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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues vocalist Andrew 'Big Voice' Odom. Enjoy!
Andrew 'Big Voice' Odom - The Thrill Is Gone
“The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”
-- Glenn Greenwald
News and Opinion
Prepping for a Ukrainian Massacre
Between the anti-Russian propaganda pouring forth from the Obama administration and the deeply biased coverage from the U.S. news media, the American people are being prepared to accept and perhaps even cheer a massacre of eastern Ukrainians who have risen up against the coup regime in Kiev.
The protesters who have seized government buildings in ten towns in eastern Ukraine are being casually dubbed “terrorists” by both the Kiev regime and some American journalists. Meanwhile, it’s become conventional wisdom in Official Washington to assume that the protesters are led by Russian special forces because of some dubious photographs of armed men, accepted as “proof” with few questions asked by the mainstream U.S. news media.
While the U.S. news media is treating these blurry photos as the slam-dunk evidence of direct Russian control of the eastern Ukrainian protests – despite denials by the Russian government and the protesters – the BBC was among the few news agencies that provided a more objective assessment, noting that the photos are open to a variety of interpretations.
However, in Official Washington, the stage is now set for what could be a massacre of Ukrainian civilians who have risen up against the putschists who seized control of Kiev in a Feb. 22 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The violent putsch was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias, some of which have now been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard and dispatched to the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
If the slaughter of the eastern Ukrainian protesters does come, you can expect Official Washington to be supportive. Whereas the Kiev protesters who seized government buildings in February were deemed “pro-democracy” activists even as they overthrew a democratically elected leader, the eastern Ukrainian protesters, who still consider Yanukovych their legitimate president, are dismissed as “terrorists.” And, we all know what happens to “terrorists.”
US Sending Paratroopers to Baltics As Ukraine Boils
As the Obama administration publicly warned Russia against further provocative acts relating to the ongoing tensions in Ukraine on Tuesday, it also announced that U.S. paratroopers from the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) based in Italy are heading to Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia this week to bolster NATO forces.
Pentagon spokesperson Rear Adm. John Kirby made the announcement Tuesday, characterizing the deployment of approximately 600 troops as "exercises" that would last about a month.
The soldiers, said Kirby, should be seen as "a very tangible representation of our commitment to our security obligations in Europe" against what he described as "Russian aggression."
Ukraine's acting president calls for action against pro-Russian separatists
Ukraine's acting president has called for the resumption of military operations against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, claiming two of his party's supporters had been "tortured to death", in a further blow to an unravelling international peace plan.
Oleksandr Turchynov said "counter-terrorist" operations in the region, suspended as part of the peace agreement in Geneva last Thursday, should restart after the bodies of two men, one a pro-Kiev politician, had been found near the rebel-held town of Slavyansk.
The politician has been named as Vladimir Rybak, a town councillor and member of the Batkivshchyna party, who went missing on 17 April.
"The terrorists who effectively took the whole Donetsk region hostage have now gone too far, by starting to torture and murder Ukrainian patriots. These crimes are being committed with the full support and connivance of the Russian Federation," Turchynov said, hours after a joint appearance with the US vice-president, Joe Biden.
The country's defence ministry also reported that one of its observation planes had been struck by gunfire from Slavyansk, one of the areas of greatest tension in the eastern region. The plane landed without injuries, the ministry added. ...
Biden flew to Kiev to offer the Ukrainian government economic support and tell Moscow it was "time to stop talking and start acting". In response, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the onus was on Washington to rein in the authorities in Kiev, which he said had been brought to power by the US and was responsible for "outrages".
Russia warns it will respond if interests attacked in Ukraine
Russia issued a blunt warning on Wednesday that it would respond if its interests are attacked in Ukraine, as pro-Kremlin rebels in the east of the country braced for a new military offensive by Kiev.
The threat by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in which he recalled the 2008 war with Georgia over breakaway South Ossetia, came as Russia accused Kiev and the US of distorting an agreement reached in Geneva last week to defuse the crisis and of ignoring what it said were provocative actions by Ukrainian nationalists.
Lavrov used an interview with the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT to accuse the US of "running the show" in Ukraine, claiming that it was "quite telling" that Kiev had announced a new offensive in the east of the country after US Vice-President Joe Biden had visited.
"If we are attacked, we would certainly respond," Lavrov told state-controlled RT television.
"If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law."
The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that it believed the west was serious about seeking peace in Ukraine but "the facts speak of the opposite".
Lavrov: If we're attacked, we'll certainly respond
The New York Times finds Russian spies in eastern Ukraine
The New York Times has run a relentless campaign of lies and distortions backing US policy in Ukraine. This has included portraying the opposition in eastern Ukraine to the pro-Western regime in Kiev as proof of an aggressive Russian intervention threatening Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the world.
The newspaper’s article Monday, “Photos Link Masked Men in Eastern Ukraine to Russia,” purports to provide definitive proof that Russian spies are active in eastern Ukraine and manipulating events there. ...
There may or may not be Russian agents in Ukraine, a question the World Socialist Web Site is not in a position to answer. However, even if the Times article proved its charge that Russian spies are active in Ukraine—which, as we will see, it does not—the reader would have a right to ask: So what?
CIA Director John Brennan went to Kiev a week ago, though he sought to hide his visit from the public, as the Western-backed regime in Kiev prepared its crackdown on the eastern Ukraine protests. British intelligence has admitted that its agents are combing east Ukraine. Why is the dispatching of spies to Ukraine by Russia more threatening than the appearance of MI6 or of Brennan, who has played a leading role in running a global network of torture camps and a program of drone murder?
Leaving these questions unasked and unanswered, the Times can write a fear-mongering piece covering up both the imperialist interests driving US policy and the hypocrisy of the American position. Washington and its European allies installed an unelected, anti-Russian government in Kiev by backing a putsch in February spearheaded by the fascist Right Sector militia. During the protests leading up to the putsch, US officials boasted that they had spent $5 billion on building up Ukrainian opposition groups.
US warns Russia over Ukraine as Moscow announces military exercises
The crisis in Ukraine deepened further overnight following the departure of the US vice-president, Joe Biden, from Kiev after a two-day visit.
In a late-night phone call, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, told the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, of his "deep concern over the lack of positive Russian steps to de-escalate" the crisis in eastern Ukraine, a state department official said.
Kerry also called on Russia to "tone down escalatory rhetoric".
But Russia says Kiev's new leaders – whom it regards as illegitimate – are to blame for the collapse of the peace accord brokered in Geneva, which many hoped would avert Ukraine's slide into civil war. ...
On Wednesday morning, Russia's defence ministry announced on state news wire Interfax that the navy had launched snap military exercises involving its fleet in the Caspian Sea.
The drill will last seven days and involve around 10 naval vessels and 400 sailors. The Caspian Sea is bordered by Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan – a region that is crisscrossed by oil and natural gas pipelines.
Big Oil is doubling down on Putin's Russia
Russia may have become an international outcast in the wake of its annexation of Crimea and continued destabilization of eastern Ukraine. But for one group of powerful multinationals, Russia these days is less pariah than promised land.
Big Western oil companies from BP to Shell have not just stayed the course in Russia in recent months -- many have essentially doubled down on oil and gas investments there and built even closer ties with Russian energy firms. Taken together, the deals could send billions of dollars flowing into the Russian economy just when Barack Obama's administration is trying to hammer it hard enough to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to reverse his annexation of Crimea and stop menacing eastern Ukraine.
"We've made clear that we'd be prepared to target certain sectors of the Russian economy if we see a significant escalation, including direct Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, White House spokesperson Laura Lucas Magnuson has said.
It's unclear how successful the American efforts will be if giant multinational energy firms continue investing in Russia. The deals are a boon to Putin and a blow to President Obama for reasons that go beyond mere dollars and cents. The Western companies that sign the agreements also bring much-needed technical know-how, which is critical to Russian efforts to tap oil and gas in an array of inhospitable sites.
"Basically, they are torpedoing whatever the United States and the EU are trying to do, which is rattle Putin's cage," said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. "I'm very surprised the oil companies are going out of their way to assure Russia and Putin that they are going to do business as usual."
Another journalist abducted in Ukraine by pro-Russian separatists
Pro-Russian separatists have abducted an American reporter, Simon Ostrovsky, in eastern Ukraine. He works for the US-based global news channel Vice News.
Ostrovsky is being held in Slavyansk by a group led by the self-proclaimed "people's mayor" Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, according to the Daily Telegraph's correspondent Roland Oliphant.
Ostrovsky has been responsible for a number of vivid dispatches from Ukraine for the Vice News website and YouTube in recent weeks, said a New York Times blog.
Vice News issued a statement saying that it is working "to secure the safety and security of our friend and colleague."
And the press freedom watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists, has called for Ostrovsky's immediate release. Its Europe and central Asia coordinator, Nina Ognianova, said the separatists should "stop detaining, harassing, and obstructing journalists reporting on the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine.
US Blesses Egyptian Repression with Apache Attack Helicopters
Orchestrated overthrow of democratically-elected government: check.
Repression, arrest, and death sentences for political opponents: check.
Mass crackdown on journalists and critical media: check.
Shipment of U.S.-made Apache attack helicopters to government behind said actions: They're on their way.
According to Reuters:
The United States said on Tuesday it will deliver 10 Apache attack helicopters to Egypt, relaxing a partial suspension of aid imposed after Egypt's military ousted President Mohamed Mursi last year and cracked down violently on protesters.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel informed his Egyptian counterpart of the decision, which will help Egypt's counter-terrorism operations in the Sinai Peninsula, the Pentagon said.
"We believe these new helicopters will help the Egyptian government counter extremists who threaten U.S., Egyptian, and Israeli security," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement, recounting Hagel's conversation with Egyptian Defense Minister Colonel Sedki Sobhi.
Secretary of State John Kerry had paved the way by certifying to Congress that Egypt met key criteria for Washington to resume some aid.
Experts: U.S. must have OKd transfer of missiles seen in Syria rebel videos
The heavy anti-tank missiles recently shown in videos being fired by Western-backed Syrian rebels were manufactured in the United States, and their transfer to the rebels would have required direct American government approval, according to experts in international weapons deals.
That makes the videos the first hard evidence that the Obama administration has undertaken what may be a test of the rebels’ ability to adapt to advanced weaponry in a conflict that to date has been primarily a battle of outdated Soviet-era equipment.
The videos, posted on the Internet over the last three weeks by the Harakat Hazem rebel group, which is affiliated with the American-backed Supreme Military Council, shows rebels firing BGM-71 TOW missiles, a wire-guided anti-tank weapons system capable of piercing the armor on the Syrian military’s heaviest battle tank, the T-80. ...
“I was aware that the decision had been made to send better equipment through the Saudis but did not know they had arrived on the ground until the videos appeared,” said a Beirut-based Western military attache, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns. The attache, who has substantial experience transferring weapons to countries and groups, said the videos were probably intended to demonstrate to U.S. officials that the missiles had been used properly.
Syria has dumped more than 80% of chemical stockpiles
Syria turned over another batch of raw materials and has now disposed of more than 86 percent of its chemical arsenal, according to a statement Tuesday from the agency overseeing the mammoth project to remove Syria's chemical weapons in accordance with a U.S.-Russian-brokered deal.
Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in a statement that the materials were delivered to ships at the main port of Latakia and from there were taken to an offshore U.S. ship. The OPCW monitors the neutralizing and disposal process from the vessel.
Israel will have to run Palestine if peace talks fail, Mahmoud Abbas warns
The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, has warned in explicit terms that Israel will have to reassume responsibility for the Palestinian areas – including providing basic services for some 2.5 million people – if the US-sponsored peace talks finally collapse in a week's time.
The warning came as Abbas set out his conditions to Israel for a nine-month extension to the peace negotiations, and as the first Palestinian Liberation Organisation delegation to visit Gaza since 2007 arrived for unity talks with their Islamist rivals Hamas, who govern the coastal strip.
Abbas's comments follow reports at the weekend that he was considering dismantling the Palestinian Authority if talks ended by the 29 April deadline without an extension. ...
In what appeared to be a two-pronged strategy, Abbas suggested to visiting Israeli journalists in Ramallah that the deadline for talks with Israel could be extended if Israel agreed to spend the first three months of the new negotiating period discussing final border arrangements, freeze settlement construction on the West Bank and release a final group of long term prisoners. ...
Abbas's message appeared to be underlined by a series of speeches by both Hamas's prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and Ahmad, who raised the prospect of talks to bring Hamas under the umbrella of the PLO. "We must conclude national reconciliation and end the division so we can have one government, one political national agenda and one system … There is no room for failure at this dialogue," Haniyeh told a packed meeting of officials adding his movement was "open for unity" and welcomed its Fatah partners.
Hole in Afghan budget stirs unease as West starts packing bags
A $375 million hole in the Afghan budget is threatening public projects and civil servants' salaries, officials say, putting the aid-dependent economy under stress just as Afghanistan awaits a new leader and foreign troops prepare to go home.
U.S., U.N. and Afghan finance ministry officials have discussed ways to resolve what they say has become a critical situation for the budget, with civil projects most at risk as international assistance starts to taper off.
"If the political situation of the country does not become normal and businesses do not start again soon this problem will become even more worrying," Alhaj Muhammad Aqa, director general of the treasury at the finance ministry, told Reuters on Wednesday. "We will not only face problems in paying salaries of employees but we will have difficulties in other issues too."
Funding for security will not be affected, as costs are met by foreign governments which recognize that any chance of stability in Afghanistan rests on quelling the Taliban insurgency.
At the start of the month, Afghans voted for a new president to replace Hamid Karzai who steps down after 12 years in power. The international community poured billions of dollars of aid into Afghanistan during Karzai's rule, but the country's next leader could struggle to receive the same levels of support.
Preliminary final election results are due on Saturday, but early tallies show no outright winner, meaning further delays in the political transition. A run-off would occur in late May or early June.
The Modern History of Venezuela and Popular Democracy
How many wars can President Obama stir up in 8 years? Is he going for the record?
Obama: Senkakus ‘within scope’ of U.S.-Japan treaty
President Barack Obama—for the first time as an incumbent U.S. president—clearly stated the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture are subject to Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, in a written reply to questions submitted by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
“The policy of the United States is clear—the Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan and therefore fall within the scope of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. And we oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan’s administration of these islands,” the U.S leader stated ahead of his visit to Japan starting Wednesday.
Article 5 stipulates U.S. defense obligations to Japan, which apply to territories under the administration of Japan. Obama’s comment therefore means the United States will defend Japan in the event of a Chinese incursion on the islets, over which China also claims sovereignty.
Mentioning “mutual interest” between the United States and China, Obama said his country will “deal directly and candidly” with China over differences on such issues. He also stressed that maritime issues should be handled constructively. “Disputes need to be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy, not intimidation and coercion,” the president said.
Chile president launches long-awaited electoral reform bill
Chilean president Michelle Bachelet sent Congress a bill on Wednesday to reform an electoral system inherited from the country's 17-year military dictatorship, making good on a key campaign promise. ...
The current electoral system, devised under dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet's regime, effectively guarantees that the two biggest party coalitions dominate Congress, with neither having a large majority. It also almost always assures that independents are underrepresented.
Although the government has not yet published full details of the bill, Bachelet said it would include proposals to add 12 seats to the Senate for a total of 50 and increase the Lower House by 35 seats to 155. Districts would be redrawn to better reflect demographics.
It also seeks to have a more equal representation of men and women in Congress, mandating that no more than 60 percent of representatives of any party be of the same sex.
SCOTUS Rotten At The Top
CIA silent on whether it will comply with Guantanamo judge's order
The CIA declined to comment again Tuesday on whether the agency would comply with a week-old military judge's order to provide USS Cole case defense lawyers with some of the deepest, darkest secrets of its now-defunct overseas prison program. ... The question of compliance loomed over the first day of pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case of waterboarded CIA captive Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 49, as his attorneys argued unsuccessfully to get the judge who issued the sweeping discovery order to step down from the case. ...
Al-Nashiri ... is accused of orchestrating the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing off Aden, Yemen, and the prosecution seeks his military execution if he's convicted. That's why, Pohl wrote in a five-page judicial order released Tuesday, al-Nashiri's civilian and military attorneys are entitled to sweeping discovery about the CIA black sites where agents held al-Nashiri for four years. During that time, al-Nashiri was waterboarded, interrogated while nude, threatened at the point of a power drill and handgun, and told that his mother would be sexually assaulted.
The public won't get the details because the information is classified. But Pohl ordered the agency to tell al-Nashiri's lawyers the names of countries and places where their client was held in secret detention, chronologically; interrogation plans, including suggested now outlawed techniques that the CIA refused to use; and names of a wide range of people who worked at the secret prisons - from doctors and mental health workers to dentists and guards.
Pohl wrote he "views the Prosecution's obligation to provide discovery broadly and liberally, especially in light of the capital referral of the charges." He also said al-Nashiri's lawyers have an "ethical duty to conduct pre-trial investigation in order to develop the full range of exculpatory, mitigation and, extenuation evidence."
Kansas judge to consider Chelsea Manning's legal name change request
A Kansas judge will on Wednesday consider Chelsea Manning's petition to legally change her name from Bradley, as she serves a 35-year sentence for passing classified US government information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. ...
Leavenworth County district judge David King scheduled the name-change hearing, which Manning is not expected to attend. He could rule on the matter during the hearing or issue his ruling on a later date.
Manning, who grew up in Oklahoma, filed the court petition as the first step toward getting her Army records changed. She has been diagnosed by at least two Army behavioral health specialists with gender dysphoria, or gender identity disorder. ...
The Army still treats Manning as a man and refers to her by her male birth name. Approval of Manning's legal name change request would clear the way for official changes to her military records, but it wouldn't mean the military would start treating Manning as a woman instead of a man.
#netmundial2014: Internet on brink of revolution as US may lose cyber control
US 'Silently' Stripping Open Net Protections
On the eve of an international forum on internet governance, efforts by the United States to strip protections for web freedom were exposed on Tuesday as activists blasted the global meet as a "farce," saying the internet is all of our "common good."
As representatives from 80 countries headed to Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday for the two-day Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, or NETmundial, WikiLeaks revealed a draft (pdf) of edits proposed by the U.S. to a set of international guidelines, entitled the "Internet Governance Principles."
The principles are meant to guide discussions during the meeting as they purport to set international standards to protect web users worldwide.
Among the changes revealed in the leaked State.gov draft, the U.S. delegation recommends stripping the word "equal" from the section on the Open and Distributed Architecture of the web.
Jumping on the change, WikiLeaks tweeted, "US silently strips #NetNeutrality from global internet governance negotiations." WikiLeaks also points out that the U.S. draft deletes binding language requiring that internet standards "must be consistent with human rights," changing "must" to "should."
Brazilian Congress passes Internet bill of rights
Brazil's Senate unanimously approved groundbreaking legislation on Tuesday that guarantees equal access to the Internet and protects the privacy of Brazilian users in the wake of U.S. spying revelations.
President Dilma Rousseff, who was the target of U.S. espionage according to documents leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, plans to sign the bill into law. She will present it on Wednesday at a global conference on the future of the Internet, her office said in a blog.
The legislation, dubbed Brazil's "Internet Constitution," has been hailed by experts, such as the British physicist and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, for balancing the rights and duties of users, governments and corporations while ensuring the Internet continues to be an open and decentralized network.
Intimidation and Political Interference Goes Unpunished in UAW Case
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.
While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.
After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality. ...
The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true. ...
Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have literacy, numeracy and technology skills that are above average relative to 55- to 65-year-olds in rest of the industrialized world, according to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group. Younger Americans, though, are not keeping pace: Those between 16 and 24 rank near the bottom among rich countries, well behind their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan and Scandinavia and close to those in Italy and Spain.
Jim Crow in the Classroom: New Report Finds Segregation Lives on in U.S. Schools
Supreme court affirmative action ruling shows split over 'post-racial America'
Sonia Sotomayor, the first hispanic justice to sit on the US supreme court, included a line in her dissent against its latest ruling that could easily have been cut and pasted from objections to a slew of recent decisions enraging liberals on issues of race and class.
“For much of its history, our nation has denied to many of its citizens the right to participate meaningfully and equally in its politics,” she wrote. “This is a history we strive to put behind us. But it is a history that still informs the society we live in, and so it is one we must address with candor.”
The "candor" Sotomayor refers to in this latest decision – to uphold a Michigan state ban on affirmative action in university admissions – is a reference to the fact that only a third of black men graduate from college compared with well over half of white men. ....
But for the majority of supreme court justices that supported Michigan's vote on Tuesday, this is time for a narrower reading of the constitution: one that respects the rights of voters to decide whether affirmative action is just as discriminatory against white students.
Though the justices' argument was framed as a technical issue over state independence from federal courts, Tuesday's decision echoes a more explicit argument used in June that America has entered a post-racial phase – one in which both positive and negative discrimination not only should be, but are, history.
#myNYPD Twitter callout backfires for New York police department
When the New York police department invited people to tweet pictures of their dealings with "New York's finest" with the hashtag #myNYPD, what could possibly go wrong?
The attempt at public outreach, however, backfired spectacularly when users flooded Twitter with hundreds of photos of police brutality during Occupy Wall Street, one of an 84-year-old man brutalised for jaywalking – and even a dog being frisked.
By midnight on Tuesday, more than 70,000 people had tweeted about police brutality, ridiculing the NYPD for a social media disaster and recalling the names of people shot dead by police.
Police officials declined to respond to questions about the comments, which were being posted at a rate of 10,000 an hour, or say who was behind the Twitter idea. But they did release a short statement.
"The NYPD is creating new ways to communicate effectively with the community," Kim Royster, an NYPD spokeswoman told the New York Daily News. "Twitter provides an open forum for an uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city."
The Evening Greens
Toms River: How a Small Town Fought Back Against Corporate Giants for Toxic Dumping Linked to Cancer
The Cowboy Indian Alliance Rises to Protect Our Common Land and Water
It’s not everyday you see cowboys helping to set up a tipi encampment, but that’s what is happening this week on the National Mall. An unlikely alliance of white ranchers and Native American activists, known as the Cowboy Indian Alliance, has erected the tipi encampment in the nation’s capital to protest plans for the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Alliance (with the ironic acronym “CIA”) brings together Native Americans with white ranchers and farmers—the archetypal enemies of the American West—to protect their common land and water. ...
Since at least the 1970s, unlikely alliances have joined Native communities with their rural white neighbors—some of whom had been their adversaries in treaty rights conflicts—to safeguard their local environment. These unique convergences have confronted mines, pipelines, dams, logging, power lines, nuclear waste, military projects, and other threats to Native peoples and white ranchers, farmers, and fishers. ...
These alliances not only joined Natives and non-Natives to confront an outside threat as a common enemy, but also shifted the consciousness and actions of the white participants, as they learned about the continuity of Indigenous cultural traditions, legal powers, and environmental sustainability. Ironically, the areas of the most intense treaty conflicts developed the earliest and strongest tribal environmental alliances with white farmers, ranchers, and fishers. As the tribes strongly asserted their rights, they left an open door to their white neighbors. They knew that if they continued to argue over dividing the fish or water, there may not be any left to argue over. So they instead came together to protect the sacred resources, as we saw this week in an agreement between tribes and white farmers to overcome their longstanding water rights conflict in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California.
In the second decade of the 21st century, new “unlikely alliances” of Native peoples and their rural white neighbors are standing strong against fossil fuel and mineral extraction throughout the continent. In some areas where tribal governments protect the local environment, white residents have begun to see them as more effective guardians of common ground than their own local, state, and federal governments. Using their sovereign powers and federal trust responsibility, tribal nations can draw federal agencies and courts into the fray in a way that local and state governments cannot, and Indigenous people offer a strong cultural anchor to the movement that makes it less willing to compromise.
Cowboys and Indians united against Keystone
$3 Million Jury Verdict in Texas Fracking Nuisance Case
A jury in Dallas, TX today awarded $2.925 million to plaintiffs Bob and Lisa Parr, who sued Barnett shale fracking company Aruba Petroleum Inc. for intentionally causing a nuisance on the Parr's property which impacted their health and ruined their drinking water.
The jury returned its 5-1 verdict confirming that Aruba Petroleum “intentionally created a private nuisance” though its drilling, fracking and production activities at 21 gas wells near the Parrs' Wise County home over a three-year period between 2008-2011.
Plaintiffs attorneys claimed the case is “the first fracking verdict in U.S. history.”
The trial lasted two and a half weeks. Aruba Petroleum plans to appeal the verdict.
The pollution from natural gas production near the Parrs' Wise County home was so bad that they were forced to flee their 40-acre property for months at a time.
Very Little Cheap Natural Gas in New York Marcellus Shale, New Report Concludes
[A]s the shale drilling boom moves into its 12th year, the most crucial benefit claimed by drillers — cheap and abundant domestic fuel supplies — has come increasingly into question. The gas is there, no doubt, but most of it costs more to get it out than the gas is worth.
A new report from New York state, where a de facto shale drilling moratorium has persisted since 2008, concludes that unless natural gas prices double, much of the shale gas in the state cannot be profitably accessed by oil and gas companies.
Using public data from Pennsylvania, the researchers predict that shale gas will be far more expensive to extract than current natural gas prices would suggest. And even if gas prices double, their analysis of production history suggests only small regions of the Marcellus in New York can be profitably tapped.
“At current gas prices near $4.00-4.50/MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), the results of this study indicate that no area in New York is likely to be commercially viable,” petroleum geologist Arthur Berman and petroleum engineer Lyndon Pittinger wrote in their report, which was commissioned by the League of Women Voters of New York State, adding that at $8/MMBtu, at most 9.1 trillion cubic feet of gas can be profitably drained from the Marcellus.
Their conclusions were based on a review of production data from over 4,000 active Marcellus wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
These projections stand in sharp contrast to the projections described in New York state’s draft 2014 energy plan, now open for public comment. In that report, state regulators cite up to 516 trillion cubic feet of gas held in the formation, while adding in a footnote that only 10 percent of that gas is likely to be economically recoverable. The new report finds only a fraction of that can be produced even at $8/MMBtu, double what gas costs today.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Ukraine crisis strains family ties in divided Donetsk
In Yemen, Drones Don't Kill Innocents
The Myth of the Pro-Labor Democrat
A Little Night Music
Andrew Odom - I don't know
Andrew Odom - Woke up this morning
Andrew "Voice" Odom - Don't You Ever Leave Me All Alone
Andrew Odom - I Don't Know Where I'm Goin'
Andrew Odom - I Got This Bad Feeling
Sunnyland Slim Big Voice Odom - No More Troubles
Andrew Odom - I Wonder Why
Andrew 'Big Voice' Odom - Feel So Good
Andrew 'Big Voice' Odom - Next time you see me
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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