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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta bluesman and sole pupil of Robert Johnson Robert "Junior" Lockwood. Enjoy!
Robert Lockwood, Jr. - King Biscuit Time
“If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.”
-- David Graeber
News and Opinion
Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners
As Greece’s spending on weapons shows, it’s not pensions or benefits that cripple economies, it’s the military-industrial complex
Somewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government’s purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.
There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it’s not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army. ... Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world’s fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.
So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. Is this an unfair characterisation? A bit. It wasn’t just Germany. And there were many other factors at play in the escalation of Greek debt. But the postwar difference between the Germans and the Greeks is not the tired stereotype that the former are hardworking and the latter are lazy, but rather that, among other things, the Germans have, for obvious reasons, been restricted in their military spending. And they have benefited massively from that.
Thomas Piketty attacks hypocritical Germans for insisting on Greek austerity: They’re “a huge joke”
In an interview with the German publication Die Zeit, economist Thomas Piketty lashed out at conservatives in Germany and France for their “shocking ignorance of history” on the matter of debt repayment.
“Look at the history of national debt,” he began. “Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.”
Germany is particularly worthy of shame in this regard, Piketty argued, because it never paid its debt after the First or Second World War, but “it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt.”
“The history of public debt,” he added, “is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order or justice.”
Piketty referred to Germany’s current insistence on Greek repayment as “a huge joke,” because Germany “is the country that has never repaid its debt,” and therefore “has no standing to lecture other nations.” ...
Piketty concluded that the only way to solve the Greek crisis is to call “a conference on all of Europe’s debts, just like after World War II. A restructuring of all debt, not just in Greece but in several European countries, is inevitable.”
Tsipras to EU: Greece's Days as 'Laboratory for Austerity' Are Over
As the European Parliament convened in Strasbourg, France on Wednesday all eyes—and ears—were aimed at Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as he made his case for why the European Union must change its handling of the financial crisis in his own country and across the continent.
Arguing that his people—who overwhelmingly rejected the terms of a previous deal in a referendum on Sunday—have suffered more than enough living inside a "laboratory for testing austerity," Tsipras said his goal is to keep Greece in the eurozone, but that a "viable agreement" must replace what has been so far offered from the group of foreign creditors known as the Troika.
"We want an agreement that will give a final end to the crisis and show there is light at the end of the tunnel," Tsipras declared. So far, he argued, the bailout funds have not gone to help the Greek economy or the people, but instead have been funneled back to financial interests which have received political firepower from maneuvers by the European Central Bank, the IMF, and the most powerful members of the European Commission.
Greece Dra(ch)ma: 'Final' debt deal deadline set, Grexit scenario 'prepared'
Greece given days to agree bailout deal or face banking collapse and euro exit
Greece has 48 hours to strike a new bailout deal with its eurozone creditors or face a banking collapse, a humanitarian emergency, and the start of an exit from the single currency, European leaders decided on Tuesday evening.
Unless Athens presents convincing details entailing more austerity as the basis for its third bailout in five years, all 28 national EU leaders, not just those of the eurozone, are to gather in Brussels on Sunday in emergency session to discuss how to contain the fallout from Greece’s financial collapse.
“We have a Grexit scenario prepared in detail,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission.
The stark ultimatum emerged from a special eurozone summit in Brussels on Tuesday where the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, was pressed to explain to the other leaders how he wanted to proceed following his victory in a referendum on Sunday when his country voted no to eurozone austerity measures as the price of staying in the euro.
The Greek leadership exasperated EU leaders by failing to present new bailout proposals on Tuesday. It is to present a formal application on Wednesday for a new rescue package from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the eurozone’s permanent bailout fund. If Berlin, Paris, Brussels and other key creditor capitals can agree the terms and timings with Athens, Greece would be offered a stay of execution in the euro. Sunday’s summit would then be of the 19 eurozone leaders.
If not, the summit of all 28 leaders, including David Cameron and heads of government of other non-euro countries, would instead convene to deal with the consequences of a Greece cut loose from the eurozone financial system.
Five leading economists warn the German chancellor, “History will remember you for your actions this week.”
As most of the world knew it would, the financial demands made by Europe have crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175 percent of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital. ...
Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, democracy and prosperity, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.
In the 1950s, Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth and peace. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed program of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.
[From an open letter to Angela Merkel by Heiner Flassbeck, Thomas Piketty, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Dani Rodrik and Simon Wren-Lewis]
Keiser Report: Yanis Varoufakis 'Shane' of Greece
Chinese stock markets continue to nosedive as regulator warns of panic
Chinese stock markets tumbled again on Wednesday as a range of government measures aimed at preventing a further nose dive in share prices had no impact. ...
Within 10 minutes of trading on Wednesday morning, a wave of listed companies across China’s two stock markets had dropped by the daily limit of 10% and had their shares automatically suspended. About 1,400 companies, or more than half of those listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen – filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses. This suspension is likely to last “until the market is stabilised and liquidity is returned to the market”, said Chen Jiahe, chief strategic analyst with Cinda Securities.
China’s securities regulator said there was “panic” in the stock market with irrational selling off increasing and “leading the stock market to a situation of intense liquidity”.
As part of the latest efforts to prevent further losses, China’s state owned enterprises were ordered by the state asset regulator not to sell shares of their listed companies. The Assets Supervision and Administration Commission also encouraged them to purchase more shares in an effort to stabilise prices.
Pentagon Found Only 60 Syrian Rebels for Training Scheme
From the moment Congress put aside a huge chunk of money to train a new faction of pro-US Syrian rebels, the plan has been heralded by officials as an eventual game-changer. The Pentagon was to train some 5,400 rebels a year, a figure they later revised down to about 3,000.
There was a lot of debate about whether 3,000 or even 5,000 new rebels would be a difference maker, but all that debate seems sort of silly as officials today revealed that after many months of careful vetting, they’ve found a grand total of 60 rebels to train.
Since the Pentagon pumped some $500 million into this training program, they are getting Syrian rebels for about $9 million each, a bad deal even by Pentagon standards.
Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists
In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.
The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:
“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera. ...
The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters. But Kramer does bluntly acknowledge the Nazi truth about the Azov fighters. He also notes that American military advisers in Ukraine “are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the Azov group.”
While the U.S. advisers are under orders to keep their distance from the neo-Nazis, the Kiev regime is quite open about its approval of the central military role played by these extremists – whether neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Islamic militants. These extremists are considered very aggressive and effective in killing ethnic Russians.
The regime has shown little concern about widespread reports of “death squad” operations targeting suspected pro-Russian sympathizers in government-controlled towns. But such human rights violations should come as no surprise given the Nazi heritage of these units and the connection of the Islamic militants to hyper-violent terrorist movements in the Middle East.
Has the World Abandoned Gaza? Region Remains in Ruins a Year After Deadly Israeli Assault
Gaza One Year On, Life Amid the Ruins
According to the United Nations (UN), 18,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged during last summer's war. More than 120,000 suffered minor damage. One year on from the end of the war, 108,000 people — more than five percent of the strip's population — remain homeless and not a single destroyed home has yet been rebuilt.
While the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism — a UN-brokered agreement aimed at enabling building materials needed for reconstruction to be brought from Israel into Gaza — has increased the amount of building materials entering the strip, much of it has been earmarked for Qatari road building projects, and in total it still only equates to five percent of need. Further slowing progress is the massive shortfall in the $3.5 billion in donations pledged by the international community to help rebuild Gaza. Only around 27 percent had actually reached the strip by mid-April, according to the International Monetary Fund.
According to Oxfam, if reconstruction continues at this pace it could take "more than century" to repair the damage to Gaza's hospitals, schools and homes.
One year on from the war, hundreds of Gaza's poorest are still living in makeshift accommodation. In Khuzaa, a town nestling the Gaza-Israel border and the scene of the ferocious fighting, scores of families still live in metal containers without electricity or running water. In the winter temperatures sink to below zero while in summer they can soar to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, posing a major health risk for the young and elderly. Last winter one four month old baby died after suffering complications resulting from the cold and damp living conditions in the caravans. Many of families living here depend entirely on international aid and other charitable donations. Most cooking is done outside on fuel stoves.
#BlockTheFactory: One Year After Gaza War, Protesters Shut Down Drone Plants
Marking the one-year anniversary of the 2014 attack on Gaza, protesters in the United Kingdom and Australia on Monday shut down four drone factories owned by the biggest arms company in Israel, Elbit Systems.
The factories produce military drones that were used in Israel's 51-day offensive last summer, which saw the deaths of more than 2,200 people—including 1,400 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children.
Actions took place in two villages in Staffordshire in central UK—Shenstone and Tamworth—as well as Broadstairs, Kent, and Melbourne, Australia. Protesters blocked the roads and entrances to factories at those sites, denouncing Elbit Systems for what they say is its complicity in the Israeli military's alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The End of Encryption? NSA & FBI Seek New Backdoors Against Advice from Leading Security Experts
FBI and Comey Find New Bogeyman for Anti-Encryption Arguments: ISIS
After months of citing hypothetical crimes as a reason to give law enforcement a magical key to unlock encrypted digital messages, FBI Director James Comey has latched onto a new bogeyman: ISIS. ...
Now, in a preview of his appearance Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey is playing the ISIS card, saying that it is becoming impossible for the FBI to stop the group’s recruitment and planned attacks. (He uses an alternate acronym, ISIL, for the Islamic State.)
“The current ISIL threat … involves ISIL operators in Syria recruiting and tasking dozens of troubled Americans to kill people, a process that increasingly takes part through mobile messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted, communications that may not be intercepted, despite judicial orders under the Fourth Amendment,” Comey wrote on Monday in a blog post on the pro-surveillance website Lawfare.
While providing no specific, independently confirmable examples, Comey has claimed that FBI agents are currently encountering problems because of encrypted communications as they track potential ISIS sympathizers and radicals. ...
According to a Federal Courts report on wiretapping in 2014 published last week, law enforcement personnel at the state and federal level were only stymied by encryption on four wiretaps all year.
White men make up 79% of elected prosecutors in US, study says
White Americans make up 95% of elected prosecutors across the US, according to a study that cites the non-indictments of white police officers in the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men as the “shocking” reality of a disproportionate and non-diverse criminal justice system that relies on prosecutorial power.
The study, from the San Francisco-based Women’s Donor Network, also found that that just 17% of elected prosecutors in the US are women – and just 1% are women of color.
The combination of these racial and gender disparities means that white men, who represent 31% of the population, hold 79% of the 2,437 elected prosecutors in the country at a time when growing attention to issues of misrepresentation in the criminal justice system has led to calls for reform.
“If we’re going to make progress in creating greater justice, eliminating overincarceration and excessive punishment, we are going to have to address the shocking lack of diversity in elected prosecutors across this country,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.
According to the report, black Americans represent less than 4% of elected prosecutors, and Latinos less than 2%. A full 60% of states have no elected black prosecutors at all. More than half (33) of the 61 identified black prosecutors are found in just two states: Mississippi and Virginia. In 15 states, including New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, every elected prosecutor is white.
Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt - Chris Hedges
This is an excellent article, worth clicking the link for and reading in full:
New SWAT Documents Give Snapshot of Ugly Militarization of U.S. Police
Extensive records from SWAT team raids in northeastern Massachusetts released today by the American Civil Liberties Union corroborate what police reform advocates have long insisted: that “Special Weapons And Tactics” units spend a majority of their time responding to low-risk situations that do not require SWAT’s quasi-military approach.
The documents include after-action reports from 79 SWAT operations between August 2012 and June 2014 by the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC, a consortium of police departments covering 925 square miles in Middlesex and Essex Counties outside Boston. According to NEMLEC, its SWAT team exists to respond to “critical incidents,” mainly “active shooters, armed barricaded subjects, hostage takers, and terrorists.”
However, an examination of the records by the The Intercept demonstrates that such critical incidents are few and far between in Northeast Massachusetts. Nonetheless, SWAT teams frequently roll out in “NEMLEC Communities,” carried in BearCat armored response vehicles and armed with flash-bang grenades.
Just one of the 79 SWAT deployments in 2012-14 — assistance with the search for the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing — involved terrorism. Other SWAT actions during that period show no hostage situations, no active shooters and only 10 non-suicidal barricaded subjects.
About half of the remaining cases involved everyday and often mundane police activity, including executing warrants, dealing with expected rioting after a 2013 Red Sox World Series game, and providing security for a Dalai Lama lecture. In one mission, 15 SWAT team members roved through Salem’s Halloween celebrations looking out for unspecified “gang-related activity,” but were warned by their commanders to maintain a “professional demeanor” given that “everyone has a camera phone and you don’t want to be on YouTube or the news later.”
Baltimore police chief fired in wake of scathing report on Freddie Gray protests
Baltimore police commissioner Anthony Batts has been fired by the city’s mayor, in a shock announcement made amid a sharply increased murder rate and scathing criticism of his handling of civil unrest earlier this year.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on Wednesday afternoon that she had decided to replace Batts, who has led the police department for almost three years. Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis is to take over as interim commissioner, she said.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Rawlings-Blake said she made the decision in an attempt to reverse a “crime surge” being suffered by the city. “Families are tired of feeling this pain, and so am I,” she said.
“We need a change,” said the mayor. “This was not an easy decision, but it is one that is in the best interests of the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better.”
Batts, 54, had been under increasing pressure to tackle a spike in violent crime. So far in 2015 the city has sustained a 48% rise in homicides and 86% rise in shootings compared with the same period last year.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on Day 11, final day of the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. Officers elected and headquarters established.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Matt Taibbi: Eric Holder Back to Wall Street-Tied Law Firm After Years of Refusing to Jail Bankers | Democracy Now!
Is Bernie Sanders really a socialist? Or just redefining socialism for America?
He remains a long-shot to win the Democratic party’s nomination, let alone the White House, but moderate colleagues in the Senate warn nonetheless that the media is failing to expose his extreme liberal agenda.
Republican opponents argue that the sight of an “honest-to-goodness socialist” even gaining on Clinton in the polls proves just how dangerously radical the Democratic party has become.
Yet by international or historical standards, it can be hard to detect the traditional hallmarks of socialism in the increasingly popular, and populist, rallies of Comrade Sanders.
A series of articles in the radical Jacobin magazine also point to the failure of other progressive champions such as George McGovern and Howard Dean to make much headway inside a party dominated by the Washington establishment.
“Like many leftists before him, the Democratic party has co-opted and changed Sanders, using him to help hinder the development of a genuine alternative to the capitalist parties,” added Ashley Smith in Socialist Worker.
But Sanders has been adamant from the outset of his campaign that he does not want to follow third-party candidates like Ralph Nader and risk letting in a Republican president by splitting the progressive vote, which is why he stood as a Democrat and not an independent, he said.
Bernie Sanders Rally in Portland, Maine
Hillary Clinton defends her trustworthiness in CNN interview
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defended her trustworthiness in her first national interview since declaring her candidacy for president nearly three months ago while on a campaign swing through Iowa on Tuesday.
Clinton dismissed attacks over her use of a private email address during her tenure as US secretary of state and foreign donations to her family’s philanthropy, saying the controversies were “largely fomented by and coming from the right”, in a sit-down interview with CNN senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar on Tuesday. ...
A CNN poll released on 2 June found that 57% of Americans thought that Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, a jump from 49% in March. Keilar suggested that Clinton’s use of private email was one reason for the erosion in trust.
Fossil Fuel Funding Boycott Puts Spotlight on Clinton Campaign
Progressive groups have a challenge for presidential hopefuls: Put your money where your mouth is on the climate, and swear off contributions from fossil fuel companies.
To affirm their commitment to taking on the climate crisis and "standing up to the corrupting influence of fossil-fuel companies," the campaign, launchedon Monday by The Nation and 350 Action, is calling on 2016 presidential and congressional candidates to sign a pledge committing to "neither solicit nor accept campaign contributions from any oil, gas, or coal company."
The Nation editors saidthey have asked each of the major declared presidential candidates in the the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties if they would be willing to honor the pledge.
Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley, as well as Green candidate Jill Stein, have agreed to do so. Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee said he supported strong climate action but would not sign the pledge.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, along with the 14 Republican candidates contacted—13 of which deny mankind's influence on climate change—did not reply.
As Grist reporter John Light noted, the challenge puts increasing pressure on Clinton, whose failure to respond does not match up with her rhetoric on the climate crisis.
The Evening Greens
David Suzuki: Welcome to an Extreme, Warming World
My hometown, Vancouver, is in a rainforest, so we celebrate sunny days. People I talk to are enjoying the recent warm, dry weather, but they invariably add, "This isn't normal" — especially with all the smoke from nearby forest fires.
With no mountain snowpack and almost no spring rain, rivers, creeks and reservoirs are at levels typically not seen until fall. Parks are brown. Blueberries, strawberries and other crops have arrived weeks earlier than usual. Wildfires are burning here and throughout Western Canada. Meanwhile, normally dry Kamloops has had record flooding, as has Toronto. Manitoba has been hit with several tornadoes and golf-ball-sized hail.
Unusual weather is everywhere. ...
The likely causes are complex: a stuck jet stream, the Pacific El Niño, natural variation and climate change. Even though it's difficult to link all events directly to global warming, climate scientists have warned for years that we can expect these kinds of extremes to continue and worsen as the world warms. Some hypothesize that the strange behaviours of this year's jet stream and El Niño are related to climate change, with shrinking Arctic sea ice affecting the former.
Several recent studies indicate a clear connection between increasing extreme weather and climate change. One, by climatologists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, looked at rising global atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures, which have increased water vapour in the atmosphere by about five per cent since the 1950s. According to the paper, published in Nature Climate Change, "This has fuelled larger storms, and in the case of hurricanes and typhoons, ones that ride atop oceans that are 19 centimetres higher than they were in the early 1900s. That sea-level rise increases the height of waves and tidal surges as storms make landfall." ...
Earth is clearly experiencing more frequent extreme weather than in the past, and we can expect it to get worse as we burn more coal, oil and gas and pump more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Fracking “super-emitters” are spewing a lot more climate-harming methane into the atmosphere than the EPA thinks
The fracking industry is spewing a lot more methane into the atmosphere than federal regulators think, a series of studies published Tuesday by the Environmental Defense Fund reveal.
What that means is that, at least in North Texas’ Barnett Shale, where the research took place, natural gas — which burns cleaner than coal but acts an incredibly potent greenhouse gas when leaked directly into the atmosphere — is having a much larger impact on climate change than we realize .
Altogether, the collection of 11 papers by scientists from 20 universities and private research firms conclude that emissions of methane — the impact of which on global warming is 35 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, over a 100-year period, and even more damaging in the short-term — in the Barnett Shale are 50 percent higher than what the EPA estimates. They’re coming, explains EDF chief scientist Steve Hamburg in a blog post, from “a small but widespread number of sources across the region’s oil and gas supply chain,” a major, 5,000 square mile operation that altogether accounts for 7 percent of the nation’s total natural gas output.
The scientists call those leaky sites “super-emitters.” At any time in the Barnett Shale, they estimate, you can find about 50 well pads, one processing plant and between two and three compressor stations that fit the bill — that’s only 2 percent of the total sites in the region, but they’re responsible for 19 percent of emissions.
Climate Commission Issues Blueprint for Low-Carbon Economy
Up to 96 percent of the emissions reductions needed by 2030 to keep global warming below a critical threshold of two degrees C could be achieved through a series of 10 steps, says a new report released by the Global Commission on the Economy and the Climate.
The Commission’s recommendations include:
Scaling up partnerships between cities, like the Compact of Mayors, to drive low-carbon urban development. Key aspects are investment in public transport, building efficiency, and better waste management. It says such measures could save around 17 trillion dollars globally by 2050.
Enhancing partnerships such as the deforestation programme REDD+, the 20×20 Initiative in Latin America, and the Africa Climate-Smart Agriculture Alliance to bring together forest countries, developed economies and the private sector to halt deforestation by 2030 and restore degraded farmland. The report says this would boost agricultural productivity and resilience, strengthen food security, and improve livelihoods for agrarian and forest communities.
The G20 should raise energy efficiency standards in the world’s leading economies for goods such as appliances, lighting, and vehicles. Investment in energy efficiency could boost cumulative economic output globally by 18 trillion dollars by 2035.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
On the One-Year Anniversary of Israel’s Attack on Gaza: an Interview with Max Blumenthal
TTIP in the EU: Rejecting Democracy at Every Turn
Hat tip Besame for this pretty cool video:
Base jumper's 'impossible' wingsuit flight through rock crevice in Swiss Alps – video
Attack on Greeks in European Parliament today
Trans women assaulted in public
A Little Night Music
Robert Jr Lockwood- This Is The Blues
Robert Lockwood jr. - Driving Wheel
Robert Lockwood Jr - Mean Black Spider Blues
Robert Lockwood, Jr. & Carey Bell - I'm a Steady Rollin' Man
Robert Lockwood Jr. - Lockwood's Boogie
Robert Lockwood, Jr. - Little Boy Blue
Robert Lockwood, Jr. - Sweet Home Chicago
Robert Lockwood Jr. - See See Rider Blues
Robert Lockwood jr. - Take a Little Walk With Me
Robert Lockwood Jr - Im Gonna Dig Myself A Hole
Robert Lockwood Jr - In The Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)
Robert Lockwood Jr. & The Aces - Route 66