The Evening Blues - 4-25-16



eb1pt12


Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Sugar Pie DeSanto. Enjoy!

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Baby What You Want Me To Do / Rock Me Baby

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

-- George Orwell


News and Opinion

Judge Grants Torture Victims Their First Chance to Pursue Justice

A civil suit against the architects of the CIA’s torture program, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, will be allowed to proceed, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington, decided on Friday.

District Judge Justin Quackenbush denied the pair’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit launched against them on behalf of three victims, one dead, of the brutal tactics they designed. ...

This is the first time opponents of the program will have the chance to seek discovery evidence in the case unimpeded by the government. In every other past torture accountability lawsuit, the government has invoked its special state-secrets privileges to purportedly protect national security.

But since the extraordinarily detailed and revealing executive summary of the Senate’s torture report was published in 2014, after years of investigation, the government now says almost everything is declassified already.

Former CIA officer faces extradition to Italy over Abu Omar kidnapping

A former undercover CIA officer is to be extradited to Italy following her conviction over the 2003 extraordinary rendition of a terror suspect to Egypt.

Sabrina De Sousa, a dual US and Portuguese citizen, was arrested in Portugal last October and has since lost three appeals against being handed over to Italian authorities. Her extradition is scheduled for 4 May.

At the heart of the case lies the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr – known as Abu Omar – who was snatched off the streets of Milan by the CIA, allegedly with the help of Italian officials, and sent to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The case was investigated by an independent prosecutor in Italy, leading to the conviction in absentia of De Sousa and 21 other CIA operatives and high-ranking officials. At the time, the case was seen as the only exhaustive investigation of the illegal counter-terrorism practice known as extraordinary rendition, and exposed US allies’ role in helping to execute the strategy.

Pages Said to Detail Saudi Arabia's Involvement in 9/11 to be Made Public

As Obama administration and Gulf ally try to evade accountability, 28-page document may be declassified by June

Confidential and deeply controversial documents said to reveal the support network behind the 9/11 hijackers may soon be made public, according to the Obama administration's head of national intelligence.

James Clapper, who is charged with overseeing the declassification, reportedly said that it is a "realistic goal" that the 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report would be available as early as June.

"We are in the position of trying to coordinate interagency position on the declassification of the 28 pages," he told attendees of an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, The Hill reported on Monday.

Clapper's statement followed similar remarks made Sunday by Sen. Bob Graham (R-Fla.), who was co-chairman of the bipartisan congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attack. Graham and others familiar with the report have alleged that the report contains damning information about U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

"Horrified": Seymour Hersh Reacts to Obama's Plan to Send 250 More U.S. Special Ops Troops to Syria

The US Is Sending 250 Special Forces Troops to Syria to Help Fight Islamic State

A White House advisor said on Monday the US would send 250 special forces personnel to Syria in non-combat roles, five times the number of soldiers that are currently there, in the first major expansion of US ground troops since the war began.

President Barack Obama decided to send the troops to support local militias battling the Islamic State (IS) and speed up the process of retaking territory from the jihadists, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, told reporters in Hannover. The total number of US forces in Syria will now be 300.

"We've seen across parts of northern and eastern Syria progress as ISIL [an alternative acronym for IS] has been pushed out of some strongholds," Rhodes said. "We want to accelerate that progress and we believe the commitment of additional US special forces can play a critical role."

Obama, who is in Germany to discuss foreign policy with a number of European leaders, is expected to formally announce the deployment later on Monday.

Obama's troop increase in Syria is part of a troubling trend

When it comes to Syria, “no boots on the ground” was something of a mantra for Barack Obama. He has repeated it dozens of times, but not anymore. On Monday, he told the world at least 250 US troops would soon be fighting inside the country. With American military members now slowly streaming into multiple countries in the Middle East, we’re entrenched in yet another war and it’s unclear how we’ll get out of it.

To much less fanfare last week, the White House also reportedly loosened the military engagement rules in Syria, so that US servicemen are allowed more leeway to kill civilians as collateral damage in pursuit of Isis. Rightwing Republicans have been clamoring for this policy change for months, despite the risk of it completely backfiring on the US and creating many more terrorists than it kills. At the time, Democrats criticized the likes of Ted Cruz for demanding such a policy. Now there is near silence as the Obama administration has made it a reality.

As he’s broken his promise involving ground troops in Syria, can we expect the same about-face in Libya? “There’s no plan for ground troops in Libya,” Obama said at a press conference in London during his European tour last week. He added: “I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t think it would be welcomed by this new government. It would send the wrong signal.”

One can imagine it’s only a matter of time before that statement is proven false.

Is the Obama Admin Ignoring the Role of Turkey & Saudi Arabia in Syria's 2013 Sarin Gas Attacks?

Yemeni Troops Retake Al-Qaeda Port City Stronghold

Yemeni and Emirati soldiers retook the Yemen seaport city of Mukalla on Sunday, the de facto capital of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), as part of a major offensive to drive the group out of their southern strongholds.

The Saudi-led coalition claimed on Monday that at least 800 militants had been killed during the Mukalla offensive, though according to earlier reports the takeover was relatively peaceful. ...

Local Yemeni officials and residents said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport, and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. They also said they had witnessed little fighting during the offensive.

Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had been in talks with AQAP earlier in the day to exit quietly and that fighters withdrew westward to neighboring Shabwa province. Air strikes killed 30 militants, residents said. ...

Mukalla has been the center of a rich mini-state that AQAP built up over the past year as it took control of an almost 370-mile band of Arabian Sea coastline.

The group that has masterminded several foiled bomb plots on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year was pocketing around $2 million a day in customs revenues from the port.

Obama Spurns North Korea Offer to Suspend Missile Program

Speaking during is visit to Germany, President Obama denounced North Korea for its offer to abandon its nuclear and missile program in return for an end to US military exercises with South Korea, condemning the nation for its “provocative behaviors.”

Indeed, as much as President Obama rails against North Korea’s nuclear test from back in February, the North Korean government had offered full nuclear disarmament just days before in return for an agreement to sign a deal to end the Korean War, which despite being in a state of mostly-ceasefire is fast approaching its 70th year.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly spurned North Korean offers for a peace treaty, insisting North Korea’s actions, themselves usually reactions to the latest failed offer, prove that the US doesn’t want peace with them. It is this refusal to even contemplate peace which has kept the war going for generations.

This is a review of Andrew Bacevich's new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East. The review itself has a well-rendered history of US military madness since Vietnam. Here's a taste:

Andrew Bacevich and America’s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East

Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Failure to improve life in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya stiffens the resolve to get it right next time. This notion prevails among politicized elements of the officer corps; much of the media, whether nominally liberal or conservative; the foreign policy elite recycled quadrennially between corporation-endowed think tanks and government; and most politicians on the national stage. For them and the public they influence, the question is less whether to deploy force than when, where, and how. ...

Bacevich describes a loyal cadre of intellectuals and pundits favoring war after war, laying the moral ground for invasions and excusing them when they go wrong. He notes that in 1975, when American imperium was collapsing in Indochina, the guardians of American exceptionalism renewed their case for preserving the U.S. as the exception to international law. An article by Robert Tucker in Commentary that year set the ball rolling with the proposition that “to insist that before using force one must exhaust all other remedies is little more than the functional equivalent of accepting chaos.” Another evangelist for military action, Miles Ignotus, wrote in Harper’s two months later that the U.S. with Israel’s help must prepare to seize Saudi Arabia’s oilfields. Miles Ignotus, Latin for “unknown soldier,” turned out to be the known civilian and Pentagon consultant Edward Luttwak. Luttwak urged a “revolution” in warfare doctrine toward “fast, light forces to penetrate the enemy’s vital centers” with Saudi Arabia a test case. The practical test would come, with results familiar to most of the world, 27 years later in Iraq.

Congress takes its first step toward killing the military draft

The military draft may be headed for the scrap heap.

The House Armed Services Committee will include instructions to examine the Selective Service program's viability and possible “alternatives” as part of its review of the annual defense authorization bill next week, staffers confirmed on Friday.

The move comes following months of hand-wringing over whether women will be forced to register for the draft as part of the military's plans to open combat jobs to all troops regardless of gender.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers — several of whom sit on the committee — has already offered legislation to abolish the Selective Service System, calling it an outdated vestige of military history.

Stonewalled by NSA, Members of Congress Ask Really Basic Question Again

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is none too happy that the executive branch is asking them to reauthorize two key surveillance programs next year without answering the single most important question about them.

The programs, authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are called PRISM and Upstream. PRISM collects hundreds of millions of internet communications of “targeted individuals” from providers such as Facebook, Yahoo, and Skype. Upstream takes communications straight from the major U.S. internet backbones run by telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon and harvests data that involves selectors related to foreign targets.

But both programs, though nominally targeted at foreigners overseas, inevitably sweep up massive amounts of data involving innocent Americans.

The question is: How much? The government won’t answer.

National Security Letters are now constitutional, judge rules

A judge who in 2013 declared that National Security Letters (NSLs) were unconstitutional has now changed her mind in an unsealed ruling made public Thursday. ...

US District Judge Susan Illston ruled three years ago that NSLs were an unconstitutional infringement of speech. But following her ruling, the law was changed to allow the recipients of the letters in certain and very limited circumstances to disclose their existence—albeit with numerous caveats. The law's change "cures the deficiencies previously identified by this Court," Illston wrote.

The judge also pointed out that the attorney general adopted new disclosure procedures as well.

The legal challenge Illston decided stemmed from a challenge brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was representing two service providers that challenged the NSLs on grounds that the gag requirement illegally limited their rights of speech. ...

[EFF] will appeal Illston's decision.

The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached

The story of Brazil’s political crisis, and the rapidly changing global perception of it, begins with its national media. The country’s dominant broadcast and print outlets are owned by a tiny handful of Brazil’s richest families, and are steadfastly conservative. For decades, those media outlets have been used to agitate for the Brazilian rich, ensuring that severe wealth inequality (and the political inequality that results) remains firmly in place.

Indeed, most of today’s largest media outlets – that appear respectable to outsiders – supported the 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of rightwing dictatorship and further enriched the nation’s oligarchs. This key historical event still casts a shadow over the country’s identity and politics. Those corporations – led by the multiple media arms of the Globo organisation – heralded that coup as a noble blow against a corrupt, democratically elected liberal government. Sound familiar? ...

Slowly, the outside world has begun to see past the pleasing, two-dimensional caricature manufactured by its domestic press, and to recognise who will be empowered once Rousseff is removed. It has now become clear that corruption is not the cause of the effort to oust Brazil’s twice-elected president; rather, corruption is merely the pretext. ...

The country’s elite class and their media organs have failed, over and over, in their efforts to defeat the [left-wing Workers] party] at the ballot box. But plutocrats are not known for gently accepting defeat, nor for playing by the rules. What they have been unable to achieve democratically, they are now attempting to achieve anti-democratically: by having a bizarre mix of politicians – evangelical extremists, far-right supporters of a return to military rule, non-ideological backroom operatives – simply remove her from office. ...

Those leading the campaign for her impeachment and who are in line to take over – most notably the house speaker Eduardo Cunha – are far more implicated in scandals of personal corruption than she is. ... It is impossible to convincingly march behind a banner of “anti-corruption” and “democracy” when simultaneously working to install the country’s most corruption-tainted and widely disliked political figures. Words cannot describe the surreality of watching the vote to send Rousseff’s impeachment to the Senate, during which one glaringly corrupt member of Congress after the next stood to address Cunha, proclaiming with a straight face that they were voting to remove Rousseff due to their anger over corruption. ...

There is a real risk that once she is impeached, Brazil’s media will no longer be so focused on corruption, public interest will dissipate, and the newly empowered faction in Brasilia will be able to exploit its congressional majorities to cripple that investigation and protect themselves.

To See the Real Story in Brazil, Look at Who Is Being Installed as President — and Finance Chiefs

It's not easy for outsiders to sort through all the competing claims about Brazil’s political crisis and the ongoing effort to oust its president, Dilma Rousseff, who won re-election a mere 18 months ago with 54 million votes. But the most important means for understanding the truly anti-democratic nature of what’s taking place is to look at the person whom Brazilian oligarchs and their media organs are trying to install as president: the corruption-tainted, deeply unpopular, oligarch-serving Vice President Michel Temer. Doing so shines a bright light on what’s really going on, and why the world should be deeply disturbed.

[See full article for descriptions of the corruption of VP Temer and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha. - js]

... But there’s one more vital motive driving all of this. Look at who is going to take over Brazil’s economy and finances once Dilma’s election victory is nullified. Two weeks ago, Reuters reported that Temer’s leading choice to run the central bank is the chair of Goldman Sachs in Brazil, Paulo Leme. Today, Reuters reported that “Murilo Portugal, the head of Brazil’s most powerful banking industry lobby” — and a long-time IMF official — “has emerged as a strong candidate to become finance minister if Temer takes power.” Temer also vowed that he would embrace austerity for Brazil’s already-suffering population: He “intends to downsize the government” and “slash spending.”

In an earning calls last Friday with JP Morgan, the celebratory CEO of Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior SA, Rubens Amaral, explicitly described Dilma’s impeachment as “one of the first steps to normalization in Brazil,” and said that if Temer’s new government implements the “structural reforms” that the financial community desires, then “definitely there will be opportunities.” News of Temer’s preferred appointees strongly suggests Mr. Amaral — and his fellow plutocrats — will be pleased. ...

So to summarize: Brazilian financial and media elites are pretending that corruption is the reason for removing the twice-elected president of the country as they conspire to install and empower the country’s most corrupted political figures. Brazilian oligarchs will have succeeded in removing from power a moderately left-wing government that won four straight elections in the name of representing the country’s poor, and are literally handing control over the Brazilian economy (the world’s seventh largest) to Goldman Sachs and bank industry lobbyists.

Health Care Industry Moves Swiftly to Stop Colorado’s “Single Payer” Ballot Measure

The Campaign in Colorado to create the nation’s first state-based “single payer” health insurance system, providing universal coverage and replacing insurance premiums with higher taxes, has barely begun.

But business interests in Colorado are not taking anything for granted, and many of the largest lobbying groups around the country and in the state are raising funds to defeat Amendment 69, the single-payer ballot question going before voters this November. ...

The proposal calls for the Colorado legislature to pass new laws raising $25 billion a year from a mix of employer payroll taxes, a 3 percent tax on employee gross pay, and a new tax on self-employed net income. The money would be used for a new health care system that would cover all premiums and out-of-pocket costs for health and dental care. The state would also be charged with negotiating with providers and for better drug prices. Supporters of the plan say the system would save $4.5 billion a year.

Cleveland agrees to pay Tamir Rice family $6m over police shooting

The city of Cleveland, Ohio, has agreed to pay $6m to the family of Tamir Rice to settle a lawsuit over the 12-year-old’s fatal shooting by a police officer.

The payment will avert a federal civil rights case brought against city authorities by Tamir’s relatives over the death of “a young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise”, their attorneys said on Monday. ...

The details of the settlement were contained in a filing by judge Solomon Oliver to federal court in Cleveland on Monday morning. The city will pay Tamir’s family $3m this year and $3m next year. Tamir’s estate will receive $5.5m while his mother, Samaria Rice, and his sister, Tajai Rice, will receive $250,000 each directly. “There is no admission of wrongdoing,” the court filing states.

Tamir was shot dead by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, who opened fire less than two seconds after arriving at a park where the 12-year-old was playing with a toy gun in November 2014. A 911 caller had reported that he appeared to be wielding a weapon and noted it was “probably fake”, but this caveat was not relayed to the officers by dispatchers.

With Call to Repeal 'Hate Bill 2', Thousands of Protesters Welcome Back NC Lawmakers/h5>

As North Carolina's General Assembly began its new session on Monday, it was greeted by tens of thousands of people calling for the repeal of the state's much maligned anti-LGBTQ House Bill 2 (HB 2), passed during a one-day special session on March 23.

The legislation, which opponents say is unconstitutional, requires that transgender people use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates, and forbids cities and counties from enacting their own ordinances to prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender people. ...

Monday, with a rally and press conference, the coalition TurnOUT! NC delivered to the state legislature a whopping 187,000 signatures demanding HB 2's repeal. ...


Local ABC affiliate WTVD reports that four Democratic state lawmakers filed a bill (pdf) Monday morning to fully repeal the controversial law—though they acknowledge that with a Republican majority, repeal is a long shot during this session.

How America's rich betrayed their fellow citizens

America has become a nation of pervasive economic inequality. It’s no wonder, then, that the 2016 election has witnessed a populist uprising. ...

Since the 1980s, rich Americans have maximized their share of the nation’s prosperity at the expense of the rest of the country. Adding insult to injury, a growing body of evidence suggests that many rich people today simply do not care about their fellow Americans. The old concept of noblesse oblige has declined among the wealthy to a disturbing degree. ...

Even though we live in a time of entrenched income inequality, poor Americans actually give a higher percentage of their income to charity than the rich do. The lack of generosity among America’s upper classes shows no signs of abating. Although the overall wealth of the upper classes is growing, levels of charitable giving continue to fall among the rich.

The selfish worldview of America’s upper classes is underscored by their demand for ever greater financial rewards. In the last 50 years, CEO compensation rates have soared. For example, in 1965 the typical CEO made about 20 times as much as average workers. By 2013, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio grew to nearly 300 to 1.

The rich have also poured money into the campaigns of candidates who cut the government programs that most benefit middle-class and working-class Americans, such as public schools and healthcare. And the wealthy increasingly cluster in neighborhoods that isolate them from other social classes.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that middle-class and working-class Americans are so angry at political and economic elites. ... The 2016 election is just the tip of the iceberg.



the horse race



Trump and Clinton share Delaware tax 'loophole' address with 285,000 firms

There aren’t many things upon which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree, especially as they court very different Delaware voters ahead of a primary on Tuesday. But the candidates for president share an affinity for the same nondescript two-storey office building in Wilmington. A building that has become famous for helping tens of thousands of companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in tax through the so-called “Delaware loophole”.

Officially, 1209 North Orange is home to Apple, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Walmart and dozens of other companies in the Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest companies. Being registered in Delaware lets companies take advantage of strict corporate secrecy rules, business-friendly courts and the “Delaware loophole”, which can allow companies to legally shift earnings from other states to Delaware, where they are not taxed on non-physical incomes generated outside of the state.

The loophole is said to have cost other states more than $9bn in lost taxes over the past decade and led to Delaware to be described as “one of the world’s biggest havens for tax avoidance and evasion”.

Both the leading candidates for president – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – have companies registered at 1209 North Orange, and have refused to explain why.

Clinton, who has repeatedly promised that as president she will crack down on “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere”, collected more than $16m in public speaking fees and book royalties in 2014 through the doors of 1209, according to the Clintons’ tax return.

Seymour Hersh Weighs In on Sanders vs. Clinton: "Something Amazing Is Happening in This Country"

Koch Brothers Consider Purchasing First Democrat

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have spent decades acquiring a world-class collection of Republicans, revealed over the weekend that they are considering purchasing their first Democrat. ...

Charles said that he and his brother had considered acquiring a Democrat only after determining that none of the Republicans on offer this year was worth adding to their collection.

“It’s kind of a scary proposition for us, because we’ve never owned a Democrat before,” he said. ... Koch said that he and his brother learned, after making some phone calls, that other oligarchs have bought Democrats in the past, and “had good experiences with them.”

"It's Possible": Koch Brother Says Hillary Clinton Might Be Best Choice for Him

When the oligarchs speak, take it with a grain of salt. Or a wheelbarrow full.

But in an interview on ABC's "This Week" which aired Sunday morning, billionaire industrialist and philanthropist of the far-right Charles Koch says given the performance of former president Bill Clinton and her own record, he thinks "it's possible" that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be better at fulfilling his libertarian and pro-business agenda than any of the Republicans currently in the running.

Asked by journalist Jonathan Karl if he could actually see himself supporting Clinton in a hypothetical general election against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich – Koch smiled, but didn't say no.

Bernie Sanders and Danny Glover

Channeling Sanders' Call for Revolution, Teachout Soars in NY Congressional Race

Populist candidate Zephyr Teachout has entirely outstripped all other Democratic congressional candidates in New York in 2016 in fundraising, bringing in over half a million dollars mostly from small individual donations, according to her campaign's most recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Teachout's fundraising success signals her continued popularity with New York progressives, who were overjoyed when Teachout shocked establishment politicians by winning over a third of the vote in the 2014 New York gubernatorial primary despite running against well-funded incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a shoestring budget, no political experience or name recognition, and an anti-corruption platform.

Teachout has attracted some wealthy donors, such as the actor Mark Ruffalo and a Rockefeller heiress, but the majority of her contributions has been from small donors—echoing the fundraising successes of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which famously boasts an average donation of $27. ...

Sanders publicly backed Teachout and two other progressive women for Congress earlier this month, and Teachout endorsed Sanders for president last year, describing the Democratic presidential hopeful as "a fearless, experienced leader capable of seeing the truth, and standing up to big private power, even when it's almost impossibly hard."

"Zephyr literally wrote the book on political corruption," Sanders wrote in turn in his fundraising appeal on behalf of Teachout's campaign. "She understands better than anybody how special interests try to buy off politicians, and she's dedicated her life to fixing our broken political system."

As Tim Murphy points out in Mother Jones, "The similarities between two of the left's leading critics of corporatocracy are obvious to the point of cliché."



the evening greens


More of Hillary's handiwork on display:

'Time was running out': Honduran activist's last days marked by threats

In her final days, Berta Cáceres was bombarded with texts and calls warning her to give up the fight against the Agua Zarca dam, or else.

The Honduran indigenous leader told trusted friends and colleagues that some of the death threats were from a suspected sicario – or hitman – who was terrorizing community members near the dam and openly boasting of his intention to kill her. ...

Cáceres, who last year won the Goldman environmental prize for her work, had reported 33 death threats linked to the campaign. Just days before her death, she accused the Honduran company behind the dam, Desarrollos Energéticos SA (Desa), of using local thugs to terrorize her and COPINH as they tried to mobilize opposition to its revised plan to dam their sacred river, the Gualcarque.

The Honduran state was complicit in this intimidation, she alleged.

Since her murder, the violence and threats against COPINH members have continued. Earlier this month, several were injured after a peaceful march including international observers was attacked by people armed with rocks and machetes. Witnesses said that the aggressors chanted “we killed the fly, only the plebs are left” as police and army officers looked on. ...

Despite international pressure on Honduras to capture the assassins – and the people who sent them – fears are mounting that COPINH members could be framed in an attempt to crush opposition to the dam and deter other communities from derailing similar projects. ...

The current wave of repression against social and political activists in Honduras has its roots in the 2009 military-backed coup d’état. The rightwing government that replaced President Manuel Zelaya licensed hundreds of environmentally destructive mega-projects, including mines, hydroelectric dams and model cities, ignoring its obligation to seek consent from indigenous communities.

Sea Change in Gasland? PA Primary Shaping into Fracking Referendum

Progressive anti-fracking candidates fill the ballot in Pennsylvania, the second largest producer of fracked gas in the country

Pennsylvania Democrats will have the opportunity to choose a host of anti-fracking candidates on the states' primary ballot on Tuesday—representing a potential sea change against the industry at the heart of the Marcellus Shale, one of the country's largest fracking plays.

The state is the second largest producer of natural gas in the country, after Texas. Pennsylvanians living close to wells and suffering the accompanying adverse effects on their health and land have long appealed to corporate officials and local politicians to put a stop to the controversial practice.

In Pennsylvania, three candidates on Tuesday's ballot, "including Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and two Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls, want to ban or pause the controversial oil and gas drilling technique, splitting an electorate in parts of the state concerned about both jobs and the environment," Reuters reports.

And fracking sharply divides the two Democratic front-runners for president: Sanders has called for a nationwide ban on the practice, while Hillary Clinton, who promoted fracking around the world during her tenure as the U.S. secretary of state, has pushed for "a middle-of-the road approach that would allow it with caveats," as Reuters puts it.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Exhibit One in Any Future American War Crimes Trial

How Neoconservatives and Liberal Hawks Use Lies to Sell Wars

Brazil’s Vice President, Unpopular and Under Scrutiny, Prepares to Lead

Saudi Arabia may be in for a nasty shock when Obama steps down

How the CIA Writes History


A Little Night Music

Sugarpie DeSanto - Slip In Mules

Sugarpie DeSanto - A Little Taste Of Soul

Sugar Pie De Santo - Going Back Where I Belong

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Witch For A Night

Sugar pie de Santo - I don't wanna fuss

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Go Go Power

Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - In The Basement (Part 1& 2)



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JekyllnHyde's picture

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

joe shikspack's picture

heh, yes, i believe that hillary has a strong grasp of the relationship between big money and political power having been such an ardent student of the subject.

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Lookout's picture

I enjoyed Sugar Pie with the news this evening. Wild stuff in Brazil. Reckon how the Olympics will work out?

The Guardian piece about the tax haven in DE is crazy too. Hellery and Trump share the same address. How appropriate.

Shillary will dance to the pull of the puppet masters strings. Trump not so much. Guess that explains the Koch endorsement?

I'm hopeful we'll do better than expected tomorrow.

4-26 primaries.jpg

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

joe shikspack's picture

i'll be surprised if there isn't fighting in the streets during the olympics. we might get a good look at what a class war really looks like before the crooks are done stealing power.

yep, i'll be doing my part in maryland tomorrow, but i would imagine that clinton probably has a lock on this state. i hope to be favorably surprised.

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Lookout's picture

Think Donna Edwards will do ok? Seems like that race is the sanders-clinton race on a state level. All the best in MD tomorrow!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

joe shikspack's picture

the conventional wisdom here is that since there are issues (freddie gray) driving turnout in baltimore city, donna edwards will likely pick up votes there. van hollen is the machine candidate and my guess is that if edwards wins, it will be a squeaker.

the good news is that even if edwards loses, margaret flowers, who is an excellent progressive candidate will be running in the general as a green.

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mimi's picture

very engaged afro-american women in my part of the woods in Maryland that Edwards needs money. I have seen her live with van Hollen and she would be definitely my candidate, if I could vote for her.

I am always amazed how unbelievable hard it is to run for anything, if you don't sell yourself out.

Let's hope. And thanks for your EB. It's THE source for me to get all the news one needs to know. I canvassed seven hours today and am dead tired and canvassing drives me nuts, but I try to be a good sports. It's heart breaking to hear what folks have to say. I darn well want a revolution and a system change. Like change the operating system from Microsoft Windows to Linux Ubuntu.

I cross my fingers for Sanders to win tomorrow in Maryland.

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Gerrit's picture

you many blessings in return.

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

divineorder's picture

children's environmental organization at the Forum Global during UNCED(Earth Summit), we stayed with a US expat photojounalist friend and learned that all the street orphans has been rounded up and sent off to camps in prep for all the foreigners coming to Rio. That was saddening to us to learn about this and since then we have had an interest in what is happening in Brazil. Guess this is one more case of what Naomi Klein talked about in Disaster Capitalism?

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

what's going on in brazil is one of the slimiest, dirtiest, most corrupt political action in years. the international banksters and brazilian oligarchs are teaming up to take advantage of an economic downturn to eject the elected government from office. it's so rotten and corrupt, i'd be surprised if the cia wasn't involved, too.

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Gerrit's picture

turned form being about oil and the great game to being about climate change? The ME is becoming unlivable as we speak. The processes of climate change have already and is right now forcing millions of people in an ever-growing stream from the rural areas to the cities in far higher numbers than globalization alone used to do. The flood of refugees from climate disasters - zero water, zero arable land, zero food - is growing, and will grow at a torrential pace. Within two or three decades, the ME will largely be uninhabitable by humans.

The puny human efforts to stem the tide of humanity leaving uninhabitable land through war is pathetic compared to the forces of nature at work there. Governmental and media bleating about terrorism and oil are a waste of their and your time. The climate is at war with humanity in the ME and the war is lost. Lost. The ME is not a human-habitable place anymore. Sure, the party is still on in Dubai. The citadels of the elites will last a little longer htan the rural villages lost to the dust, but not by much.

Fretting about the individual wars in the ME is pointless. The comparable historical period really is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when climate changes also drove the nomadic tribes of the Steppes into the European heartlands, thereby pushing the local Germanic and Slavic tribes into Rome's provinces, Rome itself, and even Africa. As Twain said, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. From here on out, the peoples of the ME will migrate in their millions, with their belongings on their aching backs, all over Europe, central Asia, and eastern Africa. Sending troops to individual little wars is a pathetic rear-guard action. Runaway climate change will swallow up all such efforts like the 1930s Dust Storms swallowed rural communities.

Faffing on about all these wars is good to try and stop the deep state from driving America straight into hell. But don't think for a second that anything can save anyone now breathing in the ME. Nothing but mass migration can save any existing human life in the ME. And the poor folks there are beginning to get it. In 30 years, you will be able to count the humans of the ME with an abacus. And you will not be able to count the numbers of wars of migration in Europe, eastern Africa, and central Asia.

Work on what you can control, eh. Work very hard at what you can control. Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

the Supreme Court is among the least of our worries.
Young people, please be smart, prepare to save yourselves.

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

Dhyerwolf's picture

that fighting over something like Supreme Court nominations will seem down heavenly compared to the problems the world will be facing in several decades (if not sooner).

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Gerrit's picture

this from Robert Scribbler, the best climate journalist out there, today:
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/04/25/melt-expanding-into-east-antarcti...

Melt Expanding into East Antarctica as Nansen Ice Shelf Crack Produces 20 Kilometer Long Iceberg
Ever since 1999 a gigantic crack has been growing in the Nansen Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. By 2014, expansion of the crack accelerated. As of early 2016, the crevice had grown to 40 kilometers in length. Flooded by melt along the Ice Shelf’s warming surface and weakened by the heating of ocean waters from below, on April 7th, according to ESA reports, this East Antarctic Ice Shelf produced an immense 20 kilometer long iceberg. A towering block of ice covering an area larger than Manhattan floating on out toward the world’s shipping lanes.
nansen-ice-shelf-fracture.jpg
The Nansen Ice Shelf, before this most recent very large iceberg calving event, was a 10 mile wide and 30 mile long ice shelf that buttressed the Presley and Reeve Glaciers of East Antarctica. It abuts the north side of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, and runs out from Mount Nanson just inland of the coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica. And it’s yet another large shelf of ice that appears to be facing severe weakening as global average temperatures are driven above 1 C warmer than those experienced during the late 19th Century by an ongoing and reckless fossil fuel emission.

Nansen occupies a region of the world that has come under increasingly intense observation due to a number of scientific studies highlighting its accelerating rates of melt and a related risk of rapidly rising global sea levels. Human-forced heating of the world’s ocean has caused waters warm enough to accelerate glacial melt to encroach upon Antarctica from the Southern Ocean. These warmer waters are drawn along beneath the floating ice shelves as fresh melt water flooding out along the ocean surface generates a landward-moving bottom current. These warmer waters eventually push beneath the ice shelves — eating away at their undersides.

And so on and so forth. I remember when the notion of West Antarctica melting was scoffed at. Now we're looking at (how fast) East Antarctica melt. There is no time left.

There is only time for making our children more resilient. Nothing else matters. Heck, nothing else mattered before, but we were too trusting to notice. With runaway climate change here now, making our children more resilient is paramount.

Best wishes my friend,

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3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

Gerrit's picture

way up the food chain, at sea, and on land. We're poisoning ourselves. which reminds me, we should talk about minimizing plastic in our households in the resilience group. Suicidal species, we humans are.

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Gerrit's picture

can do is help our children become more resilient, more adaptable, more practically-skilled, more mentally tough, more physically tough. That is all we can control. The rest is bullshit, obsolete, useless, and a waste of energy and precious time.

I've been working damn hard at making our 3+1=4 children more resourceful. Our two oldest girls are coming home on Thursday and we are going to help them buy an acreage and build an earthship home that could withstand the initial phases of climate change. What else is there to do? There is nothing more important than the resilience of our children. Nothing.

Best wishes mate and TY for this,

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3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

father.

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

(sorry no links) that the recent dramatic
rise in Syrian refugees has not been
caused by a now five-year-old civil (and
now world) war, but by the third year of an
historic drought in Syria that is driving
subsistence farmers who can no longer
hold on to become refugees. This is why
Europe considers so many of them
economic rather than war refugees - they
have left their homes not because of
fighting but in search of jobs that can
provide food.

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Only connect. - E.M. Forster

Gerrit's picture

in the Syrian war. The massive drought flooded the cities with rural refugees. There was zero infrastructure in which to assimilate them. And much repression when they complained. Then they rebelled. Against the only opponent whom they could: Assad. They couldn't fight climate change, but they could fight Assad. Anything else and everything else - U.S.-Russian relations, geostrategic blah-blah, nutbar ideologies, is just lipstick on the climate pig that no one will fight.

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riverlover's picture

Seeds for dryland farming developed in Syria were sent to the Doomsday vault in Norway because of war, and have been returned to Lebanon where the dryland farming lab has been reopened. Optimistic, aren't they?

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Gerrit's picture

Not long at all. It already exist mainly as a wary legal truce between Shias, Sunnis, Christians, and Druze populations. It is drying out fast, as everywhere else. Refugees are flowing in. Lebanese populations grow mainly overseas now, in places like Canada and South American states. The internal birth rate has plunged. It's like a row of dominoes, waiting for that one light little touch of a finger.

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riverlover's picture

I have several friends who fled Lebanon back during the Beirut destruction, and most never went back. Still in the US, medical doctors and scientists, now US citizens with children who grew up speaking French, English and Lebanese.

Moving the arid farming labs to Lebanon gave them a chance to get a few more generations of seeds collected, with luck, to be sent back to the Vault. Sad that the seed vaults are more necessary than ever, because of war, desertification, and the need to keep as many cultivars safe as possible. Our sad little attempts at Arks, much like Zoos and cryogenenic labs are for animals.

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joe shikspack's picture

i would imagine that the middle east, the low-lying islands and coastal regions of the world are just the beginning of the migrations. as time goes on, more and more regions will become uninhabitable and more people will be playing musical chairs, so to speak. with 7 billion people, there just aren't that many places to put large groups of people whose environment can't support them any more.

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Gerrit's picture

I wanted to show you a photo of the gorgeous 35-acre, oceanfront property in Nova Scotia I had tried to buy in 2013, but my ptsd filing system will not permit that :=) Well, today. I'll find it tomorrow when I don't need it. I was heartbroken when we lost the purchase, but since then I learned more about climate change and now am really grateful!

The very best climate places are those:
in the centre of our continent,
in areas where there is plentiful, uncontaminated water,
relatively less developed,
away from nuclear dumps and weapons facilities

Our family is heading back to northern Ontario. We'll have to take a loss on the sale, but we hope to end up even by buying in the north. Best wishes to all as we search for the best for our children.

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riverlover's picture

with more (most) countries unwilling or unable to deal with the diasporas happening now. The US response has been frankly, never good or fair, and getting worse all the time.

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Gerrit's picture

than in the U.S. I think. Many millions will die in the ME, but hundreds of millions will flee as infrastructures collapse under rapid climate change, mainly as desertification eats up all the existing semi-arable land. I've experienced nasty sandstorms in the Kalahari desert during infantry training. But nothing compared to what's coming there. Picture the photos you've seen of the Depression Dust Storms: towers of dust to the ceiling of the sky.

ME people will flee, just as the dust bowl farmers had to flee. Europe, central Asia, and east Africa will not cope with the vast numbers of refugees that will just keep on coming and coming. Folks who know their history of ancient Rome will remember the names of the Germanic tribes pushed into the roman empire by the Slavic tribes: Huns, VisiGoths, OstroGoths, Angles, Saxons, Burgundians, and whatnot else.

The people of Europe and Asia will know new Arabic migrant tribal names real well. Not in some future decades, but from this decade on. Austria is the first (but no surprise) of the European states to convert to fascism to counter the migrations. Most, if not all, the European countries will become fascist in the near future. Nothing (not even runaway climate change - too abstract, until the flood in the basement keeps growing) scares ordinary folks like facing mass migrations.

Canada just took in, what 25k Syrian refugees. The 35M nation is presently digesting this fairly digestible number of refugees. And we are pleased and proud of our multicultural nation's ability to absorb refugees. If the refugees had numbered 25M? And could just sail in on boats and rafts? With a hundred million more behind them? What then of progressive Canada? Europe will become mostly fascist real soon. And it will be back to the "Christians" and the "Moors" and there will be little left of today's prosperous Europe. Nothing to do with religions or cultures or yada-yada, just numbers, sheer climate-driven numbers.

This is the world of climate change. We need to learn to think like the climate future demands. We are so trapped in our culture-formed minds; we think in outmoded, useless, highly impractical, abstract ways. Change to hard, practical thinking patterns is hard. Those who adapt, will become more resilient. Those who cannot or will not adapt, will die. The vast, vast majority of today's 8B humans face a two-stage future: first, as homeless zombies, then as rotting food.

Zen has a useful meditation. I learned it from a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. It is called by various names, generally something like meditation on a rotting corpse. Many of us and all of our children will receive many opportunities to receive this learning.

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Clinton Team Cynically Exploits 'Cyberbullying' to Justify $1 Million Online Propaganda Push

There’s a foul stench of cynicism with framing routine social media astroturfing as an anti-bullying effort, but it's also par for course. There isn’t a social media astroturfing effort in the history of the practice that hasn’t argued that it’s simply pushing back against “misinformation” or harassment.

...The Bernie Bro bully narrative has been a favorite of the Clinton campaign’s high-profile defenders—largely because it allows them to gloss over policy differences and avoid legitimate criticism—so it’s logical her super PAC communications team would frame one of the most powerful people in the world, a former secretary of state and senator who has made tens of millions since leaving public office, as a victim under siege by a mob of foaming Sanders zealots.

Hillary Unleashes Million-Dollar Professional Internet Troll Army

The Hillary campaign was also recently called out by The Intercept for deploying “astroturfers” into the media — people with ties to Clinton who act as experts and political commentators to promote her campaign without disclosing their ties to the candidate.

With Hillary’s highly effective media strategies employing media surrogates — and now internet trolls — it’s becoming increasingly hard to decipher a distinction between actual Clinton supporters, unbiased political commentators, and paid campaign shills.

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"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."

joe shikspack's picture

Hillary Clinton-aligned Super PAC, Correct the Record, is taking a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook by employing a $1 million dollar professional internet troll army to build a paid, positive consensus about the Clinton campaign.

heh. back in the dark ages when i was in college, i had a prof who often illustrated his points with colorful truisms. there's one that comes to mind instantly regarding building hillary a "positive consensus":

you can't shine shit.

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enhydra lutris's picture

October will be 49 years since the 1967 "Stop the Draft Week" in Oakland. My how time flies.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

heh, selective service seems to have long outlasted my "draft beer, not students" tee-shirt.

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magiamma's picture

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

joe shikspack's picture

it's a shame she never got the acclaim that she deserved, she really had talent.

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Crider's picture

Between Alan Grayson and Republican David Jolly for Florida Senate is live now (as of 7pm Eastern time)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN5HFLv3nIk]

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joe shikspack's picture

thanks for the link! i would imagine that grayson will mop up the floor with jolly.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Same shit, different decade. How many times are we going to "Train" militaries before the public gets a clue about what's really going on?

Actually I think most folks get it now... Just so few of us have relatives in the service that we just don't care. The fact the MSM never covers our dead thoroughly probably has something to do with that.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

joe shikspack's picture

yep, with less than 1% of the population in active service in the military, it doesn't get the public attention that it might have when there was greater participation - but that's by design. the powers that be would rather that people not know what the military is up to. you'd think though, given that the military sucks up more that half of our revenue every year, it would be the sort of thing to pay more attention to how it gets used.

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riverlover's picture

was IGTNT. At least those of us who could bear to read those, felt the ache of every death reported. We only hear about injured military if they have local family or are "famous". And the invisibly injured? Let the VA deal with it is probably the popular belief.

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detroitmechworks's picture

was that you weren't allowed to criticize the war.

Essentially it defeated the point of the righteous anger we felt when yet another soldier died in a pointless war for corporate America.

If we ever do something like that here, the war itself should be discussed every time this gets brought up. I say this as a veteran who has seen exactly how much respect the MIC deserves.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj563ViG7Qg]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

snoopydawg's picture

When it first started out with so many names each week was the time to discuss why the hell those young men were dying.
Obama ran on ending the Iraq war as soon as possible, but he was trying to keep troops in there even after the timeline. The Iraqi government said that in order for the troops to stay, their government got to investigate any war crimes or suspicious activity. Couldn't have that, right?
But Obama has been adding more and more troops in over the government's objections. What sovereign nation?
And no one writing anything about him sending ground troops in to Syria.
As we know, things like war crimes, wars of aggression and coups are only bad when it is a republican president doing those things.
Using drones is great because that way no US soldiers are getting killed. The hell with the innocent civilians.
And we all know that the body count of both US troops and innocent civilians is going to go way up after Hillary's coronation.
And her supporters don't give a damn about that!

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Damnit Janet's picture

I have zilcho to add but wanted to step in, wave and maybe grab a few hugs because it's really nice to have some sense of community. Seeing new names and old ones.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

joe shikspack's picture

good to see you, i'll throw in the first hug. Smile

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

snoopydawg's picture

9/11 report released since 2002 and wanted to know why Bush flew the Saudis and members of the Bin Laden family out of the country before anyone could talk to them. (sorry, can't find the link), but he also wanted to know why Bush and Cheney weren't sworn in when the testified before congress. I do too. And why did Bush need his hand held?
I don't buy the official 9/11 story. I haven't for years. There's too many unanswered questions about what actually happened that day. One of the biggest is that 2 of the planes flew over the Air Force base around New York and there wasn't one plane that could have gotten in the air?

Another great roundup, joe. I especially liked the article about how outraged people are when Trump and Cruz talk about committing war crimes, but stayed quiet when they were actually happening. The select committee knew that the Bush administration was torturing people, but did nothing about it. And why did DiFi's committee spend 3 years and millions of dollars investigating the CIA and then did nothing about the torture reports?
Total hypocrites.
Just like when CU was announced, TOP decried that decision, but it's okay now since Hillary needs to use it to defeat the GOP.

At the time, Democrats criticized the likes of Ted Cruz for demanding such a policy. Now there is near silence as the Obama administration has made it a reality.

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joe shikspack's picture

my guess is that even if they release the 28 pages, while we'll know more than we did before, we will never get the full truth about 9/11.

And why did DiFi's committee spend 3 years and millions of dollars investigating the CIA and then did nothing about the torture reports?

my guess - ass covering. i would imagine that there were people on the intel committees in both houses that knew things at a level that a court might find that they are complicit for not acting on diligently. so now, they have made an extensive report, passed it on to the executive branch for prosecution and now they expect to be able to say, "we did our job, it's the executive branch that failed and should be held responsible."

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snoopydawg's picture

Does congress have no say when it comes to war crimes committed by the military or other agencies or just the executive branch?
I do know that they have the right to go after Obama for his war crimes, but probably every president has committed them.
At least Kusinich tried to impeach Cheney. But he spoke to an empty room.
Cowards. They don't care how many troops get killed or injured as long as they get their kickbacks from the defense contractors.

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joe shikspack's picture

the military has its own judicial system available and if it does not choose to act, presumably charges can be brought in civilian courts by the executive branch. the attorney general of the us is supposed to be independent of the executive in these matters should high-level members of the administration commit crimes.

congress could (and should) impeach obama for war crimes as they should have done with bush and cheney.

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divineorder's picture

I miss Dennis K and his always calling out the fail!

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

..."we will never get the full truth about 9/11."
... not eve n close!

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enhydra lutris's picture

DiFi et al - they knew too much, all along and had to make sure that nobody took a fall, lesst they get swept up in the whirlpool. Sort of a similar situation with "off the table" Pelosi. There was just too much stuff known and implied that they didn't want to get out.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

progdog's picture

Hope your Mondays weren't too bad! Mine was alright - nice weather and an okay day at work.

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prog - weirdo | dog - woof

joe shikspack's picture

the weather was great here today, too. maybe too good for a monday. Smile

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The Baffler has published a great critique of neoliberal tech triumphalism. The article by Evgeny Morozov is a review of The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross, former Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It's long, but I found it well worth reading to the very end.

http://thebaffler.com/salvos/made-a-moron

Thanks for the troubling news, Joe, but even more tonight for the antidotal music.

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joe shikspack's picture

thanks for the link! i rarely remember to check the baffler for articles, but every time someone has recommended one, it has turned out to be really great.

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snoopydawg's picture

A war hawk.
I have posted a link to the many military interventions she has been in favor of. I don't know if anyone read it but it goes back to the 80's. She has never cared about the innocent women and children her interventions have killed, or the damage done to their countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-...

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at the bottom of the page has disappeared.
Strange days at c99p.

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Only connect. - E.M. Forster

progdog's picture

It looks like... there's a broken image link at the bottom of the page.

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prog - weirdo | dog - woof

divineorder's picture

post from there earlier and I eventually gave up. Resized in Photo Gallery, then uploaded to c99 and it went up just fine.

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divineorder's picture

be able to read/comment the EB while it is fresh for a while. Fly off to Malawi Tuesday .

Was 46 degrees in our tent this am out at Jakkalbessie's relatives' country property near Vacaville, CA. High today is high 60's. In Zambia where we will be camping for the next month, the highs are in the 90's, and low's in high 60's . Quite a contrast but we have these little tiny chinese made rechargeable fans that along with the wine should allow us to get to sleep. On previous trips to The Wildlife Camp in Zambia the elephant's have come at night and awakened us by eating tree leaves above our tent. Great stuff.

Will check in with you EBer's when we can between now and when we return to the US in August.

Keep an eye on these kids, joe, never know when they will break out the disco if you don't lol !!

IMG_5803 (1024x683).jpg

Harbor Seal seemed to laugh as we kayaked upstream on the Albion River near Mendocino a few days ago. In reality, he is yawning after a long night hunting in the nearby Pacific. California, April 2016 by divineorder

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joe shikspack's picture

check in when you can, we are always interested in your travels.

that's quite a yawn, there. nice photo!

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divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Shahryar's picture

great roundup, as always.

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divineorder's picture

comment on too many stories but never getting around to it. Lots of important news here for sure.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

thanks! it's a big world with too much going on sometimes.

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...a great read and a great listen while I am reading. Thanks.

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