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 blues guitarist and singer Louisiana Red. Enjoy!
Louisiana Red - Red's New Dream
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”
-- John Steinbeck
News and Opinion
Pelosi to Wall Street: Ignore Warren. Dems Still Love You
U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday told CNBC that there was no "consensus" among Democrats that the Obama administration should enforce stricter regulations on the financial industry, highlighting a growing intra-party divide just as the 2016 presidential election begins to take shape.
Pelosi's comments draw another line in the sand between so-called "corporate" and "progressive" Democrats, coming amid criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others that the White House, as well as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Mary Jo White, have been "too soft" on Wall Street.
"There may have been a couple of people who say that, but that is not the consensus in our party," Pelosi said in a 45-minute interview with CNBC's John Harwood. "People will express themselves the way they do. That doesn't mean they're speaking for the party."
Think it's cool Facebook can auto-tag you in pics? So does the government
State-of-the-art facial recognition technology, which had been the stuff of hypothetical privacy nightmares for years, is becoming a startling reality. It is increasingly being deployed all around the United States by giant tech companies, shady advertisers and the FBI – with few if any rules to stop it.
In recent weeks, both Facebook and Google launched facial recognition to mine the photos on your phone, with both impressive and disturbing results. Facebook’s Moments app can recognize you even if you cover your face. Google Photos can identify grown adults from decades-old childhood pictures.
Some people might find it neat when it’s only restricted to photos on their phone. But advertisers, security companies and just plain creepy authority figures have also set up their own systems at music festivals, sporting events and even some churches to monitor attendees, which is bound to disturb even those who don’t give a second thought to issues like the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. ...
Last year, the FBI’s massive “next generation” facial recognition database went “fully operational.” But we’ve heard little about how it works and how it’s being used since; the FBI has, as is its modus operandi, attempted to keep it secret from the public. (A judge ruled last year in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that there was a “significant public interest” in the FBI becoming more forthcoming about its plans.)
The little public comment they have made has not exactly inspired confidence. As the National Journal reported, FBI Director James Comey “told Congress that the database would not collect or store photos of ordinary citizens, and instead is designed to ‘find bad guys by matching pictures to mug shots.’” He didn’tadequately explain why documents obtained by EFF showed that the FBI was populating its database with millions of completely innocent people’s photos.
In emails, Hillary's outside advisers pushed hawkish Afghan line
In the fall of 2009, as U.S. President Barack Obama conducted a long, divisive review of whether to pour more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, an influential group of advisors were quietly pushing a hawkish line.
The advisors didn't work for Obama's White House, however. They were veterans of President Bill Clinton's administration and they peppered Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, with messages urging a robust counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan and a tougher U.S. stance toward Pakistan, according to emails released by the State Department late on Tuesday.
The emails reveal how, even as Obama ran a highly formalized Afghan policy review of near-endless meetings and position papers, Hillary Clinton was receptive to outsiders' sometimes off-the-cuff views delivered through back-channels.
How much they influenced Clinton, who was also getting plenty of advice on Afghanistan and Pakistan from officials at her State Department, remains unclear. But Clinton eventually threw her support behind a troop "surge" and there is some evidence the external advisors formed part of her thinking.
Some had more national security expertise than others, but all appeared to have Clinton's ear - and her private email address.
Jason Leopold shuffles through Hillary's latest email dump and comes up with some interesting info. Here's a taste:
Hillary Clinton Sought Advice on Afghanistan From Former Bill Clinton Advisors
Weeks before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Pakistan in late October 2009 in an attempt to improve diplomatic relations with the country, she sought outside advice about how to pressure the Pakistanis to do more in fighting al Qaeda, according to emails the State Department released late Tuesday.
The emails also suggest that Clinton was on the fence about whether she should support a proposed troop surge in Afghanistan, which President Barack Obama's military advisers said was crucial in order to address the country's deteriorating security situation that the administration feared would further empower al Qaeda. There was also concern among administration officials at the increasing number of Taliban forces in South Waziristan along the Afghan border.
On October 3, 2009, Clinton met with retired Army General Wesley Clark, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and director for strategic plans and policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Bill Clinton's presidency, to discuss the issue. About a week later, Clark emailed her with his thoughts on Afghanistan and suggestions for how to approach the Pakistanis about al Qaeda.
Clark referred to an unnamed person with whom he joked about the fact that "someone deep in" Pakistan's intelligence service was likely happy al Qaeda was alive because it meant the US wouldn't "abandon Pakistan again." Clark said he and the unnamed person "recommended" by Clinton discussed "defeat strategy," and the "need for something more than just deploying more forces and hoping the training for the Afghans will work."
"I continue to be struck by the parallels to Vietnam, and especially [President Lyndon B.] Johnson's inability to resist escalation, and his advisor's continued 'incrementalism,'" Clark wrote.
Turkey Ratchets Up Rhetoric on Syria’s Kurds
Turkish officials and pro-government media continue to ratchet up the anti-Kurdish rhetoric along the Syrian border, withanalysts believing the comments are meant primarily to discourage the US from increasing its aid to the Kurdish YPG, rather than a serious threat to invade Syrian Kurdistan. ...
The US has eagerly backed the Kurds, both defensively and in attacks against ISIS, seeing them as the only faction within Syria that is effective in fighting against ISIS, and which is palatable as an ally to the US and most of its alliance. That’s not true of Turkey, however.
Turkey has centered its policy on the Syrian civil war entirely around the hope of weakening Kurdish secessionist efforts in Syria, but has instead ended up empowering Islamist factions separating the Kurds from the Assad government’s territory, and has set them up with a close alliance with the US that is only adding to the probability that Kurdish autonomy will grow.
ISIS Attacks Egyptian Army in Sinai, 200 Dead
Enormous death tolls are coming out of the northern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt today as ISIS forces launch a wave of attacks, backed by rocket fire and car bombings, against Sinai security forces loyal to the Egyptian junta. They centered around the town of Sheikh Zuwayid.
The exact toll is still being sussed out, but at least64 Egyptian troops were killed, and 25 wounded. Six civilians were also reported slain and over 100 ISIS militants were also killed, as Egypt launched a massive counterattack. ...
Though it is unclear if the timing is related, the junta speculated that the attacks were related to the second anniversary of a series of protests launched (and heavily backed by the military) against the elected Morsi government. The protests were used as a pretext for the 2013 coup d’etat, which the junta followed up with an immediate military offensive against Sinai. The offensive has been ongoing ever since.
"A New Chapter": After Half a Century, U.S. and Cuba Unveil Reopening of Embassies & Restored Ties
It's more than half-past time to shut down
CIA front USAID.
Watchdog Tries to Verify Coordinates of Afghan Health Clinics; Gets a Surprise
When the official watchdog overseeing U.S. spending on Afghanistan asked the U.S. Agency for International Development recently for details about the 641 health clinics it funds there, the agency readily provided a list of geospatial coordinates for them.
But when the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) went looking for the $210 million worth of clinics, the majority of them weren’t there.
John Sopko, the special inspector general, sent USAID a letter on June 25 asking about the clinics.
“Thirteen coordinates were not located within Afghanistan,” the letter reads. Additionally, 13 more were duplicates, 90 clinics had no location data and 189 coordinate locations had no structure within 400 feet.
One set of coordinates was in the Mediterranean Sea. ...
In his understated conclusion, Sopko noted drily: “To provide meaningful oversight of these facilities, both USAID and MOPH (the Afghan Ministry of Public Health) need to know where they are.” ...
And this isn’t the first time that USAID has handed SIGAR faulty or inadequate data on its public health missions in Afghanistan. In 2012, when SIGAR requested information about USAID’s infrastructure projects, including new schools, clinics and roads, large parts of the dataset were missing, inaccurate or duplicated. According to a 2013 letter from SIGAR, there were “concerns” about the dataset’s “completeness and reliability,” not just in terms of faulty location data but also missing cost information and project descriptions.
Russia’s Gazprom Halts Ukraine Gas Shipments Over Lack of Payment
Russia’s OAO Gazprom company has confirmed today that it is halting all shipments of natural gas into neighboring Ukraine because that nation’s natural gas monopoly Naftogazhas not made any advanced payments for gas in July. ...
The last pricing agreement expired at the end of June, and EU-brokered talks on a new price were unresolved, with Naftogaz announcing yesterday it wouldn’t make any payments until a new price was set. Gazprom, consequently, isn’t sending them any gas.
Ukraine gas sales are a major deal to the EU, much of which similarly relies on Gazprom for natural gas supplies, because the primary pipeline into Europe goes through Ukraine. Gazprom has warned that supplies to Europe might be disrupted in the case of a long-term lack of sales to Ukraine, because Ukrainian companies will try to siphon off European supply.
Germany appoints senior judge to inspect list of NSA targets
Germany on Wednesday named a former senior judge as special investigator to inspect a list of targets that German intelligence tracked on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), causing a political uproar.
Critics have accused Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff of giving the German BND foreign intelligence agency the green light to help the NSA spy on European firms and officials, triggering a scandal that has dented Merkel's popularity. ...
Merkel's coalition agreed on Kurt Graulich, a former judge at the Federal Administrative Court, to be the special investigator, according to the head of the parliamentary committee investigating NSA practices, Christian Flisek.
Opposition lawmakers had asked for details of the list, which is considered crucial to establishing whether German intelligence officials were at fault in helping the NSA.
WikiLeaks Claims NSA Targeted German Ministers Beyond Merkel
WikiLeaks published a list of German phone numbers Wednesday that it claimed showed the U.S. National Security Agency eavesdropped on senior German officials beyond Chancellor Angela Merkel. ...
The secrecy-spilling site's latest report is likely to rekindle concerns in Germany that the NSA was engaged in widespread surveillance of its close ally. Last week, WikiLeaks published documents that appeared to show the NSA had eavesdropped on the French government, prompting anger in Paris.
WikiLeaks said the new, partially-redacted list of 69 phone and fax numbers belonged to senior officials at Germany's economy and finance ministries, among others.
The site also published two documents it claimed were summaries of conversations intercepted — one involving Merkel and a second involving a senior aide — concerning the Greek debt crisis. The second conversation was intercepted by British intelligence, which passed it to the NSA, according to WikiLeaks.
There's far more here than can be fairly excerpted. This article asks some really good questions worth reading in full.
OPM, CISA, and the Cybersecurity Oxymoron
In Congress, bad policy ideas are like vampires: They are very hard to kill because they’re always somehow coming back from the dead. Such is the case with this year’s iteration of the Senate’s “cybersecurity information sharing” legislation, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), offered by the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).
The bill has been roundly criticized by a wide range of privacy and civil liberties groups, many of whom view the legislation as a de facto surveillance bill. Even though an attempt to attach CISA to the annual National Defense Authorization Act failed last month, rumors persist on Capitol Hill that CISA will rise from the dead in July and get another shot on the Senate floor, with the recent and massive hack of the Office of Personnel Management’s databases being used to justify moving forward with the bill.
But would CISA actually help prevent future cyber attacks of the kind suffered by OPM? No. ...
Have existing cyber info sharing arrangements proved ineffective? What has been learned from the existing multi-year DHS experience with industry? Was the Sony hack caused by a failure to share info with the government? To these questions, CISA’s supporters have no answers, but they are exactly the kind of questions that need to be answered before offering and passing still more cybersecurity legislation.
The bill does not designate a single department or agency as the organization responsible for carrying out the proposed cyber information sharing scheme it creates, and for enforcing compliance across federal agencies. ... The bill also fails to address multiple, GAO-documented federal department/agency cyber vulnerabilities over the last several years, their causes, and potential remedies. ...
As the recent OPM breach demonstrated, the vulnerability of federal systems is our greatest cyber Achilles’ heel — and allowing the sharing of inadequately protected personally identifying information (PII) from the private sector to the federal government will make that vulnerability worse.
British Tribunal Flip-Flops on Wrongful Surveillance of Amnesty International
A British tribunal in charge of investigating public abuse of surveillance admitted on Wednesday that the U.K. government’s spy agency illegally retained communications it swept up from Amnesty International, the largest human rights group in the world.
The revelation, disclosed in a curt email, is particularly shocking given that just last week the Investigatory Powers Tribunal issued a determination declaring that that Amnesty was not the subject of illegal spying. ...
Amnesty International responded with outrage. In a press release, it described the tribunal’s email as a “shocking revelation” that “made no mention of when or why Amnesty International was spied on, or what was done with the information obtained.” ...
Other privacy groups reacted strongly to the revelation. “Today’s farcical developments place into sharp relief the obvious problems with secret tribunals where only one side gets to see, and challenge, the evidence,” said Eric King, deputy director of the London based Privacy International, in a statement. “Five experienced judges inspected the secret evidence, seemingly didn’t understand it, and wrote a judgment that turned out to be untrue. We need to know why and how this happened.”
He concluded: “Any confidence that our current oversight could keep GCHQ in check has evaporated. Only radical reforms will ensure this never happens again.”
Canadian Surveillance Agency Says Snowden Leaks Were Damaging, Because We Say So
Talking points prepared in March for Canada’s surveillance chief accuse NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of severely damaging Canada’s spy operations.
The newly disclosed briefing document was prepared by the staff of the Communications Security Establishment — the Canadian counterpart to the National Security Agency — in anticipation of the appearance of newly arrived CSE chief, Greta Bossenmaier, before a House of Commons committee.
The document includes the familiar, unsupported assertions about how Snowden’s “unauthorized disclosures” have “diminished the advantage we have had” over foreign targets, “both in the short term but more worryingly in the long term.”
But what’s most interesting about the document is the part where Bossenmaier is advised on how to deal with any questions she might be asked by her overseers, should they request evidence to support her assertions.
The section is headed: “IF PRESSED ON THIS OR ANY OTHER DISCLOSURE.”
And here is everything that follows:
We do not comment on the operations, methods, or capabilities of Canada or our allies.
Bossenmaier followed instructions.
Tsipras, Syriza get a helping hand from an unlikely source:
IMF says Greece needs extra €60bn in funds and debt relief
International lender issues strong message to Europe by warning that Athens’ debts are unsustainable and it needs 20-year grace period on debt repayments
The International Monetary Fund has electrified the referendum debate in Greece after it conceded that the crisis-ridden country needs up to €60bn (£42bn) of extra funds over the next three years and large-scale debt relief to create “a breathing space” and stabilise the economy.
With days to go before Sunday’s knife-edge referendum that the country’s creditors have cast as a vote on whether it wants to keep the euro, the IMF revealed a deep split with Europe as it warned that Greece’s debts were “unsustainable”.
Fund officials said they would not be prepared to put a proposal for a third Greek bailout to the Washington-based organisation’s board unless it included both a commitment to economic reform and debt relief.
According to the IMF, Greece should have a 20-year grace period before making any debt repayments and final payments should not take place until 2055. It would need €10bn to get through the next few months and a further €50bn after that.
The IMF’s analysis will be seized upon by the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who has been insisting he will only agree to tough new austerity measures if Greece is granted debt relief.
Greferendum Odyssey: EU slams door on talks with Greece till Sunday referendum
Syriza can’t just cave in. Europe’s elites want regime change in Greece
It’s now clear that Germany and Europe’s powers that be don’t just want the Greek government to bend the knee. They want regime change. Not by military force, of course – this operation is being directed from Berlin and Brussels, rather than Washington.
But that the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the troika of Greece’s European and International Monetary Fund creditors are out to remove the elected government in Athens now seems beyond serious doubt. Everything they have done in recent weeks in relation to the leftist Syriza administraton, elected to turn the tide of austerity, appears designed to divide or discredit Alexis Tsipras’s government. ...
There’s no suggestion of genuine compromise. The aim is apparently to humiliate Tsipras and his government in preparation for its early replacement with a more pliable administration. We know from the IMF documents prepared for last week’s “final proposals” and reported in the Guardian that the creditors were fully aware they meant unsustainable levels of debt and self-defeating austerity for Greece until at least 2030, even on the most fancifully optimistic scenario.
That’s because, just as the earlier bailouts went to the banks not the country, and troika-imposed austerity has brought penury and a debt explosion, these demands are really about power, not money. If they are successful in forcing Tsipras out of office, a slightly less destructive package could then be offered to a more house-trained Greek leader who replaced him. ...
The real risk across Europe is that if Syriza caves in or collapses, that failure will be used to turn back the rising tide of support for anti-austerity movements such as Podemos in Spain, or Sinn Féin in Ireland, leaving the field to populists of the right.
Either way, any Greek euro deal that fails to write off unrepayable debt or end the austerity squeeze will only postpone the crisis. If the Syriza government survives, it will have to change direction. Its fate, and its chaotic confrontation with the eurozone’s overlords, is going to shape all of Europe’s future.
Varoufakis: `I Will Not` Be Finance Minister on Yes Vote
Greek crisis: NSA phone tap of Angela Merkel reveals she knew Greece's debt was unsustainable
Back in 2011, before the most recent reorganization of Greek debt, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her personal assistant that Greece's debts would still be unsustainable under the terms of the new arrangement unless it received more generous assistance from Germany and other wealthier European countries.
That's according to this National Security Agency intercept of her communications, revealed to the world by Wikileaks:
Greece's creditors know that they aren't going to be paid back. But they want the debt to stay on the books anyway.
Why?
Well because as long as the debt is on the books, Greece needs to keep asking for permission to roll the debt over and failure to pay debts can be used as a political trigger for forcing Greece out of the Eurozone. The debt, in other words, isn't about money. It's about political control. If the debt is formally forgiven then not only do Greece's creditors need to write down some money, but they need to let Greece go on its merry way. If the debt is merely subjected to repeated rounds of extend and pretend then Greece's creditors get to keep making various demands about structural reform.
It's not, in other words, that Europe wants Greece to reform in order to get its money back. It's that Europe wants Greece to remain formally on the hook for its debts as a tool to get Greece to reform.
Pasco police officers who shot Antonio Zambrano-Montes not questioned for months
The three police officers who shot dead a Mexican man in Pasco, Washington, were not interviewed by investigators examining the case until almost three months after the incident occurred, newly released documents have revealed.
So much time had passed that two of the officers said they could no longer remember basic details relating to standard personnel issues, the documents show.
Hundreds of pages of interviews and forensics reports, along with new eyewitness video and police dashcam footage of the fatal shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, were released by the county prosecutor on Wednesday and provide the most detailed account of the 10 February incident to date. ...
Lawyers for the Zambrano-Montes family have been heavily critical of the investigation into the death – which was carried out by members of neighbouring police forces assembled into a “Special Investigation Unit” [SIU] –arguing that it “lacks objectivity” and that officers were not “interviewed in a timely fashion”.
The decision on whether to charge any of the officers involved in the death falls to the Franklin county prosecutor, Shawn Sant, who has yet to make a ruling, despite releasing almost 600 pages of documents from the SIU investigation on Wednesday.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wrapping up western tour, returning to Chicago.
Tune in at 2pm!
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TISA Exposed: 'Holy Grail' of Leaks Reveals Detailed Plot for Corporate Takeover
Fifty-two-nation Trade in Services Agreement uses trade regulations 'as a smokescreen to limit citizen rights,' says labor leader
Days ahead of another round of secret international negotiations, WikiLeaks on Wednesday released what it described as "a modern journalistic holy grail: the secret Core Text for the largest 'trade deal' in history."
That deal is the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, currently being negotiated by 52 nations that together account for two-thirds of global GDP. Those nations are the United States, the 28 members of the European Union, and 23 other countries, including Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Israel. According to WikiLeaks, TISA "is the largest component of the United States' strategic neoliberal 'trade' treaty triumvirate," which also includes the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). ...
Overall, the leak provides further evidence of how "a self-selected group of mainly rich countries" plans to "bypass other governments in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and rewrite its services agreement in the interests of their corporations," reads an expert analysis penned by University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey. "It also makes the new risks from TISA to governments' right to regulate in their national interest much clearer."
Or, as the Our World is Not For Sale network said in a statement: "TISA is exposed as a developed countries’ corporate wish lists for services which seeks to bypass resistance from the global South to this agenda inside the WTO, and to secure an agreement on services without confronting the continued inequities on agriculture, intellectual property, cotton subsidies, and many other issues."
Phil Thompson on the Historical Fight for Civil and Economic Rights
Bernie Sanders draws crowd of 10,000 at Wisconsin rally
The Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders touted his progressive credentials before his largest crowd to date on Wednesday night as he pushed his campaign into Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker’s backyard.
Sanders packed the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Madison, filling its 10,000 seats to show his bid to snatch the Democratic nomination from front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t a longshot.
“Tonight we have made a little bit of history,” the white-haired Sanders said at a podium positioned between Wisconsin and United States flags at the outset of his hourlong speech before a boisterous crowd. “Tonight we have more people at any meeting for a candidate of president of the United States than any other candidate.”
The Evening Greens
“People and Planet First”: Watch Naomi’s Press Statement at the Vatican
Naomi delivered the following remarks at a press conference introducing “People and Planet First: the Imperative to Change Course,” a high-level meeting being held at the Vatican this week to explore Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ recently-released encyclical letter on ecology. The gathering will take place on July 2-3, and is being convened by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the International Alliance of Catholic Development Organisations (CIDSE).
Here is video of the full press conference:
[Naomi Klein's presentation starts at about 39:20]
BP set to pay largest environmental fine in US history for Gulf oil spill
- BP will pay $18.7bn after the justice department and four states sued
- Money will be divided among states and earmarked for cleanup projects
The US justice department, along with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Florida, all sued BP for damages not covered by the company’s earlier settlements with businesses and individuals harmed by the worst offshore spill in US history.
The settlement ends all litigation between BP, the states and the US government and allows the company to pay over 18 years. BP’s share price rose on the news.
Last September, judge Carl Barbier, who has overseen the tortuous legal case resulting from the disaster, ruled BP had been “grossly negligent” in its handling of the well. The decision opened up BP to the highest possible fines.
The company will pay $7.1bn in “natural resource damage assessment”, and the money will be divided among the states and earmarked for environmental cleanup projects related to the spill. BP was fined $5.5bn under the Clean Water Act. ...
The spill affected the shore of the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida. Its impact on seafood and wildlife is still being assessed.
California conservation efforts cut water use by 29%
California water regulators say cities showed their best drought conservation yet by cutting water use by 29% in May compared with two years ago. ...
Water savings are compared to 2013, the year before Brown declared a drought emergency.
Governor Jerry Brown in April ordered a 25% reduction in urban water use. Conservation has been lagging despite the historic dry period. The last report showed 13.5% conservation in April.
Greenpeace and utilities launch suit against Hinkley nuclear plant
Nine German and Austrian utilities selling renewable energy join with green group to launch legal action against state aid for new nuclear power in UK
Greenpeace and nine German and Austrian utilities selling renewable energy said on Thursday they are launching legal action against state aid for a new British nuclear power plant, which was approved by the European commission.
Greenpeace and the others in the group said at a news briefing that the lawsuit would be filed with the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in the coming days, over the Hinkley Point C project in south-west England.
It would be based on the argument that billions of euros of subsidies for nuclear energy would distort prices in mainland European power markets, which are linked to those in Britain via a small French interconnector.
“We are complaining against these boundless nuclear subsidies, because from an ecological and macro-economic viewpoint, they appear senseless and bring substantial financial disadvantages for other energy suppliers, renewable energies and for consumers,” said Soenke Tangermann, managing director of the Greenpeace Energy co-operative.
Oklahoma High Court Says Fracking Companies Can Now Be Sued Over Quakes
Decision on Tuesday by state's high court could mean extraction companies are open to future court battles over fracking-induced quakes
Siding against the oil and gas industry, the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a woman injured during an earthquake can sue the energy companies whose fracking activities she says are responsible.
As Tulsa World reported days ahead of the ruling, the decision could be precedent setting for other such claims in the state.
Prague, Oklahoma resident Sandra Ladra is seeking damages for injuries she suffered during the record 5.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the area in 2011. She claims that the tremor caused rocks from her chimney to fall, hurting her legs and knees, and resulting in damages over $75,000.
Ladra says that New Dominion LLC and Spess Oil Company, which operate injection wells in the area, were to blame, and sought damages from them in the district court. The energy companies countered that she couldn't do so because the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), which regulates the industry, was the body that had jurisdiction.
But the state supreme court sided with Ladra, finding that "Allowing district courts to have jurisdiction in these types of private matters does not exert inappropriate 'oversight and control' over the OCC."
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 Photography Can Destroy Reality
XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications
The Bernie Sanders smear campaign has begun
Frackers: There will be blood
The Prime Minister of Greece Tweets his Case
Donation replaced nearly three times over
A Little Night Music
Louisiana Red - The Seventh Son
Louisiana Red & Acoustic Wire - Red´s Dream
Louisiana Red - Ride On, Ride On
Louisiana Red - I Done Woke Up
Louisiana Red - Vivienne
Louisiana Red - Midnight Rambler
Louisiana Red - I Wonder Who
Louisiana Red & Little Victor - Black Bayou
Louisiana Red - Who dat
Louisiana Red - Let Me Be Your Electrician
Louisiana Red - Bring It On Home To Me
Louisiana Red - Alabama Train
Louisiana Red - I Been Down So Long
Louisiana Red & Lefty Dizz - First Degree
Louisiana Red - That Detroit Thing
Louisiana Red - Rollin' Stone
Louisiana Red - You Got To Move
Louisiana Red/Peg Leg Sam - Poor Boy
Louisiana Red - I'm Too Poor To Die
Louisiana Red - Freight Train to Ride
Louisiana Red & Baums Bluesbenders - Boogie Jam
Louisiana Red & Carey Bell - Reagan Is For The Rich Man