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 soul singer and original lead singer of the Impressions Jerry Butler. Enjoy!
Jerry Butler - He Will Break Your Heart
"My Father: a long time has passed since first we came upon our lands; and our people have all sunk into their graves. They had sense. We are all young and foolish, and do not wish to do anything that they would not approve, were they living. We are fearful we shall offend their spirits if we sell our lands; and we are fearful we shall offend you if we do not sell them. This has caused us great perplexity of thought, because we have counselled among ourselves, and do not know how we can part with our lands. My Father, we have sold you a great tract of land already; but it is not enough! We sold it to you for the benefit of your children, to farm and to live upon. We have now but a little left. We shall want it all for ourselves. We know not how long we shall live, and we wish to leave some lands for our children to hunt upon. You are gradually taking away our hunting grounds. Your children are driving us before them. We are growing uneasy. What lands you have you may retain. But we shall sell no more
Metea, a Potowatami chief of the Illinois nation
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
enhydra lutris
Unrest in Baltimore as thousands protest Freddie Gray’s death
Clashes have broken out in Baltimore’s Camden Yards as demonstrators began throwing bottles at police and smashing cars. Thousands of marchers took to the streets to protest the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after being detained by police.
Police in riot gear charged some of the protesters after they smashed police cars and threw objects at the officers. RT’s video agency Ruptly’s Paulina Leonovich says the cops have made several arrests at the scene.
Demonstrators had smashed a garbage can through the rear window of a police vehicle, while other protesters started jumping on top of cars in the vicinity.
Baltimore Freddie Gray Protests Turn Violent as Police and Crowds Clash
At least a dozen protesters were arrested in Baltimore on Saturday evening after peaceful demonstrations over the death of Freddie Gray were followed by clashes with police in riot gear and scattered vandalism.
Officers detained several people during late confrontations in the streets of west Baltimore, near to where Gray was arrested on 12 April. A crowd gathered outside a police station pelted officers with rocks, glass bottles, eggs and other items.
Young men and women furious about Gray’s death from a broken neck after his arrest yelled insults at officers as they advanced. “You are assaulting American citizens,” a protester calling himself Leon the Poet told them.
“When all hell breaks loose, the difference between a good man and a bad man is how you conduct yourself,” said the 30-year-old, who said he served in the US army in Iraq between 2005 and 2007, stationed at the Camp Anaconda base near Balad.
Freddie Gray Was Not Put in Seatbelt During Fatal Arrest
Freddie Gray had no seatbelt on in the police van where he was placed in handcuffs and later put in leg irons, police said as they confirmed the possible breach of protocol forms part of their investigation into his death.
Protesters have marched in West Baltimore for the fifth night in a row following the death in custody of 25-year-old Gray. Despite two arrests, tensions seemed to have eased on Thursday night compared with the previous demonstrations.
Six officers involved in the incident have been suspended. On Thursday an attorney working for the officers said he did not believe Gray had been wearing a seatbelt when he was placed in the van.
Baltimore police confirmed on Thursday it was policy to provide proper seatbelts during the transport of prisoners but declined to release photographs from inside the van carrying Gray.
What’s Obama Up to, with His TPP & TTIP?
The motivation behind U.S. President Barack Obama’s trans-Pacific trade-deal TPP, and his trans-Atlantic trade-deal TTIP — the motivation behind both of these enormous international trade-deals — is the same, and Democratic U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are correct: it is not at all progressive. It is instead to transfer political power away from the public in a democracy, and for that power to go instead to the international aristocracy (i.e., to go as far away from any national democracy as is even possible to go). This is to be done by switching the most fundamental thing of all: the global power-base itself. Instead of that power-base being democratic votes of the national publics, who elect their political representatives who determine the laws and regulations, that national democratic political system becomes instead the exact opposite: the global aristocratic stockholder votes of the international aristocracy who elect the corporate directors of international companies, who will, in their turn, then be selecting the members to the international-trade-panels which, in TPP and TTIP, will, in their turn, be determining the rules and enforcements regarding especially workers’ rights, product-safety, and the environment.
The international aristocracy’s weakening of these national rules will enable lowering wages of the public, who are the people who don’t control international corporations but who control only their own personal labor, which goes down in value to the lowest hourly wage in the entire international trading-area. This new system will also enable minimizing regulation of the safety of foods and other products and thus maximizing the ability of international corporations to avoid any expenses that companies would otherwise need to devote to raising the safety of their products. Those expenses (the liabilities of dangerous products) will thus be increasingly borne only by the products’ consumers. Risks to investors (which is the thing that aristocrats seek most to avoid) are consequently reduced — shifted more onto the public. It will also enable environmental harms to become virtually free to international corporations that perpetrate them, and to become likewise costs that are borne only by the general public, in toxic air, water, etc. Thus, yet another category of risks to investors will be gone. This will increase profit-margins, which go only to the stockholders — not to the public. Profits will thus become increasingly concentrated in international corporations and the families that control them, and losses will become increasingly socialized among consumers and workers — and just generally to livers and breathers: the public. ‘Government’ will increasingly be merely the spreader and enforcer of risks and penalties to the public; and, this, in turn, will enhance yet further the ‘free-market’ ideal of there being less and less, or ’smaller,’ government; i.e., of there being less and less of ‘democratic’ government. That’s what the aristocracy’s ’small government’ jag has really been all about: it’s about cost-shifting, from aristocrats, to the public. Thus, the maximum percentage of the costs — for product-safety, workers’ rights, and the environment — become borne by the public, and the minimum percentage of costs become borne by the stockholders in international corporations. In turn, aristocrats will be able to pass along to their designated heirs their thus ever-increasing dominance and control over the general public. Thus, the concentration of wealth will become more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer families, a gradually smaller hyper-aristocracy. This is what’s happening, and it will happen now a lot more if TPP and TTIP pass. (According to the most detailed study of the matter, as of 2012, the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%.” So: the world is already extremely unequal in its wealth-distribution. TPP and TTIP are designed to increase that inequality.)
Furthermore, President Obama and the Republican Party in Congress (which support him on this, and on all other matters that are of highest concern to America’s aristocracy, such as the defeat of Russia, China and the other BRICS nations — for example, by Obama’s yanking Ukraine away from Russia’s aristocracy and into control instead by America’s aristocracy) are ensuring that America’s aristocracy will be increasingly on top internationally, and these trade-deals are additionally taking advantage of America’s being the top power across both of this planet’s two major oceans: the Atlantic, and the Pacific.
In other words: the United States, with the TPP & TTIP, will be in the extraordinary position of basically locking in, perhaps for the next century, the U.S. aristocracy’s participation in both of the two major international-trade compacts. This commercial lock-in will retain the American aristocracy’s control over the national aristocracies of almost all of the other major industrial nations — encompassing virtually all of the northern hemisphere, which is where most of this planet’s land-mass is located.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic
A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”
On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.
The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.
Suicide on the Great Sioux Nation
Suicide arrives in waves on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
On Christmas Day, a 15-year-old Lakota girl took her own life. Soon afterward, a boy, just 14, took his.
Since then, a young man and six more girls, one as young as 12, have followed as this current wave continues to swell. There have been numerous additional attempts in the last few months on this South Dakota reservation of about 28,000 people.
The rate of suicide among Native youth in the United States is more than three times the national average. Very often that rate climbs even higher.
Declassified: Report on NSA surveillance flares up battle for privacy
In anticipation of the Patriot Act surveillance law’s expiration, the White House has declassified a six-year-old report on NSA practices. Some Republican lawmakers are seeking the prolongation of bulk data collection.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released the redacted report on the National Security Agency surveillance program following a lawsuit filed by the New York Times in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.
The report was prepared by experts from the CIA, the Justice Department, NSA, ODNI and Pentagon back in July 2009.
The bulk data collection and wiretapping was authorized by President George W. Bush under the ‘President's Surveillance Program’ (PSP) approved in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001.
Pentagon can’t account for $1 billion in Afghan reconstruction aid
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department can’t account for $1.3 billion that was shipped to force commanders in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014 for critical reconstruction projects, 60 percent of all such spending under an emergency program, an internal report released Thursday concludes
The missing money was part of the relatively small amount of Afghanistan spending that was routed directly to military officers in a bid to bypass bureaucracy and rush the construction of urgently needed roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and other essential infrastructure. About 70 percent of the $100 billion the United States has spent to rebuild Afghanistan during more than 13 years of war went through the Pentagon, with the rest distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian departments.
A yearlong investigation by John F. Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, found that the Pentagon couldn’t – or wouldn’t – provide basic information about what happened to 6 in 10 dollars of $2.26 billion it had spent over the course of a decade on the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.
“In reviewing this data, SIGAR found that the Department of Defense could only provide financial information relating to the disbursement of funds for CERP projects totaling $890 million (40 percent) of the approximately $2.2 billion in obligated funds at that time,” Sopko’s report says.
Kiev's Russia Border Wall Has Eastern Ukraine Fuming
KHARKIV, UKRAINE — It’s been nicknamed the “Great Wall of Ukraine.” Its planned combination of barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, berms, and tank traps along Ukraine’s 1,300-mile border with Russia look like something you’d find on one of Israel’s borders with its hostile neighbors.
If it’s ever completed, the wall will seal a frontier that, until last year, had always been wide open. Inaugurating construction here last fall, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk indicated that much more than just a physical barrier was intended. “This will be the eastern border of Europe,” he said.
But in nearby Kharkiv, an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of one-and-a-half million, mention of the wall is mostly greeted with snorts of irritation. The idea of splitting permanently and irrevocably from Russia wins virtually no acceptance. Many people here have family and friends in Russia, the local economy is heavily dependent on trade with Russia, and some say they just can’t wrap their heads around the idea of a frontier being there in the first place.
“The Russian city of Belgorod is an hour’s drive away; until recently there were almost no border formalities. It’s a scene of my childhood; I love that place,” says Yury Smirnov, a taxi driver. “Now the border inspections take hours, and it’s humiliating. Belgorod might as well be on the moon.”
Putin accuses US of backing North Caucasus militants
In a new documentary focusing on Vladimir Putin’s 15 years in power, the Russian president says communications intercepted in the early 2000s show direct contacts between North Caucasus separatists and the US secret services.
"At one point our secret services simply detected direct contacts between militants from the North Caucasus and representatives of the United States secret services in Azerbaijan," Putin said in the film, released by Rossiya 1 TV channel on Sunday.
"And when I spoke about that to the then president of the US, he said... sorry, I will speak plainly, he said, "I'll kick their asses", Putin recounts his conversation with George W. Bush on the issue. A few days later, he says, the heads of Russia's FSB received a letter from their American counterparts, which said they had the right to support opposition forces in Russia.
"Someone over there, especially the West's intelligence services, obviously thought that if they act to destabilize their main geopolitical rival, which, as we now understand, in their eyes has always been Russia, it would be good for them. It turned out, it wasn't," Putin muses, saying he had warned the West about the possible dangers of supporting terrorists.
S-300 exposes Russia-Iran trust deficit
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov announced yesterday, inter alia, that Moscow is going slow on the supply of S-300 missiles to Iran. He said the S-300 deal isn’t “a matter of the nearest future.” It’s a wonderful quibble over time past, time present and time future. What could possibly explain the Russian retreat?
Moscow certainly expected that the Iranians would summarily drop their $4 billion claim with the international court of arbitration in Geneva against Russia’s non-compliance with the 2007 deal. But this may not be happening .
Moscow doesn’t have a strong case to defend in Geneva. Of course, for the Russians it’d be a humiliation to be seen executing the deal while the suit is still pending. Obviously, a meeting point needs to be found. The trust deficit needs to be overcome.
Having said that, Moscow’s retreat also has a broader context. The Russians announced their “rethink” three days after the telephone call to Putin by King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia on April 20.
Russo-Pakistan relations are riding high
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
After decades of frosty ties, Russo-Pakistan relations are now on a roll. Close on the heels of the signing of a military co-operation framework agreement – the first of its kind between the two countries and widely described as a “milestone” in bilateral relations, Islamabad and Moscow have energized their relationship with Russia agreeing last week to invest $2 billion in construction of a 1,100-kilometer pipeline in Pakistan. The pipeline will transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the southern port city of Karachi to Lahore. In return, Pakistan will award the contract for building the pipeline to a Russian company. Russia has also offered to sell gas to Pakistan and the first gas exports could begin as early as 2016.
The pipeline deal is creating a buzz not just for the magnitude of the investment but for the significance it holds for their bilateral relations. If the military co-operation agreement signaled a thaw in ties, the energy deal confirms that Russo-Pakistan joint endeavors are not a one-off affair.
Moscow-Islamabad relations were rarely warm in the past. The two countries were on opposite sides during the Cold War. Pakistan was part of U.S.-led military alliances, received enormous amounts of military and other aid from Washington and even allowed its territory and air space to be used by the Americans for surveillance of the Soviet Union. Then in the 1980s relations plunged to a new low when Pakistan emerged a frontline actor in the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan; U.S. weapons and funds were channelled via Pakistan’s ISI to the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviets. While the end of the Cold War eased tension considerably, the continuing Russian-Indian embrace kept Pakistan out in the cold. That changed over the past decade especially with India moving closer to the Americans and diversifying its sourcing of defense hardware. In June last year, Russia lifted an arms embargo on Pakistan, paving the way for the defense cooperation agreement. The energy deal will broaden their cooperation.
Russia’s recent reaching out to Pakistan is widely interpreted as the outcome of its annoyance with India’s growing dalliance with Washington. That is the India-U.S. partnership drove Moscow into Pakistan’s arms. However, at best the India-U.S. engagement is likely to have removed any inhibitions that Russia may have had in doing business with India’s rivals.
Russia and China to increase finance cooperation - minister
Russia is interested in developing Chinese investment and cooperation, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Cooperation has been recently growing, as Western markets are now closed for Russia.
“Now we are in a situation when Western markets are closed for us and we are getting closer and closer to joint actions and cooperation with China. We’re talking about mutual financial actions, not just the possibility of interaction of financial markets, but also attracting Chinese investments into our economy,” Siluanov said on Friday during a lecture in St. Petersburg
The minister supported China’s initiative to create an economic belt known as the ‘Silk Road’ that envisages serious investments in infrastructure projects that will ease trade between China and Europe.
Trade between Asia and Europe runs right through Russia and the creation of conditions for the transit of goods and cargoes may very well boost Russia’s economy. We support the‘Silk Road’ initiative so as to set up deeper ties between our countries,” Siluanov said.
Is the U.S. losing its grip on foreign policy as China rises?
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
In recent months, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama scored two modest international successes involving Cuba and Iran.
The first was the decision to establish diplomatic ties with Cuba after a freeze that lasted over half a century. The second was the decision to come to an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
In either case, the U.S. didn’t come up with ideal solutions. But it has grabbed some positive, short-term benefits that don’t exacerbate existing foreign policy worries. Washington fell short of its desired regime change in these two countries. Cuba has lasted with and without Soviet support, and the U.S. has failed to topple Castro’s government. The Iran nuke deal, while controversial, doesn’t carry many negative side effects. Nor were there feasible alternatives.
At the same time, these two initiatives are fell short of what might be considered American successes. However, they now cast the U.S. in a better light following the unfortunate events and policy mishaps going back many years. The key problems were the failures of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the George W. Bush administration The succeeding Obama administration didn’t fare much better as it tried to change some Muslim countries through semi-peaceful revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. With the exception of Tunisia, the rest of Obama’s efforts were utter failures: Libya is barely a country, Egypt has reverted to some sort of strong-man politics, and Syria has basically dissolved into Iraq. All this is the culmination of some 14 years of U.S. foreign-policy failure.
Obama and the “right side of history” in Yemen
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The United States’ involvement in the conflict in Yemen is generally understood in terms of two factors – spectre of al-Qaeda exploiting the civil war conditions to its advantage, and, secondly, perceived need (viewed through the prism of Saudi-Iranian rivalry) to balance the growing comfort level in the U.S.’s engagement of Iran with the need to reassure the Sunni Arab allies.
However, the fundamental issue here is something else, namely, the Barack Obama administration’s inability or unwillingness to make a clean break with the “counterrevolutionary” stance it throughout adopted by the U.S. with regard to the advent of the Arab Spring in Yemen in 2011. A creative future role worthy of a world leader will not be possible unless and until the U.S. begins to distance itself openly, unambiguously from the dubious role Washington played in stymying what was a genuinely democratic people’s revolution in Yemen four years ago.
Of course, thanks to Russia’s unrepentant hostility to the Arab Spring and anything that smacked of popular upsurge, the U.S. was splendidly successful in getting the fig-leaf of the United Nations Security Council to legitimize its role in the perpetuation of authoritarian rule in Yemen.
But the primary fault nonetheless lies with the Barack Obama administration in backstabbing the popular revolution — which was, ironically, based on a remarkable “Gandhian” path of non-violence – and preventing the birth of a new era of democratic rule in Yemen.
How the US Contributed to Yemen’s Crisis
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
As a Saudi-led military coalition continues to pound rebel targets in Yemen, the country is plunging into a humanitarian crisis. Civilian casualties are mounting.
With U.S. logistical support, the Saudis are attempting to re-instate the country’s exiled government — which enjoys the backing of the West and the Sunni Gulf monarchies — in the face of a military offensive by Houthi rebels from northern Yemen.
None of this had to be.
Not long ago — at the height of the Arab Spring in 2011 — a broad-based, nonviolent, pro-democracy movement in Yemen rose up against the U.S.-backed government of dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. If Washington and Saudi Arabia had allowed this coalition to come to power, the tragic events unfolding in Yemen could have been prevented.
Airstrikes, ground battles continue to rage across Yemen
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Fighting between Yemen's warring factions raged in southern and central parts of the country, and coalition airstrikes hit Houthi rebel forces in Aden on Friday, but there were no fresh moves toward dialogue.
Saudi Arabia says it is winding down its month-old bombing campaign against the Iran-allied Houthis and forces loyal to Yemen's former president. But Riyadh pounded targets with at least 20 airstrikes across Yemen on Thursday, and 10 more on Friday.
The civilian death toll from the fighting and airstrikes since the bombing started on March 26 has reached an estimated 551 people, the United Nations said on Friday. Its children's agency UNICEF said at least 115 children were among the dead.
Washington and other Western countries backing the Saudi-led aerial campaign have grown increasingly worried about the humanitarian crisis on the ground, and also about the risk of Sunni armed groups taking advantage of the chaos.
Yemen port city hit by coalition air strikes amid fierce battles
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
SANAA, Yemen — Saudi-led coalition warplanes launched dozens of air strikes on Yemen’s southern port city of Aden Saturday, as Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies mobilized hundreds of reinforcements in an effort to wrest control of the city from militias supporting embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, security officials and eyewitnesses said.
The officials said opposing fighters faced off in fierce street battles in the Aden neighborhoods of Khour Makser and Dar Saad as the Houthis try to gain a foothold in the districts.
“The planes were carrying out air strikes every 10 minutes and continued throughout the night,” said Aden resident Mohammed al-Kheir.
Eyewitness Fahmy al-Salal said coalition air strikes in Aden killed scores of Houthis and their allies — security personnel loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The flare-up in Syria has multiple aims
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A loose alliance under the rubric “Army of Conquest”, comprising extremist Islamist groups operating in Syria, has captured the northern Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour. The Army of Conquest is an improbable coalition of Islamist groups variously linked to the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel (as well as the al-Qaeda) that came together with multiple aims.
Jisr al-Shughour is a highly strategic town that controls the supply lines to the few remaining strongholds of the Syrian regime in the northern region. Only a month ago, the opposition forces had captured nearby Idlib city. Assad’s grip on northwestern Syria is weakening and the Alawaite-dominated western coastal regions have become vulnerable.
Interestingly, Israel also seized the moment to launch an air attack on the regime’s military bases in the western region in what appears to be a synchronized move. The extent of synchronization, if any, will be difficult to gauge, because Israel routinely brags about its dealings with Saudi Arabia and puts on a swagger, whereas Riyadh simply cannot afford to acknowledge its covert links with Israel, lest the reputation of the Saudi regime got sullied on the so-called “Arab Street”.
At the very minimum, the developments in northern Syria can be related to the commencement of the intra-Syrian talks that the UN is scheduling on May 4. The opposition groups are under pressure to appear as a credible force. On the diplomatic plane, the UN’s invitation (for the first time) to Iran to attend the forthcoming parleys is a setback for Saudi Arabia.
U.S.-backed rebels team with Islamists to capture Syrian city
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ISTANBUL
Rebels, including members of U.S.-backed groups and al Qaida’s Nusra Front, captured the strategic town of Jisr al Shughur in northwest Syria on Saturday, the second major setback for the government of President Bashar Assad in Idlib province in a month.
The loss of Jisr al Shugur all but closes the government’s land supply routes to two major bases in the west of Idlib, Mastuma and Ariha, both of which are surrounded by rebel forces and can now be supplied only by air. Rebels captured the provincial capital, Idlib city, on March 28.
The latest rebel victory came surprisingly quickly, apparently aided by U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles. Islamist groups announced the battle only Wednesday. The government troops fled to the neighboring provinces of Latakia and Hama.
Gen. Ahmad Rahhal, who defected from the Syrian army and now works with the moderate rebels, called it a strategic victory for the anti-Assad forces that would strengthen their ability to move their own supplies between three provinces – Idlib, Hama and Latakia. But he told McClatchy the forces “still have a lot of work to do” and noted the government still has hundreds of troops in the two bases under siege.
Deadly Burundi protests after president seeks third term
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
At least two people have been killed in violent clashes in Burundi, a day after President Pierre Nkurunziza launched his bid for a third term in office.
Thousands defied a ban to take to the streets of the capital Bujumbura. Police shot live ammunition in the air to disperse them.
President Nkurunziza was nominated to run by his governing CNDD-FDD party.
Opponents say it is unconstitutional and threatens a peace deal that ended the 12-year civil war in 2005.
Understanding the Suffering War Brings
Remarks at Houston Peace and Justice Center Conference on April 25, 2015.
I hope to be brief enough to leave lots of time for questions after I talk.
I know that most of you are probably exceptions to what I’m about to say, because I suspect that most of you came here voluntarily. If you’re here on duty for the FBI, raise your hand.
You may all be the exceptions, but most people in the United States have no idea of the suffering that war brings.
War brings suffering first through the wasting of some $2 trillion every year, roughly half of it by the U.S. government alone, but much of the weaponry purchased with the other $1 trillion, spent by other governments, is U.S.-made weaponry. Never mind what the money is spent on. It could be dumped in a hole and burned and we’d all be better off, but the most suffering is caused by what it’s not spent on.
Obama administration fights for right to use cellphone kill switch
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
For nearly a decade, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has maintained a policy for unilaterally shutting down private cellular service, over an entire metropolitan area if necessary, in the event of a national crisis.
Adopted without public notice or debate, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 303, often referred to as the cellphone kill switch, has been shrouded in secrecy from its inception and has outraged some civil liberties groups battling to make the policy public.
A key hearing in that fight is set for next week.
“We have no clue what’s in it or what it’s about,” says Harold Feld, the senior vice president of Public Knowledge, a public interest advocacy group. In 2012 the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit in federal court seeking disclosure of information about SOP 303’s basic guidelines and policy procedures.
Exclusive: China plans greater yuan convertibility inside and outside FTZs
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
(Reuters) - China plans to take a giant step toward making the yuan more convertible by extending a pilot scheme allowing the currency to be traded with few restrictions to all its free trade zones, before taking the scheme nationwide later this year.
The liberalization, revealed to Reuters on Friday by three sources with knowledge of the plan, underlines China's ambition to transform the yuan CNY=CFXS into a major global currency.
"Once this is done, this will be a big step forward in opening China's capital account," said one of the sources, who all declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The timing would aid Beijing's campaign this year to persuade the International Monetary Fund to include the yuan in its currency basket.
Interview: Hank Paulson on dealing with China and Xi Jinping
Is China going to beat the US at its own game of capitalism? And is China the enemy of the US and the West? The former US Treasury Secretary argues both against over-estimating China the idea that conflict with the US is inevitable.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
New York — Henry Paulson’s ties to China date back 25 years and span more than 100 visits. As chairman of Goldman Sachs and as US Treasury Secretary during the George W. Bush administration, his contacts and relations with Chinese officials and leaders grew wide and deep. In 2006 he went out of his way to meet a relatively unknown provincial leader named Xi Jinping, now China’s president. Mr. Paulson's approach to the Middle Kingdom has been described as "engagement without illusions."
Paulson is engaged with both China's economy and its natural world and environment, one of his passions. “Dealing with China,” his new book, reflects on his experiences as well as ongoing efforts with China through the Paulson Institute in Chicago. Paulson hopes the book will be published in China but says he won’t accept any cuts or alterations. He spoke recently with The Christian Science Monitor.
Q: You were early captivated by the energy around the opening of China's closed and ancient society. What has sustained your interest?
The people I worked with were the disrupters, the ones using capital markets transactions as levers to open up parts of the economy to competition. They were open to ideas, looked everywhere in the world for the best ideas and then looked to adapt them to China.
No U.S.-Japan trade breakthrough expected during Abe visit: White House
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
(Reuters) - The White House on Friday dashed hopes of a breakthrough on U.S.-Japan trade when President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meet in Washington next week, further delaying a major 12-nation Pacific trade pact.
"We're not there yet," said Caroline Atkinson, Obama's deputy national security adviser.
A deal between Japan and the United States is vital to clinching a Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, as their economies account for 80 percent of the group. Obama also sees the TPP, which would cover a third of world trade, as an important counterweight to China's growing clout in the region.
Atkinson said substantial progress had been made in intense, high-level negotiations in Tokyo this week but more work was needed, especially on the thorny issues of autos and agriculture.
If Greece falls, no one wants their prints on the murder weapon
(Reuters) - "We're going bust." "No, you're not." "You're strangling us." "No we're not." "You owe us for World War Two." "We gave already."
The game of chicken between Greece and its international creditors is turning into a vicious blame game as Athens lurches closer to bankruptcy with no cash-for-reform agreement in sight.
Europe's political leaders and central bankers and Greek politicians agree on only one thing: if Greece goes down, they don't want their fingerprints on the murder weapon.
If Athens runs out of cash and defaults in the coming weeks, as seems increasingly possible, no one wants to be accused of having pushed it over the edge or failed to try to save it.
Falling prices, rising threats cool interest in Kurdish oil
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — The hall for the Irbil Oil and Gas Exhibition this week was crowded with company displays, executives and investors. But conspicuously absent were international oil giants like Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron that only a year ago were eager to exploit the promising reserves of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
The threat of Islamic State group militants, who have swept across much of northern Iraq and are battling Kurdish forces only miles away from the Kurdish capital, Irbil, has dampened international interest. The security threat only increases oil companies' doubts, on top of falling oil prices and disputes between the Kurds and the Iraqi central government in Baghdad.
At the exhibition — the main oil and gas industry gathering in the Kurdish region — slick displays with giant video screens advertising oil services companies and drilling equipment fill the hall festooned with Kurdish flags as young men in suits bustle around importantly.
But the event, which ends Saturday, just can't compare to past ones, said Baryam Akdogan of the Turkish Teffen Contracting group.
Wisconsin police billboard features officer who shot two people in 10 days
Image posted by Kenosha Professional Police Association prompts anger from community after Pablo Torres killed Aaron Siler, 26
Amidst national tension over perceived police brutality, Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of roughly 100,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago, has come into focus.
The Kenosha Professional Police Association (KPPA) posted a billboard thanking the community for its support. Some residents question the message behind the ad. It features Pablo Torres, a young officer who shot two people within a 10-day period in March. In the second shooting, Torres killed 26-year-old Aaron Siler.
Police have said the shooting occurred after a chase, when Torres was confronted with a weapon. A spokesperson for the Siler family, Kathy Willie, told the Guardian the billboard was “hurtful”.
“To me that doesn’t make the department look good,” she said. “What are they trying to say? Are they trying to say he’s not guilty and they know that for a fact? Why are they thanking him?”
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature an article by Rose Schneiderman: "A Cap Makers Story."
Tune in at 2pm!
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Move Over Shale, Solar Is Shining Brighter With Each Passing Day
Developments show how booming demand and support for solar is shaking up energy paradigm
Move over dirty fossil fuels, the solar revolution is coming.
That, at least, is the buried headline contained in new reporting from Reuters on Sunday which looks at the ability of the solar industry to upend the world's energy system in ways similar to recent innovations which allowed oil and gas companies to squeeze previously unattainable deposits from underground shale formations.
With a focus on Japan, Reuters catalogs how the rising capacity and falling prices of solar energy—even as it currently survives without contributions from a fleet of dormant nuclear plants —has led the country to turn off its "giant oil-fired power plants" one after another.
Big Data’s big libertarian lie: Facebook, Google and the Silicon Valley ethical overhaul we need
The tech world talks of liberty and innovation while invading privacy and surveilling us all. It must end now
Why has Big Data so quickly become a part of industry dogma? Beyond the tremendous amounts of money being thrown at Big Data initiatives, both in research dollars and marketing efforts designed to convince enterprise clients of Big Data’s efficacy, the analytics industry plays into long-held cultural notions about the value of information. Despite Americans’ overall religiosity, our embrace of myth and superstition, our surprisingly enduring movements against evolution, vaccines, and climate change, we are a country infatuated with empiricism. “A widespread revolt against reason is as much a feature of our world as our faith in science and technology,” as Christopher Lasch said. We emphasize facts, raw data, best practices, instruction manuals, exact directions, instant replay, all the thousand types of precise knowledge. Even our love for gossip, secrets, and conspiracy theories can be seen as a desire for more privileged, inside types of information— a truer, more rarified knowledge. And when this knowledge can come to us through a machine—never mind that it’s a computer program designed by very fallible human beings—it can seem like truth of the highest order, computationally exact. Add to that a heavy dollop of consumerism (if it can be turned into a commodity, Americans are interested), and we’re ready to ride the Big Data train
Information is comforting; merely possessing it grounds us in an otherwise unstable, confusing world. It’s a store to draw on, and we take threats to it seriously. Unlike our European brethren, we evince little tolerance for the peculiarities of genre or the full, fluid spectrum between truth and lies. We regularly kick aside cultural figures (though, rarely, politicians) who we’ve determined have misled us.
Our bromides about information—it’s power, it wants to be free, it’s a tool for liberation—also say something about our enthusiasm for it. The smartphone represents the coalescing of information into a single, personal object. Through the phone’s sheer materiality, it reminds us that data is now encoded into the air around us, ready to be called upon. We live amid an atmosphere of information. It’s numinous, spectral, but malleable. This sense of enchantment explains why every neoliberal dispatch from a remote African village must note the supposedly remarkable presence of cell phones. They too have access to information, that precious resource of postindustrial economies.
US may end ban on families paying ransom for overseas hostages – report
Parents of American journalist James Foley have said White House official threatened to prosecute them if they tried to deliver payment
The Obama administration is considering changing a US policy prohibiting families of hostages held overseas from making ransom payments to abductors, according to a television report on Sunday.
“Under recommendations contained in an ongoing White House review of US hostage policy, there will be absolutely zero chance … of any family member of an American-held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones,” according to the report aired on ABC’s This Week.
The report said three senior US officials told of the policy review, but it did not indicate when a decision might be made.
A White House official contacted by Reuters would not comment on the ABC report.
Energy Storage Would Play Major Role in a Green Future
LONDON—Inventors are in a race to find the best way of storing electricity to make the most of renewables and cut the use of fossil fuels.
Currently, when more power than needed by consumers is produced by sources such as wind turbines or solar panels, some of the electricity is wasted. But that is changing.
Governments have realised that one of their biggest challenges in cutting the use of fossil fuels is to store surplus electricity for use at peak times.
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At present, coal and gas plants are left ticking over or running at below capacity, ready to be turned on to full load to meet peak demand. This greatly adds to greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology believes that energy storage has vast growth potential as a business opportunity, and is a key to future stable electricity supplies.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Microbes have major effect on climate change
Carbon, held in frozen permafrost soils for tens of thousands of years, is being released as Arctic regions of the Earth warm and is further fueling global climate change, according to a Florida State University researcher.
Assistant Professor of Oceanography Robert Spencer writes in Geophysical Research Letters that single-cell organisms called microbes are rapidly devouring the ancient carbon being released from thawing permafrost soil and ultimately releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Increased carbon dioxide levels, of course, cause the Earth to warm and accelerate thawing.
“When you have a huge frozen store of carbon and it’s thawing, we have some big questions,” said Robert Spencer, assistant professor of oceanography. “The primary question is when it thaws, what happens to it? Our research shows this ancient carbon is rapidly utilized by microbes and transferred to the atmosphere, leading to further warming in the region and therefore more thawing. So we get into a runaway effect.”
Spencer and a team of researchers first began looking at this issue of what happened to the carbon as permafrost thawed several years ago. There was a gap in the scientific literature because terrestrial scientists had found that permafrost was thawing and thus releasing long-stored carbon. But, aquatic scientists found no evidence of that ancient carbon at the mouths of major rivers leading to the Arctic Ocean.
Long-term exposure to air pollution may pose risk to brain structure, cognitive functions
Air pollution, even at moderate levels, has long been recognized as a factor in raising the risk of stroke. A new study led by scientists from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine suggests that long-term exposure can cause damage to brain structures and impair cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults.
Writing in the May 2015 issue of Stroke, researchers who studied more than 900 participants of the Framingham Heart Study found evidence of smaller brain structure and of covert brain infarcts, a type of "silent" ischemic stroke resulting from a blockage in the blood vessels supplying the brain.
The study evaluated how far participants lived from major roadways and used satellite imagery to assess prolonged exposure to ambient fine particulate matter, particles with a diameter of 2.5 millionth of a meter, referred to as PM2.5. These particles come from a variety of sources, including power plants, factories, trucks and automobiles and the burning of wood. They can travel deeply into the lungs and have been associated in other studies with increased numbers of hospital admissions for cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes.
"This is one of the first studies to look at the relationship between ambient air pollution and brain structure," says Elissa Wilker, ScD, a researcher in the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "Our findings suggest that air pollution is associated with insidious effects on structural brain aging, even in dementia- and stroke-free individuals."
Are bees 'hooked' on nectar containing pesticides?
Bees are attracted to nectar containing common pesticides, scientists at Newcastle University and Trinity College Dublin have discovered. This could increase their chances of exposure to high levels of pesticides.
Previous studies have suggested that exposure of this kind can affect bees' fitness. The research, published in Nature, discovered that buff-tailed bumblebees and honeybees could not taste the three most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides and so did not avoid them. In fact, the bees showed a preference for food which contained pesticides: when the bees were given a choice between sugar solution, and sugar solution containing neonicotinoids, they chose the neonicotinoid-laced food.
The lab-based study also showed that the bumblebees ate more of the food containing pesticides than the honeybees, and so were exposed to higher doses of toxins.
Bees and other pollinating insects are important for increasing crop yields -- their value has been estimated to be worth at least €153billion per year globally. When pollinating crops, they can be exposed to pesticides in floral nectar and pollen. Several controversial studies have shown that neonicotinoids have negative effects on bee foraging and colony fitness. As a result, public concern has grown over the impact of neonicotinoids on bees and other pollinators. In April 2013, the EU introduced a temporary ban on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops, while further scientific and technical evidence was gathered.
Eco-tourism quandary in India’s ‘Land of the Gods’
A sunny noon this April 6, tourism entrepreneur Arvind Bhardwaj was simultaneously grappling with both riches and ruin at Byasi town, in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, northern India. He became ingredient in the curiously cooking case of a $4.2 billion industry being both economy maker and breaker.
Bhardwaj was inspecting a new restaurant site his adventure sports company ‘Red Chilli’ had leased for a year, to complement their booming Ganges riverside camping site 30 kms beyond Rishikesh.
The growth discussion was, however, clouded with worries of a court or government order to shut down approximately fifty companies running beach camps by the Ganges. A non-governmental organization (NGO) had earlier filed litigation accusing the local government of polluting the Ganges. Too many riverside campers, cried the NGO in court.
Two hours later, over a late lunch of rice and cottage cheese curry at his Red Chilli camp site, Bhardwaj was mulling over hope-horror prospects with manager Nansraj Thapa. Business was booming, yet it could go bust.
Plants may not protect us against climate change
Plants are one of the last bulwarks against climate change. They feed on carbon dioxide, growing faster and absorbing more of the greenhouse gas as humans produce it. But a new study finds that limited nutrients may keep plants from growing as fast as scientists thought, leading to more global warming than some climate models had predicted by 2100.
Plants need different nutrients to thrive, such as nitrogen for making the light-absorbing pigment chlorophyll and phosphorus for building proteins. Farmers supply these in fertilizer, but in nature, plants have to find their own sources. New nitrogen comes from the air, which is 78% nitrogen by volume, but it is almost all in the form of nitrogen gas. Plants can't break this down, so they rely on soil bacteria to do it for them. Some plants, mainly legumes, have evolved nodules on their roots that harbor these bacteria. New phosphorus comes from weathering rocks or sometimes from sands blown on the wind from deserts.
Yet these two key nutrients are not particularly well accounted for in climate models. Only two of the 11 models used to project future warming in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered the effects of limited nitrogen on plant growth; none considered phosphorus, although one paper from 2014 subsequently pointed out this omission.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
‘Left, Right & Center’: Drone Strikes, David Petraeus, Clinton Trouble
Now Is the Time for the Progressive Movement to Win
Crisis, Opportunity and Climate Austerity in Drought-Stricken California
Hellraisers Journal: Lt Linderfelt, Butcher of Ludlow, Testifies Against John Lawson, Hero of Ludlow
A Little Night Music
Jerry Butler - Make it easy on yourself
The Impressions & Jerry Butler - Come Back My Love
Jerry Butler - Never Give You Up
Jerry Butler - Good Good Lovin'
Betty Everett & Jerry Butler - Fever
Jerry Butler - I Stand Accused
Jerry Butler - I Can't Stand To See You Cry
Jerry Butler and The Impressions - Sweet Was The Wine
Jerry Butler -You Can Run (But You Can't Hide)
Jerry Butler & Betty Everett - Let It Be Me
Jerry Butler - For Your Precious Love
Jerry Butler - I'm A Telling You
Jerry Butler - I Was Wrong
Jerry Butler - I Can't Stand It