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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features composer, member of the band The Little Willies and Telecaster Master Jim Campilongo. Enjoy!
Jim Campilongo & Honeyfingers
It does not require many words to speak the truth.
Chief Joseph
News and Opinion
'Political comedy': Poroshenko's ‘Russian army evidence’ raises eyebrows
President Poroshenko’s PR advisers are helping him turn speeches into a kind of performance art. Sadly for the Ukrainian leader, they are more Laurel and Hardy than Laurence Olivier.
On Saturday, Poroshenko was again engaged in physical theatre, this time in Munich. Holding up Russian passports, he alleged that they belonged to Russian soldiers who had been found on Ukrainian soil. Citing “mountains of (Russian) lies and propaganda,” the Ukrainian President stood on a German stage and, well, lied.
Speaking of ‘propaganda,’ Yahoo news called the Russian (civilian) passports – which all Russians traveling abroad carry – 'military ID's' which is certainly a new one.
Russian soldiers cannot use their passports while on active service – they must hand them in. Everybody who has ever lived in Russia knows this. Indeed, even contract soldiers are forced to hand in theirs while on army business and, like the troops, they get a replacement military ID. This is why Sochi’s bars are crawling with off-duty Russian military – they can’t go abroad without their travel documents.
Moscow demands copies of ‘Russian soldiers IDs’ shown in Munich
The Russian Foreign Ministry says Kiev is reluctant to hand over copies of what it claims to be documents, proving Russian military presence in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko showed the audience at the Munich Security Conference several passports on Saturday, saying they belonged to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
“We asked the Ukrainian side to give us copies of the documents containing last names, because such IDs, as were shown yesterday, could easily be bought,” said Viktor Sorokin, director of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) department within the Russian Foreign Ministry, as cited by RIA Novosti.
“There’s no real proof, as of today, the Ukrainian side hasn’t been able to give us copies of these documents.”
The Ukrainian crisis and the prospect of arming Ukrainian troops was again top of the agenda in Munich on Sunday, the last day of the conference.
50,000 casualties in Ukraine: German intel says ‘official figures not credible’
The German intelligence service estimates the real losses in the Ukrainian civil war at 50,000 dead (civilians and servicemen), which is nearly 10 times higher than reported by the Kiev authorities, German media report.
The information comes from a source in German intelligence, who spoke to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAZ) newspaper.
“Germany’s special services estimate the probable number of deceased Ukrainian servicemen and civilians at up to 50,000 people. This figure is about 10 times higher than official data.
Official figures are clearly too low and not credible,” the newspaper reported on Sunday, citing its source.
Just one day before the report was published, the Ukrainian president gave completely different numbers to the international community.
Ukraine crisis: Leaders plan new Minsk peace talks
Submitted by; enhydra lutris
The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France aim to meet in Belarus's capital Minsk on Wednesday to discuss a peace plan for eastern Ukraine.
It comes after leaders of the four countries discussed the ongoing conflict by telephone on Sunday.
More than 5,300 people have been killed by fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russia rebels since April 2014.
Western countries accuse Russia of arming the rebels and sending troops to Ukraine - claims Russia denies.
West's agri-giants snap up Ukraine
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
OAKLAND, United States - At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received US$350 million in US military aid, coming on top of a $1 billion aid package approved by the US Congress in March 2014.
Western governments' further involvement in the Ukraine conflict signals their confidence in the cabinet appointed by the new government earlier in December 2014. This new government is unique given that three of its most important ministries were granted to foreign-born individuals who received Ukrainian citizenship just hours before their appointment.
The Ministry of Finance went to Natalie Jaresko, a US-born and educated businesswoman who has been working in Ukraine since the mid-1990s, overseeing a private equity fund established by the US government to invest in the country. Jaresko is also the CEO of Horizon Capital, an investment firm that administers various Western investments in the country.
As unusual as it may seem, this appointment is consistent with what looks more like a takeover of the Ukrainian economy by Western interests. In two reports - "The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture" and "Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict" - the Oakland Institute has documented this takeover, particularly in the agricultural sector.
US invasion of Iraq helped create ISIS - former UN chief
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, said the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake and helped to create the Islamist State militant group. He also blamed regional powers for making the conflict worse.
“I was against this invasion and my fears have been founded. The break-up of the Iraqi forces poured hundreds if not thousands of disgruntled soldiers and police officers onto the streets,” Kofi Annan told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday. He added that some of these former security force members went on to join the Islamic State.
“The aim of creating democracy without the existing institutions ushered in corrupt sectarian governments,” Annan said. He added that the country has been unstable ever since and this has proved the perfect breeding ground for Sunni radical Muslims, who have become affiliated with the Islamic State.
The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) stunned the world last summer by capturing large swaths of Iraq and Syria, including the city of Mosul in mid-June. The group has created what it calls an Islamic caliphate that straddles the Iraq-Syria border.
Islamic State crisis: Jordan air strikes 'destroy' IS hideouts
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Jordan says it has carried out 56 air strikes in three days on Islamic State logistics sites and hideouts.
"We achieved what we aimed at," Air Force chief Gen Mansour al-Jbour said.
Jordan intensified its strikes after captured pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh was shown being burned alive by IS.
Jordan has carried out nearly 20% of all sorties by the US-led coalition against IS in Syria so far, Gen Jbour said, adding: "We are determined to wipe them from the face of the Earth."
Defeat of Daesh must remain the priority
The ransoming of prisoners is a small part of the group’s overall strategy to win power in the region
Submitted by: NCTim
There is grave danger in trying to negotiate with Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) because the terrorists’ motives are not clear, other than a desire for publicity. No one really knows what strategic advantage they are looking for, although all they may want is to manufacture a small split in the international coalition by getting one partner to negotiate with them directly. Daesh’s capture of Jordanian air force pilot Muath Al Kaseasbeh gave it an extraordinary opportunity to create mischief. The Jordanians were in a terrible position as they naturally wanted to get their man back alive and Daesh was bright enough to seek the release of Sajida Al Rishawi, the would-be hotel bomber in an attack that killed about 60 people in 2005 at a hotel in Amman. Al Rishawi is of no great consequence to Daesh, but her release may give the group increased standing in the terrorist community.
The ongoing drama over what will happen to Al Kaseasbeh leaves his fate and that of other captives, like Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, uncertain, even if the Japanese say that his release has been linked to that of Al Rishawi by the Jordanians. It is also important to remember that Daesh has hundreds of other captives from assorted local communities that they have overrun, but who carry less international fame and consequently have less value for ransom if Daesh puts their lives on the line.
The ransoming of prisoners is a small part of the group’s overall strategy to win power in the region, both by taking territorial control but more importantly, by exercising fear over wide swathes of the population by their use of gross and targeted violence. In this, Daesh has been successful in the short term, but such a destructive tactic cannot bring long-term success and will only succeed in alienating the unfortunate populations over which Daesh currently has control. The international response to Daesh has been tough military action to degrade and overwhelm the group’s positions, coordinating this with a political response that is designed to attract the loyalty of those who were disenfranchised by the national governments and rebuild the nation states that have been challenged by Daesh. This has to remain the main priority.
How does Islamic State justify its atrocities in name of Islam?
WASHINGTON — Muslims across the globe have condemned the Islamic State’s blood lust, calling the extremist group’s tactics forbidden under Islam and an affront to humanity. So how do zealots claiming to represent a pure and true Islam square their actions with traditional Islamic law?
They cherry-pick Quranic verses out of context, apply the most rigid interpretations of jurisprudence and excuse just about any brutality by saying they’re waging a defensive jihad on behalf of aggrieved Muslims worldwide, according to Jocelyne Cesari, a renowned scholar of Islam who’s part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s working group on faith and foreign policy.
Cesari directs the “ Islam in the West” program at Harvard University and leads the Berkley Center’s Islam and World Politics program at Georgetown University. Here, in remarks that have been edited for clarity or space, she explains how the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, distorts traditional teachings to justify actions that have shocked the world.
Former members of France’s military have joined Islamic State
IRBIL, Iraq — At least 12 former members of the French military are among the estimated 1,000 French citizens who’ve joined the Islamic State, including one highly trained special forces commando who was radicalized while working as a security contractor in the Persian Gulf, according to French officials and analysts as well as Arab security services.
One French intelligence official said the number is a reflection of France’s changing demographics, even though mandatory military service ended in France in 2001.
“I don’t have any hard numbers on this because France is a secular society where religious affiliation isn’t supposed to be tracked formally, but the general sense is that the French military has evolved into a heavily – and often devout – Roman Catholic officer corps leading a primarily and somewhat devout Muslim enlisted formation,” said the official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
At least three former soldiers have been apprehended attempting to return to France from the Middle East after having fought alongside insurgents, according to a recent statement by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Nine others currently fighting with the Islamic State have been identified.
UAE sends F16s to Jordan to fight Daesh
Squadron will be stationed in the kingdom to boost air strikes on terror group
Submitted by: NCTim
Abu Dhabi: The UAE will station an F16 squadron in Jordan in support of military efforts in fighting the terrorist organisation Daesh, a WAM report said.
General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, has ordered the despatch of the squadron in line with the directives of President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The move reaffirms the UAE’s support to Jordan for its leading role and immense sacrifices for the region’s security and stability, particularly by “martyr and hero Muath Al Kasaesbeh”.
The UAE squadron will support the Jordanian Armed Forces, the Jordan Arab Army, and their participation in the global coalition to combat Daesh that has violated all religious and human values through abominable crimes which drew outrage and disgust from the Arabs.
Conservatives want to rewrite the history of the Crusades for modern political ends
One of history’s lessons is that any ideology, sacred or secular, that divides the world into ‘us versus them’ can and will be used to justify violence
Submitted by: NCTim
At the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama made a statement that you wouldn’t expect to be controversial: violence in the name of religion is a global problem and it’s bad.
He referenced the war in Syria, the killings in Nigeria, anti-Semitism’s resurgence in Europe and religious violence in India. He admitted that it can be hard to “counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.” Then he offered a longer thought about humility:
"Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ".
The subsequent controversy fuelled by right-wing American commentators and politicians has shown that humility is in short supply.
Defiant Greek PM sets up EU clash with bailout rejection, austerity rollback
(Reuters) - Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras laid out plans on Sunday to dismantle Greece's "cruel" austerity program, ruling out any extension of its international bailout and setting himself on a collision course with his European partners.
In his first major speech to parliament since storming to power last month, Tsipras rattled off a list of moves to reverse reforms imposed by European and International Monetary Fund lenders: from reinstating pension bonuses and cancelling a property tax to ending mass layoffs and raising the mininum wage back to pre-crisis levels.
Showing little intent to heed warnings from EU partners to stick to commitments in the 240 billion euro bailout, Tsipras said he intended to fully respect campaign pledges to heal the "wounds" of the austerity that was a condition of the money.
Greece would achieve balanced budgets but would no longer produce unrealistic primary budget surpluses, he said, a reference to requirements to be in the black excluding debt repayments.
U.S. urges euro zone leaders to compromise with Athens: FT
(Reuters) - The Obama administration is pushing euro zone leaders to compromise more with Greece's new government as fears grow that a protracted budget stand-off could damage the global economy, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
The U.S. lobbying effort comes amid mounting concerns in Brussels and Washington about the hardline stance taken by some members of the euro zone, particularly Germany, that Greece must press on with its budget-cutting commitments, according to the report, which cited European Union and U.S. officials.
"We've advised all sides there needs to be some compromise on everybody's part," the FT cited a senior U.S. official as saying. "There are limits to how much austerity a society can withstand."
A U.S. delegation is heading to Athens, led by the Treasury Department's top Europe official, Daleep Singh, the FT said.
Greek finance minister says euro will collapse if Greece exits
(Reuters) - If Greece is forced out of the euro zone, other countries will inevitably follow and the currency bloc will collapse, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Sunday, in comments which drew a rebuke from Italy.
Greece's new leftist government is trying to re-negotiate its debt repayments and has begun to roll back austerity policies agreed with its international creditors.
In an interview with Italian state television network RAI, Varoufakis said Greece's debt problems must be solved as part of a rejection of austerity policies for the euro zone as a whole. He called for a massive "new deal" investment program funded by the European Investment Bank.
"The euro is fragile, it's like building a castle of cards, if you take out the Greek card the others will collapse." Varoufakis said according to an Italian transcript of the interview released by RAI ahead of broadcast.
The ‘Great War' of Sinai
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Sinai Peninsula has moved from the margins of the Egyptian body politic to the uncontested center, as Egypt's strong man - President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi - finds himself greatly undercut by the rise of an insurgency that seems to be growing stronger with time.
Another series of deadly and coordinated attacks, on January 29, shattered the Egyptian army's confidence, pushing it further into a deadly course of a war that can only be won by political sagacity, not bigger guns.
The latest attack was a blow to a short-lived sense of gratification felt by the regime that militancy in Sinai had been waning, thanks to a decisive military response that lasted for months. When militants carried out a multistage attack on an Egyptian military checkpoint in Sinai, on October 24, killing 31 and wounding many, the Egyptian government and media lines were most predictable. They blamed "foreigners" for what was essentially a homegrown security and political crisis.
Instead of reexamining Egypt's entire approach to the poor region of North Sinai, the army moved to further isolate Gaza, which has been under a very strict Israeli-Egyptian siege since 2007.
Crossing the Bridge From Eurasia to NATOstan
Seen from Asia, the ghastly crisis in Europe looks and feels like a galaxy away. So as I was back from the Middle Kingdom to the austerity-ravaged, stagnated collection of dysfunctions also known as NATOstan, I decided to stop midway, in the City of Cities, for a moment of reflection.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
ISTANBUL, December 31 (Sputnik) — I had no agenda other than to connect the future (the Eurasian Century) with the past (the crumbling European Union dream) via God’s favorite abode, the City of Cities; Constantinople, the New Rome. Just a Eurasia pilgrim on the move, absorbing those flows coming from the Balkans and ancient glorious Thrace; from the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara through the Bosphorus; and from chaotic, teeming peripheries where gleaming towers coexist with miserable huts.
Morning was a question of being immersed, between myth and history, in the thundering silence of centuries of stony sleep. Istanbul should be read as a scroll – beyond methodological cunning and stylistic ornaments. Jean Cocteau wrote that Constantinople was a city born in purple, a city of blood, sunsets and fires. Casanova wrote that as Constantine arrived by the sea, seduced by the sight of Byzantium, he instantly proclaimed, “This is the seat of the empire of the world.” So, in style, he left the seat of the old empire, Rome, for good.
Take it to the bridge
Turkey under the AKP party has been busy positioning itself as the ultimate crossroads between East and West. So as I set on my pilgrimage I could not forget how, at the height of the Belle Époque, Germans and Russians were planning a railway from Berlin to Moscow, and that would end on both the Siberian coast of the Pacific and in Beijing. Now Beijing is bound to realize the dream as part of the vast New Silk Road project — an extended Trans-Siberian on high-speed rails running in parallel to a cross-Central Asian high-speed railway whose key hub will be Istanbul.
As I eventually crossed the bridge over the Bosphorus I had seen plenty of Kemalists in crisis, and perhaps a few dissimulated jihadis. The Ottoman empire for over six centuries crystallized the unity of the Sunni Mediterranean and Middle Eastern umma, confronting the Persian Shi’ite empire, inheriting and metabolizing the Byzantine institutional tradition, and keeping a wise balance between faith and ethnicity using the institutions of the community – millet – and respecting the prerogatives of its non-Muslim subjects – dhimmi.
Venezuela: a Coup in Real Time
Submitted by: NCTim
There is a coup underway in Venezuela. The pieces are all falling into place like a bad CIA movie. At every turn a new traitor is revealed, a betrayal is born, full of promises to reveal the smoking gun that will justify the unjustifiable. Infiltrations are rampant, rumors spread like wildfire, and the panic mentality threatens to overcome logic. Headlines scream danger, crisis and imminent demise, while the usual suspects declare covert war on a people whose only crime is being gatekeeper to the largest pot of black gold in the world.
This week, as the New York Times showcased an editorial degrading and ridiculing Venezuelan President Maduro, labeling him “erratic and despotic” (“Mr. Maduro in his Labyrinth”, NYT January 26, 2015), another newspaper across the Atlantic headlined a hack piece accusing the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the most powerful political figure in the country after Maduro, of being a narcotics kingpin (“The head of security of the number two Chavista defects to the U.S. and accuses him of drug trafficking”, ABC, January 27, 2015). The accusations stem from a former Venezuelan presidential guard officer, Leasmy Salazar, who served under President Chavez and was recruited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), now becoming the new “golden child” in Washington’s war on Venezuela.
Two days later, the New York Times ran a front-page piece shaming the Venezuelan economy and oil industry, and predicting its downfall (“Oil Cash Waning, Venezuelan Shelves Lie Bare”, Jan. 29, 2015, NYT). Blaring omissions from the article include mention of the hundreds of tons of food and other consumer products that have been hoarded or sold as contraband by private distributors and businesses in order to create shortages, panic, discontent with the government and justify outrageous price hikes. Further, multiple ongoing measures taken by the government to overcome the economic difficulties were barely mentioned and completed disregarded.
Simultaneously, an absurdly sensationalist and misleading headline ran in several U.S. papers, in print and online, linking Venezuela to nuclear weapons and a plan to bomb New York City (“U.S. Scientist Jailed for Trying to Help Venezuela Build Bombs”, Jan. 30, 2015, NPR). While the headline leads readers to believe Venezuela was directly involved in a terrorist plan against the U.S., the actual text of the article makes clear that no Venezuelans were involved at all. The whole charade was an entrapment set up by the FBI, whose officers posed as Venezuelan officials to capture a disgruntled nuclear physicist who once worked at Los Alamos and had no Venezuela connection.
Pentagon to Hold Joint Exercise With Thailand's Military Junta
Operation signals ongoing U.S. relationship with Thailand as Obama administration pushes for Asia-Pacific pivot
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans for a massive exercise with Thailand next week, signaling direct U.S. cooperation with the military junta that runs the country under martial law.
Following Thailand's coup last May, the U.S. suspended military aid and canceled some joint exercises, to signal opposition to the military takeover of the government, which is now headed by Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha.
However, the U.S. is now moving forward with the exercise, which is slated to start on Monday and is termed "Cobra Gold."
U.S. officials appear to be trying to publicly distance themselves from the collaboration, even as they plan for it to proceed.
Melissa Sweeney, spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, told the Washington Post that the U.S. decided this year "to proceed with a significantly refocused and scaled down Cobra Gold 2015 exercise, in light of the Thai military’s ouster of the civilian government."
Bill would require police to get warrant for electronic data
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
State Sen. Mark Leno, whose previous attempts to shield Californians’ electronic communications from police have been thwarted by Gov. Jerry Brown, is trying again, with support from the tech industry and a boost from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The San Francisco Democrat, with several Republican co-authors, is introducing a bill Monday that would require police to get a search warrant to view e-mails, text messages, GPS data and other information stored on electronic devices, as well as records of phone calls. The requirement would not apply to emergencies or police interventions to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence.
In the last three years, Leno has won legislative passage of measures requiring warrants for police to examine the contents of cell phones seized during an arrest, to use cell phone data to trace someone’s location, and to inspect an individual’s electronic messages. Brown vetoed each of them, saying they would unduly interfere with criminal investigations.
But in rulings last year on two cases, one of them from California, the Supreme Court barred police searches of cell phones without a warrant. An earlier ruling indicated officers would also need judicial approval before attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s car.
Inside the bizarre, paranoid world of the right-wing oath keepers
Submitted by: NCTim
My official Oath Keepers membership card is in my outstretched hand. With great power comes great responsibility: my duty is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. No compromise. I’m now a member of a controversial conservative group whose members make Ted Nugent look like a bleeding-heart Rachel Maddow. Our mission is to keep the government accountable. Just remember: Not on my watch.
Let’s rewind: The scene was Ferguson, Missouri. When riots broke out over the August shooting death of Michael Brown, armed members of the Oath Keepers took to the city’s rooftops, appearing out of the smoke and shattered glass of ransacked buildings. Their supposed duty was to secure the local businesses from looting. In the first days of the protests, demonstrators had broken out windows of storefronts, set arson fires, and torched a beauty supply store. ABC News reported that a number of business owners embraced the Oath Keepers’ armed presence. Group members boarded up storefronts and kept buckets of water and fire extinguishers handy in case nearby arson attacks escalated. This was the vigilante group’s moment in the media sun.
Still, rumors flew. Some protestors thought the armed men in camouflaged fatigues were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The St. Louis County police ordered the Oath Keepers to leave the rooftops of Ferguson, threatening them with arrest for acting as a security force without a license. This only added fuel to the right-wing group’s conspiracy that the government is not protecting its people. The volunteer security force packed up and left Ferguson, leaving people wondering exactly who these heavily armed mystery men were.
2014 Was Quite a Year for the Oath Keepers
The Oath Keepers made one of their first appearances in the national news last April, when more than 100 members headed to the Nevada desert to support rancher Cliven Bundy. Their mission was to assist with an armed standoff against agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management, who were attempting to seize cattle Bundy had been illegally grazing on federal land. No shots were fired during the standoff, though it is virtually unparalleled in modern history to have armed American citizens using the threat of gunfire to force federal officers to back down. Controversy redux: Critics were concerned that the government’s decision to withdraw in the face of armed resistance emboldens militia groups and sets a dangerous precedent. It didn’t help matters that Bundy went on a racist rant about African Americans during a New York Times interview, tarnishing his image. It seems that the anti-government movement always attracts a few bad eggs.
In Deadly Industry, US Oil Workers' Historic Strike for Safety Spreads to More Plants
Staging the largest U.S. oil workers' walkout in 36 years, thousands are demanding protections from some of world's most powerful oil giants
The biggest U.S. oil workers' strike in more than three decades just grew even larger, with two mid-western BP plants joining in the work stoppage to demand basic health and safety protections from some of the world's most powerful fossil fuel corporations.
The United Steelworkers announced Saturday that over 1,400 employees at two BP refineries—in Whiting, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio—have joined the 3,800 oil workers on strike at nine refineries in California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington.
The workers at the new sites officially began their work action at 12:01 Sunday morning, according to the union.
The strike, now entering its second week, is aimed at winning protections in an industry where safety is a matter of "life-or-death" for workers and surrounding communities, as Samantha Winslow points out in Labor Notes.
Bitter shipping battle continues at Oakland port
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping lines and terminal operators, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 20,000 dockworkers, have been at an impasse since July 1, when the union contract ran out.
Work delays and stoppages over the past three months have caused mounting problems for Bay Area importers and small-business owners, who say they are losing money as trucks line up daily outside the Port of Oakland waiting for container ships anchored in San Francisco Bay to unload.
The Maritime Association suspended vessel loading and unloading operations over the weekend at all West Coast ports, including Oakland. The move, which essentially eliminated weekend overtime work for thousands of longshoremen, was in retaliation for what association officials called vindictive work slowdowns and stoppages.
“The member companies concluded that they will no longer pay premium pay for diminished productivity,” said Wade Gates, the association spokesman, adding that shipping lines pay time-and-a-half on the weekends.
40 Years of Economic Policy in One Chart
Submitted by: NCTim
Growth of Real Hourly Compensation for Production/Nonsupervisory Workers and Productivity, 1948–2011
Is America in the throes of a class war?
Look at the chart and decide for yourself. It’s all there in black and white, and you don’t need to be an economist to figure it out.
But, please, take some time to study the chart, because there’s more here than meets the eye. This isn’t just about productivity and compensation. It’s a history lesson too. It pinpoints the precise moment in time when the country lost its way and began its agonizing descent into Police State USA. That’s what it really means.
It all began in the 1970s, that’s when everything started going down the plughole. Once wages detached from productivity, the rich progressively got richer. They used their wealth to reduce taxes on capital, role back critical regulations, break up the unions, install their own lapdog politicians, push through trade agreements that pitted US workers against low-paid labor in the developing world, and induce their shady Central Bank buddies to keep interest rates locked below the rate of inflation so they could cream hefty profits off gigantic asset bubbles. Now, 40 years later, they own the whole f*cking shooting match, lock, stock and barrel. And it’s all because management decided to take the lion’s share of productivity gains which threw the whole system off-kilter undermining the basic pillars of democratic government. Here’s how FDR summed it up:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies.,” April 29, 1938. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide millions
Data in massive cache of leaked secret bank account files lift lid on questionable practices at subsidiary of one of world’s biggest financial institutions
HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files.
The files – obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss private bank:
Routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland.
• Aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes.
• Colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities.
• Provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals.
The HSBC files, which cover the period 2005-2007, amount to the biggest banking leak in history, shedding light on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets.
View the video here.
Wall Street and the Crisis in Greece
Submitted by: NCTim
Occasionally a simple story, trivial even, is a useful metaphor for an historical epic. One such story: last week the New York State Attorney General’s office charged four major retailers with selling nutritional supplements that contained none of their advertised ingredients. This wasn’t / isn’t a case of low quality or of poor quality control. The manufacturers put cheap filler into pill form and sold as much as people would buy knowing that ‘consumers’ don’t have the resources to determine whether the products contained their advertised ingredients. No ‘market mechanism’ uncovered the fraud. It was / is undetectable in the ‘market’ frame. And while no one died as a result of the fraud, the same can’t be said of the broader circumstance for which the incident is metaphor.
Western economists call this ‘asymmetric’ information— the manufacturers knew that they are selling fraudulent goods but ‘consumers’ didn’t. The same principle was at work when Wall Street banks, including major French and German banks, created and sold faulty Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) to pension funds, insurance companies and smaller European banks in the run up to crisis in 2008. On the other side of the transactions, the home mortgages that backed the MBS resulted from predatory lending by Wall Street banks into the property bubble that Wall Street created. When these ‘assets’ inevitably imploded the liabilities were shifted from bank balance sheets to the public under the guise of ‘bailouts.’
Graph (1) above: Western mythology has it that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the result of an untenable economic system when the economic system didn’t become truly untenable until neo-liberal economists, mainly from Harvard University, began ‘advising’ the Russian leadership in the early 1990s. Debate persists around whether Larry Summers and his minions intended to destroy Russia or the combination of their corruption and improbable ideology accomplished to task. The outcome for the Russian people was utter economic catastrophe. Mr. Summers also had a large hand in the deregulation of Wall Street that still reverberates around the globe, including in Greece. Source: World Bank via St. Louis Fed.
The explanation provided by the Obama administration for the Wall Street bailouts, for shifting misbegotten ‘assets’ from bank balance sheets to the public, is that ‘the economy’ needed a functioning banking system to recover. Left substantially unaddressed is what constitutes a ‘functioning’ banking system. The system that preceded the crisis, the same one that has been recovered, can hardly be considered ‘functioning’ after it crashed the global economy, required the commitment of tens of trillions of dollars in contingent bailout money and continues to wreak economic havoc around the globe even today. And again, this system includes major German and French banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve most certainly understood this when it bailed out foreign banks in 2008.
Three Minutes to Midnight: Can We Turn the Clock Back in Time?
On January 22, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that it had moved the minutes hand of its "Doomsday Clock" ahead two minutes, from five minutes before midnight to three minutes before midnight. The clock envisions the life span of human civilization as a period of 24 hours. Thus when scientists decide to move the minutes hand ahead by two minutes, this means that they consider us to be drawing closer to the end of our time. With only three minutes left, we don't have much leeway.
The analogy, however, is not perfect, for there's an important difference between a real clock and the Doomsday Clock. A real clock, as long as its batteries are working, will always move forward, from second to second and minute to minute. The Doomsday Clock, in contrast, does not have to move forward, for apart from its astrophysical constraints, human civilization is not rolling along a one-way track toward some predestined end where everything comes to a stop. The minute hand on the clock of civilization could well stand still, or indeed even move in reverse, from the danger zone back toward safety. We can, perhaps, delay our final dénouement and flourish - even for many more centuries.
The hand has not moved forward because a giant meteor is about to crash into Central Europe, or because a ring of volcanoes is due to erupt from France to Siberia, or because alien invaders from a distant galaxy are about to land in the American Corn Belt. No, the hand of the clock has moved forward, from five minutes to three minutes before midnight, because of human activity itself. It has moved forward because of bad choices, programs and policies imposed by those at the wheels of power.
The Bulletin cited in particular two factors as the basis for its decision to advance the minute hand of its Doomsday Clock. One is the unchecked increase in climate change, the other the modernization of nuclear weapons systems. Both are clearly reflective of misguided choices, and the scientists spared no punches in laying the blame where it deserved to fall: on world leaders who failed to act "with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe." Some scientists pointed to the role that nuclear weapons have played in heightening the danger; others stressed the failure to stem climate change. One board member, Richard Somerville, emphasized that "efforts at reducing global emissions of heat-trapping gases have so far been entirely insufficient to prevent unacceptable climate disruption . . . The resulting climate change will harm millions of people and will threaten many key ecological systems on which civilization relies."
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature a long interview with Mother Jones by Lucy Huffaker: "Mother Jones' Philosophy."
Tune in at 2pm!
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4 GOP Presidential Hopefuls Who Admitted They Smoked Weed
They may not want to legalize it, but some of them have certainly enjoyed it.
The next presidential election is still more than a year and a half away, but the field of Republican contenders for the nomination is already crowded. One of the issues they will be dealing with is marijuana legalization. That raises the question: Who among the field has toked up?
And that raises another question: Will these Republicans who admit (or coyly don't deny) smoking weed come out in favor of legalizing it? It's not exactly a part of the Republican platform, but the issue isn't going away.
Here are four potential Republican presidential contenders who almost certainly smoked weed—either by their own admission, by their non-denials, or according to others.
Read the list here.
Drug-resistant bacteria lurk in subway stations, high school students discover
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Forget the five-million plus commuters and untold number of rats -- many of the living things crowded into the New York City subway system are too small to see. An interest in the more menacing among these microbes led high school student Anya Dunaif, a participant in Rockefeller's Summer Science Research Program, to spend her vacation swabbing benches and turn styles beneath the city. Among her findings: bacteria impervious to two major antibiotics.
The samples she collected and cultured in five stations are a component of a city-scale environmental DNA sampling effort led by Chris Mason, an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College with support from Rockefeller's Science Outreach program, as well as from numerous local, national and international collaborators. This project, called Pathomap, seeks to profile the city's microbial community, or microbiome, while also capturing DNA from other organisms, all of which could potentially be used to assess biological threats, including those to human health. The project's initial results are described in a paper published Wednesday (February 4) in Cell Systems.
With help from fellow high school student researcher Nell Kirchberger, Dunaif collected the bacteria on swabs and tested to see if they would grow in Petri dishes containing three commonly used antibiotics. Bacteria from five of the 18 swabs she tested grew in spite of the presence of either ampicillin or kanamycin, and in one case, both. None of the cultured bacteria appeared resistant to the third antibiotic, chloramphenicol.
Antibiotic resistance -- the ability of disease-causing bacteria to withstand compounds used to kill them off -- can make a once treatable infection more serious, even life threatening. A natural consequence of evolution, and the widespread use and misuse of antibiotics, resistance is increasing worldwide.
Pentagon dropped over $500,000 on Viagra last year
The US Department of Defense (DoD) spent $504,816 on the popular erectile dysfunction drug in 2014, according to government contracts cited by the Washington Free Beacon.
The DoD awarded 60 contracts for the drug to Ohio-based pharmaceutical distribution company Cardinal Health Inc. In 2013, the Pentagon spent some $425,000 to supply the pills to troops, a huge lurch from the previous year, when the Department spent a meager $8,000 on the drug.
In addition to Viagra, the Pentagon also ordered $3,505 worth of Levitra and $14,540 of Cialis, both male enhancement drugs. The contracts are filed under “troop support.”
Viagra, which is covered by the military’s health insurance policy, TRICARE, was first supplied to troops in 1998. The drug became an instant hit for Pfizer when it was authorized for sale in the US a year prior.
It’s time to fight religion: Toxic drivel, useful media idiots, and the real story about faith and violence
Out of misguided notions of “tolerance,” we avert our critical gaze from blatant absurdities. We must now get real
The relentless march of time generally affords humankind, which happens to include folks in the media, the chance to reflect on events and acquire wisdom. But the weeks passing since the massacre in Paris of the highly talented Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for their depictions of the Prophet Muhammad have only granted a good number of commentators the opportunity to bedork themselves time and again, as they pen columns and make on-air statements that both spread confusion and betray commitments to untenable, morally reprehensible extenuative positions concerning Islam. This is tragic, for, if anything, the slaughter of European artists exercising their lawful right to self-expression in the capital of their own country offered us all a “teachable moment” sans pareil about the nature of the threat lurking within – in fact, innate to — the “religion of peace.”
Rarely have murderers so clearly manifested their motive. With the exclamations they made as they carried out their atrocity — “Allahu Akbar!” and “On a vengé le prophète Mohamed, on a tué Charlie Hebdo!” (The prophet Muhammad has been avenged, we have killed Charlie Hebdo!) — the attackers explicitly told us they were killing for Islam, and imparted precisely the lesson they intended: Do not insult or ridicule our faith or you will pay the supreme price. They wrought violence against innocents who dared transgress the commandments of a religion they did not profess. What’s more, they de facto succeeded in imposing sharia tenets well beyond the confines of the Islamic world. How many major publications or networks dared even publish the anodyne drawing of a teary-eyed, forgiving Muhammad that graced the cover of the post-massacre issue of Charlie Hebdo, to say nothing of the other images satirizing the Prophet that presumably led to the fire-bombing of the magazine’s office in 2011? That so many Western media outlets shied away from doing so is more than scandalous. It unambiguously signals one thing: terrorism works. More lives are likely to be lost as a result.
Those whose profession it ostensibly is to enlighten found ample grounds on which to rebut reality and muddy the waters around the matter at hand: the faith-motivated murder of cartoonists for doing nothing more than drawing cartoons. Serial Islam-apologist Reza Aslan appeared on Charlie Rose‘s show and admitted that the Quran has “of course” served as a “source of violence” for terrorists, but then resorted to his usual tiresome Derrida-esque double-talk when it came to discussing his religion’s material role in the killings. “We bring our own values and norms to our scriptures; we don’t extract them from our scriptures.”
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, an unwitting recidivist “useful idiot” for Islamism, cautioned us to avoid “religious profiling” and contended that “The great divide is not between faiths. Rather it is between terrorists and moderates, between those who are tolerant and those who ‘otherize.’” He is apparently unaware of Islamic traditions dividing the world into Dar al-Islam (the Abode of Islam, or Muslim regions) and Dar al-Harb (the Abode of War, where Muslims must strive against, and even do battle with, infidels, in order to convert them. For Kristof, a “strain of Islamic intolerance and extremism” is the (mere) “backdrop to the attack on Charlie Hebdo.”
The Privileged Are Taking Over the Arts
It takes chutzpah to gainsay Richard Hoggart, especially on class and pop culture. But when he wrote in The Uses of Literacy (1957) that “the finest period in English... popular song seems to have been between 1880 and 1910,” he was wrong, or at least premature. Hoggart believed this was the era when working-class performers and audiences held greatest sway, dominating British music. Though he couldn’t have known it, that golden age was just about to come. As he wrote his venerable text in the Hull of the mid-1950s, not far down the road, in another northern port, a bunch of Scouse teenagers were strumming the overture to an entertainment revolution (albeit one with music hall roots) that would eclipse the reign of Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno.
Entering Paul McCartney’s council-house childhood home at 20 Forthlin Road, Allerton, Merseyside, American visitors are often visibly shocked by how tiny it is, how plain—spartan even. (Lennon’s was slightly bigger, so he is routinely and wrongly labelled as “middle-class.” His dad was an itinerant galley hand, and after his single-parent mom died, he was brought up by an aunt in a modest Liverpool street. It’s hardly Downton Abbey.) From these little houses, from terraced streets across the north or unlovely London boroughs, from mill towns and ports, factories and coalfields, came working-class kids who’d shake the world with every shake of their head.
But those days are gone—whether James Blunt thinks so or not. The former Guardsman-turned-balladeer has improved his media standing of late by building a genuinely funny and self-deprecating presence on Twitter. But he showed his more rebarbative edge on January 19 with an attack on the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Bryant had made the fairly anodyne point that posh kids such as Blunt and the actor Eddie Redmayne were becoming increasingly prevalent in U.K. entertainment. It’s not a particularly new or shocking assertion, but the vehemence of Blunt’s response was revealing. Replying by that most modish of platforms, the open letter, he called Bryant a “classist gimp” and a “prejudiced wazzock,” and invoked the threadbare sneer about the politics of envy. If nothing else, the rant by James, an Old Harrovian, gave the lie to the notion that the upper classes have better manners. Yet there is more to it than that; the note of wounded paranoia suggests that Blunt knows Bryant is right.
The great cultural tide that surged through Harold Wilson’s 1960s and beyond, the sea change that swept the McCartneys, Finneys, Bakewells, Courtenays, Baileys, Bennetts et al. to positions of influence and eminence, if not actual power, has ebbed and turned. The children of the middle and upper classes are beginning to reassert a much older order. In the arts generally—music, theatre, literature for sure—it is clear that cuts to benefits, the disappearance of the art school (where many a luminous layabout found room to bloom) and the harsh cost of further and higher education are pricing the working class out of careers in the arts and making it increasingly a playground for the comfortably off. The grants are gone and the relatively benign benefits system that sustained the pre-fame Jarvis Cocker and Morrissey is being dismantled daily.
Youtube Ditches Flash, and it Hardly Matters: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Last week, Google announced that its Youtube service would default to using HTML5 video instead of Flash. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for celebration: after all, Flash is a proprietary technology owned by one company, a frequent source of critical vulnerabilities that expose hundreds of millions of Internet users to attacks on their computers and all that they protect, and Flash objects can only be reliably accessed via closed software, and not from free/open code that anyone can inspect.
A year ago, the largest video site on the net ditching Flash would have been a blow for Internet freedom. Today, it's a bitter reminder of how the three big commercial browser vendors—Apple, Microsoft and Google—Netflix, the BBC, and the World Wide Web Consortium sold the whole Internet out.
In spring 2013, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) abandoned its long-term role as the guardian of the open Web, and threw its support at the highest level behind EME, an attempt to standardize Flash-style locks on browsers. They did this after the big three commercial browser companies revealed that they had engaged in closed-door meetings with Netflix to create back-doors in their browsers to lock users out of their own computers while streaming video. The W3C agreed to work to standardize browsers that treat their owners as untrusted adversaries and take steps to countermand user-actions (like saving videos).
By mid-May, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it, too, would support the project of designing browsers that don't trust their users, stating that it feared that it would be shut out of Netflix videos if it didn't play along, and that it believed that without Netflix, it would lose users to the commercial browser world.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Air France/KLM tops first global airline league for biofuel use
Air travel emits more than 650 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually – equivalent to the pollution from 136 million cars – making the increased use of sustainable biofuels a critical to reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.
According to a first-of-its-kind scorecard released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the industry is making strides in adopting sustainable biofuels, with some airlines doing better than others as they incorporate these new fuels into their fleets. Air France/KLM is by far the leader of the pack.
“It’s great to see certain airlines becoming leaders in the use of sustainable biofuels,” said Debbie Hammel, Senior Resource Specialist with NRDC’s Land & Wildlife Program and author of the scorecard.
“As the world rises to the challenge of curbing climate change and cutting carbon pollution, addressing air travel pollution has to be part of the mix. The aviation sector has been pretty proactive about this issue, and an industry-wide increase in the use of sustainably produced biofuels is definitely on the horizon.”
Scientists Reprogram Plants for Drought Tolerance
UC Riverside-led research in synthetic biology provides a strategy that has reprogrammed plants to consume less water after they are exposed to an agrochemical, opening new doors for crop improvement
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Crops and other plants are constantly faced with adverse environmental conditions, such as rising temperatures (2014 was the warmest year on record) and lessening fresh water supplies, which lower yield and cost farmers billions of dollars annually.
Drought is a major environmental stress factor affecting plant growth and development. When plants encounter drought, they naturally produce abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone that inhibits plant growth and reduces water consumption. Specifically, the hormone turns on a receptor (special protein) in plants when it binds to the receptor like a hand fitting into a glove, resulting in beneficial changes – such as the closing of guard cells on leaves, called stomata, to reduce water loss – that help the plants survive.
While it is true that crops could be sprayed with ABA to assist their survival during drought, ABA is costly to make, rapidly inactivated inside plant cells and light-sensitive, and has therefore failed to find much direct use in agriculture. Several research groups are working to develop synthetic ABA mimics to modulate drought tolerance, but once discovered these mimics are expected to face lengthy and costly development processes.
The agrochemical mandipropamid, however, is already widely used in agricultural production to control late blight of fruit and vegetable crops. Could drought-threatened crops be engineered to respond to mandipropamid as if it were ABA, and thus enhance their survival during drought?
Protesters march in Oakland, push for Jerry Brown to ban fracking
Thousands of antifracking activists took to Oakland’s streets Saturday to call for Gov. Jerry Brown to change his stance and ban the controversial practice, which uses large amounts of a pressurized water mixture to crack subterranean rocks and release oil or natural gas.
Chanting, playing music and waving signs reading “Don’t Frack Your Mother” and “There’s No Planet B,” demonstrators wove their way along an almost two-mile route, starting at Oakland’s City Hall and then moving through downtown Oakland to Lake Merritt.
“We’re here, marching in Jerry Brown’s hometown, to let him know climate leaders don’t frack,” said Linda Capato Jr., fracking campaign coordinator for 350.org, an international organization that fights climate change and one of the partner groups in the protest, called the March for Real Climate Leadership.
Saturday’s march, billed as the country’s largest demonstration against hydraulic fracturing, drew a wide range of supporters, including labor unions, students, environmental justice groups, health activists and people who just feel strongly that fracking worsens climate change, jeopardizes health and exacerbates the already historic drought.
Climate Change Puts Alaska's Sled Dog Races On Thin Ice
For more than 30 years, the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog race, which begins Saturday, has followed the Yukon River between Whitehorse, Canada, and Fairbanks, Alaska.
A little open water along the Yukon Quest trail is nothing new, but in recent years, long unfrozen stretches of the Yukon River have shaken even the toughest mushers.
Last year, musher Hank DeBruin of Ontario had stopped along the Yukon River to rest his dog team in the middle of the night, when the ice started to break up.
"I was sleeping in my sled bag and I heard a roar, sounded like freight train," DeBruin says. "So I threw all my stuff in the sled bag, pulled my dogs and my sled up the bank a bit and turned around, and there was wide-open water where the sled was sitting five minutes earlier."
Listen here.
Ancient snow patches melting at record speed
Norway is dotted with small glaciers and permanent snow patches that contain all sorts of archaeological treasures, from ancient shoes to 5000-year-old arrowheads. But climate change has turned up the temperature on these snowfields and they are vanishing at an astonishing rate.
They actually shouldn't be found in Norway. Summers are too hot and winters too dry for glaciers or perennial snow patches to form here. Yet, the Kringsollfonna ice patch in Sør-Trøndelag county and the Storbreen glacier just north of Snøhetta mountain have done just that for over 5000 years, even surviving the warm period in the Middle Ages.
Now they're melting fast. With one or two more hot summers, they will be history.
Working around the clock
Scientists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who study these snowfields are busy. The NTNU University Museum is leading this project, and archaeologists have already retrieved exciting discoveries from areas that emerge when ice and snow disappears -- such as arrowheads that are over 5,000 years old.
Climate Action Hub
The 2014 People's Climate March accelerated civic momentum and successfully demanded world leaders to reach an adequate and just treaty at the December 2015 UN Climate Talks in Paris.
The Climate Action Hub is the fast track on the Road to Paris, featuring the latest news and actions from environmental activists, NGOs, scientists, reporters and Daily Kos bloggers on Sundays at 4:30 PM Pacific . The Hub also posts developing climate related news throughout the week and features the ClimateDenierRoundup with links to top climate news weekday mornings at 8 AM Pacific. We encourage readers to utilize all posts to share related eco news and to promote other environmental diaries.
Our 'eco swat team' invites you to inform the community about campaigns in your local communities, to email us with story ideas, and to join The Hub to contribute your skills and experience.
It’s 2015! We need all hands on deck!
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The DR Congo Climate Factor, and the Road to 2016.
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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 Unbelievable Story of How America's War on Drugs Started
Creationists: To Dismiss Unicorns Found in the Bible as Mythical Animals ‘Is to Demean God’s Word’
Truthdigger of the Week: Deogratias ‘Deo’ Niyizonkiza
FCC’s Net Neutrality Shift a Victory for Open Internet
Low Oil Prices Threaten U.S. Fracking Industry
The World's Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy
Breaking!! Brian Williams is Off the Propaganda Channel!
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones in New York City, Calls Society Woman "Scandal Cats" & "Parasites"
I am a Lesbian
The DR Congo Climate Factor, and the Road to 2016.
The critical flaw in our Iraq War strategy and why we are making it worse
A Little Night Music
Jim Campilongo - Mozart Would Play A Tele
Jim Campilongo & 10 Gallon Cats - Swingin' With The Cats
Jim Campilongo - Jim's Blues
The Little Willies - Gotta Get Drunk
Jim Campilongo & 10 Gallon Cats - Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Jim Campilongo Electric Trio - Beautiful Dreamer
Jim Campilongo & Honeyfingers- Night in Serramonte
Jim Campilongo & 10 Gallon Cats - Like Butter
The Little Willies - For The Good Times
Jim Campilongo - Blues For Roy
Jim Campilongo - Ain't She Sweet
The Little Willies - Roly Poly
Jim Campilongo & Honeyfingers- Folsom Prison Blues
Jim Campilongo - Third Stone From the Sun
Jim Campilongo & Honeyfingers- Billy's Bird, She's a Woman