Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features jazz singer Billie Holiday. Enjoy!
Billie Holiday - The Blues Are Brewin'
“Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.”
-- Josh Billings
News and Opinion
Was approving air strikes against the PKK America's worst error in the Middle East since the Iraq War?
Kurdish guerrillas have '_trackEvent','outbound-article',');">killed two Turkish soldiers in an ambush in south-east Turkey as fighting resumes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants, ending a two-year-old ceasefire. The attack came after Turkish aircraft heavily bombed bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq. ...
It came as the US was accused by Kurds of tolerating a renewed Turkish government assault on its Kurdish minority as the price for permission for US aircraft to use Turkey’s Incirlik air base against Isis jihadists for the first time.
“The Americans are not very clever in calculating this sort of thing,” said Kamran Karadaghi, an Iraqi Kurdish commentator and former chief of staff to the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani. “Maybe they calculate that with Turkey involved on their side, they don’t need the Kurds.” ...
Turkey has become increasingly unstable and violent over the past two years as President Recep Tayiip Erdogan has tried to consolidate his grip on power, even as his AKP party '_trackEvent','outbound-article',');">lost its parliamentary majority in last month’s general election.
In Turkey, Kurds See Airstrikes and Protest Crackdowns as Political Revenge
Turkey says Kurdish peace process impossible as Nato meets
The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said it is impossible to continue a peace process with Kurdish militants and urged parliament to strip politicians with links to “terrorist groups” of their immunity from prosecution.
His comments came as Nato envoys met in Brussels to discuss the crisis in Syria and Iraq in a special session requested by Turkey.
“It is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood,” Erdoğan told a news conference in Ankara before departing for an official visit to China.
The Turkish air force has bombed camps in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). The PKK said the air strikes rendered the peace process meaningless, but had stopped short of formally pulling out.
Opening the specially convened meeting in Brussels, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed solidarity with Turkey in its fight against terrorism. Stoltenberg told the 28-member alliance: “Nato is following developments very closely. And we stand in strong solidarity with our ally Turkey.” ...
It was easy for Stoltenberg to express support for Turkey joining the fight against Islamic State. More problematic for the US and other members of the alliance is Turkey linking the fight against terrorism to include the PKK.
The difficulty for the US and other allies is that the fight against Kurdish separatists is largely seen as a domestic problem. A further – and bigger – reservation is that the PKK is one of the few armed groups in the region putting up a fight against Isis.
US, Turkey Eye 60-Mile ‘Safe Zone’ in Northern Syria
More details about Turkey’s plans for a “safe zone” in northern Syria are emerging, and as a few questions are answered on the putative deal between Turkey and the US on the matter, many more questions are also emerging on the notion.
The US and Turkey have agreed the safe zone will be60 miles long, but they haven’t decided how wide it will be. They have also determined it will be under the control of “moderate insurgents,” but it isn’t clear if such groups exist already or how the US and Turkey figure on installing them, since both insist the plan doesn’t involve ground troops. ...
US officials are also saying they don’t intend to create the zone as a place to house the 1.8 million Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey, but they also concede it might well end up becoming that, and the refugees might flock there.
Nato meets to discuss Turkey's Syria campaign
Ambassadors from all 28 Nato countries are meeting in Brussels to discuss Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State and Kurdish militants in Syria. ...
It comes after Turkey and the US agreed on the outlines of a plan to drive Isis out of a strip of land along the Turkish-Syrian border, according to reports, in a landmark deal that will draw Turkey further into Syria’s civil war and looks likely to increase the intensity of the US air war against Isis.
The plan is a diplomatic victory for Turkey, which has long demanded the creation of a safe haven in northern Syria, across the 500-mile (800km) border that links the two countries, as a precondition for joining the battle against Isis.
It is also not clear how the safe haven will affect the Kurds. US warplanes have spent months over Syrian skies bombing Isis to help the Kurds take the fight to the militants. But Ankara is worried that the Kurds’ successes across the border will fire up separatists at home, with whom it has fought a 30-year civil war, and has launched a crackdown on the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has links to Kurdish fighters in Syria – the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political arm, the Democratic Union party (PYD).
Syrian Kurds: Turkish Forces Shelling Our Fighters Near Kobani
Syrian Kurdish militia faction the YPG is reporting that as Turkey has started launching attacks on ISIS, they have also started attacking Kurdish targets inside Syria, including hitting a number of YPG forces with shelling against villages on the outskirts of Kobani. ...
Turkey has long treated the YPG’s political wing, the PYD, as the Syrian branch of the PKK, however, and they have been pushing for action against Kurdish forces in northern Syria for weeks now. This makes the denials somewhat harder to believe, as Turkey seems to be attacking anyone and everyone it doesn’t like in the area right now.
Are the U.S. and Allies Getting Too Cozy With Al Qaeda’s Affiliate in Syria?
For 14 years the US has waged a global war on terror with a stated goal of denying al Qaeda a safe haven anywhere in the world. Now several of our regional partners in the Middle East, hell-bent on removing Assad from power, are backing a coalition of Syrian rebel groups that include the local al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra as a prominent member – and at least one high ranking former US military official thinks working with al Qaeda is justified. The rebel coalition, backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is calling itself the Army of Conquest, and has recently made gains against Assad consolidating territory in Idlib province.
Reporting on al Nusra’s recent victories in Idlib, Charles Lister at Brookings reported:
“Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.
Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called “vetted groups,” but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.”
As news of the coalition victories spread, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled “To US Allies, Al Qaeda Affiliate in Syria Becomes the Lesser Evil” that reinforces the possibility some U.S. military leaders also see such collaboration with al Qaeda as a legitimate option. ...
These developments are truly breathtaking. What does it say about the clarity of the strategic thinking behind the current “war on terror” that the perpetrators of 9-11 may morph from enemies into allies? One would think that after decades of blowback from supporting the Mujahidin forefathers of al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the eighties, that our allies and the U.S. foreign policy elite would learn their lesson. Unfortunately, the willingness to advance goals through a short-sighted military support of unsavory characters still holds firm in Washington.
Qaddafi's Son Has Been Sentenced to Death for War Crimes
Saif Qaddafi has today been sentenced to death by a court in Libya over war crimes linked to the 2011 uprising.
The only surviving son of the former dictator Muammar Qaddafi faces execution by firing squad having been accused of suppressing protests during the revolution.
Saif al-Islam, along with eight others, will be given the right to appeal, according to the BBC.
He was not present in court as he is still being held by a former rebel group that took him captive in 2011 during the uprising.
Gaddafi's son trial run by militia, court under pressure - lawyer
The CIA Paid A Contractor $40 Million to Review Torture Documents
One of the main criticisms leveled by Republicans and CIA supporters about the Senate Intelligence Committee's landmark five-year study into the CIA's torture program has been the cost to taxpayers: $40 million.
The implication by these critics is that the Senate Democrats who led the investigation were responsible for the expenditures associated with the production of their voluminous report, which concluded that the CIA's use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" was not effective and did not produce "unique" and "valuable" intelligence. ...
But VICE News has exclusively obtained more than 100 pages of contracting documents that show it was CIA officials who insisted on outsourcing work related to the Senate's review — and that it was the CIA that paid more than $40 million to one of its longtime contractors for administrative support and other tasks related to the Senate's work. Those tasks included compiling, reviewing, redacting, and then posting to a server the more than 6 million pages of highly classified CIA cables and other documents about the torture program Senate Intelligence Committee staffers pored through during the course of their probe. ...
In a statement provided to VICE News, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the former Intelligence Committee chairwoman, said the deal between the CIA and Centra was an unnecessary expense.
"These documents confirm and offer context for what I said in December: CIA spent roughly $40 million in order to hamper the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA detention and interrogation program, while the committee operated within its existing budget," Feinstein said. "Not only was this a waste of taxpayer dollars, but the insistence that committee staff travel to an offsite CIA facility allowed the CIA to spy on the committee's work. I'm pleased these documents are being released so the public can understand exactly what happened, and hopefully this information will help ensure such obstruction of congressional oversight won't happen again."
Clinton & the Coup: Amid Protests in Honduras, Ex-President on Hillary’s Role in His 2009 Ouster
NSA Will Destroy Archived Metadata When Program Stops
Four months from now, at the same time that the National Security Agency finally abandons the massive domestic telephone dragnet exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, it will also stop perusing the vast archive of data collected by the program.
The NSA announced on Monday that it will expunge all the telephone metadata it previously swept up citing Section 215 of the U.S.A Patriot Act. ...
The historical metadata – records of American phone calls showing who called who, when, and for how long – will be put out of the reach of analysts on November 29, although technical personnel will have access for three more months. The program started 14 years ago, and operated under rules requiring data to be retained for five years, and then destroyed.
Hat tip Besame:
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking Among Hundreds to Urge Ban on Military Robots
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, along with hundreds of artificial intelligence researchers and experts, are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms.
In a letter unveiled as researchers gathered at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires on Monday, the signatories argued that the deployment of robots capable of killing while untethered to human operators is “feasible within years, not decades.” If development is not cut off, it is only a matter of time before the weapons end up in the hands of terrorists and warlords, they said. ...
Mr. Musk, the head of SpaceX, has raised warnings about artificial intelligence before, calling it probably humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Mr. Hawking, the physicist, has written that while development of artificial intelligence could be the biggest event in human history, “Unfortunately, it might also be the last.”
Whistleblower Exposes Torture and Child Abuse at For-Profit Prison
A social worker formerly employed at a for-profit family immigrant detention center in Texas blew the whistle this week on the prison's inhumane conditions—from solitary confinement to medical neglect—that she said amount to child abuse and torture.
The Karnes County Residential Center is operated by GEO Group—the second largest private prison company in the country that has faced numerous accusations of atrocities and civil rights violations. It is also the site of recent—and repeated—hunger strikes led by mothers incarcerated with their children, in protest of their conditions, detentions, and in many cases, their looming deportations.
Social worker Oliva López corroborated the accounts of people on the inside when she conducted an exclusive interview with McClatchy DC, published Monday, in which she countered federal and local authorities' narratives which cast the detention center as a safe and tolerable place for families to reside during asylum application processes.
President Barack Obama has overseen the explosion of family detention centers such as Karnes, which some call the "new internment camps," with the government currently incarcerating roughly 1,700 parents and children at three prisons in Texas and Pennsylvania, including Karnes. Most, but not all of them, are privately run. ...
A federal judge in California ruled Friday that the Obama administration's policy of mass incarcerating children with their mothers on alleged immigration violations breaches a previous court settlement and those detained should be swiftly released. The judge, moreover, said that family detention centers violate protections requiring that minors not be incarcerated in prisons unlicensed to take care of children. The government has until early August to appeal the decision.
Independent Committee to Investigate 'Lingering Questions' Around Sandra Bland's Death
A committee of special prosecutors and defense attorneys formed by Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis will investigate some of the "lingering questions" around the death of Sandra Bland, the 28-year old black woman from Illinois found dead in her jail cell on July 13, just three days after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation.
Last week, after Mathis says he spoke extensively with Sandra Bland's family, he became determined to treat her death like a murder case. The Harris County medical examiner ruled Bland's death a suicide, corroborating accounts given by the officials from the Texas County Jail where Bland was being held. They say Bland hanged herself using a plastic bag in her cell. ...
Dewayne Charleston, a former Waller County judge, described Waller County as "the most racist county in the state of Texas which is probably one of the most racist states in the country." The county's history of institutionalized racism has given rise to widespread skepticism over official accounts of Bland's death.
Joseph Stiglitz: Greece, the Sacrificial Lamb
AS the Greek crisis proceeds to its next stage, Germany, Greece and the triumvirate of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission (now better known as the troika) have all faced serious criticism. While there is plenty of blame to share, we shouldn’t lose sight of what is really going on. I’ve been watching this Greek tragedy closely for five years, engaged with those on all sides. Having spent the last week in Athens talking to ordinary citizens, young and old, as well as current and past officials, I’ve come to the view that this is about far more than just Greece and the euro.
Some of the basic laws demanded by the troika deal with taxes and expenditures and the balance between the two, and some deal with the rules and regulations affecting specific markets. What is striking about the new program (called “the third memorandum”) is that on both scores it makes no sense either for Greece or for its creditors. ...
Whether or not the program is well implemented, it will lead to unsustainable levels of debt, just as a similar approach did in Argentina: The macro-policies demanded by the troika will lead to a deeper Greek depression. That’s why the I.M.F.’s current managing director, Christine Lagarde, said that there needs to be what is euphemistically called “debt restructuring” — that is, in one way or another, a write-off of a significant portion of the debt. The troika program is thus incoherent: The Germans say there is to be no debt write-off and that the I.M.F. must be part of the program. But the I.M.F. cannot participate in a program in which debt levels are unsustainable, and Greece’s debts are unsustainable.
Austerity is largely to blame for Greece’s current depression — a decline of gross domestic product of 25 percent since 2008, an unemployment rate of 25 percent and a youth unemployment rate twice that. But this new program ratchets the pressure up still further: a target of 3.5 percent primary budget surplus by 2018 (up from around 1 percent this year). Now, if the targets are not met, as they almost surely won’t be because of the design of the program itself, additional doses of austerity become automatic. It’s a built-in destabilizer. The high unemployment rate will drive down wages, but the troika does not seem satisfied by the pace of the lowering of Greeks’ standard of living. The third memorandum also demands the “modernization” of collective bargaining, which means weakening unions by replacing industry-level bargaining.
None of this makes sense even from the perspective of the creditors. It’s like a 19th-century debtors’ prison. Just as imprisoned debtors could not make the income to repay, the deepening depression in Greece will make it less and less able to repay.
Hedge funds tell Puerto Rico: lay off teachers and close schools to pay us back
Report commissioned by 34 hedge funds says government had been ‘massively overspending on education’ despite spending only 79% of US average per pupil
Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes.
The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default – and repay its debts – by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education.
The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt “unpayable” – paving the way for bankruptcy.
The funds are “distressed debt” specialists, also known as vulture funds, and several have also sought to make money out of crises in Greece and Argentina, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of Co-op Bank in the UK.
The report, entitled For Puerto Rico, There is a Better Way, said Puerto Rico could save itself from default if it improves tax collection and drastically cuts back on public spending.
It accused the island, where 56% of children live in poverty, of spending too much on education even though the government has already closed down almost 100 schools so far this year.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news from New Jersey: "Frank P Walsh Announces Investigation of Bayonne Strike; Sheriff Rules County."
Tune in at 2pm!
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French Farmers Are Dumping Manure on Buildings and Blockading Roads to Protest Low Food Prices
Protesting French farmers have blocked several routes into their country from Germany and Spain, turning back hundreds of trucks transporting foreign produce and food products.
The farmers have been protesting since July 19 over the government's perceived failure to address an agricultural crisis that has left one in 10 French farmers on the verge of bankruptcy, according to French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll.
Last week, angry farmers dumped manure outside government buildings and let pigs loose inside stores to voice their frustration over cheap European produce. They say pressure from major retailers and processors has led to unsustainably low meat and dairy prices.
According to French weekly Le Point, farmers blocked five bridges linking Germany to France with tractors and hay bales, turning back at least 400 trucks. Gérard Lorber, the secretary general of the Departmental Federation of Farmers' Unions (FDSEA) for the eastern Bas-Rhin district, said that he and his colleagues had been "on the lookout for [foreign] license plates." Speaking to VICE News Monday, Lorber explained that farmers had specifically targeted refrigerated trucks.
French farmers at it again: Block highways, burn tires over low prices
When China Sneezes, the U.S. Stock Market Could Catch a Bad Cold
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “China was the United States’ 3rd largest goods export market in 2013.” That’s the latest year that data is available. The total of U.S. exports to China in 2013 reached $122.1 billion, a 10.4 percent increase over 2012. ...
On Monday, China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.48 percent (it was off another 1.7 percent at the close on Tuesday, closing at 3,663). From a June 12 high of 5,166, the Shanghai Composite is now off 29 percent in less than two months and the roller coaster ride which had seen as much as $4 trillion in investor losses earlier this month is spilling over into U.S. markets. Many S&P 500 stocks have far greater sales exposure to China than 10 percent.
According to Sue Chang, a MarketWatch reporter using data from FactSet, 52 percent of Yum Brands sales come from China; Qualcomm derives 48 percent; Micron Technology 40 percent; and Texas Instruments 32 percent.
Along with the troubles in China, the U.S. economy is facing a rash of equally serious headwinds. Canada has now entered a technical recession with two back to back quarters of contraction this year. Canada is the number one export market for U.S. goods, buying $312 billion from the U.S. in 2014 or 19.2 percent of all U.S. exports.
The U.S. also has the headwind of a stronger U.S. Dollar, making our exports less competitive than those from countries with depressed currencies.
Will Hillary Clinton Adopt Hedgie Billionaire John Arnold’s Schemes for Retirement Insecurity?
The front-running scheme for “retirement security” — backed by billionaire John Arnold — looks an awful lot like it’s “on the table” because it guarantees that middlemen collect fees for “managing” what we used to call your “nest egg.” Will Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform support it?
Hillary Clinton Has Ruled Out Expanding Social Security
This was the line in Talking Points Memo, back in April:
Hillary Clinton is not taking a position just yet on Social Security expansion, an issue with growing support in the Democratic Party that several of her prospective presidential primary rivals have endorsed.
The Clinton campaign told TPM on Thursday, in response to a query, that the Democratic frontrunner “will have a lot to say” about the issue and emphasized her opposition to privatizing Social Security.
But here’ s Clinton’s platform today:
Build savings and retire with dignity
Working families should be able to save throughout their lives so that they can send their kids to college and retire with dignity. We will defend Social Security from Republican attempts to cut or privatize the program. And we will explore ways to enhance Social Security to meet new realities, particularly for women.
“Explore ways to enhance” most definitely does not mean “expand,” especially when Clinton plans to include “saving” in any plan to allow working people — since “working families” doesn’t include those who aren’t married — to “retire with dignity.”
[There's a lot more in Lambert Strether's excellent article. If you are thinking of one day, maybe retiring, rather than dying in the traces, this might be a great article to read in full. It's got a lot of detail on how the sneaky vultures who connive with slick corporate Democratic politicians are angling to rip you off. - js]
Moderate liberal writer wants Bernie Sanders to save capitalism from itself, cutting a deal between the dark overlords and the restive masses:
Why Bernie Sanders should be the 1 percent’s candidate (yes, really)
If you are a regular viewer of Fox News, you may think of Bernie Sanders as some kind of radical socialist who wants to bring down the entire capitalist system — a modern day Lenin or Trotsky. The truth, of course, is that Sanders is neither a socialist nor a radical, or even an anti-capitalist. In the historical scheme of things, Sanders is actually a moderate (based on his policy proposals, at least). And, if they were smart, one percenters may very well want to consider voting for him, if they hope to avoid a truly radical movement in the future.
What do I mean by a truly radical movement? Basically, a movement where the people realize that American democracy is more of an illusion than a reality, and that the political apparatus is heavily rigged to favor the ruling class. A movement where people conclude that filing petitions, writing letters, and attempting to lobby politicians, when up against a global corporation, is largely futile, and that an election between two corporatists just isn’t good enough. ...
New Deal reform was fairly radical, but nowhere near the radicalism that the country needed. The financial regulation and social programs were introduced to limit wealth inequalities and economic instability — two inherent features of capitalism. And indeed, from the New Deal until the last few decades of the 20th century, inequality was reduced and economic crises were limited and controlled through a combination of fiscal and monetary policies. ...
The “new economy” was a myth. Capitalism is capitalism, and today, with inequality at pre-Great Depression highs, along with economic instability, the pragmatic move would be to once again become “fairly radical.” Some believe it is time to become truly radical, but that is not what Bernie Sanders is about. Sanders, much like FDR, is a liberal who believes that the government should support all classes, not just the one percent. That is progressive, but not the stuff of revolutions. And, if you need further proof that Sanders is no radical, the fact that he said he will support the Democratic candidate, if he does not get the nod himself, shows that he is ultimately a moderate, working within the party system. ...
The threat of radicalism in America does not seem to be significant enough at the moment. But that could change. If a mass movement, or as Sanders has said, a “political revolution” continues to form, there will be little choice but to support real reform of the American political system. And this is why Sanders’ early success is important. The odds are stacked against him, but the fact that he is attracting huge crowds across America does show that the people are ready for something other than the corporatist status quo. Sanders is just one person, and ultimately it will take the masses to change the corrupt political system of America. How radical should the solutions be? This is up to debate, but what is not is that real change requires more than just an election.
Rachel Maddow - Sanders, Trump campaigns defy conventional wisdom
The Evening Greens
Hillary Clinton's Climate Change Pledge Is Only 'Half the Way There,' Say Environmentalists
Hillary Clinton rolled out the first installment of her climate change plan Sunday, proposing to add half a billion solar panels by the end of her first term, if elected president, and calling for renewables to generate a third of America's electricity by 2027.
But she remained silent on flashpoint climate change issues like the Keystone XL pipeline and expanded oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, disappointing some environmentalists.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said that Clinton's plan was "half the way there."
"This is a credible commitment to renewable energy, and a recognition that the economics of electricity are changing fast," McKibben said in a statement. "Now, we need Clinton to show she understands the other half of the climate change equation — and prove she has the courage to stand up against fossil fuel projects like offshore and Arctic drilling, coal leasing in the Powder River basin, and the Keystone XL pipeline."
Shell is currently exploring for oil off the Arctic coast of Alaska. And, while mountaintop removal mining in Appalachian states is in steep decline, coal companies want to greatly expand mining in the Powder River basin of Wyoming, where they lease federal land. Keystone XL may be stalled and economically questionable due to cheap, plentiful oil supplies, but its support in Congress remains high.
"At the end of the day,"added McKibben, "growth in renewables doesn't mean enough if we're simultaneously kicking the decarbonization can down the road with more pipelines and more extraction on public lands."
Scientists Identify 'Triple Threat' Endangering US Coastal Cities
A trio of phenomena attributed at least in part to climate change—sea-level rise, storm surges, and heavy rainfall—poses an increasing risk to residents of major U.S. cities including Boston, New York, Houston, San Diego, and San Francisco, according to new research published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
"Call it a triple threat," Steven Meyers, a scientist at the University of South Florida and one of the paper's authors, told the Guardian.
Using historical data on rainfall, tide gauge readings, and extreme weather occurrences, the scientists explored the combined risks that endanger broad stretches of the U.S. coasts. Specifically, they looked at scenarios in which heavy rainfall combines with so-called "storm surges"—the abnormal rise of water generated by a storm—to create "compound flooding."
Writing for Climate Central, Andrea Thompson further explains: "The wall of ocean water that the winds of a storm system, such as a hurricane, can push in front of it can combine with heavy rains to exacerbate flooding in two ways: Either the rainfall inland can ramp up the severity of the surge-driven flooding, or the surge can elevate water levels to the point that gravity-driven flow of rainwater is impeded, causing that water to collect in streets and seep into homes."
That "meteorological double whammy," as Thompson calls it, is only further exacerbated by rising sea levels. Experts have linked climate change to both extreme weather and rising oceans.
Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and The Frackopoly
This is a good week to reflect on Dick Cheney’s role in facilitating fracking. Early in the George W. Bush administration, he put together a task force made up of energy industry CEO’s and lobbyists, known as EPACT 2005, which rewrote energy policy.The damage this legislation did is much broader than is usually discussed.
This has become increasingly apparent to me as I researched and wrote my new book, Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment (to be released next spring). The tremendous political power of the energy industry unleashed the tragic policy decisions in EPACT 2005. In fact, their increasing pwer over the past hundred years has locked us in to dependence on fossil fuels and other dirty energy sources. Federal funding was key in developing the technologies that are used for fracking today. Removal of federal oversight of natural gas pricing and changes in the rules around the transportation of natural gas in pipes also helped eventually drive the shale gas boom. Decisions in the 1990’s concerning the deregulation of the electric industry – how electricity is generated, sold on the wholesale market and delivered to consumers – also drove the use of natural gas-fired generation.
But one of the biggest oil and gas industry giveaways happened 10 years ago this week, when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
This giant energy bill had massive handouts and incentives for the fossil fuel, nuclear and ethanol industries, with minimal incentives for renewables and energy efficiency. This bill was largely written by the lobbyists of the oil and gas industry and other dirty energy interests. The long forgotten shyster Kenneth Lay, of Enron fame (or infamy) was one of the leading lobbyists for deregulation of the electric industry and the giveaways to the energy industry in EPACT 2005. Lay and other Enron officials lobbied the Clinton and Bush Administrations for significant deregulation of energy markets that paved the way for fracking—and many of the policies were signed into law by President Bush on August 8, 2005.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Chris Hedges: Why I Support the BDS Movement Against Israel
Greece Negotiations Already Starting to Look Wobbly
Effect of Greece’s Economic Crisis on Public Health
Blocked From Trade Pact By Its Failure on Slavery, Malaysia Suddenly Gets a Passing Grade
Guess the guitar hero – from their guitar
The OPOL Report – Days of Miracle and Wonder
But, Which Two Warlords Were They?
Legacy
The ongoing housing crisis just keeps getting worse
A Little Night Music
Billie Holiday - Stormy Monday Blues
Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit
Billie Holiday - God Bless The Child
Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow
Billie Holiday - Tain't Nobody's Business if I Do
Billie Holiday - Easy Living
Billie Holiday - These Foolish Things
Billie Holiday - I Cried for You
Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong - Farewell to Storyville
Billie Holiday - Long gone blues
Billie Holiday - Rocky Mountain Blues