Evening Blues Preview 5-5-15

This evening's music features Texas blues singer Lou Ann Barton.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Witnesses Confirm First Saudi Ground Troops Arrive in Yemen

Weeks of Saudi airstrikes against Yemeni cities have extended into the first deployment of ground troops over the weekend, with witnesses confirming Saudi special forces on the ground in Aden, backed by helicopter gunships.

In previous weeks, Saudis had tried to drop weapons to the remnants of former President Hadi’s forces, hoping this and the airstrikes would shift the tide of battle against the Shi’ite Houthis, who control most of the rest of the country.

Not making much progress that way, the Saudis seem to be bringing in the first of their ground troops. With massive numbers of troops massed around the northern border, this may just be the first of a full-scale war.

Once the Youngest Prisoner at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr Could Be Released Today in Canada

The Canadian government is expected to make a last ditch effort on Tuesday to block the release of Omar Khadr, a 28-year-old man who agreed to a controversial plea deal for killing a US soldier when he was 15.

Khadr, who was at one point the youngest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, was granted bail last month by a court in Edmonton, Alberta as he appeals an American military conviction he says was obtained through torture.

According to multiple media reports, the Canadian government is expected to argue on Tuesday that the country's interests "will suffer irreparable harm" if the Toronto-born man is released.

A story in the Toronto Star on Saturday, however, refuted those claims, with the US State department telling the newspaper that his release wouldn't hurt Canadian-American relations. ...

The Free Omar campaign, which began in 2011 to advocate for his release, said Monday the government's "'knee jerk' appeal of every court decision has prolonged his 12-year struggle for justice."

"The rights, freedom and liberties of all Canadians are diminished by the actions of this government," the organization said.

Samples of Israeli Horrific Brutality and War Criminality in Gaza

The Israeli group Breaking the Silence issued a report this morning containing testimony from Israeli soldiers about the savagery and criminality committed by the Israeli military during the attack on Gaza last summer. The Independent has a good article describing the report’s findings: “The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance” and “was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population.” At best. ...

Reading the accounts from these Israeli soldiers is revolting and important in equal parts. It shines considerable light on the reality of what Israeli loyalists have long hailed as “the most moral army in the world,” one unfairly held to a difference standard that ignores their great “restraint.”

The Intercept has chosen some selected, representative excerpts from the report:

Staff Sargent, Armored Corps:

[A]fter 48 hours during which no one shoots at you and they’re like ghosts, unseen, their presence unfelt – except once in a while the sound of one shot fired over the course of an entire day – you come to realize the situation is under control. And that’s when my difficulty there started, because the formal rules of engagement – I don’t know if for all soldiers – were, “Anything still there is as good as dead. Anything you see moving in the neighborhoods you’re in is not supposed to be there. The [Palestinian] civilians know they are not supposed to be there. Therefore whoever you see there, you kill. . . .

The commander [gave that order]. “Anything you see in the neighborhoods you’re in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters – is dead on the spot. No authorization needed.” We asked him: “I see someone walking in the street, do I shoot him?” He said yes.

Did the commander discuss what happens if you run into civilians or uninvolved people?

There are none. The working assumption states – and I want to stress that this is a quote of sorts: that anyone located in an IDF area, in areas the IDF took over – is not [considered] a civilian. That is the working assumption. We entered Gaza with that in mind, and with an insane amount of firepower.

[More at the link. -js]

Canada poised to pass anti-terror legislation despite widespread outrage

Criticism of anti-terror bill C-51 has united a diverse array of prominent opponents as many fear the legislation creates the potential for a police state

Widespread protest and souring public opinion has failed to prevent Canada’s ruling Conservative Party from pushing forward with sweeping anti-terror legislation which a battery of legal scholars, civil liberties groups, opposition politicians and pundits of every persuasion say will replace the country’s healthy democracy with a creeping police state.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is looking forward to an easy victory on Tuesday when the House of Commons votes in its final debate on the bill, known as C-51. But lingering public anger over the legislation suggests that his success in dividing his parliamentary opposition may well work against him when Canadians go to the polls for a national election this fall.

No legislation in memory has united such a diverse array of prominent opponents as the proposed legislation, which the Globe and Mail newspaper denounced as a a plan to create a “secret police force”.

The campaign to stop Bill C-51 grew to include virtually every civil-rights group, law professor, retired judge, author, editorialist and public intellectual in Canada. ...

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Canadians signed petitions urging the bill be scrapped and took to the streets in a national day of protest last month.

Workers Movement Forces Democrats To Increase Their Idea of Minimum Wage

While proposed $12 wage isn't enough, Democratic Party clearly chasing after workers who have put themselves in the street for the increased pay

It's not fifteen, but the Democratic Party is angling to hang its hat on a $12 minimum wage as they attempt to harness the energy and enthusiasm created by the national low-wage workers movement that has been steadily building in recent years.

As The Hill reports on Tuesday:

Party leaders are rallying behind new legislation that would raise the wage to $12 an hour, well beyond the $10.10 effort that failed to pass when Democrats controlled the Senate.

While the new bill has little chance to clear the GOP-dominated Congress, Democrats see the issue as a political winner for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — who have announced White House bids — as well as for potential presidential candidates.

As Common Dreams has covered in-depth, the fight for higher wages by fast food workers and employees at large retail chains like Wal-mart has gained strength in recent years with increasing numbers of the working poor demanding better pay, increased protections, and the right to organize or unionize on their own behalf.

For Democrats, the push for a $12 minimum wage is largely understood as a political strategy to get Republicans on the record during the campaign season opposing the interests of low-income Americans.

Here's Why Elon Musk Might Have Just Really Pissed Off Your Utility Company

Musk unveiled on Thursday a new type of battery — not for use in his company's popular line of luxury electric vehicles, but for homes and business.

Measuring in at 3 feet across, 4 feet tall, and 7 inches deep, the batteries draw energy from rooftop solar panels, helping to power homes and businesses at night, reducing daytime demand on the electric grid during peak hours, and providing energy security during power outages. ...

Across the country, consumers who install rooftop solar arrays have increasingly clashed with utility companies over net-metering policies. Net metering allows a customer who generates energy from solar panels to run their meters backward — essentially feeding power into the electrical grid and lowering their utility bill — when they are producing more energy than they are consuming.

Forty-three states and the District of Columbia have such policies, but in recent years utilities have pushed back against net metering in California, Arizona, and Colorado, seeking to limit consumers' ability to ween themselves from utility-generated power.

According to attorney Katie Ottenweller, who leads the Southern Environmental Law Center's Solar Initiative, it's unclear how utilities will react as battery technology matures and cuts into their traditional customer base. ... Ottenweller told VICE News. "But there's also this double-edged sword where if utilities continue to pick fights with their solar customers, it makes it easy, once battery storage is available, for them to defect from the grid altogether."

Also of interest:

David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish

The Wars Come Home: A Five-Step Guide to the Police Repression of Protest from Ferguson to Baltimore and Beyond

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shaharazade's picture

blast from the past here. So I'm working away compiling marketing info or 'hey mom your a spammer' as my son said. I am going though the My Document's section of the computer to open new individual files on company's we are approaching/ hustling/ targeting. I came upon this weird file somehow flung there from 2007 in a temporary blogging file called 'Hillary Clinton the Senator from Punjab'. So I opened it thinking WTF is this. It was transferred from my hard drive when I got my new computer. So I goggled it. It was quite illuminating as to what we then and now are dealing with politically and globally on several levels. Okay here's what she said as Senator Hillary in approximately 2005-6? at a fundraiser apparently for her senate campaign.

'I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily,' after being introduced by Singh as the Senator not only from New York but also Punjab.

" 2005: Anti-Offshoring Advocacy Group Gave Sen. Clinton A “Weasel Award,” Citing Pro-Outsourcing Comments Clinton Made In India. The Press Trust of India wrote, “An American anti-offshoring advocacy group has awarded its first ‘Weasel Award of 2005’ to Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton for her recent remarks supporting outsourcing. The Delaware-based IT Professionals Association of America (ITPAA) representing over 1,200 IT professionals nationwide, said on its Web site that it presented this award to business and political leaders that it believes ‘betray the trust of the American people.’ Scott Kirwin, founder of the organization claimed that people were ‘tired of Democrats pretending they care about the problems facing average Americans. Senator Clinton’s actions prove they clearly do not.’ The ITPAA based its award on press reports of Hilary Clinton supporting outsourcing and assuring political and business leaders in India that the US would not attempt to save the jobs lost. ‘Outsourcing will continue. There is no way to legislate against reality. We are not in favor of putting up fences.’ Hillary had said on Feb 28 in India, according to a report by the Asia Times. Kirwin also cited her position as co-chair of the ‘Friends of India Caucus’ in the Senate, a group of senators that supports issues important to India, including outsourcing and H-1B and L-1 visas, as another reason behind the ITPAA's decision to give the award to the prospective Democrat presidential nominee.” [Press Trust Of India, 3/5/05; Link To Weasel Award"

Then the follow up when she was running for president......

“Outsourcing,” she had assured her “Punjab” constituents in India on Feb. 28, 2007, “will continue. There is no way to legislate against reality. We are not in favor of putting up fences.”

So to me this blast from the past raised a number of questions regarding both what she obviously is about and outsourcing. Her globalizing 'it takes a village' to process our data and polish our iphones sits at the basis of her domestic populist US campaign. The somehow so familiar outrage from the left looking back at this long gone political brouhaha regarding the Clinton's support of outsourcing and calling any resistance with the outsourcing still going on, racist blew me away. Every real issue we face is politicized to the point where the issue is submerged and all we hear is the bs. from every side including useless Democratic internecine fights regarding who slammed who or who is a bigger liar. Politics reduced to nothing more then meaningless slams that are totally surreal if you consider the reality of what we as humans are facing.

So I went back in a timey whimmey file that I must have bookmarked or filed. In retrospect after goggling this I thought oh my god they totally politicized this whole important central economic issue. Obama was cast as a racist cause he was insulting Indian Americans with releasing her Punjab statements and the hard core money from India outsources paid to the Clinton's. He apologized (lol) all over the place. What it brought home to me looking back is the complete politicization of all issues by the absolutely immoral pols and political pundirts of both party's. Come on people who gives a rat's ass which corporate tool pol insists that any push back to globalization is racist. Why can't ordinary people look at what is going down globally and separate this from the freaking useless partisan internecine kabuki show we are presented with as elections. What a circus then and now. Good god how many times do we have to go through this shit. It really is ground hog day over and over.

For your amusement

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2007/06/dpunjab_fu...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/memo1.pdf

From Obama after he got a lot o shit for calling out HRC on her outsourcing, and the Clintons globalized money making scams

"While it's not possible to stop globalization in its tracks, what we can do is make sure we have a government that's looking out for our workers," Obama said. "We can do more to create a government that's creating quality jobs here in America, and we can do more to create a government that's helping workers who lose their jobs."

Anyway back to work but this just grabbed my attention away from the mundane toils of marketing an American small business outsourcer who still has to deal with the globalizing, transnational 'world as we find it. Also revealing is the scant and slanted Google information regarding this little piece of political history. Man I'm still dealing with it as I try to eke out a living amongst the giant transnational squids that sole goal seems to be to squash or eat any business that gets in their way.

My work rant for today. Now I'm off to delete this freaking file and apply myself to getting a client from India who now needs some American data maybe? What a bizarre world we are supposed to operate as humans and workers in. No insults to Indian workers or there marvelous culture. It' just a global Chinatown that we all globally are forced to operate under. I'm not a racist and I resent any attempts by the pols of mass deception that say if you don't like this 'world as we find it' your a racist and hate or some such nonsense the Chinese, Indians or other global workers trapped in this web of deceit by and for the benefit of Global Squid Inc.

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lotlizard's picture

I ask in all seriousness because "party's" is the 100% correct way to spell the plural of "party" in Dutch.

party |pà(r)tie| de (v) [ 's ]
feest, partij

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shaharazade's picture

I was born and grew up in LA, California. My grandfather was Welsh immigrant who moved to California from Iowa and had a ranch in the San Fernando Valley which at that time was rural and filled with ranchs orchards and farms. He used to talk and sing to me in his native strange sounding language. I spell it that way because the other way looks weird to me. Spell check says it's okay so I use it. Parties seems like the plural of party as in let's go to some parties and party.

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The organization of active and reserve duty soldiers, called Breaking the Silence, gathered testimonies from more than 60 enlisted men and officers who served in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.

The soldiers described reducing Gaza neighborhoods to sand, firing artillery at random houses to avenge fallen comrades, shooting at innocent civilians because they were bored and watching armed drones attack a pair of women talking on cellphones because they were assumed to be Hamas scouts.
...
The soldiers said they were told by commanders to view all Palestinians in the combat zones as a potential threat, whether they brandished weapons or not. Individuals spotted in windows and rooftops — especially if they were speaking on cellphones — were often considered scouts and could be shot.

A first sergeant serving in the Mechanized Infantry in Gaza told the group, “If we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming, ‘I give up’ or something — then he’s a threat and there’s authorization to open fire.”

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joe shikspack's picture

say at the UN or the ICC.

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Roger Fox's picture

Boy are my arms tired.

Opps wrong punchline.

But I am so stoked. Resurrecting my career in Golf Course maintenance, my field of academic endeavor, after being away for 20 years. Gonna have to write a blog about this path I've chosen. How at the age of 57 I am winning the battle of being over 50 yrs of age, losing a job and bouncing back, bouncing back hard. I'm too old, been out of the business for too long... what evah...

SO hows everyone else doing?... good I hope, I'm whooped and about to fall asleep. Peace out.

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FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.

Big Al's picture

As a fellow late fifties dude, mucho kudos to you.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Grandson #1 graduates from MSU this Saturday with two majors: environmental sociology and geophysics. He was recognized by this college of over 40,000 as one of MSU's top 14 academic seniors in this year's graduating class. He is off to Colorado in the fall to pursue his PhD in, wait for it, environmental soc. All those brains, and he's going to be a starving grad student so he can maybe get a tenured track somewhere as a professor doing research and teaching soc. Enjoying his job is what he keeps telling me, and I keep telling him money, money, money. While money isn't everything, it sure is at the top of the list.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

lotlizard's picture

Sounds as he's destined to be the hitherto unsung and underappreciated academic who, it turns out, just happens to hold the key to saving the world from catastrophe (in your typical "the Earth is doomed" sci-fi blockbuster).

with two majors: environmental sociology and geophysics

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Pluto's Republic's picture

It makes you sort of a hero. Really.

Believe it or not, I'm interested in golf course design. (Long time Pete Dye fan, here.) I don't golf, it's the course designs that interests me. I visited one course where the sand was entirely replaced by pine needles, and endangered birds (Ospreys) were nested throughout. It was a PGA course, in fact.

Lately, I've been watching courses throughout the Southwest, where they will soon be illegal unless they are radically redesigned to use almost no water (as is the case in California). I do wonder how that will change golf courses.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

whoohoo Roger! And man am I jealous, that would be my dream job. Biggrin

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joe shikspack's picture

it's great to hear that you're not only employed but advancing.

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mimi's picture

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lotlizard's picture

Well done!

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Note this isn't just your calls, but your location records

Investigators do not need a search warrant to obtain cellphone tower location records in criminal prosecutions, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a closely-watched case involving the rules for changing technology.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a three-judge panel of the same court, concluded that authorities properly got 67 days' worth of records from MetroPCS for Miami robbery suspect Quartavious Davis using a court order with a lower burden of proof.
In its 9-2 decision, the 11th Circuit decided Davis had no expectation of privacy regarding historical records establishing his location near certain cellphone towers.

Thus carrying around your cell phone is now a voluntary self-tracking tool.

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After investigating some flat, light and dark toned rocks around Spirit of St. Louis Crater in April, Opportunity chalked up another milestone achievement for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission – the 4000th sol or Martian day of surface operations – then did what she does best. By month's end, the robot field geologist was closing in on Lindbergh Mound, the strange rockpile near the small crater's rim.

“There was something about seeing that number with the 4 and all those zeros and realizing, 'Okay, we are today planning Sol 4000,'You kind of go, 'Really? Wow!'" said Steve Squyres, MER principal investigator, of Cornell University, in a moment of reflection. "We just cracked four thousand. I don't know what else to say other than it’s astonishing and gratifying at the same time.”

John Callas, MER project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), home to all of NASA's Mars rovers, was on the same page. "Sometimes,” he said, “you have to pinch yourself.”

It has been written many times in these pages, and it begs repeating: this rover was sent on a 90-day expedition, with the mission success mobility objective of driving 600 meters. In March, Opportunity completed 42.195 kilometers or 26.2 miles. It’s the first marathon “run” on another planet. And in April – the 4000th sol. “This rover just keeps giving and giving,” said Planetary Society President Jim Bell, professor of astronomy and planetary scientist at Arizona State University and lead scientist on the MERs' panoramic cameras (Pancams).

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lotlizard's picture

Seriously, some stock analysts complain that Apple iPads are built too well. Unlike cellphones, there are no carriers pushing people to upgrade to a newer model (and sign a new contract) every two years. If iPads don't break, people just hang on to them, which depresses iPad sales (so goes the analysts' argument).

I grew up in the 1950s when experts were assuring us that, although annoying, "planned obsolescence"—engineering things to break down or look crappy or out of date after only two or three years—was actually a stroke of economic genius and the epitome of American ingenuity. Necessary to keep consumers consuming in a consumer-based economy! It's only Alfred P. Sloan's / GM's invention of the "annual model change" that keeps U.S. car companies afloat!

Go Mars Rover! It's always inspiring to see what is possible when engineers don't knuckle under to the "just good enough" philosophy, and build something the very best they possibly can.

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