Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features singer, songwriter, rock and rockabilly artist Chris Isaak. Enjoy!
A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers, but when I go up to the river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber, they kill my buffalo and when I see that, my heart feels like bursting.
Satanta, Kiowa Chief
News and Opinion
NYPD chief defends mayor de Blasio and criticises police funeral protest
*Commissioner Bratton: turning of backs on mayor ‘very inappropriate’
*Suggests ongoing contract negotiations may contribute to rift
*De Blasio and police at odds as officers turn backs at funeral
*Thousands attend funeral of NYPD officer Rafael Ramos – in pictures
*Opinion: Dear fellow white people: protest, but don’t throw bottles
The commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bill Bratton, has given strong backing to Bill de Blasio, denouncing the protest of rank-and-file officers who turned their back on the mayor at a weekend funeral as politicised and inappropriate.
Speaking on CBS on Sunday, the leader of the largest police force in the US came out fighting on behalf of the beleaguered politician who appointed him.
“This is a mayor who cares very deeply about New York police officers, cares very deeply about the divide in the city and is working hard to heal that divide,” Bratton said.
De Blasio has faced expressions of open hostility from New York’s police unions since two officers were killed last weekend. On Saturday a cordon of officers turned their back on the mayor’s image as it was being screened outside Christ Tabernacle church in Queens, where de Blasio was addressing the funeral of one of the murdered officers, Rafael Ramos.
On Day of Officer's Funeral, Continued Calls for Justice on Both Coasts
'When a cop dies a nation cries. When Black youth die, the Black community cries alone.'
On the same day as tens of thousands of police officers from across the country joined the New York Police Department in honoring Officer Rafael Ramos, who was killed on December 20 along with his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, demonstrations took place in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles protesting police violence and racial injustice.
Ramos and Liu were allegedly shot last Saturday by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had said on social media that he intended to kill police officers. After shooting the officers in their vehicle, Brinsley killed himself minutes later in a nearby subway station.
The New York Times reports that "[a]fter the killings, the political fallout was immediate and intense. The already strained relationship between Mr. de Blasio and the department grew even worse, with the head of a police union even accusing him of having blood on his hands. When Mr. de Blasio arrived at the funeral, there was a scattering of boos, and an officer held up a sign calling for him to resign."
According to the Times, "on the streets around the church, scores of New York City police officers used the occasion to once again make a statement about what they feel is a lack of support from City Hall—turning their backs when Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered his remarks."
‘Wake Up!’ 1000s take to streets across US protesting police brutality
A wave of peaceful protests, aimed at denouncing police violence, swept across the US on Saturday, with the number of protesters peaking in Los Angeles, where there were over 5,000 in the “Millions March for First Amendment Rights.”
“Hands up, don’t shoot”, “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace,” – these mottos united demonstrations that took place in several major American cities – Los Angeles, New York and Ferguson, where there have been several cases of fatal shooting by the police.
The protesters were calling for justice for those killed by police – Michael Brown (Ferguson) and Eric Garner (New York), as well as Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego (both from Los Angeles) among them.
“Every 28 hours a person is killed in the United States by a police officer or authority figure or vigilante, and nothing stops for them,” Kirbie Joseph, an organizer of the march in New York, told The New York Times. “Everything goes business as usual, and so we can’t stop.”
In Los Angeles, over 5,000 activists, students and even celebrities participated, making police shut down streets on the proposed route of the march, as a safety measure. The protest was peaceful and no arrests were made, but a car hit a demonstrator, according to RT’s RUPTLY video agency. Twitter users reported the protester didn’t require medical aid.
Read more: Black Lives Matter’ Xmas protest turns violent in Oakland
The NYPD Is Using Fear as a Weapon in the "War on Cops" Crackdown
The New York Post's Christmas edition carried a red, but hardly festive banner on its front page: "War on Cops." The hyperbole aptly captures the perspective of the New York Police Department, which indeed has behaved like it's at war since officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were murdered in their patrol car last week. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city's largest police union, declared that there's "blood on many hands," specifically "those who incited violence under the guise of protests" and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Another police union has advised its members to remain armed even when they're off duty and to keep a low profile on the street and online.
Never mind that the dead killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had a long history of mental illness and had shot his ex-girlfriend in Maryland before traveling up to NYC. The only relevant fact, it seems, is that Brinsley had forecast his actions by posting a photo of a pistol on Instagram with the phrase "They Take 1 Of Ours… Let's Take 2 of Theirs" and hashtag references to Eric Garner and Michael Brown. That's all the evidence that Lynch, the Post, and their ilk need that there's a war on cops—and that police must respond in kind.
The week after Ramos and Liu's deaths has seen more than 40 threats against the NYPD, with seven arrests in connections with those threats, the department's media office said Friday. One of those arrested, Devon Coley, an 18-year-old facing separate assault and weapons charges, posted on Facebook a photo—possibly from a movie—of a man firing a pistol into the driver's side of a police car. He wrote "Nextt73," an apparent reference to his local police precinct in Brooklyn, and punctuated it with emojis of a cop with a pistol by his head.
Under normal circumstances, that vague, semipublic comment might be reason for police to contact Coley for a conversation. But in these "blood on the hands" times, the NYPD is making it known that it will treat all threats as deadly serious. For his Facebook post, Coley faces up to seven years in prison. Brooklyn's district attorney, Ken Thompson, told the Post that his request for $250,000 bail in the case fit the charge of making terroristic threats. (New York statute defines it as an actual threat that inspires "a reasonable expectation or fear" that a specified crime will happen.) While acknowledging that what Coley did was “stupid” and an “incredible inflammatory thing to do right now,” Circuit Judge Laura Johnson concluded, “I think that for me to set bail because of the current climate—it would be a misuse of bail.”
State Duma chief suggests trying US for WWII nuke attacks
The Russian Lower House speaker wants to instigate an international investigation into the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US military – a possible crime against humanity with no statute of limitation.
“Next year we will have the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trial and also the same anniversary of the first and only nuclear bombings of two civilian cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not incidental that I mention these events together. I think we should discuss this topic together with lawyers and specialists in international law – for crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation,” Sergey Naryshkin told the presidium of the Russian History Society.
The Russian parliamentary chief recalled that the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hardly justifiable from the pure military position, as the defeat of Japan was practically decided after the Soviet Army’s victories in Manchuria.
“The nuclear bombing of two peaceful cities was a pure act of intimidation resulting in the deaths of several thousand Japanese civilians. Let us get back to this issue within the next year,” Naryshkin said.
The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place in early August, 1945, and resulted in the deaths of between 150,000 and 250,000 people, most of them civilians. The US authorities said the demonstration of force sped up Japan’s capitulation and prevented a land operation on the island that could have inflicted heavy casualties to the US military. At the same time, the two attacks, especially the Hiroshima bombing, have been repeatedly denounced by the international rights community as fundamentally immoral and violating the spirit of conventions that banned the use of weapons of mass destruction against the enemy’s civilian population.
Moscow to supply coal, electricity to Ukraine without prepayment
Russia will supply coal and electricity to Ukraine without prepayment, Vladimir Putin's spokesman said. Ukraine is trying to cope with energy problems amid an ongoing crisis in the industrial east.
This proves the president’s political goodwill and support, “particularly before New Year,” said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday, as quoted by TASS.
“Against all the odds as President Putin said earlier in the hard times he had never given up the consistent policy towards supporting the Ukrainian people and providing real and not eventual support, due to the critical energy situation Putin took a decision on such supplies regardless the absence of prepayment, which is the condition of making them,” he added.
Moscow will supply 500,000 tonnes of coal to Ukraine per month, according to Russian Vice-Premier Dmitry Kozak.
"If an additional corresponding agreement may be reached, we're ready to supply another 500,000 tonnes, totally 1 million tonnes of coal, to Ukraine in order to help it solve energy problems," Kozak told Rossiya24 TV channel.
Ukraine's Greek Catholic Church looks to boost sway – by equiping military
The church, a minority faith in largely Orthodox Ukraine, has a long history of guarding the country's identity and independence. Now, it is doing so directly, by supplying ammo, medical kits, and armor to soldiers fighting in the east.
Submitted By: enhydra lutris
Ternopil, Ukraine — As the train bringing the wounded soldier home from the front line grinds to a halt, the crowd on the platform bursts into patriotic song. Maj. Ruslan Androsyuk’s three-year-old son jumps into his arms, unsteadying him as he limps from the carriage.
Relatives and friends wave balloons and Ukrainian flags, welcoming Major Androsyuk back after a mine ripped through his armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region, leaving him with a broken leg, fractured ribs, and pierced lungs. “If it wasn’t for his bulletproof vest he wouldn’t have survived,” says his wife Olga, choking back tears.
But it wasn't Ukraine's government that supplied Androsyuk his gear. Like hundreds of other soldiers fighting against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, his equipment was provided by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
After decades of marginalization by both Ukraine's communist and post-Communist regimes and its two dominant Orthodox churches, the UGCC is trying to establish itself as a major pro-European player by supplying government forces fighting in the east. By taking a direct role in the conflict, the UGCC hopes to win followers within a country that is becoming increasingly divided along ethnic and religious lines.
China news report: North Korea hit with another Internet outage
North Korea government blames US for Internet disruptions, after Pyongyang accused of hacking Sony
Submitted By: NCTim
North Korea's Internet and 3G mobile networks were paralyzed again on Saturday evening, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. The North Korean government blamed the United States for systemic instability in the country's networks.
North Korea's main Internet sites had suffered intermittent disruptions earlier in the week, including a complete outage of nearly nine hours, before links were largely restored Tuesday.
The National Defense Commission, the North's ruling body, chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, issued a statement Saturday dismissing U.S. denials of involvement in North Korea's Internet outages.
"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the Internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," it said.
In a separate commentary, the North denied any role in cyber attacks on South Korea's nuclear power plant operator, calling the suggestion that it had done so part of a "smear campaign" by unpopular South Korean leaders.
After 13 Years, US-Led Afghanistan War is Officially Over but Nightmare Goes On
The war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of about 3,500 foreign troops—at least 2,224 of them American soldiers—and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians
With little fanfare, the United States and NATO formally ended the longest war in U.S. history with a ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving observers to wonder what—if anything—was achieved.
Over 13 years, U.S.-led war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of about 3,500 foreign troops (at least 2,224 of them American soldiers) and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians; most experts agree that the country is as violent as ever and that the death toll will continue to rise. Many say the war is over in name only.
"Afghanistan's war is as hot as it has been since the U.S.-led invasion following the 9/11 attacks overthrew the Taliban," Lynne O'Donnell writes for the Associated Press. Some 5,000 members of Afghanistan's security forces—army, police and armed rural defense units—have died this year fighting the Taliban, according to Karl Ake Roghe, the outgoing head of EUPOL, the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan.
And while the ceremony marked the end of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a new flag for the international mission "Resolute Support" was immediately unfurled.
Islamic State executed nearly 2,000 people in six months: monitor
(Reuters) - The Islamic State militant group has killed 1,878 people in Syria during the past six months, the majority of them civilians, a British-based Syrian monitoring organization said on Sunday.
Islamic State also killed 120 of its own members, most of them foreign fighters trying to return home, in the last two months, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The militant group has taken vast parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate in territory under its control in June. Since then it has fought the Syrian and Iraqi governments, other insurgents and Kurdish forces.
Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian monitoring group, told Reuters that Islamic State killed 1,175 civilians, including eight women and four children.
First air strikes hit Libyan city of Misrata
Forces loyal to internationally recognised government carry out strikes on Fajr Libya armed group in the country's east.
Forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government have for the first time carried out air strikes on targets in the third largest city of Misrata, which is allied to an armed group that seized the capital in the summer.
The internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni has been forced to run a rump state in the east since a group known as the Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) took control of Tripoli in August, setting up a rival government and parliament.
Residents said Sunday’s air strikes hit the school of aviation close to Misrata airport, the port and a steel plant.
Ismail Shukri, a spokesman for forces allied to Libya Dawn, confirmed that air strikes had taken place but said they caused no damage.
The North African country, a major oil producer, has been engulfed in fighting between the two sides, each with its own government and parliament.
Jet Carrying 162 Passengers Goes Missing Over Java Sea
Bad weather was reported in the region; search operations have been largely suspended for the night
A jet carrying 162 people went missing early Sunday over the Java Sea. According to news reports, the AirAsia plane, an Airbus A320-200, was flying from Indonesia to Singapore and lost contact with air traffic control about 42 minutes after takeoff. No distress call was made.
Bad weather including dense storm clouds, heavy wind, and lightening was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night.
According to the Associated Press:
Aircraft searching for AirAsia Flight 8501 called off the effort for the night and will resume at Monday morning, said Achmad Toha of Indonesia's search and rescue agency. Some ships were continuing the search overnight, he said.
The plane took off Sunday morning from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and was about halfway to its destination, Singapore, when it vanished from radar.
The last communication between the pilot and air traffic control was at 6:13 a.m. (2313 GMT Saturday), when the pilot 'asked to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 34,000 feet (10,360 meters).' It was last seen on radar at 6:16 a.m., and a minute later was no longer there, Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, told reporters.
Agence France-Press reports that hundreds of Indonesians descended on the Juanda International Airport near Surabaya, East Java, on Sunday hoping for news of the missing flight.
Evil torturers catch a break: How America got distracted from a national travesty
The United States is in real trouble when the story about the hacking into Sony Pictures computers and their decision to pull an inane comedy totally big foots the deeply troubling Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.
Talk about using the holidays to flush bad news. Between the salacious internal Sony emails, the Obama administration’s watershed reset of U.S.-Cuban relations, and Christmas the average American will not get reporting on the fine print in the Senate Committee report nor a full analysis of the ambiguous CIA response.
In this case the devil really is in the details. For years the public was told the torture techniques saved lives, prevented additional terror attacks and helped lead to the capture of Osama bin Laden. Not so, says the Senate report, which goes on to chronicle years of obfuscation, deceit and deception by a CIA that was hell-bent on covering its tracks. Now the CIA is saying it is “unknowable” if the torture techniques produced results.
Even well into the Obama administration the Agency continued to go to the extraordinary steps of hacking into the Senate Committee’s computers. The Agency’s track record already includes the covert destruction in 2005 of 92 videos of detainee interrogations, which would have been critical to congressional investigators. In 2010 a federal special prosecutor declined to prosecute.
The Democratic Party Keeps Screwing Up: Why Progressives Need to Be Independent of the Party
Progressives have no power in a corporate, focus-grouped, Wall Street-leaning party.
The Democrats’ conduct since the midterm debacle is as sad and sorry as the campaign that caused it. The party’s leaders are a big problem. A bigger one is the closed system of high-dollar fundraising, reductionist polling and vapid messaging in which it is seemingly trapped. Some say a more populist Democratic Party will soon emerge. It won’t happen as long as these leaders and this system are in place.
Nancy Pelosi says it wasn’t a wave election. She’s right. It was the Johnstown Flood; as catastrophic and just as preventable. One year after the shutdown Republicans scored their biggest Senate win since 1980 and their biggest House win since 1928. Turnout was the lowest since 1942, when millions of GIs had the excellent excuse of being overseas fighting for their country.
Every Democratic alibi — midterm lull, sixth-year curse, red Senate map, vote suppression, gerrymandering, money — rings true, but all of them together can’t explain being swept by the most extreme major party in American history. Citing other statistics — demography, presidential turnout, Hillary’s polls — they assure us that in 2016 happy days will be here again. Don’t bet on it.
It took more than the usual civic sloth to produce the lowest turnout in 72 years. It took alienating vast voting blocs, including the young and the working class of both genders and all races. The young now trend Republican. Voters of all ages migrate to third parties or abandon politics altogether. It’s the biggest Democratic defection since the South switched parties in the 1960s. If Democrats don’t change their ways, their 2016 turnout will be a lot harder to gin up than they think.
Rebecca Solnit: The Age of Capitalism is over
Rebecca Solnit assesses our poisonous fossil fuel dependency -- and why we're on the verge of a paradigm shift
It was the most thrilling bureaucratic document I’ve ever seen for just one reason: it was dated the 21st day of the month of Thermidor in the Year Six. Written in sepia ink on heavy paper, it recorded an ordinary land auction in France in what we would call the late summer of 1798. But the extraordinary date signaled that it was created when the French Revolution was still the overarching reality of everyday life and such fundamentals as the distribution of power and the nature of government had been reborn in astonishing ways. The new calendar that renamed 1792 as Year One had, after all, been created to start society all over again.
In that little junk shop on a quiet street in San Francisco, I held a relic from one of the great upheavals of the last millennium. It made me think of a remarkable statement the great feminist fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin had made only a few weeks earlier. In the course of a speech she gave while accepting a book award she noted, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
That document I held was written only a few years after the French had gotten over the idea that the divine right of kings was an inescapable reality. The revolutionaries had executed their king for his crimes and were then trying out other forms of government. It’s popular to say that the experiment failed, but that’s too narrow an interpretation. France never again regressed to an absolutist monarchy and its experiments inspired other liberatory movements around the world (while terrifying monarchs and aristocrats everywhere).
Americans are skilled at that combination of complacency and despair that assumes things cannot change and that we, the people, do not have the power to change them. Yet you have to be abysmally ignorant of history, as well as of current events, not to see that our country and our world have always been changing, are in the midst of great and terrible changes, and are occasionally changed through the power of the popular will and idealistic movements. As it happens, the planet’s changing climate now demands that we summon up the energy to leave behind the Age of Fossil Fuel (and maybe with it some portion of the Age of Capitalism as well).
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s economic approach under scrutiny
Submitted By: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON — If Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the White House again, her message on the economy could be an important barometer as she courts fellow Democrats.
Members of her party are watching closely how the former secretary of state outlines steps to address income inequality and economic anxieties for middle-class families. Some members of the party’s liberal wing remain wary of Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, six-figure speaking fees and protective bubble.
Clinton is widely expected to announce a presidential campaign next year and remains the prohibitive favorite to succeed President Obama as the party’s nominee in 2016. But how she navigates a party animated by economic populism, an approach personified by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, could represent one of her biggest hurdles. Democrats bruised from GOP gains in the 2014 elections are pushing for big policy changes — raising the minimum wage and pay equity, for example — that favor the declining middle class.
“We don’t win when we play small-ball and calibrate. Why not try to be bold?” said Anna Galland of MoveOn.org, which launched a draft campaign to lure Warren into the race.
Warren says she’s not running for president, but her confrontational approach on Wall Street and reducing the gap between the rich and poor has generated a loyal following. She showcased this posture during December’s “lame duck” session of Congress, when she led the charge against a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill — ultimately signed by Obama — that repealed part of the Dodd-Frank financial law and loosened contribution caps for some political donors. Clinton has yet to comment on the spending plan.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature Dec 29, 1904: Governor-elect Alva Adams will resist the efforts of Republicans to reseat Peabody who is determined to hang onto power despite the overwhelming plurality of votes given to his Democratic opponent by the people of the state of Colorado.
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Seed libraries struggle with state laws limiting exchanges
Submitted By: enhydra lutris
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — For thousands of years, people have exchanged seeds to grow terrific tomatoes or produce the perfect potato, but a new effort to loan and borrow seeds has created a conflict between well-meaning gardeners and state agriculture officials who feel obligated to enforce laws restricting the practice.
Seed exchanges have sprouted up in about 300 locations around the country, most often in libraries, where gardeners can exchange self-pollinating seeds rather than buy standard, hybrid seeds. In spots like Duluth, Minnesota, the conflict with agriculture departments has surprised gardeners and library officials, who established exchanges to meet a growing interest in locally grown food and preserving certain varieties, never thinking to examine the intricacies of state seed laws.
"It's about the philosophy, the legacy of shared seeds," Duluth Library Manager Carla Powers said. Its seed exchange is operated by library employees and volunteers out of a converted wardrobe. "It's about sharing with our friends and neighbors in the community."
Agriculture officials say they weren't looking for a fight but felt obligated as they became aware of the increasingly popular seed libraries to enforce laws, which are largely uniform across the country.
Intended to protect farmers, the laws ensure seeds are viable, will grow the intended plant and aren't mixed with unwanted seeds for weeds or plants. Even though most of the laws refer to "sales" of seeds, that term is defined to include exchanges — where no money changes hands.
Why are the feds harassing Navajo shepherds?
Pressure from big mining interests behind government crackdown on the Navajo
Submitted By: NCTim
In late October in a remote area of Arizona called Black Mesa, federal SWAT teams dressed in military flak jackets and wielding assault rifles set up roadblocks and detained people as helicopters and drones circled overhead.
The response made it seem as though police were targeting dangerous criminals — terrorists, even. But they were actually detaining impoverished Navajo (Dine’) elders accused of owning too many sheep.
For the past month Hopi rangers and agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have been entering people’s land and holding them at gunpoint, with few warrants and little respect for due process. Community members say they live in fear because of this extreme intimidation in the Hopi Partitioned Lands in northern Arizona.
The Hopi tribe and the BIA say that over four dozen people have exceeded their permitted limit of 28 sheep per household, which will lead to overgrazing. Even if that were true — and many people doubt the claim — it would hardly justify the excessively intimidating approach to the problem. So far, three people have been arrested and more than 300 sheep impounded. Exorbitant fees are levied for people to recover their sheep, which the elderly Navajo residents depend on for their livelihood.
What We Learned About NSA Spying in 2014—And What We're Fighting to Expose in 2015: 2014 in Review
After a banner year for shedding light on the NSA’s secret surveillance programs in 2013, the pace of disclosures in 2014—both from whistleblowers and through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits—slowed significantly.
But that’s not because all the secrets of NSA surveillance have been revealed.
In fact, some of the most significant information about the NSA’s surveillance programs still remain secret. Despite one of the most significant leaks in American history and despite a promise to declassify as much information as possible about the programs, nearly two years later the government still refuses to provide the public with the information it needs. For example, government officials still have not answered a simple, yet vitally important, question: what type of information does the NSA collect about millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans (or the citizens of any other country, for that matter)? And the government still refuses to release some of the most significant decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—the secret court tasked with monitoring the government’s surveillance programs.
Despite the slowdown, in 2014, we learned still more about the NSA’s surveillance programs than we knew before. We learned that:
Read the list here.
Meet tech’s new concierge economy, where serfs deliver stuff to rich folk
The rise of Uber and possible Amazon deliveries by drone typify our regrettable need for instant gratification
Submitted By: NCTim
In a way, the name of the company – Uber – gives the game away. It has connotations of elevation, superiority, authority – as in Nietzsche’s coinage, Übermensch, to describe the higher state to which men might aspire. Although it’s only been around since 2009, Uber, the smartphone-enabled minicab company, is probably the only startup of recent times to have achieved the same level of name recognition as the established internet giants.
This is partly because Uber is arguably the most aggressive tech startup in recent history and partly because it has attracted a lot of bad press. But mainly it’s because a colossal pile of American venture capital is riding on it. Its most recent investment round valued the company at about $40bn, which is why every MBA graduate in California is currently clutching a PowerPoint presentation arguing that his/her daft idea is “Uber for X” – where X is any industry you care to mention.
What lies behind the frenzy is a conviction that Uber is the Next Big Thing, fuelled by the belief that it is the embodiment of what Silicon Valley values most, namely “disruptive innovation” – as in disruption of established, old-economy ways of doing things. In Uber’s case, the ancien regime is urban taxi cab businesses in more than 200 cities worldwide, which are portrayed by Übermenschen as little more than cosy or corrupt local monopolies.
Uber fits neatly into the mythology of the tech industry, which portrays itself as surfing one of the waves of “creative destruction” through which, as the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued, capitalism periodically renews itself. In this narrative, industrial progress involves a good deal of destruction in order to make way for new, creative, wealth-creating industries. The abolition of old timers such as licensed taxi cabs, travel agents and bookshops etc is merely the collateral damage of an essentially benign process – regrettable but necessary casualties of innovation.
Amazing Video: Stone Age Tribe’s First Contact with Modern Man
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor - Agathena
Green Neocolonialism, Afro-Brazilian Rebellion in Brazil
The Afro-Brazilian Quilombola people were forced from their land in Brazil in order to make way for eucalyptus plantations, which produce toilet paper destined for Western markets. But they are resisting by replanting native trees and food crops, and working for a post-eucalyptus reality.
The principal use for the cellulose found in eucalyptus plants in Brazil is disposable paper products, such as toilet paper and paper towels - products most in demand in first-world markets. Yet these types of paper products generate social and environmental impacts in places in Brazil where many communities have never even had access to them.
The region known as Sape do Norte, which includes the cities of Sao Mateus and Conceicao da Barra, in the state of Espirito Santo, in Brazil, has been heavily affected by eucalyptus plantations. In Sao Mateus, for example, the plantations occupy 70 percent of the territory. From Vitoria, the capital of Espirito Santo, to Sao Mateus, a stretch of close to 300 kilometers in length is covered by eucalyptus trees. In some places, small remnants of the native forest and its biodiversity can be seen, but only for a few hectares, quickly passed by in a car.
This area is also a symbol of Afro-Brazilian resistance; it is the land of the Quilombolas. The name Quilombola comes from the Kimbundu language, one of the Bantu languages widely spoken in Angola. Places where rebel or fugitive slaves lived were called quilombo - in hidden corners of the city or out in the countryside. From there the word Quilombola is derived, used in Brazil to describe a rebellious person of African descent.
"Quilombola is a specific type of person of African descent. They were brought from Africa during colonial times like the others, but they refused to submit to slavery and represented Black resistance. They built communities, called quilombos, fleeing from slavery in Brazil, living in isolated communities made up of 20 or 30 families, where they lived autonomously. Their descendants stayed in those in these places," Marcelo Calazans told Truthout. He works with the Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), an organization that has worked for 30 years on issues related to the impacts of eucalyptus cultivation in the state of Espirito Santo.
Almost 7,000 UK properties to be sacrificed to rising seas
Properties worth over £1bn will be lost to coastal erosion in England and Wales over the next century, with no compensation for homeowners, as it becomes too costly to protect them
Submitted By: enhydra lutris
Almost 7,000 homes and buildings will be sacrificed to the rising seas around England and Wales over the next century, according to an unpublished Environment Agency (EA) analysis seen by the Guardian. Over 800 of the properties will be lost to coastal erosion within the next 20 years.
The properties, worth well over £1bn, will be allowed to fall into the sea because the cost of protecting them would be far greater. But there is no compensation scheme for homeowners to enable them to move to a safer location.
In December 2013, a huge tidal surge flooded 1,400 homes along the east coast and saw numerous homes tumble into the ocean. Earlier this month, the environment secretary, Liz Truss, visited Lowestoft on the anniversary of the surge, which flooded the town.
“Last winter’s storms saw the eastern seaboard overwhelmed,” said coastal community campaigner Chris Blunkell, who lives on the North Kent coast at Whitstable. “If government won’t defend all people living on the coast, then it must make sure that they can move elsewhere, and that means compensating them for their loss. It’s wrong that the costs of climate change should be borne by the most vulnerable.”
Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches
Pontiff hopes to inspire action at next year’s UN meeting in Paris in December after visits to Philippines and New York
Submitted By: NCTim
He has been called the “superman pope”, and it would be hard to deny that Pope Francis has had a good December. Cited by President Barack Obama as a key player in the thawing relations between the US and Cuba, the Argentinian pontiff followed that by lecturing his cardinals on the need to clean up Vatican politics. But can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change?
It looks as if he will give it a go. In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.
The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.
“Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions,” Sorondo told Cafod, the Catholic development agency, at a meeting in London. “The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hellraisers Journal: Supreme Court That Upheld Czar Peabody against Miners, Now Aids Election Theft
Transgender in Big Sky Country
Let’s all screw the 1 percent: The simple move Obama could make to strengthen the rest of us
More lethal than the Whopper: How Burger King pleases the 1 percent, screws its workers
The State of Free Expression Online: 2014 in Review
A Little Night Music
Chris Isaak - She's not you
Chris Isaak - Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing
Chris Isaak - Take my heart
Chris Isaak - Only the Lonely
Chris Isaak - Mr. Lonely Man
Chris Isaak - I Want You To Want Me
Chris Isaak - I Wonder
Chris Isaak - Two Hearts
Chris Isaak - It's Now or Never
Chris Isaak - Somebody's Crying
Chris Isaak - Talk to Me
Chris Isaak - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Chris Isaak - Let me down easy
Chris Isaak - Big Wide Wonderful World
Chris Isaak - King Without A Castle
Chris Isaak - I Believe
Chris Isaak - Can't Help Falling In Love With You
Chris Isaak - Soundstage PBS Live