she fears the latest conflict will do irreparable damage to the Yemeni soul.
“This war is tearing the social texture in a way that makes it impossible to repair,” she said. “The double aggression we are under from the outside and the inside is creating cracks. I can see all my loved ones watching in pain knowing that things will never be the same even when this war ends, if it ever does.
“We have survived so many wars. We have been stripped of jobs, security and basic services before, however, this time we are being stripped of a home,” she said.
The sense of loss is all-consuming in Aden, where Mohammed takes refuge from the street fighting between Houthi fighters and local youth in his partially burned home with his two granddaughters. His son and other friends perished in the fighting. He says his son could have survived his wounds if the city had adequate medical supplies.
“By God, by God, by God, I will never surrender or have peace with them until I avenge my son and his friends,” he said. “They killed everything that was beautiful, we have nothing to smile for.”
A Young Prince May Cost Syria and Yemen Dear
The Saudis are portraying their intervention as provoked by Iranian-backed Shia Zaidis trying to take over the country. Much of this is propaganda. The Houthis, who come from the Zaidi tribes in Yemen’s northern mountains, have an effective military and political movement called Ansar Allah, modelled on Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have fought off six government offensives against them since 2004, all launched by former President Saleh, then allied to the Saudis. Saleh, himself a Zaidi but drawing his support from the Zaidi tribes around the capital, Sanaa, was a casualty of the Arab Spring in Yemen but still has the support of many army units.
Why has Saudi Arabia plunged into this morass, pretending that Iran is pulling the strings of the Shia minority though its role is marginal? The Zaidis, estimated to be a third of the 25 million Yemeni population, are very different Shia from those in Iran and Iraq. In the past, there has been little Sunni-Shia sectarianism in Yemen, but the Saudi determination to frame the conflict in sectarian terms may be self-fulfilling.
Part of the explanation may lie with the domestic politics of Saudi Arabia. Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi visiting professor at LSE’s Middle East Centre, says in the online magazine al-Monitor that Saudi King Salman’s defence minister and head of the royal court, his son Mohammed bin Salman, aged about 30, wants to establish Saudi Arabia as absolutely dominant in the Arabian Peninsula. She adds caustically that he needs to earn a military title, “perhaps ‘Destroyer of Shiite Rejectionists and their Persian Backers in Yemen’, to remain relevant among more experienced and aspiring siblings and disgruntled royal cousins”. A successful military operation in Yemen would give him the credentials he needs.
A popular war would help unite Saudi liberals and Islamists behind a national banner while dissidents could be pilloried as traitors. Victory in Yemen would compensate for the frustration of Saudi policy in Iraq and Syria where the Saudis have been outmanoeuvred by Iran. In addition, it would be a defiant gesture towards a US administration that they see as too accommodating towards Iran. ...
Saudi Arabia is not the first monarchy to imagine that it can earn patriotic credentials and stabilise its rule by waging a short and victorious foreign war. In 1914, the monarchs of Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary had much the same idea and found out too late that they had sawed through the branch on which they were all sitting. Likewise, Saudi rulers may find to their cost that they have been far more successful than Iran ever was in destroying the political status quo in the Middle East.
The Significance of Retaking Tikrit by the Iraqi Government
Patrick Cockburn, author of The Rise of the Islamic State, has just returned from northern Iraq, where he says that even if the government has retaken Tikrit, it is a small victory that signals a long war ahead
On Hitler's Birthday, U.S. Will Begin Training Ukraine's Far-right National Guard
On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported The United States plans to send soldiers to Ukraine later this month to train the country’s national guard, which includes groups expressly espousing support for far-right and Nazi ideology.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post on Sunday that the units to be trained include the Azov Battalion, a volunteer force that has attracted criticism for its far-right sentiments including brandishing an emblem widely used in Nazi Germany.
...
That the United States is supporting neo-Nazi factions is nothing particularly new. Indeed, Alternet’s Max Blumenthal (as well as other outlets) have documented this fact for well over a year. What is of note is that (A) the United States military is now doing so openly and seemingly without much shame and (B) deciding, in a perverse irony, to begin this latest partnership on Hitler’s Birthday.
Informant Provided Bomb-Making Manual to Alleged “ISIS-Inspired” Plotters
In what has been widely described in the media as the breakup of an “ISIS-inspired” plot, on April 2 the Department of Justice announced that Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, both of New York, had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. The defendants “plotted to wreak terror by creating explosive devices” for use in New York City and sought “bomb-making instructions and materials” for an attack, the Justice Department statement said.
Like other recent sensational “terror plots,” however, the criminal complaint unsealed yesterday demonstrates the key role of an undercover law enforcement informant in both formulating and facilitating the alleged plot. It doesn’t appear that Velentzas or Siddiqui actually planned or attempted to bomb any target, nor is there any evidence of discussions about how to create a bomb before the introduction of the informant into their lives.
It was only after the informant provided the pair with a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook – a manual with instructions on how to create an explosive device — that their amateurish efforts gained any traction. ... According to the complaint, the informant and Velentzas had a discussion about “what they’re trying to achieve” with all the research about bombs. Velentzas then told the informant that she didn’t have any existing plans to do anything, and that “she would never want to hurt anyone.”
Cleveland officer facing trial in 137-shot barrage says he cannot recall shooting
His footprints were found on the hood of a beat-up Chevy Malibu that had been strafed by police gunfire, killing its two unarmed occupants after a high-speed chase over streets and freeways in and around Cleveland.
Yet Officer Michael Brelo told investigators he couldn’t remember standing on the hood and firing the final 15 rounds of a 137-shot barrage down into the windshield – even though a rookie cop told those same investigators that Brelo talked about it days afterward. ...
Brelo, 31, goes on trial on Monday on two counts of voluntary manslaughter for the deaths of Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30. He is the lone officer among the 13 who fired their weapons that night who is charged criminally, because prosecutors say he stood on the hood and opened fire four seconds after the other officers had stopped shooting. ...
Brelo’s defence team has argued that all 49 rounds Brelo fired that night, including the last 15, were lawful and that the threat did not end until Brelo reached into the Malibu and removed the keys, preventing the suspects from using the car as a weapon. Russell and Williams were each shot more than 20 times.
Regardless of the trial’s outcome, the effects of the chase and shooting will likely endure for years to come.
The incident helped spur a US Justice Department probe that concluded Cleveland police officers had shown a pattern and practice of using excessive force. The city and federal authorities are negotiating a consent decree to reform the police department that will cost the city millions of dollars to implement and enforce. Cleveland has already paid $3m to the families of Russell and Williams, to settle a lawsuit.
Black woman's 'lynching' charge: an unsettling tactic to punish activism?
Maile Hampton, the African American activist who was arrested for “lynching” after trying to pull a fellow protester away from police during a January rally against law enforcement brutality in Sacramento heads into court on 9 April, facing a charge that carries the possibility of four years in prison and a lifetime of being labeled a felon.
Video of the rally shows police tussling with a protester in the street while activists on the sidewalk yell: “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
A woman who appears to be Hampton enters the street, carrying a bullhorn. She grabs the handle of a sign held by the protester being detained by police and attempts to pull it away from an officer who is also holding it. She is then pushed away by other officers.
Hampton’s arrest – and sensational-sounding charge – made headlines. California’s lynching law was put on the books in 1933, to prevent mobs from forcibly taking people from police custody for vigilante justice.
But the statute has long been used against protesters as well, by police if not prosecutors. ... In 2011, police in Oakland used it against members of the Occupy movement, arresting at least two activists, Tiffany Tran and Alex Brown, on the count during a sweep of a public plaza. The charges were dropped.
In 2012, police in Los Angeles also used the lynching law against Occupy, when an activist named Sergio Ballesteros was accused of intervening in an arrest during an Art Walk – according to published reports, the charge was later dropped. ...
Hampton, sitting in her lawyer’s office in mid-March with her half-brother, Jamier Sale, for an exclusive interview with the Guardian, said she believed she and Sale were being targeted by police because they were “very active in the Black Lives Matter movement”.
Chris Hedges: Boycott, Divest and Sanction Corporations That Feed on Prisons
All attempts to reform mass incarceration through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics, the courts and state and federal legislatures are useless. Corporations, which have turned mass incarceration into a huge revenue stream and which have unchecked political and economic power, have no intention of diminishing their profits. And in a system where money has replaced the vote, where corporate lobbyists write legislation and the laws, where chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with inadequate public transportation, sever people in marginal communities from jobs, and where the courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state, this demands a sustained, nationwide revolt.
“Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left,” said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders. “Mass incarceration is the most important civil rights issue of our day. And it is time for communities of faith to stand with poor people, mostly of color, who are unfairly exploited and abused. We must halt human rights violations against the poor that grow more pronounced each year,” Caley said here. He and other prison reform leaders spoke Saturday at the Elmwood Presbyterian Church.
“We have to shut down the system,” said Gale Muhammad, another speaker and the founder and CEO of Women Who Never Give Up. “All the companies that use prison labor have to be boycotted. And we can’t stop there. We have to boycott the vending machines in the prisons and the phone companies. We have to stop spending our money. Until we hit them in the pocket they won’t listen.”
Corporations currently exploiting prison labor include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Caterpillar, Chevron, the former Chrysler Group, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, International Paper, JanSport, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Koch Industries, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sears, Shell, Sprint, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart and Wendy’s. ...
Vast sums are at stake. The for-profit prison industry is worth $70 billion. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest owner of for-profit prisons and immigration detention facilities in the country, had revenues of $1.7 billion in 2013 and profits of $300 million. CCA holds an average of 81,384 inmates in its facilities on any one day. Aramark Holdings Corp., a Philadelphia-based company that contracts through Aramark Correctional Services to provide food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, was acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs. And, as in the wider society, while members of a tiny, oligarchic corporate elite each are paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the workers who generate these profits live in misery.
"They Couldn’t Take My Soul": Anthony Ray Hinton on His Exoneration After 30 Years on Death Row
LGBT battle far from over as 'religious freedom' bills multiply across the US
The LGBT equality movement pocketed a major victory last week when religious freedom legislation perceived as “anti-gay” sparked a national uproar, forcing the governors of Indiana and Arkansas to defy social conservatives by rejecting discrimination against LGBT people. ...
The swift and overwhelming backlash that helped modify the religious freedom bills – spurred in particular by tech and business leaders – revealed a new front in the broader US culture wars over LGBT rights. Even as marriage equality emerges a winner in the national battle, other hard-won LGBT rights are being attacked under the guise of religious liberty.
Measures resembling those in Indiana and Arkansas have multiplied across the country – and the majority have garnered less attention. Twelve states besides Arkansas and Indiana have proposed religious freedom laws over the past year. The bills failed to pass in five states, but are still pending in seven. ...
Proponents of religious liberty have sought political cover under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was authored by New York senator Chuck Schumer and signed into law in 1993 by Bill Clinton.
Experts Say Case of Purvi Patel Sets 'Cruel' Precedent for Reproductive Rights
Woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for losing fetus may have 'chilling effect' on reproductive health in many states
Though she has steadfastly claimed the loss of her pregnancy was a miscarriage, the 20-year prison sentence given to Purvi Patel by an Indiana court this week for the crime of 'feticide' is being slammed by legal experts and reproductive rights advocates who say the ruling is not only misguided and "cruel" given the facts of the case, but sets an "alarming" precedent for the rights of women both in Indiana and around the country.
Patel on Monday became the first woman in U.S. history to be sentenced to prison for losing her own fetus. She was found guilty of one charge of feticide and one charge of neglect of a dependent, after prosecutors claimed she delivered her fetus alive, rather than stillborn, as Patel told doctors.
"While no woman should face criminal charges for having an abortion or experiencing a pregnancy loss, the cruel length of this sentence confirms that feticide and other measures promoted by anti-abortion organizations are intended to punish not protect women," said Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, in a statement on Monday.
Indiana passed its feticide law in 2009, a year after a pregnant woman lost her twin fetuses when she was shot in the stomach during a bank robbery. Supporters said the law would help prosecute in those cases where a third party harmed a pregnant woman's fetus, but opponents warned that it could be misused to criminalize abortions.
"The prosecution and verdict in this case demonstrate that, despite their claims to the contrary, the real result of the anti-abortion movement—if not the intended goal—is to punish women for terminating pregnancies," Paltrow wrote in an article for The Public Eye magazine. "Turning this law into one that can be used to punish a woman who herself has an abortion is an extraordinary expansion of the scope and intention of the state’s law."
Greece considering nationalising its banks and issuing new currency, sources claim
Greece’s government is prepared to nationalise the country’s banks and could create a new currency to pay its bills unless the eurozone nations back down over austerity, sources have reportedly said. ...
A senior official told The Daily Telegraph: “We are a left-wing government. If we have to choose between a default to the IMF or a default to our own people, it is a no-brainer. ...
One official told the paper that Athens believed its Eurozone creditors were attempting to force Syriza from office.
“They want us to impose capital controls and cause a credit crunch, until the government becomes so unpopular that it falls,” the insider said. “They want make an example of us, and demonstrate that no government in the eurozone has a right to have mind of its own. They don’t believe that we will walk away, or that the Greek people will back us, and they are wrong on both counts.”
The global south has free trade to thank for its obesity and diabetes epidemic
You wouldn’t think that free-trade deals could lead to a diabetes and obesity epidemic, but they have. Today, many countries in the global south are seeing an explosion of these afflictions - all because their governments welcomed in transnational food companies looking for new “growth markets” for poor quality, heavily processed or just plain junk food.
For big conglomerates to increase their profits, they need to develop and sell products aimed at hundreds of millions of the world’s poor. Many of these people and communities still eat food that they produce themselves, or buy from informal markets that sell local produce. These local food systems and circuits are their livelihood for untold numbers of people.
Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to their success. The case of Mexico provides a stark picture of the consequences. Over the past two decades, the government of Mexico has signed more than a dozen free trade agreements and nearly 30 investment treaties that have opened up the countryside and the retail sector to transnational companies, putting Mexico’s food system up for grabs ....
Mexico is now one of the ten biggest producers of processed food in the world, with total sales reaching $124bn in 2012. The corporations running this business – such as PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever and Danone - made $28bn in profits from these sales, $9bn more than they made in Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy.
One of the main effects of all this has been a radical change in people’s diets and a disproportionate increase in malnutrition, obesity and diabetes. Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health reports that, between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25% to 35.5%; the number of obese women in that age group increased from 9.5% to 37.5%. A staggering 29% of Mexican children between the ages of five and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35% of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in 10 school age children suffers from anaemia.
Whistleblowers: Citigroup Falsely Represented Up to 80% of Mortgages Sold to Fannie and Freddie in 2007
BLACK: The Citigroup case was made possible by Richard Bowen and Sherry Hunt, who were colleagues as underwriters. ... It turns out that Richard Bowen and Sherry Hunt were able to document, originally when they looked, 40 to 60% of the representations and warranties that Citigroup was giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy these toxic mortgages were false. Imagine that. 40 to 60% of the time they were lying. And so they, Richard Bowen and Sherry Hunt blew the whistle all the way up the chain at Citigroup, including to Robert Rubin, in writing.
PERIES: Robert Rubin being?
BLACK: Robert Rubin was former treasury secretary under President Clinton. He was, would soon become chairman of the board of Citigroup. He is the leader of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.
He said, to the financial crisis inquiry commission: I have no idea what we did in response, and I don't know who did anything in response, but I heard back that we did great things.
So what did they actually do. Well, first they didn't fix the problems, they made it worse, so that by 2007, when Bowen and Hunt are looking again, the rate at which Citi is lying to Fannie and Freddie is up to 80%. ...
Now, they gave the Department of Justice the ideal criminal case on a platinum platter against the most elite leaders, including Robert Rubin at Citigroup, and the Justice Department refused to do anything. ...
Seven years past the peak of the crisis and the Justice Department is still batting zero, zero, zero against the elite frauds who caused the crisis in terms of prosecutions.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on a visit by Mother Jones to a meeting of the Chicago Federation of Labor where she spoke on behalf of the structural iron workers now in prison in Leavenworth prison.
Tune in at 2pm!
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O’Malley’s Populist Critique of Trade Pact Unsupported By Prior Comments
Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, D-Md., now positioning himself as a progressive populist among potential 2016 presidential candidates, told USA Today that he differs from Hillary Clinton because he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement he said will “hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.” ...
But just two years ago, there was no criticism to be heard when O’Malley discussed the TPP.
On May 8, 2013, O’Malley spoke before a trade conference hosted by the Council of Americas in Washington, D.C., where he was asked on camera about his perspective as a governor on the TPP and other trade deals pursued by the Obama administration. “I would hazard to guess that a majority of us [governors] believe that free trade, provided it’s fair — and that’s always the rub — is a net benefit for us. I believe that, at the risk of stating the painfully obvious, we’re all part of a global economy,” O’Malley said. “So it would seem to me, that to the extent that we can be proactive in concluding agreements with strategic partners, geographically, philosophically, then that is a benefit to us.” ...
O’Malley also signed a letter with six other governors to President Obama about the TPP deal. The letter, sent on May 27, 2011, did not decry the potential impact on middle class jobs. Instead O’Malley and the other governors requested: “Among your priorities for these negotiations, we ask that you include very strong intellectual property rights provisions, consistent with U.S. law, for protecting the investment of our innovative, intellectual property-intensive sectors, such as biopharmaceuticals.” ...
Hillary Clinton championed the TPP throughout her service as secretary of state. In 2012, speaking before a crowd in Annapolis, Maryland, that included O’Malley as a guest, Clinton declared, “This agreement is not just about eliminating barriers to trade, although that is crucial for boosting U.S. exports and creating jobs here at home.”
Chicago mayoral runoff: Rahm Emanuel fights to keep African American support
The April sun beats down as hundreds of supporters wait at a west side church to hear Jesús “Chuy” García, the county commissioner and former legislator who is looking to unseat Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. In an effort to drum up support among African American voters, García is flanked by black leaders like Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr, the philosopher Cornel West and Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, which has given the Mexican American candidate more than $300,000 in campaign donations to date.
In February, Chicagoans pushed a sitting mayor into a runoff – a first in the city’s history. The vote will take place on Tuesday, and it may now hinge on support from African Americans, who represent a large percentage of the city’s undecided voters. Four years ago, after leaving his position as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel rode into city hall on such support, picking up 58% of the African American vote and capturing every black ward in the city.
But on re-election night, Emanuel took just 42% of the black vote – a phenomenon many attribute to factors including the mayor’s unprecedented closing of almost 50 schools, his consistent allocation of city funds to resource-rich downtown neighborhoods, and what some say is an abrasive, closed-off personality.
In March, an Instagram photo of Emanuel posing next to a straight-faced African American man exploded on social media, after it was picked up by media sites such as MSNBC and Bloomberg.
The photo’s caption, written by health store worker Albert Griffith, read: “The Mayor of Chicago came by my job, still can’t stand this muthafucka tho.”
The Evening Greens
Chief of Blackfeet Nation Calls on President Obama to End Oil Leases on Sacred Tribal Lands
Chief Earl Old Person of the Blackfeet Nation recently asked President Obama for his support in ending oil leases in the Badger-Two Medicine in the Rocky Mountains.
The Badger-Two Medicine is 165,588 acres, and is surrounded by the Blackfeet Reservation, Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and the Rocky Mountain Front. This largely roadless area is of significant cultural and spiritual importance to the Blackfeet Nation.
Chief Old Person, a member of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council since 1954, noted that the Treaty of 1855 and the agreement made in 1895 reserved traditional rights, including access to practice tribal religion. He also said that the Badger-Two Medicine is sacred to the Blackfeet people and is known as the “Backbone of the World.” ...
Of the 47 original leases issued, 18 remain. The tribe has pursued the cancellation of these leases. In 2013, leaseholder Sidney Longwell of Solenex, LLC, filed a lawsuit in district court to begin drilling. No ruling has yet been made.
6,000 Acres of Old Growth Forests Slated for Logging, the Largest Sale in Decades
Two coalitions of conservation groups filed Notices of Appeal before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week from recent district court opinions approving old growth logging in the Tongass National Forest. In one case, four groups challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s Big Thorne old growth timber sale and associated road construction. In a separate lawsuit, a partially overlapping set of groups challenged provisions in the Tongass Land Management Plan that the Forest Service relies on when preparing old growth sales across much of Southeast Alaska.
The Big Thorne sale is by far the largest Tongass old growth sale in decades. The conservation groups argue that it undercuts the region’s $2 billion fishing and tourism industries while continuing an unsustainable log export industry. The groups are also concerned about damage to vital habitat for salmon, bears, Sitka black-tailed deer, goshawks and the Alexander Archipelago wolf, and impacts to sport and subsistence hunters as well as recreational use of the forest.
The Big Thorne sale would clearcut more than 6,000 acres of old-growth rainforest on Prince of Wales Island. Though the Forest Service estimates the sale would cost taxpayers $13 million, the economics of recent sales indicate taxpayer costs could eventually climb over $100 million. The Forest Service has been widely criticized for offering old-growth sales at an economic loss to American taxpayers and its Tongass timber program is currently under review by the federal General Accounting Office. Timber makes up less than 1 percent of economic activity in Southeast Alaska.
By contrast, economic reports value Southeast Alaska’s fishing and tourism industries at a combined $2 billion annually. Some reports suggest road building and industrial activity associated with Big Thorne would harm fish habitat and is inadequately analyzed by the Forest Service. Wild coho runs, an economic staple for the region’s troll fleet, are particularly sensitive to habitat impacts to headwater streams.
California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth
A punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature. ...
“Mother Nature didn’t intend for 40 million people to live here,” said Kevin Starr, a historian at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about this state. “This is literally a culture that since the 1880s has progressively invented, invented and reinvented itself. At what point does this invention begin to hit limits?” ...
But the drought is now forcing change in a place that long identified itself as “America’s desert oasis.” Palm Springs has ordered 50 percent cuts in water use by city agencies, and plans to replace the lawns and annual flowers around city buildings with native landscapes. It is digging up the grassy median into town that unfurled before visitors like a carpet at a Hollywood premiere. It is paying residents to replace their lawns with rocks and desert plants, and offering rebates to people who install low-flow toilets. ...
Other places face different threats to their way of life. Mayor Robert Silva of Mendota, in the heart of the agricultural Central Valley, said unemployment among farmworkers had soared as the soil turned to crust and farmers left half or more of their fields fallow. Many people are traveling 60 or 70 miles to look for work, Mr. Silva said, and families are increasingly relying on food donations. ...
State officials signaled on Friday that reductions in water supplies for farmers were likely to be announced in the coming weeks, and there is also likely to be increased pressure on the farms to move away from certain water-intensive crops — like almonds.
California's wealthy lagging in water conservation
As California gears up for the first mandatory water restrictions in its history, a long-standing class divide about water use is becoming increasingly apparent.
Beverly Hills and other affluent cities use far more water per capita than less-wealthy communities, prompting some to cast them as villains in California’s water conservation effort.
Residents in communities such as La Canada Flintridge, Newport Beach, Malibu and Palos Verdes all used more than 150 gallons of water per capita per day in January. By contrast, Santa Ana used just 38 gallons and communities in Southeast L.A. County used less than 45.
“Some people -- believe it or not -- don't know we are in a drought,” said George Murdoch, general manager of utilities in Newport Beach, which is beginning to fine chronic water wasters. “We have people that own a home here but aren't around a lot, so they could miss a leak.”
Stephanie Pincetl, who worked on the UCLA water-use study, said wealthy Californians are “lacking a sense that we are all in this together.”
“The problem lies, in part, in the social isolation of the rich, the moral isolation of the rich,” Pincetl said.
California governor tells climate change deniers to wake up
As his state faces the worst drought in its history, with mandatory water rationing for residents and fears of destruction to the agricultural sector, California governor Jerry Brown had a message Sunday for climate change deniers: wake up.
“With the weather that’s happening in California, climate change is not a hoax,” Brown said, on ABC news. “We’re dealing with it, and it’s damn serious.” ...
Brown responded to criticism that the rationing rules did not do enough to limit water consumption by the agricultural sector. About 9m acres of farmland in California are irrigated, accounting for 80% of all human water use, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. High-growth crops include almonds and other nuts, grapes, citrus and other fruit.
“The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres,” Brown said. “They’re pulling up vines and trees. Farmworkers are out of work. There are people in agriculture areas that are really suffering.”
Brown said shutting down agriculture production in the state was possible but “that would displace hundreds of thousands of people, and I don’t think it’s needed.”
“If things continue to at this level, that’s probably going to be examined,” he said.
California's thirst should be nation's wake-up call
For Californians, a fourth consecutive year of below-average rainfall and snowmelt will mean the first mandatory water restrictions in the state's history.
But those of us living in the other 49 states won't be exempt from the fallout. California farmers, who provide about half the country's fruits and vegetables, have already lost hundreds of thousands of acres of previously productive farmland. The impact on produce prices at your local grocery store will only intensify if the drought, already reckoned the worst in California's recorded history, persists. ...
Our proximity to abundant supplies of freshwater may give many Michiganders a false sense of security, at least until they wander into the produce aisle. But Brown's emergency edict makes it clear that the consequences of climate change are growing less theoretical, and more concrete, with each passing season.
Global warming is the challenge to which all of our destinies are increasingly linked. Michigan policymakers to whom California's troubles seem remote are missing the point, and squandering an important learning opportunity.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The Factual Errors in John Bolton’s “Bomb Iran!” Op-Ed in the New York Times – and Why You Should Care
Who Supports Comcast-Time Warner Merger? Follow the Money
DOJ intervenes in case of Ashley Diamond
Is There Hope for Greece?
A Little Night Music
Baby Face Leroy Foster - Boll Weevil
Leroy Foster - Take A Little Walk With Me
Baby Face Leroy Trio - Red Headed Woman
Baby Face Leroy Trio - Rollin' And Tumblin'
Little Walter Trio - Just Keep Lovin' Her
Muddy Waters (w/ Leroy Foster) - Muddy Jumps One
Baby Face Leroy Foster - Late Hours at Midnight
Baby Face Leroy - My Head Can't Rest Anymore
Baby Face Leroy - Blues Is Killin' Me
Snooky Pryor (w/ Leroy Foster) - Boogy Fool
Jimmy Rogers (w/ Leroy Foster) - Round About Boogie
Lee Brown (w/ Leroy Foster) - Horse Shoe Boogie
J.B. Lenoir And His Bayou Boys (w/ Leroy Foster) - My Baby Told Me
Little Walter (w/ Leroy Foster) - Dead Presidents
Little Walter Trio (w/ Leroy Foster) - Moonshine Blues
It's National Pie Day!
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