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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Louisiana swamp bluesman Slim Harpo. Enjoy!
Slim Harpo - Baby, Scratch My Back
“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
News and Opinion
TPP - A Threat to Peace?
When we look at conflicts, we look at why they happen to begin with – the root causes. A simple way is to look what our basic human needs are. We know air, water, food, clothing and shelter are needed for survival. Beyond those we can look at security, identity, well-being and self-determination. If those are not met, it is argued, then people engage in conflict. As currently practiced and implemented, free trade agreements contribute to structural violence – the violence where social structures and institutions prevent people from meeting their basic needs. The agreements protect the interests of elites over the vast majority of people and the planet; consequently, the potential for conflict is increased. Now it becomes a little clearer that the debated provisions of TPP can be linked directly to social conflict, unrest and instability: resource exploitation, labor rights and income inequality, agriculture, environmental issues and national, regional and local community democratic decision-making powers.
Trade and economies have the potential to lead to peace as well as violence and war. Peace through trade can become a realistic idea when connected to basic principles of a peacekeeping economy as outlined by political economist Lloyd Dumas. The principles are: (1) Establish balanced relationships – everyone gains benefit at least equal to their contribution and there is little incentive to disrupt the relationship; (2) Emphasize development – Most of the wars since WWII have been fought in developing countries. Poverty and missing opportunities are breeding grounds for violence. Development is an effective counter-terrorism strategy, as it weakens the support network for terrorist groups; (3) Minimize ecological stress – The competition for depleteable resources - most notably oil and increasingly water - generates dangerous conflicts between nations and groups within nations. It is proven that war is more likely to happen when there is oil. Using natural resources more efficiently, developing and using non-polluting technologies and procedures, and better not bigger economic growth can reduce ecological stress. ....
The current debate on the Trans Pacific Partnership suggests that the agreement will lead to immense social conflict, unrest and instability. Trade is not the issue. People and societies have always traded and will continue to do so. The trade relationships and mechanisms are at the core of whether trade drives violent conflict and war or contributes to peace.
Antiquities Scholar: Islamic State’s Destruction of Museum & Library is Cultural & Ethnic Cleansing
All-Out War in Libya Predicted without Further Peace Talks
Libya is teetering on the edge of all-out war, with a brutal stalemate and misery for civilians predicted unless a recent minor diplomatic breakthrough can be built upon.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), a non-governmental organisation working to prevent and resolve conflict, warned Thursday of a “dramatic turning point” in the “deteriorating internal conflict,” with a descent into social radicalism predicted.
“The most likely medium-term prospect is not one side’s triumph, but that rival local warlords and radical groups will proliferate, what remains of state institutions will collapse… and hardship for ordinary Libyans will increase exponentially,” the ICG said in a report, ‘Libya: Getting Gevena Right.’
“Radical groups… will find fertile ground, while regional involvement – evidenced by retaliatory Egyptian airstrikes – will increase.”
The ICG called on parties to the conflict to continue negotiations commenced in Geneva in January, which ended with no resolution but a commitment to extend talks.
French Officials Slam Parliamentarians Over Secret Meeting With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
French officials have publicly condemned an unofficial meeting in Syria between four French parliamentarians and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this week. ...
The French delegation was led by socialist parliament member Gérard Bapt, and also included opposition Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party senator Jean-Pierre Vial, UMP deputy Jacques Myard, and senator François Zocchetto, of the centrist Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) party. ...
Speaking from Damascus Tuesday, Bapt told French daily Le Monde that the group had "met Bashar al-Assad for over an hour this morning," and described the discussion as "very direct." None of the parliamentarians have revealed the details of their talks with Assad.
The controversial visit comes as French lawmakers are divided over France's diplomatic lockdown with Syria, particularly in light of the rising threat of the Islamic State (IS), which has compounded fears caused by the recent terror attacks in Europe.
Many believe France needs Syria's support to fight the two countries' common enemy, and that dialogue is the only way forward — a position not endorsed by French President François Hollande, who refuses to strike IS positions in Syria, for fear that such an operation would indirectly benefit the regime.
Susan Rice, Samantha Power to address AIPAC meeting
In a move that may ease — or exacerbate — spiraling tensions with Israel over a potential Iran nuclear deal, the White House has decided against snubbing America's leading pro-Israel lobby and will send President Barack Obama's national security adviser and U.N. ambassador to address its annual policy conference. ...
The administration's choice of Rice and Power to address the AIPAC conference, at which Netanyahu will also speak, is an apparent effort to try to tamp down an increasingly vitriolic back-and-forth between the U.S. and its top Mideast ally. But, it is not at all clear if it will have that effect.
Just two days ago, Rice sharply criticized Netanyahu's impending visit. In an interview on Tuesday, she said plans for Netanyahu's speech had "injected a degree of partisanship" into a U.S.-Israel relationship that should be above politics. "It's destructive to the fabric of the relationship," Rice told the Charlie Rose show. "It's always been bipartisan. We need to keep it that way."
Banksy in Gaza: Haunting images among ruins of war
West's offer to rebuild Ukraine faces reality check
Western powers are preparing what they say may be their most potent weapon against Moscow's interference in Ukraine - a multi billion dollar aid package to rebuild a near-bankrupt state and realize the European dream cherished by many Ukrainians.
There is just one problem: foreign governments and international financing institutions are not willing to pour money into a dysfunctional state. Only this week the businessman brought in by the new authorities to clean up the tax service was himself suspended pending a corruption inquiry. ...
"There's strong resistance because many people in various ways benefited from the old, inefficient and largely corrupt system," said Kalman Mizsei, the head of the EU's advisory mission to Ukraine.
Ukraine is one of the world's most corrupt places, ranking as 142 out of 175 in Transparency International's corruption perception index. By some estimates, the shadow economy accounts for up to 60 percent of economic output. ...
"The public administration needed to run a state is simply not there," said one Western donor consultant working in Kiev, who described mid-level bureaucrats responsible for implementing projects as "ineffective, demotivated and underpaid".
Ukrainian military begins pulling back heavy weaponry from eastern front
Kiev’s forces have begun pulling back heavy weapons from the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, marking a step forward for the troubled peace plan agreed in Minsk this month.
Army command said on Thursday that it would withdraw 100mm cannons from the current demarcation line over the next 24 hours, barring attacks by Russia-backed rebels. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the military, later said a second phase of the withdrawal would be pull back heavier weapons, including the 120mm mortars that have been a feature of the conflict.
The withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides to create a buffer zone of up to 140km (87 miles) was the second point of the 12-point agreement brokered by the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia in Minsk. ...
The Guardian did not see any evidence of a withdrawal of heavy weapons on the Ukrainian front lines near Mariupol on Thursday, although locals said they had seen artillery being moved near a military checkpoint on the eastern edge of the city. Dmytro Chaly, military spokesman for the Mariupol area, later said units near the city had already begun pulling back 100mm MT-12 anti-tank cannons to positions not less than 25km from the front line.
DNI Clapper backs arming Ukraine forces against Russia
The top U.S. intelligence official said Thursday that he supports arming Ukrainian forces against Russian-backed separatists, as the Obama administration continues deliberations about whether to deepen involvement in a conflict pitting the West against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said providing weapons to Ukraine would likely trigger a “negative reaction” from the Russian government, which Western officials are hoping will ensure that separatists stick to a European-brokered cease-fire that took effect this month.
“It could potentially further remove the very thin fig leaf of their position that they have not been involved in Ukraine,” Clapper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding that Russia could respond by sending more sophisticated weapons to separatist areas. ...
Nevertheless, pressed by senators to reveal his position on proposals to provide “lethal assistance” to Ukrainian forces, Clapper said he would support it. “From an intelligence community perspective, that is a policy issue,” Clapper said. “I would favor it, but that is a personal perspective, and it does not represent an official company policy of the intelligence community.”
In Midst of War, Ukraine Becomes Gateway for Jihad
In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned, but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought in two wars against Russia.
Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Rizvan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany.
You can also do business in Ukraine that’s not quite legal. You can earn easy money for the brothers fighting in the Caucasus, Syria and Afghanistan. You can “legally” acquire unregistered weapons to fight the Russian-backed separatists, and then export them by bribing corrupt Ukrainian customs officers.
“Our goal here is to get weapons, which will be sent to the Caucasus,” Rizvan, the brother who meets me first in Kiev, admits without hesitation.
Austria Responds to Radical Islam with Law Limiting Foreign Influence
The Austrian government on Wednesday approved revising a century-old law on Islam in an attempt to modernize its provisions and diminish foreign influence — though some Muslim groups have condemned elements of the redrafting as distrustful, unfair, and unconstitutional.
The legislation, or "Islamgesetz," regulates the status of the 560,000 Muslims living in Austria, affirming certain rights while imposing new prohibitions.
It allows Muslims to miss work on Islamic holidays, establishes a university program for imams, and provides for access to Islamic clerics and halal food in prisons, hospitals, retirement homes, and the military. It also outlaws the foreign funding of mosques and Islamic organizations, requires imams to speak German, and certifies that groups representing Austrian Muslims must use a standardized German edition of the Qur'an.
Islam has been an official religion in Austria since 1912, when the original law granting Muslims the same rights enjoyed by the country's other religious communities was passed. ...
Austria's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz says that the law seeks to codify what he describes as an "Islam of European character."
Judge Tosses Out Case Against Argentina's President
A federal judge in Argentina on Thursday dismissed a case accusing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of a plot to shield Iranian suspects in the investigation of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing.
"There is not a single element of proof, not even an indication, that points to the current head of state [...] for the serious crime of a cover-up, which would cause her to not only be accused, but also require an inquest," judge Daniel Rafecas said in a 63-page dismissal.
The judge's decision refuted the claims made by special prosecutor Alberto Nisman in the days before he was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment under suspicious circumstances.
Nisman said he had wiretap evidence to prove that Kirchner and her foreign minister Hector Timerman had colluded with Iranian counterparts to shield five Iranian citizens believed to be responsible for the 1994 attack that left 85 people and hundreds injured.
Judge Rafecas described the claims against Kirchner, Timerman, and other officials as baseless.
Nisman had placed the weight of his claims against the president on a secret "pact" he said came in the form of a request to the international police agency Interpol to bring down the so-called red notices, or international arrest warrants, against the Iranian suspects.
Nisman's claim has been disproven by former Interpol chief Ronald Noble, who has said there was never any consideration or a request to remove the red notices against the Iranians.
Germany OKs Greece bailout extension
Greek bailout deal gets Bundestag green light
The German parliament has backed the extension of the Greek bailout by four months with an overwhelming majority – the biggest yet of any Bundestag vote on measures to fight the European debt crisis.
But in a sign of growing scepticism over Greece’s financial aid package within Germany, 29 MPs from Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc rebelled and voted against the plan. A total of 542 MPs voted in favour, with just 32 MPs voting against and 13 abstaining.
The finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, admitted at the start of the session: “This is not an easy decision for any parliament member.” He also told MPs that Greece is not getting more money.
“We’re not talking about new billions for Greece, we’re not talking about any changes to this programme – rather it’s about providing or granting extra time to successfully end this programme.”
The extension will give Greece breathing space to hammer out a new reform programme with the much-loathed troika – the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. The bailout would otherwise expire on Saturday.
Keiser Report: Can Bitcoin save Greece?
Ecuador launches new digital currency – but most residents know little about it
The new system, which is officially set to launch on Thursday, will work much like mobile phone bank payments in other countries: users will be able to exchange hard cash for digital money which is stored in an electronic wallet on their phones.
As with other mobile payment programmes, text messages will allow users to make payments to other accounts, but what makes this plan different is that this is the first time a national government will have full control; everything from the creation of new units to securing the system against attack will be managed by the Central Bank of Ecuador.
“This is better than private options because our priority will be the users and not profit”, David Duque, Digital Money Analyst at the Central Bank of Ecuador told The Guardian. “Forty percent of Ecuador’s population does not have a bank account and we want to make it easier for the ‘unbanked’”.
So far, however, Duque’s enthusiasm has not been matched by ordinary Ecuadorians: customers have been able to create a digital account since December, but so far, said Duque, only 8,000 people have done so – in a nation of 15 million. “We have not yet launched a big promotional campaign”, he said. ...
Later in the year the government plans to begin accepting the currency for taxes and other bills. Taxi drivers and municipal buses also plan to accept the digital dollar in the coming months. “We expect 500,000 active users by the end of the year”, said Duque.
The bill which gave the Central Bank the authority to create digital dollars was passed last July, but most residents know very little about the new system. With scarce information to go on, opinion is strongly divided along party lines.
Chicago’s “Black Site” Detainees Speak Out
On Tuesday, The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported on the “equivalent of a CIA black site” operated by police in Chicago. When computer program analyst Kory Wright opened the story, he told me, “I immediately recognized the building” — because, the Chicago resident says, he was zip-tied to a bench there for hours in an intentionally overheated room without access to water or a bathroom, eventually giving false statements to try and end his ordeal.
A friend of Wright’s swept up in the same police raid described his own brutal treatment at the facility, known as Homan Square, including attacks to his face and genitals. The experiences of the two men line up with the way defense attorneys described the “black site” warehouse to Ackerman: as a place where detainees were held off the books, without access to lawyers, while being beaten or shackled for long periods of time. ...
The descriptions that Wright and Hutcherson provided of their experiences at Homan are eerily similar to how Tracy Siska, executive director of the Chicago Justice Project, described such torture in The Atlantic:
Isolation, deprivation of food, other outside contact. It’s meant to be a lot of touchless torture. So they’re not touching you, which in the human-rights field is more powerful and scary because it doesn’t leave marks but leaves huge internal wounds.
Siska has known about the goings-on at Homan “since about the mid- to late-2000s.” Siska also said that most of those detained at Homan are poor, black and brown people suspected of street crimes. When I asked why reporters haven’t covered the abuses allegedly occurring there, Siska replied with a slight chuckle, “That’s the million dollar question. The problem is a lot of reporters agree with the police perspective.”
17 Shots: Police Killing of Unarmed Mexican Farmworker in Washington State Sparks Protest
Pasco autopsy contradicts police account that victim was not shot in back
Independent autopsy of Antonio Zambrano-Montes finds Mexican national was shot twice in the back from behind, contradicting police statement
An independent autopsy of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a Mexican national who was shot dead by police in Pasco, Washington, has contended he was shot twice from behind, in direct contradiction of statements by police investigating the shooting who say the unarmed man was not shot in the back.
Video of the incident shows Zambrano-Montes running away from police just before he is killed in a volley of bullets. He appears to momentarily raise his arms and then turns to the officers chasing him before they open fire.
An independent autopsy commissioned by members of Zambrano-Montes’s family, with extracts publicly released by the family’s lawyers, contends he was shot once in the buttocks and once in the back of his upper right arm.
The autopsy also suggests Zambrano-Montes had as many as eight entry wounds rather than the “five to six” quoted by police, saying he was shot from the front six times: three times in the chest, once in the chin, once in the scrotum and once in the left arm. ...
Calls for a federal investigation have been growing, with local community members and advocacy groups calling for the Department of Justice to intervene. The Mexican foreign ministry has also condemned the incident as a “disproportionate” use of force.
Three years after Trayvon Martin, a new civil rights movement grows in strength
On Tuesday, just two days before the anniversary of Martin’s death, the US Justice Department announced there was “insufficient evidence” to charge George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch captain who shot Trayvon, in a federal civil rights investigation. ...
The Justice Department decision – based on the high threshold for federal charges – has not just dealt a blow to Martin’s family, who have maintained their fight for justice for going on 1,100 days. So have the families of many other young people. But coupled with the lack of progress on other reforms both locally and nationally, the end of the federal investigation into Martin’s death has raised an occasion for questions about whether the ongoing movement will be able to achieve its goals, and if it does, what the next steps might be.
For Phillip Agnew, the 29-year-old executive director of the Dream Defenders, who is resolute that this week’s Justice Department decision will not signal an end of organising around Martin’s case, the legislative setbacks are emblematic of a wider political gulf.
“Now we will decide what justice looks like,” he says, “It will no longer be up to prosecutors, district attorneys, the DoJ, institutions and people that specialize in [political] theatre nor have any regard for love and justice to decide what ‘Justice for Trayvon’ means.
“The center of the matter now, is that we have lost faith in these institutions that readily serve false hopes and promises.” ...
Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace and a member of the Don’t Shoot Coalition, remains optimistic about institutional and legislative change. He cited the long history of the civil rights movement as evidence that such cultural shifts take time.
“We like to romanticize the civil rights movement, but it took over a decade to really manifest itself to where the kind of changes we needed to see happen actually happened,” McPhearson said. “You’re not going to see a movement succeed in seven months or a year.”
Economists Throw Weight Behind Universal Health Care in Vermont
It is not only possible, but financially and economically advantageous to implement a publicly financed healthcare system in Vermont, according to an open letter signed by more than 100 economists and delivered Thursday to lawmakers at the Vermont State House.
"As economists, we understand that universal, publicly financed health care is not only economically feasible but highly preferable to a fragmented market-based insurance system," reads the letter, whose signatories include Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; Richard Wolff of New School University; and Julie Nelson of the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
It continues: "Health care is not a service that follows standard market rules; it should be provided as a public good. Evidence from around the world demonstrates that publicly financed health care systems result in improved health outcomes, lower costs and greater equity."
In December, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin abruptly abandoned his much-lauded plan to create a single-payer healthcare system in the state, saying moving forward with the proposal would be too costly.
"A Historic Decision": Tim Wu, Father of Net Neutrality, Praises FCC Vote to Preserve Open Internet
Net Neutrality Is Here — Thanks To an Unprecedented Guerrilla Activism Campaign
Malkia Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice, stresses that the strength of the net neutrality movement relied on the diversity of its coalition. She says Color of Change, National Hispanic Media Coalition, immigrant rights’ groups, activists from Black Lives Matter and communities of color “took it to the streets, to the doorstep of the ISPs.” ...
Tim Karr, who has worked on net neutrality advocacy for over a decade, also emphasized the role of a large coalition, “from librarians to free speech advocates,” with a shared interest in Internet freedom. “It also took a host of different tactics,” he says. “Protests in Philadelphia, protests in San Francisco, people making videos on YouTube — not coordinating in some centralized fashion, but many groups using their own creative strength and reaching out to their own constituents around this goal of convincing the FCC to reclassify Internet access providers under Title II.” ...
Much ink has been spilled over the tactics around major policy debates of the Obama years. For many critics, the top-down approach favored by the administration has doomed many of the president’s own priorities.
Harvard professor Theda Skocpol pins the blame for the failure to pass major climate change legislation on “CEOs and Big Enviro honchos” who eschewed grassroots organizing in favor of backroom deals. She notes that the proponents of climate change legislation used an “insider-grand bargaining political style that, unbeknownst to its sponsors, was unlikely to succeed given fast-changing realities in US partisan politics and governing institutions.”
Following Obama’s first election win in 2008, the president retired his grassroots “Organizing for America” army of volunteers into a wing of the Democratic National Committee, and reportedly pressuredactivist groups not to publicly criticize his administration.
The past year of organizing around net neutrality defied this strategy.
What You Should Know About Walmart’s Raise
Remember when Walmart got panned for running a Thanksgiving food drive for its own employees—overlooking the irony of demonstrating noblesse oblige by asking customers to subsidize the workers the company itself impoverished? The retail giant took a more strategic approach last week when rolling out its latest do-gooder scheme: raising its base wage incrementally to $10 an hour. The move was widely praised even by labor groups—for lifting wages slightly closer to… well, what it should have been paying workers all along. ...
But even with the raise, Walmart would still seem to peg the value of its workers at less than a living wage. The lowest-paid employees rely on billions in public benefits each year, including masses of food stamps, to scrape by. According to one recent analysis based on federal estimates, “a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between… $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.” If a part-time associate is working 1,000 hours a year—roughly half its workers are part-timers—the extra dollar an hour still might not make her financially self-sufficient, much less lift her family out of poverty. ...
The modest wage hike still barely offsets the lag between associates’ earnings and shareholder gains in recent years. While wages have barely kept pace with inflation, during the “recovery” since 2007, Walmart has seen a 22 percent rise in profits per worker, according to The New York Times
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report from the New York Times: "Colorado Miners in Need, Destitute of Food, Clothing, and Fuel." Strike benefits have ended except for the most needy, according to District 15 President John McLennan.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Amid National Public Education Battle, Massive Turnout for LA Teachers Rally
An estimated 15,000 teachers and their supporters rallied in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, threatening to strike should union and school district representatives fail to reach an agreement to reduce class sizes, raise teacher pay, and eliminate the existing system for evaluating educators. ...
The massive rally was the latest action in an ongoing standoff between the 35,000-member teachers union and the country's second-largest school district. An official impasse was declared earlier this month, after seven months and 18 rounds of contract talks.
According to the LA Times, "Each side argues that the other is being unreasonable." The union is seeking a pay raise of 8.5 percent; the district has offered 5 percent.
In addition, the union wants smaller classes—UTLA says the district has 3,000 classrooms with over 45 students per teacher—and to add more counselors, nurses, and librarians on campuses as part of its campaign called 'Schools LA Students Deserve.' The union is also calling for elimination of the "illegally implemented" Teacher Growth and Development Cycle evaluation system.
Republican Presidential Contender Scott Walker Compares ISIS Fighters to Wisconsin Protesters
Scott Walker woos CPAC by boasting about crusade against Wisconsin unions
Wisconsin governor appears at conservative conference to tout a new war against unions after legislature pushes through polarising right-to-work law
Seeking to wow a crowd of conservative activists on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker decided to trumpet what first made him a Republican hero: his crusade against organized labor.
In what many saw as a boast that he could handle Islamic State, Walker talked of besting labor and said: “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”
With that red meat line at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Walker won raucous applause about the episode that thrust him on to the national stage – his success in pushing through legislation in 2011 to curb collective bargaining by Wisconsin’s public sector unions, notwithstanding huge protests by unions and their allies. Walker argued at the time that government employee unions needed to be weakened, saying their demands and costly benefits, like pensions, were squeezing Wisconsin taxpayers. ...
Several labor leaders voiced outrage at Walker’s assertion that his success in taking on 100,000 union protesters in 2011 meant that he could take on Isis, a radical Islamic group that controls part of Syria and Iraq and has boasted of numerous atrocities.
“It’s disgusting to hear Scott Walker compare the 100,000 hardworking men, women, senior citizens and children who came out to protest in Wisconsin to the terrorists of Isis,” said Jim Tucciarelli, president of a New York City local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“The protesters were members of the military, police officers, firefighters, and first responders. They were librarians, teachers and nurses. How desperate do you have to be as a politician to compare those folks to murderous terrorists?”
The Evening Greens
Climate Change Might Be Causing Huge Craters in Siberia
Reports of new methane-eruption craters in the Siberian permafrost have piqued the interest of scientists around the higher latitudes who see it as a new sign of a warming climate.
The first craters were identified in summer 2014 in the natural gas-rich Yamal Peninsula, which juts into the frigid Kara Sea more than 2,000 miles northeast of Moscow. They're suspected to have been caused by eruptions of methane from beneath the region's permafrost soil, which has been thawing during recent summers.
The English-language news outlet Siberian Times reported this week that scientists have identified numerous other sites, publishing photographs provided by a Russian scientist and local residents. ...
Most of studies of the region have been conducted by scientists working for the oil and gas industry. The Russian natural gas major Gazprom estimates that trillions of cubic feet of the fuel lie beneath the Yamal Peninsula and the nearby sea floor, and some of the craters are located near a major gas field — meaning a new eruption could pose a hazard to workers or infrastructure, Romanovsky said.
While scientists say the world as a whole has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, Arctic temperatures are up by more than double that figure. The region's permafrost holds a massive store of carbon frozen within it, largely from methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas in the short-term than carbon dioxide. Some scientists have raised concerns that thawing permafrost could release enough methane to speed up climate change.
Coal Ash Contaminated Drinking Water
NAFTA’s specter may haunt Keystone verdict
TransCanada could harness trade deal's Investor-State Dispute Settlement, and U.S. taxpayers could foot the bill.
President Barack Obama may decide to kill Keystone XL for good, but that could be no easy task — thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The 21-year-old free-trade pact allows foreign companies or governments to haul the U.S. in front of an international tribunal to face accusations of putting their investments at risk through regulations or other decisions. The CEO of Keystone developer TransCanada has raised the prospect as a potential last resort if Obama rejects the $8 billion project, although for now the company is focused on getting him to say yes. ...
Such a challenge would go before a tribunal of privately chosen arbiters who could award TransCanada damages paid by U.S. taxpayers, but it would not have the power to approve Keystone. ...
Meanwhile, U.S. environmentalists who are confident Obama has their backs are also aware that a trade-deal tribunal process they have never liked could complicate Keystone’s post-rejection politics. The same groups fighting Keystone are also working to stop a $250 million NAFTA challenge filed by a U.S. energy company, Lone Pine Resources, against a fracking moratorium in the Canadian province of Quebec.
“We are very strongly opposed to these provisions being in trade bills” in the first place, Natural Resources Defense Council international program director Jake Schmidt said in an interview. “A company could challenge any environmental law in the U.S. on the basis of lost profits and not have to go through the normal U.S. court system.”
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 Incredible Whiteness of Hillary Clinton
Hat tip Johnny the Conqueroo:
Naming Names: Your Real Government
Not a Pretty Girl
A Little Night Music
Slim Harpo - I'm a King Bee
Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips
Slim Harpo - Raining in my Heart
Slim Harpo - My Baby, She's Got It
Slim Harpo - I Got Love If You Want It
Slim Harpo - Boogie Chillun
Slim Harpo - You Can't Make It
Slim Harpo - TE-NI-NEE-NI-NU
Slim Harpo - Dynamite
Slim Harpo - Mohair Sam
Slim Harpo - The Music's Hot
Slim Harpo - Blues Hang-Over
Slim Harpo - The Hippy Song
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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