Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features New Orleans r&b piano player, singer and songwrither Huey Piano Smith. Enjoy!
Huey Piano Smith - Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
“I want an Oompa-Loompa!' screamed Veruca.”
-- Roald Dahl
News and Opinion
Big Bank’s Analyst Worries That Iran Deal Could Depress Weapons Sales
Could a deal to normalize Western relations with Iran and set limits on Iran’s development of nuclear technology lead to a more peaceful and less-weaponized Middle East? ... The prospect of stability has at least one financial analyst concerned about its impact on one of the world’s biggest defense contractors.
The possibility of an Iran nuclear deal depressing weapons sales was raised by Myles Walton, an analyst from Germany’s Deutsche Bank, during a Lockheed earnings call this past January 27th. Walton asked Marillyn Hewson, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, if an Iran agreement could “impede what you see as progress in foreign military sales.” ... Hewson replied that “that really isn’t coming up,” but stressed that “volatility all around the region” should continue to bring in new business. According to Hewson, “A lot of volatility, a lot of instability, a lot of things that are happening” in both the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region means both are “growth areas” for Lockheed Martin.
The Deutsche Bank-Lockheed exchange “underscores a longstanding truism of the weapons trade: war — or the threat of war — is good for the arms business,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung observed that Hewson described the normalization of relations with Iran not as a positive development for the future, but as an “impediment.” “And Hewson’s response,” Hartung adds, “which in essence is ‘don’t worry, there’s plenty of instability to go around,’ shows the perverse incentive structure that is at the heart of the international arms market.”
U.S. has flown 2,320 strikes against Islamic State at a cost of $1.83 billion: official
The U.S. military has flown 2,320 air strikes against Islamic State militants since Aug. 8 at a cost of $1.83 billion, hitting thousands of targets including tanks, oil infrastructure and fighting positions, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The strikes by U.S. forces amounted to about 80 percent of the total number carried out by a multinational coalition. In all, the partners have flown 2,893 air strikes, with 1,631 in Iraq and 1,262 in Syria, hitting 5,314 targets. ...
Coalition strikes have hit 73 tanks, some of them U.S.-made Iraqi M1A1 Abrams tanks seized when Islamic State militants overran northwestern parts Iraq last year. They also destroyed 282 Humvee vehicles that had been taken from Iraqi forces.
This is an excellent analysis by Tom Englehardt, here's the intro to get you started. It's worth clicking the link for a full read.
The New (Deplorable) American Order
1% Elections, The Privatization of the State, a Fourth Branch of Government, and the Demobilization of "We the People"
Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.
And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.
Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."
Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.
Endless Afghan War to Persist as US Base Closures Postponed
New reporting reveals how Obama administration continues to backtrack on promise to reduce military presence in Afghanistan by 2016
As the Obama administration continues to slow down its promised troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, new reporting by Reuters reveals U.S. military bases in Kandahar and Jalalabad are likely to remain open beyond the end of the year.
Speaking with an unnamed senior official, Reuters reports the policy reversal "reflects the U.S. embrace of Afghanistan's new and more cooperative president, Ashraf Ghani, and a desire to avoid the kind of collapse of local security forces that occurred in Iraq after the U.S. pull-out there."
Ghani is visiting the U.S. next week, which is when officials expect for Obama to officially announce the altered timeline for military withdrawal.
Obama threatens to withdraw US support for Israel in UN
Election Over, Netanyahu Claims He’s Back to Supporting Two-State Solution
Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly disavowed support for a two-state solution, and promised that if reelected he would build tens of thousands of new settlement homes to ensure Palestine could never be independent.
The hawkish shift appeared to pay off, and got Netanyahu a strong plurality. With continued rule all but assured, he’s trying to press the rewind button on his campaigning, today declaring that he’s once again super in favor of a two-state solution.
Jerusalem at boiling point of polarisation and violence – EU report
A hard-hitting EU report on Jerusalem warns that the city has reached a dangerous boiling point of “polarisation and violence” not seen since the end of the second intifada in 2005.
Calling for tougher European sanctions against Israel over its continued settlement construction in the city – which it blames for exacerbating recent conflict – the leaked document paints a devastating picture of a city more divided than at any time since 1967, when Israeli forces occupied the east of the city.
The report has emerged amid strong indications that the Obama administration is also rethinking its approach to Israel and the Middle East peace process following the re-election of Binyamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister.
According to reports in several US papers, this may include allowing the passage of a UN security council resolution restating the principle of a two-state solution.
The leaked report describes the emergence of a “vicious cycle of violence … increasingly threatening the viability of the two-state solution”, which it says has been stoked by the continuation of “systematic” settlement building by Israel in “sensitive areas” of Jerusalem.
In addition the report blames tension over the status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex as well as heavy-handed policing and punitive measures – including evictions and home demolitions by Israeli forces – for the escalating confrontation.
Ecuador: Why Did It Take Sweden 1,000 Days to Agree to Question Julian Assange in Our U.K. Embassy?
PATRIOT Act strikes again: How little-known language could enable massive spying — on you
In the most recent reauthorization for the phone dragnet, which was signed February 26 and released on March 11, the judge who signed the order, DC District Judge James Boasberg, provided directions to the government for each of three scenarios that may occur with the phone dragnet in the next several months: one or more of three Circuit Courts currently reviewing the program might approve or strike down aspects of it, Congress might reform the phone dragnet, or Congress might do nothing and let Section 215 expire on June 1.
For each scenario, Boasberg basically directed the government to let the court know how it would affect the dragnet.
In the last scenario, Boasberg pointed to language Congress included in the PATRIOT Act Reauthorization of 2006 that might let the government continue the collection program it currently has.
As the New York Times reported in November, that language would permit any investigation started before June 1, 2015 to continue. “It was always understood that no investigation should be different the day after the sunset than it was the day before,” the Times quoted former Senate Intelligence Committee lawyer Michael Davidson, who was involved in previous reauthorizations of the PATRIOT Act. ...
Effectively, for the last 9 years, the government has been claiming that the phone records of every single American are “relevant to” its standing investigation into al Qaeda and several other terrorist groups. And since those enterprise investigations remain in place, the government may well argue that the Sunset of that provision of the PATRIOT Act in June shouldn’t affect that collection.
EU gears up for propaganda war with Russia
The European Union is set to launch a first operation in a new propaganda war with Russia within days of EU leaders giving formal approval to the campaign at a summit on Thursday.
Officials told Reuters that a dozen public relations and communications experts would start work by the end of March in Brussels with a brief to counter what the EU says is deliberate misinformation coordinated by the Kremlin over Moscow's role and aims in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe.
It is the first stage of a plan that leaders want EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to finalize by June, which may include efforts to produce and share Russian-language broadcast programming, notably for ethnic Russians in ex-Soviet states.
Those communities currently tune in heavily to Russian state broadcasters, which have bigger production budgets than local stations for their entertainment output, as well as news.
Fear, Censorship, and Pledges of Loyalty: Egyptian Press Freedom Is at Its Lowest Ebb
While international attention has focused on the ongoing retrial of Al Jazeera television journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, local Egyptian reporters based in Cairo paint a picture of press freedom that's as bleak as it's ever been. With Thursday's adjournment of the Al Jazeera journalists' retrial, the two remain in a legal limbo. But there's nothing murky about the state of press freedom in President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's Egypt.
"I've never felt as hopeless and frustrated as I do now," Shahira Amin told VICE News, sitting at a café in central Cairo recently. Amin was a senior anchor and deputy head of state-owned Nile TV but resigned in early 2011 to protest what she saw as her channel's biased coverage of the January 25 revolution that overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. ... Intimidation and arrests, she said, have now forced all but a tiny minority of independent news outlets into peddling the state line. ...
Other old hands tell similar stories. Baher Mohamed's father Hazem, who himself had a long media career, described the current climate as "diseased," with state control banishing the hope that emerged after the revolution and confining Egyptian outlets to promoting government and business interests. ...
The international press occasionally mentions cases of foreign journalists who have been attacked by suspicious mobs at protests or the many who have been detained by security forces — in the case of one Le Monde journalist, just for talking politics in a cafe.
As usual, however, it is local journalists who suffer the worst treatment. Nine are still behind bars, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). And despite government promises to release journalists and political prisoners ahead of a large economic summit held last week and designed to woo international investors, there has been little progress, Sherif Mansour, who heads CPJ's Middle East and North Africa operations, told VICE News.
UK Police Deem Snowden Leak Investigation a State Secret
British police claim a criminal investigation they are conducting into journalists who have reported on leaked documents from Edward Snowden has to be kept a secret due to a “possibility of increased threat of terrorist activity.”
Following Snowden’s disclosures from the National Security Agency in 2013, London’s Metropolitan Police and a lawyer for the United Kingdom government separately confirmed a criminal probe had been opened into the leaks. One of the Metropolitan Police’s most senior officers publicly acknowledged during a parliamentary hearing that the investigation was focusing on whether reporters at the Guardian had committed criminal offenses for their role in revealing British government mass surveillance operations exposed in Snowden’s documents.
But now, the Metropolitan Police, known as the Met, says everything about the investigation’s existence is a secret and too dangerous to disclose. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from this reporter, the force has repeatedly refused to release any information about the status of the investigation, how many officers are working on it, or how much taxpayer money has been spent on it.
Former House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers’ Quiet Trip Through the Revolving Door
Mike Rogers, a former seven-term Republican congressman from Michigan, turned heads last year when he left his perch as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in order to — as it was reported at the time — become a talk radio host. ...
But beyond fulfilling his college-era interest in radio and joining the ranks of D.C. think tanks, Rogers apparently has other gigs. The March 10 edition of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast, an online program produced by Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel who now works at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, opened a new window into Rogers’ post-congressional career (emphasis added):
BAKER: Mike Rogers, twenty levels of experience … In probably a fit of good judgment he’s left Congress and is now a CNN national security commentator, host of a nationally syndicated radio commentary for Westwood One, doing consulting and some private equity investment, isn’t that right?
ROGERS: I am, yeah, absolutely.
The Intercept reached out to Rogers, Stewart Baker and Carolyn Stewart, Rogers’ media contact at the Hudson Institute, for more information about Rogers’ unacknowledged new career. “I think the congressman should answer your questions,” replied Baker via email. Asked which private equity firm Rogers works for, Stewart said, “I don’t remember.” Rogers himself has not responded.
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister: The United States is the Real Threat in the Americas, Not Venezuela
Why Everyone Is So Pissed at Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
Over the past year, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff has weathered waves of criticism over government fraud, financial mismanagement, and bloated public spending on infrastructure projects for mega sporting events like last year's World Cup — and the outlook hasn't improved since her narrow re-election last October.
A sagging economy and the biggest corruption scandal to ever hit the country have pummeled Rousseff's popularity to its all-time lowest level, according a Datafolha poll released on Wednesday, with 62 percent of those surveyed describing their assessment of the president as "bad" or "terrible." Only 13 percent thought highly of her. ...
After the budget profligacy of her first term, Rousseff's promotion of unpopular austerity measures aimed at reducing the deficit and improving fundamentals has cost her considerable support — particularly among the country's poorest voters, who traditionally side with the president.
Rousseff had pledged to revive Brazil's stagnant economy, which dipped into recession last year, but not at the expense of the working classes. Maria do Socorro Braga, a political scientist at Brazil's Federal University of São Carlos, told VICE News that few were prepared for the abrupt spending cuts and tax hikes that are being pushed by her government.
"They have turned their back on Rousseff over the financial adjustments and joined the middle and upper classes in their anger over the lackluster performance of the economy and corruption scandals," she said.
EU commits $2.15 billion to help Greek poor, small companies deal with crisis
The European Union committed 2 billion euros ($2.15 billion) on Friday to help Athens deal with what even EU leaders now call the "humanitarian crisis" hitting Greeks in the wake of the financial crisis that left the nation on the brink of bankruptcy.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the funds will not be linked to international loans keeping Greece afloat but will instead be used as aid for people and companies hit hardest by the crisis.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras praised the decision.
"It is a good sign," he said. "It was recognized that there is a humanitarian crisis in our country and that there must be a common effort against it — because it was the not the result of some natural catastrophe."
The pledge came hours after the EU leaders told Tsipras to come up "in the next days" with a raft of budget cuts and tax increases to improve his balance sheet before he gets more bailout money from Europe.
More Athens debt talks: Chance for Greek PM's charm offensive?
Greece ready to play the Russian card
Greece is ready to play the Russian card, bringing a new geostrategic dimension to the euro crisis.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras moved up his planned visit to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to early next month instead of in May.
Faced with intransigence by the European Union and its other creditors in rolling back austerity and alleviating its debt burden, the Greek government is quietly dangling the prospect of turning to Russia for aid.
The Greek economy may represent an insignificant portion of the EU’s overall gross domestic product, but its location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East continues to be of considerable geostrategic importance. ....
Greek leaders are trying to take the crisis out of the narrow realm of contractual law regarding debt and deal with it in the context of European solidarity and the very real humanitarian crisis that exists in Greece.
The Chicago Black Site Prison - Kevin Gosztola Discusses
Chicago police commander resigns in wake of Homan Square revelations
A senior Chicago police commander in charge of a major unit operating out of the controversial Homan Square police warehouse has resigned, the Guardian has confirmed.
The news came as attorneys for three Homan Square victims announced that they would file the first civil rights lawsuit over the facility with the aim of shutting down the complex likened by attorneys and activists to the domestic law enforcement equivalent of a CIA “black site.”
Nicholas Roti, the chief of the bureau of organized crime, resigned from the Chicago police department last week, Chicago police public affairs officer Mike Sullivan told the Guardian.
In an emailed reply to the Guardian on Thursday night, Martin Maloney of the Chicago police said:
Chief Roti left CPD to become the chief of staff for the Illinois state police [ISP], where he will work for another recently departed senior CPD official who was appointed to be the director of ISP. It’s been in the works for some time.
The organized crime unit, according to its website, is tasked with confronting illegal narcotics, gang activity and vice in Chicago, operations that numerous people formerly held at Homan Square believe led to their incommunicado detentions there.
Virginia gov. calls for investigation into student's arrest
About 1,000 students gathered at the University of Virginia campus Wednesday night to demand justice for a student who was injured during an arrest and appears in a photo with a bloody face as he is being held down by an officer.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has also called for an investigation into the early-morning arrest of Martese Johnson, whose lawyer said he needed 10 stitches in his head.
Martese Johnson was charged on two counts: obstruction of justice without force, and public swearing or intoxication, Charlottesville General District Court records show.
The Alcoholic Beverage Control agent who made the arrest, listed in court records as J. Miller, said in the arrest report that Johnson "was very agitated and belligerent."
A statement from a group calling itself "Concerned Black Students," however, claims the arrest of Johnson was unprovoked and extreme. ...
Wednesday night's rally was moved several times, finally ending up at an outdoor amphitheater after more students than expected showed up.
Judge won't release grand jury testimony in Garner chokehold death
A judge on Thursday refused to release testimony heard by a grand jury that declined to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, arguing there wasn't a good enough reason to make the secret information public.
The New York Civil Liberties Union and others had asked the court to order Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan to release the grand jury transcript, including the testimony of the officer involved, Daniel Pantaleo, and dozens of witnesses, detailed descriptions of evidence and other documentation. A similar step was voluntarily taken by the prosecutor in Ferguson, Missouri, when a grand jury there refused to indict an officer in the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. ...
Civil liberties lawyers had argued that the public needs to reconcile the widely watched video of Garner's July 17 death with the decision not to indict the officer involved.
But State Supreme Court Justice William Garnett wrote that the law required the NYCLU and the other parties who brought the lawsuit to establish a "compelling and particularized need" to release the grand jury minutes.
The NYCLU's legal director, Arthur Eisenberg, said the civil rights agency was disappointed that the court "has chosen to perpetuate secrecy rather than promote transparency." He said, "In doing so, the court has reinforced the distrust many New Yorkers already feel toward the performance of the criminal justice system in this case."
The Shocking Finding From the DOJ's Ferguson Report That Nobody Has Noticed
In the city of Ferguson, nearly everyone is a wanted criminal.
That may seem like hyperbole, but it is a literal fact. In Ferguson -- a city with a population of 21,000 -- 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police.
That statistic should be truly shocking. Yet in the wake of the Department of Justice's withering report on the city's policing practices, it has gone almost entirely unmentioned. News reports and analysis have focused on the racism discovered in departmental emails, and the gangsterish financial "shakedown" methods deployed against African Americans. In doing so, they have missed the full picture of Ferguson's operation, which reveals a totalizing police regime beyond any of Kafka's ghastliest nightmares.
It turns out that nearly everyone in the city is wanted for something. Even internal police department communications found the number of arrest warrants to be "staggering". By December of 2014, "over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued by the court." The report makes clear that this refers to individual people, rather than cases, so people with many cases are not being counted multiple times. ...
This complete penetration of policing into everyday life establishes a world of unceasing terror and violence. When everyone is a criminal by default, police are handed an extraordinary amount of discretionary power. "Discretion" may sound like an innocuous or even positive policy, but its effect is to make every single person's freedom dependent on the mercy of individual officers. There are no more laws, there are only police. The "rule of law," by which people are supposed to be treated equally according to a consistent set of principles, becomes the "rule of personal whim." ...
Residents are routinely charged with minor administrative infractions. Most of the arrest warrants stem from traffic violations, but nearly every conceivable human behavior is criminalized. An offense can be found anywhere, including citations for "Manner of Walking in Roadway," "High Grass and Weeds," and 14 kinds of parking violation. The dystopian absurdity reaches its apotheosis in the deliciously Orwellian transgression "failure to obey." (Obey what? Simply to obey.) In fact, even if one does obey to the letter, solutions can be found. After Henry Davis was brutally beaten by four Ferguson officers, he found himself charged with "destruction of official property" for bleeding on their uniforms.
A Boehner-Pelosi prescription for Medicare doc fixes
In a rare display of bipartisanship, House leaders are actively pursuing a deal to permanently change the way Medicare pays doctors and to extend a children’s health program for two years. ...
While details are still being ironed out, the basic contours are clear: The plan would permanently eliminate the Sustainable Growth Rate, the outdated formula that calls for frequent and deep cuts to Medicare providers, and replace it with a new payment system. This is a priority for both parties to end the need for frequent “doc fixes.”
The plan would also extend funding for two years for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is set to expire in September. Instead, it would continue at the elevated payment rates approved under Obamacare.
Lawmakers would pay for $70 billion of the total package, with most of the savings at the back end of the 10-year budget window. Republicans will argue that the Medicare structural reforms included will generate deeper savings in the second 10-year window. About half of that $70 billion would come from cuts to health care providers, such as hospitals, acute-care providers and insurers. Most of the cuts are not expected to take place immediately. The other half would be covered through cuts to Medicare beneficiaries, such as additional means testing for high-income seniors. ...
The replacement policy agreed to by the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees and the Senate Finance Committee would move away from volume-based payments, in which physicians are paid based on the number of tests or procedures ordered, into a value-based system. That would reward them with higher payments when they meet performance thresholds on improved care and quality.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a few observations from Frank P Walsh on Rev Hillis and from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on the preacher, Billy Sunday.
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Silicon Valley Democrats Pursuing High-Skill Immigration Reform
Illinois Republican governor orders state agencies to divert union 'fair share' dues
Unions cry foul and say ‘legally questionable scheme shows the lengths to which Bruce Rauner will go in his obsession to undermine labor unions’
Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, dogged in attempts to eliminate fees paid to unions by workers who choose not to join, has instructed state agencies to divert money from non-union employee paychecks away from organized labor until a judge settles the matter.
In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, general counsel Jason Barclay directs departments under the Republican governor’s control to create two sets of books, one of which would move deductions from non-union members to the operations budgets of state agencies instead of to the unions, although the money would not be spent.
The idea was immediately condemned by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest of two dozen unions that filed a countersuit over an executive order Rauner signed last month calling the fees a free-speech violation. He’s seeking a federal court’s declaration that they are unconstitutional.
“This legally questionable scheme shows the lengths to which Gov Rauner will go in his obsession to undermine labor unions,” Roberta Lynch, executive director of the Illinois council of AFSCME, said in a prepared statement. “To frustrate lawful fair-share agreements, Rauner is ordering payroll staff to make unauthorized reductions in employees’ established salaries.”
The process outlined in the memo calls for preparing one payroll report with the “proper pay” and one, to be processed, that reduces the worker’s gross pay by an amount equal to what nonunion workers normally pay in so-called “fair share” fees. It is not clear how the deductions would affect federal tax withholding or health-insurance payments. Taxes are based on gross pay – if that amount is lower, less is withheld, creating potential headaches down the line.
San Francisco church doused homeless people with water to deter sheltering
St Mary’s cathedral, home of the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, has been scrambling to explain itself after local media revealed that it had installed water sprinklers above its doorways that were dousing homeless people seeking shelter in the alcoves there.
Officials of the archdiocese hastily began the process of dismantling the sprinklers after the local CBS franchise, KCBS Radio, revealed that homeless people and their belongings were routinely being soaked by the automated system.
The anti-homeless technique has been deployed outside commercial properties in several major cities, including San Francisco, but its use by an institution devoted to the tradition of the good Samaritan has proved more contentious.
Within hours of the story appearing, St Mary’s was insisting that the furore was all a “misunderstanding”. The spokesperson for the archdiocese, Larry Kamer, stood on the steps of the cathedral and admitted that the sprinklers had been in place for “several years”, adding that they were used to deter homeless people from sheltering in the alcoves of the church.
Tight mayoral race exposes divide among Chicago Democrats
The Evening Greens
Aboriginal 'Lifestyle Choice' to Live in Australia's Outback Will No Longer be Supported
Looming Australian government cut backs mean hundreds of Aboriginal communities will be cut off from services or forced to close down, creating concern and anger among indigenous and non-indigenous people alike.
Meanwhile, the country's senate has called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to apologize for describing Aboriginal Australians who live in remote communities as having made a "lifestyle choice."
Federal funding for water, electricity, sewage, and other services in indigenous communities across Western Australia will end on July 1, 2015. The state government will have to pick up the tab, but has already said it doesn't have the funds to support the residents in the long term.
Now, 274 communities are being assessed by the state to determine if they are "viable" and state officials have said that at least 150 will need to be permanently cut off, effectively forcing them to close down. ...
Brian Wyatt, chairman of the National Native Title Council, told VICE News that Abbott's position doesn't take into account why Aboriginal people in remote communities live there.
"The cultural DNA of our people is connected to their land, [so] forcing them off it, to assimilate, amounts to cultural genocide," he said.
Aboriginal Australians have been cited as having one of the longest continuous cultural histories on earth and have existed as a distinct cultural group for 50,000-65,000 years.
Despite the Deep Freeze on the US East Coast, This Winter Was the Hottest on Record
It may not make shivering Northeasterners feel any better, but their miserable winter wasn't shared by the rest of the planet.
The three-month stretch from December through February was the warmest on record, the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported this week. Average global temperatures were 0.79 degrees Celsius (1.42 Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average, the highest mark since record keeping began in 1880. February's average alone was 0.82 degrees Celsius (1.48 Fahrenheit) above the last century's benchmark, the second highest on record for the month.
While the heavy snowfalls on the US East Coast and even parts of the South got a lot of attention this winter, the American West, Europe, and most of Russia had a warmer-than-average winter. Parts of Siberia saw average temperatures five degrees Celsius (nine Fahrenheit) above normal. ...
Scientists expect that the increasing global temperatures — up an average of about 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) since 1880, and forecast to rise at least two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) by 2100 — will bring more extreme storms and droughts and an increase in global sea levels, with consequences falling disproportionately on the world's poor.
Thanks to Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice at Lowest Levels Ever Recorded
At the height of the most recent winter season, Arctic sea ice was at its lowest level ever recorded, with climate change playing a key role in this historic decline, the National Snow and Ice Data Center revealed Thursday.
Arctic sea ice reached its maximum levels on February 25th at 5.61 million square miles. This "was the lowest in the satellite record, with below-average ice conditions everywhere except in the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait," the scientists note. ...
The NSIDC's findings, furthermore, come on the heels of a study published earlier this month in the journal Cryosphere, which concluded that Arctic sea ice is vanishing far more rapidly than was previously thought.
Canada regulator probing TransCanada over safety allegations
Canada's energy regulator is investigating up to a dozen new allegations of natural gas pipeline safety-code violations at TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO), according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), and the company confirmed an investigation is under way but offered few details of the allegations.
It marks the second time in recent years the regulator has probed safety practices at Canada's second-largest pipeline company following complaints by a whistleblower.
Documents reviewed by Reuters showed the allegations include faulty or delayed repairs, sloppy welding work and a failure to report key issues to the regulator.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Thomas Friedman asks if US should arm ISIS to fix problems created by policies he supported
Obnoxious Chicago Mayor Faces Threat
Yanis Varoufakis: Of Greeks and Germans: Re-imagining our Shared Future
OK. Do let us think about the children
A Little Night Music
Huey "Piano" Smith - Don't You Just Know It
Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns - Sea Cruise
Huey Piano Smith - High Blood Pressure
Huey Piano Smith - Don't You Know Yockomo
Huey 'Piano' Smith - Pop-Eye
Huey Piano Smith & the Clowns - Little Liza Jane.wmv
Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns - Would You Believe It I Have a Cold
Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns - Second Line
Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns - Well I'll Be John Brown
Huey Smith (Huey Piano Smith) - You're Down With Me
Huey Piano Smith and His Clowns - If It Ain't One Thing, It's Another
Huey Piano Smith - Somebody told it
Huey Piano Smith and The Clowns - Just A Lonely Clown
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!
|