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 features singer, songwriter, master of the one string diddley bow and three string slide guitar, California native Steven Gene Wold, better known as Seasick Steve. He started out with nothin' and still got most of it left, this is some great stuff, folks. Enjoy!
Seasick Steve - Started Out With Nothin'
Civilization has been thrust upon me, and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.
Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux
News and Opinion
Volatility of Charlie Hebdo Cover on Display as Protests Erupt in Numerous Countries
Protests against anti-Muslim sentiment have now taken place in Niger, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Proving that the tensions surrounding recent events in Paris remain complex and will continue to have political and cultural reverberations, protests have taken place in numerous countries in recent days which demonstrate the "Je Suis Charlie" meme clearly has it limits when it comes to unanimous sentiment and interpretation around the world.
As Associated Press reports, protests occurred in Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Though expressions of global solidarity went out to the victims and the people of France following the attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices that took place on January 7, a debate remains underway regarding the relevant lines drawn between freedom of the press, religious incitement, and the tensions that exist between what kinds of speech are protected and what, if any, limits to that speech should be enforced by governments or society. Across Europe, the rise of Islamophobic sentiment has become a worry for both the Muslim community and defenders of religious tolerance.
Following the massacre at their offices, which claimed the lives of ten staffers, Charlie Hebdo featured a depiction of the Prophet Mohammed on the cover of its very next issue, which was released in a record-printing of more than 3 million copies.
Rise of the right after France attacks
As the country tries to make sense of the bloody events, one political party is ready to seize the moment.
Paris, France - On Boulevard Richard Lenoir, a few metres from the former office of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, a small crowd gathers around the spot where French policeman Ahmed Merabet was killed by attackers as he tried to stop them from fleeing the scene of their mass murder.
Standing there, shivering, Sophie cries silently as she looks at the pile of notes, flags and flowers on the ground.
"I can't stop crying," said the 50-year-old school librarian, who did not want to give her last name because she lives near where the attackers did and is "scared".
"I find it very difficult what's happening. It's shocking, it's sad, it's unbelievable that you can kill people like that. We're in France, a free country, we want to live in peace. I'm very afraid of racism. I think it's going to be very tense for several weeks, several months, several years, between the populations."
A week after the attacks that killed 17 in Paris, tensions are rising in France from schools to the streets, and fears of racism and sectarianism are growing.
Charlie Hebdo fallout: Belgium deploys troops, UK raises terror alert to ‘severe’
Europe is in a state of high alert after anti-terror raids netted over two dozen arrests. UK police have raised threat level to ‘severe’ fearing attacks similar to the one narrowly averted in Belgium, while Brussels has deployed troops to guard key sites.
The security beef-up in Britain to the second-highest level of five comes after a Thursday raid on an extremist cell in Belgium revealed an imminent plan to attack police officers. British authorities say a similar attack may be in preparation in UK, the British media reported.
The authorities want to arm patrollers with additional Tazer guns, which incapacitate the target with a powerful electric shock. Unlike officers in continental Europe, their British colleagues mostly go unarmed. Amid the escalated terror tension in Europe, there are fears of a repetition of the knifing of soldier Lee Rigby in May 2013 in Woolwich, south London, by a jihadist loner.
British police also ramped up patrol in Jewish communities due to concerns of anti-Semitic attacks. One of the attacks in Paris last week, which triggered the ongoing anti-terrorism response in Europe, targeted a kosher supermarket.
Muslims in America are hearing backlash from Paris attack
WASHINGTON — Islamic community leaders in North Texas want extra police and FBI protection for hundreds of Fort Worth-Dallas Muslims who’ll be attending a conference Saturday on combating Islamophobia after the group received multiple threats involving guns and possibly dynamite.
Muslim leaders in Ohio said they’d reported last Sunday to federal officials that they’d received a call from a man who threatened to destroy a Central Ohio mosque. On Thursday, Duke University in North Carolina canceled plans to allow a Muslim call to prayer from a campus chapel bell tower after receiving threats of violence from anti-Muslim groups.
Last week’s Paris attack happened on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, more than 3,500 miles away, but many in the Muslim community here say they’re feeling the backlash as if it happened in America.
The national Muslim civil rights group, Council on American-Islamic Relations, reports the level of anti-Muslim rhetoric and threats received by its Washington office and more than two dozen national chapters is at its highest since right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Five killed in second day of Charlie Hebdo protests in Niger
(Reuters) - At least five people were killed on Saturday in protests in Niger against Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, authorities said, bringing the death toll from two days of violence in the country to 10.
Police fired tear gas at crowds of stone-throwing Muslim youths who set fire to churches and looted shops in the capital Niamey after authorities banned a meeting called by local Islamic leaders. A police station was attacked and at least two police cars burned.
"They offended our Prophet Mohammad, that's what we didn't like," said Amadou Abdoul Ouahab, who took part in the demonstrations.
President Mahamadou Issoufou said all five of the dead were civilians, with four of them killed inside burned churches or bars. He said an enquiry would be opened and those responsible for organising the violence would be punished.
The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs
Prominent Ukrainian MP denounces Obama's weakness, calls him a 'shot-down pilot'
Submitted by: Azazello
There were times in Ukraine’s recent history when even the country’s military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable.
But that was then—a previous regime.
On the surface, today’s Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian political landscape last year. Its political culture looks modern, attractive, refined and European. For example, at the end of last year a new law was passed that allowed former citizens of other countries to participate in Ukrainian politics and even the government, in case they denounce their former citizenships. The reason given was the fight with notorious Ukrainian corruption. Apparently, in a country of more than 40 million people, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (called “Rabbit” by his citizens) couldn’t find a dozen or so native-born yet not corrupt professionals for his government.
Now three former foreigners—ex-American Natalia Yaresko (Minister for Finance), ex-Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius (Minister For Economy and Trade) and ex-Georgian Alexander Kvitashvili (Minister for Public Health)—are firmly established in their new cabinets. They are just the beginning. They gave up their U.S. and European passports with only two benefits in return: a $200-a-month salary and the chance to build a prosperous new Ukraine.
In a strange twist of fate, the Ukrainian ministers during their meetings now have to speak hated Russian—former foreigners do not speak Ukrainian well enough and locals do not speak English at the level necessary for complicated discussions on how to save a Ukraine economy that is disappearing before their eyes.
Russia’s “Turk Stream” Pipeline Idea: A New Energy Move against Europe?
Caspian Sea basin, Energy Geo-economics, Energy pipelines, Gas, Iraq, Plan/Strategy Overview, Policy Analysis, Situation Report, South Caucasus, Southeast Europe, Southwest Asia, Turkey
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Russia continues to play hardball with natural gas for the European Union, trying to get Brussels to sacrifice Ukraine in return for the promise of better relations with Moscow. The European Commission’s vice-president for energy union, Maros Sefcovic, visited Russia on January 14 to ask exactly what Moscow’s intentions were about the now-cancelled South Stream pipeline. Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced late last year a Russian plan to substitute for it a huge 63 billion cubic meter per year (bcm/y) pipeline project under the Black Sea to Turkey and then up to the Turkish-Greek border.
Moscow Tries to Turn the Natural Gas Pipeline Screw
Sefcovic was told that Russian shipments of natural gas through Ukraine would end and that if the EU wanted the gas, then it would have to get it through the new planned pipeline, which Russia has suggested could be called “Turk Stream”.
But it is far from clear that Russia and Turkey can arrive at terms for implementing the project, even if Europe bends to the Russian pressure. For example, the day after Putin’s announcement of the new pipeline project in December, the Turkish energy minister said his country would really prefer LNG terminals for export to the world at large, instead of merely a passing gas through to Europe. And the Turkish vice-premier remarked earlier this month that the Azerbaijani-sponsored Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) would take precedence over any new Russian project.
That may be because TANAP is already agreed between Turkey and Azerbaijan and soon to be under construction. Even before Sefcovic’s visit to Moscow, the EU had asked for TANAP’s initial volume to be scaled up from the initial 16 to 20 bcm/y. The additional volume could come from sources in Azerbaijan or the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq.
Isis using UK female jihadists to incite terror acts back home, say researchers
Intensive monitoring of social media accounts of female Britons based in northern Syria reveals women’s key new role
A hardcore of British women who have travelled to Syria to join Islamic State (Isis) are encouraging other women in the UK to carry out terrorist attacks back home, the Observer has learned.
The role of British female jihadists in inciting terrorism in the UK has been uncovered by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London, which has identified a group of around 30 female Britons based in northern Syria.
According to monitoring of their social media accounts, a number have been acting as Isis recruiters or openly praising the Charlie Hebdo shootings, while encouraging more bloodshed, including the beheadings of westerners.
Until now, the western women joining Isis have largely been portrayed as passive – travelling to marry jihadists and bear their children away from the frontline. But as police across the UK prepare for possible attacks against them and with Europe on high alert following arrests of suspected Islamist militants in Belgium, France and Germany, the ICSR work shows that many such women are part of the escalating threat.
With Greek Elections Nearing, Leftwing Syriza Increasing Its Lead: Poll
Ahead of national elections in Greece scheduled for January 25, new polls released on Friday and Saturday show the leftwing Syriza party continues to enjoy growing popularity, improving its lead over opposition parties, including those that make up the current ruling coalition.
According to Reuters:
Greece's anti-bailout Syriza party is solidifying its opinion poll lead over the ruling conservatives eight days before the country's election, according to a new survey on Saturday.
The survey by pollster Kapa Research for Sunday's To Vima newspaper showed the radical leftists' lead widening to 3.1 percentage points from 2.6 points in a previous poll earlier in the month. [...]
The survey, conducted on Jan. 13-15, showed that Syriza, which is running on a pledge to end austerity policies and renegotiate the country's debt, would win 31.2 percent of the vote if the election was held now, versus 28.1 percent for Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' New Democracy conservatives.
Trade Deals and Democrat Delusions
Submitted by: Azazello
The Democrats’ rebuke in recent mid-term elections and eternally low approval ratings for Congress suggest that a large number of people perceive that something is broken with American politics. What doesn’t appear to be as widely understood are the changes to Western political economy that have taken place over the last forty years that could best be described as a neo-liberal fascist) coup. The traditional left / right divide theorized to be embodied in oppositional politics, Democrats versus Republicans, has been supplanted by the unified economic agenda of the radical right with ‘political’ differences consigned to cultural issues being decided at the state and local levels.
American politics ‘works,’ to the extent the term was ever applicable, through a residual mythology that posits distinct realms of the economic and the political. Economists write implicitly or explicitly about capitalism (e.g. ‘markets’) as if the federal, state and local governments weren’t fully integrated with ‘markets’ through government funded research and development, military entanglements in the interests of capitalists, regulations, transfers and expropriation. Politicians speak of foreign and domestic programs, legislation and regulations as if the resulting economic outcomes were unrelated to their form and intent. These tendencies are nowhere more evident than in ‘trade’ agreements, the political framework of ‘market’ relations.
Democrats have been the more effective proponents of neo-liberal trade policies since Bill Clinton passed NAFTA in 1993. With Republicans regaining control of Congress the Democrat establishment is scrambling to claim ‘political’ differences while President Obama and Congressional Republicans promote nearly identical economic agendas through trade agreements. This ‘works’ by giving civil decision-making authority to supranational agencies through economic leverage, the right to be compensated for not destroying the world. Countries with the weakest labor protections, environmental regulations, banking restrictions and public interest legislation are being made the new ‘politics,’ the direction of ‘public’ policy via economic policy, by design.
For the large residual that retains the mythology of political and economic divide, Democrats have for forty years postured ‘politically’ while acting through economic policies. Jimmy Carter deregulated the railroads and airlines and appointed Paul Volcker Chairman of the Federal Reserve to protect bank assets from the ravages of inflation by engineering a major recession. Bill Clinton eliminated Glass-Steagall, de-regulated the banks, implemented austerity policies and attempted to singing the praises of neo-liberalism at the Hamilton Project to his unconditional revival of the major economic force promoting neo-liberal policies— Wall Street and trust-fund ‘capitalists,’ Mr. Obama has repeatedly contradicted his pseudo-populist rhetoric with economic programs straight from the neo-liberal playbook.
Latest FBI Claim of Disrupted Terror Plot Deserves Much Scrutiny and Skepticism
Submitted by: NCTim
The Justice Department on Wednesday issued a press release trumpeting its latest success in disrupting a domestic terrorism plot, announcing that “the Joint Terrorism Task Force has arrested a Cincinnati-area man for a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol and kill government officials.” The alleged would-be terrorist is 20-year-old Christopher Cornell (above), who is unemployed, lives at home, spends most of his time playing video games in his bedroom, still addresses his mother as “Mommy” and regards his cat as his best friend; he was described as “a typical student” and “quiet but not overly reserved” by the principal of the local high school he graduated in 2012.
The affidavit filed by an FBI investigative agent alleges Cornell had “posted comments and information supportive of [ISIS] through Twitter accounts.” The FBI learned about Cornell from an unnamed informant who, as the FBI put it, “began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.” Acting under the FBI’s direction, the informant arranged two in-person meetings with Cornell where they allegedly discussed an attack on the Capitol, and the FBI says it arrested Cornell to prevent him from carrying out the attack.
Family members say Cornell converted to Islam just six months ago and claimed he began attending a small local mosque. Yet The Cincinnati Enquirer could not find a single person at that mosque who had ever seen him before, and noted that a young, white, recent convert would have been quite conspicuous at a mosque largely populated by “immigrants from West Africa,” many of whom “speak little or no English.”
The DOJ’s press release predictably generated an avalanche of scary media headlines hailing the FBI. CNN: “FBI says plot to attack U.S. Capitol was ready to go.” MSNBC: “US terror plot foiled by FBI arrest of Ohio man.” Wall St. Journal: “Ohio Man Charged With Plotting ISIS-Inspired Attack on U.S.
Guantánamo Diary exposes brutality of US rendition and torture
Memoir serialised by Guardian tells how Mohamedou Ould Slahi endured savage beatings, death threats and sexual humiliation
Submitted by: NCTim
The groundbreaking memoir of a current Guantánamo inmate that lays bare the harrowing details of the US rendition and torture programme from the perspective of one of its victims is to be published next week after a six-year battle for the manuscript to be declassified.
Guantánamo Diary, the first book written by a still imprisoned detainee, is being published in 20 countries and has been serialised by the Guardian amid renewed calls by civil liberty campaigners for its author’s release.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi describes a world tour of torture and humiliation that began in his native Mauritania more than 13 years ago and progressed through Jordan and Afghanistan before he was consigned to US detention in Guantánamo, Cuba, in August 2002 as prisoner number 760. US military officials told the Guardian this week that despite never being prosecuted and being cleared for release by a judge in 2010, he is unlikely to be released in the next year.
The journal, which Slahi handwrote in English, details how he was subjected to sleep deprivation, death threats, sexual humiliation and intimations that his torturers would go after his mother.
Israel PM slams impending 'war crimes' probe
Netanyahu calls decision by Hague-based ICC to launch investigation into possible war crimes in Palestine "absurd".
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed the decision by the International Criminal Court to launch a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, saying it is "absurd".
Speaking in West Jerusalem on Saturday, a day after the decision was made, Netanyahu said: "It's absurd of the ICC to ignore international law and agreements under which the Palestinians don't have a state and can only get one through direct negotiations with Israel. The rules of the ICC are clear: No state, no standing, no case."
The preliminary probe does not mean war crimes were committed but will seek to determine whether preliminary findings merit a full investigation into alleged atrocities, which could result in charges being brought against individuals in either Israeli or Palestinian territories.
Palestine applied to join the ICC in December and has since signed the Rome treaty, the charter that led to the formation of the ICC in 2002. It is due to join the court in April but its membership will be backdated to June 2014, meaning that the court will have jurisdiction to look into last summer's offensive between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.
The police rely on fear and lobbying to defeat reforms. Protestors can't let them do so again
Submitted by: NCTim
For the first time in a long time, American police departments are on the defensive. They’re on the defense in New York, where, after the NYPD’s open insurrection against the mayor, 69% of New York “voters, black, white and Hispanic” disapprove “of police officers turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at funerals for two police officers” according to a Quinnipiac poll – and now, even some cops have started openly airing their disgust with their own union leadership. They’re on the defense in Washington, where they’re “on the hot seat” at President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. And they continue to be on the defense in municipalities across the country, as every new police shooting sparks intense national scrutiny on social and in traditional media.
Police departments usually rely on fear and lobbying to beat reforms back; police reformers can’t let them this time.
Police state apologists will try to sell fear, even though “20 years of falling crime and aggressive policing means that police violence – justified or otherwise – now appears to be a much larger share of all violence,” as Harry Siegel wrote in the New York Daily News. But while fear of crime has fallen as fear of police violence has risen, it’s still hard to argue with the good ol’ fear of terrorism.
After Paris, for instance, CongressmanPeter King said that “ The fact is, it’s coming from the Muslim community and it shows that the NYPD and Ray Kelly were right for so many years when they were really saturating areas where they thought the threat was coming from” a reference (and perhaps the start of a call for a return to) the NYPD’s defunct and discredited Muslim surveillance program. Senator Bob Corker said that, after too much handwringing over the CIA torture report, America can “over-hamstring” the law enforcement efforts of the NSA, despite the Patriot Act. Corker – who voted against gun control legislation after the Newtown school shootings – told the National Journal that the way to keep an American Charlie Hebdo “from happening is through outstanding intelligence-gathering,” while Senator Lindsey Graham warned that “I fear our intelligence capabilities, those designed to prevent such an attack from taking place on our shores, are quickly eroding.”
Florida police 'used mug shots of black men' for target practice
At a time when police public relations are strained over the shootings deaths of black men by white cops, people are asking why North Miami police would use pictures of real black men at the firing range.
When National Guard Sgt. Valerie Deant paid a visit last month to a shooting range in Medley, Florida she was astounded at what she found. North Miami Beach Police had been participating in a shooting drill using mug shots of six black males as targets.
Deant was even more shocked when she discovered that one of the images was that of her brother, Woody Deant.
"I was like, 'Why is my brother being used for target practice?'" Deant told NBC6, which first reported the story.
About 15 years earlier, Woody Deant had been arrested over his involvement in a drag racing incident that left two people dead. Deant, whose image at the firing range had been sprayed by bullets, had spent four years behind bars. But today he describes himself as a dedicated father and “a career man”.
Blood on Their Hands: The Racist History of Modern Police Unions
Outraged by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's statements concerning the killing of Eric Garner, Patrick Lynch, the longtime leader of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), the NYPD's officers union, recently made the outrageous assertion that the Mayor had "blood on his hands" for the murder of the two NYPD officers.
In Milwaukee this past fall, the Police Association called for, and obtained, a vote of no confidence in MPD Chief Ed Flynn after he fired the officer who shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed African American; subsequently, the union's leader, Mike Crivello, praised the District Attorney when he announced that he would not bring charges against the officer.
In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a longtime supporter of racist police torturer Jon Burge, is now seeking to circumvent court orders that preserve and make public the police misconduct files of repeater cops such as Burge, by seeking to enforce a police contract provision that calls for the destruction of the files after seven years. And in a show of solidarity with the killer of Michael Brown, Chicago's FOP is soliciting contributions to the Darren Wilson defense fund on its website.
Such reactionary actions by police unions are not new, but are a fundamental component of their history, particularly since they came to prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement. These organizations have played a powerful role in defending the police, no matter how outrageous and racist their actions, and in resisting all manner of police reforms.
A Nation in Decline': Majority of US Public School Students Live in Poverty
Devastating report reveals downward trajectory for today's generation of learners
As it turns out, there's no high-stakes test that can account for this.
A new study released on Friday shows that more than half of students enrolled in U.S. public schools live in poverty, a measurement that the report's authors say places the U.S. on the road to overall decline.
Released by the Southern Education Foundation, the new analysis (pdf) used the most recent national census figures available to confirm that that 51 percent of the students across the nation’s public schools were low income in 2013.
According to the report:
In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.
Most of the states with a majority of low income students are found in the South and the West. Thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West.
Mississippi led the nation with the highest rate: 71 percent, almost three out of every four public school children in Mississippi, were low-income. The nation’s second highest rate was found in New Mexico, where 68 percent of all public school students were low income in 2013.
Large Everest Capital hedge fund closing after Swiss franc losses: Bloomberg
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hedge fund manager Marko Dimitrijevic is closing his largest hedge fund, Everest Capital's Global Fund, having lost almost all its money after the Swiss National Bank (SNB) scrapped its three-year-old cap on the franc against the euro, Bloomberg news reported on Saturday.
Citing a person familiar with the firm, Bloomberg said the fund had been betting that the Swiss franc would decline. The fund had about $830 million in assets at the end of 2014, according to a client report cited by Bloomberg.
It said an Everest spokesman would not comment on the fund and Dimitrijevic did not return calls.
Everest Capital, based in Miami and specializing in emerging markets, still manages seven funds with about $2.2 billion in assets, Bloomberg said.
Condoleezza Rice says she was stunned CIA mission was leaked
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told jurors Thursday she was stunned to learn that a classified mission to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions — now at the heart of a criminal leak trial — had been disclosed to a reporter.
Rice testified for the prosecution in U.S. District Court at the trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, 47, of O'Fallon, Missouri, who is charged with illegally disclosing details of the program to New York Times reporter James Risen. Sterling denies leaking any information to Risen.
While Rice's testimony helped establish the importance of the classified program in question, her testimony did not implicate Sterling in any way as the leaker. Prosecutors opted not to force Risen to testify about his sources after the reporter made clear he wouldn't divulge sources even under threat of a jail sentence for contempt of court. So they plan to introduce a package of circumstantial evidence to prove Sterling was the source, including evidence of phone calls and emails between the two.
Prosecutors say Sterling leaked the information out of anger because he felt mistreated within the CIA. Defense lawyers say the leak could have come from anywhere and that Sterling has faced unfair suspicion because he sued the CIA for racial discrimination.
In her testimony, Rice said the program was one of the most closely held operations during her tenure as national security adviser in the first term of President George W. Bush's administration.
DEA admits to collecting phone records of Americans
Yet another federal agency of the United States government maintained a database of phone records pertaining to Americans who were not necessarily suspected of any wrongdoing, the Justice Department has admitted.
In addition to the
database of telephony metadata maintained by the US National
Security Agency (NSA) and revealed to the world through
classified documents via former government contractor Edward
Snowden, a Justice Department official acknowledged in a court
filing this week that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operated
a similar system for roughly a decade.
The admission was made on Thursday by way of an official
declaration entered in federal court by Robert Patterson, an
assistant special agent in charge at the DEA, concerning a
previous Department of Homeland Security investigation that
helped authorities narrow in on a suspect charged with violating
the trade embargo between the US and Iran.
In December, a federal judge said the government had to explain
the "contours of the mysterious law enforcement database used
by Homeland Security Investigation, including any limitations on
how and when the database may be used,” according to
Courthouse News Service.
Barbara Lee named House MVP by liberal Nation magazine
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Oakland Democrat Barbara Lee was named 2014′s Most Valuable House Member by the liberal Nation Magazine Monday.
Lee led a long fight to recognize Cuba as Comrade Marinucci recently described, and continues to battle the Obama administration on military interventions in the Middle East. She was one of the first members of Congress to condemn a Staten Island grand jury’s refusal to indict the police officer for the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
Lee was cited by the longstanding bastion of the Left as a “full-spectrum advocate for peace, civil rights, civil liberties and economic justice.”
The Nation picked Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy as the year’s MVP Senator, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the overall “most valuable progressive.”
Go west, young Han
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
November 18, 2014: it's a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China's Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9.
Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.
You may not have the faintest idea where Yiwu is, but businessmen plying their trades across Eurasia, especially from the Arab world, are already hooked on the city "where amazing happens!" We're talking about the largest wholesale center for small-sized consumer goods - from clothes to toys - possibly anywhere on Earth.
The Yiwu-Madrid route across Eurasia represents the beginning of a set of game-changing developments. It will be an efficient logistics channel of incredible length. It will represent geopolitics with a human touch, knitting together small traders and huge markets across a vast landmass. It's already a graphic example of Eurasian integration on the go. And most of all, it's the first building block on China's "New Silk Road", conceivably the project of the new century and undoubtedly the greatest trade story in the world for the next decade.
'Drill, baby, drill' in the South China Sea
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
As I predicted a while back, the United States has quietly ditched its old, underperforming pretext for confrontation in the South China Sea and is sidestepping into a new justification.
I do not care deeply about America's stake in the South China Sea.
So I have little interest in slogging through recent US & PRC contributions to the controversy du jour: the viability or lack thereof of the notorious nine-dash line, or 9DL, under international law.
The only people who should give a sh*t about the South China Sea are the Chinese. Much of the PRC's trade and Middle East energy pass through the South China Sea; and the determined US rapprochement with Myanmar (and anti-Chinese activism by the PRC's domestic Myanmar opponents) has threatened one of the PRC's important energy security countermoves: the Rakhine to Kunming oil and gas pipeline originating beyond the western end of the Malacca Straits.
Mass extinction for Earth’s oceans probable, comprehensive study says
The first comprehensive study of its kind has determined that ocean life is facing mass extinction from human activity. But the record damage is still reversible – unlike our impact on land. American scientists say the effects can be mitigated.
We’ve known for a while that achieving sustainability would be
impossible with our lifestyles. Although the majority of Earth is
covered in water we are vastly reliant on, many of our practices
are causing unprecedented damage to marine biology: coral reef
damage, resource mining, fish farming, construction work,
chemical pollution, the depletion of bio resources, unintended
species migration, global warming, military drills – to name just
a few.
The picture has just been made clearer by a study that for the first time ever brought all these
strands together. Drs. Malin L. Pinsky, Stephen R. Palumbi,
Douglas J. McCauley and colleagues from the University of
California have dug into hundreds of sources past and present,
including the fossil record and statistics on shipping and seabed
mining to form the chilling conclusions of their study, published
Thursday in the journal Science.
“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction
event,” McCauley says on the analysis, which has already
received wide acclaim from marine biologists and experts in
related fields.
Nuclear Madness and Resistance
The Jeffrey Sterling trial is a bit disheartening for anyone who’d rather humanity paid a bit of attention to avoiding nuclear apocalypse, even though Sterling exposed the CIA’s crime to Congress, and Sterling or someone else (at least 90 people could have done it) exposed the crime to an author who put it in a book and would have put it in the New York Times if, you know, it weren’t the New York Times (the paper obeyed Condoleezza Rice’s demand for censorship).
The last time a whistleblower defendant faced prosecution in civilian U.S. court for “espionage” it was Dan Ellsberg, and the New York Times was a radically different beast.
Here’s a report from Ray McGovern on Thursday’s appearance by Condoleezza Rice in the Sterling trial:
“It was surreal in court earlier today; stiletto-heeled Rice prancing in within 2 feet of me, as if on the modeling runway, with a Paula Broadwell-type look on her face — and, at the same time, Bill Harlow sitting down next to me after his testimony explaining how hard he had tried to get Jim Risen to listen to reason and not pursue/publish the story about the botched CIA ‘Merlin’ operation…..and how listening to Rice’s request at the White House meeting, NY Times Washington Bureau Chief Jill Abramson felt ‘out of her pay-grade range,’ and how her NYT masters (surprise, surprise) bowed to the White House/CIA hyperbole re the dangers of publishing, and agreed to the urgent demand/request of Rice and her boss. (Pls see my piece yesterday on pitfalls of letting covert action eager beavers loose on the basis of a false major premise i. e., that Iran was working on a nuclear weapon.)
NASA Confirms 2014 Officially the Hottest Year Ever for Earth on Record
In 1898, Svante Arrhenius became the first scientist to connect global warming and fossil fuel combustion when he proposed a relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperate. According to the technology website Lenntech, Arrhenius calculated that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration would subsequently lead of a 5 degree temperature rise on Earth. And more strikingly, Arrhenius was far ahead of his time when he and Thomas Chamberlin announced human activities were likely responsible for the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
However, as often occurs in science, the research by Arrhenius and Chamberlin was largely forgotten for decades until the North American Drought of 1988 sparked significant interest in global warming. According to Wikipedia, the North American Drought was one of the worst episodes of drought ever recorded, resulting in nearly $60 billion (adjusted for inflation, $120 billion in 2014 US dollars) in damage and record-setting heat waves that killed approximately 4,800 to 17,000 people. At its height, the drought affected nearly 45% of the land in the US.
When scientist James E. Hansen testified that the drought could be “explicitly attributed” to global warming thus began a debate that would pit two groups of people against each other: the pro science individuals who believe that the Earth is indeed warming and the climate change deniers, individuals who are still unconvinced by the data. Consequently, global warming and climate change has moved from the realm of science and into the arenas of economics and politics.
Still, scientific papers clearly demonstrate that global surface temperatures have risen primarily due to human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. And in research published this week, scientists have found that 2014 was the hottest on Earth since record keeping was first instituted in 1880. According to the New York Times, extreme heat blanketed many parts of the world, including the ocean surfaces (except in Antarctica), which provided the energy needed for last year’s Pacific storms. As Michael H. Frielich, director of Earth sciences at NASA told the Times, “Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our generation.” It can also have dire consequences for human health
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature newspaper accounts of disturbances in Chicago, caused by those who refuse to starve quietly, with headlines: "1500 Idle Riot Around Hull House," & "Woman [Lucy Parsons] Leads Mob in Chicago Riot...Jane Adams Supplies Bail."
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Minneapolis Archdiocese files for bankruptcy amid clergy abuse claims
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, saying it’s the best way for the church to get as many resources as possible to victims of clergy sexual abuse.
“We’re doing the right thing,” Rev. Charles Lachowitzer, a top church official, said before Friday’s filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. “This decision reflects ... a process of putting victims first.”
The archdiocese is the 12th U.S. diocese to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sex abuse claims. The lawsuits will be put on hold while the bankruptcy case is pending.
The filing estimates that the archdiocese — with more than 800,000 parishioners — has assets between $10 million and $50 million, with liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. It also estimated 200 to 300 creditors.
Study: Environment trumps genetics in shaping immune system
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON (AP) — How your immune system does its job seems to depend more on your environment and the germs you encounter than on your genes, says new research that put twins to the test to find out.
After all, the immune system adapts throughout life to fight disease, said Stanford University immunologist Mark Davis, who led the work.
And while young children's immunity may be more influenced by what they inherit from mom and dad, Thursday's study showed genetic influences waned in adulthood.
"Experience counts more and more as you get older," said Davis, director of Stanford's Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection.
Dead man gaming: 32yo dies after 3-day non-stop marathon in Taiwan internet cafe
A man died after playing games in an Internet café in Taiwan for three days without a break. Doctors say it was over-exhaustion from an intense gaming binge, local media report.
The incident happened in
Kaohsiung city, Taiwan, when a man identified as Hsieh was found
slumped motionless in his chair, the Taipei Times reported. The
death occurred last week, but reports emerged in local press only
Friday.
Other customers, who were also on an extended gaming binge,
thought he was just sleeping after three days of non-stop gaming.
But then an employee at the café came to realize the man was not
breathing. The 32-year-old was taken to hospital where he was
pronounced dead.
“Hsieh was a regular customer here and always played for
consecutive days. When tired, he would sleep face-down on the
table or doze off slumped in his chair. That is why we were not
aware of his condition in the beginning,” the café attendant
told reporters.
Net Neutrality: We’re Not Done Yet and We Need Your Help!
One year ago today, a federal appellate court struck down a set of rules, crafted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), that were supposed to protect the open internet. That ruling, ironically enough and only after a huge effort from Internet users, may have finally set the FCC on the path toward new, better, and legally sustainable neutrality rules. To stay on that path, though, we need your help.
Let’s take a look at how far we've come. It starts with an important, if complicated, legal problem. Many folks who support net neutrality, including EFF, have been worried that the FCC did not have firm legal authority to issue meaningful open internet rules. After a lengthy legal challenge to the last set of such rules (adopted in 2010), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals came to the same conclusion, explaining that the FCC can’t impose “common carrier”-type rules on ISPs without actually classifying them a “common carriers.” Having chosen to classify them instead as “information services” back in 2004, the FCC had to go back to the drawing board.
That led to a new FCC proposal, based on the same flawed legal theory, that, if adopted, would actively undermine the open Internet in the name of protecting it.
A broad coalition of folks, including EFF, concluded that part of our strategy for fostering net neutrality should be to help the FCC get things right. After all, ISP behavior was getting worse, consumers have fewer options for voting with their wallets, and the FCC seemed determined to regulate one way or another. So we suggested the FCC should reverse its 2004 decision, reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, and issue new, targeted guidelines that would survive court scrutiny. In the meantime word spread about the risk to the open Internet, and more and more people started to speak out on the issue—even late night comedians. And in November President Obama joined us.
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor-
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: Robert Hunter's "Poverty" Reviewed by the International Socialist Review
Islamic State Reported in Afghanistan
PBS-TV’s Frontline Misrepresents Russia’s Vladimir Putin
Freedom Rider: Charlie Hebdo: “Je Suis White People"
The Fascinating Origins of Religion — and Why It's Deeply Intertwined With Violence
What About the Christian Terrorists?
A Gathering of Rainbows
A Little Night Music
Seasick Steve - Down On The Farm
Seasick Steve - Diddley Bow
Seasick Steve - You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks
Seasick Steve - Dog House Boogie
Seasick Steve - Thats All
Seasick Steve - Free Country
Seasick Steve - Whiskey Ballad
Seasick Steve - Rooster Blues
Seasick Steve - Back In The Dog House
Seasick Steve - Thunderbird
Seasick Steve - The Dead Song
Seasick Steve - Sorry Mr Jesus
Seasick Steve - Hobo Blues
Seasick Steve - Happy (To Have a Job)
Seasick Steve - What a Way to Go
Seasick Steve - Treasures
Seasick Steve and Tom Jones - You Gotta Move