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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 accordionist and zydeco artist Buckwheat Zydeco. Enjoy!
Buckwheat Zydeco - On A Night Like This
On this land there is a great deal of timber, pine and oak, that are much use to the white man. They send it to foreign countries, and it brings them a great deal of money.
On the land there is much grass for cattle and horses, and much food for the hogs.
On this land there is a great deal of tobacco raised, which likewise brings much money. Even the streams are valuable to the white man, to grind the wheat and corn that grows on this land. The pine trees that are dead are valuable for tar.
All these things are lasting benefits. But if the Indians are given just a few goods for their lands, in one or two seasons those goods are all rotted and gone for nothing.
We are told that our lands are of no service to us, but still, if we hold our lands, there will always be a turkey, or a deer, or a fish in the streams for those young who will come after us.
We are afraid if we part with any more of our lands the white people will not let us keep as much as will be sufficient to bury our dead.
Doublehead - Creek Chief
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
NCTim
enhydra lutris
H/T: BigAl
H/T: gjohnsit
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Calls on Journalists to Tell ‘Full Story’ of US Torture
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed the treatment of al Qaeda suspects held in secret prisons, told the Bureau today it was now down to journalists to “tell the full story” about the intelligence agency’s torture programme because politicians did not have the will.
In a video interview on the last day of his house arrest recorded for the Bureau by film-maker Tarquin Ramsay, the former CIA counter-terrorism analyst called on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to release more details from its 6,000-page report on CIA torture completed last December.
The committee published a heavily redacted 525-page executive summary, which contained shocking details about “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Kiriakou said the release of more details was vital, not only for accountability, but also to avoid a repeat of the programme in the future.
“If the next president decides he wants to torture prisoners, all he needs is a stroke of his pen. We need legislation that will permanently and formally outlaw torture,” he said.
Henry A. Giroux: Liberalism's Failures in a Time of Increasing Violence, Racism, Inequality and State Terrorism
In these two far-reaching interviews on the "Soap Box" with Eric Poulin, Henry Giroux talks about the failure of liberalism in a time of increasing violence, racism, inequality, state terrorism, and the rule of the financial elite over every commanding social, cultural and political institution in the United States. He elaborates on the failure of many liberals to move both beyond the call for weak reforms that do not challenge the fundamental structures of domination and their willingness to often align themselves with repressive policies that benefit the rich and powerful. He points, for instance, to liberalism’s refusal to name the corruption and misery produced by neoliberal capitalism and its willingness to align itself with policies of the right such as the Iraqi War, state torture, a health-care program that largely benefits big insurance companies, and the massive suffering caused by the growing inequality in wealth, income and power. He also points to the refusal on the part of liberals to protest a grotesque and dangerous incarceration and surveillance state, and the failure to address the issue of what it takes to reinvent politics so as not to serve the interests of the rich and powerful - the failure in short to name a counter-revolution politics that has corrupted both political parties. He argues that liberals are more afraid of the left than the right and have consistently, especially under President Obama, gone out of their way to compromise with the right while moving the Democratic Party into more conservative territory, all the while refusing to bear responsibility for destroying the conditions that make a real democracy possible.
Why is the US Trying to Replace the Assad Government With al-Qaeda in Syria?
H/T: BigAl
A month ago, the city of Idlib fell to opposition fighters, mainly al-Qaeda and its affiliates and allies. It was a major blow to the Syrian army. Last Saturday, the nearby town of Jisr al-Shughour also fell, mostly to the same groups.
Fighting against the Syrian government and army are a mixture of Syrian and foreign mercenaries from dozens of countries. They are supplied, trained, armed and paid by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, NATO, and of course the United States. Their weapons are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it is appears that TOW wire-guided missiles supplied by Saudi Arabia (and indirectly the US) made a major difference in the battles for Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour. The Syrian government is backed mainly by Russia and Iran, plus a few thousand fighters from Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is also backed by a substantial majority of the Syrian population, as determined by foreign intelligence estimates as well as a multi-candidate 2014 election with astonishing participation even by expatriate Syrians.
NATO, the US and the relatively marginalized secular Syrian opposition, say they want to replace the current Syrian government with one that is secular, democratic, respectful of human rights, and which represents all the people of Syria.
Really? The US has undermined and overthrown democratic governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), Congo (1965), Chile (1973), Turkey (1980), Nicaragua (1981-90), Haiti (2004), and the occupied Palestinian territories (2007), and it is trying to do the same in Venezuela. Why? Because the democratic choice of the people did not result in a compliant government, subservient to the West and multinational corporations. That’s the real agenda of the US and NATO.
WPost Blames Obama for Syrian Mess
Exclusive: As Al-Qaeda forces advance in Syria – with the help of the Saudi-Israeli alliance – American neocons are shielding themselves from the blame if Damascus falls to the jihadists by preemptively faulting President Obama for not intervening for “regime change” earlier, Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
For the past two decades, American neocons and Israeli hard-liners have targeted Syria for “regime change,” a dream that may be finally coming true, albeit with the nightmarish ending of Al-Qaeda or maybe the Islamic State emerging as the likely winners.
Such an outcome would be disastrous for the millions of Syrian Shiites, Alawites, secular Sunnis and Christians, including descendants of survivors of Turkey’s Armenian genocide a century ago. They would all face harsh repression or, possibly, mass decapitations. An Al-Qaeda/Islamic State victory also would be a major problem for the United States and the West, which would have to choose between a terror central in the center of the Middle East or a military invasion.
So, what we’re now seeing in Official Washington is the beginning of a neocon finger-pointing narrative that promotes the theme that if President Barack Obama had only armed and trained “moderate” rebels and bombed the Syrian military (to create “safe zones” or to punish the government for its alleged use of sarin gas), everything would have worked out just fine.
The reality is far different. Indeed, the neocon baiting of Obama to engage more deeply in Syria was much like the incremental steps that preceded U.S. “regime changes” in Iraq and Libya. First comes the “humanitarian” propaganda portraying the opposition as entirely noble, then there are increasingly coercive demands of the sitting government, followed by military threats and clashes over “no-fly zones,” setting the stage for a violent “regime change” and the murder of the leaders, before the countries descend into bloody chaos as brutal jihadists seize large swaths of territory.
Arab troops spotted landing in vital Yemen city
H/T: gjohnsit
SANAA, Yemen - With helicopter gunships hovering overhead, at least 20 troops from a Saudi-led Arab coalition, including Yemeni expatriates, came ashore Sunday in the southern port city of Aden on what military officials called a "reconnaissance" mission, as fighting raged between Iranian-backed Shiite rebels and forces loyal to the nation's exiled president.
The landing was the first of its kind since the start of the Saudi-led air campaign against the rebels and their allies - forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh - who have captured most of northern Yemen and marched on southern provinces over the past year.
The objective of the landing was not immediately clear, but Yemeni military officials said the coalition troops would attempt to better organize and train forces loyal to the country's internationally recognized leader, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, as well as identify an area that could serve as a "green zone" from which Hadi and his government could operate when they return to Yemen.
At the top of that list, said the officials, is the al-Bureqah area west of Aden, which stretches for about about 10 miles along the coast and is home to a major oil refinery and large fuel tanks.
'Limited' coalition ground force in Aden, Yemen, more coming
A "limited" Saudi-led force is on the ground in Yemen's strategic port of Aden and more troops are on their way, a government official has confirmed to AFP. About 20 troops have landed in the city for a "reconnaissance" mission, AP reports.
"A limited coalition force entered Aden and another force is on its way" to Aden, the official and commander told the agency on terms of anonymity.
The Saudi-led forces "will start helping us in fighting" the Houthi rebels, a leading member of the Popular Committees, also told the agency. The PC are a locally recruited militia loyal to expelled President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Similar
reports appeared in the local Al-Ghad daily, which claimed the ground forces have entered the airport. The newspaper is linked to southern separatists, who demand the restoration of the southern state that merged with North Yemen 15 years ago.
Yemen: Saudi Arabia used cluster bombs, rights groups says
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Saudi-led coalition carrying out air strikes in Yemen has used US-supplied cluster bombs banned by much of the world, a rights group has said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it had evidence that the bombs were used at least twice against Houthi rebels. There were no reports of casualties.
Cluster bombs spread small bombs over a wide area and can leave unexploded munitions buried in the ground.
They are banned under a treaty signed by 116 countries, but not Saudi Arabia.
Islamic State again pushing to capture Iraq refinery at Baiji
IRBIL, Iraq — Militants from the Islamic State have taken control of half Iraq’s largest oil refinery and have cut supply lines to the 150 or so government troops who are holding out inside the facility, witnesses reported Saturday.
The surprise Islamic State advance came despite U.S.-led aerial bombardment of Islamic State positions in the central Iraqi city of Baiji, where the refinery is located, and is a reminder of the precarious security situation in central Iraq where elite government troops are stretched thinbattling Islamic State forces
Speaking from inside the facility, an Iraqi officer who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter said government troops were running low on food, water and ammunition. He said the situation was chaotic after 11 months of nearly unbroken siege.
He said Islamic State fighters control “all the major buildings,” 80 percent of the watchtowers around the facility, and had flanked government positions with “snipers and suicide bombers driving heavily armored car bombs.”
Afghan Forces Suffer Heavy Toll in First Battles With Taliban
H/T: gjohnsit
Afghan security forces are suffering record casualties in their first battles against the Taliban since the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan ended in December after more than 13 years.
The number of killed and wounded so far this year is about 70 percent higher than during the same period last year, said Colonel Brian Tribus, director of public affairs for NATO’s Afghanistan mission.
Last year’s casualty rates, which marked a fifth consecutive annual increase, were labeled in November as “not sustainable” by a top U.S. general. With Afghan forces now operating without the same U.S. and NATO support that they previously enjoyed, the body count has soared.
“We are taking so many casualties, that’s the reality,” said Afghan Interior Minister Nur al-haq Ulumi. “We are fighting by ourselves.”
Upswing in fighting in Ukraine sends civilians fleeing and puts truce in doubt
Eight Ukrainian soldiers are killed in past week, and another 40 wounded in attacks by pro-Russia separatists, in most intense clashes since Minsk ceasefire
Ukraine is experiencing its most serious increase in fighting in three months, sending more civilians fleeing and raising fresh doubts about the viability of a shaky February truce.
Another Ukrainian soldier was killed this weekend bringing the death toll in the past week to eight, with another 40 wounded in attacks in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russia separatists, the most intense clashes since the ceasefire agreed in Minsk.
Even if the conflict does not escalate again into war, civilians are continuing to flee the conflict area, adding to the country’s humanitarian crisis. More than 1.2 million people have been internally displaced by the conflict, in which more than 6,200 people have died since April 2014.
A representative of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” said on Saturday that eight soldiers were wounded in one 24-hour period at the end of last week. The day before, two Ukrainian service personnel were killed and a two others wounded.
Will Russia join China’s AIIB as an ‘Asian’ member?
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The sizes of the equity stakes that members plan to take in the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) keeps changing as more countries join and their designations change. A South Korean news agency also reports a diplomatic source as saying that China will allow Russia to join the AIIB as an “Asian” member with greater voting rights than non-Asian nations.
Yonhap quoted the source as saying Wednesday that South Korea will likely take a 3%-3.5% stake in the AIIB, down from an earlier 4% to 5%, now that Russia is expected to join the regional development bank as an “Asian” member.
“Russia has been categorized as an Asian member in the AIIB,” said the source who is said to have been involved in this week’s fourth round of preparatory meetings in Beijing to discuss rules and other issues involving the bank.
If true, Russia’s Asian designation would seem to indicate preferential treatment by Beijing which has been moving closer to Moscow in geopolitical terms. It would also give Russia, whose territory straddles Asia, more voting power in the AIIB which is viewed as a competitor to U.S.-led development banks.
Sweden accuses Russian warships of disrupting power cable laying
Swedish authorities have accused Russian naval ships of interfering with the cable-laying work between Sweden and Lithuania. It comes a few months after Sweden unsuccessfully hunted for Russian submarines in the Stockholm archipelago.
Sweden insists Russian war vessels have interfered with the cable-laying four times over the past couple of months, the Local reported.
"Sweden has discussed the matter with the Russian authorities," Pezhman Fivrin, spokesperson for Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, told the Aftobladet newspaper.
Stockholm would discuss the accusations again on Monday, Wallström said.
China says U.S. welcome to use civilian facilities in South China Sea
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
(Reuters) - The United States and other countries will be welcome to use civilian facilities China is building in the South China Sea for search and rescue and weather forecasting "when conditions are right", China's navy chief has told a senior U.S. officer.
China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas, with overlapping claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
Recent satellite images show China has made rapid progress in building an airstrip suitable for military use in the disputed Spratly Islands and may be planning another.
Those moves, along with other reclamations, have caused alarm around the region and in Washington too, with the issue dominating a summit of Southeast Asian leaders this week, to China's displeasure.
Amnesty says Egypt using courts and jail to intimidate journalists
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities are using the courts to stifle journalism, Amnesty International said on Sunday in a report that listed 18 reporters and media workers jailed and dozens more facing criminal investigations
The New York-based rights group said several reporters have been detained for long periods without charge or trial, including an Egyptian photographer known as Shawkan who has been held for more than 600 days.
Rights groups say a crackdown launched by the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after the overthrow of Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013 has muzzled freedom of expression.
"In Egypt today anyone who challenges the authorities' official narrative, criticizes the government or exposes human rights violations is at risk of being tossed into a jail cell, often to be held indefinitely without charge or trial or face prosecution on trumped-up charges," Amnesty said.
Will Modi juggernaut deliver instant karma?
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, said the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Perhaps, Prime Minister Modi can attest to this truism. As he has crisscrossed the globe since becoming Prime Minister — Bhutan, Brazil, Nepal, Japan, U.S., Burma, Australia, Fiji, Nepal, Seychelles, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Singapore, France, Germany, and Canada — he has left far behind the trail stretching back to his humble origins. He is due to be in China, Mongolia, South Korea, and Russia later this year.
As PM Modi tries to remake India’s brand image, he’s been championing a “Make in India” manufacturing campaign and searching for new sources of energy to fuel India’s growth. While the Non-Resident Indians, also known as “Not-Really Indians,” or the Indian diaspora is elated at India’s newfound place in the world, the Modi-mania at home has been fading with discontent growing by the day. Some are even calling the Prime Minister’s Office (or the PMO), the Prime Minister Overseas.
Nowadays, in India people want instant karma; waiting for a lifetime to attain nirvana is the theoretical notion of antiquity and requires a lot of grinding struggle. The days when the Indian population could wait for a leader to prove his mettle through his long tenure are gone. In the age of instant connectivity the natives want instant results.
Can PM Modi deliver instant change in a society that is polytheistic, polymorphous and complex — in terms of class, caste, religion, gender and income — at every level of social organization? Will India’s polytheistic divisions hold India back in the 21st century? Will the Modi juggernaut continue to roll on or simply grind down to a creaking halt?
With Nationwide Protests Against Police Brutality, Activists Declare: "Black Spring" has Begun
'The war on Black people in Baltimore is the same war on Black people across America,' declares grassroots organizers Ferguson Action.
Submitted by: NCTim
Fueled by the announcementon Friday that six police officers would be charged for their role in the tragic death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, activists are holding a national day of protest on Saturday to amplify the growing call for racial justice and end to police brutality against people of color.
"#BlackSpring has begun," event flyers announced. Last week, in the wake of Gray's death and the local protests and police crackdown that followed, solidarity demonstrations began springing up in cities across the country, with many more expected for the weekend.
On Saturday, demonstrations are planned for over 25 cities, including: Boulder, Colorado; Dallas and Houston, Texas; Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus, Ohio; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Wilmington and Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Albany and New York City, New York; Knoxville, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; Orlando and Tampa, Florida; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky; Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; Los Angeles, California; Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Toronto, Ontario in Canada.
And in Baltimore, protesters will march from the Gilmore Homes housing projects where Gray was arrested and end with a massive rally at City Hall.
392 People Killed by Police from Jan 1, 2015 thru April 30 2015
Submitted by: NCTim
Jan10 left us a link to a story about 388 flags planted on the lawn at Harvard University. They were flown upside down and each one signified someone who had died this year at the hands of the police.
There is a website, killedbypolice.net which names each and every person killed by police in the United States. This year there have been 392 killed so far (January (91) ,February (85) ,March (115) ,April (101) )
It’s important to remember that Freddie Grey would not have even been on this list if the Baltimore police department had been allowed to get away with the cover-up they were attempting. These 392 people are the ones officially killed by police. Hard to imagine how many others there are who should be listed.
The website lists 771 people killed by police in 2013 and 1101 in 2014. 2015 is on pace to come in at around 1,200 people killed by cops since we are averaging 98 a month right now. It may be higher than that considering the fact that more deaths typically occur during the summer months.
Baltimore burns and America declines
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
When do you declare a point of no return? The burning of Baltimore might appear in future history texts as the turning-point in America’s fortunes. Six years after the election of America’s first African-American president, the prospects of black Americans seem bleaker than at any time since the First World War, when the great migration began from the cotton-fields of the South to the factories of the North.
Nearly three quarters of black children are born outside of marriage, which means that the vast majority of black children are raised by single parents. Black women, meanwhile, are carrying the economic burden of their families more than men. Roughly 3 black women are employed full time for every 2 black men (for American whites, the ratio of 3:2 in favor of men.
It is hard to blame racism for this discrepancy: why should there be less discrimination against female black job applications than against male job applicants? Two-thirds of Bachelor’s degrees awarded to African-Americans, moreover, to go women. No people in the history of the world has managed to raise and educate children without a father’s contribution to family income. Where are the black men? For every 100 black adult women not in jail, the New York TImes reports, there are only 83 black men. The missing 17% are dead or in jail.
The reason that so many black men are in jail is because they have committed crimes. There is an argument, to be sure, that many black men are incarcerated for “non-violent” crimes such as selling illegal drugs; the counterargument is that the drug business is inherently violent, and that it is easier to catch a miscreant selling drugs than to catch him in the act of shooting a rival. In any case, America’s higher incarceration rate has coincided with a drastic drop in the incidence of violent crime. Statisticians will argue ad infinitum about causality, but a common-sense reading of the data tells us that there is less crime because more violent offenders are in jail.
Inside the Military-Police Center That Spies on Baltimore's Rioters
H/T: gjohnsit
On Ambassador Road, just off I-695 around the corner from the FBI, nearly 100 employees sit in a high-tech suite and wait for terrorists to attack Baltimore. They’ve waited 11 years. But they still have plenty of work to do, like using the intel community’s toys to target this week’s street protest.
They are the keepers of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a government “fusion center” set up to share information and coordinate counterterrorist activities between 29 law enforcement agencies—federal, state, and local, including Baltimore city and county cops—in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Seeded by a state anti-terror advisory council whose meetings are closed to the public, nourished by Republican and Democratic governors alike, MCAC has expanded its access to spying tools over the past decade and a half. It can pinpoint cellphone users. It can monitor movements of state motorists through their license plates, as it has done with an estimated 85 million drivers.
It turns out that Maryland hasn’t been under sustained assault from international terrorists, despite the wild fears of the homeland security boosters who seek to justify the center’s budget. So rather than accept the possibility that MCAC and other fusion centers were guarding against an overhyped threat, the federal government has expanded the mission to include threats that have always existed: When your job is to find bad guys, it makes it easier to define everyone as a bad guy.
The MCAC has adopted what the Department of Homeland Security calls an “all-crimes approach”—one focused not just on monitoring gangs and other criminal threats, but all manners of civil unrest, from Occupy protesters to the Baltimore residents who have clashed with police on the city streets this week. And it is run by a cop who has been accused of racism in the past.
Conservatives Remarkably Quiet About Freddie Gray’s 2nd Amendment Rights Being Violated
Submitted by: NCTim
What was revealed during Baltimore Chief Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby’s press conference regarding the charges against officers in the death of Freddie Gray was something that should get Second Amendment “right to bear arms” advocates extremely angry: He was carrying a legal knife, which was supposedly the cause for his arrest.
Mosby said:
“[The police] failed to establish probably cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest, as no crime had been committed… the knife was not a switchblade and is lawful under Maryland law.”
Freddie Gray was killed during a violent arrest process that nearly severed his spine. An arrest that had no probable cause and shouldn’t have happened in the first place. He was literally arrested for no reason.
Where is the conservative outrage over this fact? Why aren’t they marching in the streets with the protesters and letting everyone know Freddie Gray’s rights were violated.
Baltimore’s new plantations: Race, police and how little things have changed since Frederick Douglass
Where Freddie Gray grew up, one in four juveniles is arrested and the unemployment rate is 58 percent
Across the street from Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall, where violent protests erupted last Monday afternoon, stands Frederick Douglass High School. It was from that school that students emerged at 3 p.m., only to find themselves in the crosshairs of the police. The school is named after the famed abolitionist who spent 10 years a slave in Baltimore. Anyone familiar with Douglass’ most famous work—”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself“—cannot but feel a bitter irony in that juxtaposition of Douglass High and the riots of the past week. For once upon a time, Baltimore offered Douglass a glimpse of freedom, which “laid the foundation and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.”
Douglass was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of rural Maryland. While Americans often look to the countryside for escape or rebirth—think of Thoreau’s meditative retreat to Walden or the pioneers farming their own land on the frontier—Douglass saw something more sinister there. On the Eastern Shore, the slave was denied any sense of personal or historical time; Douglass didn’t know his birthday or his age and was forbidden to ask about it. The only time the slave knew was that of a farm animal—“planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, or fall-time”—the rhythms of nature and forced labor dictating each and every moment of his life.
Douglass’ father was white and rumored to be his owner, presenting Douglass with a terrible confusion of biology, property and tyranny: “The slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slave the double relation of master and father.” The countryside, in short, was not a place of pastoral ease or natural innocence. It was a political site of great coercion and cruelty.
When Douglass was about 8, he was sent to Baltimore, where he lived for seven or eight years. He was sent there again in his 20s, and it was from there that he escaped to the North. Though always a slave in Baltimore, Douglass discovered in the city a freer existence. There was better food, better clothes and “privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation” such as roaming the city on his own. It wasn’t that urban slaveholders were kinder human beings: They were, after all, slaveholders, and Douglass’ new master, who had never held slaves, became more vicious with time. It was that the city imposed a regime of “shame” on the slaveholders that was absent in the countryside.
Open Carry Group In Texas Threatens Freddie Gray Protesters With Stupidity
Submitted by: NCTim
Many photos in this article.
1 in 4 US renters must use half their pay for housing costs
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than one in four U.S. renters have to use at least half their family income to pay for housing and utilities.
That's the finding of an analysis of Census data by Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that helps finance affordable housing. The number of such households has jumped 26 percent to 11.25 million since 2007.
Since the end of 2010, rental prices have surged at nearly twice the pace of average hourly wages, according to data from the real estate firm Zillow and the Labor Department.
"It means making really difficult trade-offs," said Angela Boyd, a vice president at Enterprise Community Partners. "There are daily financial dilemmas about making their rent or buying groceries."
Taser to change hiring practices of former police chiefs
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Abandoning a practice that has faced criticism, Taser International will no longer hire police chiefs with whom it has business relationships within weeks or months after they leave public service.
The maker of police stun guns and body cameras said it would require a one-year “cooling off period” before entering into consulting contracts with former law enforcement officials to promote their experiences using Taser equipment.
The change follows New Mexico’s scathing state audit report Thursday that found Taser hired Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz days after he stepped down in 2013 — even as he remained on the city payroll.
Similar arrangements have been reported between the company and former Fort Worth, Texas, Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead and former New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas.
Robert Reich: America’s economy is a nightmare of our own making
The former secretary of labor examines how our country became the most unequal society in the developed world
For the past quarter-century I’ve offered in articles, books, and lectures an explanation for why average working people in advanced nations like the United States have failed to gain ground and are under increasing economic stress: Put simply, globalization and technological change have made most of us less competitive. The tasks we used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.
My solution—and I’m hardly alone in suggesting this—has been an activist government that raises taxes on the wealthy, invests the proceeds in excellent schools and other means people need to become more productive, and redistributes to the needy. These recommendations have been vigorously opposed by those who believe the economy will function better for everyone if government is smaller and if taxes and redistributions are curtailed.
While the explanation I offered a quarter-century ago for what has happened is still relevant—indeed, it has become the standard, widely accepted explanation—I’ve come to believe it overlooks a critically important phenomenon: the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs. And the governmental solutions I have propounded, while I believe them still useful, are in some ways beside the point because they take insufficient account of the government’s more basic role in setting the rules of the economic game.
Worse yet, the ensuing debate over the merits of the “free market” versus an activist government has diverted attention from how the market has come to be organized differently from the way it was a half-century ago, why its current organization is failing to deliver the widely shared prosperity it delivered then, and what the basic rules of the market should be. It has allowed America to cling to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re “worth” in the market, without examining the legal and political institutions that define the market. The tautology is easily confused for a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim has meaning only if the legal and political institutions defining the market are morally justifiable.
Candidate Sanders Calls for 'Political Revolution' Against Billionaire Class
'I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when elections become a battle between billionaires,' candidate for Democratic nomination said in an interview Sunday
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is calling for revolution. The independent senator from Vermont who just this week announced his bid for Democratic nominee, minced no words when speaking on ABC's This Week on Sunday.
"I think I'm the only candidate who's prepared to take on the billionaire class which now controls our economy, and increasingly controls the political life of this country," Sanders told host George Stephanopoulos. "We need a political revolution in this country involving millions of people who are prepared to stand up and say, enough is enough, and I want to help lead that effort."
Sanders contrasted his record with that of his primary opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that the presumed nominee "has been part of the political establishment for many, many years."
"I respect her and I like her," the senator continued, "but I think what the American people are saying is that at a time when 99 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent, and when the top 0.1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, maybe it's time for a real political shakeup in this country and go beyond establishment politics."
100 days of solitude: Syriza struggles as Greeks once again stare into the abyss
As Syriza nears its 100th day in office, Alexis Tsipras walks a fine line between eurozone compromise and being accused of submitting to Angela Merkel
In the countdown to Syriza marking 100 days in office, Greece got its first crisis monument. Arms outstretched, mouth wide open, his face locked in despair, the sculpture depicts a man dangling from a financial index in free fall. Below, his world of concrete and stone lies broken and smashed.
Officially known as the “crisis work”, the art piece has attracted a steady flow of spectators to the place where it has been erected, in the shadow of a bridge on the boulevard that connects Athens to the sea. Flowers lie next to it as if in mourning for all that has passed.
For Tasos Nyfadopoulos, the young sculptor behind the work, it is the first public tribute to the thousands of suicides the crisis has left in its wake. And an expression of everything Greeks have come to feel. “People want art to express them,” he said. “And with this work I tried to express my own feelings and let society at large speak.”
On the rollercoaster ride that is the debt-stricken country’s epic battle to stay afloat, many had hoped that Syriza would also provide solace. But five years after Athens was forced to be bailed out by the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – accepting the biggest rescue package in global financial history – Greeks are not sure what to think. What they do know is that after five years of dancing to the tune of austerity – of making the sacrifices necessary to keep bankruptcy at bay – they are, like Nyfadopoulos’s dangling man, once again staring in to the abyss.
Putin ratifies BRICS $100bn currency pool deal
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratified a deal to establish a $100 billion foreign currency reserve pool for the BRICS group. The pool’s purpose is to protect national currencies from volatility in global markets.
The document was “to ratify the treaty on the establishment of a pool of foreign exchange reserves of the BRICS.”
On Wednesday the deal was ratified by Russia’s upper house of Parliament, the Federation Council. According to the deputy head of the Federal Council Committee for Budget and Financial Markets, Sergey Ivanov, the currency pool will primarily support the balance of payments of the BRICS member states.
“Realization of the agreement will also contribute to the effective protection of the national currencies against the volatility in the world currency markets,” Ivanov said.
Costa Rica issues alert over ammonium nitrate spill
People warned against swimming in beaches and fishing after 180 tonnes of toxic cargo spills from sunken boat off coast.
Costa Rica has issued an emergency alert after a ship carrying 180 tonnes of ammonium nitrate sunk off the country's Pacific coast, releasing the massive amount of toxic cargo into the ocean.
The National Emergency Commission (CNE) urged people on Sunday to avoid swimming at beaches and suspend fishing in the region off the port of Puntarenas, 90 kilometres west of the capital.
The CNE said the accident occurred on Saturday when the boat, which was transporting ammonium nitrate for the fertiliser company Fertilizantes de Centroamerica, capsised in heavy seas. Two crew members were rescued without incident.
Ammonium nitrate is often used in the manufacture of fertilizers and explosives, and can be dangerous to health in cases of direct contact with the chemical.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature news from Colorado: John R Lawson found guilty of murder, sentenced to life in prison.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Settling an old debate: Researchers solve a lingering mystery of cancer cell biology
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
German biologist Theodor Boveri observed early in the last century that cancer cells often harbor multiple copies of a subcellular structure that he had previously named the centrosome. He was also the first to suggest that the extra centrosomes drive cancer. Biologists have since learned a great deal about the structure and many functions of Boveri's "special organ of cell division." But why cancer cells harbor multiple copies of this organelle -- and whether they are "addicted" to having so many -- has remained unanswered. So has the question of whether healthy human cells even require centrosomes to divide. Now, 101 years after Boveri aired his suspicions, a Ludwig Cancer Research paper published in advance online in Science may have some answers.
A team of researchers led by Karen Oegema and Andrew Shiau of Ludwig San Diego reports that while cancer cells are not addicted to multiple centrosomes, healthy cells absolutely require them to proceed with cell division. In the absence of centrosomes, healthy cells enter a state of latency, while malignant cells continue dividing. "Our results have settled a long-running debate in cell biology," says Oegema, a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, San Diego. "Centrosomes make things so much better for healthy dividing cells, that they have a protective mechanism that halts their division if they lose these organelles."
Ordinarily, the resting cell's single centrosome serves as an organizing center for the cell's protein filament-based skeleton. When a cell divides, however, the centrosome takes on another function. It duplicates and plays a role in ensuring equal distribution of chromosomes to the two daughter cells. Many cancer cells contain multiple centrosomes, and this aberration contributes to the misdistribution and abnormal numbers of chromosomes in daughter cells.
Still, it wasn't clear that centrosomes are absolutely needed for cell division. Biologists have long known that other mechanisms exist to separate chromosomes. "The growing feeling among a number of cell biologists is that the 'centrosome is like the appendix of the cell'," says Shiau, director of the Ludwig Institute's Small Molecule Discovery Program in San Diego. His team, which is part of a broader Technology Development program at Ludwig, specializes in developing compounds that can be used to advance cancer research and have potential as therapies.
St. Louis mothers wonder if babies they were told died are alive
ST. LOUIS — Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital are now wondering if the children could have been taken from them still very much alive.
A video that went viral in March showed Melanie Gilmore learning that her children had located her birth mother, Zella Jackson Price of suburban St. Louis. DNA confirmed with near 100-percent certainty that the two are mother and daughter.
Price was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, only to be told hours later that her daughter had died. No one is sure who was responsible, but Gilmore ended up in foster care. She was told by her foster parents that her birth mother gave her up.
With Gilmore’s 50th birthday approaching, her children decided to track down her birth mother, leading them to the now 76-year-old Price. Gilmore, who is deaf and lives in Eugene, Ore., learned in March through lip reading and sign language that her mother had been found. They reunited in April.
Fighting patent trolls becomes bipartisan issue in Congress
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Patent law — famously arcane and technical — is becoming a mainstream, even bipartisan issue in Congress.
The push for patent overhaul is spurred by the recent increase in patent litigation, mainly by companies whose principal business is generating lawsuits rather than producing products. And a Senate bill introduced last week is designed to slow these patent trolls by making it more difficult and more costly to bring many patent suits.
The proposed Senate legislation fine-tunes an antitroll bill in the House, patent experts say, to be less objectionable to groups, including pharmaceutical companies and universities, that traditionally resist any moves to weaken the rights of patent holders.
“It looks pretty good, and in this environment it should have a good shot at becoming law,” said Arti Rai, a professor at the Duke University School of Law and former senior official in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Pop-up boutique takes gender pay gap discussion to New Orleans
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
PITTSBURGH — Elana Schlenker’s small pop-up shop, which opened on a struggling businesses corridor in April, drew customers, news crews and guest speakers not solely for its female-made merchandise but also its premise. At 76 < 100, as the boutique was called, men paid full price, while women paid 76 percent of that.
Schlenker wants to draw attention to gender-based wage inequality, prevalent around the world. In Pennsylvania, women take home 76 cents to each man’s dollar. The store’s slogan was “Pay what you’re paid,” and for the month of April, customers did.
Now, Schlenker is looking to take her wage-gap crusade down south to Louisiana. “The gap there is even worse — it’s 66 percent,” she said regarding the statewide disparity. "We want to keep going with what really worked well in Pittsburgh and continue the great energy," wrote photographer Tammy Mercure, Schlenker's New Orleans-based collaborator.
At the chic store on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh, items for sale ranged from honey collected by a female beekeeper to books by the Guerilla Girls art activist collective, with a quarter of products produced locally. Schlenker sourced female talent to cater events and design and build the store's modern wooden displays.
A space odyssey: cosmic rays may damage the brains of astronauts
(Reuters) - It may not be space debris, errant asteroids, supply shortages, thruster malfunctions or even the malevolent aliens envisioned in so many Hollywood films that thwart astronauts on any mission to Mars. It may be the ubiquitous galactic cosmic rays.
Researchers said on Friday long-term exposure to these rays that permeate space may cause dementia-like cognitive impairments in astronauts during any future round-trip Mars journey, expected to take at least 2-1/2 years.
In a NASA-funded study, mice exposed to highly energetic charged particles like those in galactic cosmic rays experienced declines in cognition and changes in the structure and integrity of brain nerve cells and the synapses where nerve impulses are sent and received.
The irradiated particles in galactic cosmic rays, remnants of star explosions called supernovas, can penetrate spacecraft and astronauts' bodies. Earth itself is protected by its magnetosphere.
Dead zones: Places where no animal can survive found in Atlantic Ocean
A team of German and Canadian marine biologists have for the first time ever witnessed so-called ‘dead zones’ in the Atlantic Ocean – places where no life can thrive, owing to there being almost no dissolved oxygen in the water.
Zones depleted of oxygen do exist in nature and have previously been discovered along populated coastal areas off the eastern and southern coasts of the United States and the Baltic Sea. But this is the first time such a place has been observed in the open ocean.
In a paper published in the journal Biogeosciences, researchers outline the existence of pockets of low-oxygenated patches of water in the Atlantic Ocean.
They are vast – sometimes 100 square miles in size. They travel constantly and are also seasonal. One of the biggest ever discovered forms each year in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Scientists discover swirling, oxygen-depleted dead zones in North Atlantic
Scientists baffled by open sea dead zones but say the areas of low oxygen could explain previously mysterious die-offs
Researchers have discovered dead zones in the Atlantic Ocean with oxygen levels low enough to kill most marine life, according to a report published Thursday. It added that it was the first time such zones, which usually occur near coastlines, were observed in the open ocean.
Researchers found the dead zones in eddies, large areas of swirling water, that were slowly moving westward — raising fears that the low-oxygen zones could encounter an island and potentially lead to mass fish kills in shallower water, the research report said.
“The few eddies we observed in greater detail may be thought of as rotating cylinders of 100 to 150 km (60-94 miles) in diameter and a height of several hundred meters, with the dead zones taking up the upper 100 meters (328 feet) or so,” Johannes Karstensen, a researcher at GEOMAR, the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, in Kiel, Germany, said in a press release. Karstensen was part of the team of German and Canadian researchers behind the report.
Dead zones normally occur near coastlines where river runoff carries fertilizers and other chemical nutrients into the ocean, causing algae blooms that rapidly consume the water’s oxygen, the press release said. Though ocean currents can carry these waters away from the coast, a dead zone forming in the open ocean had not yet been discovered, according to the press release for the report, titled “Open ocean dead zones in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean.” It was published in the European Geosciences Union’s open access journal Biogeosciences.
Dull glow of forest yields orbital tracking of photosynthesis
Researchers have found a tight correlation between ground-based measurements of forest-canopy photosynthesis and traces of fluorescence detected in low-Earth orbit, enabling continuous measurement of forest health on a global scale.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A research team led by geoscientists from Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory has provided some crucial ground-truth for a method of measuring plant photosynthesis on a global scale from low-Earth orbit.
The researchers have shown that chlorophyll fluorescence, a faint glow produced by plant leaves as a byproduct of photosynthesis, is a strong proxy for photosynthetic activity in the canopy of a deciduous forest. That glow can be detected by orbiting satellites and could be used to monitor global photosynthetic activity in real time.
“We show that fluorescence is tightly coupled to photosynthesis, capturing both daily and seasonal fluctuations,” said Xi Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and the study’s lead author. “This is the first time anyone has linked fluorescence to photosynthesis over a long time scale in a deciduous forest and validated orbital measurements of fluorescence with ground-based measurements.”
The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Yang led the work as a graduate student in the Brown–Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) graduate program, working with Brown geoscientist Jack Mustard and MBL associate scientist Jianwu (Jim) Tang.
Can organic farming reverse agriculture from a carbon source to a carbon sink?
More than a third of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) come from agriculture and a new theory suggest human can reverse global warming by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 through regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use.
Scientists believe increasing the soil's organic content will not only fix carbon and reduce emissions, it will also improve the soil's ability to retain water and nutrients and resist pests and droughts.
To mitigate GHG emissions and retain soil fertility, organic agriculture might be a wise choice for decreasing the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers, protecting environments, and further improving crop yields.
Recent research showed that replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure significantly decreased the emission of GHGs. Organic farming can reverse the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source to a carbon sink.
Arizona lawmakers tell cities they can't ban plastic bags
PHOENIX (AP) — Vexed by the litter caught in cactus and shrubs, one Arizona city banned plastic bags on Earth Day last year. Two others considered similar bans as part of a growing trend around the country to outlaw the single-use of plastic bags at checkout counters.
Those efforts are now in limbo after Arizona lawmakers voted this month to make it illegal for cities to impose bag bans, angering municipalities over what they see as heavy-handed action by the state.
It's a clash that has grown more intense as lawmakers here have taken an aggressive approach in recent years in curtailing the role of local government. Arizona cities are forbidden from hiking minimum wages and enacting taxes or regulations on firearms. The same law that made it illegal for cities to ban plastic bags also applied similar restrictions on Styrofoam containers and other disposable products. And it included a requirement blocking cities from requiring business owners to report energy usage consumption, something some municipalities were considering in order to encourage energy-efficiency in buildings.
Some local officials note the irony: While the conservative Arizona Legislature scoffs at the federal government, they say state lawmakers are doing the same thing to cities and towns — especially those that tend to lean liberal.
Coal-tar-sealant runoff causes toxicity and DNA damage
Runoff from pavement with coal-tar-based sealant is toxic to aquatic life, damages DNA, and impairs DNA repair, according to new research. Rainwater runoff collected as long as three months after coal-tar-sealcoat application caused 100% mortality to minnows and water fleas, which are part of the base of the food chain.
Runoff from pavement with coal-tar-based sealant is toxic to aquatic life, damages DNA, and impairs DNA repair, according to two studies by the U.S. Geological Survey published in the journals Environmental Science and Technology and Science of the Total Environment.
Pavement sealant is a black liquid sprayed or painted on the asphalt pavement of parking lots, driveways and playgrounds to improve appearance and protect the underlying asphalt. Pavement sealants that contain coal tar have extremely high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Coal tar is a known human carcinogen; several PAHs are probable human carcinogens and some are toxic to fish and other aquatic life.
Rainwater runoff collected as long as three months after coal-tar-sealcoat application caused 100% mortality to minnows and water fleas, which are part of the base of the food chain, when the test organisms were exposed to ultra-violet radiation to simulate sunlight. The full study, reported in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Exposure of fish cells to coal-tar sealant runoff damaged their DNA and impaired the ability of the cells to repair DNA damage. "The simultaneous occurrence of DNA damage and impairment of DNA repair has important implications for cell health," said Sylvie Bony, who led the study at the Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'Etat (ENTPE), a French research agency in Lyon, France. The study is reported in the scientific journal Science of the Total Environment.
Marshes, reefs, beaches can enhance coastal resilience
The resilience of U.S. coastal communities to storms, flooding, erosion and other threats can be strengthened when they are protected by natural infrastructure such as marshes, reefs, and beaches, or with hybrid approaches, such as a "living shoreline" -- a combination of natural habitat and built infrastructure, according to a new study.
The resilience of U.S. coastal communities to storms, flooding, erosion and other threats can be strengthened when they are protected by natural infrastructure such as marshes, reefs, and beaches, or with hybrid approaches, such as a "living shoreline" -- a combination of natural habitat and built infrastructure, according to a new NOAA study.
The study, published in Environmental Science and Policy, assesses reports and peer-reviewed studies on the strengths and weaknesses of using built infrastructure, such as seawalls or dikes, natural infrastructure, or approaches which combine both. The study focuses on how these approaches help coastal communities reduce their risk of flooding and erosion, as well as additional benefits, and the tradeoffs when decision makers choose one type over another.
"When making coastal protection decisions, it's important to recognize that built infrastructure only provides benefits when storms are approaching, but natural and hybrid systems provide additional benefits, including opportunities for fishing and recreation, all the time," said Ariana Sutton-Grier, Ph.D., the study's lead author, member of the research faculty at University of Maryland and NOAA's National Ocean Service ecosystem science adviser. "Natural and hybrid systems can also improve water quality, provide habitat for many important species, and mitigate carbon going into our atmosphere."
Threats like coastal erosion, storms and flooding can reshape the shoreline and threaten coastal property. With approximately 350,000 houses, business, bridges and other structures located within 500 feet of the nation's shoreline, erosion is a problem many U.S. coastal communities are addressing.
Fracking wastewater and the risk to our food
Unconventional drilling creates a huge amount of waste, some of which is being sprayed onto farmer’s fields. A 2005 report from New Zealand stated cows grazing on “dump farms” have elevated levels of hydrocarbons. “Cows are allowed to graze on land with high levels of hydrocarbons without any punishment and their food products are allowed to go to market without government testing,” a Green Party MP said last year. It is happening in Canada too. The field above is northwest of Calgary. Former energy consultant Jessica Ernst said, “We are eating & drinking drilling and fracking waste.”
“When they are drilling deep horizontal wells, they go a great distance and this produces a lot of drilling waste. It is toxic. There are a lot of naturally occurring toxics that are brought up. It is often radioactive. I have documentation that the formations they want to frack are radioactive. This comes up with metals and BTEX (Benzene, Tolulene, Ethylbenzyne, Xylenes) carcinogens plus the mystery additives which companies refuse to disclose,” said Ernst.
The most economical disposal method is to dump the waste on agricultural land. This includes the grasslands, where animals graze, and crop lands. “So, essentially, we will eat the waste coming from the drilling.” Farmers are paid to let let companies spread what they are told is “good fertilizer” on their fields.
Ernst said some farmers eventually stop accepting this fracking waste. Others don’t care and will continue accepting waste on fields that will be used to plant crops.
Declining 'large herbivore' populations may lead to an 'empty landscape'
The decline of the world's large herbivores, especially in Africa and parts of Asia, is raising the specter of an "empty landscape" in some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, according to a newly published study.
Many populations of animals such as rhinoceroses, zebras, camels, elephants and tapirs are diminishing or threatened with extinction in grasslands, savannahs, deserts and forests, scientists say.
An international team of wildlife ecologists led by William Ripple, Oregon State University distinguished professor in the College of Forestry, conducted a comprehensive analysis of data on the world's largest herbivores (more than 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, on average), including endangerment status, key threats and ecological consequences of population decline. They published their observations today in Science Advances, the open-access online journal of Science magazine.
The authors focused on 74 large herbivore species - animals that subsist on vegetation - and concluded that "without radical intervention, large herbivores (and many smaller ones) will continue to disappear from numerous regions with enormous ecological, social, and economic costs." Ripple initiated the study after conducting a global analysis of large-carnivore decline, which goes hand-in-hand, he said, with the loss of their herbivore prey.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Sam Harris Made Himself Look Like an Idiot in a Email Exchange with Chomsky and Has Shared It with the World
U.S. Braces for Even Worse Wildfire Season
Fighting for Our Oceans
Hellraisers Journal: Landlords want tenant farmers with plenty of "force," meaning little children.
The OPOL Report: Fake change in a new box edition
Smith Trustees: Transgender women are women
Silence Won't Stop An Epidemic
A Little Night Music
Buckwheat Zydeco - Hey Good Lookin'
Lyle Lovett and Buckwheat Zydeco - That Was Your Mother
Buckwheat Zydeco - What You Gonna Do?
Buckwheat Zydeco - I'm on the Wonder
Buckwheat Zydeco - Time Is Tight
Buckwheat Zydeco - Hot Tamale Baby
Buckwheat Zydeco - Tee Nah Nah
Buckwheat Zydeco - Jambalaya
Buckwheat Zydeco - Hey Baby
Buckwheat Zydeco - Crawfish Song
Buckwheat Zydeco - When The Levee Breaks
Buckwheat Zydeco - Don't Mess With My Toot Toot
Buckwheat Zydeco - Cry to Me
Buckwheat Zydeco - Why Does Love Have To Be So Sad
Buckwheat Zydeco - Zydeco Honky Tonk
Buckwheat Zydeco - Crossroads
Buckwheat Zydeco - Turning Point
Buckwheat Zydeco - Buck's Boogie
