Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 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 is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features jazz/funk trio Soulive. Enjoy!
Soulive - El Ron
Note: We here at the Evening Blues Weekend Edition often step beyond the boundries of traditional blues music. Joe shikspack so adeptly covers the blues genre in his weekday series that we at the Weekend Edition would find most trad blues offerings we could serve up as being redundant. Therefore Joe, in magnanimous manner has allowed us to color outside of the lines and we appreciate and thank him for that. Almost all modern American music has it's roots in traditional blues music anyway, so ultimately we do not stray far from the mother language. As Muddy Waters sang:
The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, let us add to that list (jazz, country, bluegrass, ragtime, folk, gospel, soul, swing and rhythm and blues) and all subsets thereof. -- JtC
We are all poor because we are all honest.
Red Dog - Oglala Sioux
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
enhydra lutris
NCTim
Funkygal
Elizabeth Warren Warns Washington: 'America Is More Progressive Than You Are'
Progressive icon Elizabeth Warren delivered an amazing speech at Netroots Nation, warning Washington and all conservatives that progressive values "are America's Values."
Link Submitted by: NCTim
Elizabeth Warren delivered the keynote address Friday morning at Netroots Nation, the annual convention for progressive activists. Her half-hour speech was met with cheers throughout, as she laid out her message that progressive values are America's values.
Warren opened by appealing to her base, acknowledging that the organizers' choice to hold this year's convention in Arizona was controversial, and "not because it is hot enough out there to melt your flip-flops," Warren quipped.
“I’m going to start right off the bat before we get any further in this – as loud as I can: no ifs, no ands, no buts, Arizona’s SB1070 is a stupid law. It is stupid. It is racist. It is unconstitutional and it should be struck down.”
She also started off by mentioning the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling, and by taking pot shots at her former opponent Scott Brown, whom she beat in 2012, and Sarah Palin, who issued a scathing critique of Warren's Netroots Nation speech last year. The Democratic U.S. Senator from Massachusetts mockingly labeled Palin's review "deep."
Greek banks to reopen for first time in three weeks
Withdrawal limit relaxed to €420 a week and deposit boxes can be emptied, but capital controls remain
Greek banks will reopen on Monday morning for the first time in three weeks, with queues expected to form outside branches as customers rush to empty deposit boxes they have been unable to access.
Withdrawals will still be restricted, but in a slight relaxation of capital controls, Greeks will be able to withdraw a weekly allowance of €420 (£290) in one transaction, rather than being limited to €60 a day. Restrictions on sending money abroad and other controls remain in place.
Deposit boxes are not affected by the capital controls and customers can take whatever they want from them, bank officials said. “We are expecting queues in our branches in the first two or three days. Many people will ask to open their safe deposit boxes,” said an official at EFG Eurobank Ergasias, the country’s third largest bank.
The Greek government made the order over the weekend for lenders to pull up their shutters. They were ordered to close on 29 June to prevent the financial system collapsing, as withdrawals skyrocketed over worries that the country’s debt crisis would see it ejected from the euro.
Greek debt crisis: Germany 'may consider' debt relief
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she is prepared to consider further debt concessions to Greece once its latest economic reforms are worked out.
In a television interview, she said she was open to discussing reduced interest rates and extended maturity dates.
But Mrs Merkel said this would happen only after details of the latest bailout had been agreed, and reiterated that there would be no debt write-off.
Meanwhile France's president called for the creation of a eurozone government.
Greece – Opening the Floodgates for the Financial Vultures
Once upon a time – about 6 days ago – Greece was still the potential gateway to a new Europe, a Europe that could see in Greece how to regain sovereignty, autonomy and self-determination – and above all, democracy, the very wisdom Greece gave Europe 2500 years ago.
Not respecting the people’s democratic and overwhelming NO to the troika imposed austerity, Mr. Tsipras and his small isolated team of Syriza members went to Brussels accepting a ‘package’ much worse than the one the people rejected a week before. By signing a memorandum of agreement, he offered the vultures of Europe, Washington and Wall Street a sell-out of his country.
Though, at the time, not all was lost. The MOA has no legal standing on its own before parliamentary ratification. In the night from Wednesday to Thursday from, 15 to 16 July 2015 – a date to remember – the Greek Parliament after a brief at times fiery debate and especially after Tsipras energetically defending his MOA under threat of resignation – gave green light to the criminal troika to suck Greece empty of any remaining public property and services.
It is very possible that Tsipras and his team were threatened – a process so well described in John Perkins’s “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. These Washington cum troika bandits know no scruples. But – if there were threats – why did Alexis Tsipras not come out in the open and tell the world about them? That’s what Chavez did, that’s what Correa of Ecuador just did and many others before him. That would have been his best protective shield. – The question is – how far does integrity reach? – For a statesman and leader of a country it should be unlimited.
How Goldman Sachs Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis
The investment bank made millions by helping to hide the true extent of the debt, and in the process almost doubled it.
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts.
The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.
In 2001, Greece was looking for ways to disguise its mounting financial troubles. The Maastricht Treaty required all eurozone member states to show improvement in their public finances, but Greece was heading in the wrong direction. Then Goldman Sachs came to the rescue, arranging a secret loan of 2.8 billion euros for Greece, disguised as an off-the-books “cross-currency swap”—a complicated transaction in which Greece’s foreign-currency debt was converted into a domestic-currency obligation using a fictitious market exchange rate.
As a result, about 2 percent of Greece’s debt magically disappeared from its national accounts. Christoforos Sardelis, then head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency, later described the deal to Bloomberg Business as “a very sexy story between two sinners.” For its services, Goldman received a whopping 600 million euros ($793 million), according to Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over from Sardelis in 2005. That came to about 12 percent of Goldman’s revenue from its giant trading and principal-investments unit in 2001—which posted record sales that year. The unit was run by Blankfein.
“We are Going to Collapse your Banks”: Greek Government Insider Lifts the Lid on Five Months of Financial Blackmail
Link Submitted by: NCTim
In this interview with Mediapart, a senior advisor to the Greek government, who has been at the heart of the past five months of negotiations between Athens and its international creditors, reveals the details of what resembles a game of liar’s dice over the fate of a nation that has been brought to its economic and social knees. His account gives a rare and disturbing insight into the process which has led up to this week’s make-or-break deadline for reaching a bailout deal between Greece and international lenders, without which the country faces crashing out of the euro and complete bankruptcy. He describes the extraordinary bullying of Greece’s radical-left government by the creditors, including Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s direct threat to cause the collapse of the Hellenic banks if it failed to sign-up to a drastic austerity programme. “We went into a war thinking we had the same weapons as them”, he says. “We underestimated their power”.
A senior member of Greece’s negotiating team with its European creditors agreed to a meeting last week in Athens with Mediapart special correspondent Christian Salmon. Speaking on condition that his name is withheld, he detailed the history of the protracted and bitter negotiations between the radical-left Syriza government, elected in January, and international lenders for the provision of a new bailout for the debt-ridden country.
The almost two-hour interview in English took place just days before last Sunday’s referendum on the latest drastic austerity-driven bailout terms offered by the creditors, and opposed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and which were finally rejected by 61.3% of Greek voters.
Disgraced ex-IMF chief Strauss-Kahn slams new Greek deal as ‘deadly blow’
The former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has decried the latest deal reached on a new Greek bailout as “profoundly damaging.”
While admitting that the deal removed the risk of a Grexit, he stressed that “the conditions of the agreement, however, are positively alarming for those who still believe in the future of Europe.”
“What happened last weekend was for me profoundly damaging, if not a deadly blow,” he wrote in the open letter entitled “To my German friends” published on Saturday.
Strauss-Kahn referred to the deal as a “diktat” and accused European leaders of putting ideology and political gains ahead of real problems, and thus risking the integrity of the European Union.
Seeking War to the End of the World
By Robert Parry
If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.
Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home.
Much of this “strategy” is personified by a single Washington power couple: arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and an early advocate of the Iraq War, and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who engineered last year’s coup in Ukraine that started a nasty civil war and created a confrontation between nuclear-armed United States and Russia.
Kagan, who cut his teeth as a propaganda specialist in support of the Reagan administration’s brutal Central American policies in the 1980s, is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post’s neocon-dominated opinion pages.
Gaza explosions target officials' cars
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A series of explosions on Sunday targeted cars belonging to officials in Gaza, including those from the ruling Hamas militant group.
Four blasts hit vehicles in Gaza City just after 06:00 (03:00 GMT). Two people suffered minor injuries.
News agencies said the five cars belonged to members of Hamas and the rival Islamic Jihad militant group.
Supporters of the so-called Islamic State group have threatened Hamas' leadership in Gaza in recent weeks.
US and Philippines Face People's Tribunal for Torture, Disappearances, Murder
Witnesses and survivors deliver emotional testimony about the impact of both governments' collaboration in the so-called War on Terror
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
The United States and Philippine governments are collaborating on the mass violation of human rights and self-determination in the southeast Asian country—inflicting torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings through the so-called War on Terror—witnesses and survivors testified Thursday during the Washington, D.C. kickoff of a grassroots International People's Tribunal.
Organized by numerous groups, including a global network called the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, the historic tribunal has assembled a jury of lawyers, scholars, ministers, and rights campaigners—and enlisted prominent attorney, activist, and former government official Ramsey Clark as their lead prosecutor.
Those gathered for the emotionally-charged testimony demanded that the administrations of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and U.S. President Barack Obama answer for their atrocities.
Coy Gemarino testified to a crowded auditorium at the Catholic University of America Thursday that her husband was extra-judicially killed in 2014, "brutally shot in front of my mother who is 91 years old."
Retired General: Drones Create More Terrorists Than They Kill, Iraq War Helped Create ISIS
Link Submitted by: NCTim
Retired Army Gen. Mike Flynn, a top intelligence official in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, says in a forthcoming interview on Al Jazeera English that the drone war is creating more terrorists than it is killing. He also asserts that the U.S. invasion of Iraq helped create the Islamic State and that U.S. soldiers involved in torturing detainees need to be held legally accountable for their actions.
Flynn, who in 2014 was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has in recent months become an outspoken critic of the Obama administration’s Middle East strategy, calling for a more hawkish approach to the Islamic State and Iran.
But his enthusiasm for the application of force doesn’t extend to the use of drones. In the interview with Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan, set to air July 31, the former three star general says: “When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.” Pressed by Hasan as to whether drone strikes are creating more terrorists than they kill, Flynn says, “I don’t disagree with that.” He describes the present approach of drone warfare as “a failed strategy.”
“What we have is this continued investment in conflict,” the retired general says. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just … fuels the conflict.”
On cue: Iran asks India to invest $8 billion
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Iran isn’t wasting any time.
Even before the US Congress approves the recent nuclear arms treaty with Iran, its president, Hassan Rouhani, is asking India to invest in infrastructure projects worth $8 billion. The proposal includes an expanded role in developing Chabahar, a strategic port that will open up access to Central Asia, Iran’s envoy to New Delhi said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Rouhani met with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the emerging markets economic summits in Russia this month. This occurred before the historic nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers was finalized, Iran’s ambassador to India told Reuters. If approved, the nuclear deal would end most economic sanctions on Iran.
India’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment, so Modi’s response to the offer remains unknown.
Saudi Foreign Minister Threatens Iran with Confrontation after Nuclear Talks Breakthrough
Link Submitted by: NCTim
Ostensibly angered by the successful conclusion of nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers, the Al Saud regime has threatened to “resolutely” confront the Islamic Republic over any alleged “mischief” in the region.
Following a Thursday meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Riyadh is “committed to confront” the Islamic Republic should Iran “try to cause mischief in the region.”
He made the comments only two days after Iran and the P5+1 states reached a conclusion on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the Austrian capital city of Vienna.
The success of Iran-P5+1 nuclear talks is viewed by political experts as a major blow to Israel and Saudi Arabia, who have been the two major critical voices seeking to throw a monkey wrench in the diplomatic process.
Iran’s ‘Look East’ policy takes wings
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Most analysts blithely overlook that Iran also has a “Look East” dimension to its foreign policies and once it shakes off the shackles of the UN sanctions, it is that vector which is bound to become lively almost overnight, impacting the regional alignments in the South Asian region in a major way.
Few would have noted that amidst the preoccupations over the Vienna talks between Iran and the world powers last week, President Hassan Rouhani found time to make a quick dash to Ufa, Russia – although Iran is not a member of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] is yet to take a decision on Iran’s membership. He was signaling the high importance Iran will attach to the “Look East” in its multi-vector foreign policies.
In the emergent context of the nuclear deal concluded at Vienna and the prospect of lifting of sanctions, Iran’s “Look East” will galvanize the country’s ties with Pakistan. Islamabad could anticipate this and within hours of the news coming in from Vienna, the Foreign Ministry had come out with a full-fledged statement, warmly welcoming the Iran deal and hailing it as auguring “well for peace and security in our region.”
Indeed, Pakistan has every reason to visualize itself as the biggest beneficiary of the lifting of sanctions on Iran in the immediate terms. The deck is now clear for the implementation of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, which has been stalling for years due to combined US-Saudi pressure on Pakistan.
Iraq closes border crossing with Jordan until further notice
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq closed its border with Jordan until further notice, in part to deprive Islamic State militants of taxes they impose on cargo trucks driving through their territory, a senior Iraqi military official said Thursday.
A Jordanian government official confirmed the closure of the Trebil crossing between Jordan and Iraq.
The closure dealt a new blow to Jordan's fragile economy which has suffered from the spillover of Islamic State land grabs in neighboring Iraq and Syria since the summer of 2014. In the spring, Jordan closed its only trade crossing with Syria after Islamic militants seized the area from Syrian government forces.
In Iraq, the Islamic State group controls large areas between Trebil and the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, in the country's Anbar province. Earlier this week, Iraq launched a large-scale military offensive to try to dislodge the Islamic State group from Anbar.
The Chattanooga Shootings: Can Attacking Military Sites of a Nation at War be “Terrorism”?
A gunman yesterday attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four U.S Marines. Before anything was known about the suspect other than his name — Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez — it was instantly and widely declared by the U.S. media to be “terrorism.” An FBI official announced at a press briefing: “We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not.”
That “terrorism” in U.S. political and media discourse means little beyond “violence by Muslims against the West” is now too self-evident to debate (in this case, just the name of the suspect seemed to suffice to trigger application of the label). I’ve documented that point at length many times — most recently, a couple of weeks ago when the term was steadfastly not applied to the white shooter who attacked a black church in Charleston despite his clear political and ideological motives — and I don’t want to rehash those points here. Instead, I want to focus on a narrow question about this term: Can it apply to violent attacks that target military sites and soldiers of a nation at war, rather than civilians?
In common usage (as opposed to legal definitions), “terrorism” typically connotes, if not denotes, “violence against civilians.” If you ask most people why they regard the 9/11 attack as so singularly atrocious, you will likely hear that it was because the violence was aimed indiscriminately at civilians and at civilian targets. If you ask them to distinguish why they regard civilian-killing U.S. violence as legitimate and justified but regard the violence aimed at the U.S. as the opposite (“terrorism”), they’ll likely claim that the U.S. only kills civilians by accident, not on purpose. Whether one is targeting civilian versus military sites is a central aspect to how we talk about the justifiability of violence and what is and is not “terrorism.”
Big Money Stalls Key Dodd-Frank Anti-Corruption Rule for 5 Years and Counting
Link Submitted by: NCTim
When Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill five years ago, on July 21, 2010, he looked extremely pleased with himself. It had been a tough fight, he said: “We had to overcome the furious lobbying of an array of powerful interest groups and a partisan minority determined to block change.” But now, Obama proclaimed, the bill’s reforms “will become the law of the land.”
HA HA PSYCH.
The reality of U.S. politics is that good ideas don’t win and take effect just because they’ve “become the law.” Yes, to get even that far, they have to have somehow threaded their way through a campaign system ruled by money instead of people; passed a House of Representatives overflowing with members from bizarrely gerrymandered districts; and made it past a filibuster in the anti-democratic Senate. But that is often just the start of the truly bloody trench warfare.
One case study is Dodd-Frank’s Section 1504. Congress, on July 21, 2010, gave the Securities and Exchange Commission 270 days to issue a rule on how exactly to implement it. Today, 1,821 days later, there still is no rule.
Fight over police videos likely to continue despite ruling
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge's decision to release videos showing police killing an unarmed California man doesn't mean it will be easier for the public to get such footage. In fact, it shows police will do all they can to keep recordings secret.
Even after U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled Tuesday in favor of news media companies that the First Amendment required unsealing the evidence in a lawsuit, the city of Gardena took its aggressive fight to shield the footage from view to a higher court.
"We have serious privacy concerns as it relates to the release of police videos in general," Gardena Police Chief Ed Medrano said in a statement after the ruling. "Although the video has been released, we are still moving forward with our appeal because we are concerned about the broader implications of this decision."
The ruling comes amid a broader debate about whether public accountability requires disclosure of video of officers using force recorded by a growing number of cameras worn on police uniforms and mounted in their cruisers. Police want to keep footage under wraps as evidence exempt from disclosure and to protect the privacy of people caught on camera.
Pastor Encourages Followers To Use Guns To Fight Against Same-Sex Marriage Rights In Viral Video
Gun-wielding preacher tells his followers to fight back against same-sex marriage rights. “It’s time that we finally take a stand and say no more.”
Link Submitted by: NCTim
Former Arizona televangelist Joshua Feuerstein isn’t happy about the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing marriage equality across the country. He’s so upset that he created a video where he waves a semiautomatic assault rifle and tells his followers, “It’s time that we finally take a stand and say no more. We’re not backing up any further.”
Feuerstein shared the video with his 1.6 million followers on Facebook, and it has been viewed more than 5 million times since it was uploaded on July 9.
Feuerstein first claims an essentially fake and definitely outdated story about a gay man supposedly suing two publishers for $70 million over anti-gay passages in the Bible proves same-sex marriage is really about helping the left and liberals "to come after Christianity."
But that's just the first part of Feuerstein's hyperbolic rant.
Medicaid enrollment surges, stirs worry about state budgets
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ATLANTA (AP) — More than a dozen states that opted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act have seen enrollments surge way beyond projections, raising concerns that the added costs will strain their budgets when federal aid is scaled back starting in two years.
Some lawmakers warn the price of expanding the health care program for poor and lower-income Americans could mean less money available for other state services, including education.
In Kentucky, for example, enrollments during the 2014 fiscal year were more than double the number projected, with almost 311,000 newly eligible residents signing up. That's greater than what was initially predicted through 2021. As a result, the state revised its Medicaid cost estimate from $33 million to $74 million for the 2017 fiscal year. By 2021, those costs could climb to a projected $363 million.
"That is a monstrous hole that we have got to figure out how to plug, and we don't know how to do it," said Kentucky state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican who leads the Senate budget committee and opposed expansion. "The two biggest things that keep me up at night are state pensions and the cost of expanded Medicaid."
Hacking Team and Boeing Subsidiary Envisioned Drones Deploying Spyware
There are lots of ways that government spies can attack your computer, but a U.S. drone company is scheming to offer them one more. Boeing subsidiary Insitu would like to be able to deliver spyware via drone.
The plan is described in internal emails from the Italian company Hacking Team, which makes off-the-shelf software that can remotely infect a suspect’s computer or smartphone, accessing files and recording calls, chats, emails and more. A hacker attacked the Milan-based firm earlier this month and released hundreds of gigabytes of company information online.
Among the emails is a recap of a meeting in June of this year, which gives a “roadmap” of projects that Hacking Team’s engineers have underway.
On the list: Develop a way to infect computers via drone. One engineer is assigned the task of developing a “mini” infection device, which could be “ruggedized” and “transportable by drone (!)” the write-up notes enthusiastically in Italian.
Activists: US overstates encryption threat, underreports wiretap figures
Link Submitted by: NCTim
National security and law enforcement officials have frequently warned that the use of encryption software represents a real threat to their core responsibilities preventing attacks and combating serious crime.
Among them, FBI Director James Comey has warned that “encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place.” Encryption scrambles the content of emails and phone calls and other electronic communications, such as mobile phone apps, pagers and fax machines. Comey added that its use “will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels.”
Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates echoed those thoughts, saying encryption could hamper access to information considered vital for national security. “Crucial information becomes, in effect, ‘warrant proof,’” she said.
Encryption ‘threat’
Even the New York Times is body-shaming Serena Williams now: It’s time to break this absurd and insulting habit once and for all
Despite being one of the greatest athletes of all time, Williams has dealt with body-shaming her entire career
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
You needn’t concern yourself with the size of Serena’s butt. Don’t bother losing sleep over the musculature of her legs. After 21 Grand Slams, she’s going to be just fine. And the woman accurately described as looking like a pretty “Disney princess” after winning her sixth Wimbledon championship has had more than enough concern trolling over her body by now.
The 33-year-old superstar easily qualifies as one of the greatest athletes of all time, living or dead, male or female. As the Guardian aptly put it “We’re lucky to be living in her time.” And yet along with the narrative of her awe-inspiring achievements, Williams has, since she exploded on the scene in the late ’90s, been the subject of relentless scrutiny for her powerful-looking body. After she went through injury and a spectacular tumble in the ranks roughly a decade ago, she recalled, “Everyone called me fat, saying I was really unfit.Every paper, the headline was ‘fat, fat, fat.’” In 2007, the Telegraph breathlessly noted her “weight loss” and “the new, slim-line Williams,”but then, a notoriously jaw-dropping 2009 feature by Jason Whitlock took her to task for “arguably pushing 175 pounds” and lamented, “She’d rather eat, half-ass her way through non-major tournaments and complain she’s not getting the respect her11-major-championships résumé demands.” And last year, Russian tennis chief Shamil Tarpischev was rightly fined for snarking on the bodies of “the Williams brothers” and declaring, “It’s frightening when you look at them.” And then came this weekend.
Even as she was solidifying her role as a living legend, defeating opponents who, as the Atlantic points out, were kindergarten-age when Williams was on her first Grand Slam, the New York Times’ Ben Rothenberg was busy commenting that “Williams, who will be vying for the Wimbledon title against Garbiñe Muguruza … has large biceps and a mold-breaking muscular frame, which packs the power and athleticism that have dominated women’s tennis for years. Her rivals could try to emulate her physique, but most of them choose not to.” The piece further notes that “body-image issues among female tennis players persist, compelling many players to avoid bulking up,” and also quotes Agnieszka Radwanska’s coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, who says, “It’s our decision to keep her as the smallest player in the top 10. Because, first of all she’s a woman, and she wants to be a woman.” The implications were clear — Williams treads a lonely path. And if you’ve ever dared to go deeper into some online sports conversations or God forbid the replies on Twitter, you’ll see a consistent level of far worse observations, a deluge of flat-out mockery for Williams’ body.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: 900 coopers join stillcleaners on strike at Standard Oil refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey.
Tune in at 2pm!
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APNewsBreak: Free broadband for 5 NYC housing developments
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
NEW YORK (AP) — The city is poised to begin providing free Internet broadband access to more than 16,000 residents of its sprawling public housing system.
Buildings at five of the poorest New York City Housing Authority complexes will start being wired for the high-speed connection this fall, officials told The Associated Press ahead of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio's public announcement, scheduled for Thursday.
The city will spend $10 million to deliver the Internet to residents of the Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx, the poorest area in the city; the Red Hook East and Red Hook West Houses in Brooklyn; and the Queensbridge North and Queensbridge South Houses in Queens. The Queensbridge Houses, the largest development in the nation, will be the first to receive the program.
City officials have said they want to change the perception that access to high-speed Internet is a luxury rather than a utility.
More rain expected in California on 2nd day of summer storm
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
LOS ANGELES (AP) — More rain is expected Sunday in the second day of a summer storm that has brought beach closures, flash floods and power outages along with thunder and lightning to Southern California.
The region was expected to receive scattered showers again Sunday, with downpours in some areas, as remnants of tropical storm Dolores off Baja California bring warm, muggy conditions northward, said National Weather Service meteorologist David Sweet.
The unusual weather turned Los Angeles County's typically packed coast into empty stretches of sand when the threat of lightning forced authorities to close 70 miles of beaches Saturday. The popular Santa Monica Pier and its nearby beaches were also shuttered.
Last summer, a lightning strike killed a man at Venice Beach and injured about a dozen people.
'If We Can Do It, So Can You': Marshall Islands Makes Inspiring Climate Pledge
Pacific island nation on the frontlines of climate crisis announces goal to be emission-free by 2050
Faced with the disastrous impacts of the growing climate crisis, the Marshall Islands, a remote Pacific island nation, has taken a decisive step towards the preservation of the planet, as well as its own land and people.
On Sunday, Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) President Christopher Loeak announced his country would be the first small island nation to submit to the United Nations a clear climate target for 2025 ahead of the upcoming Paris climate summit.
"I am proud that, despite the climate disasters hitting our shores with increasing regularity, we remain committed to showing the way in the transition to a low-carbon economy," he said. "We may be small, but we exemplify the new reality that going low carbon is in everyone’s interests. It improves our economy, our security, our health and our prosperity, particularly in the Pacific and more broadly in the developing world."
According to the pledge, known as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (or INDC), the island nation has committed to reduce emissions by 32 percent below 2010 levels by 2025, and 45 percent by 2030, with the longer-term vision of zero emissions by 2050, if not earlier.
Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our Frightening Water Emergency
For years, Americans dismissed dire water shortages as a problem of the Global South. Now the crisis is coming home.
The United Nations reports that we have 15 years to avert a full-blown water crisis and that, by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. Five hundred renowned scientists brought together by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that our collective abuse of water has caused the earth to enter a “new geologic age,” a “planetary transformation” akin to the retreat of the glaciers more than 11,000 years ago. Already, they reported, a majority of the world’s population lives within a 30-mile radius of water sources that are badly stressed or running out.
For a long time, we in the Global North, especially North America and Europe, have seen the growing water crisis as an issue of the Global South. Certainly, the grim UN statistics on those without access to water and sanitation have referred mostly to poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and large parts of Asia. Heartbreaking images of children dying of waterborne disease have always seemed to come from the slums of Nairobi, Kolkata, or La Paz. Similarly, the worst stories of water pollution and shortages have originated in the densely populated areas of the South.
But the global water crisis is just that—global—in every sense of the word. A deadly combination of growing inequality, climate change, rising water prices, and mismanagement of water sources in the North has suddenly put the world on a more even footing.
There is now a Third World in the First World. Growing poverty in rich countries has created an underclass that cannot pay rising water rates. As reported by Circle of Blue, the price of water in 30 major US cities is rising faster than most other household staples—41 percent since 2010, with no end in sight. As a result, increasing numbers cannot pay their water bills, and cutoffs are growing across the country. Inner-city Detroit reminds me more of the slums of Bogotá than the North American cities of my childhood.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Going to the beach may require hand sanitizer in addition to sunscreen
“No swimming” signs have already popped up this summer along coastlines where fecal bacteria have invaded otherwise inviting waters. Some vacationers ignore the signs while others resign themselves to tanning and playing on the beach. But should those avoiding the water be wary of the sand, too? New research in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology investigates reasons why the answer could be “yes.”
Sewage-contaminated coastal waters can lead to stomach aches, diarrhea and rashes for those who accidentally swallow harmful microbes or come into contact with them. But over the past decade, scientists have been finding fecal bacteria in beach sand at levels 10 to 100 times higher than in nearby seawater. Tao Yan and colleagues wanted to find out why.
Acidic Arctic Ocean Threatens Food Web
One byproduct of rising carbon-dioxide levels is increasing ocean acidity — a phenomenon that scientists have termed an existential threat to marine life. The waters of the Arctic and the far-north Pacific are particularly prone to acidification as a result of several natural factors, so scientists regard the region as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world's oceans. A new study shows that within just fifteen years these waters may be too acidic for a range of marine animals to build and maintain their shells year round.
Ocean acidification works like this: The top layer of the ocean comes into contact with atmospheric gases, gradually dissolving them. Carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid when dissolved in water, increasing the ocean's acidity. As ocean water acidifies, it eventually loses its ability to maintain levels of calcium carbonate minerals that many marine organisms, from tiny plankton at the bottom of the food chain to clams and crabs, require to build their shells.
The new study, published in the journal Oceanography, notes that already, "[t]he rapid accumulation of carbon dioxide in the upper thousand meters of the ocean has fundamentally altered the chemistry of seawater, making the ocean on average ~30% more acidic."
Does past sea level rise portend future rise from warming?
You may have seen claims in recent weeks that historic records show a global temperature rise could give us sea levels 20 feet higher than the norm. How accurate are these claims, and why is it important that we take this issue seriously?
The reports are a result of a University of Florida study that was recently published in the journal Science. The researchers, including lead author Andrea Dutton, wanted to investigate how historically Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have reacted to global temperature rises and therefore get a glimpse of how current climate change might impact our sea levels.
The international team of scientists wanted to look at evidence of peak sea levels during several different periods of history and how that affected the polar ice sheets. They used computer models and geological evidence to specifically identify when average temperatures were around 1 to 3 °C (1.8 to 5.4 °F) above preindustrial levels–this being the standard level that we use to assess modern climate change. The researchers then looked at how high global sea levels were compared to the base rate when the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic had retreated.
Human activities are jeopardizing Earth's natural systems, health of future generations
New report calls for action to ensure future health, environmental sustainability, showing that solutions are within reach
A new report released by The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, calls for immediate, global action to protect the health of human civilization and the natural systems on which it depends. The report, Safeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch, provides the first ever comprehensive examination of evidence showing how the health and well-being of future generations is being jeopardised by the unprecedented degradation of the planet's natural resources and ecological systems.
"This Commission aims to put the health of human civilizations, and their special relationship with the larger biosphere, at the centre of concerns for future planetary sustainability. Our civilization may seem strong and resilient, but history tells us that our societies are fragile and vulnerable. We hope to show how we can protect and strengthen all that we hold dear about our world," says Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet and one of the report authors.
The report was written by a Commission of 15 leading academics and policymakers from institutions in 8 countries, and was chaired by Professor Sir Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK. It demonstrates how human activity and development have pushed to near breaking point the boundaries of the natural systems that support and sustain human civilizations.
The role of oceanic plankton in cloud formation
Nobody knows what our skies looked like before fossil fuel burning began; today, about half the cloud droplets in Northern Hemisphere skies formed around particles of pollution. Cloudy skies help regulate our planet’s climate and yet the answers to many fundamental questions about cloud formation remain hazy.
Satellites use chlorophyll’s green color to detect biological activity in the oceans. The lighter-green swirls are a massive December 2010 plankton bloom following ocean currents off Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America.NASA
New research led by the University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory suggest tiny ocean life in vast stretches of the Southern Ocean play a significant role in generating brighter clouds overhead. The results were published July 17 in the online, open-access journal Science Advances.
Galapagos airport evolves to renewable energy only
The Galapagos islands are known, of course, for those lumbering, giant tortoises and as the inspiration for Darwin's theory of evolution.
Now they boast another cool distinction: an airport believed to be the only one in the world working exclusively on wind and solar energy.
The metamorphosis to an earth-friendly place serving nature-loving tourists could not be more stark, considering that the airport was actually born of war.
During World War II, US forces built an airfield here on Baltra, one of the 13 islands that make up the Galapagos archipelago in the Pacific, roughly 1,000 kilometers (660 miles) off Ecuador.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Bernie Sanders Takes His Populism to the Red States and Draws Huge Crowd
People and Planet Benefit From ‘Green’ Buildings
The Racist Killing Fields in the US: The Death of Sandra Bland
Hellraisers Journal: 150,000 miners pledge full support to John R Lawson and to U. M. W. of A.
No Time Left!
Making Black Lives Matter
Against the brain-fog
Arrested for being trans
A Little Night Music
Soulive - Hat Trick
Soulive w/John Scofield - What You See Is What You Get
Soulive - Flurries
Soulive w/Jon Cleary - When You Get Back
Soulive - Too Much
Soulive - Eleanor Rigby / I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Soulive - Cannonball
Soulive W/ Susan Tedeschi - Misunderstood
Soulive - Spanish Joint
Soulive - Backwards Jack
Soulive w/ Susan Tedeschi - Butterfly
Soulive - Bridge to 'Bama
Soulive feat. Warren Haynes - Born Under A Bad Sign
Soulive - Cash's Dream
Soulive w/John Scofield - Tabasco
Soulive feat. Warren Haynes & Derek Trucks- Thrill Is Gone
Soulive - Uncle Jr.
Soulive - Turn It Out
Soulive - Vapor