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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This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features funk and R&B musician Jon Cleary. Enjoy!
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - More Hipper
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
The Wise Man believes profoundly in silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood, is ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence; not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shinning pool. His, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. Silence is the cornerstone of character.
Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman
or Ohíye S’a “Wins Often”
Wahpeton Santee Sioux
South Dakota, USA
(1858-1939)
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
Funkygal
enhydra lutris
This is why Hillary’s losing: The issue Jeb Bush and Donald Trump understand, which may keep Clinton from the White House
Her negatives are almost as bad as Trump's. She's not trusted, and losing swing states. Start talking about reform!
And here you thought Trump was wrong about everything. Chatting up CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he became the second GOP candidate in two days to pose as a reformer. Last Monday, Jeb Bush impersonated one in a ‘major speech’ at Florida State University. Nor was Bush first in the pool. In his May 27 kickoff, Rick Santorum, the evangelical teen idol of 2012, cited corruption 10 times and abortion just twice. Santorum’s attempted makeover might have raised more eyebrows were he not flat-lining at roughly 1 percent in the polls.
A day after Santorum’s announcement, George Pataki became the first candidate in either party to propose a specific ethics reform. Pataki called for a revolving door bill to stem the flood tide of ex-officials flowing into K Street from every government office. Trouble is, Pataki polls at roughly 0 percent, so when he talks, no one hears him either. With Bush and Trump blowing the bugle, more Republicans will fall in. If they blow loud enough, they may even wake up a few Democrats.
Government corruption is perhaps the central issue of the 2016 campaign because it’s the biggest problem facing our country. It’s the reason other problems never get solved. Corruption, not the chimera we call partisan gridlock, is what makes our government so inefficient and ineffectual and our politics so empty and vicious. It’s why an ever more cynical public has fled the civic life of the nation. It’s also why Democrats lose elections, though you wouldn’t know it to talk to one.
This isn’t the first time corruption has driven a national election, though with each passing year the public grows more forceful and explicit in expressing its ire. The above quote from Obama typified his 2008 campaign rhetoric. By the end of the race the promise of reform provided the rousing finish of most of his speeches. It’s what voters thought he meant when he vowed to ‘transform’ politics. His reform agenda was his most detailed. It too included a revolving door policy, a ban on lobbyists in high government positions and a memorable promise to invite C-SPAN cameras into health care negotiations. The Chicago Sun-Times called that pledge “a standard line of the campaign trail, a crowd pleaser that always, always, won him applause.”
The American empire is fading out: #BlackLivesMatter, Bernie Sanders & the secrets to a better tomorrow
Salon talks to philosopher Michael Hardt about how new forms of social movements can make a difference
Historians may end up describing this as a revolutionary moment.
It seems that in recent years no government, dictatorship or monarchy is safe. A protest movement in a small Mediterranean nation, Greece, threatens the whole European project, and a whole wave of leaderless protest movements throughout Europe in recent years still challenges the order. Middle Eastern and North African states remain in varying degrees of instability after the Arab Spring. The Green Revolution in Iran, though put down by authorities, might be seen to have turned that country toward a new moderation. Protest movements in Latin America in the 2000s have steered virtually the entire continent to the left and ended the hegemonic hold on the region by the U.S. since the Monroe Doctrine. Politicians in the United States now use the language of Occupy Wall Street, and just 4 years after the landmark protests, an Occupy-type candidate, the self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, challenges Hillary Clinton in a way that would not have been conceivable before thousands of Americans took to the streets and occupied to call for an end to runaway economic inequality.
It seems that only an immense police state keeps a secure lid on things these days, as we see in places like China and Russia. But that strategy creates problems of its own. America’s intensifying police-state experiment has made its largest cities into tinderboxes after decades of police violence and mass incarceration. The criminal justice system tasked with, in President Obama’s words, “containing and controlling problems” of poverty and racial subjugation has potentially created a problem it can neither contain nor control.
Philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri wrote presciently about the current circumstance in their “Empire” trilogy, whose first volume, “Empire,” was published 15 years ago on the eve of President Bush’s election. The book was a landmark in radical thought, leading Slavoj Zizek to offer that the two thinkers had “rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the 21st century.” Hardt and Negri describe both the contemporary nature of power (corporations, police, surveillance, and debt) and the manner of resistance which has come to emerge in the years after “Empire’s” publication, what Hardt and Negri termed the “multitude,” or resistance organizations composed of an array of struggles — economic, racial, gender, identity, and other modes of power and control. From the Arab Spring to resistance movements throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, nearly all theaters of resistance bear the mark of what Hardt and Negri describe in “Empire.”
Vowing to #SayHerName and More, Hundreds Gather to Honor Life and Death of Sandra Bland
After being arrested in Texas following routine traffic stop earlier this month, many questions remain about untimely death of woman who has further galvanized national movement
Hundreds of people attended the funeral of Sandra Bland on Saturday at the DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lisle, Illinois outside of Chicago to commemorate the woman whose untimely death in Texas jail cell on July 13 has further galvanized a national call demanding something be done about the extreme levels of police violence and the pervasive mistreatment of black women, men, and other minorities across the country.
Though an official autopsy report released Friday found that the available evidence suggests Bland hung herself inside her jail cell three days after being arrested following a confrontation with an officer who pulled her over for failing to signal, many of her family and friends—as well as members of the larger public—have questioned those findings and are demanding further investigation.
As the Chicago Tribune reported:
The majority of people attending Bland's funeral Saturday had never met her. Yet mothers stood in line outside the Lisle church for nearly an hour under the unforgiving sun, a thick layer of sweat forming on their foreheads and those of the crying infants they held in their arms. Teenagers held handwritten signs with photos of Bland they found on Facebook; some young men had made T-shirts that read “#SandySpeaks.”
Those attending Sandra Bland's funeral were joined by their fierce belief that, whatever the circumstance, the 28-year-old Naperville woman did not deserve to die.
Iran deal is about staving off the coming oil shock
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
The Iran nuclear deal signals a major shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Integral to the equation is oil, economics, terror – and US hegemony.
The Bush administration had initiated a long-term covert strategy to undermine Iranian influence in the Middle East and Central Asia, combined with overt pressure through diplomatic initiatives and economic sanctions.
Under Obama, this strategy accelerated, largely in concert with other Gulf powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, who have long sought to roll-back Iranian influence.
Yet even as the strategy accelerated, unlike its predecessors which openly declared their warmongering hostility to Iran, the Obama administration had used the pressure to forge an unprecedented deal with the country.
Turkey’s peace with Kurds splinters as car bomb kills soldiers
Kurdish rebels blamed for attack on military police vehicle carrying several officers, as PKK says ceasefire has ‘lost all meaning’ after Turkish air strikes
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The fragile peace process between the Turkish government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, appeared to be on the brink of collapse after two Turkish soldiers were killed and four others were injured in a car bomb attack that Ankara blamed on Kurdish rebels.
The blast came after Turkey launched air strikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq as well as against Islamic State in Syria, in retaliation for a string of violent attacks last week for which Turkey blames both groups – themselves fierce rivals.
Turkey asked Nato on Sunday night to hold an extraordinary council meeting on Tuesday under article four of the treaty, which invokes consultation but does not automatically trigger military action on the part of fellow Nato members. According to a statement by the Turkish foreign ministry, the meeting aims at informing Turkey’s Nato allies about the ongoing operations against Isis in Syria and the PKK in northern Iraq.
Nato officials said that while Turkey may ask for military assistance, the purpose of the meeting is primarily exploratory and to send a political message of support. They said that, while other Nato allies are sympathetic to requests for help against Isis, none are likely to want to become involved with the PKK, which is regarded as an internal problem for Turkey.
Turkey calls Nato talks on IS and PKK
Turkey has called a special meeting of Nato ambassadors to discuss military operations against the Islamic State (IS) group and PKK Kurdish separatists.
The session is to take place in Brussels on Tuesday.
Turkey launched air attacks against IS militants in Syria and resumed air raids against PKK camps in northern Iraq following recent attacks.
In one attack blamed on IS, 32 people were killed in a suicide bombing near the Syrian border on 20 July.
Greece rocked by reports of secret plan to raid banks for drachma return
Opposition demands answers after covert proposals attributed to Yanis Varoufakis and fellow ex-minister highlight deep split in Syriza party
Some members of Greece’s leftist-led government wanted to raid central bank reserves and hack taxpayer accounts to prepare a return to the drachma, according to reports that highlighted the chaos in the ruling Syriza party.
It is not clear how seriously the government considered the plans, attributed to former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis and ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. Both ministers were sacked this month. However, the revelations have been seized on by opposition parties who are demanding an explanation.
The reports on Sunday came at the end of a week of fevered speculation over what Syriza hardliners had in mind as an alternative to the tough bailout terms Tsipras has reluctantly accepted to keep Greece in the eurozone.
About a quarter of the party’s 149 MPs rebelled over proposals to pass sweeping austerity measures in exchange for up to €86bn (£60bn) in fresh loans. Tsipras has been struggling to hold the party together.
An Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist: David Cameron
This open letter to the Prime Minister is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project.
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
Dear Prime Minister David Cameron,
It is with deep disappointment that I read excerpts of your speech provided by Downing Street to the press, purporting to set out a five-year strategy to tackle fundamentalist terrorism, which — whatever its intentions — is thoroughly misguided, and destined to plunge this country, as well as the Middle East, into further chaos and misery.
I am writing this open letter to request you, as a matter of urgency, to abide by your obligations as a human being, a British citizen, a Member of Parliament, and as our Prime Minister: to undertake proper due-diligence in the formulation of Britain’s foreign, counter-terrorism and security policies, based on the vast array of evidence from scientific and academic studies of foreign policy, terrorism and radicalisation, rather than the influence of far-right extremist ideology, and of narrow vested interest groups keen to profit from war and fear.
Ideology, innit
In your speech, you say:
“It begins by understanding the threat we face and why we face it. What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim….
And like so many ideologies that have existed before — whether fascist or communist — many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it.
We need to understand why it is proving so attractive… The root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself.”
Russia’s new maritime doctrine ‘to counter NATO’s expansion’, focuses on Crimea & Arctic
Amendments to Russia’s Maritime Doctrine approved by President Putin stem from NATO’s “eastward expansion”, said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. He added that the new doctrine focuses on Russia’s naval presence in Crimea and the Arctic.
The main reasons for adopting amendments to Russia’s (PDF) maritime doctrine of 2001 are “the changes of international affairs” and the consolidation of Russia as a maritime power, Rogozin said at a meeting of Russia’s top brass aboard the Admiral Gorshkov frigate in Baltyisk on Sunday, as cited by the Kremlin website.
The revised document published the same day highlights Russia’s naval presence in the Atlantic and the Arctic, he said. “Attention to the Atlantic stems from NATO's active development and the alliance approaching our borders,” he explained.
“The second consideration is Crimea's and Sevastopol’s rejoining Russia and the task of their swiftest integration into the economic life of our country. And of course [we have to] resume the presence of our fleet in the Mediterranean.”
Myanmar: New Front in an Old War
How the Arakan Army is emerging as a major player in Myanmar’s civil war.
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
In the very early morning of March 29 the Myanmar Army was caught off-guard when it was assaulted and overrun in two separate locations: Kyauk Taw, in northern Rakhine State, and Paletwa, slightly north of Kyauk Taw in neighboring Chin State. In Kyauk Taw, two soldiers were killed, and two were taken prisoner, according to the Arakan Information Network, as quoted by The Irrawaddy. In Paletwa, a captain was killed, a private was injured, and two soldiers were taken prisoner according to the Chin Human Rights Organization. In both instances the assailants appeared to escape without serious casualties. As surprising as the assault was, more surprising was the group behind it: a relatively obscure militia called the Arakan Army, using the former name of Rakhine State. This group had previously only been known for operating in the country’s northern Kachin and Shan States, mostly in a supportive position of the much better known Kachin Independence Army. In a single carefully coordinated attack, though, the Arakan Army has gone from obscurity to prominence.
The commander of the Arakan Army, Brigadier General Tun Myat Naing is younger than his contemporaries of the other ethnic armed groups in the country, but is shrewd, passionate, and well spoken. Regarding his militia being outnumbered and outgunned in Rakhine State, he told The Diplomat, “Revolution is to resist a more powerful enemy, a better equipped army – this is how we have to manage to fight for our freedom, to liberate oppressed people.” Utilizing a smaller army requires flexibility. “Guerrilla tactics are good for saving your manpower and firepower and direct contact when you are sure you will win. It just depends.” The quick appearances of Tun Myat Naing’s men and their equally quick disappearances after fighting underscores their versatility. Their raids on the Myanmar Army so far have involved overrunning positions, seizing weapons and equipment, and disappearing back into the jungle, leaving the Myanmar military scrambling to respond.
Reprisals
The Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s Armed Forces are known, has conducted raids and arrested a number of Rakhine citizens it says are suspected of being associated with the Arakan Army. At least 31 have been formally charged, but Tun Myat Naing says far more have suffered as a result, “Many villagers were taken into the sun, and they kept them there the whole day. Their food was taken by the army. People were treated badly, beaten and tied up, hanging under trees. A village was completely burnt down by some Burmese soldiers, we heard from the villagers. They told the villagers they had to follow the orders to burn down the villages.” Reports from independent sources have corroborated accounts of collective punishment against Rakhine villagers in and around Kyauk Taw, where 450 people have been displaced by continued clashes, most notably a blockade of food or aid. Brigadier General Tun Myat Naing said that transportation routes into the city had been blocked off, and that coupled with flooding from heavy rains, which washed away most everything they owned, has left many families in complete desolation. According to the general these people have been denied status as internally displaced persons (IDPs) by the local and central government, and none of the many aid agencies or government agencies in the state have taken steps to help what he estimates to be more than 5,000 people affected by the conflict and blockade of Kyauk Taw and the dozens of smaller villages nearby.
How the U.S. is training China’s military – while inching toward conflict
Despite tensions between the United States and China over the South China Sea, the two nations’ militaries train together at a very high level. Current “mil-mil” engagements are robust, with China participating in the world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC 2014, which is hosted biannually by the U.S. Pacific Command. The drills allowed China to learn a great deal about U.S. tactics, techniques and procedures (in military shorthand, “TTPs”).
But even as the United States provided China with its highest-level access to military drills, the U.S. military leadership consistently ratcheted up the level of confrontation in the South China Sea. Most recently, a top U.S. Navy admiral participated in a surveillance flight in the region. The United States is at once inching closer to armed confrontation, while at the same time training Chinese forces in the American way of war.
RIMPAC is one of many occasions when U.S. forces have trained their Chinese counterparts. China has participated in U.S.-led counter-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean since 2008. Initially, due to language difficulties and unfamiliarity with American and allied forces tactics, techniques and procedures, China was given a separate area to patrol. But over the last seven years, cooperation has become closer, as the United States sought greater coordination of operations and closer relations with Chinese ships, by conducting combined exercises in 2013 and again in 2014. This increased interoperability allowed Chinese forces to learn counter-piracy tactics, techniques and procedures, especially those relating to how to support ships that are deployed far from land, for long periods of time. They also learned how to properly run visits and time off for their troops in foreign ports, and how to configure ships to be both efficient and comfortable for the seamen. From the U.S. Navy, the Chinese learned that allowing telephone contact with family at home enhanced — rather than hurt — troop morale and discipline. The Chinese were also able to study American methods for destroying chemical weapons, as they aided the U.S. Navy in destroying Syria’s surrendered weapons.
Sweden’s 3rd largest city hit by multiple blasts, police plead for help to tackle violence spike
Four grenade attacks this week have rocked Malmo, the third largest city in Sweden, prompting police to sound an alarm over the increasing violence. Multiple explosions, shootings and arson struck the city, which has a large migrant population.
On Sunday, the southern Swedish city of Malmo saw the fourth grenade attack in under a week as the a hand grenade was detonated in a car park in the district of Värnhem in the morning, local media reported.
The attack came after a blast on Friday in the Solbacken neighborhood, which occurred less than 12 hours after another explosion in the residential area of Limhamn in the west, and two days after a car bomb attack that injured a man outside a community center in the south.
“It is the thirtieth explosive attack since the New Year. We have a situation that is serious,” said the Malmö police chief, Stefan Sintéus, about the explosion on Friday, as quoted by the Local.se on Saturday.
New Orleans Katrina Pain Index at Ten: Who Was Left Behind
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the nation saw tens of thousands of people left behind in New Orleans. Ten years later, it looks like the same people in New Orleans have been left behind again. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter. While tens of billions poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal. Many of the elderly and the poor, especially poor families with children, never made it back to New Orleans. The poverty rate for children who did made it back remains at disturbingly high pre-Katrina levels, especially for Black children. Rents are high and taking a higher percentage of people’s income. The pre-Katrina school system fired all it teachers and professionals and turned itself into the charter experiment capital of the US even while the number of children in public schools has dropped dramatically. Since Katrina, white incomes, which were over twice that of Blacks, have risen three times as much as Blacks. While not all the numbers below are bad, they do illustrate who has been left behind in the ten years since Katrina hit.
33 Rent in New Orleans is up 33 percent for one bedroom apartments and 41 percent for two bedroom apartments since Katrina hit. This is very tough because in New Orleans, 55 percent of residents rent. The national average is 35 percent. In 2005, one bedroom was $578 and two was $676. In 2015, it is $767 for one and $950 for two. CNN/Money recently named New Orleans as one of the worst cities in the US for renters. Before Katrina the average renter spent 19 percent of its income on rent. The Data Center, a terrific resource for information on the region, reports 37 percent of renters in New Orleans now spend more than 50 percent of their income to rent. Rental apartments are mostly substandard as well with 78 percent, nearly 50,000 apartments, in the city needing major repairs.
38 In 2005, 38 percent of the children in New Orleans lived in poverty, 17 percentage points higher than the US as a whole. The most recent numbers show 39 percent of the children in New Orleans live in poverty, still 17 percentage points higher than the national average. 82 percent of these families have someone working in the family so the primary cause is low wages.
Watch These 12-Year-Olds Talk About Race More Candidly Than Most Adults Do
These New York City middle-schoolers opened up about their experiences with race and racism in WNYC's "Being 12" series.
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
Over the past year, high-profile issues of racial violence have flooded the news. These stories have left parents and teachers with the difficult task of discussing racism with their kids and students, and adults have come up with some creative ways to approach these tough issues.
Last year #FergusonSyllabus became a popular Twitter hashtag for teachers to share tools and methods they used to discuss the police killings of black men and boys like Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Around the same time, They Are Children asked American kids to send handwritten cards to Central American child refugees facing deportation. The outcome was an outpour of empathy and compassion.
Recently, New York Public Radio (WNYC) decided to go straight to kids themselves and asked a group of 12-year-olds, “What are you?” for the radio series “Being 12.” Their answers revealed the array of complex experiences that pre-teens face every day based on their race.
Hundreds protest in New Jersey to highlight US police brutality
Hundreds of people took to the streets of Newark, New Jersey, to protest against police brutality and racial injustice. Many carried signs bearing slogans such as: “Stop Racist Violence,” and “Black Lives Matter.”
A crowd of demonstrators demanded justice after a black activist, Sandra Bland, was found hanged in a Texas jail cell just three days after her detention for a minor traffic violation.
“There is a burgeoning police state in the United States,” Larry Hamm, a social justice activist and People’s Organization for Progress Chairman told protesters on Saturday, according to PolitickerNJ. “Stop killing us! Stop killing us! Stop killing us!
He added: “We want an end to police violation of Constitutional rights. We want an end to police murder and torture and terror. We are not going to be paralyzed with fear. We are going to fight back every day of our lives. …This is not just a depression. It’s a criminal act of economic oppression.”
How Right-Wing Groups Hope to Chip Away at Rules Allowing Us to Know Who Funds Campaign Ads
It's bad enough that the infamous 2010 Citizens United ruling paved the way for dark money groups to mete out millions from corporate donors into federal elections, but now - even though the Supreme Court upheld disclosure mandates for sponsors of political advertisements in that same ruling - disclosure rules for political ads are under attack.
Emboldened by a series of Supreme Court cases granting First Amendment rights to corporations, corporate speech advocacy groups are trying to chip away at what's left of disclosure requirements. They argue that disclosure rules limit political expression by exposing campaign donors and ad sponsors to public scrutiny and that the activities of these donors and advisory groups are protected under the First Amendment.
Donors can already make anonymous contributions to so-called "dark money" nonprofit groups, organizations that abuse the rules of their tax exempt status to engage in political spending, but money that flows into a campaign by other means is generally subject to disclosure, and so are the sponsors of campaign advocacy.
"Judges are still willing to be open to the arguments from the same sort of people who really gave Citizens United aid, including [lawyer] James Bopp, whose position on disclosure is just very firmly against it," says author Tamara Piety, professor of law at the University of Tulsa. "I think that this current [commercial speech] doctrine is very plastic, and it offers a lot of potential for bad decisions, but it seems like there is some small, nascent pushback on expanding the doctrine to its fullest potential exhibition."
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature news from New Jersey: Standard Oil Company Spurns Mediation to Settle Bayonne Strike; Young Martyr Buried.
Tune in at 2pm!
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21 US MDs Graduate from Cuba’s Latin American Medical School
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
Havana, July 21, 2015 – The 21 new US MDs who received their diplomas today brings to 136 the number of US graduates of Havana’s Latin American Medical School. They successfully complete six years of study on scholarships provided by the Cuban government. “This amounts to a $40-million-dollar investment in US health care by Cuba,” said Dr. Peter Bourne, MEDICC Board Chair. The Medical University of Havana ceremonies also graduated 948 Cubans and over 350 physicians from 33 countries.
The curriculum at ELAM—the world’s largest socially-accountable medical school—includes basic and clinical sciences in classrooms and hospitals, but mainly in community healthcare settings. Since its founding in 1999, ELAM has graduated nearly 25,000 doctors from over 80 countries, most of its students from low-income families in medically underserved areas. They graduate debt-free, and many decide to serve in the public sector in primary healthcare specialties.
In his commencement address, Medical University of Havana Rector Jorge González challenged medical education worldwide to turn away from training doctors for private gain, and instead train them for public service, to face down the world’s health problems and make care accessible.
Medicine as a public service is just the approach that drew many US graduates to ELAM. “When I learned about Cuba’s health system—free, universal, and with a focus on public and global health—I knew this is where I wanted to study,” Dr. Veronica Flake of Philadelphia told MEDICC. “I came to ELAM because I believe health is a human right, and so does Cuba,” said Dr. Tia Naquel Tucker of Sulphur, Louisiana. “What we need in the USA, especially where I come from, are public health programs.”
Climate change drove woolly mammoths to extinction, say scientists
Dramatic climate shifts made it difficult for large animals such as the woolly mammoth to survive, new research confirms.
The mighty megafauna of the last ice age, including the wooly mammoths, short-faced bears and cave lions, largely went extinct because of rapid climate-warming events, a new study finds.
During the unstable climate of the Late Pleistocene, about 60,000 to 12,000 years ago, abrupt climate spikes, called interstadials, increased temperatures between 7 and 29 degrees Fahrenheit (4 and 16 degrees Celsius) in a matter of decades. Large animals likely found it difficult to survive in these hot conditions, possibly because of the effects it had on their habitats and prey, the researchers said.
Interstadials "are known to have caused dramatic shifts in global rainfall and vegetation patterns," the study's first author Alan Cooper, director for the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said in a statement emailed to Live Science. [Photos: Autopsy of a 40,000-Year-Old Mammoth]
Temperature drops during the Late Pleistocene showed no association with animal extinctions, Cooper said. Instead, only the hot interstadial periods were associated with the large die-offs that hit populations (local events) and entire species of animals (global events), he said.
Abrupt climate change may have rocked the cradle of civilization
New research reveals that some of the earliest civilizations in the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent may have been affected by abrupt climate change. These findings show that while socio-economic factors were traditionally considered to shape ancient human societies in this region, the influence of abrupt climate change should not be underestimated.
A team of international scientists led by researchers from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that during the first half of the last interglacial period known as the Holocene epoch, which began about 12,000 years ago and continues today, the Middle East most likely experienced wetter conditions in comparison with the last 6,000 years, when the conditions were drier and dustier.
"Evidence for wet early Holocene was previously found in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea region, North and East African lakes and cave deposits from Southwest Asia, and attributed to higher solar insolation during this period," said Ali Pourmand, assistant professor of marine geosciences at the UM Rosenstiel School, who supervised the project. "Our study, however, is the first of its kind from the interior of West Asia and unique in its resolution and multi-proxy approach."
The Fertile Crescent, a region in west Asia that extends from Iran and the Arabian Peninsula to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and northern Egypt is one of the most climatically dynamic regions in the world and is widely considered the birthplace of early human civilizations.
Doctors Protest Big Pharma's Out of Control Greed Which is Bankrupting Ill Patients
The Mayo Clinic leads a protest against drug company greed.
Americans diagnosed with cancer are at risk of losing their life savings because cancer drug costs are escalating almost as fast as the worst forms of the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic medical journal article decrying these costs signed by scores of nationally known oncologists.
“In the United States, the average price of new cancer drugs increased 5- to 10-fold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 per year in 2012,” the article said. “The cost of drugs for each additional year lived (after adjusting for inflation) has increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. This increase is causing harm to patients with cancer and their families.”
“Cancer is a very scary,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, the lead author, told NPR. “Everybody’s shocked. But they don’t know about the second shock coming, and that is the financial destruction that’s coming with it. That comes in the course of treatment. That comes after the patient dies. All of a sudden, they see that their lifelong savings is being given to drug companies.”
Tefferi blamed drug company greed, physicians who are too quick to prescribe new drugs without proven efficacy, health insurers willing to go along with pricing with upwards of $3,000-a-month co-pays, and a lack of federal government oversight adding checks and balances to a Wild West of drug pricing, especially for the federal health plan for seniors, Medicare, which is barred from negotiating drug prices. That prohibition was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.
Fracking Industry Billionaires Give Record $15 Million To Ted Cruz's Super PAC
Citizens United strikes again.
Thanks to the Citizens United decision at the Supreme Court, the ultra-rich and corporations are essentially freed up to give unlimited amounts of money to organizations called Super Political Action Committees (PACs) that, while technically legally barred from directly coordinating with campaigns, can do everything else they can to promote candidacies.
Farris and Dan Wilks, billionaires who have enriched themselves from the fracking frenzy in West Texas, made a “record-setting” $15 million contribution to the pro- Ted Cruz Super PAC Keep The Promise. This is the largest-known donation by any individuals in the 2016 race so far.
When billionaires can give so much money – recall that $15 million is the total that progressive candidate Bernie Sanders raised from hundreds of thousands of small donors – it should be no surprise that they will have influence over a politician's point of view.In early 2014, Cruz introduced his so-called American Energy Renaissance Act, which among other things curtailed the federal government's power to regulate fracking altogether while opening up more land and offshore territory to dirty energy exploration.
He appeared at the Heritage Foundation's 501(c)4 wing, Heritage Action, to promote his bill. Rather than engage seriously in the debate over fracking, which would involve taking note of environmental and safety concerns, Cruz sung the gospel of the process. He called the fracking boom a “providential blessing,” literally applying messianic language to the process. Cruz also praised Pennsylvania for its embrace of fracking in the Marcellus shale, and condemned New York for its cautiousness on the process.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Scottish shoppers use 150m fewer carrier bags following single-use charging
Scotland’s Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead has welcomed the news that carrier bag usage was reduced by 147 million last year, despite the charge on single use carrier bags only being in place for the last 11 weeks of the year.
The figures, published by WRAP today, cover the 2014 calendar year for the UK from seven major grocery retailers. In Scotland, bag usage dropped from 193.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 64.6 million during the same period in 2014, suggesting that Scotland is well on track to achieve a reduction of more than 80 per cent in the use of single-use carrier bags.
Mr Lochhead said: “These astounding figures – a reduction of 147 million – are yet another indication that the single use carrier bag charge has been a tremendous success, driving behaviour change to reduce litter across our beautiful country and also the amount of resources we, as a nation, consume.
“Litter is a blight on our environment and I’m delighted with the reports we’ve received from these retailers. I’m pleased that so many consumers are now in the habit of reusing bags and the level of support from the Scottish public is extremely heartening.
6 Homemade herbicides: Kill the weeds without killing the Earth
It's been said that weeds are just plants whose virtues have not yet been discovered, but if you're tired of waiting to find out what those virtues are, you might want to use one of these homemade herbicides instead of the chemical versions.
Many common weeds can be either food, medicine, or unwanted visitors to the garden, depending on the varieties and how you view them. But if you've eaten all of them you can, and you still need to get rid of weeds in your yard, it's far better for you, your soil, and your local waterways to choose a more environmentally friendly herbicide than those commonly found in the home and garden center.
Strong chemical herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides can end up polluting our drinking water, our groundwater, and surface water, so it's important to consider the longer term effects of using them, and to instead make the choice to use a gentler herbicide, which won't contribute to the larger issue of water contamination.
The most environmentally friendly way to get rid of weeds is to pull them up, dig out the roots, let them dry in the sun, and then add them to a compost or mulch pile. However, that method can also take quite a bit of time, so if you're looking for a quicker way to effectively get rid of weeds, one of these homemade herbicides might be the way to go.
Rising Sea Levels Could Decimate Sea Turtle Nests
Rising sea levels could decimate sea turtle nesting sites around the world, scientists have warned, with the largest rookery site for green turtles increasingly at risk from being swamped by seawater.
Researchers have tested the impact of seawater upon turtle eggs in an attempt to find out why so few hatchlings were emerging on Raine Island, on the fringes of the Great Barrier Reef.
Raine Island is a remote coral cay that acts as the world’s largest nesting site for green turtles – as many as 100,000 female turtles can lay eggs in the sand each summer.
Scientists, concerned that only 10 percent of eggs are producing turtles, compared to 90 percent in other parts of the world, tested the effect of seawater upon the eggs.
They found that eggs submerged in seawater for up to six hours had far less chance of hatching, due to the need for embryos to gather oxygen from the surrounding environment to avoid suffocating.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Exhausted Forest Firefighters Refuse to Sing "O Canada" for Stephen Harper
#11
Kos Petition For More Debates
ADA at 25 years - Changes Coming. (Website Developers Be aWare)
Hillary Ditched Obama's No Lobby $ Policy
Hellraisers Journal: Two More Strikers Shot Down in Bayonne Standard Oil Strike; Mediators Arrive
Campaign as Populist, Hire Wall Streetsters
The ways in which the economy never recovered from 2008
A Little Night Music
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Let's Get Low Down
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Pin Your Spin
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - So Damn Good
Taj Mahal - Lord Things Sure Gettin' Crazy Up In Here
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Just Kissed My Baby
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen -- Aint Nuttin Nice
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Stepping In On Your Thing
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Too Damn Hot
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Help Me Somebody
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Doin Bad Feelin Good
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Go Go Juice
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Fools Game
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Got To Be More Careful
Bonnie Raitt - Unnecessarily Mercenary
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - People Say
Soulive w/Susan Tedeschi & Jon Cleary - Clean Up Woman
Jon Cleary & the Monster Gentlemen - Beg Steal or Borrow
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - Moon Burn