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 songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player TV Slim. Enjoy!
TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flatfoot Sam
A great war leaves the country with three armies — an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
-- German Proverb
News and Opinion
Obama’s Lawyers: Let’s Extend the 9/11 Wars Forever
President Obama has said the United States’ combat mission in Afghanistan is over, and that the 13-year-long war there has come to an end. Top lawyers in his administration have a different message: Not so fast.
Obama stated unconditionally in his State of the Union address in January that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.”
But in a recent speech to the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, an often-used venue for Obama administration officials to make extensive remarks on national security policy, Stephen Preston, the Pentagon’s top lawyer seemed to reinterpret the president’s earlier statements. The lawyer appeared to walk back his more emphatic pronouncements about the end of America’s longest war.
Obama has called for the “repeal” of the 2001 authorization for use of military force (AUMF) that sent Americans to war against al Qaeda and associated groups. An ending of the post-9/11 war, in other words.
Noting that the United States is fighting at least eight distinct terrorist and militant groups under the AUMF, Preston suggested that there may never be an end to the war with America’s terrorist and militant enemies, at least in the traditional sense. ...
Speaking to U.S. troops at a base in New Jersey last December, the president said, “This month, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over. This month, America’s war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end.”
But Preston seemed to argue that this isn’t so, raising questions about what legal significance the president’s own statements have.
The Iraqi Pissing Match - John Kiriakou
JAY: Why didn't the United States give a damn, in the sense of leave Saddam alone? There's dictators all over the world; who cares about this one? So he suppresses his people; that's never been a big deal for the United States, really. He still has to sell his oil on the world market; you have access to the oil. What is all this sanctions and everything about?
KIRIAKOU: It was a pissing match between Saddam Hussein and a series of American presidents is what it really came down to. The first President Bush, President Clinton, the second President Bush wanted Saddam to do what they told him to do, and he was unwilling to just fall in line.
JAY: So he had to say uncle.
KIRIAKOU: He had to say uncle.
JAY: So how many people died 'cause he would say uncle?
KIRIAKOU: Oh, untold tens of thousands of people died. Whether it was as a result of sanctions or fighting or American airstrikes or whatever it was, thousands and thousands of people died just because of this personality conflict, for lack of a better term, between Saddam Hussein and three American presidents.
JAY: You're saying this is essentially a pissing match. I mean, and I don't think we should make that too banal. What I mean by that: it isn't just a personality thing. I think ingrained in U.S. foreign policy is this, that we must make everyone believe we are stronger than they are. And it's sort of like a loan shark. I said this in another interview. If you let someone get away with not paying back their interest that week, then everyone else isn't going to pay back. That's the theory. So you've got to break some knees, and if somebody's really defiant, for that, for its own sake, you have to prove you can put that person in their place.
But, as an analyst, you can see this isn't good foreign policy.
KIRIAKOU: No, it was quite bad foreign policy. It was a waste of resources and people were getting killed. But at the same time, it goes beyond the president and the State Department and the Defense Department. You have congressional leaders hammering the president for being weak on Iraq and to bomb more and to fight harder and to make sure that Saddam is humiliated. And so you have this spiral of bad policy that you just can't get out of.
JAY: And how much do you think that for certain sectors of the economy--'cause it's certainly not true for all of the economy, but if you're in fossil fuels or if you're in military production and associated high tech, war's damn good for business.
KIRIAKOU: It is good for business. And when you think about it, though, if we--. Look at it this way. We bought much, much more Libyan oil than we ever bought Iraqi oil. Iraqi oil mostly went to Europe. And when Libya collapsed and their oil industry came to a screeching halt, it had virtually no effect on our own economy. Virtually none. So did we really need to hammer the Iraqis like this over more than a decade to protect the oil? We really didn't need the oil anyway.
Terrorism Case Renews Debate Over Drone Hits
A Texas-born man suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda stood before a federal judge in Brooklyn this month. Two years earlier, his government debated whether he should be killed by a drone strike in Pakistan.
The denouement in the hunt for the man, Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, who was arrested last year in Pakistan based on intelligence provided by the United States, came after a yearslong debate inside the government about whether to kill an American citizen overseas without trial — an extraordinary step taken only once before, when the Central Intelligence Agency killed the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. ...
The Obama administration’s discussions about the fate of Mr. Farekh, who used the nom de guerre Abdullah al-Shami, began in earnest in 2012, and in the months that followed the C.I.A. and the Pentagon ramped up surveillance of his movements around Pakistani tribal areas.
Drones spotted him several times in the early months of 2013, and spy agencies used a warrant issued by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor his communications. The Pentagon nominated Mr. Farekh to be placed on a so-called kill list for terrorism suspects; C.I.A. officials also pushed for the White House to authorize his killing.
But the Justice Department, particularly Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., was skeptical of the intelligence dossier on Mr. Farekh, questioning whether he posed an imminent threat to the United States and whether he was as significant a player in Al Qaeda as the Pentagon and the C.I.A. described. ... The debate over what to do about Mr. Farekh stalled, infuriating members of Congress. During a closed-door hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in July 2013, lawmakers grilled military and intelligence officials about why Mr. Farekh had not been killed. ...
Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the secret meetings about whether to kill an American citizen “chilling.” Mr. Jaffer, who has sued the Obama administration to make public the legal arguments underpinning its targeted killing program, said it was “telling” that parts of the government advocated for the killing of Mr. Farekh even though capture turned out to be possible
The Extrajudicial Killing That Didn't Happen
Some of the most powerful people in the U.S. government wanted to kill Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh. The military, the CIA, and an influential Republican member of Congress all argued that a drone should be sent to kill the American.
Now he is in custody. And if convicted of all charges that he faces, he'll get a maximum of 15 years in prison.
How can a person narrowly escape extrajudicial assassination, get extradited to the United States, appear inside our judicial system, and face just 15 years in prison? Powerful people were prepared to end his life, but the extent of what they're willing to prove beyond a reasonable doubt wouldn't even draw a life sentence.
The New York Times notes "a years long debate inside the government" about whether to kill him. That timeframe alone hints at the nonsensical definition of imminence used by the White House–if a violent attack didn't occur during the course of a years-long debate, calling the hypothetical attack imminent has no meaning. In this case, no attack ever materialized, so it seems clear that the "imminence" threshold wasn't met. And it is equally clear that capturing Al Farekh was possible.
Targeted Killing: The New Questions
In providing a glimpse of the administration’s internal debate about a possible targeted killing of a US citizen, the Al Farekh case points to the many questions about the program that remain unanswered. Here are some:
- Where do members of Congress get authority to advocate for the killing of American citizens? Mike Rogers didn’t get his way, but why should he even have a say in the execution of an American citizen?
- Why did both the CIA and the Pentagon believe that Al Farekh could not be captured, when events proved that in fact he could? Does the availability of military technology that allows us to kill remotely affect how “feasible” we deem a capture? After all, before the advent of drones, when the alternatives to capture were to send troops into a foreign country or to drop a bomb, with inevitable collateral damage, the threshold for authorizing force was presumably quite high. When one can use a pinpoint strike with a drone, executed with plausible deniability and covert consent from Pakistan, does that cause the intelligence and defense agencies to redefine “feasible,” allowing for a lighter trigger for the decision to kill? As a legal matter, it shouldn’t. As a pragmatic matter, it very likely does.
- How urgent could the threat posed by Al Farekh to the United States have really been if two years later, we were able to capture him and arraign him in an ordinary federal court in Brooklyn? The concept of “continuing and imminent threat” has always seemed an oxymoron. For a threat to be imminent, it should be immediate; the purpose of this requirement is to ensure that lethal force is truly a last resort. But Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011, was reportedly on the kill list for more than a year before he was actually killed. And there is no evidence that Al Farekh engaged in any attacks against the US in the two years between the time officials requested kill authorization and his capture in Pakistan. The administration argues that when terrorists hide among the civilian population and threaten to attack without warning, the requirement of “imminence” needs to be relaxed. But if the threat “continues” for years, can it really be said to be “imminent?”
[More excellent questions at link. -js]
US Military Spending Still Up 45% Over Pre-9/11 Levels; More Than Next 7 Countries Combined
Despite a decline in military spending since 2010, U.S. defense expenditures are still 45 percent higher than they were before the 9/11 terror attacks put the country on a seemingly permanent war footing.
And despite massive regional buildups spurred by conflict in the Ukraine and the Middle East, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next seven top-spending countries combined, according to new figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
That’s nearly three times as much as China, and more than seven times as much as Russia.
Your tax dollars at work:
US Carrier, Warships Head to Yemen to Join Naval Blockade
Last week, the Pentagon joined in the naval blockade of Yemen slightly, with a US ship boarding a Panamanian cargo ship they accused of having Iranian weapons on board. They didn’t find any.
Now, the US is doubling down, adding the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier,along with several support ships, nominally to stop the weapons shipments that neither they, nor any of their allies, have been able to prove are happening.
U.S. says might talk to Iran about regional stability, cites Syria
The U.S. State Department said on Monday it might talk with Iran about promoting regional stability, noting it had been open to including Iran in past efforts to achieve a Syrian peace deal if Tehran had altered its policy.
But it drew a distinction between talking to Iran about issues beyond its nuclear program and actually working with Tehran on such matters, something Washington has ruled out.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf made the comments when asked about a call by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif in a New York Times opinion piece for regional dialogue to address the crises in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Washington was put in an awkward position since it blames Tehran for much of the instability and because it does not wish to upset Gulf Arab allies who fear a nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran may pave the way to a wider U.S.-Iranian entente.
Marco Rubio Threatens War With Iran
Sen. Marco Rubio polished off his first week as a 2016 candidate Sunday by saying Iran could face war unless it abandons all hope of developing a nuclear bomb, offering a dose of tough talk days after congressional Democrats struck a deal with Republicans to give Congress a say over an emerging deal between the Islamic Republic and the White House. ...
“You combine that with a very clear demarcation to the Iranian regime. And that is this. If you cross this threshold, you will face military action on the part of the United States,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “We don’t want that to happen. But the risk of a nuclear Iran is so great that that option must be on the table."
Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'seriously wounded in air strike'
The leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, sources have told the Guardian.
A source in Iraq with connections to the terror group revealed that Baghdadi suffered serious injuries during an attack by the US-led coalition in March. The source said Baghdadi’s wounds were at first life-threatening, but he has since made a slow recovery. He has not, however, resumed day-to-day control of the organisation.
Baghdadi’s wounding led to urgent meetings of Isis leaders, who initially believed he would die and made plans to name a new leader.
Two separate officials – a western diplomat and an Iraqi adviser – confirmed the strike took place on 18 March in the al-Baaj a district of Nineveh, close to the Syrian border. There had been two previous reports in November and December of Baghdadi being wounded, though neither was accurate.
The diplomat confirmed an air strike on a three-car convoy had taken place on that date between the village of Umm al-Rous and al-Qaraan. The attack targeted local Isis leaders and is believed to have killed three men. Officials did not know at the time that Baghdadi was in one of the cars.
Gitmo Detainee, Who the US Claims Was Bin Laden's Bodyguard, Argues for His Release
A Guantanamo detainee who the US military claims was a bodyguard for late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a part of an aborted 9/11 suicide operation will try to convince a parole board Tuesday that he does not pose a national security threat to the United States — and should therefore be released from the detention facility.
Representatives for Saudi national Abdul Rahman Shalabi, 39, said in documents released Monday that Shalabi wants to attend a Saudi rehabilitation program for extremists, complete his university studies, get married, have children, and work for his family's real estate and construction business. ...
Shalabi was captured in December 2001 by Pakistani forces as he attempted to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Shalabi was referred to as one of the so-called "Dirty 30," a phrase used by US intelligence personnel for men suspected of being bin Laden's bodyguards or those who were attached to his security detail. A month after the Pakistanis turned Shalabi over to US forces, he was rendered to Guantanamo, becoming one of the detention facility's first captives. ...
Shalabi said he was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan in the late 1990s by his college teacher and that while there he met an Imam at a local mosque who provided him with room and board. Shalabi attended the mosque every day and taught the Koran to Afghan children.
The military claimed this was a cover story. According to interrogations of other detainees, they said, Shalabi attended al Qaeda affiliated training camps.
The US military backs up its assertions by citing "intelligence" gleaned from the interrogations of self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly identified Shalabi as a bodyguard for bin Laden from a photograph. It has been well documented as recently as last December that Mohammed was subjected to brutal interrogations at CIA black site prisons, which lawmakers have said calls into question the integrity of information he provided to his interrogators.
Egypt's Ex-President Mohamad Morsi Sentenced to 20 Years in First of Many Trials
Ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has today received a 20-year jail sentence for ordering the arrest and torture of protesters.
The verdict was delivered by the Cairo Criminal Court and broadcast on state television. The Muslim Brotherhood leader was sentenced with 12 other defendants, who sat by him in a soundproof cage in the makeshift courtroom set up at the police academy in New Cairo. ...
One year after his election victory, Morsi was removed through a military coup in July 2013 following mass street protests. Critics and opponents accused him of quickly moving to strengthen his hold on the country through the introduction of new extraordinary presidential powers along with a controversial constitution.
This trial, dubbed the "Presidential Palace case" because of the location where the violence took place, revolved around clashes that broke out between Islamist supporters of the government and opposition protesters on December 5, 2012. According to AP's report, Judge Ahmed Youssef said Tuesday's sentence was linked to Morsi's "show of force" against protesters, as well as their unlawful detention. Youssef dropped the murder charges that had been brought against the former president, meaning that he was spared the death penalty.
Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis: The Medicine of Austerity Is Not Working, We Need a New Treatment
ECB Is Studying Curbs on Greek Bank Support
The European Central Bank is studying measures to rein in emergency funding for Greek banks as resistance to further aiding the country’s stricken lenders grows among policy makers, people with knowledge of the discussions said.
ECB staff have proposed increasing the discounts imposed on the securities banks post as collateral when borrowing from the Bank of Greece, the people said, asking not to be named as the matter is private. While adjusting these so-called haircuts hasn’t been formally discussed by the Governing Council, it may be considered if Greece’s leaders fail to quickly convince euro-area finance ministers they can reform their economy and secure bailout funds, one of the people said. Greek bank stocks slid.
Greek lenders are mostly locked out of regular ECB cash tenders while the government, which holds talks with euro-area partners in Riga this week, tussles with its creditors over the much-needed aid payments. Instead, the banks currently have access to about 74 billion euros ($79 billion) of Emergency Liquidity Assistance from their own central bank -- an amount that has been rising and which will be reviewed this week.
Searing Testimony in Favor of Black Control of Police
Black people are not killed in such horrific numbers by the police because the police are badly trained. They're not killed because police don't have body cameras or other technical fixes. They're killed because black people have no power in their own communities, or those communities are run by people who are accountable to folks outside of the communities. ... When people come up with these diversionary proposals, these pseudo-solutions to the problem--and that includes just hiring more black cops. And of course it includes stuff like amorphous sensitivity training. The response has to be that black folks demand control of the police that are in their community.
Six Baltimore officers suspended over police-van death of Freddie Gray
Six Baltimore police officers have been suspended over the death of a man whose neck was broken after he was arrested and locked in a police van, as it emerged officers had delayed providing him with medical attention despite his requests.
Freddie Gray died from a “significant spinal injury”, police confirmed on Monday, while claiming it remained unknown how he was hurt. Chiefs said Gray appeared to have been injured while locked alone in a compartment of their transportation wagon.
“When Mr Gray was put in that van, he could talk, he was upset. And when he was taken out of that van, he could not talk and he could not breathe,” deputy police commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said at a press conference.
“It’s clear that what happened happened inside the van,” said mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. “We don’t have any procedure that would have an officer riding in the back of the van with the suspect.”
Rodriguez said all officers involved who had been interviewed had denied using force against Gray. A criminal inquiry has been opened into Gray’s death. City officials said the investigation would be completed by Friday 1 May and then handed to state prosecutors, who would decide whether or not to bring criminal charges. ...
Gray died on Sunday, a week after being chased and arrested by officers at 8.39 am. His family say he lapsed into a coma after his spine was “80% severed” at his neck and his voice box was injured. Police said an autopsy was completed on Monday and confirmed the spinal injury led to Gray’s death.
Global Action Day against Free Trade Agreement, Brussels
Newly Leaked TTIP Draft Reveals Far-Reaching Assault on US/EU Democracy
Mammoth deal an even greater boon to corporate power than previously known, warn analysts
A freshly-leaked chapter from the highly secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, currently under negotiation between the United States and European Union, reveals that the so-called "free trade" deal poses an even greater threat to environmental and human rights protections—and democracy itself—than previously known, civil society organizations warn. ...
The European Commission's latest proposed chapter (pdf) on "regulatory cooperation" was first leaked to Friends of the Earth and dates to the month of March. It follows previous leaks of the chapter, and experts say the most recent iteration is even worse.
"The Commission proposal introduces a system that puts every new environmental, health, and labor standard at European and member state level at risk. It creates a labyrinth of red tape for regulators, to be paid by the tax payer, that undermines their appetite to adopt legislation in the public interest," said Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe in a press statement released Monday.
Regulatory cooperation refers to the "harmonization of regulatory frameworks between the E.U. and the U.S. once the TTIP negotiations are done," ostensibly to ensure such regulations do not pose barriers to trade, the Corporate Europe Observatory explainedearlier this month.
The chapter includes a "regulatory exchange" proposal, which will "force laws drafted by democratically-elected politicians through an extensive screening process," according to an analysis from CIEL.
"Laws will be evaluated on whether or not they are compatible with the economic interests of major companies," the organization explains. "Responsibility for this screening will lie with the 'Regulatory cooperation body,' a permanent, undemocratic, and unaccountable conclave of European and American technocrats."
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature from the Chicago Day Book: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn calls for more women on the picket lines and explains IWW's views on sabotage.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Organizing for Action Tries to Soothe Dems With Misleading Email on Fast Track Trade Authority
The millions of people who signed up to get email from Mitt Romney in 2012 would be pretty irked if they started getting messages now from his team about a super new bill in Congress that raises taxes, cuts the Pentagon’s budget in half and forcibly marries every registered Republican man to Neil Patrick Harris.
So you can imagine how members of Organizing for Action, or OFA, felt when they got email on Friday telling them about a super new “Trade Promotion Authority” bill. Passage of the Trade Promotion Authority, better known as “fast track,” would pave the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, or TPP, which includes a grab-bag of things the Democratic base absolutely loathes. It would would raise the cost of prescription drugs, give Obama an environmental trade record “worse than George Bush’s,” create a special legal system for multinational corporations to kill any domestic law that hurts profits, and much more. ...
The OFA email did not ask members to take action supporting fast track; instead, it appears to be an attempt to mollify them enough so they don’t take action opposing it. In any case, the email is filled with assertions clearly crafted to mislead OFA members.
[Click the link for the outrageous crap that OFA is selling.]
US Supreme Court Rejects Terror Claims Against Chiquita
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from relatives of thousands of victims of conflict in Colombia aiming to sue Chiquita Brand International.
In its decision, the court referred to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling which limited attempts by foreigners to use U.S. courts to seek retribution for human rights abuses abroad under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).
"By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court has created yet another obstacle in the path of victims seeking remedies for abusive corporate actions abroad, and allows a U.S. corporation to get away with financing terrorism without accountability to its victims in U.S. courts," said EarthRights International (ERI), an environmental and human rights legal nonprofit.
ERI continues:
From 1997-2004, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC), used Chiquita’s financial support to spread fear in the banana-growing region of Urabá, Colombia. The AUC tortured and killed thousands of villagers, labor leaders, and community organizers who were suspected of favoring leftist guerrillas or making trouble for the plantation owners.
"For human rights advocates around the world, this decision is particularly baffling considering Chiquita admitted to paying the paramilitaries in response to a U.S. government investigation," ERI stated.
As noted in the petition (pdf) filed with the Supreme Court, Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to "Engaging in Transactions with a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist."
The Evening Greens
Interior Secretary Jewell Defends Fracking on Public Lands; Says Industry is Responsible for Reassuring Public
Asking “How many of you burned no fossil fuels today?” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell defended allowing fracking on public lands, saying that the practice is necessary to ensure U.S. energy security while attempting to move away from burning hydrocarbons.
Jewell’s agency last month released rules dealing with fracking on public lands, regulations many say don’t go far enough in protecting the land and those who use it from the toxic waste associated with the practice. ...
Jewell worked for Mobil Oil early in her career before moving into the banking world.
There would be more regulation of coal mining if it didn’t just affect ‘hillbillies'
For many in central Appalachia, the fight against reckless strip mining operations recalls a popular t-shirt in West Virginia: “Save the Endangered Hillbilly.” It’s not really a joke; decades of contempt and disregard for rural mountaineers underscore an existence no less threatened than local wildlife.
Appalachia has become a code word for our nation’s sacrifice zones. “Coal mining has been destroying human and wildlife communities in Appalachia for more than 100 years”, according toTierra Curry, a southeastern Kentucky native and a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center’s lawsuit against the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 resulted in a recent proposal to list two species of fish impacted by mining under the Endangered Species Act. ...
A West Virginia Universitystudy last fall conclusively demonstrated that “dust collected from residential areas near mountaintop removal mining sites” – where the radical strip mining process involves clear-cutting massive swaths of forests, blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the pulverized remains and heavy metals into valleys and waterways – “causes cancerous changes to human lung cells”.
The breakthrough study, which deserved national attention and government action, added to over two dozen peer-reviewed analyses that have pointed to soaring rates of birth defects, cancer, heart and respiratory diseases in mountaintop removal areas. ... While President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton love to invoke the “children in the hills of Appalachia” in their speeches, national environmental and public health groups should press the president and all presidential candidates to support the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act, which requires an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal operations until a federal health study can determine its impact.
Bird flu outbreak continues as flock of millions registers infection in Iowa
A lethal strain of bird flu has been discovered in a flock of millions of hens at an Iowa egg-laying facility. Iowa is the top egg-producing state in the US and Monday’s discovery represents the worst case so far in a national outbreak that had already prompted Wisconsin to declare a state of emergency.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the Iowa flock numbered 5.3 million birds while the company that operates the farm said it was 3.8 million. It was unclear why there was such a discrepancy.
Iowa was already among the 12 US states to have detected bird flu infections since the beginning of the year. The other states with infected poultry flocks are Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The "Possible Military Dimensions" Bomb That Could Blow Up the Iran Deal
Why Don’t Americans Want to ‘Soak the Rich’? It’s a Trick Question
The California town with no water: even an 'angel' can't stop the wells going dry
Transman leads Reader Voting in Ultimate Guy Contest
Saudi's Ending Yemen Bombing Fail
A Little Night Music
T.V. Slim - Don't Reach Across My Plate
T.V. Slim - Juvenile Delinquent
T.V. Slim - Gravy Round Your Steak
T.V. Slim - My Baby is Gone
TV Slim - Don't Knock The Blues
TV Slim - Love Bounce
T.V. Slim - Darling Remember
TV Slim & his Heartbreakers - Tired Of Your Cheatin' and Lying
T.V. Slim - Can't Be Satisfied
T.V. Slim - I'm A Real Man
TV Slim - Flat Foot Sam Meets Jim Dandy
TV Slim - Hold Me Close To Your Heart
T.V. Slim - My Ship Is Sinking
TV Slim - The Fight
T.V. Slim - Rockin' Little Baby
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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