The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Lou Donaldson.. Enjoy!
Lou Donaldson - Hot Dog
Note: We here at the Evening Blues Weekend Edition often step beyond the boundries of traditional blues music. Joe shikspack so adeptly covers the blues genre in his weekday series that we at the Weekend Edition would find most trad blues offerings we could serve up as being redundant. Therefore Joe, in magnanimous manner has allowed us to color outside of the lines and we appreciate and thank him for that. Almost all modern American music has it's roots in traditional blues music anyway, so ultimately we do not stray far from the mother language. As Muddy Waters sang:
The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, let us add to that list (jazz, country, bluegrass, ragtime, folk, gospel, soul, swing and rhythm and blues) and all subsets thereof. -- JtC
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. - Kurt Vonnegut
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors: janis b, Funkygal, enhydra lutris
Elizabeth Warren Harangues Republicans Who Want To Defund Planned Parenthood
Ever since an anti-abortion group released secretly made and heavily edited videos claiming they prove Planned Parenthood is selling fetal tissue for profit, congress has been threatening to defund the woman's health group, even if it means shutting down the government.
Not intimidated? Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who used her time on the Senate Floor this week to lambaste the Republicans who threaten Planned Parenthood.
"I come to the Senate Floor today," Senator Warren begins, "to ask my Republican colleagues a question. Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s? Or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s health-care centers.
"On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The Republicans have had a plan for years to strip away women’s rights to make choices over our own bodies.”
Why Criminal Justice Isn't Just
Contributed by: janis b
Imagine if your doctor approached your complaint of chest pains with a conception of the human body from two or three hundred years ago. That’s essentially what police officers, jurors, and judges do every day when it comes to diagnosing whether someone is lying or a memory is accurate or a person deserves jail time. Much of our legal system is based on unsupported gut intuitions about how human beings behave that have been around for generations.
No one questions the wisdom of researchers’ developing new, more effective medicines. But the law seems different. The unstated assumption is that those who wrote our codes and shaped our institutions of criminal justice were somehow more enlightened than we are today.
Thirty miles from Selma, a different kind of civil rights struggle
Contributed by: Funkygal
Uniontown, Alabama — As Esther Calhoun sees it, discrimination, rooted in the acts of many, has turned this wisp of a town into a dumping ground.
A landfill owner that staked out roughly 1,000 acres for Alabama’s biggest municipal-waste site on a county road dotted by well-worn homes. A county commission that approved the landfill over objections from a largely African-American neighborhood. And a state agency that issued operating permits time and again.
“If this had been a rich, white neighborhood, the landfill would never have gotten here,” said Calhoun, whose sharecropper and slave ancestors toiled on local plantations, explaining why so many of her fellow citizens view the facility as discriminatory.
365 Days and 605 Armored Military Vehicles Later: Police Militarization a Year After Ferguson
Last August Ferguson and Fallujah had a lot in common. Those protesting the death of Michael Brown were met with “armored vehicles, noise-based crowd-control devices, shotguns, M4 rifles like those used by forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, rubber-coated pellets and tear gas.” The scene looked more like a foreign warzone than a Midwestern American town and no one could tell why local police were taking up arms against those they are sworn to protect and serve.
The world was shocked by this highly and dangerously militarized response by local law enforcement. Foreign leaders equated Ferguson to combat zones in Iraq and Gaza. Veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars expressed horror at the reality that they had been less heavily-armed while on active duty abroad. President Obama reacted by saying “[t]here is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don't want those lines blurred.”
March, moment of silence to mark anniversary in Ferguson
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
One year after the shooting that cast greater scrutiny on how police interact with black communities, the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, will be marked with a somber march and a moment of silence.
The march late Sunday morning begins at the site where Brown, who was black and unarmed, was fatally shot by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, 2014. A grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November, but the shooting touched off a national "Black Lives Matter" movement.
How Ferguson changed hearts and minds in America
A year after the police shooting of Michael Brown set off a wave of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement that rose to prominence in the aftermath is winning. Americans are paying more attention to systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Democratic presidential candidates have had public appearances derailed when they fail to take a convincing stance on the issue. And cops have been charged and indicted for high-profile killings.
The movement hasn't definitively won. Black people are still dying at alarming rates at the hands of police, and several recent police shootings — such as the killing of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati — were horrifying and unnecessary.
But recent surveys show the shift. A June survey of 2,000 US adults from Gallup found that all Americans are more likely to say that black people are unfairly treated in all aspects of society, including police encounters. And a July survey of 2,000 US adults from the Pew Research Center found a 20-year high in the percentage of Americans calling racism a "big problem" in society.
A Year After Ferguson, Housing Segregation Defies Tools to Erase It
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
When she tore open the manila envelope on a sweltering morning in early June, Crystal Wade thought she had unlocked her ticket to freedom.
“The St. Louis Housing Authority is pleased to inform you,” the letter read, “that you have been determined eligible to participate in our Housing Choice Voucher Program.”
Colloquially referred to as a Section 8 voucher, it would allow her to use a housing subsidy at any suitable rental property she could find anywhere in the city or county of St. Louis. So as she wilted that June morning in her subsidized north side townhome, where the air conditioner was broken again, where a baseboard was black with mold from a leaky window, where she avoided the ground-floor living room for fear of catching a stray bullet, she began to dream of the possibilities.
Days of Revolt: The Black Prophetic Tradition
Reviving the Myth of the ‘Superpredator’
Contributed by: Funkygal
A week ago, rumors were whipped up on social media about a contest between two Los Angeles gangs to indiscriminately kill 100 people, whether rivals or bystanders, in 100 days. The rumors were posted with the hashtag #100days100nights.
It was internet hearsay until the early morning hours of July 28, when the Daily Beast ran an “exclusive story” that blessed the rumors with credibility. Citing an unnamed “law enforcement source,” the Daily Beast reported that bloodthirsty gangs were indeed pitted in a contest to put fatal bullets in the first 100 bodies unfortunate enough to cross their paths.
The story draws from a well-worn narrative that depicts gang members, and poor urban folk generally, as mindless, amoral, sadistic, blood-lusting subhumans, too stupid or evil—or both—to need a reason to kill. The narrative took its modern form in the 1980s, when the news media used an actual rise in violence associated with the crack cocaine street business to incite a new moral and racial panic.
Baltimore homicide uptick: Anti-crime partnership launched
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
Baltimore police and civic leaders launched a partnership Monday with five federal agencies that will embed their special agents with city homicide detectives, bidding to quell an upswing in homicides and other violent crime in that city.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was joined by State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, Acting Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, and U.S. representatives Barbara Mikulski, among others, to announce the start of the Baltimore Federal Homicide Task Force.
"We have doubled down on our commitment to focus on repeat violent offenders, and that's what we continue to do in a more collaborative and intentional way," Rawlings-Blake said. "We are increasing the resources, we are increasing the collaboration and increasing the partnership at all levels. This is our next step in our all-hands-on-deck approach to decreasing violence."
To LA Times, Meth in Skid Row Victim’s Blood More Important Than Gun in His Flesh
Contributed by: Funkygal
On March 1, Los Angeles police officers killed an unarmed, homeless black man named Charly Keunang on LA’s Skid Row.
Captured on cellphone video, the incident received attention because we are living in a moment when many people have decided that the state-sanctioned killing of black people by law enforcement is worth our attention—and that’s very uncomfortable for those who want to believe that every police killing must be in some way justified, if we could only see how. So Keunang’s autopsy—five months later—was likely to make some kind of news, but what kind?
The Los Angeles Times headline (7/29/15) on the autopsy report: “Skid Row Shooting: Autopsy Shows Man Shot Six Times, Had Meth in System.” And, indeed, the story by Kate Mather, while it notes that the autopsy can’t actually show how drugs might have affected Keunang’s behavior, nevertheless elaborates, with comments from a pathologist from San Francisco, on the possible effects of methamphetamine—and even talks about “marijuana exposure,” because the victim may have smoked it within days of his death. A quote from LAPD Chief Charlie Beck underlines the drug angle: “The combination of mental illness and drug abuse on skid row leads to multiple violent confrontations,” he says.
Obama Administration Accused of Giving Human Trafficking Status Upgrade to 'Further Corporate Trade Agenda'
Controversy over the State Department's upgrading of Malaysia in its annual human trafficking report continues to swirl, with one organization charging that it shows the administration watering down human rights abuses in an effort to "further its corporate trade agenda."
UN rights envoy says meeting with Myanmar's Rohingya blocked
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
A U.N. human rights envoy said her whirlwind visit to Myanmar was marred by disappointments: She was barred from meeting long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims and talks with several senior officials were denied or canceled at the last minute. And when she met with government critics, security officials were there, quietly snapping pictures.
Yanghee Lee was in the Southeast Asian nation to assess the human rights situation ahead of November general elections — the second vote since the former dictatorship began its bumpy transition to democracy just a few years ago.
But she said Friday the lack of access and serious disruptions to her program made it impossible to fulfill her mandate.
Greek forces to train in Israel as Syriza-led government deepens alliance
Contributed by: Funkygal
Greek, along with Italian, military forces are soon to train in Israel.
This is the latest indicator of the deepening military alliance being forged between Israel and Greece’s government led by the leftist Syriza party.
Last month, Israeli helicopter pilots completed an unprecedented 11-day combat training exercise near Greece’s Mount Olympus.
Israel arrests suspected Jewish radicals in West Bank
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
Israel has arrested at least seven suspected Jewish militants and placed two more in jail without charge.
The arrests come amid a crackdown on Jewish extremists in the wake of a deadly arson attack in the West Bank, which Palestinians have blamed on Jewish settlers.
An 18-month-old boy died in the attack in July. His father died on Saturday.
The arrests were made in raids on two unauthorised Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Thousands of Haitians fleeing Dominican Republic stuck in camps
Contributed by: janis b
Tens of thousands of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans have fled the Dominican Republic in response to its strict new immigration policy with many settling in squalid camps in Haiti.
Haitian officials estimate the population at four camps in the south of Haiti is at least 2,000 and growing.
Venezuelan opposition stages march against hunger
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
Critics of Venezuela's socialist administration staged a small protest against hunger and crime in Caracas Saturday as the South American country struggles to control violence in food lines.
The past week saw daily reports of looting in supermarkets and raids on food trucks. The country's opposition coalition called for Saturday's march after a man was killed and 60 were arrested amid the looting of several grocery stores in an industrial town.
There have been 56 episodes of looting and 76 looting attempts in the first half of 2015, according to the nonprofit Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict.
Mine Kafon - Inspired by children’s toys, an Afghani inventor’s clever, surprisingly low-cost solution to the threat of landmines
Contributed by: janis b
Nagasaki: The Last Bomb
At 3:47 A.M. on August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress took off from the American airbase on the island of Tinian, in the North Pacific Ocean. Operation Centerboard II, the mission to drop the second atomic bomb on a Japanese city, had begun. Already things were not going as smoothly as they had three days earlier, in the run over Hiroshima. That attack had been textbook—“operationally routine,” as a classified Army history later put it. The Enola Gay had reached its target and returned home without complication; an announcement sent out under President Harry Truman’s name had trumpeted its success. But Bockscar, the strike plane chosen for Centerboard II, had been delayed on the tarmac because of fuel-pump problems. Only the day before, four B-29s in succession had crashed on takeoff, causing extensive fuel fires. As one of the scientists on Tinian wrote, “We all aged ten years until the plane cleared the island.” But clear the island it did.
Bockscar had been stripped of most of its armor and weaponry to accommodate its five-ton atomic payload, known as the Fat Man. Thirteen minutes after takeoff, at 4 A.M. Tinian time, the weaponeer made his way aft and removed two green safing plugs from the bomb, replacing them with red arming plugs: it was now live. Whereas the weapon dropped over Hiroshima had been a relatively squat cylinder, this one was shaped like a giant egg. It was five feet around and eleven feet long and painted mustard yellow. At one end was a rigid, boxy tail fin known as a California parachute, designed to help keep it from spinning wildly once it was released. The pit crew who assembled it had signed their names on the casing, and some also wrote messages to the Japanese—“Here’s to you!” and “A second kiss for Hirohito.” On its nose, the bomb bore a stenciled acronym, JANCFU, which stood for Joint Army-Navy-Civilian Fuckup.
“In a Nuclear War the Collateral Damage would be the Life of All Humanity”. Conversations with Fidel Castro: Hiroshima and the Dangers of a Nuclear War
From October 12 to 15, 2010, I had extensive and detailed discussions with Fidel Castro in Havana, pertaining to the dangers of nuclear war, the global economic crisis and the nature of the New World Order. These meetings resulted in a wide-ranging and fruitful interview.
The first part of this interview published by Global Research and Cuba Debate focuses on the dangers of nuclear war.
The World is at a dangerous crossroads. We have reached a critical turning point in our history.
This interview with Fidel Castro provides an understanding of the nature of modern warfare: Were a military operation to be launched against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the US and its allies would be unable to win a conventional war, with the possibility that this war could evolve towards a nuclear war.
The scars of nuclear war: Japanese pensioner who survived the Nagasaki bomb shows off the remains of his ribs and the horrific wounds on his back 70 years on from the blast that killed more than 70,000
Nagasaki and Hiroshima anniversary: Powerful photos of survivor show effects of atomic bomb 70 years on
One survivor has shown his wounds from the day, to highlight the lasting effects of the atrocity.
86-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi was just 16 years old when the bomb devastated his city.
The Bomb Sends a Message to the World - Untold History
Radioactive coyotes and poisoned applesThe strange history of the Manhattan Project
Before launching season one of WGN America's terrific drama series Manhattan, which returns in fall 2015, Sam Shaw was best known as a writer on the first season of another period drama: Showtime's Masters of Sex. But Shaw had long wanted to do a drama set in the midst of the Manhattan Project and the construction of the world's first atomic bomb, and that pre-planning shows in the deliberate, hugely satisfying fashion in which the cable drama's first season played out.
Of course, amid all of that conceptualization, Shaw learned a lot about the Manhattan Project.
"We have our own Alexandrian library of nuclear apocalypse in our offices," he told me. "300 or so volumes and growing."
Because truth is stranger than fiction, we asked him to share some tidbits from his research that might break our brains just a little bit. Some made it into the show, but some were just too weird to be believed and will stay in the historical record only. Below are five of the weirdest things Shaw learned while researching his show.
Make Deal Not War!: Obama’s, and Washington’s, Absurd Choice of a Nuclear Deal or War on Iran
I don’t know which is worse: President Obama asserting, in defense of the nuclear deal he and his Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated with Iran, that “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” or the fact that most Americans, and most American pundits, seem to accept that limited choice of options as a given.
Nothing could be more ridiculous, of course. We already know, because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have repeatedly inspected Iran’s nuclear energy programs and reactors and verified the fact, that no bomb-making work has been going on in Iran for years. Iran has no weapons-grade uranium 235 and no plutonium. Even the US intelligence services and Israel’s Mossad leaders past and present have said that Iran has no nuclear weapons program underway.
Obama opens up on Iran - What he's learned about war, Republicans, and his own foreign policy
Toward the end of our meeting with President Obama, one of us asked whether the Iran nuclear deal might change the future of that country's poisonously anti-American politics, and Obama drifted from the technical and political details he'd otherwise focused on into something of a more reflective tone.
"I just don’t know," he said, leaning back a bit in his chair for the first time since he'd arrived. "When Nixon went to China, Mao was still in power. He had no idea how that was going to play out.
"He didn’t know that Deng Xiaoping would suddenly come in and decide that it doesn’t matter what color the cat is as long as it catches mice, and the next thing you know you’ve got this state capitalism on the march," Obama said, paraphrasing the famous aphorism by Mao's successor that capitalistic policies were acceptable if they helped China. "You couldn’t anticipate that."
It was surprising to hear Obama, normally more restrained in how he discusses the Iran nuclear deal, refer to it, however cautiously, as a moment when the arc of history might curve.
The Winners & Losers in Iran Sanctions Relief
Why the US nuclear budget grows while the stockpile of warheads shrinks
If you simply tally the number of warheads, the United States’ nuclear stockpile looks like a shadow of what it once was. The number of warheads held by the U.S. peaked in 1967 at over 31,000, but has been steadily declining, mainly through a series of treaties with nuclear rival Russia. By February 2018, the deadline for the most recent treaty, the U.S. will have pared down its active strategic arsenal (warheads ready to launch) to 1,605, the lowest number since Dwight Eisenhower was president.
And yet, American taxpayers will soon be spending more on nuclear weapons in real dollars than they have since the end of the Cold War. In October 2013, just four months after calling for yet another one-third reduction in the stockpile, President Barack Obama announced plans to “modernize” the entire nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, arguing that updating and replacing the so-called nuclear triad — the submarines, jets and ballistic missiles designed to deliver warheads — will help create a leaner, sleeker nuclear fleet. But leaner doesn’t mean cheaper, at least not in the short term. According to a recent study by two researchers at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Jeffrey Lewis and Jon Wolfsthal, Obama’s modernization program could carry a price tag of over $1 trillion, vaulting nuclear weapons spending relative to the overall defense budget to a level comparable to the 1980s.
For US, national interests remain important in the Middle East
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
President Obama’s strong defence of the Iran deal comes with a lot of geo-political baggage, is deeply rooted in the U.S.’ ‘new’ approach towards the Middle East, and strongly reflects continuation of the old principle of international order and inter-state relations: there are no permanent enemies or permanent friends. The only permanent thing is national interest.
In a carefully constructed speech, Obama was quick to invoke history—the Iraq war — and present the case of Iran deal as a way to avoid wars in the future. That Iraq war was a mistake and the Iran deal a correct decision and that supporters of Iraq war were again supporting war with Iran was the logic he used to criticise opponents of the deal. To quote him, “Let’s not mince words, the choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”
Which war President Obama was referring to in his speech? Certainly, he was pointing out and, at the same time, strongly rejecting the possibility of starting a war with Iran, or imposing it on Iran, as the final solution to the nuclear issue. However, while the U.S. is certainly not going to wage a war with Iran to permanently settle the nuclear issue, it is certainly creating such conditions in the Middle East as conducive to creating and maintaining sort of controlled instability. i.e., mini wars.
A Wizard at Prying Government Secrets From the Government
Contributed by: Funkygal
When the reporter Jason Leopold gets ready to take on the United States government, he psychs himself up by listening to the heavy metal bands Slayer and Pantera.
Mr. Leopold describes himself as “a pretty rageful guy.” He argued recently with staff members at his son’s preschool because he objected to their references to “Indians” and they objected to his wearing family-unfriendly punk rock T-shirts to school meetings.
Mr. Leopold, 45, who works for Vice News, reserves most of his aggression for dealing with the government. He has revealed about 20,000 pages of government documents, some of them the basis for explosive news stories. Despite his appearance — on a recent day his T-shirt featured the band name “Sick of It All” — his secret weapon is the opposite of anarchic: an encyclopedic knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, the labyrinthine administration machine that serves it and the kind of legal judo often required to pry information from it.
Fuel for agression ->
Big Bad Socialism? The U.S. Is Already A Socialist Nation – And Conservatives Love It
There’s no greater fear-mongering word than “Socialism.” It’s the word used, improperly mind you, to strike fear into the hearts and minds of those who are too stupid to know any better.
Here’s the thing — Socialism is not a dirty word. In fact, we here in the United States already enjoy several things all due to socialist principles with people standing up for themselves and for the greater good.
Going Bankrupt Like Trump Did Is for High Rollers, Not Homeowners
Donald Trump took advantage of the nation’s bankruptcy laws four times in the last 24 years, and if ordinary Americans in this country were allowed to do the same, the country would be in markedly better shape economically, with a far stronger post-recession recovery.
“They Pray to the Money”; House Republicans Decry Speaker John Boehner’s Lobbyist-Friendly Congress
Last week’s surprise bid by a group of House Republicans to oust Speaker John Boehner wasn’t about Boehner’s ideology, two members of the would-be rebellion said in a radio interview Thursday. It was about how Boehner uses congressional power to raise money over the interests of individual legislators.
“He’s not a policy leader. He’s a political leader. He knows how to raise money,” Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., told North Carolina radio host Tyler Cralle. “We have allowed the money to control policy in Washington, D.C.”
Donald Trump Says He Can Buy Politicians, None of His Rivals Disagree
Donald Trump bragged Thursday night that he could buy politicians — even the ones sharing the stage with him at a Republican presidential debate.
Trump was asked about something he said in a previous interview: “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
“You’d better believe it,” Trump said. “If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.”
The GOP Debate is What Oligarchy Looks Like
In the run-up to the first Republican presidential debate, a flurry of news stories about the candidates offered glimpses of oligarchy in action. Consider:
Jeb Bush’s largest Super PAC has already raised $103 million, most of it collected before he even officially declared that he was running for president. (That may explain the exclamation point in his “Jeb!” logo.)
At least 20 individuals wrote checks to Bush’s Super PAC for $1 million or more, and an estimated 236 checks were received for $100,000 or more.
Roughly a third of the more than $380 million already raised for the 2016 election comes from less than 60 donations, according to the Associated Press.
For the first time in more than a century, most of the funding for a presidential election is being donated in amounts of six figures or more from corporations and wealthy individuals.
It took Ted Cruz three months to raise $10 million, according to the same AP account. He then more than doubled the size of his coffers by collecting $11 million with a single check from a hedge funder.
Donald Trump says he’s financing his own campaign – despite the fact that Trump-led corporations have filed for bankruptcy four times.
Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi moves to tackle corruption
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
He said senior political appointments should not be based on sectarian or party quotas and moved to abolish the posts of vice-president and deputy PM.
Most of Mr Abadi's proposed reforms will require parliamentary approval.
The move follows recent anti-government protests sparked by unreliable electricity amid a major heatwave.
They're All Reactionaries
The news media is understandably trying to parse the words, tone, and body language of the Republican candidates' debate performances Thursday night to decide who "won" and "lost," who is on the rise and who is on the descent, and how they differ from each other.
But the most significant revelation from the debate is that all of them -- including the so-called "moderate" candidates (Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie) -- are right-wingers. On a scale of 1 to 10 -- with 10 being the most reactionary -- every candidate rated an 8 or above.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Can habitat protection save our disappearing bats?
In summertime, bats are a common feature in the night sky, swooping around backyards to gobble up mosquitos. Bats also help with crops: they act as a natural pesticide by feeding on harmful insects.
But these winged mammals are now under threat. As agricultural intensification expands across the world, the conversion of their natural habitats has caused a dramatic decline in population. North American bats are also plagued with white-nose syndrome, an emerging infectious disease that’s decimating their numbers.
“Many bat populations in Quebec have lost 80 to 100 per cent in recent years,” says Concordia biology professor Jean-Philippe Lessard.
Obama's Climate Plan Won't Save the Planet, But It's the Result of a Movement That Will
In Thursday’s marathon prime-time Republican debates, climate change was not at the top of the agenda. Aside from a few mentions of “the energy revolution,” a buried and affirmative reference to the Keystone XL pipeline, and some broad-strokes jabs at regulation, the GOP’s candidates for president — with the help from the Fox News moderators — stuck to more familiar conservative talking points like ISIS, Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood.
For climate activists, this might have come as a surprise given how keenly Republicans focused their energies on carbon this past week. After President Obama unveiled his Clean Power Plan on Tuesday, conservative pundits and candidates worked themselves into a frenzy. Rush Limbaugh, a man not known for his subtlety, chided the administration for “destroying the planet, folks. You are worse that Al Qaeda.” One Wall Street Journal op-ed named the plan a “Climate Change Putsch,” referencing a German word that means to violently overthrow the government. Marco Rubio called it “catastrophic,” while Jeb Bush said it was “irresponsible and over-reaching.” The plan also came with renewed calls to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and is expected to face myriad legal challenges. In a phenomenon organizers and policy-wonks alike refer to as polarization, the Clean Power Plan is clearly making the right people angry.
Shell Cuts Off ALEC, But Greenpeace Says PR Stunt Won't Save Arctic
Royal Dutch Shell on Friday announced that it would not renew its partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), citing the corporate lobbying organization's continued denial of climate change, in a move that environmental groups say does nothing to absolve the oil giant from its destructive business model.
"ALEC advocates for specific economic growth initiatives, but its stance on climate change is clearly inconsistent with our own," said Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith on Friday. "We have long recognized both the importance of the climate challenge and the critical role energy has in determining quality of life for people across the world. As part of an ongoing review of memberships and affiliations, we will be letting our association with ALEC lapse when the current contracted term ends early next year."
Antarctic life is more diverse than previously thought
The team of scientists, led by Monash University, along with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Waikato in New Zealand, and Australian National University, looked at how recent investigations have revealed the continent and surrounding ocean is rich in species. They are also very highly diversified into a variety of distinct ecological regions that differ greatly from each other.
Lead author, Professor Steven Chown, School of Biological Sciences at Monash, said the team explicitly focussed on demonstrating the diversity of various areas of the Antarctic continent and Southern Ocean. He said:
“Most people think of the continent as a vast, icy waste, and the sea as uniformly populated by whales, seals and penguins. But that’s simply not true”.
“There’s much biodiversity on land, especially among the micro-organisms, such as bacteria, and the seafloor is very rich in larger unusual species, such as sea spiders and isopods (the marine equivalents of slaters or wood lice). More than 8000 species are known from the marine environment.”
EPA Causes Massive Mine Waste Spill in Colorado That Turns River Orange
Workers with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spilled roughly one million gallons of mine waste into a Colorado creek on Wednesday, turning the nearby Animas River bright orange and prompting criticism from environmental groups over the government's lackluster response to the accident.
EPA officials on Thursday confirmed that the leak was caused by its own employees, who had been using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the Gold King Mine, an abandoned site north of Silverton.
Wastewater from Colorado mine reaches New Mexico
Mustard-colored wastewater laced with heavy metals continues to drain into a river from an abandoned mine in southwestern Colorado at a rate of about 550 gallons per minute, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which caused the spill.
The rate of discharge Saturday was down from about 740 gallons per minute on Friday. But three days after the massive spill, the agency said it still didn't know what the possible environmental and health impacts are.
New Zealand About to Say Adios to Coal
In a move celebrated as good news for the climate, New Zealand is on track to end coal-fired power.
Genesis Energy announced Thursday that it will shut down its last two coal-burning electricity generators, which operate at the Huntly Power Station, by December 2018.
How changing land use pattern in the Caribbean is impacting storm risks
Turning natural landscapes in the Caribbean into urban areas or farmland may increase the risk of people dying from floods and storms, scientists suggest.
In a study published by Scientific Reports last month (8 July), researchers from Anguilla’s health ministry and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium investigate which factors make the region more prone to deaths related to these disasters. Out of 20 variables, they found that using a greater proportion of land for agriculture and having a higher percentage of people living in urban areas were consistently linked with deadlier floods and storms.
“As natural landscapes are transformed into agricultural land, the protective effect that they offer to human populations might be seriously reduced.”
In 'Great Day for People Power,' Welsh Town Council Rejects Open-Pit Coal Mine
City councilors of a small Welsh town on Wednesday unanimously rejected a company's bid to build a new open-pit coal mine, defying the developer's threats to sue them and attracting jubilant praise from residents and environmental organizations.
"This is a great day for democracy and people power," Friends of the Earth Cymru (Wales) director Gareth Clubb declared Wednesday.
The decision by representatives on the planning committee of Caerphilly county borough came in response to a sustained campaign from local residents who oppose Miller Argent's proposal for the Nant Llesg mine in the Rhymney valley, aimed at extracting six million tons of coal on 478 hectares of land.
This South Korean neighborhood banned cars for a month — and people loved it
As part of the EcoMobility Festival, Haenggung-dong — a neighborhood in the city of Suwon, which has 1.2 million residents — permitted businesses to run occasional shuttles to get deliveries, and allowed traffic on one main road for part of the month, but that was it. No other cars, and no street parking.
These unusual restrictions might seem pretty out there, but in a sense, they're a throwback. We take it for granted that streets are for cars, but even in the US, streets — which take up 20 to 40 percent of the total land area in most cities — were once universally used as a mixed public space for pedestrians, pushcart vendors, horse-drawn vehicles, streetcars, and children.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Bernie Sanders Releases Racial Justice Issues Page on Campaign Website
This Week in The WAR ON WOMEN - August 8
Hellraisers Journal: Gurley Flynn: Defense Committee Refuses to Accept Joe Hill's Noble Sacrifice.
A Little Night Music
Lou Donaldson - Snake Bone
Lou Donaldson - The Natural Soul
Lou Donaldson - Blues Walk
Lou Donaldson - Dog Walk
Lou Donaldson - Gravy Train
Lou Donaldson - Alligator Boogaloo
Lou Donaldson - Watusi Jump
Lou Donalson - Turtle Walk
Lou Donaldson - Hamp's Hump
Lou Donaldson - Its Your Thing
Lou Donaldson - Nice N' Greasy
Lou Donaldson - Musty Rusty
Lou Donaldson - Cool Blues
Lou Donalson - Peepin'
Lou Donaldson - Midnight Creeper
Lou Donaldson - Spaceman Twist
Lou Donaldson Quartet feat Lonnie Smith