Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Eddy Clear water. Enjoy!
Eddy Clearwater - Came Up The Hard Way
"The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums."
-- Arthur Koestler
News and Opinion
Drums Along The Potomac: How This Country Never Learns Anything
Quite frankly, this has been one of the more depressing weeks we have seen in a very long time. The country seems to be sliding down some very familiar tracks into a military engagement in the Middle East -- an engagement that, at the moment, seems to be cloudy in its objectives, vague in its outlines, and obscure on the simple fact of what we are supposedly fighting for, and who we will be fighting with. Can we fight the Islamic State generally without help from (gasp!) Iran? Can we fight the Islamic State in Syria without a de facto alliance with Hafez al-Assad, who was Hitler only a year or so ago? And the most recent polling seems to indicate that all the institutions that are supposed to act as a brake on war powers within a self-governing republic are working in reverse again. The Congress is going to debate how much leeway it should give the president to make war, not whether he should be allowed to do it at all. The elite media, having scared Americans to death by giving the barbarians and their slaughter porn the international platform the barbarians so desired, is jumping on board with both feet. (To cite only one example, Chris Matthews is suiting up again.) The country has been prepared to give its children up again. ...
Amid more executions by the militant group ISIS, Americans increasingly see the group as a threat to the U.S. Now, 65 percent of Americans view ISIS as a major threat - up from 58 percent in October - while another 18 percent view it as a minor threat. Majorities of Republicans (86 percent), Democrats (61 percent) and independents (57 percent) view ISIS as a major threat. Support for sending U.S. ground troops to fight ISIS has risen among all partisans, but particularly among Democrats and independents. Back in October, 56 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents disapproved of using ground troops - now 50 percent of Democrats approve and 53 percent of independents favor using ground troops.
You can see the logical canyon, can you not? The Islamic State is no more an actual threat to the United States than it was in October. But there have been more garish executions and more events elsewhere, so the perceived threat -- real or not -- has begun to work its dark magic on the national imagination, the way that aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds once did. The more bellicose of our leaders are openly shilling for a general engagement on the ground; the inevitable John McCain inevitably has called for a "mere" 10,000 ground troops, and he wants those troops to help fight against both the Islamic State and Assad. Because...do something!
The U.S. Empire and ISIS: A Tale of Two Death Cults
President Obama is a master of military supply and demand. His operatives and allies supply jihadists with enough weapons, financing and, in the case of Libya, a Euro-American air force, to plunge vast tracts of Africa and Asia into bloody chaos, thus creating a demand for intervention by the planet’s only “indispensable” nation: the United States. It’s a diabolical formula for fomenting hell on earth, driven by a simple logic: Since the U.S. is superior to the rest of the world ONLY in military terms, Washington finds its ultimate advantage in turning the whole world into a battlefield. U.S. imperialism in terminal decay sees no salvation except through global war.
Of necessity, Obama is a flame-thrower, a fire-spitter, a pyromaniac on a mission to incinerate humanity’s capacity to resist – a vision shared by the jihadist death cults America has incubated for the past four decades.
ISIS, the Islamic State, begat by Al Qaida, which was begat by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the U.S. in Afghanistan, now declares sovereignty over portions of Libya, having occupied much of Syria and Iraq and planted the black flag in southern Yemen and the suburbs of Paris, where its token presence is enough to drive millions of Europeans into a decrepit Crusader palsy. A subcontinent of thieves who have plundered the planet for half a millennia vow to send the dark Others back to “their own countries” – as if Europe had not stolen these African and Asian homelands long ago. In the end, however, what Europe will send is more weapons to the jihadists, mimicking Uncle Sam. ...
ISIS has been such a boon to U.S. war-fomenting strategy, Obama has been emboldened to demand that Congress give him three years of virtually unlimited, renewable powers to reboot the War on Terror. Like George Bush before him, Obama refuses to put geographic limits on the scope of his crusade against ISIS and its “associates.” The world is his live-fire chessboard, he can call the pieces by whatever name he wants, and make up the rules along the way. Every move is calculated to lead to greater militarization of relations among nations and peoples, because the military is America’s strongest suit – in fact, its only suit.
The truth is, the rulers of the United States are as much a death cult as the Islamic State, although U.S. imperialism is infinitely more dangerous.
'The Spy Cables': Al-Jazeera Teases Massive Global Intelligence Leak
Al-Jazeera is reporting that it has come into the possession of "hundreds of secret intelligence documents from the world's spy agencies" which, in partnership with The Guardian newspaper, will be detailed in a series of in-depth exposés beginning on Monday.
Though nothing is indicated about the possible source of the intelligence documents, Al-Jazeera says the files come from intelligence agencies around the world, including: Israel's Mossad, Britain's MI6, Russia's FSB, Australia's ASIO and South Africa's SSA.
On Monday, Haaretz reports that one of the revelations contained within the documents may be Mossad's "true assessment" of the Iran's nuclear program—a potentially explosive piece of information if it betrays public comments on the subject made by the nation's political leaders.
Report Claims Militias Have Seized Qaddafi’s Chemical Weapons Amid Chaos in Libya
Libyan militias have reportedly seized chemical weapons — including mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin — that were stockpiled by former dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
An unnamed Libyan military official told Asharq Al-Awsat, a London-based newspaper that is owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, that militias recently captured chemical weapons caches in southern and central Libya. The report could not be independently verified by VICE News.
The newspaper was unsure about the quantity of weapons seized, but their military source expressed concern they "may fall into the hands" of militants loyal to the Islamic State. The paper claimed to have — but did not share — a video that purportedly shows militants testing chemical weapons in a mountainous area south of Tripoli.
"In the footage, a militant is shown firing a projectile, producing flames followed by a cloud of dense white smoke that covers a wide area," the paper wrote.
Iraq DM Slams US for Revealing Timing for Mosul Attack
Iraqi Defense Minister Khalid Obeidi was harshly critical of the Pentagon today, saying they should not have revealed the timing for a planned Iraqi attack on the ISIS city of Mosul.
Obeidi says any comments on the planned attack were for Iraq to make, not the US, and that Centcom commanders had no business unveiling so many details.
Is Lebanon's Hezbollah Sending Fighters to the Iraqi Frontlines?
In a message broadcast to supporters, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, announced last week that the militants had a "limited presence" in Iraq as he called upon countries in the Middle East to "come with us" to fight the threat from the Islamic State (IS). It is not the first time Hezbollah has intervened in an Iraqi conflict, but with its battles in Syria and suggestions that the militant group may be overstretched, the nature of its commitment on the Iraqi front lines remains unclear.
Hezbollah, a political and militant organization formed in the 1980s with the help of Iran, is currently fighting with President Bashar Assad's forces against the Syrian rebels. The former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri recently called for the group to withdraw from the country, accusing them of "destroying Syria on the heads of Syrians." Hezbollah has also been engaged in deadly clashes with the al Nusra front on the mountainous Syrian Lebanese border of Qalamoun. Last month, it clashed with Israel, attacking a military convoy in response to an Israeli air strike.
But last week's announcement was the first time that Nasrallah confirmed Hezbollah's involvement in Iraq. ...
Commenting on Nasrallah's speech, Alexander Corbeil, an analyst for the think tank SecDev Group, told VICE News: "The growth of ISIS (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra has in part legitimized the narrative that Hezbollah is fighting radicals in Syria and, by extension, Iraq, to the best interest of states and peoples in the region."
It is thought, however, that Hezbollah has been operating in Iraq in a limited capacity for some time. In July 2014, Hezbollah commander Ibrahim al-Hajj, a technical specialist involved in training, was killed near Mosul, Iraq. Lebanon's the Daily Star reported that Iraqi officials had said that the militant group sent advisers to help Iraqi militias fighting Sunni extremists, and that the commander's death was the first known Hezbollah death in Iraq when IS captured large parts of the country.
Israeli intel cooperated with U.S. and Britain to surveil Iran leaders, new Snowden leak reveals
Israeli signals intelligence has cooperated with its U.S. and British counterparts to surveil Iran’s leaders, according to a document leaked this month by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The memo was written in April 2013 by the head of the Iranian department at the U.S. National Security Agency’s signals intelligence unit.
In January 2013, specialists from the NSA and the Israeli army’s 8200 signals intelligence unit discussed the Iranian leadership in detail. For the first time, a video conference took place between Israeli, American and British experts, the latter from Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the GCHQ. The document refers to 8200 as ISNU, which stands for Israel Sigint National Unit. ...
According to the memo, the GCHQ has “long advocated that it work with NSA and the ISNU in a trilateral arrangement to prosecute the Iranian target.” But the NSA’s signals intelligence chief “has been opposed to such a blanket arrangement, and this specific trilateral should not be interpreted as a broad change of approach. In other areas, NSA and CCHQ have agreed to continue to share information gleaned from the respective bilateral relationships with ISNU.”
DHS Urges Lenovo to Remove Israeli Software, Fearing Cyberattacks
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has advised Chinese laptop maker Lenovo Group to stop installing the Superfish adware on its computers, saying it makes those computers vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Superfish, developed by Israel-based Komodia, has been installed on all computers by Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, since 2010. The software introduces vulnerabilities in the way it collects data to serve up ads, and security experts warn it could easily be co-opted to steal user data outright.
The world has broken its promises about rebuilding Gaza – and the children will suffer
Six months after international donors pledged billions after the last war, the cash has not materialised, lives remain shattered and the desperate suffering goes on
Baby Salma died of hypothermia at just 40 days old. Her body was drenched with freezing rainwater. It was frozen “like ice-cream”. Gaza was hit by a severe winter storm called “Huda” in January. Salma was its youngest victim.
Salma’s mother, Mirvat, says, “The night she died the storm was strong. We were all soaking wet, but some of us managed to sleep. The rain came and in and drenched Salma’s blankets. I found her shaking. Her tiny body was frozen like ice-cream. We took her to hospital, but later the doctor called. Salma was dead. My beautiful girl weighed 3.1kg at birth. She was healthy and would be alive today if we had not been bombed out of our home in the war and reduced to living like this.” ...
UNRWA, the agency for which I work, was forced to suspend what for Mirvat's family would have been a life-saving programme just three weeks ago. After the conference in Cairo last October at which donors pledged $5.4bn to rebuild Gaza, we created a $720m project. With the generous pledges at Cairo we were certain the funds would be there. Or so we thought. With this money, we aimed to give rental subsidies to people whose homes were uninhabitable. We hoped to give cash so people could repair and rebuild their houses. But the billions pledged did not materialise and the programme was left with a shortfall of nearly $600m.
Certainly the need is great and the sense of desperation is palpable and profound. We estimate that approximately 100,000 housing units were damaged or completely destroyed, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Many of those with homes that are habitable have found themselves on water and electricity grids that are dysfunctional.
Rebuilding Gaza physically is only part of the story. If Salma and Moemen had lived, what future would they have had? The next generation in Gaza is traumatised, shocked, brutalised. The recreational spaces where they play are littered with some 8,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance. ...
Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is man-made, the result of deliberate political choices.
Gazans flee floods caused by Israel's dams opening
Brigadier Gerneral Said Al-Saudi, chief of the civil defence agency in Gaza, told Al Jazeera: "Israel opened water dams, without warning, last night, causing serious damage to Gazan villages near the border. More than 40 homes were flooded and 80 families are currently in shelters as a result."
He added that the dam opening would adversely affect local agriculture as the flooded area included Israel poultry and animal farms.
"We are appealing to human rights organisations and international rights organisations to intervene to prevent further such action.''
A major storm in the region has previously brought freezing rain to Gaza and snow across parts of the Occupied Territories and Israel.
Ukraine Rebels Withdraw Heavy Weapons, Exchange Prisoners
A senior rebel commander said separatist forces were due to begin withdrawing heavy weapons from the frontline in east Ukraine on Sunday, a step towards implementing an internationally brokered peace deal.
The rebel announcement comes as Ukrainian military and separatist representatives exchanged dozens of prisoners on Saturday evening, kicking off a process intended to usher in peace to the conflict-ridden east.
Senior separatist commander Eduard Basurin told the Russian news agency Interfax that rebel forces would begin a two-week process of withdrawing heavy weapons from the frontline in east Ukraine on Sunday.
The Ukrainian side also appeared ready to pull back its weapons, according to a Ukrainian senior military official.
Financial Lifeline: Greece reaches deal with Eurozone to extend bailout loan
Greece readies reform promises
Greece's government prepared reform measures on Sunday to secure a financial lifeline from the euro zone, but was attacked for selling "illusions" to voters after failing to keep a promise to extract the country from its international bailout. ...
Greeks reacted with relief that Friday's deal averted a banking crisis which fellow euro zone member Ireland said could have erupted in the coming week. This means Tsipras has stood by one promise at least: to keep the country in the euro zone. ...
Top Marxist members of Tsipras's Syriza party, a broad coalition of the left, have so far been silent on the painful compromises made to win agreement from the Eurogroup.
But veteran leftist Manolis Glezos attacked the failure to fulfill campaign promises. "I apologize to the Greek people because I took part in this illusion," he wrote in a blog. "Syriza's friends and supporters ... should decide if they accept this situation." ...
Friday's agreement merely buys time for Greece to seek a long-term deal with the Eurogroup. Euro zone members Ireland and Portugal have already exited their bailouts, but Greece faces yet another program - on top of bailouts in 2010 and 2011 totaling 240 billion euros - when the extension expires.
"Once you get them into the safe space for the next four months, there'll be another set of discussions which will effectively involve the negotiation of a third program for Greece," Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said on Saturday.
Greece drafts menu of reforms to appease eurozone creditors
Greece’s new leftwing government moved to head off insolvency and a run on the country’s banks on Monday by drawing up a menu of structural economic reforms aimed at appeasing its eurozone creditors and securing a four-month bailout lifeline.
Sources said the three pages of draft proposals included new policies aimed at improving tax revenue, combating widespread tax evasion among the wealthy, cracking down on the illicit cigarettes and petrol trade, and other campaign pledges from Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister and Syriza leader who came to power a month ago promising to end five years of EU-dictated austerity. The proposals will be submitted formally on Monday and will be scrutinised by eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday, who will then decide whether or not to approve a bailout extension. ....
In an abrupt U-turn, Tsipras also yielded to the authority of the reviled “troika” of the European Union, the European Central Bank and IMF. Officials from those institutions will police Athens’ economic and fiscal policies. Tsipras restricted his freedom of manoeuvre by renouncing any “unilateral” moves on the terms of Greece’s bailout, and committed to fully repaying the debt mountain he wanted partly written down. ...
Germany’s powerful finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, locked in a war of nerves with Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said Greece would not get a penny until the end of April at the earliest. He rubbed salt in the wounds of Tsipras’ concessions by adding that reality had caught up with the new Greek government which would now have a hard time selling its defeat in Brussels on Friday to its anti-austerity and anti-German constituents at home.
Tsipras may have recovered the prerogative of making his own policy proposals, reasserting limited sovereignty, but his scope for action is severely constrained.
Can a Bitcoin-style virtual currency solve the Greek financial crisis?
Soon – if the Greek crisis is not resolved – one of the most audacious pieces of lateral thinking ever could get a try-out: a parallel digital currency, issued by the Greek government, modelled on Bitcoin, but with a crucial difference. In orthodox economics, money barely figures. It’s just there, acting as a lubricant to supply and demand. The assumption is: markets create money, and the state’s role is to make sure it’s not fake or diluted. ...
Varoufakis outlined, in a detailed blog post 12 months ago, how a Bitcoin-like virtual currency could be used to get around the ECB’s refusal to boost demand through quantitative easing. Just like Bitcoin, it would be exchangeable one for one with euros. But it would be issued by the state – and if you were prepared to hold it for two years, you would earn a profit paid for by taxes. For this reason, Varoufakis called it “future-tax coin”.
If the Greek government issued a parallel digital currency, and forced banks and businesses to use it, this would boost the money supply in defiance of the policy of the European Central Bank, said Varoufakis. In addition, he predicted, the currency would provide “a source of liquidity for the governments that is outside the bond markets, which does not involve the banks and which lies outside any of the restrictions imposed by Brussels or the various troikas”.
If a parallel currency ever happens (I am writing this on Friday: anything could happen by Monday), it will dramatise one of the key arguments of anti-establishment economists like Varoufakis: that states – not markets – create money.
Money only has value, say these economists, because states decree it. Furthermore, the state is not just standing above the market, regulating the currency: the act of taxing and spending is what creates money, not the act of buying and selling in a marketplace. It’s called “modern monetary theory”, but it’s no mere theory.
If it is right, the obvious practical conclusion is that a state with its own currency is always solvent. It can always create more money and pay people in that money. Therefore, it can always run a deficit – always use state spending to suppress unemployment. The only condition is that people must believe the state will exist in future.
50 Years Later, Malcolm X’s Family Gather at Place of His Murder to Honor Revolutionary Life, Legacy
NYPD officers call re-training in wake of Eric Garner death a 'waste of time'
A majority of New York police officers called the re-training program they were ordered to undergo after the death of Eric Garner a “waste of time”, according to the New York Post.
Garner, 43, died in July after being placed in a chokehold, a move that is banned under police rules, by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. After a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, sparking national protests, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to retrain the entire department, emphasizing tactics such as de-escalation and improving communication between officers and citizens.
But during the training, officers fell asleep in their seats and eight out of 10 gave the $35m program a negative review when they finished, the Post reported, citing a high-ranking NYPD official. ...
“It’s been a big disappointment on the backs of the city because they’re paying for this course,” the Post’s source reportedly said of the training.
The official said his information was based on a review of 2,000 officer surveys completed after the training program. So far, 4,000 of the department’s officers have undergone such training; another 16,000 will do so.
Justice Department and FBI reviewing case of Utah man shot dead by police
The US Department of Justice is investigating the fatal police shooting of Darrien Hunt, a young black man who was carrying a replica samurai-style sword, after the officers involved were cleared of wrongdoing by local prosecutors in Utah.
A “federal review into the circumstances” that led to Hunt’s shooting in September last year is being conducted by the FBI and the justice department’s civil rights division, prosecutors told an attorney representing Hunt’s family in a letter this week. ...
Hunt was shot repeatedly from behind after fleeing a confrontation with Corporal Matthew Schauerhamer and officer Nicholas Judson at a strip mall in Saratoga Springs. Police and two witnesses say Hunt swung the sword at an officer after being told to drop it. ...
Hunt’s family said that the 22-year-old, who was an anime enthusiast, may have been role playing on the day he was killed. They argue in their lawsuit that the police officers violated his constitutional rights by confronting him about why he was holding the sword, which may be openly carried under Utah’s weapons laws.
New York Is Illegally Shackling Pregnant Incarcerated Women
The state of New York is illegally shackling incarcerated women during childbirth, according to a new report on reproductive justice from the Correctional Association of New York.
“Women continue to be shackled on the way to the hospital (even when they are in labor), during recovery (even within hours after giving birth and for long periods of time), and on the way back to the prison (even with waist chains just days after having a C-section),” the report said. New York passed an anti-shackling statute in 2009, but according to the Correctional Association, “23 of 27 women the CA surveyed who gave birth after the law went into effect said they were shackled at least once in violation of the statute.”
In many ways, the state of New York is abusing pregnant incarcerated women all over again, given that 90 percent of all incarcerated women experienced sexual and physical abuse before heading to prison, according to the report.
Federal Court Blocks Immigrant Detainment Policy
The government "cannot deprive individuals of their liberty merely to send a message to others," says ACLU
A U.S. federal court on Friday put a temporary halt on the so-called "no release" policy to detain immigrants seeking asylum from violence in Central America.
The New York Times reports:
During the influx of migrants last summer, the Department of Homeland Security started holding most women who came with their children in detention centers in Texas and New Mexico, to discourage others in their home countries from embarking on an illegal passage to the United States. The women and children were detained even after they had asked for asylum and passed the initial test to prove their cases, showing they had credible fears of facing persecution if they were sent home. Their petitions for release were routinely denied.
The Obama administration's "incantation of the magic word 'national security' without further substantiation is simply not enough to justify significant deprivations of liberty," Judge James E. Boasberg wrote in his decision.
Boasberg's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the University of Texas. The civil liberties group launched the suit "on behalf of mothers and children who have fled extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution in Central America and come to the U.S. for safety."
"Mayor 1%" Rahm Emanuel of Chicago Faces Progressive Challenge in Heated Bid for Re-election
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on death in the mines & why 2,451 men killed in the mines of the United States in 1914 is deemed to be comparatively good news.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Workers and critics greet Walmart pay raise but say much remains to be done
By trumpeting its plan to raise pay for 500,000 workers, Walmart clearly hopes to end once and for all its reputation as a bottom-of-the-barrel employer. Mind you, this is the company that has been hounded for years by protesters shouting about rock-bottom wages, off-the-clock work, sexual discrimination, union busting and the use of unsafe factories in Bangladesh. ...
Nelson Lichtenstein, the author of two books on Walmart and a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, welcomed the announcement on raises, saying “better late than never”.
“This is a good thing, but I don’t see it as a breakthrough,” he said.
He said the promised raise to $10 next year would have the biggest effect where Walmart first got started: in the rural south, where wages are lowest. He predicted the pay raises would have a major ripple effect – at dollar stores, at Target and Kmart, even at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants. Walmart’s move places public relations pressure on those companies to follow suit, as well as economic pressure. If those companies want to attract good workers – and not lose employees to Walmart – they, too, may need to pay at least $10 an hour.
Lichtenstein said Walmart didn’t go far enough to raise pay, and that its move would still leave many part-time workers in poverty. For an $8.50-an-hour employee working 25 hours a week, a raise to $10 will mean earnings of $250 a week or $13,000 a year, up from the current $212.50 a week or $11,050 a year. At that level, many workers will continue turning to food stamps and Medicaid.
Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour wins Oscar
Laura Poitras’ film about Edward Snowden and the NSA spying revelations carries off Academy award for non-fiction films
Citizenfour has won the Oscar for best documentary, for its director Laura Poitras, editor Mathilde Bonnefoy and producer Dirk Wilutzky.
Collecting the award, Poitras, flanked by journalist and collaborator Glenn Greenwald, said: “The disclosures of Edward Snowden don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself. When the decisions that rule us are taken in secret we lose the power to control and govern ourselves.” Poitras thanked Edward Snowden for his “sacrifices”, and added: “I share this award with Glenn Greenwald and the many other journalists who are taking risks to expose the truth.”
The team were joined onstage by Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills. In response to the news, Snowden himself wrote:
“When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honour and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.”
The Evening Greens
Lobbyist dubbed Dr Evil behind front groups attacking Obama power rules
To Washington insiders he is Dr Evil: the hidden orchestrator of industry campaigns against the Humane Society, Mothers against Drunk Driving, and other seemingly uncontroversial groups.
Now Richard Berman, a one-time lobbyist turned industry strategist, has zeroed in on another target: Barack Obama’s new power plant rules.
Over the last year, Berman has secretly routed funding for at least 16 studies and launched at least five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon dioxide from power plants, the Guardian has learned.
The rules, the centre-piece of Obama’s climate agenda, are due to be finalised in mid-summer. They have come under sustained assault from industry and Republican-controlled Congress - and Berman is right at the heart of it. ...
From the offices of Berman’s PR firm in Washington, at least five new front groups have launched attack ads against the EPA, environmental groups, fishermen and sportsmen, and green building organisations. The groups all use Berman’s address.
Meanwhile, the Employment Policies Institute, a tax-exempt organisation headed by Berman and operating out of Berman’s office according to tax filings, funded a series of reports by an ultra-conservative think tank, the Beacon Hill Institute.
The reports, claiming the power plant rules would lead to rolling blackouts, send electricity prices skyrocketing, and devastate local economies, are being published in 16 states by a network of pro-corporate and ultra-conservative think tanks.
Prominent Climate Change Denier Funded by Koch Brothers, Energy Companies: Reports
Willie Soon received $1.25 million over 14 years to write academic research stating climate change is not caused by human activity, newly released documents show
A prominent climate change denier and researcher quietly took more than $1.2 million in payouts from the energy industry, including the Koch brothers and other oil lobbyists, for the past 14 years, newly released documents have shown.
Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, accumulated a total of $1.25 million from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Southern Company, and a Koch brothers foundation, according to documents obtained by Greenpeace through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings.
For years, Soon's work has been a go-to source for politicians angling to block climate change legislation, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who has called climate change a hoax. Soon has also testified before the U.S. Congress and appeared on numerous conservative news shows to claim that greenhouse gases are not harmful and that recent global warming trends are not caused by human activity, but by variations in the sun's energy. ...
In addition, the documents confirm that Soon neglected to disclose his close ties to the fossil fuel industry in most of his academic papers on climate change. At least 11 papers published since 2008 do not state any connection to the companies who paid him, and at least eight of those papers may have violated the ethical guidelines of the journals in which they appeared.
How Often Were Willie Soon’s Industry-Funded “Deliverables” Referenced by the IPCC?
Thanks to a bombshell investigation reported over the weekend by The New York Times, The Guardian, Inside Climate News and more, we now know that the prominent climate denialist Willie Soon, oft-cited by climate denying politicians and industry figures, calls his publications “deliverables” to his fossil fuel funders.
Some of these “deliverables” have even found their way into the reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), generally regarded as the most comprehensive evaluation of the current state of climate science. ...
DeSmogBlog has searched all five of the IPCC’s major assessment reports for references to research and papers by Soon. In all, seven papers that Soon co-authored have been referenced and/or cited in IPCC assessment reports. Some of the papers acknowledge research funding from various arms of the fossil fuel industry. But others do not. Some of the papers cited by the IPCC predate the Harvard Smithsonian Center involvement, but Soon's long history of taking fossil fuel industry money is well established. In fact, as far back as 2003, years before the release of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), documents revealed that Soon was actively working to “undermine” the report.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The Atlantic Ignores Muslim Intellectuals, Defines “True Islam” As ISIS
Greek surrender: When all hope is gone
How Chicago police condemned the innocent: a trail of coerced confessions
Pro-Kiev militias are fighting Putin, but has Ukraine created a monster it can't control?
The Terror Bombing, the Prosecutor, the Spy and Mossad
Venezuela's struggle against the 'common enemy'
Weaving Reality: Diversity/Integrity
hat tip psychodrew:
Obama's Libya Debacle - How a Well-Meaning Intervention Ended in Failure
A Little Night Music
Eddy Clearwater - I Wouldn't Lay My Guitar Down
Eddy Clearwater - All Your Love
Eddy Clearwater - Blues Hang Out
Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater - Lonesome Feeling
Eddie "the Chief" Clearwater - Cool Blues Walk
Eddie "the Chief" Clearwater - Hypnotized
Eddy Clearwater - Blues For Breakfast
Dave Myers Feat. Eddie Clearwater & Jimmy Johnson - Blue Shadows Falling
Eddy Clearwater & Carey Bell - One Day
Eddy Clearwater, Lacy Gibson, Hayes Ware, Fred Below - Jackson Town Blues
Eddy Clearwater - Hillbilly Blues
Eddy Clearwater - Mean Case Of The Blues
Eddy Clearwater - Blues at Theresa's
Eddy Clearwater - Sweet Little Rock'n Roller
Eddy Clearwater + Los Straitjackets - You Humbuggin' Me
Eddy Clearwater - The Duck Walk
Eddy Clearwater - Chicago Daily
Eddy Clearwater & Otis Rush Nightstage, Cambridge MA, 1988
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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