The Evening Blues - 11-2-15
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta bluesman Skip James. Enjoy!
Skip James - Crow Jane
"I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo."-- Barack Obama
News and Opinion
The Endless War Grows: Obama Sends U.S. Forces to Syria, Reversing Pledge of No Boots on the Ground
US special forces in Syria are Obama's latest broken foreign policy promise
Obama was elected on a promise to pull back US troops from the Middle East. Instead, the presidency has been marked by mission creep
The Obama administration announced on Friday it will send US special forces into Syria, breaking its repeated vow that Barack Obama would not send ground troops into the war-torn country. This is the latest in a series of U-turns and broken promises that further cements our Forever War and sets a disturbing precedent for whoever becomes the next US president in 2016. ...
While the administration says they will only be “advising and assisting” we know that the US military has already carried out combat operations inside Syria. “Advise and assist” is the same thing the White House said that our troops would be doing in Iraq, but now the Pentagon is admitting: “We’re in combat” in Iraq as well (and have been for months). ...
In 2012, Obama unequivocally said he would end the war in Afghanistan, and chided Mitt Romney the Republican nominee for not promising that. In 2013, Obama said: “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.” In 2014, Obama said: “We will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq”. At this point, all of those promises have been completely broken.
Worse, the Obama administration has effectively removed the democratic process (and Congress) from any decision making on whether to go to war. We now have ground troops inside Syria without any sort of legal authorization from Congress. Obama explicitly campaigned in 2012 on ending the Afghanistan war, which he has now extended beyond his term. The Obama administration also went into Libya and removed Muammar Gaddafi, despite the House voting against it beforehand. ...
Many have argued that the legacy of Obama will be as someone who wanted to end our major wars but was stuck by circumstance into prolonging them. The real legacy of Obama will come into focus when a President Trump or a President Cruz (or a President Clinton, the most hawkish of all the candidates) decides to start our next war, and feels absolutely no obligation whatsoever to consult anyone before unleashing our military on one country in the Middle East or another.
8 times Obama said there would be no ground troops or no combat mission in Syria
The White House is announcing Friday that a small number of special forces will be put on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria -- a new strategy that pretty clearly contradicts past Obama and administration statements that U.S. forces would not be put on the ground there. As the United States got drawn into the fight against the Islamic State earlier this year, the White House repeatedly emphasized this point -- a move to assure the nation that we wouldn't be drawn into a new war like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Asked Friday about the incongruence of Obama's past comments and putting these boots on the ground, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly emphasized that these are not combat troops -- a distinction that many disagree with, we would note -- and suggested promises to not put boots on the ground were being taken "out of context."
“You’ve read one quote that, to be fair, is out of context," he said when NBC's Kristen Welker pointed to Obama saying in 2013 there would be no U.S. boots on the ground.
But Obama has actually said no boots on the ground repeatedly in 2013, before adjusting his language slightly -- but notably -- in 2014.
[See link for detailed list of Obama's lies. -js]
Andrew Bacevich: Ongoing Wars in Iraq & Syria Continue Decades of Failed U.S. Militarism in Mideast
Obama's move in Syria reignites war powers debate
President Obama's decision to send U.S. troops into Syria is reigniting the debate in Congress over long-stalled legislation authorizing the war. ...
Democrats pounced on the decision, suggesting that it underscores the need for Congress to take up and pass an authorization for use of force (AUMF), which could also place boundaries on military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
"Regardless of my views, the War Powers Resolution requires Congress to debate and authorize the escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said, calling the administration's decision to send troops into the country a "mistake."
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) struck a similar tone in a letter to Obama Friday, adding that "the lack of will from Congress to vote on a new AUMF amounts to a total dereliction of its duties and responsibilities."
Lawmakers have struggled for months to overcome the wide divisions on a war bill. The issue has created splits between and within the Republican and Democratic parties.
While Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) pledged earlier this year to try to find common ground, members of the committee have made little progress.
ISIS War Never Authorized, Proposed AUMF Explicitly Ruled Out Syria Presence
Under the War Powers Act, Congress is supposed to vote on any war within 60 days of its launch. The ISIS war began in 2014, and because of mid-term elections looming large, Congress just never voted on it, meaning the war was never authorized.
There’ve been a few pushes for Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, but they’ve never gotten far. beyond their respective committees. The administration has simply ignored the lack of authorization for the war so far, but deploying ground troops into Syria is likely to bring the question some new attention.
This is doubly true because, back when those AUMF proposals were making the rounds, endorsed by the White House, they almost all explicitly banned sending ground troops into Syria, meaning even if the administration had gotten their requested authorization, they’d be violating it now.
Syrian MP: US Deployment an Act of Aggression
Syrian MP Sharif Shehadeh was critical of the US for deciding after five years to suddenly send the troops into Syria, particularly since they’d made the announcement without asking the Syrian government and indeed don’t intend to coordinate with Syria at all on the matter.
“Will America allow Russian ground troops to go into America without an agreement? I think the answer is no,” noted Shehadeh. Indeed, the most the State Department said on the matter was that the newly deployed troops are only intended to fight ISIS, and not the Syrian government itself. ...
The US has often presented its “advisory” deployments as something short of direct acts of war by arguing they are supported by the governments of the various nations they’re involved in. In Syria, there is no pretense at all of this, however, and Syria objects to the move.
Al-Qaeda’s Zawahri Urges Syrian Unity Against Russia, US, Shi’ites
In a newly released audio message directed at Syria and released on the Internet, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged all Sunni Muslims in the nation, and particularly his supporters, to band together to confront the threat of war from various factions.
“The Americans, Russians, Iranians, Alawites, and Hezbollah are coordinating their war against us,” Zawahri said, saying it was time for the various Islamist factions to stop fighting amongst themselves and direct the fighting against all those factions.
Perpetual wars taking heavy toll on once-protected hospitals
A month after a U.S. AC130 aircraft raked a Doctors Without Borders trauma hospital in Afghanistan with canon fire, killing 30 including a dozen staff members, there is still no official U.S. report on what the United States believed led to the assault.
But in the time since the attack, other medical facilities have been targeted in a range of conflicts around the world, heightening growing concerns among humanitarian workers that the long tradition of sanctity for hospitals, clinics and medical workers in combat zones has vanished in an era of scorched-earth combat.
Last week, Doctors Without Borders denounced what it said was an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition on a hospital in northern Yemen, where Saudi Arabia, with American logistical support, has been waging war against rebels backed by Iran.
And on Saturday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, after meeting with the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, issued a denunciation of what he called “the brazen and brutal erosion of respect for international humanitarian law.”
“These violations have become so routine there is a risk people will think that the deliberate bombing of civilians, the targeting of humanitarian and healthcare workers, and attacks on schools, hospitals and places of worship are an inevitable result of conflict,” he said.
More Countries Than Ever Are Bombing Syria -- Will They Find a Way to Make Peace?
Respect Turkey election result, says victorious Erdoğan
Strongman president hits out at global media after AKP secures unexpected majority in parliamentary polls
Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has demanded the world respect the result of the country’s parliamentary election after his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) swept back to single-party government with an unexpectedly convincing win.
With all the ballots counted early on Monday, preliminary projections pointed to the AKP getting 317 seats in the 550-member parliament on 49% of the vote, restoring the majority it lost in a June election. Erdoğan said voters had opted for stability, but in characteristically pugnacious form in Istanbul, he also attacked the global media and its criticism of him.
The high-stakes vote, Turkey’s second in five months, took place in a climate of mounting tension and violence following an inconclusive June poll in which the conservative, Islamic-leaning AKP failed to secure an outright majority for the first time since coming to power in 2002.
The result could exacerbate divisions in a country deeply polarised along both ethnic and sectarian lines; Erdoğan is adored by supporters who hail him as a transformative figure who has modernised the country, but loathed by critics who see him as an increasingly autocratic, even despotic leader.
The AKP won with a far higher margin of victory than even party insiders had expected. ...
The leftist, pro-Kurdish HDP party gained a small crumb of comfort from passing the 10% threshold it needed to secure seats as a party in the new parliament – less than the 13% it scored in June, but enough to deny the AKP a so-called supermajority, the 330 MPs a ruling party needs to be able to call a referendum on changes to the country’s constitution.
Turkish President Erdogan Regains Parliamentary Majority in Vote Held Amid Violence & Fear
Erdogan Expected to Tighten Grip on Turkey After Party's Unexpectedly Decisive Victory
Turkey's increasingly authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won an unexpectedly decisive victory in the country's snap general elections on Sunday. ...
The results were far more conclusive than predicted by opinion polls and analysts, many of whom expected the AKP to be forced to seek an unwelcome alliance with the CHP or MHP, a scenario that would undoubtedly have sidelined Erdogan and potentially exposed AKP leaders to graft investigations. ...
At a joint press conference, HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag thanked those who campaigned for the party, with Demirtas adding that despite "tyranny and massacre politics," it was still a victory for their party. He went on to say the elections had not been fair or democratic, but that HDP would "continue its fight without despair." ...
The pugnacious, divisive Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade, first as a three-term prime minister with the AKP, then as head of state since August 2014. The presidency is traditionally a largely symbolic role in Turkish politics, but since taking office, Erdogan has often bypassed Davutoglu and further tightened his control over the police, judiciary, and media.
His authoritarian streak has increased since his recent rebuke in the polls: Courts have prosecuted journalists responsible for critical coverage, dozens have been jailed for "insulting" the president, and members of the HDP have been arrested for alleged terrorism links. In the election run-up, police raided a number of opposition media groups.
The crackdown on dissident voices will likely be encouraged still further by these strong results, and Erdogan is now expected to attempt to transfer executive powers to his office, further tightening his grip on Turkey.
For some further interesting background on Turkey, see this article:
The End of the President Erdogan’s AKP Era in Turkey? – Part I
Russian Jet Crash Was Caused by 'External Activity,' Says Airline
The Russian airline whose jet crashed in Egypt killing everyone on board said today the crash could not have been caused by a technical fault or human error, and instead blamed "external activity" for the incident that killed 224 people on Saturday.
Alexander Smirnov, deputy general director of the Kogalymavia airline, told a news conference in Moscow: "The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external activity.
"The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft. There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air," Smirnov added.
He did not specify what that action might have been, saying it was up to the official investigation to determine.
Islamic State Claims It Downed Russian Airliner — But Cause Remains Unclear
Investigators are still searching for answers after a Russian jetliner crashed in Egypt on Saturday, killing all 224 passengers and crew members aboard. An Islamic State (IS) affiliate has claimed responsibility for downing the jet, but experts working at the crash site say they haven't found conclusive evidence to confirm the cause.
"It's too early to make any conclusions. The destruction [of the plane] happened in the air and the fragments scattered over a large area (around 20 square kilometers)," said Victor Sorochenko, the executive director of Russia's Interstate Aviation Commission, according to RT. ...
On Saturday, IS affiliate Wilayat Sinai claimed responsibility for the crash via social media. "The fighters of the Islamic State were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders. They were all killed, thanks be to God," the group's statement read.
Russia's transport minister has written off the claims, saying they "can't be considered accurate."
Wilayat Sinai also released a video on Sunday titled "From Sinai to Jerusalem," which calls for attacks on Israel and includes footage of recent attacks in Israeli territory, but doesn't make mention of the crash.
Days Before Runaway Military Blimp, Another Blimp Accident in Kabul Killed Five
The runaway military surveillance blimp that came loose from an Army base in Maryland on Wednesday dragged its torn tether through power lines in two Pennsylvania counties before crashing into the woods.
But at least no one died.
The same can’t be said of a recent accident involving a U.S. military blimp in Kabul that constantly hovers over the Afghan capital. ...
On Oct. 11, a British military helicopter was coming in for a landing at NATO headquarters, where the blimp is moored. According to an eyewitness who spoke to the BBC, the helicopter hit the tether, which then wrapped itself around the rotors. The helicopter crashed, killing five people — two U.S. service members, two British service members, and a French contract civilian — and injuring five more. ...
The BBC’s Andy Moore reported that the British Defense Ministry was investigating. “Official military sources say only that somehow or other, during the course of that incident, the cable of the balloon was severed,” he said.
The blimp deflated and eventually crashed to the ground nearby.
Its deflation was captured on video. Afghan onlookers, used to seeing the blimp as impregnable and omniscient, cheered, and urged the person filming it to post the video on Facebook, which he did.
The Pentagon Blew $43 Million On 'The World’s Most Expensive Gas Station'
Somewhere in Sheberghan, a medium-sized Afghan city in the northern province of Jowzjan, lies a simple gas station with just a handful of pumps. The humble facility, which was supposed to provide cheap natural gas to local Afghan drivers, cost $43 million to build — and the US Department of Defense footed the bill.
The station was conceived of and paid for by the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO), a Department of Defense program that has since been disbanded. "We do capitalism," said Paul Brinkley, the program's former head. "We're about helping companies make money."
In the case of the Sheberghan station, "doing capitalism" meant going over budget by $42.5 million to build a little-used gas station. An equivalent facility just across the border in Pakistan cost just $500,000.
Why the project cost so much — and where that money went — is still a big mystery. The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) singled out the facility as an example of profligate Pentagon waste.
According to SIGAR, nobody at the Pentagon wants to talk about the gas station, or the $800 million TFBSO program that has been offline for just over a year. SIGAR has repeatedly asked the Department of Defense to explain why the Sheberghan facility cost $42.5 million more than was required, and the agency is now accusing the Pentagon of stonewalling.
"[The Pentagon] now says it knows nothing about the project," Sopko told VICE News.
Will Denmark Give Edward Snowden Asylum? Politicians Call For Vote In Parliament
After the European Parliament passed a resolution Thursday urging states to drop criminal charges against former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and offer him protection, two political parties in Denmark have stepped forward, the Local reported Friday. The left-leaning Alternative and the Red-Green Alliance parties want Denmark’s Parliament to vote on offering Snowden asylum.
“Snowden is a democratic hero and it is fantastic that the EU has now gone in front and is holding democracy’s banner high,” said Uffe Elbæk, a member of Parliament from the Alternative party. “I would be incredibly proud of Denmark if we were the European country to offer Edward Snowden asylum.” ...
Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance also issued a statement in support of offering Snowden asylum. However, it remains unclear if a vote would be scheduled any time soon.
Chris Hedges: Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Sheldon Wolin, our most important contemporary political theorist, died Oct. 21 at the age of 93. In his books “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism” and “Politics and Vision,” a massive survey of Western political thought that his former student Cornel West calls “magisterial,” Wolin lays bare the realities of our bankrupt democracy, the causes behind the decline of American empire and the rise of a new and terrifying configuration of corporate power he calls “inverted totalitarianism.”
Wendy Brown, a political science professor at UC Berkeley and another former student of Wolin’s, said in an email to me: “Resisting the monopolies on left theory by Marxism and on democratic theory by liberalism, Wolin developed a distinctive—even distinctively American—analysis of the political present and of radical democratic possibilities. He was especially prescient in theorizing the heavy statism forging what we now call neoliberalism, and in revealing the novel fusions of economic with political power that he took to be poisoning democracy at its root.”
Wolin throughout his scholarship charted the devolution of American democracy and in his last book, “Democracy Incorporated,” details our peculiar form of corporate totalitarianism. “One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic,” he writes in that book, “surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media.”
Wolin’s magnificence as a scholar was matched by his magnificence as a human being. He stood with students at UC Berkeley, where he taught, to support the Free Speech Movement and wrote passionately in its defense. Many of these essays were published in “The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics and Education in the Technological Society.” Later, as a professor at Princeton University, he was one of a handful of faculty members who joined students to call for divestment of investments in apartheid South Africa. He once accompanied students to present the case to Princeton alumni. “I’ve never been jeered quite so roundly,” he said. “Some of them called me [a] 50-year-old ... sophomore and that kind of thing.”
From 1981 to 1983, Wolin published Democracy: A Journal of Political Renewal and Radical Change. In its pages he and other writers called out the con game of neoliberalism, the danger of empire, the rise of unchecked corporate power and the erosion of democratic institutions and ideals. The journal swiftly made him a pariah within the politics department at Princeton.
For every job created, companies spent $296K on buybacks
Think the aggressive monetary stimulus put in place since the financial crisis has benefited Wall Street over Main Street?
Analysts led by Michael Hartnett at Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Sunday put the numbers in perspective, tallying up the results after 606 global rate cuts since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and $12.4 trillion of central bank asset purchases, or quantitative easing, since the collapse of Bear Stearns:
• For every 1 job created in the US this decade, U.S. corporations have spent $296,000 on stock buybacks.
• An investment of $100 in a portfolio of global stocks & bonds (60:40) since the onset of QE1 would now be worth $205; in contrast, a wage of $100 has risen to just $114 over the same period
• U.S. prime (“CBD”) office real estate has appreciated 168% this decade; in contrast, the value of U.S. residential property across America has risen just 16%.
•For every $100 U.S. venture capital & private equity funds raised Jan 1st 2010 they are now raising $275; in contrast, for every $100 of U.S. mortgage credit extended and accepted at the beginning of this decade, just $61 was extended and accepted in June 2015.
Supreme court case to examine alleged racial prejudice in US juries
Alleged racial prejudice at the heart of the US criminal justice system comes under scrutiny at the supreme court on Monday, as it considers the controversial case of a black teenager sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
Lawyers bringing the appeal on behalf of Timothy Foster – who admitted taking part in the murder of 79-year-old Queen Madge White in 1987 – argue he has been on death row ever since because when recommending capital punishment the jurors did not fairly consider evidence that he was intellectually disabled.
The prosecution claimed race played no factor in its decision to exclude five African Americans from the jury in the trial, which was held in Rome, Georgia, shortly after a landmark supreme court ruling that was meant to stamp out the practice of seeking to modify the racial profile of juries.
But notes found nearly 20 years later reveal that all the black jurors were identified with a “B” against their name by the prosecutors, who also said the death penalty was necessary “to deter other people out there in the projects”, a reference to predominantly African American housing areas.
Civil rights activists argue the case of Foster v Bruce Chatman, a Georgia prison warden contesting the appeal, is one of the most extreme examples of a practice that remains endemic in US courtrooms. They hope it will lead to major changes in the way juries are selected.
“This is a pervasive problem,” said Christina Swarms, litigation director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund. “It hasn’t gone away. This is not a problem that is limited to the deep south.”Black jurors are up to three times more likely to be dismissed by prosecutors in many states, she claimed, pointing to studies from Louisiana to Philadelphia.
Technology, the Internet, and Race: Tool for Liberation or Oppression?
New FBI Program Trains Teachers, Students to Snoop On Muslims
Rights groups are charging that a new FBI program to counter "extremism," expected to be unveiled shortly, employs games and online tools that encourage teachers and students to snoop on—and discriminate against—Muslims, in violation of their most fundamental civil liberties.
Entitled 'Don't Be a Puppet,' the program "leads the viewer through a series of games and tips intended to teach how to identify someone who may be falling prey to radical extremists," New York Times journalist Laurie Goodstein reported on Monday. "With each successful answer, scissors cut a puppet’s string, until the puppet is free."
Muslim, Arab, civil rights, and community groups invited by the FBI to "review" the program on October 16 told reporters that Don't Be a Puppet unfairly targets Muslims.
"Teachers in classrooms should not become an extension of law enforcement," said Arjun S. Sethi, an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, in an interview with the Times. "The greatest threat facing American schoolchildren today is gun violence. It’s not Muslim extremism."
In fact, in the 14 years following the attacks of September 11, 2001, white supremacist and right-wing extremists killed nearly two times as many people in the U.S. than "individuals motivated by Jihadist ideology," according to a report released by the New America research group earlier this year.
John Oliver: Medicaid Gap -Problem Obamacare was supposed to solve?
Muslim advocates welcome Bernie Sanders' support but want visible action
A Muslim-American student pushed the issue of Islamophobia in the US into the spotlight last week, when she asked Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to address the subject before an audience of hundreds at George Mason University.
Remaz Abdelgader, a senior at GMU, in Virginia, wanted to know more about Sanders’ stance on what she called “the growing Islamophobia in this country”.
Sanders’ response lasted several minutes.
“Our job is to build a nation in which we all stand together as one people,” he said. “And you are right. There is a lot of anger being generated, hatred being generated against Muslims in this country … There is hatred being generated against immigrants in this country.
“And if we stand for anything, we have got to stand together and end all forms of racism and I will lead that effort as president of the United States.” ...
Sanders’ remarks received approval from Muslim advocates in the US.
“I think that in putting Islamophobia in the context of racism, because he pledged to eliminate racism and bigotry, that yes, he had a good response,” said Robert McCaw, government affairs manager at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. ...
“It’s great that the candidate fielded a question from a Muslim woman and invited one up on stage,” McCaw said. “What would be better is if candidates would embrace Muslims, meet them at their houses of worship and Islamic community centers, sit down with Muslim leaders and hear what their issues are. And do so in a public fashion.”
'Next Phase' for Sanders as TV Ad Signals Move to Amplify Popular Message
Highlighting his message that "people are sick and tired of establishment politics" and casting himself as the only presidential candidate from either major party offering the "real change" that a majority of Americans are now seeking, Bernie Sanders released his campaign's first ever television ad on Sunday in the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
The minute-long ad features a voice-over cataloging his lifetime record of "fighting injustice and inequality" that began during the anti-war and civil rights struggles of the 1960s and continues today as he takes aim at "Wall Street and a corrupt political system" while demanding action on climate change, a green energy jobs program, living wages and equal pay for workers, and tuition-free higher education for all.
While in New Hampshire, Sanders received the endorsement of three state labor union organizations, including the American Postal Workers Union in New Hampshire, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 490, and the Service Employees International Union Local 560 in Hanover.
Explaining why organized workers are backing his campaign in large numbers, Sanders said it's because they "understand that at a time when the middle class of this country continues to disappear, we need an economy that works for the middle class and not just the top 1 percent."
Los Angeles considers officially 'drought shaming' water violators
Drought-stricken Los Angeles is weighing new ways to crack down on residents who use more than their fair share of dwindling water supplies. For the first time in many years, such water hogs could be publicly named in an official version of the increasingly familiar and social-media-driven phenomenon of “drought shaming”.
Earlier this month, LA councilman Paul Koretz had a motion approved that gave the city’s department of water and power 30 days to recommend measures to curb excessive water use, up to and including shutting off supplies. According to the Los Angeles Times, the city council is also considering stiffening the rules on water conservation with “substantial” fines for excessive consumption.
The naming and shaming of heavy users would be a similarly draconian step.
Bronson Mack, a spokesman for the water authority of neighbouring southern Nevada, said the publication of the names of water-wasters in his state had often proved an effective way of changing water use habits. Individuals were notified by the authorities when their names were about to be released in the public records, he said.
“Some people tell us they did not know they were on the list, and we can then work with them to help them get their water use down,” Mack told the Guardian. “It’s a who’s who of influential people. Often, people are shocked at how much water they use.”
Big Win for Farm Workers as EPA Moves to Ban Dangerous Pesticide
In what could be a huge gain for environmental justice, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Friday a ban on an agricultural pesticide linked to brain damage problems in children as well as harm to workers and communities.
The announcement on the pesticide, chlorpyrifos, comes a day ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline issued (pdf) by a federal court of appeals directing the EPA to act on a 2007 petition from Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to ban the chemical, and comes 15 years after the agency banned its residential use.
"This is what we have been seeking for years," said Patti Goldman, the Earthjustice attorney handling the case.
As PAN explains, "chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide known for its damaging effects on the human nervous system."
"[U]sed in the production of fruits and vegetables throughout the U.S., chlorpyrifos has been widely studied for its neurodevelopmental effects on children," PAN adds.
Jennifer Sass previously wrote at NRDC's Switchboard blog:
Organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos were developed as nerve agents in World War II and adapted for use as insecticides after the war. It should come as no surprise that a chemical developed as a nerve agents would have deleterious effects on people who come into contact with it when it is used as an insecticide.
"EPA’s own findings show that chlorpyrifos causes brain damage to children and poisons workers and bystanders," Goldman's statement adds, while Virginia Ruiz of Farmworker Justice hailed the proposal as "a step forward on the path to environmental justice."
Argentina to generate 8% of energy from renewable sources by 2017
Renewable energy is making inroads in Argentina. Last week, after much negotiation, the chamber of deputies approved a new law decreeing that, by 2017, the country must generate 8% of its electricity from wind, solar or small-scale hydro power, among other energy sources. The bill also calls for this percentage to increase to 20% by 2020. Developing these kinds of energy sources is one of the most efficient mitigation methods in the fight against climate change.
The target is ambitious enough, insofar as renewable energy projects will have to scale up considerably. Today barely 1% of Argentina’s energy generation mix is renewable, according to a report from Cammesa in 2014. But experts may see the target as unambitious given the country’s potential.
87% of Argentina’s electricity generation comes from burning fossil fuels, the rest from nuclear and hydroelectric energy. ...
“Legislating and implementing the law will be a real challenge, because it requires the creation of a market for renewable energy from practically nothing,” said Nicolás Brown, an engineer specialising in renewable technology. “The renewables industry and large energy consumers in general will also find it difficult.”
Another key aspect of the law is the legal requirement for heavy power users – those consuming 300 kW or more – to comply on an individual basis with the renewable energy targets enshrined by law. It forces them to meet some of their energy needs with electricity generated from renewable sources.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
The U.S. and China Are Playing with Matches
Ben Bernanke Is Still Keeping the Secrets of the Crash of 2007-2009
Apocalypse now: has the next giant financial crash already begun?
Last British Detainee At Guantanamo Goes Home — Eight Years After Being Cleared for Release
U.S. to Send Special Operations Forces to Syria
Republicans 'cautious' about confronting Black Lives Matter on campaign trail
Declassified CIA documents detail how to sabotage employers, annoy bosses
A Little Night Music
Skip James - Devil Got My Woman
Skip James - Mountain Jack
Skip James - Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues
Skip James - I'm So Glad
Skip James - Cypress Grove Blues
Skip James - Illinois Blues
Skip James - 22 20 Blues
Skip James - Skip´s Worried Blues
Skip James - My Last Boogie
Skip James - Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning
Comments
How QE helped Wall Street crush Main Street
link
Good evening, Joe. Thanks for the EB.
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 --
evening el...
thanks for reading!
hmm, dare I say it?
I fear that as long as bombs don't drop on the Western part of Europe or US soil, people (media and politicians) just deny there is any war going on. The ME may be a quagmire, but as long as the bombs fall somewhere else, it's not a real war for "them".
Someone will not like that and perhaps bombs fall where nobody wants them to fall. I could see then Obama's legacy in ten to twenty years would be seen as "letting it happen" and "enabler of the wwIII or a bystander to the whole mess.
May be he should consider resigning as a way out for him? It might be the better solution out of this mess. The whole development feels unreal and surreal and eerie.
Thanks for the list, I will read more tomorrow.
evening mimi...
it's interesting, most of the people that i know feel pretty disconnected from these wars, in no small part because even if we have a stake in them, we no longer have a voice. these are executive wars of choice, the legislature - i.e., the instrument of the people's will, appears to want no part of its constitutional role in this matter. never has the term "do nothing congress" been a more apt descriptor for the actions of the collection of derelict morons that inhabit the offices of representatives.
just read an opinion piece in Der Spiegel that
talks along your thinking as well, citing Portugal, whose politician clearly said that not the will of the voter (or the peopel's will) counts, not the democratic values count, but those of the financial economy and the interests of the banks.
Präsident Aníbal Cavaco Silva refused to hand the governmental restructuring over to the democratically elected left majority and caused a constitutional crisis with it, which could have effects on whole Europe. His argument was that a leftist government would set the "wrong signals to the financial institutions, investors and markets". The majority of the Portuguese had voted to discard or at least weaken austerity policies, but Cavaco Silva thinks that is "too risky" towards Brussels and the financial markets.
I mean what are the votes still good for? People feel disconnected pretty much in Europe too, not only from wars. Even if they seem "to do something" it's rarely what people really voted for.
the old guard will not yield...
power without a struggle. portugal could have an outbreak of interesting times soon.
In Germany the elites worry about Pegida, AfD, and neo-Nazis but
won't admit that it's their, the elites', own fault.
If the elites hadn't so thoroughly insulated themselves from the concerns of ordinary people, the latter wouldn't find right-wing pied pipers appealing. But the elites did what elites do, which is revert to rule by oligarchy in democratic disguise.
People think they see through the disguise now. They know their lives are getting harder and harder. They sense that they no longer have a say in anything. They don't want GMO? Trade treaties will ram it down their throat. There is disillusionment with a lack of integrity in all of society's institutions. Banks are beyond the law. Even VW, it turns out, is cheating.
Traditional national power centers are being rejected. People in Catalonia want out. People in Scotland want out.
People sense they have again become vassals to invisible overlords — the truly wealthy who live in their own world. Among these are many key players who wouldn't be all that sorry to see a shooting war break out between the West and Russia-and/or-China. In fact, they'd rake in enormous profits if it did.
Democracy is window-dressing. Decision-making in Berlin and especially Brussels — where both NATO and the E.U. have their headquarters — is opaque and way beyond ordinary people's reach.
As in Japan, people want peace and don't want militarization and rearmament, but get steamrollered by their politicians and Washington DC.
Washington DC itself scoffs at Old Europe, spies on everyone everywhere, and feeds trillions into its nuclear armed jukebox — which nowadays somehow only plays songs by "Ned 'n' Yeah Who?" and "Della Viva and the Saöudeez."
Millions of Muslims far away, at home in their own land? A threat we must bomb, invade, or cull with drones and commando death squads ("Special Forces"). If you disagree you risk being called a naïve pacifist, blame-America-firster, or even an anti-Semite.
Yet: a million mostly Muslim undocumented and unscreened immigrants per year, not a few of them genuine anti-Semites? Not a problem. If you say you do see a problem you risk being lumped in with hooligans, racists, provincial idiots, and neo-Nazis.
Mixed messages?
The above opinions and conclusions are not necessarily my own. They're my attempt to empathize with what I'm hearing from ordinary people in Germany. (It's what David Brooks and Tom Friedman do all the time for big bucks on the op-ed page of the New York Times, so please indulge penniless me!)
From the Swiss newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung (in German):
Germany and the refugee crisis: Merkeldämmerung (“Twilight of the Merkel”, an allusion to Wagner’s “Twilight of the Gods”)
oh, goody, lotlizard, I will come back to this one,
so well put together and expressed. Bye. See you later.
I am puzzled about the article "Merkeldämmerung",
can't follow. If there is something that I don't think Merkel did wrong then it's her insistence to open Gernamy for the refugees. She should apologize for that? Why? The author is former "Bild" Zeitung chief editor, heh, not my kind of newspaper, even if he writes in the Neue Zuericher. Ack, didn't read the whole article to the end. May be later. Germany is almost foreign to me already. Awful.
This part matches up with what I hear people saying
With a lot of people, it isn't that they are against helping refugees in reasonable numbers. It's that they have the impression politicians are (once again) taking them for fools and that Merkel in particular is being deceptively optimistic, along the lines of Kohl's promises of "blühende Landschaften" — "landscapes in bloom," i.e. that the former GDR would soon be booming economically — and "die Wiedervereinigung werden wir aus der Portokasse bezahlen" — "we'll be able to pay the cost of reunification out of the petty cash box."
They dislike the idea of Germany becoming a so-called melting pot, where an identifiably German people or German culture as we now know them cease to exist. They find it an unappealing prospect to contemplate a future where each European country would be (like the typical U.S. state) simply an area with arbitrary borders inhabited by people from every ethnic background and culture.
Anyway, I am more Left-alternative-Green myself, being, for example, a member of the co-op that publishes taz.die tageszeitung. So although I often check the NZZ for the center-right Swiss perspective, I wouldn't normally be very interested in their opinion pieces.
a sad reminder - and a question concerning Hawaii
ah, so it's the greed or envy that some newcomers get some of the money they themselves supposedly don't get, but should in their opinion. What else is new. Everything about "it's unfair, you get something, I don't get." Cross-ethnic equality is a concept most people can't live with, if they think a privilege they had is taken away for some reason. Always the same stuff.
Especially if one admits that the melting pot doesn't exist for real in US either. Isn't even worth to fear melting pots, if all you can see is self-segregation for all the wrong reasons.. Same self-segregation would happen in Germany, and most probably with much more aggression from the Germans towards the newcomers, if they can't be integrated in the job market and be offered a modest, but secure, content life.
Did you read the article about the "Historic election could return sovereignty to Native Hawaiians"? I am not sure I understand if it's only for the Native Hawaiians, who gain sovereignty, how this looks like practice? Hawaii reminds me too much of a "country that was bought out by the highest bidder". You can sense the "colonial spirit" in the rich and wealthy US mainland investors, just well hidden behind a front of progressive liberalism and a little "aloha" spirit fakery.
Sounds to me like civil unrest will come and then may be a brutal oppression? Can you educate and enlighten me what it really is all about? Would the Native Hawaiians get something like land areas of their own, in which they can establish their own governments? If that's what it would mean, wouldn't that be something similar to "reservations"?
One of the reasons I have some reservations to move to Hawaii is that it reminds me of a people, who got their land and culture taken away, similarly to some areas I know in Africa, just that in Africa Africans are the majority, but in Hawaii they are not anymore. Sigh. Sad.
One can see it as greed or envy but for them it's discrimination
That's where the (far) Right finds its opening. They can claim that for some mix of unsavory reasons, the European elites' program calls for discriminating against "locals" — Germans in Germany, Dutch in the Netherlands, Danes in Denmark, etc.
A lot of people feel it's the same as trying to rent an apartment and having the landlord look at you and say, "Sorry, there aren't any free" and shut the door in your face. But then a person of a different ethnicity comes and suddenly an apartment is free — for them. Or it could be a table in a restaurant, a room in a hotel, etc.
Try telling one of your children that the cookies are all gone and then their sister or brother comes and suddenly there are cookies.
This is where the elites, I think, failed. Because they were selling all these cutbacks in the name of austerity. And the "austerity" excuse seems to be very selectively applied.
The authorities didn't say, "There is money, but we have to save it for emergencies like global heating or a possible flood of refugees." They just said, "There isn't any money, we all have to tighten our belts."
While of course the 0.1% are living the life of Riley [peculiar English idiom] — living like a Saudi prince — and aren't tightening their belts at all.
So people say, "Just as we thought. 'Austerity' was just an excuse that they can flip on or off like a light switch depending on whether their favorite interest group is benefiting or not."
On the one hand, in the context of refugees, this comes across as mean-spirited. On the other hand, the Left has been saying "austerity" was bogus and the wrong approach all along.
It's the Left's job to redirect people's anger back at the phony austerity doctrine and its adherents, and have the 0.1% pay for the refugees too, not just the people at the bottom.
Anyway, politicians and pundits of the "New Right" can claim — and have it sound half-plausible — that there is some kind of plan to negate European culture and identity. "Look," they say, "most of us northern Europeans no longer have a very strong connection to the nominally dominant Christian faith. Muslims, on average, are much more personally invested in and committed to Islam than we are to Christianity. So Muslims, even though they're a minority, are going to 'take over' [quickly gain influence far out of proportion to their numbers] because they rigidly follow their religious leaders and do everything as a bloc."
Parents don't like it when all the school activities that up till now were routine are suddenly controversial, because Muslim parents object to the swimsuits, or the P.E. uniforms, or the food, or even the simple fact of co-education — boys and girls taking part together.
It's different from, say, black-white relations in the U.S. because unlike African-American slaves, immigration to Germany was voluntary. "If they don't like the customs here, if they think our way of doing things in Europe is immoral, why did they come? They only came for the money. They don't care about us 'locals' as people. Why should we care about them?"
And then the next step is, "The politicians I always used to vote for don't seem to care about us 'locals' either anymore. They only care about immigrants."
Finally, it's true that in Dresden, women with niqab, clothed head to toe in jet black with only their eyes showing, are an everyday sight. In Frankfurt, I can't remember the last time I saw one.
At any rate, "local" people, especially women, react negatively, seeing it as a symbol of oppression and self-segregation.
— —
This has been another hypothetical report from our hypothetical focus group with ordinary citizens in northern Europe on the topic "immigration and the shift to the Right."
I will be on the bus to Dresden all day today, and have to get ready to move, so I will probably be on c99 a lot less for the next week or two.
thanks, lotlizard, well, that's upside down imo ...
discrimination against locals is pretty much an oxymoron. Usually the foreigner/immigrant/refugee (and other more brownish, more non-christian) get discriminated (for rentals for example or other subsidies) and not the other way around. So to claim that Dresdner locals get discriminated is to me something like what some white people in the US claim to be reverse discrimination (when white students complain that black students get into college via affirmative action for example) and I don't accept that argument. Locals are citizens and they can't be discriminated on the basis of being "local", if at all they could be discriminated because of "being member of a 'lower' class, ie for economic inequality reasons". The difference to the US is that Afro-Americans are locals and they are clearly discriminated on the basis of their race and class. Brownish people in Germany are "foreigners", "migrants", "refugees", "non-citizens", "guest workers" or whatever else, but not locals. If you are brown and tell people you are German, they look at you like you are a bit "strange".
I would (as a government) go against such demagoguery. It's racism to me. On the other hand, I don't think that religious customs that come with the immigrants /refugees should be allowed to be imposed into German legislation and be accepted in public institutions like schools and universities. It's still the immigrant's host country and they have to adapt to the host countries laws. As long their religious services can be offered and exercised freely in their own mosques or other private places of worship without being threatened or disturbed, I think that would be "good enough".
I remember in the sixties, religious education in public schools was offered for several religions and it was up to the students to choose which ones they wanted to get or not get any at all. That to me is freedom of religion exercised, as the mandatory public school curriculum was not mandatory when it came to religious instructions. Everyone could get what he wanted or could abstain.
With regards to covering faces completely with a niqab, I tend to be against the complete coverage of the face, as you are not identifiable in public, which I think shouldn't be allowed. I can't stand militia men who cover their faces and can't be identified, nor do I like to not being ablet to identify whoever hides behind a niqab. They should be allowed to wear it, but must not hide nose and mouth, as to be able to identify a person by their face.
I also don't think it's the German woman's role to impose their own interpretation of female oppression on the migrant women. These women chose not to revolt against the supposed "oppression" and it's their choice to do so. None of German (christian) women's business, I would think.
Oh, well, since when get "locals" discriminated when they search for a rental unit? Just spoke to three young brownish people from Germany and they can tell you stories about not finding a rental on the base of their ethnicity. So, unless they lie, and unless something dramatically has changed, racist reactions still go on from white (and more privileged if only by their citizen status) against non-white in Germany, may be not too open, but still enough to find an excuse to not rent out to "brown" people. And may be it's different in different parts of Germany. I have no real feeling anymore what it is all about. Please correct me if I am wrong. But I hope there are enough people who clearly fight the AfD and Pegida people's arguments. They are unacceptable to me.
Thanks for your always so insightful and detailed answers ! Good luck with your move ! I "schlepped" my boxes and are going into the business of opening one by one and enjoy the surprise of revisiting old books.
Saxons and Dresdeners ask me about being a Green and I tell them
And they tell me in return that they don't know enough to have an opinion about all those national, international, or environmental problems that I bring up.
What they do know, however, is their specific local situation and everyday experience since reunification, and that makes them skeptical and distrustful.
The SED (Socialist Unity i.e. communist party) was always forcing a Soviet-dictated view of world history and international affairs on people, for all the good that did them.
And then the West German parties and economic carpetbaggers came in, and took advantage of their naïvete and haste to make up for lost time.
Now they don't believe anyone's idealistic talk and are just happy to be able to concentrate on who and what will tangibly benefit their family.
I may wish they had a broader horizon and were more progressive, but who am I to talk down to them? Who am I to act as if I know more about their lives and their schoolchildren's lives than they do?
The one thing the Greens are known for in Dresden is their unpopular stance against building the Waldschlösschenbrücke (the new bridge over the Elbe). The majority attitude was, "So UNESCO withdraws its World Heritage designation [for the picturesque stretch of river valley upstream from the bridge], so what? We need the convenience, the investment, and the jobs."
So for now in the former GDR, it's pointless to focus on what I as an American progressive and Green/Alliance '90 supporter think.
It's better if I try to listen to what other people think, and try to understand why they think they think that (even if it seems to come from a darker place in human nature than I would like).
As for discrimination, discrimination by private citizens is just as you and your friends say. I was trying to give a name to the sense that the government was slighting its own citizens in favor of non-citizens. If it helps, I take back using the word "discrimination," since it seems to be misleading.
Whatever you call it, you hear it everywhere: "We asked for [thing involving citizens and their kids] and authorities said there was no money for it because of cutbacks, but when [thing involving foreigners] came up suddenly unlimited money was magically there."
Compare it to U.S. politicians who say there's no money for anything civilian and domestic, yet always vote more money for military programs, especially military giveaways to foreign countries.
oh, what a great response, I really heart you for it.
I guess, if I would have a chance to go back and live and talk to the people over there, I would easily "understand" them, even if I wouldn't like the effect of what they think on the refugees. It ends up for me always the come down in the same way: You have to be on the ground and talk and live with the people to understand their feelings and thinking. It just doesn't work to simply read about it.
Thanks, lotlizard. I very much appreciate your comment.
also look at this article, which would sorta
counter the bad effects of "austerity" to the locals...
Refugee influx a major opportunity for Germany, leading economist says.
Well said joe
Not just the bloody wars but even in matters domestic like spying and letting the police, banks and wall street run amok. We the people, even if we vote have no say and in most cases aren't even allowed to know what these derelict morons are up to. As Nancy said It's a useless quaint piece of paper or some such thing. My neighbor a pretty liberal Democratic voter and an environmental biologist and I we're talking about our bent corrupt Democratic city government. I did grass root work for the county Dem. party and helped get these crooks elected. He said he's a Democrat in theory these days and that in reality they do not represent any of us and are not democratic at all. On a global level I don't know anyone personally from 'far lefty' liberals to conservatives, who likes or justifies these so called wars.. It shocks me when people at dkos or elsewhere on the net defend them as necessary for security or humanitarian interventions. Polling on the wars is also shocking. One of the weirdest things I've witnessed in my life is the reviving of the cold war. Seems the darkside is by-partisan.