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 Louisiana blues musician Lightnin' Slim. Enjoy!
Lightnin' Slim and Whispering Smith - Walkin', Texas Flood
"Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation."
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
News and Opinion
Obama Does Have a Strategy in Iraq: Escalation
Even as Obama admits there's no military solution in Iraq, the Pentagon is pouring more U.S. troops and weapons into its floundering war on the Islamic State.
Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to challenge the Islamic State — and just days after he said he still has “no complete Iraq strategy” — the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation.
According to reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is poised to send 400 to 500 additional troops to Iraq immediately, and to build a new U.S. military base in restive Anbar province to house them — and potentially many more.
These troops would not be limited to the officially narrow training mission of the 3,100 U.S. troops already on the ground in Iraq. They would still be considered trainers and advisers, but their mission, according to the Times, would be “to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi and repel the Islamic State.” ...
Despite the bluster of hawks who crave a deeper war in Iraq and Syria, it isn’t true that Obama has no strategy against the Islamic State. There is a strategy — but it’s wrong, and it’s losing.
The Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own oft-repeated understanding that “there is no military solution” to the so-called ISIS crisis. Instead, the U.S. strategy has relied almost solely on military action, with little or no investment in the funds, personnel, or political capital to wage the kind of powerful diplomacy that’s so desperately needed. If anything, the ongoing air war — and the flooding of the region with arms — is making a diplomatic resolution less likely.
82nd Airborne to advise Iraqi forces fighting ISIS
Obama Not Ruling Out Additional Escalation in ISIS War
450 Troops May Only Be the Beginning
New strategy almost always means escalation, and US officials capped off this latest escalation with an ominous warning that the president has “not ruled out additional steps” against ISIS, and some reports that they could quickly bring the new troopsnumber to around 1,000.
When a US war is going badly, it seems that political leaders seem to accept that the “safe” move is to stay the course and double down with more troops/money/bombs. The war is going so badly at this point, however, that they haven’t even finished announcing the last escalation while they’re already preparing us for the next.
New Bipartisan AUMF Greenlights Endless War
Proposal would allow "significant" troop deployments and geographically-limitless military intervention against a broadly-defined enemy
Amid a dearth of congressional debate, and fresh announcements of more troop deployments to Iraq, a group of bipartisan lawmakers is pushing yet another piece of legislation authorizing open-ended and geographically-limitless war against the Islamic State or ISIL.
Introduced by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) this week, the new authorization for use of military force (AUMF) is being framed by its backers as a bid to jump-start a real debate over the war and pursue a "narrow" mission.
However, analysts say that this new legislation, in fact, calls for extremely broad war powers, in some ways going beyond the failed AUMF proposed by President Barack Obama in mid-February.
"This is a bad AUMF," Raed Jarrar, policy impact coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, told Common Dreams. "But taking one step back, the idea of the use of force in Iraq and Syria is a bad idea to start with. Even if they came up with a better AUMF, the use of force is still bad idea. This is missing from the debate."
Hat tip Pluto:
Imperial Decay
GOP move to attach a cyber bill to defense legislation stokes Democratic anger.
Democrats are in an uproar over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s surprise move to tie cybersecurity to a massive defense bill — and they’re mad enough about the GOP’s tactics that they’re willing to block bipartisan legislation to advance protections against hacking in the wake of the massive federal data breach revealed last week.
Top Democratic sources said Wednesday that they believe Senate Democrats have enough votes to stop the cybersecurity legislation from advancing as part of a defense authorization bill on the floor this week. Infuriated by McConnell’s tactics, which would make it more difficult to change the cyber measure, Democratic leaders fired off a letter to the Kentucky Republican calling the linkage a “pure political ploy” that should be abandoned. ...
The partisan procedural scuffle on cybersecurity comes just days after a similar fight over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection programs forced key provisions of the PATRIOT Act to briefly lapse.
The coming cyber debate was setting up similar battle lines over privacy that emerged during the NSA fight. Although the cybersecurity bill — which aims to make it easier for the government and the private sector to share information about cyber threats — passed the Intelligence Committee 14-1, senators had always planned to have a privacy debate when the measure hit the floor.
Despite Global Recognition, the Plight of Guantánamo’s Best-Selling Author Worsens
Mohamedou Ould Slahi's 13th year of captivity in Guantánamo has been remarkable in many ways.
"Guantánamo Diary," his story of torture and unlawful detention by the United States, was finally published and has become a best-seller, earning rave reviews around the world and a Hollywood movie deal. Readers continue to marvel at a book that's been called a "masterpiece" and "literary magic," written by a man whose "unfailing humanity is the constant thread throughout." Celebrities like Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading Mohamedou's work for a global audience. Almost 50,000 people have signed the ACLU's petition calling for his freedom.
But Mohamedou's despair only grows, because the Obama administration is still denying this innocent man what he most urgently needs: freedom.
Today, we asked a federal judge to order the Defense Department to give Mohamedou a hearing mandated years ago by President Obama. That hearing, before a Pentagon body called the Periodic Review Board (PRB), would give Mohamedou the opportunity to show that he poses no threat to the United States and must be set free. He's entitled by law to this administrative process, and it could be the key to sending him home.
The PRB process isn't the only way the U.S. government could set Mohamedou free. The Defense Department could also stop fighting Mohamedou's federal habeas corpus lawsuit, which challenges the legality of his initial detention. In the case, Mohamedou has argued that his capture by the U.S. in his home country of Mauritania in 2001 — far from any battlefield — and his subsequent detention and torture in Jordan, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, are unlawful. In 2010, the federal judge in his case agreed, rightly discounting evidence obtained from torture and finding that the government failed to show Mohamedou was "part of" al-Qaida at the time of his capture. But after the judge ordered Mohamedou released, the Obama administration appealed as part of a strategy it pursued for all Guantánamo habeas cases, in which it successfully persuaded the appeals court to adopt looser legal and evidentiary standards to keep some Guantánamo prisoners indefinitely detained — but never charged with a crime.
That case is still pending. In the meantime, we're asking for a prompt PRB hearing for Mohamedou. Despite President Obama's 2011 order that the hearings take place within a year, the Defense Department has dragged its feet.
Proposed Torture Ban Includes New Transparency and Oversight Mechanisms
The Senate is poised to vote on a measure imposing a government-wide ban on torture — a prohibition that would be bolstered by provisions to bring detainee interrogation policy out of the shadows.
The move, proposed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would require the Pentagon and all federal agencies to conduct interrogations in accordance with the Army Field Manual, which forbids the worst of the Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques documented last year by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the post-9/11 torture program.
Human Rights Watch Senior National Security Counsel Laura Pitter said: “Requiring the CIA and other U.S. agencies to abide by one uniform set of interrogation rules will help prevent torture.”
She added, however, that these reforms wouldn’t be as effective in the future “if those responsible for torture in the past aren’t brought to justice.”
The amendment may fall short of a complete ban on torture since under the current version of the field manual, U.S. interrogators are still allowed to employ tactics that many would consider torture, including the use of stress positions, sleep interruption and sensory deprivation. A taskforce of medical ethicists urged the administration in 2013 to make changes to the manual, noting that it permits techniques that are “recognized under international law as forms of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”
Mideast’s worst case: A ‘big war’ pitting Shia Muslims against Sunni
The Middle East crisis that peaked one year ago Wednesday when the Islamic State captured Mosul may result in the breakup of Iraq and an indefinite continuation of a war in Syria that’s already out of control, analysts say.
Yet still worse things could happen.
“The conditions are very much like 1914,” says Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. “All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war.”
Hiwa Osman, an Iraqi Kurdish commentator, was even more blunt: “The whole region is braced for the big war, the war that has not yet happened, the Shiite-Sunni war.”
U.S. and foreign experts say the U.S still has not developed a strategy for dealing with the Sunni extremists who now hold more territory Iraq and Syria than one year ago. President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was a work in progress. “We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Obama said at the close of the G-7 summit in Germany. “The details are not worked out.” ...
“IS cannot be ended by Kurds, Shiites, Americans or Iran. It has to be done by Sunni Arabs,” said Osman. “You need to present them with a deal for the day after IS is defeated. And no one has managed to articulate that vision for them,” he said.
Conceivably, that would be a federal system that ends Shiite domination of the security services, but most importantly secures reconciliation with Baathists, members of the party that ruled Iraq under the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Baathists are said to comprise a great many of the top positions in the Islamic State military apparatus.
After Iraq-Syria Takeover, the Inside Story of How ISIL Destroyed Al-Qaida from Within
Al-Qaida 'cut off and ripped apart by Isis'
Insiders say group has been drained of Middle East recruits and that US wrongfooted by shift in balance of power between warring jihadi groups
Two of al-Qaida’s most important spiritual leaders have told the Guardian that the terror group is no longer a functioning organisation after being ripped apart by Isis. In a wide-ranging interview, Abu Qatada, a Jordanian preacher who was based in London before being deported in 2013, and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, regarded as the most influential jihadi scholar alive, say the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat through little more than appeals to loyalty.
Senior insiders in Jordan add that al-Qaida around the Middle East has been drained of recruits and money after losing territory and prestige to its former subordinate division. The ongoing war between al-Qaida and Isis has left the US struggling to catch up with the tectonic shifts within the global jihadi movement, intelligence insiders told the Guardian. ...
Isis leaders, who described al-Qaida as a “drowned entity” in issue six of their official English-language publication, Dabiq, have declared that they will not tolerate any other jihadi group in territory where they are operating. They have readily delivered on that statement. Last week, Isis fighters in Afghanistan were reported to have beheaded 10 members of the Taliban, and on Wednesday al-Qaida in Libya vowed retaliation after blaming Isis for the death of one of its leaders.
The US has been slow to grasp the implications of al-Qaida’s decline and possible collapse despite extensive study of Isis, according to intelligence community insiders. “There’s such a cadre of people so closely tied to the al-Qaida brand within the IC [intelligence community] that I think they don’t see what else is going on outside the organisation,” said Derek Harvey, a former intelligence analyst who predicted how resilient the Iraq insurgency would be. ...
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has depicted the rivalry between the two jihadi groups as cosmetic, and his top Iraq policy official, Brett McGurk, has repeatedly stated: “Isis is al-Qaida.” Kerry’s new spokesman, John Kirby, said in his old job at the Pentagon that Isis, al-Qaida and al-Qaida’s Syrian proxy the Nusra Front “in our minds, from our military perspective, are very much one and the same”. ...
However misleading, the conflation of the two groups has political and legal benefits for Obama. He launched military action against Isis without congressional approval 10 months ago and a push for retroactive legislative blessing is all but dead in Washington. Portraying al-Qaida and Isis as the same thing has allowed the president to claim that the 2001 and 2002 congressional authorisations for attacks on al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein provide the legal foundations for the current campaign.
Israeli Deputy DM Denies Cyber-espionage Against Iran Talks
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan today denied Israeli culpability for a round of spyware attacks on venues related to the Iran nuclear talks, despite the spyware in question being widely acknowledged as Israeli government-made. ...
Interestingly, Ben-Dahan conceded his denial was entirely meaningless to the situation within his own press conference, conceding part way through that Israeli intelligence doesn’t inform him of their covert spying campaigns in the first place, and he’s thus in no position to either confirm or deny the incident.
News Flash: Washington Post Caters to the Powerful
A fascinating sociological experiment unfolds before our eyes starting this morning, as the Washington Post unveils its new “PowerPost” vertical, subtitled “Intelligence for Leaders.”
Post publisher Fred Ryan, in a memo to the Post newsroom leaked to Politico, said the new project would focus “on the subjects that matter most to the people at the center of power.”
What we can learn, therefore, is what the editors of the Washington Post, themselves of course among the powerful, think their fellow powerful people are interested in.
If I had a captive audience of powerful people, mind you, I would expose them relentlessly to the stories of the powerless — the people being squashed by their precious status quo, the people scraping by at wrong end of the playing field the powerful have tilted so steeply, the people going to schools to which the powerful would never dream of sending their children.
But of course the Washington Post’s goal here is not to bum out the powerful, or teach them humility; it is to attract them, coddle them and fulfill their needs. ...
As of this morning, you can “Start your day with PowerPost’s must-read morning briefing, delivering scoops and key insights to your inbox at 7 a.m., Monday through Friday.” And you’ll get a familiar, tedious mix of insider political gossip, talking points and stenography — now, with a little social media sprinkled in!
Troika Demands Could Create Rupture Within SYRIZA
Number of people killed by police this year reaches 500
Two young black men shot dead by police in New York City and Cincinnati puts number killed by police in the US on track to exceed 1,000 by end of 2015
The number of people killed by police in the United States during 2015 reached 500 on Wednesday, according to a Guardian investigation, after two young black men were shot dead in New York City and Cincinnati.
Isiah Hampton, 19, was fatally shot by New York police department officers at an apartment building in the Bronx on Wednesday morning, according to police chiefs. His death followed that of Quandavier Hicks, 22, during a confrontation with Cincinnati officers at a house on Tuesday night.
Their names were added to The Counted, a project by the Guardian to report and crowd-source names and a series of other data on every death caused by law enforcement in the US this year.
The updated findings on fatalities so far this year means that the total is on track to exceed 1,000 by the end of 2015 – and that people are being killed by officers at more than twice the rate most recently detected by the much-criticised FBI system, which recorded 461 killed in 2013.
Texas Pool Party Cop 'Apologizes,' Says He Wasn't Motivated by Race
The actions of a Texas cop who was filmed yanking a 14-year-old black girl down by the braids and sitting on her at a pool party on Friday was not motivated by race, his lawyer has said.
Eric Casebolt, a 10-year veteran of the McKinney Police Department, resigned Tuesday after video of the incident, which occurred in the affluent Dallas suburb of McKinney, emerged over the weekend. Two teen witnesses to the incident said the officer appeared to be driven by race, because most of the teens detained were black. ...
But Casebolt's lawyer, Jane Bishkin, an attorney with the Dallas County Police Officer's Association, denied those claims Wednesday, saying the officer "was not targeting minorities," and had also detained a white female at the scene, which was not caught on camera.
Casebolt was also filmed drawing a gun on a group of other teens when they tried to intervene in the hair pulling incident, some of whom fled and were pursued by police. ...
She added that Casebolt "allowed his emotions to get the better of him," but that he "apologizes to all who were offended." Bishkin blamed "prior suicide calls" for putting the officer in "an emotional place" before he arrived at the scene that day.
NYPD commissioner keeps digging...
Bill Bratton attempts to clarify remarks on recruitment of black police officers
New York City police commissioner William Bratton on Wednesday attempted to clarify controversial remarks he made about the recruitment of African American police officers.
Bratton claimed his remarks to the Guardian had been taken out of context in a news story the paper published based on a two-part feature on the New York police department – but that had brought attention to what he said was the improving record of the NYPD in hiring black recruits.
“The quotes are accurate, but the context in which they’re presented gives the quote a totally different context,” Bratton said at a press conference.
Bratton said that when he had raised the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in stop-and-frisk tactics as one of the factors behind a difficulty in recruiting African American officers, he had meant that being the subject of such stops could discourage black people from applying.
“Stop, question and frisk is not preventing people from coming on the job,” Bratton said on Wednesday. “It’s not something that prohibits them. What it might do, however, because of a negative interaction with a New York City police officer – why would they want to become a New York City cop when they feel that they’ve been inappropriately dealt with in stop, question and frisk?”
Rikers Guard Allegedly Joked About Getting Gang Tattoo After Kicking Inmate to Death
One guard at New York's Rikers Island prison has plead guilty while two other guards were arrested Wednesday after federal prosecutors indicted the three on conspiracy charges in the 2012 beating death of an inmate.
Ex-Rikers guard Brian Coll, 45, has been arrested and charged with a range of offenses related to the kicking of burglary suspect Ronald Spear to death in December 2012. Coll was charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, filing a false report, and depriving a prisoner of his rights.
Current Rikers guard Byron Taylor, 31, was arrested along with Coll, and also faces charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice for helping Coll restrain Spear during the incident, and then lying to investigators about it. The pair allegedly colluded with another guard, Anthony Torres, 49, to keep the incident under wraps. Torres has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and filing a false report, authorities said.
About six or eight months after Spear's death, Coll reportedly asked a female corrections captain whether he should get a teardrop tattoo, the complaint added. Some gang members take up the teardrop tattoo after they kill another person. The corrections captain claimed Coll had proudly told her "I beat the case," after the state declined to press charges, the complaint said. ...
A federal investigation was launched into the incident after state authorities said they would not charge the guards with the death. Preet Bharara, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the latest incident "more sad news out of Rikers Island."
Man kicked by Orlando police while sitting on curb demands charges
Orlando’s police chief says state officials will look into whether an officer used excessive force for repeatedly kicking a man sitting passively on a curb.
Orlando police chief John Mina said Wednesday that he has asked the Florida department of law enforcement to investigate. Mina’s decision came hours after 30-year-old Noel Carter filed an affidavit asking the state attorney to bring battery charges against the officer who kicked him at least a dozen times – and against another officer.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature from the Everett Labor Journal: Gompers declares that John R Lawson is innocent of murder and must be freed while blaming the Rockefellers, Sr & Jr, for the Colorado troubles.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Backlash Against TPP Grows as Leaked Text Reveals Increased Corporate Control of Public Health
Expecting 'Goodies' for Fast Track Vote? New Report Cautions Lawmakers on Broken Promises
"Members of Congress who have exchanged 'yes' votes for such IOUs have more often than not seen the promises broken," says Public Citizen
Lawmakers banking on "special favors" in exchange for their votes on controversial trade legislation risk "political peril," according to a new report (pdf) from the watchdog group Public Citizen.
In the face of stubborn resistance from Democratic lawmakers,the Obama administration has "moved beyond trying to sell Fast Track on its merits," Public Citizen says, "and is now offering rides on Air Force One, promises of infrastructure legislation, and pledges to help representatives survive the political backlash of a 'yes' vote on Fast Track." What's more, lawmakers are striving to include amendments to allegedly make pending trade legislation more palatable. ...
"Even in the rare case where a promise to 'fix' a controversial trade deal has been upheld, the acclaimed tweak has failed to offset or outlast the damage wrought on local communities," said Ben Beachy, research director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. "Voters do not tend to remember boasts of finite safeguards or worker assistance funds, while mass layoffs, farm foreclosures and news reports on inequality provide fresh, ongoing reminders of how their member of Congress voted on Fast Track and Fast Tracked deals." ...
Of the 92 specific promises included in the report, only 17 percent were kept, according to the organization.
For example: In 1993, U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), along with other Florida representatives, voted for NAFTA on the basis of the Clinton administration's promises to protect Florida’s tomato growers from destabilizing surges in tomato imports from Mexico. But, Public Citizen points out, the Clinton administration did not honor its pledge—within two years of NAFTA, tomato imports multiplied, Florida’s tomato revenues dropped more than 40 percent, and the number of Florida tomato growers fell 60 percent.
Why should some Native Americans have to drive 163 miles to vote?
Imagine if, in the 2016 elections, you had to drive 104 miles (167 km)to your nearest pollingstation, like National Congress of American Indians research found those people living in the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada do, or 163 miles (262 km),like residents of the Goshute Reservation in Utah do. Or imagine if you had to take a plane flight to the nearest polling place because you cannot get to it by road, which was the case for several Native communities in 2008, when the state of Alaska attempted a “district realignment” to eliminate polling places in their villages. That’s just half the trip. In those circumstances, can you really be said to be enjoying full voting rights? ...
In an attempt to remedy these problems, the Department of Justice recently proposed the Tribal Equal Access to Voting Act. It would provide polling places at locations of the tribes’ choosing, likely remedying the 100 mile drive for tens of thousands of voters. The DOJ proposal is not perfect because, as currently written, it contains some conditions that will not work for some communities such as the requirement to provide all poll workers and election officials and also ensure that they are adequately trained. Some tribes, especially smaller ones of 200-300 people or less, may not have the capacity or expertise to do that.
Some might ask why Native communities can’t just vote absentee by mail. It is not that easy. Although circumstances can vary, illiteracy rates are extremely high in some Native areas. In the Bethel Census Area in Alaska, for example, illiteracy is 17 times the national average. This is not because people are drop-outs, but because they speak and read Yup’ik, their Native language, and English-speaking high schools were not widely available in rural Alaska until the late 1970s and early 1980s. In addition, some reservations do not deliver mail to your house, so you have to travel a significant distance to check a rural post office box that you are probably required to share with several other families.
In Alaska, rural mail delivery is just not as fast and sometimes it can take several weeks to get your ballot, in which time you may have missed the deadline to return it (if you could read and understand it). Some people also just don’t trust voting by mail, and who can blame them? It’s hard to trust completely an absentee voting system when sometimes very serious mistakes happen, like the time in the 2004 general election when 2,500absentee ballots were held up at a post office because the Alaska Division of Elections had deposited them at the post office with inadequate postage. It was later discovered that some voters did not receive them in time as a result. ...
Given the long history of denying American Indian and Alaska Native communities their rights, it is time that the most basic of democratic rights - the right to vote - is protected and upheld. Every vote must and should matter, regardless of who they are or where in America they live.
Bill Clinton says he will stop giving paid speeches if Hillary made US president
Bill Clinton has said he will stop giving paid speeches if his wife, Hillary Clinton, is elected US president.
Republicans and media commentators have criticised both Clintons for earning millions of dollars from paid speeches, saying the practice raises the possibility of conflicts of interest.
The former president said he would continue to give speeches without compensation if Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, enters the White House.
“I will still give speeches, though, on the subjects I’m interested in, and I’ve really enjoyed those things,” he told Bloomberg TV at a Clinton Foundation conference in Denver on Wednesday.
The Evening Greens
Last Month Was the Hottest May on Record in Alaska
Temperatures in Alaska averaged 44.9 degrees Fahrenheit this May, making it the warmest May in the 91-year temperature record of the state, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data released today.
And that's a remarkable 7.1 degrees higher than the 20th-century average.
"Really since June of 2013, it's been very persistently warm with lots of records," Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alaska, told VICE News. "So this is kind of just another one in this two-year streak."
The last record-breaking May was in 2005, when the average temperature climbed to 43.7 degrees.
Temperature records are usually broken by fractions of a degree, Thoman said, making this May's level even more extreme. ...
Across the state, 2015 saw the lowest May snow-cover extent on record, dropping 161,000 square miles below average, about the size of California. In Anchorage, a record-low 25.1 inches of snow fell from September 2014 through May 2015. The 30-year average is nearly three times that high. ...
The warm weather is also creating a dangerous feedback loop with sea ice, which has been disappearing from the Arctic at astonishing rates.
Fox outfoxes FOX.
As Bonn Climate Talks Conclude, Another Failure for Planet Earth, Humanity
Developed countries criticized for being unwilling to buck fossil fuel industry and make necessary transition to renewable energy sources
As ten days of UN-sponsored climate talks came to end in Bonn, Germany on Thursday morning, global campaigners demanding far-reaching solutions to the crisis of a warming planet expressed dissatisfaction on multiple levels, charging that the continued foot-dragging of governments is sentencing future generations to unparalleled catastrophe even as scientists issue grave new warnings about the dangers of inaction.
As the final sessions concluded and the latest draft texts emerged from the talks, activists staged protests inside and outside of the convention center calling for bold action on climate and an "energy revolution" that would steer the world away from coal, oil, and gas and towards renewable sources like wind and solar.
Speaking on behalf of Friends of the Earth, Lucy Cadena, the group's climate justice and energy coordinator, said the among the deepest frustrations is that while solutions are available to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, Bonn has once again proven that leaders from the most developed countries are unwilling to buck the fossil fuel industry and make the urgent transition to renewable energy sources.
"Climate change is upon us, and every increase in temperature causes more heatwaves, droughts and floods, killing thousands of people," Cadena said. "If developed country governments continue to drag their feet at the UN negotiations instead of taking immediate action, millions of people will pay for it with their lives. People around the world are already implementing real, proven solutions—community-controlled, renewable energy systems. The energy revolution has come of age, and our politicians must help implement it or fade into obsolescence along with the dirty energy systems they cling to."
Climate Change Could End By 2100, If We Make It That Long
Big Pharma's Hidden Hand In Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs
The report Bad Medicine, released Wednesday night, examines antibiotic production from start to finish, revealing that some of the most well-known drug corporations are fueling the global health problem of antibiotic resistance.
The multinational corporation Pfizer, for example, has sourced antibiotics from a Chinese factory that "stands accused of discharging pharmaceutical waste into the environment and numerous other manufacturing deficiencies," the report states.
Pollution from the dumping of pharmaceutical raw materials is a serious problem, because it releases antibiotics into the environment—a factor behind the rise of antimicrobial resistance. ...
"There also appear to be direct links between one of the world's largest generic drug manufacturers, McKesson, which owns several European brands, and Indian company Aurobindo, which sources from at least four polluting Chinese factories," write the study's authors.
And Israeli company Teva has direct ties to three Chinese companies that "have been in the Chinese media spotlight for various offenses including improper waste management and the release of noxious chemicals," notes the study.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
When I lost my hands making flatscreens I can't afford, nobody would help me
Provocative moves by great powers are pushing the world one step closer to the ultimate disaster.
German Banker: Obama Is Destroying Europe
Remarkable Event in the Keystone State
U.S. military trainers in Iraq outnumber trainees
A Little Night Music
Lightning Slim - Mean Old Lonesome Train
Lightnin' Slim - It's Mighty Crazy
Lightnin' Slim - That's Allright
Lightnin' Slim - I'm Tired Waitin' Baby
Lightnin' Slim - Have Your Way
Lightnin' Slim - Voodoo Blues
Lightnin' Slim - Feelin' awful blue
Lightnin' Slim - Rooster Blues
Lightnin' Slim - Love Me Mama
Lightnin' Slim - I'm A Rolling Stone
Lightnin' Slim - Bad Luck Blues
Lightnin' Slim & Lazy Lester - Hoodoo Man
Lightnin Slim - New Orleans bound
Lightnin' Slim - Oh Baby
Lightnin' Slim - Crazy 'Bout You Baby (Can't Hold Out Much Longer)
Lightnin' Slim - My Babe