Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
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 British blues/blues rock band Savoy Brown. Savoy Brown's discography includes one of rock and roll's greatest albums of all time (IMHO), Street Corner Talking. Enjoy!
Savoy Brown - Tell Mama
Of all the animals the horse is the best friend of the Indian, for without it he could not go on long journeys. A horse is the Indian's most valuable piece of property. If an Indian wishes to gain something, he promises that if the horse will help him he will paint it with native dye, that all may see that help has come to him through the aid of his horse.
Brave Buffalo, Teton Sioux medicine man
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
NCTim
enhydra lutris
Current NSA Officials Admit Agency Is Drowning In TOO MUCH Info
The Problem Isn’t Too Little Spying … It’s Too Much
Former top NSA officials have repeatedly said that the NSA is collecting TOO MUCH information on Americans to be able to stop terror attacks.
The Intercept reports that current mid-level NSA officials confirm that the NSA is gathering TOO MUCH information… and it’s making it impossible to focus:
“We in the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices every single day,” the analyst wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a situation that you ultimately stymie any outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to endless possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.”
The document is one of about a dozen in which NSA intelligence experts express concerns usually heard from the agency’s critics: that the U.S. government’s “collect it all” strategy can undermine the effort to fight terrorism. The documents, provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, appear to contradict years of statements from senior officials who have claimed that pervasive surveillance of global communications helps the government identify terrorists before they strike or quickly find them after an attack.
Critics Blast 'Compromises' as Patriot Act Barrels Toward Sunset
'The USA Freedom Act alone does fundamentally very little in terms of significantly constraining the ability of the National Security Agency to perform bulk collection of data about anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise.'
With the sunset of key spy powers on the near horizon and lawmakers scrambling to save them, privacy and internet freedom groups are dialing up the pressure on Congress to end mass surveillance as we know it.
The Senate will return to Washington, D.C. for a rare session on Sunday, on the heels of a week-long Memorial Day recess. With sections of the Patriot Act barreling toward a 12am June 1 expiration, lawmakers are reportedly scrambling to come up with a last-minute deal to save the law after a series of Senate votes on Friday failed to resolve an impasse.
The debate over the National Security Agency's (NSA) spy powers has some senators pushing to kill the Patriot Act entirely and others advocating for "clean" re-authorization.
Still others—backed by the White House—in favor of the USA Freedom Act, so-called reform legislation that privacy advocates say doesn't go far enough. That bill would renew three expiring Patriot Act powers while ending the NSA's controversial bulk collection of U.S. phone records. Records would be held by phone companies instead.
Obama says 'handful of senators' blocking surveillance reforms
U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Friday that surveillance powers used to prevent attacks on Americans could lapse at midnight on Sunday unless "a handful of senators" stop standing in the way of reform legislation.
Obama said he had told Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other senators that he expects them to act swiftly on a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would renew certain powers and reform the bulk collection of telephone data.
"I don't want us to be in a situation in which for a certain period of time, those authorities go away and suddenly we're dark and heaven forbid we've got a problem," Obama told reporters in the Oval Office.
McConnell has called the Senate back to Washington for a rare Sunday session to deal with the expiration of three provisions of the Patriot Act, including Section 215, used to justify the National Security Agency's collection of billions of Americans' telephone call records.
German Court Turns Down Drone Lawsuit but Leaves Door Open to Others
Amid the grim accounts of civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes, the attack that killed Faisal bin Ali Jaber’s relatives has stood out.
On August 29, 2012, a drone flying above the Yemeni town of Khashamir launched four missiles at a group of five men standing near a vehicle on a remote mountainside. All of them perished. Three of the men were suspected al Qaeda militants, but the other two were Jaber’s relatives — his nephew Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber was a local police officer, and his brother-in-law Salim bin Ahmed Ali Jaber was a respected imam who days earlier had publicly denounced al Qaeda.
Their deaths triggered protests across Yemen. In the years since, Faisal has committed his life to finding answers — and justice — for his slain kin.
Earlier this week, the drone killings were the focal point of a historic lawsuit that was heard in a German courtroom. Though a panel of German judges dismissed the case on Wednesday, and the current security crisis in Yemen prevented Faisal from attending the proceedings, he and his attorneys consider their effort a victory, marking the first time Germany’s role in U.S. drone strikes has been acknowledged in court.
Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His “So-Called Khorasan Group Doesn’t Exist”
Submitted by: NCTim
In early September 2014, an Associated Press story quoted unnamed U.S. officials discussing an imminent threat from a previously unknown, Syria-based terror outfit called the “Khorasan Group.” U.S. officials told the AP that the jihadist group was stocked with al Qaeda veterans and was plotting imminent attacks against U.S.-bound airline flights. Officials also suggested that the level of danger posed by the group exceeded that of ISIS, the militant group which now controls much of Iraq and Syria.
Weeks later, after similarly breathless coverage of the so-called Khorasan Group from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, CBS News and others, American airstrikes against Syria commenced, including strikes that were said to have specifically targeted this shadowy new organization.
In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, something remarkable happened. American officials almost immediately began retracting their claims about the level of danger posed by the Khorasan Group. FBI Director James Comey, addressing previous assertions that the group posed an imminent threat to American interests, said, “I don’t know exactly what that word means … ‘imminent.’”
After the airstrikes had commenced, reports began to surface that no identifiable Syrian activists within the country had ever heard of such an organization. Days after the U.S. initiated military operations within Syria, it became increasingly unclear whether the “Khorasan Group” itself actually existed.
Patrolling the hood from (China) sea to shining sea
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
By Pepe Escobar
If only Mad Men in real life were like Don Draper – channeling his true inner self, after many a rocky season, to finally click on “I’m OK, you’re OK.”
Instead, we have a bunch of (Pentagon) madmen provoking every major geostrategic competitor all at once.
The Masters of War at the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration are now announcing they’re ready to dispatch military aircraft and ships within 18 kilometers of seven artificial islands China has built up in the Spratly Islands.
Beijing’s response, via the Global Times, couldn’t be other than There Will be War; “If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a U.S.-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea … The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”
How It All Began: The Belgrade Embassy Bombing
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
When I was in Beijing during the protests in 1989, a middle-aged man came up to me and asked, “Couldn’t America send some B-52s here and…” and he made a swooping motion with his hand.
Ten years later, on May 7, 1999, the American bombers did show up.
Instead of showering freedom ordnance on China’s dictators, however, they dropped five bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
As to why this happened, the United States has always declared it was an accident.
A lot of people in China believe otherwise and there is a good amount of evidence to support their view.
Premier: Serbia ready to reduce dependence on Russian gas
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
TIRANA, Albania (AP) — In a major policy shift, the Serbian prime minister said his country will accept U.S. calls to reduce dependency on Russian gas by adding an American-backed pipeline that would bring gas to Europe from Azerbaijan.
"Regarding energy safety, energy security, we are ready to diversify the sources of gas for Serbia, which is very important for our American friends as well," Aleksandar Vucic told The Associated Press in an interview.
The United States has been encouraging Balkan and other states to move forward with the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, which will take Azeri gas from the Caspian Sea to Italy, rather than setting its hopes on another project that would pipe Russian gas through Turkey.
The West has accused Russia of using gas as a tool to increase its political influence over countries like Serbia.
Macedonia: Europe’s Camel Doesn’t Want To Be A Domino
We’ve all heard it – “a camel is a horse designed by a committee”. It’s designed that way because everybody has their own agenda and their own use for the camel. It is hardly surprising; it comes as no surprise that Europe’s camel state has become the latest in the focus of the Western and CIA’s destabilisation agenda.
Recent mass protests are being held in Skopje, capital of Macedonia and these are buttressed with terrorist acts by US trained terrorists, and it just happened that the bloodletting occupied on the 9th of May. There is more involved here than protestors demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski over a series of issues, most notably a series of wire-tappings of political opponents. Gruevski denies these allegations and also makes the usual wild claims about shadowy foreign intelligence services being behind the protests, as if every Macedonian is really behind him.
The line “A stage, big screen and massive sound system are all in place.” raised my eyebrows
no prizes for guessing which wealthy financier is funding the opposition… Vicky’s involved, of course… as I read recently, “Macedonia is another key element in any potential future pro petro-dollar pipeline route, and destabilizing that country may well be the Neocons next agenda”
Russian aircraft head off US warship in Black Sea, news agency says
According to Russia’s state news agency a US destroyer was moving along the edge of territorial waters in yet another encounter with western militaries
Russian military aircraft were scrambled to head off a US warship that was acting “aggressively” in the Black Sea, the state news agency RIA reported on Saturday, citing an anonymous source in Russia’s armed forces in Crimea.
The source was quoted as saying that the US destroyer Ross was moving along the edge of Russia’s territorial waters and heading in their direction.
“The crew of the ship acted provocatively and aggressively, which concerned the operators of monitoring stations and ships of the Black Sea Fleet,” RIA quoted the source as saying.
“Su-24 attack aircraft demonstrated to the American crew readiness to harshly prevent a violation of the frontier and to defend the interests of the country.”
Nigeria's new president takes power, eyes US military support
Muhammadu Buhari is the first opposition candidate to unseat an incumbent in a presidential election. He has vowed to strike hard at Islamist militants in northern Nigeria.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
As Muhammadu Buhari stood at the podium in Abuja’s Eagle Square to be sworn in as Nigeria’s new president on Friday, a new chapter in the fight against Boko Haram was about to begin.
In today's audience sat the presidents of Chad, Benin, Cameroon, and Niger, with whom Mr. Buhari will begin working to continue the counter-insurgency strategy started, belatedly many believe, by his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan.
Also in the audience was US Secretary of State John Kerry, who reportedly met with Buhari Friday to discuss the Obama administration’s willingness to expand military cooperation. And the attendance of Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the head of the US military's Africa Command, sends a signal of changes ahead after relations frayed with Mr. Jonathan’s administration.
“There was a strain in our relationship, particularly with the army on military cooperation, and we have every indication that we’ll be able to start a new chapter,” a State Department official told The New York Times.
Sanders' appeals to voters of a certain age: his own
Submitted by: NCTim
EPPING, N.H. >> Fit and quick-witted at age 73, Sen. Bernie Sanders was still going strong after speaking for an hour in 90-degree heat Wednesday when he fielded a question from a man who could have been an older brother.
"Would you raise the top marginal tax rate to over 90 percent, as it was in the 1950s, when the middle class and the economy were doing so well?" asked Milt Lauenstein, 89, who had the same white hair and hunched posture as Sanders.
"You mean under the communist Dwight D. Eisenhower?" Sanders quipped about the former president, who, of course, was a Republican, but one who did not oppose high taxes as fiercely as party leaders do now.
It is not every day in 2015 that an Ike joke gets a laugh, but Sanders landed the line perfectly - at least for the roughly 50 older people in the crowd of 200 who came out to meet the candidate in a backyard here. It was the latest Sanders event to draw a sizable number of registered voters who share not only Sanders's cultural reference points but also his age group.
The Press and Bernie Sanders
As the Vermont liberal spreads his message, the media seems unsure of how to cover him.
On May 26, Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted his first major campaign rally since announcing his presidential candidacy last month. Staged on the banks of Lake Champlain in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, the Sanders rally reportedly drew more than five thousand people, making it one of the largest campaign events of 2015, hosted by either a Democrat or a Republican.
But the sprawling rally didn't cause much of a media stir. Rather than cover it as a major news event, the Washington Post ignored the rally in its print edition the next day, as did the New York Times, according to a search of the Nexis database. The network news programs that night covered the event in just a few sentences.
At a time when it seems any movement on the Republican side of the candidate field produces instant and extensive press coverage, more and more observersare suggesting there's something out of whack with Sanders' press treatment.
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And they're right.
O'Malley announces 2016 run with jab at Clinton and Bush 'royal families'
- Former Maryland governor confirms candidacy at Baltimore event
- Progressive vision and criticism of Wall Street feature heavily in speech
- Martin O’Malley’s presidential announcement was as much a civic pride rally as a campaign event.
While the event had all the spectacle of presidential politics – with a booming Bruce Springsteen soundtrack and the former Maryland governor announcing his candidacy on a grassy hill in front of the Baltimore skyline – it also felt like a gathering of friends, celebrating both O’Malley and his home state of Maryland.
O’Malley, who served as Maryland’s governor from 2007 to 2015, anchored his presidential bid in his progressive vision for the country as well as his experience as Baltimore’s mayor. In the long run-up to his announcement on Saturday, he pointedly took stances to the left of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton on issues like gay marriage, immigration reform and trade, and provided a generational contrast with signs emblazoned with the slogan “New Leadership”.
In his speech, which was introduced by speakers including a gay undocumented immigrant and a blind, African American community activist, O’Malley repeatedly emphasized his progressive credentials, talking about his support for gay marriage and the Dream Act while recognizing “transgender Americans”.
Protests underscore Baltimore baggage as O’Malley enters race for Democratic nomination
BALTIMORE — Martin O’Malley formally launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nominationSaturday in the sun-drenched heart of the city he once led. But Baltimore today confronts an image far different than the one O’Malley left behind when his term as mayor ended eight years ago.
The city has been rocked by killings and riots and has become a national symbol of urban turmoil and despair.
O’Malley, 52, Saturday confronted the controversy as he has since parts of West Baltimore erupted in protest last monthover the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died in police custody.
Critics charged his anti-crime policies alienated that constituency. O’Malley vigorously disagreed, and spent a good chunk of his address Saturday addressing the concerns.
America’s never-ending war on poor people: Why “The Briefcase” is just the latest assault
As a new study from the CDC and a new show from CBS expose, America's attacks on the impoverished are relentless
If you want to get a sense of what Mahatma Gandhi’s famous “poverty is the worst kind of violence” quotation means for the U.S. today, there are two stories from this past week you should read. One is from Jonathan Cohn, the Huffington Post’s ace health care reporter. The other is from Margaret Lyons, Vulture’s insightful television critic. Taken together, these two pieces offer a decent sketch of how America’s economy and its culture work together to relentlessly make poor people feel like shit.
Let’s start with Cohn’s piece, which takes a look at a new study from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The study is based on five years’ worth of results from an in-person survey run by the National Health Interview Survey and, as Cohn writes, it “demonstrates, in vivid terms, something that public health experts have known for a while.” Namely, that the closer you are to being poor, the higher the chances are that you’re suffering from what the public health field calls “serious psychological distress” — something of a catchall term for common forms of mental illness.
The difference isn’t small, either. Nearly 9 percent of people with incomes below the poverty line (around $20,000 for a three-person family) said they suffered from “serious psychological distress.” That means that between 2009 and 2013, the years during which the survey was conducted, nearly one out of 10 of these people — and there are more than 40 million of them — felt debilitating levels of anxiety and depression. In contrast, barely more than 1 percent of those whose incomes exceeded the poverty line by four times or more said they felt similar mental anguish.
If you’re someone who thinks depression and anxiety are just fancy words for the blues — and nothing that a good pep-talk and yank at the ol’ bootstraps can’t fix — you might not find this too upsetting. But before you dismiss this is as little more than airy talk from the usual bleeding hearts, you should keep two things in mind. One: your view of mental health is not only antiquated, but is increasingly the last refuge of folks in denial about their own needs. Two: there’s a growing body of research showing that poverty’s harms are just as severe cognitively as they are psychologically.
U.S. Households Under Pressure: Stagnant Incomes, Rising Basic Expenses
How do you support a consumer economy with stagnant incomes for the bottom 90%, rising basic expenses and crashing employment for males ages 25-54? Answer: you don’t.
Frequent contributor B.C. passed along a sobering set of charts that provide context for How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck. The basic story is well-known to the bottom 90%: most of the household income goes to taxes, housing, food and transportation, with healthcare and insurance, pensions and retirement contributions rounding out the big-ticket items. (Higher education is, as we all know, paid with student loans by all but the top-tier of families.)
Here’s the question this raises: is the sliver that’s left enough to support a $17 trillion consumer economy? The answer is obvious: no.
Stagnant household income has a number of systemic causes, including the generational decline of full-time employment (A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home) and the concentration of wage gains in the top 10%. These dynamics are not easily addressed, for the simple yet profound reason that the amount of human labor that generates a meaningful profit in a stagnant, over-indebted, financialized economy is declining.
Campaign officials like to spin reporters in private. That’s worth making public.
Submitted by: NCTim
It's not every day that I get attacked by a Pulitzer Prize winner over my journalistic standards. That's what Glenn Greenwald, famous for being NSA leaker Edward Snowden's conduit, did last night on Twitter. He was wrong.
First, my crime: Agreeing to let senior Clinton aides speak on the condition of anonymity and then attributing what they said about their view of the state of the race and other matters only to senior campaign officials.
Greenwald's first tweet was mocking.
We exchanged a few tweets back and forth, but 140 characters is too short for a full explanation and defense of using anonymous sources and "background" material in a story. Greenwald's argument rests on the premise that allowing people to speak without attribution is a sucker move that allows them to gain an advantage by saying things that aren't true without repercussions.
Legendary Journalist in Private: “It Is All Fraudulent, All of It, Everywhere”
Submitted by: NCTim
Politico recently ran a fantastic historical profile of journalist Theodore H. White by the writer Scott Porch. White invented the genre of modern presidential campaign books with The Making of the President, 1960 (and then 1964, 1968 and 1972).
The 1960 version, which won a Pulitzer Prize and sold four million copies, describes John F. Kennedy as a “forlorn and lonesome young man … lithe as an athlete … handsome and tired, with just a fleck of gray now in his glossy brown hair” who “baffled” the “old-line politicians of Tammany.” Then after Kennedy was assassinated, White helped Jackie Kennedy create the “Camelot” myth of his presidency.
In other words, White publicly took the stance that U.S. politicians and politics were just super. This is from the first pages of The Making of the President, 1960:
I owe two general acknowledgments:
First, to the politicians of America — men whom I have found over the long years the pleasantest, shrewdest and generally the most honorable of companions …
Second, I must thank my comrades of the press — whose reporting at every level of America politics purifies, protects and refreshes our system from year to year.
Legal Pot, Marriage Equality Making Americans More Socially Liberal
Submitted by: NCTim
According to a new Gallup poll, an increasing number of Americans are describing themselves as socially liberal, thanks in large part to two things, according to The Washington Post: the partial legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage.
The poll found that Americans are generally turning to the left on social issues, particularly when it comes to legal marijuana (which just over half of Americans now support) and marriage equality (which a record 60 percent of Americans now support). The Post noted that "[t]here are certainly other factors that could be at play, up to and including foreign policy. But the most obvious answers -- and ones that makes a lot of sense because they have moved so quickly -- are gay marriage and marijuana."
What's more, for the first time since Gallup began polling the topic, the number of Americans who describe themselves as socially liberal and socially conservative is even, at 31 percent. That marks the highest percentage of social liberals -- as well as the lowest percentage of social conservatives -- that Gallup has found yet; in 1999, socially conservative Americans outnumbered socially liberal ones 2-to-1.
Though Americans might increasingly support pot shops and same-sex weddings, the left-leaning shift on social issues has not been accompanied by increased support for liberal economics. A steep 39 percent of those polled described their views on economic policy as conservative, compared to only 19 percent who described their economic views as liberal. So rather than making a clear turn to the left, some Americans appear to be moving more toward libertarianism.
Fury after primary pupils are asked to complete radicalisation-seeking surveys
Parents complain after London council circulates questionnaire among year 6 pupils in schools with large Muslim intakes
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Parents of children as young as nine have reacted angrily after schools in an east London borough asked pupils to complete surveys designed to provide clues to possible radicalisation. Waltham Forest council has been piloting the scheme in five primary schools with large Muslim intakes. The questionnaire, circulated among year 6 pupils, asks how much they trust the police and people from another race or religion.
They are also asked whether they agree that it is acceptable to marry someone from outside their race or religion and whether women are just as good as men at work. Another question asks if the pupils believe their religion is the only correct one. About 22% of the population in Waltham Forest, one of the most deprived local authorities in England, are Muslim.
The programme has been funded with a €500,000 (£360,000) grant from an EU fund – the Radicalisation Leading to Terrorism Programme – designed to “identify the initial seeds of radicalisation with children of primary school age”.
But some parents have complained they were not consulted about the surveys. One parent of an 11-year-old boy at Buxton primary school in Leytonstone, who was asked to complete the questionnaire, said: “This is why we need to get involved with this, otherwise ‘monitoring’ like this goes unchecked and without vetting. No letter was sent home explaining this and I found out just talking to my son.”
The FIFA corruption sideshow: Takedown of 1 percent crooks or strategic move against Putin?
Loretta Lynch’s big bust of soccer's sleazy cabal has sports fans cheering, but maybe Russia was the real target
t was going to take a powerful nation where soccer was not a dominant cultural force to attack the alleged large-scale institutional corruption of FIFA, the governing body of the world’s most popular sport. There’s only one country on the planet that matches that description, a country that also perceives its laws as extending to all corners of the globe. Considered in that light, this week’s federal indictments against 14 major figures in world soccer — many of whom were arrested in a late-night raid at a Zurich luxury hotel, a scene worthy of a “Mission: Impossible” movie — should not come as a complete surprise.
Still, this was a huge and dramatic gesture from the Obama administration, which has been inordinately cautious in going after many other varieties of international crime and corruption. That’s an important point, if we’re trying to unpack what just happened and how to understand it. We need to ask the crucial legal question of cui bono, “Who benefits from this?” and maybe the more important question of who gets hurt by it. But let’s bracket that for the moment and move on. Brand new Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who has apparently been cooking the FIFA case for several years in her previous gig as the lead federal prosecutor in New York, has evidently decided to use her brief tenure at the tail end of a lame-duck presidency to write her name in the history books.
Should Americans feel proud about our nation’s startling intervention in the global sports landscape? Well, hell, why not? Based on what we know so far, these FIFA officials and their partners in crime were grotesque examples of the global 1 percent in action. In the most notorious single example, former American soccer official Chuck Blazer, who allegedly misappropriated at least $15 million from the North American and Central American soccer federation, supposedly kept a $6,000-a-month apartment in New York’s Trump Tower for his cats. (His own apartment was $18,000 a month.)
But maybe we ought to attach an asterisk to that “why not,” and be cautious about proclaiming our superior virtue. Maybe we ought to wonder why the denizens of the executive suites at Citibank and Chase and Barclays are not facing federal indictment and languishing in the joint, alongside soccer officials from second- or third-tier countries accused of taking piss-ant bribes. The rental price of Chuck Blazer’s two apartments sounds extreme to you and me, but I doubt that buys you a week in Jamie Dimon’s Park Avenue condo — or pays the servants for a week at his sprawling suburban mansion in Westchester.
Leaked Treaty You've Never Heard of Makes Secret Rules for the Internet
A February 2015 draft of the secret Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) was leaked again last week, revealing a more extensive and more recent text than that of portions from an April 2014 leakthat we covered last year. Together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), TISA completes a trifecta of trade agreements that the administration could sign under Fast Track without full congressional oversight.
Although it is the least well-known of those agreements, it is the broadest in terms of membership. As far as we know, it presently includes twenty countries plus Europe (but notably excluding the major emerging world economies of the BRICS bloc), who, with disdainful levity, have adopted the mantle "the Really Good Friends of Services." Like its sister agreements, TISA will enact global rules that impact the Internet, bypassing the transparency and accountability of national parliaments. The only difference is that its focus is on services, not goods.
In our previousanalysis, we focused our attention on two points from the leaked text. The first was a provision that would prohibit democratically-elected parliaments from enacting limits on the "free flow of information" to protect the privacy of their citizens - limits that, we argued, should be debated publicly, not behind closed doors. The second was text on net neutrality, that would lock in a particular set of global rules on net neutrality, including an open-ended exception for "reasonable network management" that could become a loophole for exploitation. Those provisions remain in the new leaked draft.
But the latest leak has revealed more. The agreement would also prohibit countries from enacting free and open source software mandates. Although "software used for critical infrastructure" is already carved out from this prohibition (and so is software that is not "mass market software", whatever that means), there are other circumstances in which a country might legitimately require suppliers to disclose their source code.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature the conclusion of the Appeal to Reason's coverage of the pummeling of JDR Jr by Frank P Walsh, chairman of the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Tune in at 2pm!
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From Fracking to Coal Waste, NAACP Confronts Environmental Racism in North Carolina
The organization that brought the Moral Monday movement announces investigation into environmental civil rights violations
Submitted by: NCTim
The organization that spurred the south's "Moral Mondays" movement announced this week it is launching a civil rights investigation into the disproportionate public health hazard that fracking and coal ash pollution pose to poor communities and people of color in one North Carolina county.
The NAACP probe is specifically aimed at uncovering environmental racism in Stokes County but has broad implications for a state whose coal waste contamination and just-greenlighted fracking tests have garnered nation-wide attention—and concern.
"We wish we didn’t have to but we are committed to doing so, to investigate and really bring justice around this issue of coal ash and about fracking, and about the injustices of these industries that operate without any regard for the human rights of the people who are impacted by this pollution," declared Baltimore-based Jacqui Patterson, director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, at a Wednesday news conference at the Rising Star Baptist Church in Walnut Cove, North Carolina.
The NAACP will be working with the organization's North Carolina and Stokes County chapters to pursue the investigation.
Most wells near Duke Energy ash ponds contaminated
Submitted by: NCTim
Most of the private wells tested near Duke Energy’s North Carolina coal ash ponds show contaminants above state groundwater standards, state regulators said Tuesday.
Of 117 test results mailed to power plant neighbors in recent days, 87 exceeded groundwater standards, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said.
In nearly all cases, DENR said, the well water would still meet federal standards for municipal water supplies. But health warnings included with many of the results advised that the water not be used for drinking or cooking.
The result: More uncertainty about whether the contaminants came from coal ash or occurred naturally. And confusion, environmental advocates say, about how to interpret the test results.
Recordings reveal how informant ring operated in Orange County jails
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
SANTA ANA, Calif. – With the Orange County District Attorney’s Office being accused of using jailhouse informants to gain convictions, America Tonight has obtained audio of once-secret conversations between law enforcement and a jailhouse informant that threatens to unravel dozens of criminal cases, including some murder convictions.
The tapes were recorded as part of a jailhouse informant operation, which involved at least six inmates and may have lasted 30 years.
The Orange County District Attorney’s systematic use of informants first came to light in 2013. At that time, public defender Scott Sanders was preparing for the penalty phase of a case involving his client Scott Dekraai, a convicted mass murderer. Sanders found out that an inmate at the same jailhouse, Fernando Perez, had been used to gather information on both Dekraai and another client. Suspecting it wasn’t a coincidence Sanders started an investigation.
In January 2014, Sanders delivered the results of his investigation in the form of a 500-page court motion. The motion detailed law enforcement’s use of informants to gather confessions from dozens of inmates and accused deputies of hiding evidence and then lying about it.
Shocking ads ignite debate about abortion ban in Chile
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The video shows a woman climbing a stairwell, her belly visibly pregnant, as she offers suggestions: Make sure there are no security cameras. Be careful not to look down or you might regret it.
She tumbles backward as the screen goes black. "When you reach the bottom everything will be OK," she says.
The video is one of a series of mock abortion tutorials, part of a public campaign urging Chile to allow women to end pregnancies in cases of rape or medical complications. It would be a radical change for Chile, one of only four countries that prohibit all abortion, according to the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, though a handful of others are so restrictive that they have de facto bans.
The videos are deliberately dark and disturbing, appearing to show pregnant women throwing themselves into traffic or thrusting their stomachs onto fire hydrants. Released last month, the videos organized by Miles, a non-governmental group, aim to rally support for President Michelle Bachelet's attempt to ease the abortion ban.
In Face of Rising Climate Movement, Tar Sands on Life Support: Report
Evidence of struggling tar sands sector suggests opportunity to slow the rate of growth 'significantly'
With dozens of carbon-intensive tar sands projects delayed or on hold, a new report released Friday confidently declares: "The case for the tar sands is crumbling."
A new analysis by Oil Change International identifies 39 projects—representing more than 1.61 million barrels per day (bpd) of potential tar sands oil production capacity—that companies are currently unable or unwilling to invest in.
That's good news for the climate and the environment, as well as for frontline communities that bear the brunt of the toxic tar sands production.
And it's bad news for the tar sands sector, which now finds itself "struggling to justify many new projects," says Hannah McKinnon, senior campaigner on private finance at Oil Change International.
Solar Impulse plane begins Pacific crossing
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg has begun his bid to cross the Pacific, from China to Hawaii, in the zero-fuel Solar Impulse aeroplane.
The experimental aircraft, which has a wingspan bigger than a jumbo but weighs little more than a large car, left Nanjing at about 02:40 (18:40 GMT).
It is likely to take Mr Borschberg five to six days of continuous flight to reach his central Pacific destination.
He will try to stay awake for much of that time, taking only short catnaps.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
How shade can help trout populations
As snowpack levels decline with the warming climate, many streams will experience less water flow, especially during summer months, potentially exposing more fish to predation by birds and other animals.
A new study has found that providing adequate shade and cover in small streams may reduce predation on trout by as much as 12 percent, from just one species of bird – the kingfisher. The findings, based on a study at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center in the Alsea River basin, are being published in the journal Ecology of Freshwater Fish.
Lead author Brooke Penaluna, who is a research fish biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, said the findings may give fisheries managers a new tool to help mitigate the effects of climate change and better preserve fish populations during low-water regimes.
“We’re able to tell fisheries managers that they may be able to increase their trout population by 12 percent – and it may be higher,” said Penaluna, who led the research as a doctoral student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. “It is possible that adding shade and cover to small streams may help protect trout against other predators as well.”
Montreal Protocol Leads to Better Ozone
We are already reaping the rewards of the Montreal Protocol, with the ozone layer in much better shape than it would have been without the UN treaty, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
Study lead author Professor Martyn Chipperfield, from the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Leeds, said: “Our research confirms the importance of the Montreal Protocol and shows that we have already had real benefits. We knew that it would save us from large ozone loss 'in the future', but in fact we are already past the point when things would have become noticeably worse.”
Although the Montreal Protocol came into force in 1987 and restricted the use of ozone-depleting substances, atmospheric concentrations of these harmful substances continued to rise as they can survive in the atmosphere for many years. Concentrations peaked in 1993 and have subsequently declined.
In the new study, the researchers used a state-of-the-art 3D computer model of atmospheric chemistry to investigate what would have happened to the ozone layer if the Montreal Protocol had not been implemented.
Tiny parasite may contribute to declines in honey bee colonies by infecting larvae
Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that a tiny single-celled parasite may have a greater-than expected impact on honey bee colonies, which have been undergoing mysterious declines worldwide for the past decade.
In this week's issue of the journal PLOS ONE, the scientists report that a microsporidian called Nosema ceranae, which has been known to infect adult Asiatic and European honey bees, can also infect honeybee larvae. They also discovered that honey bee larvae infected with the microsporidian have reduced lifespans as adults.
Since 2006, beekeepers in North America and Europe have lost about one-third of their managed bee colonies each year due to "colony collapse disorder." While the exact cause is unknown, scientists have speculated that pesticides, pathogens, mites and certain beekeeping practices have all contributed to this decline. Nosema ceranae, a kind of fungal pathogen spread by spores, is also implicated in colony collapse because it reduces colony health and is widespread.
"Previous research suggested that Nosema ceranae could not infect honey bee larvae," said James Nieh, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who headed the research effort with graduate student Daren Eiri, the first author of the study. "But this was largely based upon indirect evidence: spore counts in newly emerged adult bees, which typically have low spore counts."
Global climate on verge of multi-decadal change
A new study, by scientists from the University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre (NOC), implies that the global climate is on the verge of broad-scale change that could last for a number of decades.
The change to the new set of climatic conditions is associated with a cooling of the Atlantic, and is likely to bring drier summers in Britain and Ireland, accelerated sea-level rise along the northeast coast of the United States, and drought in the developing countries of the Sahel region. Since this new climatic phase could be half a degree cooler, it may well offer a brief reprise from the rise of global temperatures, as well as resulting in fewer hurricanes hitting the United States.
The study, published in Nature, proves that ocean circulation is the link between weather and decadal scale climatic change. It is based on observational evidence of the link between ocean circulation and the decadal variability of sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.
Lead author Dr Gerard McCarthy, from the NOC, said: "Sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic vary between warm and cold over time-scales of many decades. These variations have been shown to influence temperature, rainfall, drought and even the frequency of hurricanes in many regions of the world. This decadal variability, called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), is a notable feature of the Atlantic Ocean and the climate of the regions it influences."
'Dementor' wasp, giant stick insect among new Mekong finds
From a soul-sucking 'dementor' wasp named after a creature from the Harry Potter books to a half-metre long stick insect, scientists identified 139 new species in the Greater Mekong Region in 2014, according to a new report.
Many of the newly-described species are already under threat from new roads and dams and the region's rapacious demand for wildlife meat and luxury timber, the WWF said in its report.
Southeast Asia has a "treasure trove" of biodiversity with an average of three new species a week being discovered in the area between 1997 and 2014, the report said.
"We've only skimmed the surface of new discoveries in the Greater Mekong," said WWF expert Thomas Gray.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Oregon Organic Farmers Beat Monsanto As Federal Judge Upholds GMO Seed Ban
Climate Change Is Killing People Around the World and It's Only Going to Get Worse
Our Gang Problem Is Bigger Than We Think
War Crime: NATO Deliberately Destroyed Libya's Water Infrastructure
Hellraisers Journal: Pummeled! "Frank Walsh Knocks Out Young Rockefeller in Three Days' Battle"
Bernie Sanders is polling better than EVERY Republican candidate
Gaius Publius: “Sinking the Sanders Campaign Beneath a Wave of Silence”
Remarkable People: Celtic Lassie; 1988-2015
I will NOT go without a fight. "...I Want To Live..."
On the lighter side
A Little Night Music
Savoy Brown - Wang Dang Doodle
Savoy Brown - Can't Get Next to You
Savoy Brown - Louisiana Blues
Savoy Brown - Hellbound Train
Savoy Brown - Street Corner Talking
Savoy Brown - All I Can Do
Savoy Brown - Boogie
Savoy Brown - Needle And Spoon
Savoy Brown - May Be Wrong
Savoy Brown - Ring In His Nose And A Ring On Her Hand
Savoy Brown - A Hard Way To Go
Savoy Brown - Looking In
Savoy Brown - Time Does Tell
Savoy Brown - I'm Tired
Savoy Brown - I'm Crying
Savoy Brown - Let It Rock (Rock and Roll on the Radio)
Savoy Brown - Train To Nowhere
Savoy Brown - A Little More Wine
Savoy Brown - Vicksburg Blues
Savoy Brown - Made Up My Mind
Savoy Brown - Getting to the Point
Savoy Brown - Mississippi Steamboat
Savoy Brown - Take It Easy
Savoy Brown - Money Can't Save Your Soul