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 the band Little Charlie & The Nightcats. Enjoy!
Little Charlie & The Nightcats - Nightcat Boogie
"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."
-- Arthur Miller
News and Opinion
NSA releases email in dispute over Snowden 'internal whistleblowing'
The National Security Agency has disputed Edward Snowden's insistence that he made efforts to raise his concerns about its surveillance practices internally before he decided to go public.
Releasing an email exchange it claimed to be the only record it could find of such an effort by Snowden, the agency said on Thursday he was merely “asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed”. ...
Snowden's description appears to match parts, if not all, of the newly emerged email, which was made public on Thursday via the Senate intelligence chair, Dianne Feinstein.
“Hello, I have a question regarding the mandatory USSID 18 training,” writes Snowden to a redacted address that appears to be in the Office of General Counsel.
He goes on to cite a list provided in the training that ranks presidential executive orders alongside federal statutes in the hierarchy of orders governing NSA behaviour.
“I'm not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law,” adds Snowden.
“My understanding is that EOs may be superseded by federal statute, but EO's may not override statute. Am I incorrect in this?”
In a reply which was cc'd to a number of redacted email addresses, Snowden is told by an unnamed individual that he is “correct that EO's cannot override a statute” but that they have the “force and effect of law”.
The issue is an important one in the context of whether NSA surveillance activities were permissible, as it addresses possible conflict between laws passed by Congress and orders given by the White House.
Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden would not get a fair trial – and Kerry is wrong
As Snowden told Brian Williams on NBC later that night and Snowden's lawyer told me the next morning, he would have no chance whatsoever to come home and make his case – in public or in court.
Snowden would come back home to a jail cell – and not just an ordinary cell-block but isolation in solitary confinement, not just for months like Chelsea Manning but for the rest of his sentence, and probably the rest of his life. His legal adviser, Ben Wizner, told me that he estimates Snowden's chance of being allowed out on bail as zero. (I was out on bond, speaking against the Vietnam war, the whole 23 months I was under indictment).
More importantly, the current state of whistleblowing prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes a truly fair trial wholly unavailable to an American who has exposed classified wrongdoing. Legal scholars have strongly argued that the US supreme court – which has never yet addressed the constitutionality of applying the Espionage Act to leaks to the American public – should find the use of it overbroad and unconstitutional in the absence of a public interest defense. The Espionage Act, as applied to whistleblowers, violates the First Amendment, is what they're saying.
As I know from my own case, even Snowden's own testimony on the stand would be gagged by government objections and the (arguably unconstitutional) nature of his charges. That was my own experience in court, as the first American to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act – or any other statute – for giving information to the American people. ...
[W]hen I finally heard my lawyer ask the prearranged question in direct examination – Why did you copy the Pentagon Papers? – I was silenced before I could begin to answer. The government prosecutor objected – irrelevant – and the judge sustained. My lawyer, exasperated, said he "had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did." The judge responded: well, you're hearing one now. ...
Without reform to the Espionage Act that lets a court hear a public interest defense – or a challenge to the appropriateness of government secrecy in each particular case – Snowden and future Snowdens can and will only be able to "make their case" from outside the United States.
Here's an excerpt of an adversarial press conference, where Kerry's stupid remarks about Snowden were dissected. The whole pile-on is pretty good if you want to click the link.
Jen Psaki gets grilled over Kerry's idiotic "Snowden is a traitor" remarks
QUESTION: Thanks. Before we get back to Ukraine, which I’m sure we will, and maybe even Syria too, I wanted to just ask you a couple things about the Secretary’s comments yesterday, rather strong comments yesterday about Edward Snowden in some interviews that he did. He called him a traitor, said he should man up – a traitor, a coward, said he should man up and come home to face justice.
How does the Secretary make the determination that Mr. Snowden is a traitor?
MS. PSAKI: I think what the Secretary – I don’t think I have anything to add to the Secretary’s comments. He was making clear what the Administration feels, which is that when you release classified information, when you put people at risk, that is not something that’s in line with a patriot of the United States of America.
QUESTION: He did – he mentioned the word “patriot,” and in the same sentence as “patriot,” he mentioned the name of Daniel Ellsberg. I’m wondering, does the Secretary believe that Dan Ellsberg was a patriot or is a patriot, and that Edward Snowden is a traitor? Is that correct?
MS. PSAKI: I am not going to do any more analysis of the Secretary’s comments. I think he was pretty clear in how he feels about the alleged actions by Edward Snowden. He thinks he should be returned and face justice in the United States.
QUESTION: Is he convinced that he’ll be convicted? There were a lot of – the reason I’m asking this is because back in the – during the whole Pentagon Papers, there were a lot of people that felt the same way the Secretary feels about Ed Snowden, who they felt the same way about Daniel Ellsberg, that he --
MS. PSAKI: Well, and I know too, Matt, that the Secretary himself was – when he was opposing the war in Vietnam was --
QUESTION: Right.But Daniel Ellsberg admitted to breaking the law and yet the Secretary believes he’s a patriot, and Ed Snowden – Edward Snowden also admitted to breaking the law and he is a traitor. That’s the – I’m having a problem – I mean, I’ll ask him the next time I have the opportunity to, but have you – do you have any idea what his thinking is about this?
MS. PSAKI: I encourage you to. I think the point he was making, Matt, is --
QUESTION: Okay. I mean --
MS. PSAKI: -- about his concern and distaste for the actions of Edward Snowden.
QUESTION: Right. I understand that. But the only difference at the moment, it seems to be – well, I mean, other than what they actually leaked, is that Ellsberg was charged and went on trial, but he was never acquitted, he was never convicted. The case, you’ll recall, was thrown out by a judge because of such severe prosecutorial misconduct that he – that the judge said that was indelibly tainted, he could never get a fair trial, which is exactly what Snowden fears now. So I just --
Hat tip to dharmafarmer:
Glenn Greenwald: NSA documents on Middle East to be disclosed
Numerous documents focusing on partnerships and surveillance tactics between America’s National Security Agency and regional security apparatus’ in the Middle East, especially the Gulf region, will be released soon, according to the journalist leading the reporting on the explosive NSA leaks. ...
AA – Have you noticed from the documents the types of partnerships between the NSA and regional security agencies (in the Middle East)?
GG – The one thing I try not to do is talk in interviews or elsewhere about reporting we haven’t done yet, because it has to go through the reporting process for me to responsibly describe the documents, but yes, one of the things we want to work on are documents that detail NSA cooperation with some of the worst tyrants in the Gulf region, both to augment their own domestic surveillance capabilities and also for the NSA to share with those regimes information they get about those countries. This is definitely a big story that remains to be told that we want to work on now…. All I can say is there is a lot more reporting to do on that region of the world.
AA – From what you’ve disclosed already on NSA surveillance on places like Yemen, have you found the NSA has an effective impact on US action in those areas?
GG – One of the first stories that Jeremy Scahill and I reported for the Intercept was the NSA’s role in targeting people with lethal drone attacks through the use of sim cards and the like, and the ways in which that’s so unreliable, and virtually guarantees the death of civilians or kills they are not even certain who they are killing. Look, sometimes the NSA intercepts communication between people who, regardless of the ambiguity of the word ‘terrorism’, would be regarded as legitimate targets of the NSA, but the problem is the vast majority of what they do isn’t about that.
AA – What is it about?
GG – It’s about putting entire populations under surveillance, targeting people and companies for economic interests, just generally wanting to use surveillance as a means to exert hegemony and domination over the world. The more you know what people in the world are saying and doing, the more power you have over them.
This is a really interesting article about events in 1945 that have a certain interesting resonance today. It's worth clicking the link for a full read.
How Officials Tried to Censor One of the Biggest Stories in the World
When Germany surrendered in World War II, military leaders told reporters to keep it a secret.
Sixty-nine years ago this month, world leaders tried to delay the reporting of one of the biggest stories of the 20th century. They might have been successful, too, if not for one rogue journalist.
On May 7, 1945, Edward Kennedy, Paris bureau chief for the Associated Press, went around American censors to report the news that Germany had surrendered in World War II. Naturally, his decision frustrated the military officials who were trying to control the timing of the story, but Kennedy's decision infuriated his fellow journalists, too.
Looking back, the way the news spread—very, very slowly—seems impossibly old-fashioned by today's real-time news standards, and yet the debate Kennedy started is fundamental in journalism: What, exactly, does the public have a right to know? And who gets to decide?
Larry Page: 'right to be forgotten' could empower government repression
The EU’s "right to be forgotten" ruling risks empowering repressive governments and their control of the internet, Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, warned.
Page explained that the new ruling, which forced Google to deploy a new webform for removal requests, would damage future technology startups and admitted that Google had been caught unawares by the European court of justice (ECJ) ruling, in an interview with the Financial Times.
“It will be used by other governments that aren’t as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things,” warned Page. “Other people are going to pile on, probably… for reasons most Europeans would find negative.” ...
Leveraging the company’s experience of removing links to child abuse material and copyright infringing content, Page said that responding to privacy takedown requests would be nothing new for the Google. But he said that smaller companies, without Google’s means, could struggle to respond threatening their survival and innovation. ...
Google has the power to reject a takedown request if it thinks the information is in the public interest, while media companies including newspapers are insulated from the majority of removal requests as most of what they publish is deemed as being in the public interest.
U.S. Seeks to Censor More of Memo That Approved Drone Strike on American
One week after the Obama administration said it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to make public portions of a Justice Department memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a United States citizen, the administration is now asking the court for permission to censor additional passages of the document.
In the interim, the Senate voted narrowly last week to confirm David Barron, the former Justice Department official who was the memo’s principal author, to an appeals court judgeship. At least one Democratic senator who had opposed Mr. Barron over the secrecy surrounding his memo voted for him after the administration said it would release it. ...
In January 2013, a Federal District Court judge ruled that the government could withhold the memo from the public entirely. But this April, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the government must make public portions of the memo that lay out legal analysis, though not facts based on classified intelligence.
The Second Circuit’s opinion specified which passages of the memo should be disclosed and which should be redacted. But in a new court filing, Sarah Normand, an assistant United States attorney, said that the sections of the memo that the court had designated for public release contained further information that should be exempt from disclosure. ...
The Justice Department asked to keep its entire motion seeking additional redactions secret, but on Wednesday the court issued a five-page order denying that request and saying that as much of the motion as possible would have to be made public.
The order also recounted new details about several previous rounds of then-secret negotiations between the court and the government, dating back to February, over what would be redacted.
Huge US Military Not Enough to Handle Constant Global Warfare
[T]he Earth is a big planet, and the administration’s ambitions stretch well beyond the Pentagon’s capabilities. Fortunately for them, the Pentagon is only about 36% of the world’s military spending, and much of the rest is available for hire.
Proxy wars are nothing new, but the US policy of global interventionism at all times, in all theaters, is relying on proxy fighters like never before, with US foreign aid and the implicit threat of being labeled a “rogue nation” combining to ensure that militaries the world over are at the administration’s beck and call. ...
Direct US involvement in nations like Pakistan and Yemen have produced huge anti-US backlashes, and the policy of intervention by proxy seems to be driven not only by the Pentagon’s limits but by the hopes that indirect intervention will keep critics silent.
Shell Shock: Kid's hospital caught in Kiev crackdown
US Demands Russia Force Separatists to Surrender in Ukraine
The US was remarkably ambivalent about the recent fighting in Donetsk, where over 100 rebels were slain, many of them in attacks on trucks carrying the wounded, but were officially “disturbed” today by news of a military helicopter getting shot down in Slovyansk.
And when the US gets disturbed, they start complaining to Russia. Today’s talks between John Kerry and Russian FM Sergey Lavrov centered around Kerry demanding Russia officially condemn the secessionist fighters in Ukraine’s east and force them to disarm and surrender to the central government.
Ukraine to push on with army offensive, row grows over Russian fighters reports
Ukraine's government vowed on Friday to press ahead with a military offensive against separatists, despite a deadly attack on an army helicopter, amid increasing reports that volunteer fighters from Russia were involved in rebellions in the east. ...
Poroshenko, who is due to be inaugurated on June 7, vowed to punish the perpetrators of the helicopter attack.
Donetsk, an industrial hub of 1 million where strategic buildings are being held by rebels, was quiet on Friday. But the airport violence brought a subdued air to the last day of the school year when school-leavers usually celebrate in the parks with champagne and ice-cream.
Long lines were forming at the city's railway station following Monday and Tuesday's clashes as many people headed out of the city for safety reasons.
Vita, a middle-aged woman waiting with her daughter and little granddaughter for a train to Moscow, said: "We are really concerned with what is going on, I need to take away my pregnant daughter. We'll leave her with my sister in Moscow and come back to my husband who stayed at home with all our belongings."
CrossTalk: Bleeding Ukraine (ft. Graham Phillips)
Russia has withdrawn most troops from Ukraine border: U.S. official
Russia has withdrawn most of its troops from the Ukrainian border, but seven battalions, amounting to thousands of men, remain, a U.S. defense official said on Friday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in Singapore to attend a weekend security conference, has called the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the border a promising sign, but said all troops positioned there earlier this year needed to be moved back.
There's lots of good detail in this, Carol Rosenberg is doing an incredible job of detailing the ongoing process at the Gitmo military court. It's worth a read.
Guantanamo lawyers spar over CIA 'black site' disclosures
A defense attorney for a waterboarded prisoner told an Army judge he was as brave as the federal judge who helped topple the presidency of Richard M. Nixon in an impassioned plea on Wednesday to not reverse an order to let lawyers see details of the CIA's black site program. ...
For the prosecution, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins argued that no individual has "a monopoly on patriotism," and offered a counter-proposal. The government would tweak a case protective order, he said, to let attorneys for the first time share some limited classified information with Nashiri as an alternative to giving defense lawyers a deep dive into the details of the spy agency's most closely guarded secrets.
The issue is a pivotal one for the war court as it edges toward the February 2015 trial of Nashiri, a Saudi accused of orchestrating al-Qaida's bombing of the USS Cole warship off Yemen in October 2000. Seventeen U.S. sailors died, and the Pentagon prosecutor is seeking the death penalty, if Nashiri's convicted. ...
On April 14, the judge ordered the government to give Nashiri's lawyers classified material providing explicit details of the now defunct interrogation and detention program - the names of agents, medical staff and guards who worked in the black sites as well as a chronology of where he was held and cables that discussed his interrogations.
Besides being waterboarded, the 49-year-old Saudi was subjected to a mock execution and threatened with a power drill and handgun during interrogation.
Kammen said in court Wednesday that one account of Nashiri's waterboarding described observers as being so upset by it they vomited. Pohl's order to name names could help the defense find those people, he argued. ...
Separately Wednesday, defense lawyers asked Pohl to get them a copy of the entire Senate Intelligence Committee's "Torture Report." It details not only Nashiri's treatment in CIA custody but describes interrogations of other captives that might implicate their client.
Prosecutors replied that the judge, whose job was created by Congress, has no authority to order the Senate to hand over a copy of the report. The prosecutors also said that they haven't obtained or read the report to decide what portions defense lawyers might be entitled to see.
Under Pressure, Hagel Promises to Act on Guantánamo Transfers
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is under pressure from within the Obama administration to step up his pace in approving the transfer of low-level Guantánamo Bay detainees, has told reporters that he would decide soon whether to accept a months-old offer to resettle six prisoners in Uruguay.
But Mr. Hagel, in his most expansive public comments about detainee transfers, acknowledged that he has been in no rush to sign off on them. He cited the burden and responsibility of being the one official who, under a legal obligation imposed by Congress, must personally determine that releasing a detainee makes sense.
There were no transfers of low-level detainees under Mr. Hagel’s predecessor, Leon E. Panetta, who ran the Pentagon from July 2011 to February 2013. ... Of the 154 remaining detainees, 78 are recommended for transfer if security conditions can be met; most have had that status since a January 2010 task force report.
CIA’s feet held to fire on declassifying Senate intelligence panel report
A federal judge on Thursday kept some pressure on the Central Intelligence Agency as it works to declassify a summary of a key Senate intelligence committee report.
Acting in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave the CIA until June 20 to spell out its timeline for completing the declassification review.
“The more detailed, the better,” Boasberg added.
The ACLU is trying to pry loose, among other documents, the 400-plus page executive summary of the interrogation and rendition report completed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the 6,000-plus page full report itself.
Blair should ask Chilcot to publish full Iraq letters to Bush, says John Major
Tony Blair should ask the Chilcot inquiry to publish his correspondence with George Bush about the Iraq war, as releasing only the "gist and quotes" will allow suspicions to fester, Sir John Major has said.
The former Conservative prime minister, who lost power to Blair in 1997, said it was a pity the full papers were going to be withheld by the Cabinet Office.
The Chilcot inquiry has been accused of allowing a whitewash after it struck a deal with ministers to publish the gist of letters between Blair and Bush, but not the full correspondence.
The publication of the Chilcot report has been overdue for several years, with discussions in recent months focusing on 25 notes from Blair to Bush and 130 records of conversations.
After intense negotiations, Sir John Chilcot, who has been leading the inquiry since 2009, has agreed with the Cabinet Office that the gist of the conversation can be made public, but direct quotations from the notes will be kept to "a minimum necessary for the inquiry to articulate its conclusions". He has also agreed that use of material from the letters "should not reflect President Bush's views".
Bush/Blair Iraq War Plotting to Remain Hidden From Public
Critics are charging that a UK inquiry into the country's role in the Iraq War has "neutered" its own investigation by censoring critical conversations between George W. Bush and Tony Blair in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.
Headed by Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry was convened in 2009 by the UK government and tasked with establishing "what happened" in Iraq and identifying "the lessons that can be learned." The report's released is years behind schedule, in part due to debate over the release of 25 letters and 130 recordings of conversations between Blair and Bush.
The U.S. has heavily pressured the UK government to block the release of these conversations, which the U.S. says are classified. The UK government has also fiercely lobbied against the full release of the documents.
Libya Militia Stole US Weapons in Raid
Militia fighters stole hundreds of American-supplied automatic weapons and other equipment in a raid on a Libyan base where the US was training local forces, bringing an abrupt end to the secretive program, a report said Tuesday.
Elite US troops have been tasked since last year with covertly forming local counterterrorism units in Libya, Mauritania, Niger and Mali, part of US efforts to widen the war against al-Qaida affiliates in Africa, The New York Times reported, citing American officials.
It has been financed in part with millions of dollars in classified Pentagon spending, the Times said, and involves instructing and equipping “handpicked” commandos in the four countries, with the hope the teams will eventually be able to take on fighters like Boko Haram. ...
As well as automatic weapons, the fighters seized night-vision goggles and vehicles, it added, saying that American instructors were promptly sent home. US officials are now looking for a more secure site to get the program going again.
CIA-linked rogue general stirs three-front militia war in Libya
US special forces arrive to tackle Libya Islamists
French, American and Algerian special forces have been sent to the south of Libya to attack terrorist networks as a former general with links to the CIA fights Islamist militias in the lawless east of the country.
With the crisis deepening, Olivier Guitta, director of research at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think-tank, said that the special forces offensives were being conducted against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim).
Divided Egypt disputes strength of Sisi's mandate
Everyone knew Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt's former army chief, would win the country's presidential election this week. The question was how many Egyptians would turn out to validate his coronation. Supporters wanted an overwhelming majority of voters to throng to polling stations, proving the strongman had universal support. Critics hoped he might win with a low turnout, suggesting that most Egyptians are at best indifferent to his leadership.
Preliminary results suggest over 46% of the electorate took part, the vast majority of them voting for the former field marshal. Predictably, the ensuing debate has revolved around two questions. Is the turnout figure believable? And if it is, how much legitimacy does it grant Sisi?
On the former, sceptics are struggling to believe participation is as high as 46%. Anecdotal evidence from reporters touring the polling stations suggested a lower turnout. So too did widespread panic among Sisi's many vocal supporters in the media, and his tacit ones within the state. ... Seemingly rattled, the government announced a last-minute public holiday to encourage more people to vote, extended voting to a third day, and threatened non-voters with a large fine.
Financialization and the Collapse of European Social Democracy
LAPAVITSAS: ... And across Europe what we see is actually the collapse of social democracy. In Greece that collapse has been astounding. The main party of social democracy, the PASOK Party in Greece, which was the party of government in 2009, has vaporized. I mean, it's incredible. It's just--it's slammed right down to nothing almost. And in the coming elections, what they will make electorally is highly debatable, whether they will manage to--maybe it will be single figures. That is an indication of the political changes that we see as a result of the financialization and its crisis. It's made social democracy disappear or lose its message and so on. That has created all kinds of--that has had all kinds of knock-on effects. As the social situation has become worse and worse, with rising unemployment, poverty, and so on, which--in Greece, these things have reached the stage of social catastrophe now, much worse than the United States--you can see that the ends of the political spectrum have become more powerful. As social democracy vanishes, the ends of the political spectrum have become stronger.
Now the strongest party is the left. Greece has always had a left presence, political presence, away from social democracy. And as the social democratic core has collapsed, then the voters of that party or government have migrated to parties of the left, which is why we have SYRIZA, the main party of the left now, you know, bidding for power. So we've had a complex movement whereby a large part of the electorate has gone to the left. But also a significant part of the electorate, mostly from the right, now has gone to the extreme right, because obviously the voters of the right have been disillusioned in governments of the right applying the neoliberal programs so viciously too. So we've had a polarization. We observe a polarization in Greece pretty naturally as part of this financialization [crosstalk]
JAY: And am I correct that the fascist party, which is called--
LAPAVITSAS: Golden Dawn.
JAY: --Golden Dawn, picks up some of the rhetoric against neoliberalism?
LAPAVITSAS: That's exactly it. It picks up a rhetoric against neoliberalism and picks up the rhetoric against the European Union and the European Monetary Union. It talks about policies to protect employment, to protect living standards, but, of course, for the Greeks, not for the foreigners.
JAY: Not for immigrants.
LAPAVITSAS: Yeah, foreigners or immigrants or whatever it is. So they take these ideas, which at core are actually ideas that fit with people's experience, because--
JAY: Well, they're popular, yeah.
LAPAVITSAS: --unemployment is huge, poverty has increased. They take these ideas, they promise solutions. They often put their finger in people's wounded pride. And they promise to solve them through violence and by attacking foreigners or immigrants or whoever else in a typical sort of extreme-right and fascist way.
The promise, though, is on the left. That's where most Greek people are looking towards. And for the first time in the history of Greece, certainly in the postwar history of Greece, we might have the prospect of a radical left-wing government emerging because of the social disaster and because of these political changes that I mentioned. This to me indicates what might happen elsewhere in Europe, and potentially what might happen in places even like the United States.
Turkish telecoms watchdog says waiting on ruling to unblock YouTube
Turkish telecoms watchdog BTK said on Friday it had not yet received a ruling by Turkey's top court ordering the removal of a two-month block on video-sharing website YouTube.
The Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that a block on access to YouTube imposed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government was a violation of rights, but nearly 24 hours after the ruling was announced the video-sharing site remained inaccessible to most Turks. ...
This is the second time that the Constitutional Court has overturned a media ban imposed by the government. Last month it ordered Twitter unblocked after the authorities shut down access in the run up to local elections.
Blocks were imposed after audio recordings purportedly revealing corruption in Erdogan's inner circle were leaked and widely circulated on the sites. ...
Erdogan has publicly criticised the Constitutional Court for acting against national interests, repeatedly calling for the ban on Twitter to be re-instated.
Part 2: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Segregation, Housing Discrimination and “The Case for Reparations”
New Orleans Nearly Finished Killing Off Its Public Schools
New Orleans is now home to the first and only school district in the United States that is all-charter.
The Recovery School District on Wednesday shuttered its last remaining traditional public school, meaning that almost all New Orleans schools are now privatized. The shutdowns moved forward despite opposition from local communities.
"The right to public education is fundamental human right," said Monique Harden of the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in an interview with Common Dreams. "Profit motive drives insane, reckless, unsafe decisions that are not in the best interests of children."
Benjamin Banneker Elementary, which closed Wednesday, is one of the five remaining traditional public schools in the Recovery School District that will not re-open this fall, according to the Washington Post. This leaves only five remaining public schools in New Orleans, all of them under the control of the Orleans Parish School Board, The TImes Picayune reports.
The state-run RSD was created in 2003 with the expressed purpose of improving school performance. Yet, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the agency embarked on an aggressive campaign to prevent public schools from re-opening and divert public funds to charter schools, rapidly privatizing the education system. ...
The sabotage of New Orleans public schools included the mass-firing of 7,000 teachers, most of them African-American, and subsequent hiring of disproportionately white and young teachers, some of them hailing from Teach for America, the Post reports. While the teachers have since won a $1 billion lawsuit for wrongful termination, the privatization drive continues.
Zephyr Teachout Emerges To Challenge NY Gov. Cuomo from the Left
With launch of a new website and a short statement that she is running for governor because "New Yorkers need an economy and democracy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected," law school professor and progressive activist Zephyr Teachout has emerged from the Left to challenge the re-election campaign of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state's current Democratic governor.
The news comes a day before the state's Working Families Party holds its annual convention and though it remains unclear if Teachout is the independent progressive party's official nominee, her new website carries a clever hybrid tagline: "Zephyr Teachout: Working Party Democrat for Governor."
Speculation has been active for weeks about whether or not the WFP would endorse Cuomo or run a challenger against him. As the New York Times reports on Friday:
For weeks now, [Cuomo] has been working behind the scenes to soothe misgivings by the leadership of a small but influential political party made up of labor unions and liberal activists who believe his policies have veered too far to the right.
Late on Thursday, a co-chairwoman of that group, the Working Families Party, said Mr. Cuomo’s efforts were not likely to be successful.
“Unless there is a significant new development in the next 24 hours, I don’t expect the state committee to endorse the governor,” said the co-chairwoman, Karen Scharff, who as executive director of the liberal advocacy group Citizen Action of New York wields considerable influence in the party.
The Evening Greens
White House energy report omits Keystone, other controversial issues
WASHINGTON — A White House report on its energy policy Thursday stressed good news but omitted any discussion of controversial issues such as lifting a ban on oil exports, the long-delayed Keystone pipeline or growing concern about crude oil in railroad tank cars.
Coming days before a signature White House proposal to crack down on carbon emissions at power plants, the administration’s report card touting its “all of the above” energy strategy was sharply criticized by green groups. They complained that President Barack Obama tries to look tough on pollution while eroding that very effort by touting the record U.S. production of oil and natural gas.
“He’s trying to straddle the fence on this,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, one of several environmental groups unhappy with the Obama administration. “If he’s serious about climate change, he can’t have it both ways.” ...
The Obama plan is designed to spur use of renewable energy sources and is expected to encourage the use of natural gas at power plants. That’s a blow to coal producers, but it takes advantage of the new-found bounty of natural gas being produced thanks to the drilling process called fracking.
'Permanent Protest Vigil' Launched to Confront First Tar Sands Mine in US
As a Canadian company readies its plans for extraction at the first proposed tar sands mine in the United States, a group of climate justice activists is readying its own mobilization: a permanent protest vigil at the site to protest the project's "swift obliteration" of ecosystems, danger to waterways and contribution to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
The company, Calgary, Alberta-based US Oil Sands, has leased over 32,000 acres of public land in the Book Cliffs area of Utah, and foresees its $60 million PR Springs project producing tar sands in 2015. The site of the mine also sits just outside the Northern Ute Ouray Reservation.
The project has faced ongoing resistance from environmental groups who have seen the devastating impacts the Alberta tar sands have brought to land, water and indigenous communities.
"These beautiful lands that US Oil Sands plans to destroy have been enjoyed by Utahns for decades and were the home for Ute people for hundreds of generations," Jessica Lee, a spokesperson for Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Peaceful Uprising, said in a statement. "This tar sands strip mine would cause swift obliteration of multiple ecosystems and severe contributions to climate-change related disasters."
Those two climate justice groups, as well as Canyon Country Rising Tide, aim to to put a spotlight on what US Oil Sands is doing to the biodiverse area with the permanent vigil, which was launched over the weekend.
Small Farmers’ Loss of Land Increases World Hunger
The world is increasingly hungry because small farmers are losing access to farmland. Small farmers produce most of the world’s food but are now squeezed onto less than 25 percent of the world’s farmland, a new report reveals. Corporate and commercial farms, big biofuel operations and land speculators are pushing millions off their land.
“Small farmers are losing land at a tremendous rate. It’s a land reform movement in reverse,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN, an international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers, which released the report Thursday.
“The overwhelming majority of farming families today have less than two hectares to cultivate and that share is shrinking,” Hobbelink told IPS.
“If we do nothing to reverse this trend, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.”
GRAIN’s Hungry for Land report provides new data to show small farms occupy less than 25 percent of the world’s farmland today – just 17 percent, if farms in India and China are excluded. Despite this they still provide most of the world’s food because they are often much more productive than large corporate farms. ...
Over the next 20 years, 400 million acres, or nearly half of all U.S. farmland, is set to change hands as the current generation retires. Institutional investors are eagerly waiting to buy, the report said.
That will be bad news for food production, farmland, the environment and the economy. The U.S. and far too many other countries have bought into agribusiness propaganda and financial lobbying that commercial, large-scale agriculture is how to feed the world, create jobs and grow the economy, said Mousseau.
“Instead government policies need to be aligned to favour small farmers, not corporations,” he added.
The hard evidence from many studies shows that small farmers practicing agroecological farming produce more food, protect soil and water, have far lower CO2 emissions and provide better livelihoods, said Hobbelink.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Check it out, it's resistant to excerpt but speaks a lot to what's on a lot of our minds these days:
Where Is the American Spring?
Hat tip Don midwest:
Meet the Man Hired to Make Sure the Snowden Docs Aren't Hacked
Voice of Choice: Calm, Effective Dealing with Anti-Choice Bullies
The 6th Great Extinction (you don't want to read this)
Time announces our victory...or defeat
A Little Night Music
Little Charlie & The Nightcats - Hurry Up and Wait
Little Charlie & The Nightcats - My Next Ex-Wife
Little Charlie & The Nightcats - I Love To Watch You Walk Away
Little Charlie & The Nightcats - Nervous
Little Charlie and The Night Cats - Rain
Little Charlie and the Nightcats - TV Crazy
Little Charlie And The Nightcats - You Win
Little Charlie And The Nightcats - Smart Like Einstein
Little Charlie & The Night Cats - Run Me Down
Little Charlie & The Night Cats - Dump That Chump
Little Charlie and the Nightcats - Percolatin'
Little Charlie and the Nightcats - 1997 Montréal International Jazz Festival
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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