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 gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Enjoy!
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head
Conversation was never begun at once, nor in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation. Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence to the speech-maker and his own moment of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regard for the rule that thought comes before speech.
Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief
News and Opinion
Joe is on vacation this week, the Weekend Edition team will be filling in for the following: News, Greens and Hosting. Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Compiled by: Johnny the Conqueroo
Contributors:
NCTim
enhydra lutris
Johnny the Conqueroo
Hillary Clinton is going to lose: She doesn’t even see the frustrated progressive wave that will nominate Bernie Sanders
Clinton's positioning on TPP is way too cute. When it passes with Dems' implicit support, grass roots will explode
Submitted by: JtC
Hillary Clinton went to New York’s Roosevelt Island earlier this month to relaunch her campaign for president. Her first kickoff fell flat, perhaps because she herself didn’t attend, opting instead to send a video greeting card in which people she still insists on calling ‘everyday Americans’ shared their life plans. (To go to school! Plant a garden! Get married!) She came on at the end to say she had plans of her own that include being president, and that she does it all for us.
She delivered a 45-minute speech that told us little more than that three-minute video. She still won’t say where she’d peg the minimum wage or if she’d ever rein in the surveillance state or get us out of Iraq. Most amazing is how she finesses the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Obama so covets. It’s the biggest deal in the history of commerce; its investor tribunals would substitute corporate for democratic will here and around the world — and Clinton hasn’t said boo about it. Some ask how she gets away with it. I’m not so sure she does.
Politicians have always ducked tough issues, but today’s Democrats are the worst. When the TPP came before the House, enough Democrats played it cute to leave the outcome in doubt till the very end. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t tip her hand until just before the vote. Many who voted no never said exactly why. Some want to curb currency manipulation. Some oppose the fast track process, others the secret tribunals or the intellectual property rules that actually restrain competition. If the caucus as a whole has a bottom line, no one knows what it is.
The TPP is a mystery because our leaders wish it so. We don’t know what’s in it because our president won’t let us read it, and not out of respect for precedent or protocol. George W. Bush showed us drafts of his trade agreements. We’re negotiating one right now with Europe, and Europeans get to read those drafts. If a comma gets cut from the TPP, hundreds of corporate lobbyists know in an instant. The only people who don’t know are the American people — and that’s only because our president thinks our knowing would ruin everything.
Key Democratic senators back plan for trade legislation
Submitted by: JtC
The U.S. Senate is headed toward showdown votes this week on legislation key to a Pacific trade pact, and two Democrats essential to passing the measure on Monday said they would support it, although some colleagues may change their votes to oppose the bill.
Senators Ron Wyden and Bill Nelson, two of 14 Democrats who backed a bill to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress last month, said they would again vote "yes" on a measure that has divided their party and put most congressional Democrats at odds with President Barack Obama, also a Democrat.
The legislation would let lawmakers set objectives for trade deals like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) but restrict them to a yes-or-no vote on the final deal.
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and one of the architects of the bill, said he held round-the-clock discussions over the last week with Republican leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives and with leading Democrats.
Constituents to Senators: Reject Fast Track, or Don't Come Home
Senate expected to take up trade legislation on Tuesday, but labor federation warns: 'Fast Track has gotten even worse since the House got its hands on it.'
Submitted by: NCTim
With the U.S. Senate expected to take up Fast Track, or Trade Promotion Authority, on Tuesday, the stakes are high for progressives who oppose pro-corporate trade deals.
Last week, the House passed a Fast Track bill that—unlike the Senate version passed in May—was decoupled from Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) legislation. To move Fast Track to President Barack Obama's desk, thereby enabling him to ram through Congress mammoth international pacts like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Senate must pass its own standalone Fast Track bill.
With votes scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, anti-Fast Trackers are being urged to call their senators, while activists are also organized the#SenatorDontComeHome Twitter storm for Monday afternoon at 1 pm EDT, in which they told lawmakers to block Fast Track or risk alienating constituents.
The Senate is scheduled to take a cloture vote on that legislation on Tuesday, requiring 60 votes to advance the bill for debate. If that vote is successful, the subsequent vote, to actually pass Fast Track, would require a simple majority and is expected to come Wednesday.
Spy Agency's Secret Plans to Foster Online "Conformity" and "Obedience" Exposed
Internal memo from secretive British spy unit exposes how GCHQ and NSA used human psychological research to create sophisticated online propaganda tools
Submitted by: NCTim
With never-before-seen documents accompanied by new reporting on Monday, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman are offering a more in-depth look than ever into how a secretive unit of the UK's GCHQ surveillance agency used a host of psychological methods and online subterfuge in order to manipulate the behavior of individuals and groups through the internet and other digital forms of communication.
According to the reporting, the latest documents, which were leaked to journalists by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden,
demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud, and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online.
UN accuses Israel and Hamas of possible war crimes during 2014 Gaza conflict
Commission appointed by UN human rights council says those responsible for suspected violations of international law must be brought to justice
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A United Nations inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war has accused Israeli and Palestinian factions of multiple potential violations of international law including suspected war crimes.
Calling on Israel to “break with its lamentable track record” and hold wrongdoers responsible, the hard-hitting report commissioned by the UN human rights council lays most of the blame for Israel’s suspected violations at the feet of the country’s political and military leadership.
The commission – chaired by a former New York supreme court judge, Mary McGowan Davis – says leaders should have been aware as the war progressed that their failure to change course was leading to mounting civilian casualties.
“Those responsible for suspected violations of international law at all levels of the political and military establishments must be brought to justice,” it says.
NATO plans 40,000-strong rapid response force in E. Europe
Submitted by: JtC
NATO’s rapid response Spearhead Force in Europe might reach 40,000 troops, a tenfold growth from the initial 4,000-strong force deployed last year, the military alliance’s chief said. Most of these troops will be stationed near Russian borders.
“NATO defense ministers ... [will] make a decision to further increase the strength and capacity of the 13,000-strong NATO Response Force (NRF) to 30,000 or 40,000 troops,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.
The decision is to be officially announced during NATO’s defense ministers meeting on June 24-25 in Brussels.
The troops will be under the command of 6 HQs to be stationed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The Spearhead Force will include Special Forces and rapid response teams, enforced with marine and air components.
Europol web unit to hunt extremists behind Isis social media propaganda
Europe-wide police team aims to find key figures in campaign producing 100,000 tweets daily linked to terror group, seeking to recruit foreign fighters
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A new Europe-wide police unit is being set up to scour the internet for the ring leaders behind Islamic State’s social media propaganda campaign, which it has used to recruit foreign fighters and jihadi brides.
The police team will seek to track down the key figures behind the estimated 100,000 tweets a day pumped out from 45,000 to 50,000 accounts linked to the Islamist terror group, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria.
Run by the European police agency Europol, it will start work on 1 July, with a remit to take down Isis accounts within two hours of them being detected.
Europol’s director, Rob Wainwright, told the Guardian that the new internet referral unit would monitor social media output to identify people who might be vulnerable and those preying on them. He said: “Who is it reaching out to young people, in particular, by social media, to get them to come, in the first place? It’s very difficult because of the dynamic nature of social media.”
Sunni tribes, abandoned by Iraq, key to Islamic State fight
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
HABANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Parading across a desert base, hundreds of Sunni tribesmen who graduated a crash training course stood ready to take on the Islamic State group on behalf of a government that many believed left them to die at the hands of the extremists.
Among them were tribesmen who watched as Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi a month ago to the Islamic State group. Their suspicions toward the Shiite-led government in Baghdad could be seen as they pushed forward to receive their first government salary in 18 months, with one brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle as he neared the front.
"For a year and a half we told them we need weapons, we need salaries, we need food, we need protection, but our requests were ignored until the disaster of Ramadi happened," said Sheikh Rafa al-Fahdawi, one of the leaders of the Al Bu Fahad tribe of Anbar province.
But money and weapons alone won't be enough to repair the mistrust between Baghdad and the Sunni tribes it now needs to battle the Islamic State group, which holds about a third of the country and neighboring Syria in its self-declared "caliphate." After Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi and then turned to Shiite militias for help, both sides remain suspicious of each other, threatening any effort to work together.
Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks
Submitted by: NCTim
The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than 270,000 corporate clients, and says it protects more than 400 million people with its products.
British spies aimed to thwart Kaspersky software in part through a technique known as software reverse engineering, or SRE, according to a top-secret warrant renewal request. The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities.
The efforts to compromise security software were of particular importance because such software is relied upon to defend against an array of digital threats and is typically more trusted by the operating system than other applications, running with elevated privileges that allow more vectors for surveillance and attack. Spy agencies seem to be engaged in a digital game of cat and mouse with anti-virus software companies; the U.S. and U.K. have aggressively probed for weaknesses in software deployed by the companies, which have themselves exposed sophisticated state-sponsored malware.
Greece debt crisis: EU leaders hold critical summit
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Greece faces a critical 24 hours as European leaders hold an emergency summit that could break the deadlock around the country's debt crisis.
Greek PM Alexis Tsipras said he hoped Greece would "return to growth within the eurozone".
But European ministers have said there is still no basis for making a decision for aid for Greece on Monday.
On Sunday, Mr Tsipras set out new proposals to try to prevent a default on a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) IMF loan.
Has Washington Gone Looney Tunes?
Submitted by: JtC
Given a series of recent speeches by leading US officials and actions, the question must be frankly posed: Has Washington gone collectively looney tunes? Even as the governments of the EU are moving to buck US pressures and ease the sanctions, the Obama Administration seems intent on marching in the direction of a nuclear confrontation with Russia. As the ancient Greek expression puts it, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad…” The following recent developments fit that pattern quite nicely, thank you.
On June 5, Ashton Carter, the neo-conservative Obama Defense Secretary gave clear indications he is prepared to be far more provocative against Russia than his fired predecessor, Chuck Hagel. Carter convened a special meeting in Stuttgart, Germany of two dozen US military leaders and US Ambassadors in Europe at the headquarters of US European Command. He told them, “We have something that has taken a sad turn recently, which is Russia.”
That in itself was not so notable as were the reports that the neo-con US Defense Secretary, “Ash”—that is his nickname, appropriately enough—Carter discussed at the Stuttgart meeting returning US short-range nuclear missiles to European NATO countries to target Russia.
On June 7, just two days after Carter’s Stuttgart remarks, UK Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, told the press that the UK might again place American nuclear missiles on British soil because of what he termed “heightened tensions” with Russia. The Foreign Secretary said there were “worrying signs” about the increased activity of Russian forces and that the UK would “consider the pros and cons of taking US intermediate-range weapons.”
Taliban attack on Afghan parliament in Kabul ends
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A co-ordinated Taliban attack on the Afghan parliament in Kabul has ended with all six gunmen killed, the interior ministry says.
Attackers detonated a huge car bomb outside the gates, stormed the compound, then entered a building next to the chamber.
Police evacuated the premises, while trying to fight the gunmen off.
The Taliban say they carried out the attack to coincide with a vote to endorse a new defence minister.
Afghan forces repel daring Taliban attack on Kabul parliament
The coordinated Taliban assault in the heart of Kabul didn't achieve its objective – killing Afghan lawmakers – but was a reminder that the group remains potent.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Seven Taliban militants attacked the Afghan parliament in Kabul on Monday while it was in session, in one of the most daring attacks by the insurgent group in recent years.
The attack started when a car with explosives blew up outside the parliament gates, having passed through a number of security checkpoints, Reuters reported, citing a Kabul police spokesman. Six gunmen then opened fire in a building opposite the parliament, a gun battle that lasted up to two hours.
Members of parliament were seen being evacuated on television. None were hurt, though nineteen people were injured. All seven attackers were killed.
"It shows a big failure in the intelligence and security departments of the government," said Farhad Sediqi, a lawmaker, told Reuters.
'Fear they will find me': death threats stalk Afghan acid victim
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Four years after a militiaman doused Mumtaz with a flesh-searing acid for rejecting his marriage proposal, leaving her disfigured, scarred and traumatised, death threats have forced the 20-year-old Afghan into hiding.
Her ordeal encapsulates the major issues roiling Afghanistan -- a silent tsunami of violence against women, anti-Taliban militias bringing further turmoil to an already conflict-torn country and a seemingly dysfunctional state unable to offer Afghans even a modicum of security.
Swaddled in a cobalt blue scarf partly covering her jagged facial scars, Mumtaz vividly recalls the horrors of that night when the jilted lover stormed into her house with six other assailants, holding up the corrosive liquid.
"He grabbed me by my hair and hurled the acid at my face with such vengeance, as if to say 'now let's see who will marry you'," Mumtaz, who goes by one name, told AFP in a safe house in the volatile northern province of Kunduz.
This is a terrible idea for fixing Iraq, and Washington loves it
Submitted by: NCTim
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in congressional testimony on Wednesday, put voice to an idea that has been rattling around US government offices for the past few months: The state of Iraq may be so irreparably broken that it can never be put back together again, and perhaps should one day be formally partitioned into separate states.
This is an idea that has been growing in popularity within the US government — in both parties, in Congress and in the Obama administration, in multiple agencies. It is attractive because it promises a relatively easy solution to a terrible problem. But it is a false promise. Partition would entrench Iraq's problems rather than solve them.
"There will not be a single state of Iraq"
Carter's statement was prompted by a question from Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat of the House Armed Services Committee, who in the course of asking how the US could respond to the chaos in Syria and Iraq, said, "Iraq is fractured. You can make a pretty powerful argument, in fact, that Iraq is no more."
"The question [is] what if a multisectarian Iraq turns out not to be possible," Carter responded, referring to the idea of Iraq as it presently exists, a state that encompasses Kurds, Arab Sunnis, and Arab Shias. "If that government can't do what it's supposed to do, then we will still try to enable local ground forces, if they're willing to partner with us, to keep stability in Iraq, but there will not be a single state of Iraq."
Germany releases Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour
Respected journalist had been controversially detained at Berlin airport at Egypt government's request.
Submitted by: JtC
German authorities have released Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour, who had been detained at Berlin airport at the request of the Egyptian government.
Accompanied by his lawyers, Mansour greeted his supporters after his release on Monday, and thanked the German court for its decision.
"I extend my thanks and appreciation to the honest and honourable judges of Germany," he said in Arabic.
"Thanks to people around the world who supported me in the last days," Mansour added. "I'm free, I'm free, I'm free."
Question mark over Erdogan as Turk parties jockey for power
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ISTANBUL (AP) — Two weeks after Turkey's parliamentary elections, experts agree on one thing: No one really knows what's going to happen next.
Turkey's June 7 election left Turkey's long-ruling Justice and Development Party, known by Turkish acronym AKP, short of the majority it needs to govern alone, meaning it will have to turn to at least one of the three opposition parties to secure its hold on government.
Negotiating such a coalition will be complicated by the vitriol of the campaign, the differences between the four camps and the ambitions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, still a dominant force in Turkish politics despite his theoretically neutral role as head of state.
"Neither can I or anyone else make any predictions as to what's happening," said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of Turkish politics at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Rich people are the f**king worst: The 1 percent’s vile new war on us all
The wealthy and their GOP apologists talk about poor people as the takers. They have it completely backward
Submitted by: JtC
Rich people rarely tell you how they really feel about poor people. Occasionally, though, you get a glimpse. Earlier this week, the Washington Post published a story about Rancho Santa Fe, a small but extremely wealthy enclave in Southern California. Like the rest of California, the people of Rancho Santa Fe are dealing with a drought. As you might imagine, that means water is scarce and conservation is critical. For the denizens of Rancho Santa Fe, however, conservation is someone else’s problem, namely poor people.
According to Steve Yuhas, who lives in the area and hosts a conservative talk-radio show, privileged people “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful.” Oh, the humanity! In case it wasn’t clear, Yuhas added that the right to water ought to scale with income: “No, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”
And Yuhas isn’t alone. Gay Butler, an avid equestrian and fellow resident of Rancho Santa Fe, fumed for similar reasons. “It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” she said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?” Perhaps Butler has a point. It’s one thing to demand sacrifice in extraordinary circumstances, but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere, right? If a woman wants to ride her finely manicured horse on a dirt-free prairie in the middle of the desert, what matters a little drought?
Brett Barbre, a fellow Orange Country aristocrat, also appears to get it. “I call it the war on suburbia,” he remarked. “California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom. It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everyone else how they think everybody should live their lives.” Barbre continued: “They’ll have to pry it [his water hose] from my cold, dead hands.”
GOP Forced To Admit Repealing Obamacare Would Blow Up The Deficit Like A Bad Bush War
Submitted by: NCTim
Republicans have pushed so many lies about the Affordable Care Act that they may actually be believing them. For years, Douglas Elmendorf, economist at the Congressional Budget Office, gave Democrats a hard time over the federal costs and tax implications of the ACA. More recently, as the law’s implementation became a reality, the true effects began coming out, and the doomsday predictions began subsiding.
Republicans, unhappy with this development, appointed conservative economist Keith Hall to replace Elmendorf, hoping the numbers would change under Hall’s more conservative methodologies.
They were wrong. They usually are. It turns out that the effects of Obamacare on the economy and the deficit have nothing to do with the guy behind the calculator.
What about the calculator itself? In order to further skew the numbers on the ACA in favor of repeal and a return to unprecedented insurance company profits leading to massive campaign contributions, Republicans adopted a method of predicting the law’s impact called “dynamic scoring,” which they admitted was a more conservative way of estimating than previous standards.
Lawsuit brought by Muslims rounded up after 9/11 gets go-ahead from court
In all, 762 detainees were swept up across US, including 491 in the New York area, and locked up and abused for months at a time, alleges lawsuit
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
It has been nearly 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, but a lawsuit on behalf of Muslims rounded up in the aftermath has barely moved forward as lawyers try to show how frightening it was for hundreds of men with no ties to terrorism to be treated like terrorists, locked up and abused for months at a time.
The lawsuit finally got the go-ahead from a federal appeals court last week, with two judges willing to let the courts grapple with what happened when the largest criminal probe in US history tested the boundaries of civil liberties.
In a 2-1 ruling, the second US circuit court of appeals reinstated the lawsuit against three former top US officials, including then attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller.
Holding the defendants “in solitary confinement 23 hours a day with regular strip searches because their perceived faith or race placed them in the group targeted for recruitment by al-Qaida violated the detainees’ constitutional rights”, the majority wrote.
War and Peace: The Lost Principles of Science and Value
Submitted by: NCTim
In recent months we have seen one ‘peace activist’ organization after another framing global conflicts in US war-propaganda terms.
There is no criterion of peace, no evidence base, no life ground or compass governing judgement.
The official enemy is assumed as first premise, and slogans substitute for understanding. Avaaz, Amnesty International, and Physicians for Human Rights, for example, have all called for a version of ‘humanitarian bombing’ to ‘save lives’ in Syria. The war criminal attacks on Iraq and Libya under the same pretexts are erased from view.
In this way, blame-the-enemy justifications for mass murder run free with no grounding principle to tell peace from war, or of truth from propaganda. Even the legendary Science for Peace held a conference in March this year organized as if it was the US National Endowment on Democracy in Ukraine Yet oppositions are skeptical of any ‘moral compass’ because it is a concept typically invoked by the very people demanding wars. So we remain adrift in a world heading for cumulative catastrophe without any principled life-value bearings.
Wall Street Front Group Pleads for Government Help in New York Times OpEd
Submitted by: NCTim
After the U.S. government pumped the secret, astronomical sum of more than $13 trillion into Wall Street during the years surrounding the 2008 financial crisis to bail it out of its own greedy and reckless gambles, Wall Street is shamelessly asking for more government handouts in the opinion pages of the New York Times. The woman pitching this pathetic poppycock, Kathryn S. Wylde, was actually on the Board of Directors at the New York Fed during the crisis – the very institution that sluiced the secret $13 trillion into Wall Street’s coffers.
If you live outside of New York City, you’ve never heard of the Partnership for New York City. Even if you live inside New York City, unless you’re part of the black tie cocktail circuit, you’ve still never heard of the group. So when the New York Times gave a chunk of its opinion pages on Monday to Wylde as President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City to plead for government help for Wall Street, it really needed to do the ethical thing and fess up that this is a brazen front group for the financial services industry.
The Co-Chair of the Partnership for New York City is James Gorman, Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley pocketed a cool $2 trillion in low-cost loans from the New York Fed, much of it at an interest rate of under one-half of one percent during the crisis.
In March of this year, Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed in a Senate hearing that the New York Fed handed out $2 trillion each in these cheap loans to Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch and rolled them over for about two-years. Back in 2008 and 2009, an investor could still get more than 3.5 percent on the 10-year Treasury note. If these three banks did nothing more complicated than make 3 percent on these loans by investing in the 10-year Treasury, you’re looking at $60 billion in profits per year per bank, or more than $360 billion in profits for all three banks over that two-year period. On Wall Street they call that arbitrage; on Main Street they call that looting the public purse.
“Wag the Dog” Mass Killing, Race Wars and Gun Confiscation Obscure Sleight of Hand TPP Passage
Submitted by: NCTim
The accelerated rate of New World Order events unfolding every single day is becoming mind boggling. The latest tragedy in South Carolina where a wacked out white man on Big Pharma killer drugs murdered nine African Americans in a Charleston church has triggered a litany of hot button issues that smack of false flag agenda to attack gun owners, foment a race war, and wag the dog for streamlining the fast track TPP in one fell swoop.
Last Wednesday night 21-year old Dylann Roof was taken in and welcomed by a black bible study group only to have the gunman turn on them an hour later pulling out his .45 caliber handgun and murdering nine victims in a diabolical scheme to start a race war. This latest incident comes on the heels of two months earlier with the Walter Scott shooting also in Charleston where another trigger happy white police officer shot in cold blood another African American in the back.Race tensions are already running high with the sting of the Baltimore riots still fresh a couple months ago. Combined with Jade Helm Special Forces operations already underway infiltrating civilian communities throughout the Southwestern states, the stage is set for a very long hot summer.
Of course mainstream media’s agenda is simply to enflame the tragic situation, reporting how the killer’s long been planning to be the incendiary device that initiates a full scale war between white Americans and black Americans. One of Roof’s friends recalled a drunken rant when Roof vowed a six-month plan “to do something crazy” to incite a race war. Meanwhile, several family members of the shooting victims belonging to the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in the South spoke out publicly forgiving the deranged young racist killer. It turns out that Roof had been taking a cocktail of prescription drugs prone to inducing violence, among them the drug Suboxone that’s replaced methadone for treating opiate addiction but is also known to cause both suicidal as well as homicidal impulses in patients.
A common undisputable pattern amongst all the highest profile perpetrators of mass killings in the US to the person is that they all have an extensive psychiatric history of taking notoriously dangerous destabilizing Big Pharma medication. Yet because of the immense power of the pharmaceutical manufacturers and active support from both the psychiatric profession and feds’ Food and Drug Administration, the drug companies are allowed to continue distributing their killer poisons that cause such grave harm to so many American families. Of course it’s no different from another chemical company Monsanto that kills untold numbers of humans, animals and plants around the world, and then manipulates Congress and Obama to pass and sign laws protecting Monsanto from all lawsuits.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature from the New York Times: Jack Reed, war correspondent and Board Robinson, illustrator, are under arrest by Russian military authorities.
Tune in at 2pm!
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This 3-minute film will get you excited about NASA's mission to Pluto
Submitted by: NCTim
If you're excited about space exploration, this trailer for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto will give you chills.
The short film, made by Erik Wernquist and the nonprofit National Space Society, perfectly captures what makes this probe — scheduled to reach Pluto for the first time on July 14 — such a huge deal.
In the 1960s and '70s, the Mariner missions showed us Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and in the '70s and '80s the Pioneer and Voyager missions showed us Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus in detail for the first time. In much the same way, New Horizons will give us a close-up view of something even farther away: Pluto.
Could training stem police shootings? Las Vegas is a test
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
LAS VEGAS (AP) — By 2 a.m., nearly five hours had ticked by since Stanley Gibson's last call.
"I want to come home," the 43-year-old Gulf War veteran told his wife, Rondha, his voice edged by post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Rondha Gibson did not know where to find him until a white Cadillac, bathed in spotlights, filled her television screen. "Local man shot by Metro police," a headline announced.
"I think that's my husband you guys killed," she recalls telling the dispatcher who answered her 911 call.
On that night in 2011, local leaders had just started acknowledging two decades of shootings by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers. But Gibson's death was a flash point.
On Brink of 'Sixth Great Extinction,' Humanity Must Conserve or Die
'We are sawing off the limb we are sitting on.'
Submitted by: JtC
It's official: the planet is entering a "sixth great extinction" that even the most conservative estimates show is killing off species at rates far higher than the previous five mass die-offs—and humanity is both at fault...and at risk.
A joint study by scientists from several North American universities published last week in Science found that the rate of extinction for species in the 20th century was up to 100 times higher than it would have been without impacts of human activity, such as climate change, deforestation, and pollution.
Moreover, if those rates are allowed to continue, "life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," said co-author, Paul Ehrlich, the Bing professor of population studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead."
Major internet providers slowing traffic speeds for thousands across US
Study finds significant degradations of networks for five largest ISPs, including AT&T and Time Warner, representing 75% of all wireline households in US
Submitted by: JtC
Major internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday.
The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US.
The findings come weeks after the Federal Communications Commission introduced new rules meant to protect “net neutrality” – the principle that all data is equal online – and keep ISPs from holding traffic speeds for ransom.
Tim Karr of Free Press, one of the groups that makes up BattlefortheNet, said the finding show ISPs are not providing content to users at the speeds they’re paying for.
Modern humans and Neanderthals 'interbred in Europe'
Submitted by: JtC
Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred in Europe, an analysis of 40,000-year-old DNA suggests.
The study suggests an early Homo sapiens settler in Europe harboured a Neanderthal ancestor just a few generations back in his family line.
Previous work has shown our ancestors had interbred with Neanderthals 55,000 years ago, possibly in the Middle East.
The new results reveal there was additional mixing once modern humans pushed north into Europe.
Japan to resume whale hunt in Antarctic this year
Submitted by: JtC
Tokyo intends to resume whale hunting in the waters of the Southern Ocean this year, despite disapproval recently voiced by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
Japan's chief whaling negotiator Joji Morishita said that the international debate over whether the country should be killing whales has moved from science into politics, AFP reported on Monday.
It comes despite a Friday report by the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that stated that the country failed to provide a proper explanation for the reason behind the scheduled killing of almost 4,000 minke whales over the next 12 years in the Antarctic.
As the global whaling moratorium allows killing for research, Japan has been hunting the mammals under that guise. Yet their meat is processed into food, and the country backs the plan for the so-called sustainable whaling.
As globe warms, melting glaciers revealing more than bare earth
Submitted by: JtC
CIUDAD SERDAN, Mexico — As a result of warming temperatures, Mexico’s tallest volcano, Pico de Orizaba, is performing an all-natural striptease, the ice patches near its summit melting away to bare rock.
The same process is taking place in the permafrost of Russia, the ice fields of the Yukon and the glaciers of New Zealand. And as the once-frozen world emerges from slumber, it’s yielding relics, debris – and corpses – that have laid hidden for decades, even millennia.
The thaw has unnerved archaeologists, given hope to relatives of lost mountain climbers and solved the mysteries of old plane crashes.
What emerges is not always apparent – or even pleasant. That pungent smell? It’s a massive deposit of caribou dung in the Yukon that had been frozen for thousands of years, and now is decomposing in the air, its sharp odor unlocked.
The Evening Greens
Tonights Greens submitted by: enhydra lutris
Kids need green open spaces
Is it coincidence that Isaac Newton discovered gravity while sitting under a tree? Or that Albert Einstein said, “Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”
A study was just released that says outdoor green spaces make kids smarter.
The study assessed whether exposure to green space improved the cognitive development in children. Researchers tested the cognitive development of 2,593 schoolchildren in Spain, ages 7 to 10.
Three types of cognitive development tests were given to examine working memory, superior working memory and inattentiveness. The kids were given computerized cognitive tests every three months for a year. The inattentive kids only made it through half of the first test (just kidding).
First taste of freedom for 'rewilded' bison in Romania
Armenis (Romania) (AFP) - An excited crowd gathered in southwestern Romania to watch more than a dozen woolly brown bison stroll off lorries into the picturesque Tarcu mountains -- nearly 200 years after they became extinct in the region.
"I grew up hearing legends about bison that lived here and today we finally see them there," said 60-year-old teacher Elena Dragomir, watching the event near the village of Armenis with a group of her students.
Wildlife experts brought a group of 14 bison from zoos across Europe last week to a 140-hectare (345-acre) Romanian reserve, where they will reacclimatise to natural life before their release into the wilderness in a few months time.
On Saturday, another group of 14 bison was released fully into the Southern Carpathians, a year after they were brought to the reserve to reacclimatise.
Opinion: It does not take GMOs to feed the world
We can feed the world without the kind of farming that depends on managing weeds with toxic chemicals, and we don’t need costly chemical fertilizers that slowly destroy soil’s ability to grow crops while exacerbating climate change.
I grew up in a diversity-loving community. The old adage “it takes all kinds” was written into my blood…until I said it to a new acquaintance.
“No,” he replied. “There are some kinds we could really do without.”
And he’s right. We could do without many kinds of people.
I think the same is true of farming practices—but I have been hearing something different. I first came across the “It-Takes-All-Kinds-of-Farming” theory at the 2014 Camden Conference. The message that came out of one panel was that organic farming is fine, but that we need all kinds of agriculture if we are going to feed the world.
Heatwave in Pakistan's Sindh province leaves 224 dead
Some 224 people are now believed to have died during a heatwave in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.
Health officials say most of the deaths have been in the largest city, Karachi, which has experienced temperatures as high as 45C (113F) in recent days.
The city has seen power cuts caused by an increased demand for electricity because of the extreme weather.
Many of the victims are elderly people who have been suffering from fever, dehydration and gastric problems.
Sunlight Striking Earth’s Surface in Just One Hour Delivers Enough Energy to Power the World Economy for an Entire Year
Around the world, solar installations are growing by leaps and bounds on residential and commercial rooftops and in solar farms that can cover thousands of acres.
In April 1954, top scientists gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear something new: voice and music broadcast by a solar-powered radio transmitter. Scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey were demonstrating their invention, the first practical solar cell, which was made of silicon. This breakthrough paved the way for the solar revolution taking place today on rooftops and in massive ground-mounted solar farms around the world.
Solar cells, also called solar photovoltaics or PV, powered U.S. satellites during the 1960s space race with the Soviet Union. But PV technology was still too expensive to be used for much else until the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Amid rising fears about energy security, governments and private firms poured billions of dollars into solar research and development, reaping big gains in efficiency and cost reductions. This led to widespread use of PV in the 1980s for powering telephone relay stations, highway call boxes, and similar applications.
Japanese and U.S. companies became early leaders in PV manufacturing for uses both large and small. For example, Japanese firms such as Sharp and Kyocera pioneered the use of solar cells in pocket calculators. A credit-card-sized solar-powered calculator from 1983 still helps us do quick calculations.
In the mid-1980s, Germany joined the United States and Japan in the race for PV production dominance, but by the early years of the new millennium, Japanese and U.S. companies accounted for roughly 70 percent of the world’s PV output.
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 Incredible Effect Jon Stewart Had on Society
Why the TPP Agenda Is Straight out of Alice in Wonderland
Robert Reich: Mass Incarceration Is Leading to Economic Ruin
What Have We Learned From WikiLeaks’ Saudi Arabia Documents?
Greece Told, ”Do a deal or we cut off the money and your banks go bust.”
Another pot myth is discredited
EPA report shows the financial foolishness of delayers who refuse to act against climate change now
Hellraisers Journal: From Vera Cruz, Cabled Interview of General Carranza by John Kenneth Turner
U.S. armed forces working side-by-side with terrorists
Every breath a trans person takes is an act of revolution
A Little Night Music
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - That's All
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Didn't It Rain
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Down By The Riverside (Study War No More)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - What Is the Soul of Man
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Nobody's Fault But Mine
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - God Don't Like It
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Rock Me
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Trouble In Mind
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Things I Used To Do
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Four Or Five Times
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - The Lonesome Road
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Strange things happening everyday
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Sit Down
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Don't Take Everybody to be Your Friend
Rosetta Tharpe/Lucky Millinder - Shout, Sister, Shout
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - I want a tall skinny papa
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Ain't No Grave Hold My Body Down
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - There Is Peace In Korea
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll