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 blues singer and piano player Tommy Tucker. Enjoy!
Tommy Tucker - Hi-Heel Sneakers
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
-- Plato
News and Opinion
Anonymous Fear-Mongering About the Patriot Act from the White House and NYT
Several of the most extremist provisions of the 2001 Patriot Act are going to expire on June 1 unless Congress reauthorizes them in some form. Obama officials such as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and new Attorney General Loretta Lynch have been engaged in rank fear-mongering to coerce renewal, warning that we’ll all be “less safe” if these provisions are allowed to “sunset” as originally intended, while invoking classic Cheneyite rhetoric by saying Patriot Act opponents will bear the blame for the next attack. ...
Enter the New York Times. An article this morning by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, in the first paragraph, cites anonymous Obama officials warning that “failing to [strike a deal by the deadline] would suspend crucial domestic surveillance authority at a time of mounting terrorism threats.” Behold the next two paragraphs:
“What you’re doing, essentially, is you’re playing national security Russian roulette,” one senior administration official said of allowing the powers to lapse. That prospect appears increasingly likely with the measure, the USA Freedom Act, stalled and lawmakers in their home states and districts during a congressional recess.
“We’re in uncharted waters,” another senior member of the administration said at a briefing organized by the White House, where three officials spoke with reporters about the consequences of inaction by Congress. “We have not had to confront addressing the terrorist threat without these authorities, and it’s going to be fraught with unnecessary risk.”
Those two paragraphs, courtesy of the Obama White House and the Paper of Record, have it all: the principal weapons that have poisoned post-9/11 political discourse in the U.S. ...
It’s just government propaganda masquerading as a news article, where anonymous officials warn the country that they will die if the Patriot Act isn’t renewed immediately, while decreeing that Congressional critics of the law will have blood on their hands due to their refusal to obey. In other words, it’s a perfect museum exhibit for how government officials in both parties and American media outlets have collaborated for 15 years to enact one radical measure after the next and destroy any chance for rational discourse about it.
Washington wisdom on data collection shown up by Justice Department verdict
The inspector general’s report undermines the Beltway consensus that expiring portions of Patriot Act are crucial counter-terrorism tools
For all the acrimony over the future contours of US domestic surveillance, a consensus has emerged: the expiring portions of the Patriot Act that do not govern the mass collection of US phone records are critical counter-terrorism tools.
The only dissent from that consensus: the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, which has found that a provision heralded by everyone from across the political spectrum to be at best marginally useful.
Yet the Washington surveillance debate, which is heading for a sort of resolution in an extraordinary Senate session on Sunday, has all but ignored last week’s groundbreaking Justice Department inspector general report on the key provision, known as Section 215. ...
The Justice Department inspector general’s report released on Thursday confirmed that the FBI uses the Patriot Act provision to collect much more than business records. It gives the FBI “large collections” of Americans’ internet metadata, as long noted by journalist Marcy Wheeler, including the to/from lines of emails, texts, instant messages, web addresses, and probably internet protocol addresses.
The report stopped its review in the year 2009 and warned that large-scale FBI access to domestic internet metadata was growing, adding that it had outstanding questions about specific FBI policies to protect Americans’ privacy.
Progressives Betray Struggle Against Surveillance State
A struggle of some consequence is now being waged in Congress to keep on life support the NSA’s massive spying on the American people. And in this struggle the progressives (aka liberals) are engaged in a massive betrayal of all they profess to believe in. Instead too many of them are scurrying about attacking Rand Paul, the libertarian, anti-interventionist, Republican Senator who is leading the charge against the Bush/Obama spying program. Among other things Senator Paul has engaged in a filibuster to stop this nefarious program. So far he has been successful. ...
All the Democrats voted in favor of Obama’s phony reform, the USA Freedom Act. ... Next, when it came time to vote for the original Bush/Obama Patriot Act, the sides switched and the Republicans voted in favor of that measure. But they also failed to muster the 60 votes needed to go forward and so that version of mass surveillance failed. Only Rand Paul and a few other Republicans stood firm on the issue of no mass surveillance and confronted the Republican majority, a clear proclamation of principle over Party. For progressives this is (yet another) massive failure of those Dems whom they labored to install in the Senate. ...
Clearly this is a time when progressive organizations, who are forever urging us to write and contact our Congresspeople, should be rolling into action. And here is the biggest problem. I have long been on many of the progressive mailing lists. On this issue I have received nothing from them – nada, zilch. So I checked to see what they had on their web sites. Would there be at least a mention of this issue, a plea to contact one’s Senator? I checked Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Green Party, Code Pink and Peace Action. None of them had a call to action on this issue as far as I could see as of May 26, which is very late in the game . To be fair, UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition) did have a statement on this as an issue, dating from a while back and including condemnation of Obama for his actions. But even here there was no call to action – no call for phone or letters to Congress and certainly no calls for a street demonstration, which is almost an autonomic reflex with UNAC.
In short the pwogs have shown an abysmal failure to take action in halting the Spy State. And there is not much time to act.
The Kill List: ICWatch Uses LinkedIn Account Info to Out Officials Who Aided Assassination Program
Guantanamo detainee doesn't trust memory of battle he was convicted over
Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was once the youngest prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, is unsure about his memory of a firefight that led to his murder conviction by a US military tribunal, according to an interview published on Wednesday. ...
In 2010 he pleaded guilty to charges that included murdering US army medic Christopher Speer with a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Khadr was 15. ...
In an interview with a Toronto Star journalist and documentary film crew, Khadr said he agreed to the deal because he was advised it was his only way out of the US naval base prison on Cuba.
“I have memories but I don’t know if they’re mine, if they are accurate or not,” Khadr said, adding that he was unconscious for a week after the event and then brutally interrogated.
Khadr was blinded in one eye and shot in the back in the battle. His lawyers have argued there is evidence he did not throw the grenade that killed Speer.
Assange on the Untold Story of the Grounding of Evo Morales’ Plane During Edward Snowden Manhunt
The military-industrial-congressional complex has dreams of sugar plums dancing in their heads. They're dreaming of big, big war with big money for everybody.
Army begins training for the next war, which may be much different — and bigger
For more than a decade, troops here have been schooled in counterinsurgency.
“Mission-specific” training, they call it: going house to house, busting down doors, rooting out terror cells, recognizing crude explosives.
Now, after a pair of mission-specific wars, an Army in transition aims to get back to the future.
The training needed to fight full-scale, more conventional battles has suffered, Army leaders contend.
With Americans on Memorial Day weekend still assessing what was gained from fighting two drawn-out conflicts at the same time, are they ready to start thinking about the next war — maybe even The Big One?
“You hope it wouldn’t be World War III, but you have to prepare for the worst,” said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commanding general of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. “We need to be ready to play against the pro teams, not just the amateurs.”
By that he means a nation such as North Korea, even Russia. A “pro team” could even be a band of radicals with the means to acquire nationlike resources in a hurry — such as those fighters who call themselves the Islamic State, recruiting through the global reach of the Web. ...
At a time when U.S. military action has become defined by targeted airstrikes, ships jockeying in the South China Sea and a reluctance to place boots on the ground, the Army is seeking to reassert itself on the strategic stage, experts say.
Now facing steep troop reductions planned by the Pentagon, “the Army really is looking for a strategic framework in which to remain relevant,” said Kelley Sayler of the Center for a New American Security, an independent research organization.
Biden Talks Up Sending Missiles, Other Arms to Ukraine
The ceasefire in Ukraine has been holding for months now, but the Obama Administration continues to agitate for new fighting in the east, and continues to try to insinuate itself into that potential future conflict.
Vice President Joe Biden today talked up the idea of sending lethal arms, including anti-tank missiles, to the Ukrainian military, saying it was necessary because of Russia’s “brutal aggression.”
Biden went on to claim Russia was carrying out a “hyper-aggressive propaganda program” over the annexation of Crimea, which the US does not recognize. Biden added that sanctions against Russia will remain in place.
Chief of Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate pledges no attacks on the West
Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate would not use Syria as a launching pad for attacks on the West, its chief said in a wide-ranging televised interview late Wednesday.
Abu Mohamed al-Jolani said his group, Al-Nusra Front, would protect Syrian minorities that renounced the regime.
"The instructions that we have are not to use al-Sham as a base to launch attacks on the West or Europe, so as not to muddy the current war," Jolani said.
"Our mission in Syria is the downfall of the regime, its symbols, and its allies, like Hezbollah," Jolani said, referring to the powerful Shiite movement fighting alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime.
But if the United States kept attacking them, he said, "all options are open. Anyone has the right to self-defence."
Jolani also denied the existence of the "Khorasan group," which the US had said was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda that was plotting attacks against the US.
Iraqi Offensive Against Ramadi Stalls Amid ISIS Bombings
One day into their much-hyped offensive against the ISIS-held city of Ramadi, Iraqi troops and their allies have stalled almost immediately, with reports that the troops entered the grounds of the university, but were unable to retake it.
Iraqi military officials say their near-term goal is to surround the city, and attributed their inability to make any progress through the last day to a sandstorm, which they say ISIS used to their advantage.
Military contractors join fight against ISIS in Philippines
The Iran Talks Game Changer: An Israeli-Hezbollah War?
There are signs Israel may be at war again this summer. This time, not with Hamas in Gaza but with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such a war may be the result not only of spillover from the Syrian war or ongoing Israeli-Hezbollah tensions. The deciding factor may be an Israeli calculation that war will shift momentum in the U.S. Congress decisively against the pending nuclear deal with Iran -- a deal that critics say will increase Iran's maneuverability in the region, including its support for Hezbollah. ...
If a Congressional vote on a resolution rejecting the nuclear deal were held today, President Obama probably would prevail -- possibly without even having to use his veto to defeat the attempt by Republicans and pro-Netanyahu Democrats to scuttle the historic diplomatic agreement with Tehran. Opposition arguments -- from claiming that the deal is a capitulation to Iran to the notion that it is unacceptable to make a deal with a regime like that in Tehran -- have not sufficiently resonated with the public to kill the agreement. This has caused some disarray in the opposition camp.
Indeed, if you are in that camp right now, it is reasonable to expect that the search is not for a new argument but for a game changing development: an event so powerful it shifts the momentum in Congress back to AIPAC, Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and the other opponents of a nuclear deal.
Arguably, a military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah this summer could fit that bill. The argument that the deal -- and the more than $50bn that would be returned to Tehran -- would strengthen Iran in the region and empower its allies would become much more potent if Israel were in an active conflict with Lebanon with Hezbollah rockets hitting Israeli cities, as was the case in 2006. Such a scenario can become the much desired game-changer that may cause many pro-Netanyahu Democrats to break with Obama.
Blundering Tony Blair Quits as Middle East Peace Envoy – Only Israel Will Miss Him
Tony Blair’s time as Middle East envoy representing the US, Russia, the UN and the EU has finally come to an end. Eight years after he took up the role, Blair tendered his resignation and left one question: how come a war criminal ever became a “peace envoy” in the first place? ...
For Arabs – and for Britons who lost their loved ones in his shambolic war in Iraq – Blair’s appointment was an insult. The man who never said he was sorry for his political disaster simply turned up in Jerusalem four years later and, with a team which spent millions in accommodation and air fares, managed to accomplish absolutely nothing in the near-decade that followed.
Blair appeared indifferent to the massive suffering of the Palestinians – he was clearly impotent in preventing it – and spent much of his time away from the tragedy of the Middle East, advising the great and the good and a clutch of Muslim dictators, and telling the world – to Israel’s satisfaction – of the dangers represented by Iran. ...
If only he had resigned more than two years ago, after Palestinian leaders had themselves characterised his job as “useless, useless, useless”. Israel, of course, would never have described him as this. Stoutly condemning the campaign for Israel’s “delegitimisation”, Blair talked about this as a form of bias which was “an affront to humanity” – a choice of words he never used about the massive civilian casualties inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians of Gaza.
WikiLeaks Releases 500K U.S. Cables from 1978 on Iran, Sandinistas, Afghanistan, Israel & More
WikiLeaks releases more than half a million US diplomatic cables from 1978
Today WikiLeaks has released more than half a million US State Department cables from 1978. The cables cover US interactions with, and observations of, every country.
1978 was an unusually important year in geopolitics. The year saw the start of a great many political conflicts and alliances which continue to define the present world order, as well as the rise of still-important personalities and political dynasties.
The cables document the start of the Iranian Revolution, leading to the stand-off between Iran and the West (1979 – present); the Second Oil Crisis; the Afghan conflict (1978 – present); the Lebanon–Israel conflict (1978 – present); the Camp David Accords; the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and the subsequent conflict with US proxies (1978 – 1990); the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia; the Ethopian invasion of Eritrea; Carter's critical decision on the neutron bomb; the break-up of the USSR's nuclear-powered satellite over Canada, which changed space policy; the US "playing the China card" against Russia; Brzezinski's visit to China, which led to the subsequent normalisation of relations and a proxy war in Cambodia; with the US, UK, China and Cambodia on one side and Vietnam and the USSR on the other.
Through 1978, Zbigniew "Zbig" Brzezinski was US National Security Advisor. He would become the architect of the destabilisation of Soviet backed Afghanistan through the use of Islamic militants, elements of which would later become known as al-Qaeda. Brzezinski continues to affect US policy as an advisor to Obama. He has been especially visible in the recent conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.
WikiLeaks' Carter Cables II comprise 500,577 US diplomatic cables and other diplomatic communications from and to US embassies and missions in nearly every country. It follows on from the Carter Cables (368,174 documents from 1977), which WikiLeaks published in April 2014.
TSA Body Scanner Lobbyist Takes Congressional Job Overseeing Spending on TSA Security
Rapiscan Systems lobbied aggressively to win a major contract with the Transportation Security Administration to provide X-ray body scanners at airports, only to lose the contract in 2013 after the company failed to deliver software to protect the privacy of passengers.
Rapiscan now has a friend on the inside.
Earlier this month, Rapiscan lobbyist Christopher Romig took a job with the House Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee, which oversees the TSA budget. ...
In his last lobbying filing statement, Romig disclosed that he lobbied Congress on “aviation, port and border security,” as well as the “budget and appropriation.” All areas he will now supervise as a professional staff member.
"Pretrial Punishment": Julian Assange Remains in Ecuadorean Embassy Fearing Arrest If He Leaves
Want to Stop Crime? Legalize Drugs, Says Police Organization
Nationwide protests against police brutality and calls for police reform during the past two years has led one group of law enforcement officers to agree wholeheartedly that policing needs to change, and so do policies.
The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, is made up of current and former police officers, federal agents, judges, and prosecutors who are pushing for an official end to the drug war, and what they say are decades of worsening violence between cops and citizens because of the war on drugs.
"It's exacerbating every social problem we have in the United States," said Jack Cole, a retired lieutenant of the New Jersey State Police and current board member of LEAP.
"You name the problem and I can explain the way it's being affected by the drug war," he said. "Let's talk about the institutionalized racism and brutality in law enforcement. Both of those things are tremendously affected by the war on drugs. What happens when you take police officers who are supposed to protect and serve communities and you train them to go to war?" ...
The group focuses on many of the consequnces of the drug war from a police officer's perspective: the enormous amount of money and resources spent on drug arrests has distracted police from working real crime cases, and the practice of treating everyone in drug-plagued communities as a criminal has led to more dangerous conflicts between police and citizens.
"There's not enough detectives to handle robbery, burglary or homicide, nor any of the others like sex crimes or juvenile crimes, they're overwhelmed, but narcotics, it's just, 'What do you want? You got it, we'll give it to you," Doddridge said. "The tough thing is the War on Drugs is taking those resources away from real crime."
Black people in Minneapolis nine times more likely to be arrested for petty crime
Black people in Minneapolis are 8.7 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people, according to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The research into racial disparities in policing also found that native American people were 8.6 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people.
White youth, however, while making up 40% of the city’s youth population, accounted for only 14% of youth arrests.
The findings are based on Minneapolis police department figures, secured through a freedom of information request, on more than 96,000 low-level arrests between 1 January 2012 and 30 September 2014.
The Reoccurring Financial Woes of Greece
Class of 2015: women are still making less than men – and prospects are poor
Young female college graduates are expected to make $3 less an hour than male counterparts – and all this year’s graduates face a struggle for good jobs, report finds
In their annual report, The Class of 2015: prospects for young graduates improving, but still a long way to go, Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers found that unemployment and underemployment rates still remain substantially higher than before the recession began. Similarly, wages for everyone but college-educated men are lower than they were 15 years ago.
The unemployment rate for this year’s college graduates is 7.2%, compared with 5.5% in 2007, and the underemployment rate is 14.9% compared with 9.6% in 2007. For high school graduates, unemployment rate is 19.5% compared to 15.9% in 2007 and the underemployment rate is 37%, compared with 26.8% in 2007.
“The class of 2015 joins the class of 2009 through 2014 in graduating into acutely weak labor market and [graduates are] competing with more experienced workers for a limited amount of job opportunities,” said Alyssa Davis, research assistance at the EPI. “Many young college graduates are working in a job that does not require a college degree at all. This is another sign of a continued slack in labor market and a sign that young graduates’ high unemployment is not because they lack the right skills but because of a continued lack of economy-wide demand for workers.” ...
“The only group that has wages that were higher than they were in 2000 is the young male college graduates, whose wages have only improved 1% since 2000. However, young female college graduates have wages that are actually 6.7% lower than they were in 2000.” ... On the bright side, that means that women who graduate from college earn about 84 cents for every dollar that male college graduates do. That’s better than the 78 cents earned by all women for every dollar earned by men.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature From the Appeal to Reason: "Appeal Staff Correspondent Describes Walsh-Rockefeller Combat," JDR Jr before the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Tune in at 2pm!
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State Department Officials Pass Through Revolving Door, Lobby for Passage of TPP
While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is refusing to reveal her position on the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, other former State Department officials are actively supporting the agreement. They’re just not bothering to reveal their conflicts of interest.
More than 30 former State Department officials, envoys, military officers and White House national security advisers who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents signed a letter last month calling the trade agreement “a defining test for American political and economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific region” and urging members of Congress to give President Obama “fast-track” authority to speed its passage.
Though the officials identified themselves in the letter using their prior government titles, many have since passed through the revolving door and now work at consulting firms focused on helping multinationals with interests in East Asia. Six of those with non-disclosed involvement in ventures that focus heavily on Pacific Rim trade served under Secretary Clinton. ...
Asked about the letter, Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., said he was disappointed to see former government advisers failing to disclose that “they’re on the take.”
Other TPP critics say that the letter is indicative of a recurring problem. “I guess the main thing that jumps out of me — it’s really kind of the norm. I’m not saying that’s good,” said Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Dean Baker. He said he’s seen pro-TPP opinion columns that fail disclose similar conflicts of interest.
Is US Trade Rep a Wall Street Crony? Groups Demand Transparency.
Noting deep ties between the country's top trade negotiator and Wall Street banks, ten groups representing millions of Americans are calling on the White House to make public all communications between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the massive financial institutions that stand to benefit from proposed trade deals.
In a letter (pdf) addressed to Froman—lead champion of President Barack Obama's corporate-friendly trade agenda—groups including National People's Action, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, and CREDO Action request "the prompt, voluntary, and proactive disclosure of all records of communication between yourself and representatives of the ten largest U.S. financial institutions—including lobbyists, employees, and trade associations—during your tenure as U.S. Trade Representative."
Those financial institutions include JP Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.
In particular, the letter's signatories are concerned that provisions in proposed trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the TransAtlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) would weaken or rollback existing U.S. financial regulations, for the benefit of big banks. ...
In a press release, the groups highlighted the links between Citigroup—which has lobbied extensively on the TPP, TTIP, and Fast Track authority—and Froman, who they note "received a more than $4 million golden parachute from Citigroup upon leaving the large financial institution to join the Obama administration in 2009."
Hillary and Wall Street: A Love Story
Democrats look to make debt-free college the key campaign issue of 2016
On Wednesday, nine Democratic senators came out in support of a resolution to make four-year public colleges in the US debt-free. The resolution, proposed last month by senators Brian Schatz, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, calls on the federal government to provide states with support so that they can lower tuition costs, increase financial aid, reduce the burden of existing student debt. The resolution currently has 20 supporters in the Senate, while a similar resolution in the House has roughly 40 co-sponsors.
The increased support for the resolution adds pressure on potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates to either endorse the resolution or come up with a plan of their own, with supporters of the debt-free college measure particularly interested in seeing where Hillary Clinton will come out on the issue.
A week prior to officially announcing his run for president, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill that would eliminate tuition at four-year public colleges and universities. The bill is estimated to cost $70bn a year – two-thirds of which would be covered by the federal government and one-third of which would be covered by the states. Federal funds for the bill would be sourced from a new tax that Sanders referred to as “a Wall Street speculation fee” to be imposed on Wall Street investment firms and hedge funds.
One of the main differences between Sanders’ plan and that of the other Democrats lies in what they seek to eliminate. While Sanders has narrowed his focus to tuition, others have zeroed in on debt.
The Evening Greens
Obama’s Dizzying Spin on the Environment and Trade
The Obama Administration claims that the new round of secret trade deals will be the greenest ever. Its latest attempt to sell that story was released earlier this week in a slick new report titled “Standing Up For The Environment: Trade For A Greener World.” As with most of the spin coming from the U.S. Trade Representative these days – there’s a lot of “trust us” bluster in the report, marketed with unattributed numbers and fancy graphics. But, perhaps most notably, it ignores the largest environmental issue of our times – climate change – and the numerous concerns raised by environmental groups about how these trade deals will damage the climate, not protect it.
While the report touts new provisions on wildlife protection, animal trafficking and illegal logging, we’ll have to take the Administration’s word for it. The environmental chapters for the Trans Pacific Partnership (with 11 Pacific Rim countries) and the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (with Europe) are still secret documents. But there are good reasons for concern. A leaked version of the TPP environmental chapter posted on WikiLeaks last year was ripped open by U.S. green groups for not being “fully enforceable.”
The issue of “enforceability” is critical as past trade agreements have routinely failed to effectively enforce environmental and labor-related chapters. The Sierra Club recently pointed out how environmental provisions in the US-Peru trade deal have failed to stop illegal logging. And earlier this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) issued a blistering report documenting how past Presidents have repeatedly made false promises about how trade agreements will protect labor standards. ...
Also missing from the USTR report is how both TPP and TTIP continue an extractive model of trade that has not only negatively impacted jobs and equality, but has also been devastating for the climate. Earlier this year, some 40 organizations focusing on rural and community-based responses to climate change wrote Congress calling for a full assessment of the climate impacts of these proposed trade deals. The groups wrote, “There is little question that the economic globalization largely driven by trade deals over the last several decades has contributed to the expansion of fossil fuel and other dirty energy production that cause climate change, expanded deforestation and other methods of natural resource extraction, while undermining local and community-level responses to climate change.” ...
Conflicting and confused agendas – masked by corporate style greenwashing – characterize the new USTR report. The Obama administration’s all-out effort to pass fast track, TPP and TTIP threaten to undermine its efforts to address climate change. The environment, and the people living in it, deserve better.
India's Deadly Heat Wave Could Be a Glimpse of Things to Come
Indians are suffering from temperatures topping 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) and nearing 122 F (50 C) in some states where amenities like air conditioning are rare. More than 1,000 deaths have been blamed on the heat wave so far, and the extreme heat is projected to continue through the week's end. ... This year's temperatures are higher than normal, largely because of warmer than usual sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific — a sign of an emerging El Nino pattern. ...
Scientists say that warming is being driven by carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal. At current levels of emissions, the expected warming is likely to be closer to 4 C (7.2 F).
That leaves India in a touchy spot as it tries to extend the benefits of an electrified society—like air conditioning, for instance —to all 1.2 billion of its people. A recent study by economists at the University of California-Berkeley found that India has a potential demand for AC a dozen times the size of that in the United States, due to its larger population and hotter climate.
"They're talking about solar and fossil fuels and also more hydro,"said Upmanu Lall, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society. "But if you look realistically, from a cost point of view, it's most likely that most of the expansion is still going to be from fossil fuels."
The government is promoting alternatives to fossil fuels, but is also investing heavily in more coal plants. And every bit of new capacity is quickly spoken for, Lall said.
Meet the Corporate Villains Sponsoring the COP21 Climate Talks
Fresh revelations that yet another round of United Nations climate talks—this time the upcoming negotiations in Paris—will be sponsored by some of the very corporations driving global warming have been met with outrage and alarm that the global process continues to be "captured by big polluters."
Pierre-Henri Guignard, Secretary-General of the UN Conference of the Parties 21 (COP21), unveiled the list of corporate sponsors on Wednesday. "We are building a very business friendly COP which will show the commitment of the private sector to the spirit of the convention,"he stated.
"Today's announcement of the corporate sponsors of the COP21 exposes the deep contradiction in UN COP process and their cozy relationship with the very corporations who are driving the climate crisis," Cindy Wiesner of the U.S.-based Grassroots Global Justice Alliance told Common Dreams. "The effort of these corporations to green-wash their ongoing damage of the planet in order increase profit and gain public support is offensive."
Japanese Nuke Restart Gets Greenlight Despite Safety Concerns of Residents
Despite the health and safety concerns of local residents, Japan's Sendai nuclear power station on Wednesday was granted final regulatory approval to restart its operations, meaning it is now poised to be the first such facility to reopen since the industry was halted nation-wide following the Fukushima meltdown in 2011.
Asia Onereports that Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority on Wednesday approved "operational safety programs for the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Sendai nuclear power plant," meaning all necessary permits have now been granted. ...
The restart is moving forward despite majority opposition in Japan to a resumption of the country's nuclear industry.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
On Patriot Act Renewal and USA Freedom Act: Glenn Greenwald Talks With ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer
Breast cancer could be 'stopped in its tracks' by new technique, say scientists
Obama’s Dizzying Spin on the Environment and Trade
Kyler's Mom calls for change
The Thundering Failure of the Democrats
A Little Night Music
Tommy Tucker - Long Tall Shorty
Tommy Tucker - Alimony
Tommy Tucker - Drunk
Tommy Tucker - Sitting Home Alone
Tommy Tucker - Oh what a feeling
Tommy Tucker - Is that the way god planned it
Tommy Tucker - Chewin gum
Tommy Tucker - A Married Man's A Fool
Tommy Tucker - It Hurts Me Too
Tommy Tucker - Thats how much
Tommy Tucker - Real True Love (I Ain't Had None Lately)
Tommy Tucker - Trouble In Mind
Tommy Tucker - I Can't Believe It
Tommy Tucker - I'm Shorty
Tommy Tucker - Mo' Shorty