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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Motown r&b singer William "Smokey" Robinson. Enjoy!
Smokey Robinson - The Tracks Of My Tears
"In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."
-- Horace Smith
News and Opinion
The United States Considers Itself a Human Rights Champion. The World Begs to Differ.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is part of a regular examination of the human rights records of all 193 U.N. member countries and will be the second review of its kind for the U.S. since 2010. The review comes at a critical time when the U.S. human rights record has been criticized for falling short of meeting international human rights standards. From racially biased policing and excessive use of force by law enforcement to the expansion of migrant family detention and from the lack of accountability for the CIA torture program to the use of armed drones abroad, the U.S. has a lot to answer for. ...
The world will be asking hard questions of a country that considers itself a human rights champion, and, as the UPR represents the final human rights review of the Obama administration, it will be expecting meaningful answers and a concrete plan of action, including in the area of economic justice, which the U.S. submission to the Human Rights Council regrettably referred to as social and economic "measures" rather than the universally accepted framework and terminology of "rights."
What human rights legacy will the president leave behind in January 2017? Will President Obama be remembered as a leader who approved secret kill-lists, institutionalized the use of indefinite detention, and failed to end unlawful surveillance practices? Or will the president endorse accountability for torture and provide an apology and reparations for victims, including the 26 former CIA detainees who the U.S. Senate torture report found were wrongfully detained? Will President Obama heed the recommendations made by former Justice John Paul Stevens, who this week called the government to compensate some of the Guantanamo detainees, or will he be seen as the president who turned a blind eye to injustice? ...
On Monday, the world will be watching to see whether the Obama administration will stand on the right side of history.
U.S. Government: We Can Classify Anything and Judges Can’t Stop Us
At a hearing today on a lawsuit seeking to make videotapes of force-feedings at Guantánamo public, Justice Department attorneys argued that the courts cannot order evidence used in trial to be unsealed if it has been classified by the government. “We don’t think there is a First Amendment right to classified documents,” stated Justice Department lawyer Catherine Dorsey.
The judges at the D.C. Court of Appeals appeared skeptical. Chief Judge Merrick Garland characterized the government’s position as tantamount to claiming the court “has absolutely no authority” to unseal evidence even if it’s clear the government’s bid to keep it secret is based on “irrationality” or that it’s “hiding something.”
“That is our position,” Dorsey agreed. She added that a more appropriate tool to compel the release of the videos was through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Sixteen media organizations, including First Look Media, are seeking footage of Abu Wa’el Dhiab being repeatedly force-fed at Guantánamo. ... “There is a public right at stake,” David Schultz told the panel of judges on behalf of the media outlets, adding that the videos depict “illegal conduct by government employees.”
The government countered by claiming release of the videos could harm national security, the same argument it made during a district court proceeding late last year. In that case, District Judge Gladys Kessler rejected the feds’ national security claims and ordered the release of the force-feeding videos after they had been redacted to strip out any personally identifiable information. However, she then granted a stay to that order in December to allow the government to appeal to the D.C. court.
The UK Has Just Unearthed New 'Top Secret' Colonial-Era Government Files
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has located a new cache of colonial-era government documents, VICE News has learned.
The documents, some with "Top Secret" classifications and tantalizing subject titles, originate in the Colonial Office — the long-ago-disbanded government department that oversaw the colonies of the British Empire. ...
The discovery of the colonial-era documents is likely to arouse unease among historians — some of whom have accused the government in recent years of purposefully suppressing damning material from Britain's Imperial days.
ndeed, this is not the first time that the FCO has uncovered a large trove of long-lost, and sometimes incriminating, historical documents. In 2011 — after repeated denials, and amid a protracted legal battle — the FCO admitted to unlawfully holding 1,500 Kenya files (nearly 300 boxes, occupying 100 linear feet) at Hanslope Park: a sprawling and secretive high-security government compound in Buckinghamshire that the FCO shares with intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6, and where government scientists reportedly develop counter-espionage techniques.
Later that year, the FCO conceded that it actually possessed 8,800 — and, eventually, 20,000 — colonial files, covering 37 former colonies and territories. The government dubbed these files the "Migrated Archives," as if they had drifted, on their own, into the tombs of the Foreign Office. ...
Last year, Cambridge University historian Tony Badger, who was appointed by the FCO to review the colonial files released in 2011, told a group of historians that the Migrated Archive "had been deliberately created. The people who created and administered it knew what they had, knew for a long time, and were determined that others should not know what they had."
E.U. Seeks U.N. Backing for Military Action to Stop Wave of Migrants Fleeing Horrific Abuse in Libya
Five-day humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen expected to begin on Tuesday
A five-day ceasefire in Yemen is expected to begin on Tuesday, offering much-needed respite for civilians who have endured almost seven weeks of Saudi-led air strikes against Iranian-backed rebels.
The humanitarian ceasefire proposed last week by the Saudi foreign minister was accepted over the weekend by the forces allied to the Houthi rebels, who took control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, last year.
“Based on the efforts of some friendly nations to reach a humanitarian ceasefire, during which the aggressive blockade is lifted and trade ships are allowed to reach Yemeni ports, and the path is opened for humanitarian assistance, we declare our agreement to the humanitarian ceasefire that begins on Tuesday,” said Sharaf Luqman, a spokesman for Yemeni army defectors who have allied with the rebels.
Luqman said any breach of the ceasefire by al-Qaida and its supporters would risk retaliation, an implicit reference to the Saudi-led coalition and its allies on the ground in Yemen, which the Houthis accuse of funding and backing al-Qaida.
King Salman of Saudi Arabia pulls out of US talks on Iran
King Salman of Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from a carefully orchestrated summit with the US that President Barack Obama hoped would assuage Gulf anxieties about the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran.
The monarch had been expected to join other heads of state from the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries at an unprecedented meeting at the White House and a day of talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Now the only leaders attending will be the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait. ...
Obama had been expected to make a renewed effort to help the GCC states create a regional defence system to guard against Iranian missiles. The Saudis and others appear to accept that a nuclear agreement is inevitable but are keen to extract guarantees that their interests will not be harmed by it, diplomats say.
“We want to be sure that that it will not affect the GCC,” one senior Gulf official said. “That is the bottom line.” Others described the need for a policy of containing Iran, especially with the lifting of economic sanctions. The Qataris and Saudis – now coordinating closely after ending a long period of estrangement – have also been pushing for enhanced US support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
The Saudis and Emiratis in particular emphasise Iran’s role in backing the Houthis, and are deeply concerned about its growing influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, where the Shia militia Hezbollah – fighting openly in support of Assad – is viewed as a tool of Tehran.
Everything we know about the death of Osama Bin Laden is wrong
Everything you know about Osama bin Laden’s killing is wrong.
That’s the short version of a very long Seymour Hersh story, just published in the London Review of Books, which offers an alternative narrative of the killing of Bin Laden in 2011.
The slightly longer version is that two key Pakistani officials, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the Pakistan’s intelligence service, were in on the operation to kill Bin Laden and ensured U.S. helicopters could travel safely across the border from Afghanistan into airspace over key Pakistani security facilities. They did so, Hersh’s story goes, in exchange for both personal bribes and a resumption of US military funding to Pakistan. That part is all too easy to believe.
Hersh also offers a different narrative about the key tip-off in finding Bin Laden, which — depending on whether you ask torture apologists or not — ostensibly came from Hassan Ghul (an al Qaeda detainee captured in Iraq in 2004), either before or after CIA started torturing him, as well as a tip from a foreign partner. Instead, according to Hersh’s story, a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer actually approached the CIA station chief in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, to offer up Bin Laden in exchange for part of the $25 million reward the U.S. offered. That source told the CIA that Bin Laden had been held captive by Pakistan’s intelligence service since 2006 as a kind of insurance policy against the Taliban. After that source went to the CIA, they did a series of checks, including obtaining DNA from a Pakistani doctor who was caring for the aging Bin Laden. It checked out. The U.S. decided to pursue Bin Laden, which is when they started bribing the Pakistanis to make it possible.
The plan called for a stealth raid of the Abottabad compound, conducted with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, which would assure that the Pakistani military did not interfere with the two Black Hawk helicopters after they crossed the border from Afghanistan. The raid would be conducted in secret, and remain a secret; the official story would be that Bin Laden was killed in a drone strike in tribal lands. However, on the night of the raid, things started to go haywire when the Navy SEALs crashed their helicopter, making it impossible to later tell the pre-arranged cover story. Rather than keeping the operation secret for some time until telling that cover story, the Obama administration immediately began spinning the raid to its political benefit. Subsequently, according to Hersh, the government had to come up with one story after another to cover holes in the previous ones. The foregrounding of torture in the pursuit in Bin Laden, according to this version of events, came when CIA old-timers were brought in to help craft yet more cover stories — and they decided to give it a spin that would help CIA avoid accountability for its torture program.
In short, as Hersh tells it, we’ve been told cover story after cover story after cover story.
CIA’s Fake Vaccination Program in Pakistan Unrelated to Bin Laden
Since the 2011 assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama Administration has forwarded a more or less internally consistent, albeit often dodgy, narrative about what happened and how they came by his whereabouts. This centered on the CIA running a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, where bin Laden was staying. Pulitzer-winning Investigative journalist Sy Hersh has revealed this to be false.
During the course of revelations that broad swathes of the official story were flat out fabrications by the administration, it became apparent that a lot of the narrative was hastily cobbled together, including the vaccination scheme.
The fake CIA program was real, and was operating around Abbottabad. At no point, however, was it ever even tangentially related to the bin Laden killing, and no one in the program ever attempted to get DNA from anyone in bin Laden’s compound.
Kerry set to meet Putin in first visit to Russia since start of Ukraine crisis
Russian president Vladimir Putin will receive US secretary of state John Kerry at his Black Sea residence in the resort of Sochi on Tuesday, in Kerry’s first visit to Russia since the start of the Ukraine crisis.
Kerry will also meet Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart.
“This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed,” state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement. Discussion is likely to focus on Ukraine, where sporadic fighting continues despite a ceasefire agreement, as well as on Syria and Iran.
“We continue to underline that we are ready for cooperation with the US on the basis of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and that Russian interests are taken into account without attempting to exert pressure on us,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
Michael Gove to proceed with Tories' plans to scrap human rights act
Michael Gove, the new justice secretary, is to press ahead with plans to scrap the Human Rights Act which could see Britain pull out of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) if the reforms are rejected by Strasbourg.
The scrapping of the human rights act, a pledge included in the Tory manifesto, is one of the measures to be included in the prime minister’s plans for the first 100 days, when the Queen’s speech is delivered on 27 May.
The plans, which would see the human rights act replaced by a British bill of rights, would mean that the European court of human rights would no longer be binding over the UK’s supreme court. The ECHR would also no longer be able to order a change to UK law although British citizens would still be entitled to appeal to the Strasbourg-based court. ...
A withdrawal from the ECHR, which would be strongly resisted by the former justice secretary Kenneth Clarke and the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, would plunge the UK into a constitutional crisis. It would be resisted by the Scottish government and would place the UK government in breach of the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement of 1998, which was approved by joint referenda on both sides of the Irish border and was lodged at the UN.
Keiser Report: UK Election Aftermath
Assange appeal rejected by Sweden's supreme court
Sweden’s highest court has thrown out Julian Assange’s appeal against his arrest warrant, dashing his immediate hopes of an end to his three-year confinement in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
His lawyers were, however, encouraged by a 4-1 decision by the judges, which a senior legal figure said indicated the court could still change its mind. ...
Assange’s lawyers said on Monday they would discuss their next steps. Previously they said they were prepared to take their case to the European court of human rights, where they maintain that legal thinking on proportionality speaks in their favour.
Swedish prosecutors are now preparing to travel to London to question Assange, after Stockholm’s appeal court in November was sharply critical of their failure to move the case forward. Assange has argued that the prosecutor’s repeated refusal to question him in London has condemned him to remain in legal limbo. ...
In January, Sweden’s government agreed to examine whether it could issue a guarantee forbidding rendition of “any person under the control of the Swedish authorities while considered a refugee by a third country”. It is scheduled to issue a decision by 15 June.
Debt Collectors Fight Privacy Advocates Over Limits for Automated License Plate Readers
As privacy advocates battle to rein in the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), they’re going up against another industry that benefits from this mass surveillance: lenders and debt collectors. ...
California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and other states have proposed laws to better clarify the use of these cameras, which can track the GPS location of every car and transmit registration information to third parties. In Rhode Island, for instance, state Rep. Larry Valencia and state Sen. Gayle Goldin proposed bills in 2014 to prohibit the sale or trade of data collected by ALPRs, and to mandate that the state destroy records after one year.
I filed a records request and found two letters in opposition. One letter came from the Steven G. O’Donnell, on behalf of the Rhode Island State Police, arguing that law enforcement should be able to come up with its own internal procedures to govern the use of ALPRs.
The other letter came from Danielle Fagre Arlow, senior vice president to the American Financial Services Association (AFSA), a trade group for consumer lending companies, some of which target the subprime market.
“Our particular interest in the bill,” Arlow wrote, “is the negative impact it would have on ALPR’s valuable role in our industry – the ability to identify and recover vehicles associated with owners who have defaulted on their loans and are not responding to good-faith efforts to contact them.” Arlow opposed the bill’s restrictions on “how long data can be kept because access to historical data is important in determining where hard-to-find vehicles are likely located.”
As Feds Probe Baltimore Police, Cops in Freddie Gray Case Seek Removal of Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby
Baltimore: thousands of suspects arrive too injured to go to jail, records show
Nearly 2,600 detainees were turned away by city’s detention centre in past three years, suggesting police officers either ignored or did not notice the injuries
Thousands of people have been brought to the Baltimore city jail in recent years with injuries too severe for them to be admitted, newly released records have shown.
The records, obtained by the Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request, showed that correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center refused to admit nearly 2,600 detainees who were in police custody between June 2012 and April 2015.
The records did not indicate how the people were injured or whether they suffered their injuries while in custody. However, they suggested police officers either ignored or did not notice the injuries. Suspects are constitutionally guaranteed health care before they are booked into jail.
Suddenly, Baltimore – Wonder Why?
Suddenly, the mass media is writing about or televising the conditions in West Baltimore. Conditions that Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, summarized as decades long “suffocating poverty, dysfunction and despair.”
Suddenly, reporters and camera teams are discovering Baltimore’s inner city—crumbling or abandoned housing; mass unemployment; too many merchants gouging the locals (the poor pay more); too many drug dealers; schools, roads and sidewalks in serious disrepair; debris everywhere; lack of municipal services (which are provided to the wealthier areas of the city); and, as always, grinding poverty and its many vicious circle consequences. ...
Hundreds of pages in newspapers and hundreds of hours of television time were devoted to cover what the Reverend Donte L. Hickman Sr. called “the deterioration, dilapidation and disinvestment.”
And what brought the media attention? A couple hundred young men smashing windows and burning some stores, buildings and cars. Young men like Freddie Gray die often at the hands of some violent police in America’s inner cities without any subsequent media coverage or remedial action, but it took protests, civil unrest and fires to finally illuminate the interest of the nation’s media. How shameful! And how predictable will be the inevitable official inaction by the ruling classes once the embers dim, leaving the neighborhoods in despair. ...
Our first black president laments the cycle of poverty, but calls protestors who destroyed property, not lives, “thugs.” This is the same president who has spent tens of billions of dollars illegally attacking communities with civilians (“collateral damage”) in foreign countries. Such monies could have rebuilt our devastated cities, promoted programs and employment to help those in need in these very cities, and enforced laws against the corrupt political officials, and commercial and street predators who profit from the powerless poor and exploit poverty programs.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on a speech by Mother Jones at Allentown, Pennsylvania. Also soon to come before the Commission on Industrial Relations: Big Bill Haywood, Clarence Darrow, and Mother Jones, etc.
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Obama intensifies TPP push as critics worry trade deal will threaten US jobs
As a congressional vote to fast track the adoption of TPP looms, the president attacks critics, unions and longtime allies who say the pact is a disaster
To Barack Obama, the Trans-Pacific pact will increase trade, strengthen protections for Asian workers and aid international relations.
But opponents of the most important trade deal in a generation - including unions, but also left-leaning Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren – are worried about the impact it will have on US jobs. ...
He has called union leaders and other critics of the deal “dishonest” for saying the Pacific pact was “secret”. He also suggested union leaders were frozen in the past for likening the deal to the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which labor insists was a disaster, costing hundreds of thousands of US manufacturing jobs. ...
Obama has never before attacked his labor allies so vigorously, and some union leaders ask why is he fighting so hard for a deal they say will be a boon to corporate America while doing little to help US workers. Unions have gone all-out to block the deal, warning that they might withhold endorsements from any lawmaker who votes for fast track.
Military Contractors Behind New Pressure Group Targeting Presidential Candidates
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has formed a new pressure group, now active in Iowa and New Hampshire, to serve as the “premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate” and to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”
Roger’s group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, is hosting candidate events and intends to host a candidate forum later this year. The organization does not disclose its donors. But a look at the business executives helping APPS steer presidential candidates towards more hawkish positions reveals that many are defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism.
Bernie Sanders challenges Hillary Clinton on trade deal and Iraq war
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, on Sunday outlined what he said were differences between his campaign and that of the clear frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.
Sanders again linked the former secretary of state to the “billionaires” he says dominate US politics, but widened his criticisms to include the former secretary of state’s positions on international trade agreements, the Iraq war and the threat of climate change. ...
Clinton has so far handled TPP with extreme care – last month her campaign chief, John Podesta, was caught in private remarks to donors saying: “Can you make it go away?”
On Sunday, Sanders broadened his attack: “On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq … Not only I voted against, I helped lead the effort against what I knew would be a disaster.
“On climate change, I have helped lead the effort against the Keystone pipeline. I’m not quite sure Hillary Clinton has come out with a position on that. So those are just some areas where we differ.”
Former Obama Campaign Manager Led Austerity-Loving Tories to Victory
After bringing American-style negative campaigning to the UK, Jim Messina says he's coming home to throw his weight behind Hillary Clinton
After the surprise win of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party in Thursday's national election, the spotlight has now fallen on American political operative Jim Messina, who led the pro-austerity party to victory.
Prior to working the British political machine, Messina served as campaign manager—or self-described "mastermind"—of U.S. President Barack Obama's successful 2012 election bid and, before that, White House deputy chief of staff under Rahm Emanuel from 2009 to 2011.
Before his appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday, host Joe Scarborough introduced Messina, who was hired as an official adviser to the party of Prime Minister David Cameron, as "the man being called a traitor by liberals worldwide."
When asked if he has "seen the light" and plans to support a Republican candidate for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Messina said that he will throw his full weight behind Democratic candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Last year, Messina became co-chair of the pro-Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA.
"I am all Hillary all the time," Messina said. "Whatever its going to take to get Hillary."
Jeb Bush: I would have invaded Iraq
Jeb Bush has said he would have authorised the US invasion in 2003 of Iraq.
The presumed Republican presidential hopeful said on Sunday he would have authorised the invasion, though he acknowledged mistakes made after Saddam Hussein’s downfall.
Bush, the son and brother of two former presidents, pointed out that the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton voted in favour of authorising the use of force in Iraq before the invasion.
“I would have [authorised the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” Bush told Fox News television in an interview to be aired late on Monday. “And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”
The Evening Greens
Widely-Used Tool Can Lowball Methane Pollution Rates, Scientists Report, With Huge Implications for Climate Policy
An EPA-approved methane sampler widely used to measure gas leaks from oil and gas operations nationwide can dramatically under-report how much methane is leaking into the atmosphere, a team of researchers reported in a peer-reviewed paper published in March.
The researchers, one of whom first designed the underlying technology used by the sampler, warn that results from improperly calibrated machines could severely understate the amount of methane leaking from the country’s oil and gas wells, pipelines, and other infrastructure.
“It could be a big deal,” study co-author Amy Townsend-Small, a geology professor at the University of Cincinnati,toldInside Climate News, adding that it’s not yet clear how often the machine returned bad results, in part because figuring out whether there’s an error would have required using a different kind of device to independently test gas concentrations at the time levels were originally recorded.
Because of their climate-changing implications, methane leak rates are perhaps the single most consequential issue surrounding the shale gas rush and thepush by the Obama administration for a shift from burning coal to burning natural gas for the nation’s electricity supply. Because natural gas is primarily made of methane, an unusually powerful greenhouse gas, if enough methane escapes into the atmosphere, these leaks could potentially make natural gas a worse fuel for the climate than burning coal.
And methane leaks are at their most powerful – 86 times stronger than the same amount of carbon dioxide – in the first two decades or so after they hit the atmosphere. Climate scientistswarnthat methane leaks risk pushing the climate over an irreversible tipping point where melting permafrost and other self-reinforcing cycles can cause global warming to spiral out of control.
NOAA Warns Record High Levels of CO2 in the Atmosphere
Dimock, PA Lawsuit Trial-Bound as Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination in Neighboring County
A recent peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed what many fracking critics have argued for years: hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas can contaminate groundwater.
The study's release comes as a major class action lawsuit filed in the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2009 winds its way to a jury trial later this year. The lawsuit over fracking groundwater contamination pits plaintiffs based in Dimock, PA against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation
Initially, the U.S. District Court complaint filed in November 2009 featured many more plaintiffs.
But years passed by in the case and eventually most of the plaintiffs agreed — some would argue they were forced — to enter into a plea deal with Cabot. But the rest of the plaintiffs have stood their ground, and will soon have their day in court.
Oil Sheen Visible on Hudson River After Fire at NY Nuclear Plant
A gigantic oil sheen has been spotted in New York's Hudson River, following an explosion, fire, and oil leak that occurred Saturday at the Indian Point nuclear facility in Buchanan, just south of Peekskill.
According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, oil made its way into the facility's discharge drains during the fire. "Several thousand gallons may have overflowed the transformer moat," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC.
The fire didn't cause the release of any radiation and didn't pose a threat to workers or the public, accordingto a statement by Entergy Corp, the owner of the nuclear power plant. The transformers are used to step up power produced by the plant before it is transmitted to the grid.
A boat crew for the watchdog group Riverkeeper—which patrolled the Hudson off Indian Point after Saturday's transformer fire, looking for possible discharges of transformer oil and firefighting foam into the river—found areas of sheen in many locations, and a "notable odor" in the vicinity of the power plant. ...
"The history of fire safety at Indian Point is one of mistakes, illegality, and failure by both Entergy and the NRC," said Riverkeeper president Paul Gallay. "The plant should not be operated under its current fire safety regime. The plant is not cheaper, it's not safe, and it’s not necessary. It's time to close Indian Point and move on."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
How To Keep NSA Computers From Turning Your Phone Conversations Into Searchable Text
The Killing of Osama bin Laden
Secret Tapes of the 2013 Egypt Coup Plot Pose a Problem for Obama
Chris Hedges: A Nation of Snitches
America as Dangerous Flailing Beast
Enforcing the Ukraine ‘Group Think’
A Breathtakingly Immoral Plan
SAVE Champion of Equality Awards
“Gaius Publius: Sanders Raises $3 Million in Four Days; Will He Split the Party?”
A Little Night Music
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - I second that emotion
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - You really got a hold on me
Smokey Robinson - The Tears of a Clown
Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson - People Get Ready
Smokey Robinson - What's So Good About Goodbye
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Mickey's Monkey
Smokey Robinson - I Like It Like That
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Going To A Go-Go
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - I Don't Blame You At All
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - I gotta dance to keep from crying
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Shop Around
Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson - Ooo Baby Baby
Smokey Robinson - My Girl
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!
|