Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Eddie Boyd. Enjoy!
Eddie Boyd - Five Long Years
"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism. If these folks — if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation. So I want to be very clear. Some of the hype that we’ve been hearing over the last day or so — nobody’s listening to the content of people’s phone calls. ...
Now, with respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States."
-- Barack Obama
News and Opinion
NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls
The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".
The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs. ...
[Ron] Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has obliquely warned for months that the NSA's retention of Americans' communications incidentally collected and its ability to search through it has been far more extensive than intelligence officials have stated publicly. Speaking this week, Wyden told the Guardian it amounts to a "backdoor search" through Americans' communications data. ...
"Once Americans' communications are collected, a gap in the law that I call the 'back-door searches loophole' allows the government to potentially go through these communications and conduct warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans."
NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails – Clapper
- NSA used 'back door' to search Americans' communications
- Director of national intelligence confirms use of new legal rule
- Data collected under 'Prism' and 'Upstream' programs
US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.
The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.
Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.
“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian. ...
The legal authority to perform the searches, revealed in top-secret NSA documents provided to the Guardian by Edward Snowden, was denounced by Wyden as a “backdoor search loophole.”
Many of the NSA's most controversial programs collect information under the law affected by the so-called loophole. These include Prism, which allows the agency to collect data from Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and other tech companies, and the agency's Upstream program – a huge network of internet cable taps.
Clapper did not disclose how many warrantless searches had been performed by the NSA.
Neither Clapper nor the government will say how often the spooks troll American's private data, but apparently it's often enough that they feel that it would try the patience of their
rubber stampers FISC "overseers" if the FISC had to individually rubber stamp each use of the powers that have been granted them without any sort of meaningful public process:
Clapper letter Tells of U.S. Searches for Emails and Calls
The government has not said how often it has used the power to examine Americans’ communications [within the repository of communications that the government collects without a warrant]. ...
Last month, the issue also arose at a hearing by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal watchdog group that is examining how the government is using the FISA Amendments Act. ...
Patricia Wald, a retired appeals court judge, asked why it would not be appropriate to require analysts to get court approval to pull up Americans’ communications.
Robert S. Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, replied that imposing that rule would be an operational burden and would make the surveillance court extremely unhappy because of the frequency with which analysts query the database.
Judge Wald replied, “I suppose the ultimate question for us is whether or not the inconvenience to the agencies, or even the unhappiness of the FISA court, would be the ultimate criteria.”
Dragnet Nation: Do Google, Facebook Know More Private Info Than NSA and Soviet-Era Secret Police?
No more NSA spying? Sorry, Mr Obama, but that's not true
Last week in the Hague, Barack Obama seemed to have suddenly remembered the oath he swore on his inauguration as president – that stuff about preserving, protecting and defending the constitution of the United States. At any rate, he announced that the NSA would end the "bulk collection" of telephone records and instead would be required to seek a new kind of court order to search data held by telecommunications companies. ...
Dream on. The significant thing about Obama's announcement is the two things it left out: surveillance of the internet (as distinct from the telephonic activity of American citizens); and of the rest of the world – that's you and me. So even if Obama succeeds in getting his little policy swerve through Congress, the central capabilities of the national surveillance state will remain in place, untouched and unimpaired. ...
This is intolerable, for various reasons. The first and most obvious one is the intimacy of the data that is being collected. What is even more offensive is the speciousness of the rationale that is trotted out by state authorities to "justify" it. ... Equally offensive is the argument, regularly trotted out by government apologists, that "collection" does not mean what any normal person thinks it means. Sure, they say, the metadata may be hoovered up by the spooks' machines, but it isn't actually "collected" until it has been looked at by a human being. This is either breathtaking casuistry or evidence of startling official ignorance of current capabilities in machine learning and pattern recognition. Either way, it's bullshit.
Related to that is the way in which bulk collection of metadata undermines a fundamental principle of any civilised legal system – the presumption of innocence until proved otherwise. Current NSA/GCHQ practice effectively turns every citizen into a suspect to be surveilled, just in case, at some time in the future, the state decides to take an interest in him or her.
Key senators will vote to declassify Senate findings on CIA
Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King said Wednesday they will vote to declassify the findings, conclusions and executive summary section of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation techniques.
Their votes are likely to mean a majority of the 15-member committee will back declassification. A vote is expected Thursday.
The committee has seven Democrats, seven Republicans, including Collins, and one independent, King.
“We remain strongly opposed to the use of torture, believing that it is fundamentally contrary to American values," the two senators said in a joint statement.
"While we have some concerns about the process for developing the report, its findings lead us to conclude that some detainees were subjected to techniques that constituted torture. This inhumane and brutal treatment never should have occurred. Further, the report raises serious concerns about the CIA’s management of this program."
‘We’re All Cheneyites Now’
Dick Cheney’s ideology of U.S. global domination has become an enduring American governing principle regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office, a reality reflected in the recent Ukrainian coup, the 2011 “regime change” in Libya and drone wars waged in several countries by President Barack Obama.
The final form of this ideology took shape in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union when the world was then to be subjected to eternal U.S. military dominance, as revealed in the leaked “Draft Defense Planning Guidance” (DPG) devised by Cheney’s subordinates when he was Defense Secretary under President George H.W. Bush.
Since then, Cheney has been so successful in propagating this ideology of permanent U.S. domination abroad and rule by a “unitary executive” at home that it has now survived multiple changes of U.S. presidents largely intact. ... President Obama has cemented Cheney’s ideological legacy by continuing his unilateralism and even expanding it into such executive powers as targeted killings of American citizens accused of terrorism. ...
While there remains some slight domestic opposition to Cheney’s most visible legacy, the U.S. global military prison at Guantanamo, there is virtually no deviation in the United States from the core of Cheney’s ideology. That is, the unrelenting pursuit of total U.S. global military domination as outlined in the Defense Planning Guidance.
This February’s successful subversion of Ukraine’s democratically elected government by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland is merely the latest example of U.S. policies first conceived and promoted by Cheney and like-minded ideologists, including Nuland’s husband, renowned neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century.
If there was any doubt about the continuation of Cheneyism under Obama, the activities of Nuland – a Bush-43 holdover who was promoted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Secretary of State John Kerry – shows there was no real break in foreign policy with the change of administrations in 2009.
As revealed by Nuland, there has not been a Russian policy “reset” by the U.S.; it was a mere subterfuge. And as Putin is learning, any objection to U.S. strategic expansionism is treated as “terrorism” or “aggression” and becomes a pretext for U.S. diplomatic, economic and military suppression of the “threat.”
Apparently the propagandists were not put off by the NBC report that
debunked their lies about Russian troops massing on the Ukraine border.
Feel the fear! Listen to the creaking wheels of the Great Propaganda Wurlitzer as it wheezes out its ancient tune! See the Nato fearleader shaking the pom-poms of doom! Step right up and enjoy The Big Lie...
Russia could achieve Ukraine incursion in 3-5 days: NATO general
Russia has massed all the forces it needs on Ukraine's border if it were to decide to carry out an "incursion" into the country and it could achieve its objective in three to five days, NATO's top military commander said on Wednesday.
Calling the situation "incredibly concerning", NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said NATO had spotted signs of movement by a very small part of the Russian force overnight but had no indication that it was returning to barracks.
Russia's seizure and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region has caused the deepest crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War, leading the United States and Europe to impose sanctions on Moscow. They have said they will strengthen those sanctions if Russia moves beyond Crimea into east Ukraine.
NATO military chiefs are concerned that the Russian force on the Ukrainian border, which they estimate stands at 40,000 soldiers, could pose a threat to eastern and southern Ukraine.
"This is a very large and very capable and very ready force," Breedlove said in an interview with Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.
A view of NATO expansion through a Russian lens
NATO Plans Military Buildup in Caucasus - Projects in Armenia, Azerbaijan Aimed at Spiting Russia
You can’t have a border with Russia these days, or in Armenia and Moldova’s case be just kind of close to Russia, without NATO looking to throw military assets at you these days to “counter” an imagined Russian threat. ...
While NATO has imagined a looming problem in Moldova over the status of Transnistria, Russia has extremely cozy relations with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the only hint of any military tension for either Armenia or Azerbaijan in the region are with one another, not with Russia.
Rather, NATO seems to be looking to use the fiction of an “expansionist” Russia to engage in some military expansion of its own, insinuating itself ever-deeper into Asia for no apparent reason beyond just sticking it to Russia.
Torture war between CIA and Senate Intel Committee intensifies
In what may be the most damning portion of this report, the Intelligence Committee alleges that as information was passed up the chain of command toward the top levels of the U.S. government, CIA officials would twist the facts to make it seem as though the torture program was producing intelligence that actually came from more traditional interrogation:
One official said that almost all of the critical threat-related information from Abu Zubaida was obtained during the period when he was questioned by [FBI interrogator Ali] Soufan at a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was interrogated by the CIA and waterboarded 83 times.
Information obtained by Soufan, however, was passed up through the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community, the Justice Department and Congress as though it were part of what CIA interrogators had obtained, according to the committee report.
“The CIA conflated what was gotten when, which led them to misrepresent the effectiveness of the program,” said a second U.S. official who has reviewed the report. The official described the persistence of such misstatements as among “the most damaging” of the committee’s conclusions.
None of the participants has, or will ever, suffer any legal consequences for the torture program (even as he shut the program down upon taking office, President Obama made clear there would be no prosecutions). But to this day, all those involved have to insist, for the sake of their reputations and their own self-image as moral human beings, that it was all worthwhile. And they’ll never stop insisting as much, no matter what evidence might emerge showing they’re wrong.
Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) the indispensable font of all knowledge of where the skeletons reside:
CIA’s Own Records of CIA’s Lies to Congress
The lies CIA told Congress in its first several years of the torture program include that it,
- Refused, at first, to reveal that the CIA relied on the September 17, 2001 Finding and therefore hid that the President had personally authorized the torture.
- Briefed on torture techniques that had happened months in the past, but claimed they had never yet been used.
- Falsely claimed CIA had not tortured before the August 1 memos purportedly authorizing it.
- Claimed Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah were not yet compliant as late as February 2003, even though they had been found compliant, after which CIA continued to use torture anyway.
- Claimed the torture tapes were a perfect match with what had been recorded in the torture log when a CIA OGC lawyer reviewed them in December 2002.
- Did not disclose the tapes had already been altered by the time CIA OGC reviewed them.
- Claimed the torture tapes had shown the torturers followed DOJ’s guidance when in fact they showed the torturers exceeded DOJ guidance.
- Misled regarding whether the detainees who had been killed had been tortured.
- Oversold the value of information provided by Abu Zubaydah.
- Lied about importance of torture in getting Abu Zubaydah to talk.
There are a number of claims CIA made that are almost certainly also false — most notably with regards to what intelligence came from torture — but most of that didn’t get recorded in the CIA’s records. I fully expect we’ll find details of those in the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
Syria death toll over 150,000, says human rights body
At least 150,000 people have been killed in Syria's three-year-old civil war, a third of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said.
The UK-based Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical or security sources, said the real toll was likely to be significantly higher at about 220,000 deaths.
Efforts to end the conflict by bringing together representatives of President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition have so far failed. The United Nations peace mediator for Syria said last week that talks were unlikely to resume soon.
Sooprize, Sooprize, Sooprise!!! The robed masters decided that the wealthy and powerful haven't manage to corrupt our political process enough yet, so they're going to let them
make even larger bribes "contribute" more to
their elected whores candidates for office:
McCutcheon v. FEC: Supreme Court Strikes Down Overall Limits On Campaign Contributions
The Supreme Court struck down limits Wednesday in federal law on the overall campaign contributions the biggest individual donors may make to candidates, political parties and political action committees.
The justices said in a 5-4 vote that Americans have a right to give the legal maximum to candidates for Congress and president, as well as to parties and PACs, without worrying that they will violate the law when they bump up against a limit on all contributions, set at $123,200 for 2013 and 2014. That includes a separate $48,600 cap on contributions to candidates.
The decision will allow the wealthiest contributors to pour millions of dollars into candidate and party coffers, although those contributions will be subject to disclosure under federal law. Big donors already can spend unlimited amounts on attacks ads and other outlets that have played an increasingly important role in campaigns.
But the court's decision does not undermine limits on individual contributions to candidates for president or Congress, now $2,600 an election.
Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision, which split the court's liberal and conservative justices. Roberts said the aggregate limits do not act to prevent corruption, the rationale the court has upheld as justifying contribution limits. ...
Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case, but wrote separately to say that he would have gone further and wiped away all contribution limits.
Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the liberal dissenters, said that the court's conservatives had "eviscerated our nation's campaign finance laws" through Wednesday's ruling and 2010 decision in Citizens United that lifted limits on independent spending by corporations and labor unions.
"If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today's decision we fear will open a floodgate," Breyer said in comments from the bench. "It understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institution. It creates, we think, a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate's campaign."
Supreme Court Continued Today on its March to Destroy the Nation’s Campaign Finance Laws Enacted to Prevent Corruption
The Supreme Court in the McCutcheon decision today overturned 40 years of national policy and 38 years of judicial precedent to strike down the overall limits on the total contributions from an individual to federal candidates and to party committees in an election cycle.
With its decision today in McCutcheon, the Supreme Court majority continued on its march to destroy the nation’s campaign finance laws, which were enacted to prevent corruption and protect the integrity of our democracy.
The Supreme Court majority voted in McCutcheon todayto license the further corruption of our democracy. The Court re-created the system of legalized bribery today that existed during the Watergate days.
The same Supreme Court majority struck down the longstanding ban on corporate expenditures in federal elections in the 2010 Citizens United decision. That decision paved the way for vast amounts of unlimited contributions and secret money to be spent to distort federal elections and corrupt government decisions.
With its Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, the Supreme Court has turned our representative system of government into a sandbox for America’s billionaires and millionaires to play in.
Telecomm's money was used to bribe Greek officials
Swedish mobile telecoms equipment maker Ericsson paid 116 million Swedish crowns ($18 million) to a commercial agent, money which was then used to bribe Greek officials to secure a deal for Ericsson in 1999, Swedish radio reported on Wednesday.
In an interview, former Ericsson employee Liss-Olof Nenzell told Swedish radio that "politicians, generals and high-ranking state officials" had received the Ericsson money.
Ericsson said in a statement that it had paid money to a commercial agent, but did not know what became of it. ...
The Greek order was for the Ericsson airborne surveillance system Erieye and was worth 4.9 billion Swedish crowns ($759 million). Ericsson has subsequently sold its defense business to Swedish group Saab. ...
Antonis Kantas, deputy armaments chief at the Greek Defense Ministry between 1997 and 2002, has admitted to taking $16 million in bribes relating to arms deals with foreign companies and mentioned Ericsson in connection with bribes in his court testimony.
What are the Saudis Afraid Of?
Why aren't Europe's young people rioting any more?
In December 2008, in Athens, a "special security officer" shot dead a young student, igniting demonstrations, strikes and riots. Young people were at the forefront of the protests, in a country with a long tradition of youth participation in social and political movements. Several commentators at the time spoke of a "youth rebellion". ...
Following severe austerity measures in 2010-11, there were again mass demonstrations and strikes, culminating in the "movement of the squares" – protests against the destruction of private and social life. Young people were again prominent, lending enthusiasm and spirit to the movement. ...
Then there was nothing. As economic and social disaster unfolded in 2012 and 2013, the youth of Greece became invisible in social and economic life. The young have been largely absent from politics, social movements and even from the spontaneous social networks that have dealt with the worst of the catastrophe. ...
The answer seems to be that the European youth has been battered by a "double whammy" of problematic access to education and rising unemployment, forcing young people to rely on family support and curtailing their independence. Uncertain about the future, worried about jobs and housing, the youth of Europe shows no confidence and trust in established political parties. Significant sections have already been attracted to the nihilistic ends of the political spectrum, including varieties of anarchism and fascism. The left, traditionally a home for the radical strivings of young people, has lost its appeal. ...
The double whammy appears to have sapped the rebellious energy of the young, forcing them to seek greater financial help from parents for housing and daily life. This trend lies at the root of the current paradox of youth in Europe. There is little extreme poverty, and the young are relatively protected and well-trained, but their labour is not valued, their dreams of education are denied and their independence is restricted. As a consequence, frustration has grown. Yet, it cannot find an outlet in mainstream parties, including the left, which strikes many young people as far too timid. Even in Greece, where the official opposition of Syriza – the party of the left – is preparing for government, young people are looking askance at a party that seems unwilling to take radical action.
U.S. companies are chipping away at retiree health benefits
ALTOONA, Pa. — Throughout a bitter winter, burly linemen gathered at daybreak round tiny fire pits on a street in front of where they’ve clocked in to work for years. ... Now, locked out of their jobs since Thanksgiving in a contract dispute with Penelec, part of powerful Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., their only work was on their vigil.
American politics this election year is rife with discussion about the gap between rich and poor, with talk of raising the minimum wage for those at the bottom and about those at the very top.
But in Altoona, as in much of America, it’s about the vast middle, those who work hard, play by the rules and make decent livings. Now the rules are changing. The promise of the middle class is being broken.
Big companies are shifting their focus entirely to their stockholders. Globalization, endorsed by both major political parties, puts added pressure on the bottom line. Wages are stalled and benefits are on the chopping block. ...
“We’re coming down to two groups in this country: elites and those who have to work for them,” complained J. Merritt, 48, an 18-year employee of Penelec, who goes by his first initial. “That is not what this country was founded on. The forefathers of this country are probably flipping in their graves.”
Once a mainstay of blue-collar and government jobs, retiree health benefits are steadily disappearing. ... By 2010, just 17.7 percent of American workers had employer-provided retiree health coverage, down sharply from about 29 percent in 1997, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan study organization.
FirstEnergy started notifying employees in 2009 that the company would end its subsidy for retiree health care in 2014.
'Too Big to Fail' still thriving
Five years after Lehman Brothers' seismic bust and just two years after euro member Greece defaulted, the concept of being too big or too strategic to fail is alive and well.
Although unwritten government guarantees of big banks have been at the heart of taxpayer outrage over being left on the hook for the missteps of giant corporations, few politicians or voters are keen to embrace another 'Lehman moment' or the global economic implosion that ensued.
Tighter regulation on capital buffers and risk-taking, the insistence that banks have 'living wills' for any future workout procedure, creditor 'bail-in' bonds and even the ring-fencing of certain operations within banks have all been preferred routes to limit the exposure of both society and shareholders.
Yet, as an International Monetary Fund study detailed this week, there's still a running assumption that governments would again rescue the biggest banks in the event of another panic.
The IMF found that at least through 2012 the euro zone's biggest banks still benefited from an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $90 billion to $300 billion. Subsidies for UK and Japanese banks may have been as high as $110 billion and they ranged from $20 billion to $70 billion in the United States.
Citigroup CEO Named To “Key Administration Post”
Just a few short days ago, it looked like Citigroup was on the ropes. The company’s proposal for redistributing capital back to shareholders was rejected by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Given the global bank’s repeated fiascos – including most recently the theft of around $400 million from its Mexican unit – it is hardly surprising that the Fed has said “no” (and for the second time in three years).
The idea that Citigroup might now or soon have a viable “living will” now seems preposterous. If top management cannot run sensible financial projections (that’s the Fed’s view; see p.7 of the full report), what is the chance that they can lay out a plausible plan to explain how the company, operating in more than 100 countries worldwide, could be wound down through bankruptcy – without any financial assistance from the government? According to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, failure to submit a viable living will should result in remedial action by the authorities.
Such action has now been taken: CEO Michael Corbat has been named to a top White House job, with responsibility for helping to develop “financial capability for young Americans.” ...
Presumably, Mr. Corbat’s appointment will help prepare the next generation of Americans for deep recession, job losses, and dismal prospects due to major miscalculations by Citigroup and other big banks – including what these firms have done, what they are doing now, and what they will do.
The Evening Greens
Key senator says U.S. office can lift part of oil export ban
A U.S. government office has the power to approve exports of an abundant type of petroleum and help energy companies begin to partially bypass a 40-year ban on crude exports, according to a report released on Tuesday by Lisa Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The ban on crude exports the government put in place after the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s includes a prohibition on exports of unprocessed condensate, a light petroleum that appears in oil reservoirs as a gas, but condenses to a liquid when it leaves the well.
The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), an office of the Department of Commerce, can simply modernize its definition of crude to exclude the condensates from the ban, according to the report called "License to Trade: Commerce Department Authority to Allow Condensate Exports." BIS has changed definitions of other types of petroleum for decades, it said. ...
If condensate exports were allowed, it would be a small but important first step in opening U.S. oil sales to global markets. Exports of refined products like gasoline and diesel are already allowed. Condensate exports could reach between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels per day if the BIS grants licenses, Citigroup analysts said in a recent research note. ...
The United States still imports much of its oil, so it could be a few years before it has so much that most companies will need to find new markets. And no major legislation to lift a ban exists, in part because few lawmakers in an election year want to support a measure that could be blamed for raising motor fuel prices.
U.N. Climate Panel Issues Dire Warning of Threat to Global Food Supply, Calls for Action & Adaption
'Unprecedented' Ocean Temperatures on Track to Bring Death to Coral Ecosystems
Coral reefs off of the Western Australian coast are in extreme peril due to "unprecedented" ocean temperatures caused by climate change, a report released Tuesday by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) warns.
While ocean temperatures fluctuate over the years, both the highs and lows have consistently reached new heights in the Indian Ocean where the scientists did their research. The period since 1980 has been "the warmest period with highest sea levels” in the waters off of the West Australia coast since records began in 1795.
An effect of this warming is an event known as coral bleaching, which often leads to the death of coral ecosystems.
"Indian Ocean warming towards the end of the twenty-first century could potentially increase coral bleaching risk," the report warns, "and affect maintenance of the current diverse high-latitude coral reef ecosystem and associated fisheries."
“We were hoping that West Australia … still had some time to react or adapt to the changes," AIMS scientist Dr. Jens Zinke told the Guardian. "But we’re now seeing all these heatwaves. It’s not that change is going to come, it’s that change is already happening."
Better than Hamsterdance:
The History of Climate Change Negotiations in 83 seconds
From the Department of What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You (the US government's largest and busiest department these days):
House Votes to Block Climate Research
The Republican-controlled House has approved a measure that would effectively force government agencies to stop studying climate change. The measure calls on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and related bodies to focus on forecasting severe weather — but not explore one of its likely causes. The vote comes as the U.N.'s top climate panel issued a report this week calling on governments to prepare for global warming's worsening impact and to cut emissions in order to prevent it from getting worse.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Americans Have Stopped Looking for Another Hitler
"'no rights legally,' because I am transgender"
A Little Night Music
Eddie Boyd and the Chess Men - Nothing But Trouble
Eddie Boyd - Blue Coat Man
Eddie Boyd and Fleetwood Mac - You Got To Reap
Eddie Boyd - Third Degree
Eddie Boyd and Fleetwood Mac - The Big Boat
Eddie Boyd - Just a Fool
Eddie Boyd - Praise To My Baby
Eddie Boyd - 24 Hours
Eddie Boyd - Please Help Me
Eddie Boyd and His Blues Band - The Train Is Coming
Eddie Boyd & the Daylighters - Come On Home
Eddie Boyd - Blue Monday Blues
Eddie Boyd - Cool Kind Treatment
Eddie Boyd - Key To The Highway
Eddie Boyd With Fleetwood Mac - She's Real
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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