The Evening Blues - 2-2-16
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features r&b singer and songwriter Albert Washington. Enjoy!
Albert Washington - Having a Good Time
“Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing.”-- John Cheever
News and Opinion
Obama and the Pentagon Plan Massive Military Escalation and the Media Barely Seem to Care
Almost five years after the United States and its NATO allies launched a campaign in Libya to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the United States is on the verge of massively escalating its military operations in the war-torn country. According to the New York Times, the new effort is “expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops.” It is unclear how long this newest effort will last. ...
Slowly trickling wars are a common feature in U.S. policy. The latest war in Iraq against ISIS was originally sold as “limited,” “humanitarian” airstrikes to save the Yezidi trapped on a mountain from ISIS, and it has now gone on for over a year and a half, spans two countries, and soon will include “boots on the ground.” All this with neither the corporate media nor Congress, which hasn’t yet brought military authorization to a vote, paying much attention. ...
It’s always difficult to tell if public indifference is what leads to a media blackout or the other way around, but the Times is correct that a broad public discussion about the wisdom of committing to potentially decades-long military efforts is disturbingly absent.
When the U.S. began its anti-ISIL efforts in August 2014, ISIL was in two countries. Now, after tens of thousands of aerial ordinances have been dropped on two continents, ISIS now has a presence in over 20 countries. The U.S. has even expanded its war in Afghanistan to include ISIS, the White House announced last Thursday. None of the major presidential candidates, including the most progressive member of the U.S. Congress, Bernie Sanders, outwardly opposes the U.S.' current anti-ISIL efforts, including the once-unpopular drone program.
Drone War Protester Mary Anne Grady Flores Speaks Out Ahead of Six-Month Jail Term
Ratcheting Tensions, Obama Orders Huge Weapons Increase Along EU-Russia Border
Less than a week after Russia's foreign minister warned that NATO's military build-up near Russia's borders is "counterproductive and dangerous," the United States is ramping up the deployment of heavy weapons and armored vehicles to NATO member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Administration officials told the Times "the additional NATO forces were calculated to send a signal to President Vladimir V. Putin that the West remained deeply suspicious of his motives in the region," referring to Russia's ongoing presence in eastern Ukraine.
According to the paper, "the administration plans to pay for the additional weapons and equipment with a budget request of more than $3.4 billion for military spending in Europe in 2017, several officials said Monday, more than quadrupling the current budget of $789 million. The weapons and equipment will be used by American and NATO forces, ensuring that the alliance can maintain a full armored combat brigade in the region at all times."
The equipment could be deployed in , , and the Baltic countries, Pentagon officials said.
Pentagon to Use ISIS War to Push for Bigger Budget
The Pentagon’s defense budget request for 2017, expected to be released related this week, is said to include a major increase in funding sought to pay for the ever-escalating ISIS war, with officials saying it will be about 35% higher than last year’s ISIS war budget.
It is probably unsurprising, as the Pentagon’s escalations have already put 3,700 ground troops in Iraq, with officials openly pushing for another 800 troops in the near term, and likely more than that before the year is out.
UN Declares Syria Talks Started, Rebels Insist They’re Not Staying
Though all previous indications were that the official beginning was last Friday and they’d already held multiple meetings, the UN announced today as the “formal start” of the Syrian peace talks in Geneva, urging the nations involved to get behind an effort for a ceasefire between the government and moderate rebels.
An official from the rebel delegation faulted the UN for declaring the talks started, saying they’d overstepped their bounds in presenting the talks as actually happening. The UN, however, was fully prepared to hold the talks without any rebels, and seems to be planning to do exactly that.
At Rome Conference, Nations Talk Growing ISIS War, Expanding Into Libya
While most of the international focus this week is on the Geneva Conference aiming to send the Syrian Civil War, a separate conference is getting underway in Rome,and likely will be far more impactful, as a number of Western nations discuss the escalation of the war against ISIS. ...
The US is now saying a prominent focus of the talks will be the possibility of expanding the war into Libya, something the US and France are pushing heavily for.
Britain is likely to be on board for that push as well, with reports they are planning to send up to 1,000 ground troops to Libya, though the Cameron government is reluctant to broach the issue to parliament after the battle over expanding their own ISIS war into Syria, which involved overt lying over the number of “moderate” rebels involved.
Jordan's King Abdullah Demands Help on Refugees
In an interview with the BBC aired on Tuesday ahead of an international donor conference, King Abdullah said the refugee crisis was overloading Jordan's social services and threatening regional stability.
Jordan has already accepted more than 600,000 UN-registered Syrian refugees out of 4.6 million registered worldwide.
The government says another one million Syrians are living there, including those who arrived before the 2011 uprising. Together with Palestinians and Iraqis, refugees make up around 20 percent of the population.
King Abdullah, who is heading to the Supporting Syria and the Region conference in London on Thursday aiming to secure aid promises, told the BBC that 25 percent of Jordan's state budget was spent on helping refugees. "For the first time, we can't do it any more," he said.
"Jordanians are suffering from trying to find jobs, the pressure on infrastructure and for the government, it has hurt us when it comes to the educational system, our healthcare. Sooner or later I think the dam is going to burst," he said. "The psyche of the Jordanian people, I think it's gotten to boiling point."
Almost all West Bank land deals for illegal settlements forged, investigation finds
A fraud squad investigation has revealed that 14 of 15 supposed real estate acquisitions made by Al-Watan, a company run by pro-settlement activist Ze’ev Hever and owned by the right wing Amana, were forged. ...
In recent years, whenever the state sought to evacuate illegal outposts in the Binyamin region, Al-Watan officials would announce that they had bought the local lands from their Palestinian owners. The documents often turned out to be forged.
A police investigation that was opened in the case ended, and the case was transferred to the state prosecutor. The police did not interrogate Hever, but by questioning a chain of straw men it emerged that 14 of the 15 supposed deals were forged.
Is Law Enforcement “Going Dark” Because of Encryption? Hardly, Says New Report
Unbreakable encryption — which prevents easy, conventional surveillance of digital communications — isn’t a big problem for law enforcement, says a new report published by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society on Monday. The report, titled “Don’t Panic,” finds that we are probably not “headed to a future in which our ability to effectively surveil criminals and bad actors is impossible” because of companies that offer end-to-end encryption, such as Apple.
That’s because the technology isn’t universally marketable and there are so many other spying options on the table, as everything from fitness trackers to fridges is getting hooked up to the internet and transmitting vast amounts of data about our everyday lives. ...
The signatories conclude, not every company is going to jump on the end-to-end encryption bandwagon, because it’s not going to make them money. ... “Internet companies more recently have been shifting towards data-driven advertising, and the technology that facilitates advertising delivery has become more reliant on user data for targeting ads based on demographics and behaviors,” the report says. “Implementing end-to-end encryption by default for all, or even most, user data streams would conflict with the advertising model and presumably curtail revenues.” ...
And even if end-to-end encryption were ubiquitous, metadata — or information about the communications — is not encrypted. Phone numbers, email addresses, email subject lines, and other information is still accessible to law enforcement, and will continue to be, because it’s impossible for the company to send something somewhere without knowing its destination.
Fisher-Price smart bear allowed hacking of children's biographical data
In September, Mattel’s Fisher-Price brand announced it had partnered with a tech company to make Smart Toy, a stuffed bear that can learn a three-year-old’s name.
Naturally, it’s hackable.
Researchers at Rapid7, a Boston-based security company, found that the app connected to the Fisher-Price toy had several security flaws that would allow a hacker to steal a child’s name, birthdate and gender, along with other data. The toymaker encourages parents to use the app so that the toy can better interact with children.
Fisher-Price has since fixed the issue, Rapid7 said. ...
As far as security flaws go, this one may not be severe. But Rapid7’s findings do reinforce how vulnerable consumers can become as they bring more of their possessions online by making them “smart”. This also applies to toys. Last year, Rapid7 found security flaws in a baby monitor. Mattel also recently announced a smart Barbie that has security researchers on the hunt for bugs.
Cliven Bundy defies son Ammon in call for Oregon militia to stand their ground
Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led a standoff with the federal government in 2014, wants the protesters in Oregon to stand their ground – directly defying the message of his son, Ammon.
Days after militia leader Ammon Bundy, now in jail in Portland, Oregon, called on the final four occupiers at the Malheur national wildlife refuge to surrender and go home, the elder Bundy sent a letter to government officials declaring that the armed militia would not be backing down.
“This is notice that We the People of Harney County and also We the People of the citizens of the United States DO GIVE NOTICE THAT WE WILL RETAIN POSSESSION OF THE HARNEY COUNTY RESOURCE CENTER,” Cliven wrote in the letter, which he sent on Monday to the local sheriff, Oregon governor Kate Brown, and the White House. ...
“What this is saying is that Cliven Bundy is taking control of things,” Cliven said in an interview from his ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, on Monday afternoon. “If we don’t retain it, then we’ve lost everything that we’ve done in the last two months. We’re not gonna give up.”
He added: “This is not Ammon’s message. This is my message ... We’ve made a decision to retain it ... The feds are going to get out of there.”
Shootings and racist messages prompt DoJ inquiry into San Francisco police
The US Department of Justice said Monday that it would examine use of force and ethnic disparities in arrests as part of a review of the San Francisco Police Department amid heightened racial tensions.
Unlike investigations by the DOJ’s civil rights division, the review will be voluntary and won’t end with a court-monitored legal settlement. ...
The review comes amid calls for the chief’s removal sparked when five officers opened fire and killed Mario Woods, 26, in the city’s Bayview neighborhood on 2 December. ...
Earlier in the year, a judge ruled that Police chief Greg Suhr waited too long to discipline officers who he discovered had exchanged racist and homophobic text messages. Suhr is appealing the judge’s order, which bars him from firing eight of the 14 officers implicated in the scandal.
Suhr said he delayed disciplining the officers because he didn’t want to interfere with a federal corruption investigation into several officers. So far, the mayor has stood behind the chief, who says he has no plans to resign.
Three Financial Crimes that Show How the DOJ "Went Easy" on Wall Street
Why Wages May Matter More Than Immigration For Iowa's Latino Voters
Angelica Serrano still cries when she thinks of walking two days through the desert from Mexico into the US with 20 people, including her 1-year-old infant son strapped to her chest. She arrived in Arizona 23 years ago, and has since made a home in Des Moines, Iowa, where she will caucus for the first time on Monday night, with her son, who is now 24, translating to help her understand the complicated process. She plans to support Bernie Sanders. ...
Serrano, who is a cook at McDonalds who has raised three children on a wage of $9.90 an hour, said that she supported Sanders more for his economic reform platform and stance on unions than on immigration.
Her wage has remained the same for the last 17 years at the fast food chain. On Thursday, she walked off the job along with 11 other employees and 1,000 other workers who have joined the Fight for 15 campaign to strike for a $15 per hour minimum wage and improved work conditions. ...
"It was very hard raising children on the wage and stressful because if you pay one bill, you can't pay another," Serrano said. "I'm still paying off my debts from money I borrowed to get here."
Hillary Clinton pushed to the limit in Iowa caucuses
Hillary Clinton was given the fright of her life as veteran socialist senator Bernie Sanders pushed her to the limit in the Iowa caucuses, on a night of extreme drama in the first test of the US presidential election year.
With more than 99% of the precinct results in, Clinton led 49.9% to 49.6% over Sanders after seeing an apparently comfortable lead slip. The Associated Press and multiple outlets said the race was simply too close to call, though the Clinton camp claimed a narrow victory.
Both candidates will now move on to New Hampshire buoyed up, Clinton with a “sigh of relief” that her bid to be the first female president of the United States is alive, and Sanders believing that his revolution against the “billionaire classes” truly began in the snowy cornfields of Iowa.
With half of the results in across the rural midwest state, Clinton appeared to be easing to victory, three points up on the Vermont senator, whose relatively ramshackle campaign seemed to be no match for her mighty political machine.
But as the night wore on, Clinton’s lead shrank to two and then one point, until she was locked in a virtual tie with the 74-year-old whose passion has ignited a fervour among young Americans. ...
The democratic socialist [...] has stolen some momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary on 9 February – and a prolonged fight appears inevitable, a far cry from what had been envisaged as a graceful procession toward the nomination for Clinton.
By almost 11pm local time, the two Democratic rivals had both given what sounded like competing victory speeches.
Billionaire Super Pacs Are Big Losers in Iowa
Billionaires went to bed very cranky last night and are likely awakening to irritable bowel syndrome this morning. What has been working swimmingly well for them since the 2010 Citizens United decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, allowing the super wealthy to dump unlimited sums of money into Super Pacs to sway the outcome of elections, just had a wrench thrown into the gears. ...
Embarrassing for the billionaires giving to Hillary Clinton’s Super Pac, Priorities USA, was her tiny margin of victory over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has no aligned Super Pac of billionaires and millionaires, but has instead received hundreds of thousands of small checks from average people across America according to Federal Election Commission records. With 99 percent of the vote counted in Iowa caucuses, Hillary logged in with 49.9 percent of the Democratic vote versus Sanders’ 49.6 percent. ...
Hillary’s Super Pac, Priorities USA, was legally required to update its filings with the Federal Election Commission on January 31, 2016. Those filings make for some very interesting reading. Over 90 percent of the $41 million the Super Pac raised during the full year of 2015 came from a handful of billionaires and the super rich. ...
Apparently attempting to quiet nervous stomachs among the billionaire class who have lavished large chunks of their fortunes to put Hillary in the White House, Priorities USA issued a memo a few days ago alerting donors to what’s left in the war chest and what’s still pledged to come in. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Super Pac said it is “sitting on a war chest of $44.7 million in cash following strong fundraising in the second half of the year” and “has another $42 million in fundraising commitments, or pledges from its donors to contribute funds in the future.”
The Movement Goes Beyond the Man, Say Sanders Supporters
Hillary won six out of six coin tosses. Hmmm... impressive. Knowing what a bunch of low-down dirty crooks the Clintons are, I wonder if they didn't distribute loaded coins to polling stations across Iowa.
Coin tosses used to determine county delegates in Clinton-Sanders race
In a sign of how close the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has been in Iowa, officials in some counties resorted to a coin toss.
According to an obscure Democratic party rule, a coin flip can be called upon if the result is a tie. The toss was used in a handful of precincts to decide how to award the number of delegates to the county convention. ...
Unbelievable coin toss decides a dead heat in west Davenport! @HillaryClinton wins! @chucktodd @CNBC @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/CtsvYJllBf
— Andrew Tadlock (@andytadlock) February 2, 2016
In total, the Clinton camp won six out of six coin tosses.
Sam Lau, the Iowa Democratic party spokesman, noted that the coin tosses were used to determine county convention delegates, which make up only a fraction of the state delegates awarded to candidates. The coin tosses did not affect the overall result in the state.
Bernie Sanders wants raw vote count released after tight finish in Iowa caucuses
Bernie Sanders has called on the Democratic party to release a raw vote count in Iowa after a nail-biting finish left lingering doubts over the first, much tighter-than-expected, clash with Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.
Speaking to reporters on a chartered plane flying from Des Moines to their next showdown in New Hampshire, the leftwing senator said his performance in the Iowa caucus was a signal that the American people were hungry for more radical change than that offered by establishment candidates. ...
He threw little light on an unfolding controversy over certain Iowa precincts that did not have enough Democratic party volunteers to report delegate totals for each candidate but did call on officials to take the unusual step of revealing underlying voter totals. Delegates are awarded in the Iowa Democratic contest on a precinct-by-precinct basis, irrespective of the state-wide vote for each candidate.
“I honestly don’t know what happened. I know there are some precincts that have still not reported. I can only hope and expect that the count will be honest,” he said. “I have no idea. Did we win the popular vote? I don’t know, but as much information as possible should be made available.”
Sanders’ campaign director, Jeff Weaver, told reporters he did not “anticipate we are going to contest” specific results but hoped there would be an investigation into what happened.
After Dead Heat in Iowa, Will Clinton Move Further Left to Stop the Sanders Surge?
The fractures in America’s political landscape have been exposed
The Democratic and Republican Iowa results have three things in common. First, they are an undeniable and unequivocal rebuke to the party establishments. Cruz, an ideologically driven pious Texas senator, whose grandstanding in the senate has irritated his colleagues, is far more loathed by the Republican leaders than Trump. Add the 52% they got between them to the 9% who backed Ben Carson – the brain surgeon who claimed pyramids were for grain storage and called Vladimir Putin a “one-horse country” – and you have almost two-thirds of Iowans rejecting anything close to a consensus candidate who could unite the party.
Clinton had name recognition, money, a former president-husband, a previous presidential run and virtually the entire party machine on her side. This was supposed to be a coronation in which Sanders was cast as the jester: if there was a female equivalent of regicide, this would be it. ...
Last night’s results lay bare the scale and depth of the realignment that has been taking place within the country for almost a generation: a polarisation of left and right that has made elections more volatile, politics more gridlocked and discourse more shrill. A socialist is in the running for the Democratic nomination; Donald Trump could be president. If these are the things we are saying in February, imagine what we might be saying come the Democratic and Republican conventions in July.
Oh dear. This is a brutal photo caption. pic.twitter.com/BHjhSWL1i9
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 5, 2015
Top Hillary Clinton PAC Donation Amounts to 222,000 Bernie Sanders Donations
FEC filings released Sunday provide an illustration of how dramatically the contributions of mega-donors eclipse those of normal citizens.
For example, billionaire George Soros gave $6 million to the pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA last quarter. By comparison, the average donation to the Bernie Sanders campaign — the only one mostly funded through small donors — was $26.28, according to a spokesperson for the campaign.
That means Soros gave as much money as a small city’s worth of small donors — 222,000 people, slightly larger than the population of Des Moines.
The $3 million that pro-Israel billionaire power couple Haim and Cheryl Saban gave is equivalent to about 185,000 Sanders donations, or a bit more than the population of Boulder.
'People need someone they can trust’ - Bernie Sanders
FBI is Now Involved in the Investigation Into the Flint Water Crisis
The FBI is joining the investigation into the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported on Monday.
Gina Balaya, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit, told the Free Press that federal prosecutors are "working with a multi-agency investigation team on the Flint water contamination matter, including the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, EPA's [Environmental Protection Agency] Office of Inspector General, and EPA's Criminal Investigation Division."
Balaya did not specify whether the inquiry was civil or criminal, but announced the FBI's involvement late Monday in response to a concern over the EPA leading the investigation when the agency had been criticized for its response to the crisis. ...
Balaya's announcement also comes just as the U.S. House Oversight Committee prepares to hold its first hearing on the crisis Wednesday. Former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley has reportedly been asked to testify, but is expected to decline.
Earley has reportedly stepped down as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools.
City Takeovers and the Destruction of Democracy
Everybody in the world knows by now that the water supply of Flint River, Michigan, was poisoned. But the nature of the crime is not really discussed in full, and that's what we need to be talking about.
The villain here was an emergency financial manager system, a dictatorship that was put in place by the governor over not just Flint, Michigan, but by all of the majority black or heavily black cities of Michigan. So this crime against the 100,000 residents of Flint, Michigan, whose water was poisoned, was really rooted in a crime against democracy that was being committed against most of the black people in the state of Michigan. Half of the black folks in the state of Michigan effectively were disenfranchised, denied an effective right to vote by this emergency financial manager system. And the result was, of course, this horrific poisoning of the water of Flint. But something that was not so dramatic but still just as soul-killing, which is the death of democracy in black Michigan.
And all of this happened without a peep of complaint from the Democratic administration in Washington. And the reason that there was not a peep of complaint over the disenfranchisement of half of black Michigan was because this is a bipartisan policy. Not a Republican policy, but a Democratic and Republican policy, to take the power of the vote, to dilute the power of the vote, and to give it basically to bankers and corporations. ...
Well, we know that the history of the privatization of water in the United States has been one of deep corruption. And in fact, I saw one study that showed that not one instance of the privatization of water supplies in municipalities in this country has resulted in a situation in which there were not widespread charges of corruption. And universally, the price of water goes up.
BP makes record loss and axes 7,000 jobs
BP is to cut another 7,000 jobs after reporting an annual loss of $6.5bn (£4.5bn), the worst in its history. ...
Bob Dudley, the BP chief executive blamed the annual loss, plus a fourth quarter deficit of $2.2bn, on the collapse in oil prices coupled with continuing fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. ...
The underlying profit for the last three months, not counting the Gulf and other factors, was down from $2.2bn last time to $196m, much worse than analysts had expected.
A consensus among 17 analysts ahead of the results predicted that underlying profits would fall in the final three months to $730m down almost 70% on the same period a year earlier.
Ships' noise is serious problem for killer whales and dolphins, report finds
Noise emanating from passing ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins far more than previously thought, with new research showing that the animals’ communication and ability to find prey could be hampered by the underwater din.
The low rumble of passing ships has long been connected to the disturbance of large whales. But US researchers have documented persistent noise also occurring at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000Hz where killer whales, also known as orcas, hear best.
These noise disturbances could be hindering the ability of killer whales to communicate and echolocate – the process of using sound to bounce off objects such as prey and identify where they are. Dolphins and porpoises, which also operate at higher frequencies, may be suffering the same problems.
The findings, published in PeerJ, suggest that the noise could well affect the endangered population of killer whales that are found near the shipping lanes. A population of just 84 killer whales forage up the US west coast and into Puget Sound.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Adding Up the Costs of Hillary Clinton’s Wars
Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Record
From the First Gulf War to Islamic State: How America Was Seduced by the “Easy War”
Letting US ‘Lead’ Against Islamic State
Feeding the Military-Industrial Complex
Iowa proved Bernie Sanders can win – and that Hillary Clinton is beatable
The Flint Water Crisis is Not Without Parallel in Michigan History
Argentine Prosecutor Who Alleged Iran Behind '94 Bombing Tied to NY Money
The Flint water connection to fracking
New England: one of the Earth’s greatest spectacles - in pictures
A Little Night Music
Albert Washington - I'm The Man
Albert Washington - Somewhere Down The Line
Albert Washington - Turn On The Bright Lights
Albert Washington - Loosen These Pains And Let Me Go
Albert Washington - Somewhere Down The Line
Albert Washington - Case Of The Blues
Albert Washington - Step It Up And Go
Comments
You have several articles on ISIS, Syria, etc
And here is another one
It is posted on TomDispatch.com
It starts out when the author says that he was told early on that the VietNam war was a civil war between North & South. That became the platform of the anti war effort that eventually led to the end of the war (without millions more deaths so Nixon could win re election ....thanks to Kissinger and the military as well)
This article makes the point that ISIS is part of a civil war within the Muslim world. They only once and a while threaten the West and when the West pounds the shit out of them, they use it to recruit more supporters. They have uneven support in the Muslim world.
The articles you posted show the escalation of world efforts which will lead ISIS to keep going.
The good news is this can be the story for the peace movement which needs to be reawakened.
America's New Vietnam in the Middle East A Civil War Story About the Islamic State Might Spark a Peace Movement
evening don...
great article. unfortunately, our ruling class has a thing about bombing brown people.
Amazing that this is still PERFECTLY relevent...
Right down to the references to the people we're bombing. The Establishment sure does like to save money on scripts by repeating themselves...[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDw-zFFhFgc]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
evening dmw...
i guess it's easier to be a prophet when history keeps repeating itself.
That video shows how far back the press
Have been stenographers for the government.
I miss him and Molly Ivins
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
The EPA is going to save us
Testimony: Northeast & Mid-Atlantic States can lead nation toward 100 percent clean, renewable energy
This article is from Common Dreams today. I skimmed down a very long PDF looking for what the government calls "clean" energy besides solar and wind. I found it:
"EPA expects nuclear power to be a key partner in achieving the goals of the CPP."
CPP = Clean Power Plan. So the report is announcing a nuclear renaissance.
I won't go into the tired arguments against nuclear power as a solution. Let's just consider the global water crisis that we are heading into and then consider the amount of water needed for nuclear power plants and the amount of water that will be endangered by these plants. We are now seeing the damages to the environment that fracking has caused -- are we prepared to risk what's left of our environment with nuclear energy? The scientists are ready with their arguments to persuade us that fear of nuclear energy is so dated and so wrong. They will never convince me.
Fukushima is still leaking after 4 years!
As far as I know (things may have changed) the nuclear debate on DKos is already closed. Those who oppose nuclear energy will be accused of CT, fear mongering and anti-science. Governments/industry and their supporters in academia are ready for our protests. Just think about water and how precious it is.
To thine own self be true.
evening marilyn...
it's great to see you, i hope all is going well.
hope springs eternal for the nuke people, but for some funny reason, nobody wants a reactor in their neighborhood. i wonder how it is that they are planning to force the siting of reactors and nuclear waste storage on communities. i can only imagine that fukushima has only made the public more wary of being near such a monster.
Hi Joe, hope you are well
I'm busy painting for a course. This week-end I'm taking my grandson 7, to the mainland to celebrate Chinese New Year's in honour of my Malaysian-Chinese daughter-in-law. We have barely had a winter here and now the blossoms are coming out.
I'm not online very much these days. The US election was something I avoided until last night. I think Bernie humiliated the Clintons. Really happy to see him come so close.
The nuclear industry has been trying to cover up the effects of Fukushima because it would hurt their campaign for expansion but the truth is coming out.
Best wishes Joe! and thanks for being here with your excellent news & blues.
To thine own self be true.
Joe - Hillary "cost of wars" article had a link
a link to a 2015 review of hillary's book "hard choices" in the London Review of books
If anyone wants a take down of Hillary's foreign policy, it is there in spades and more.
She is driven by Exceptionalism, being tough, damn the consequences, as she jetted around the world.
Now that Obama and the military are pushing for a bigger budget to fight ISIS and pivot Asia, these things seem less and less tethered to reality
Her strengths are her big problems. God forbid that she become president.
We came, we saw, he died
She is so proud of her competence, they why did she not use official email? Was she dumb? Or, as an inspector general has said recently, she did it on purpose.
Here is an excellent article showing how far back that
Hillary hasn't seen a military intervention that she wasn't for. It starts in the 80's. She has so much blood and deaths on her hands and we can see from the video of when she laughed about Gaddafi's death that none of those deaths bother her in the least. She will be as dangerous as Cheney and Obama if not more.
http://www.empireslayer.org/2013/11/hilary-clinton-pro-war-and-imperiali...
And the U.S. blaming Russia for being in Ukraine is beyond asinine. I wonder how the U.S. would react if Russia overthrew either Mexico or Canada's government and installed a puppet president? I can't believe with all the shit that's they are doing that they think it's a good idea to poke Russia.
I read this statement from the link: I guess if you're the one making rules, then of course it's not a breach of the agreement.
"
The official said the Pentagon wanted a “heel to toe” rotational troop presence in Eastern Europe, meaning that there would always be the equivalent of a brigade in the region. Under a 1997 agreement known as the NATO-Russia Founding Act, both sides pledged not to station large numbers of troops along their respective borders.
Administration officials said they were confident that the new deployments would not be seen as breaching that agreement. In any event, Poland and the Baltic states argue that Russia’s incursion in Ukraine was a clear violation of the act, and that NATO should no longer abide by it.
And I keep seeing comments on kos that says that Obama hasn't started any new wars. Talk about being either naive or plain stupid. And these are the people who are going to vote for Hillary.
And there's a diary on kos celebrating Holder endorsing Hillary. Of course her supporters are denigrating any one who brings up his history of not prosecuting the war criminals or anyone in the bank industry.
Many people are saying that they didn't break any laws. If that's true, then why were they fined?
I wonder if we are going to survive the rest of Obama's presidency without having WW3?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
when I think of the time the Berlin Wall fell
and the Soviet Union collapsed and all the chances and hopes we had for peaceful co-existence and and an end of the terrible cold war, all of it now just to watch a recurrence looking at what happens in Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, like a recurring night-mare in the making. I have difficulties not wanting to cry. It's horrible to watch what slowly develops in Eastern Europe specifically, but unfortunately all over Europe, not to speak of the ME. I have a hard time not to blame the US for this. And that is terrible as well. I just don't know anymore whom I should blame for all of it.
https://www.euronews.com/
morning don...
for some reason last night i was unable to post comments after a while.
anyway, i suspect that she had her own server because she wanted to run her own foreign policy.
One of the more entertaining Black Swans
… that is helping to neuter the bloody US empire unfurled its wings today. (It actually landed in 2013, but it took this long for the US to realize it had ripped the floor out from under the US tech industry. Permanently.)
The reason it took so long for the US to catch on is because the Black Swan was an idea that was inconceivable to USians:
Am I right? Whoever heard of the US obeying some foreign constitution? Ridiculous.
This idea became the subject of one my most popular and widely read essays, which I wrote a week or so after the Guardian published its first news story about NSA and Edward Snowden on June 4th, 2013. The focus :: It is illegal (an act of war) for the NSA to spy on citizens in most foreign nations, because most nations have modern Constitutions that demand their governments protect and defend the People's Human Rights. (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified unanimously at the UN in 1948.) Universal Human Rights include the right to food, the right to affordable shelter, the right to health care, the right to privacy including digital privacy, and several others related to women, children, and self-determination. Almost all of the Universal Human Rights are denied to Americans, via omission in the obsolete US Constitution, or via the lack of direct conference (which means they can be revoked at any time, just as the right to privacy was).
The US steadfastly refused to recognize the constitutions of any foreign nation — and, at that point the world mobilized. One of the first steps was for the world to rebuild its communications technologies and systems to avoid all products or services that were touched by US laws or regulations, and any technology services from companies based in the US. This also touches on US global banking services, which have been replicated elsewhere and are now redundant.
Finally, the big ball is rolling, just in time to be disruptive in 2016. Apple iPhone is one of the first victims. US Cloud storage technologies have started relocating to better nations. But, really, the damage has been done. Thus, today's too-little-too-late pathetic news:
Much too late.
If you've been staying up-to-date with EFF and Silicon Angle, then you know that industry CEOs know that US-based technologies are poison to the rest of the world. In light of that, and in light of consequences, you might like this great article from Wired that explains How China Won the Smartphone and Much Much More.
Sanctions work both ways.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
What does this mean?
European Commission defence of European rights sinks in an unsafe harbour
It does not look settled.
And Canada recently said that it will no longer provide data to the other 5 eyes countries.
I am fuzzy headed this evening and have to go to bed because of a 6 hour cognitive test tomorrow so I don't know how to sort out your article.
Yes, yes - clear that we do not care about other countries rule of law. And they have a right to strike back.
Going to bed....
This is amazing
A comment with such brilliance, so much win.
I have no words except Thank You.
morning pluto...
i presume that this means that we will eventually have to go to war with europe in order to make it safe for american business.
no kidding /nt
https://www.euronews.com/
Those limited, humanitarian airstrikes
So sensible.
Hope you all are well.
morning crider...
the lesser evil has not yet resorted to carpet bombing or making the sand glow. i guess that's restraint and limitation.
Good evening, Joe. Hope your health is better.
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 --
morning el...
i'm down to some runny sniffles and mild throat irritation in the morning.
thanks for the well wishes!
What the zombie apocalypse looks like
That's hilarious and so true
It might change our evolution. Humans will be born with bent necks.
To thine own self be true.
Or a third eye...
in the forehead that works independently of the other two.
morning gj...
the college in my town has taken to painting signs on the ground at crosswalks reminding their students to look up from their mobile devices when they cross the street.
Iowa doesn't mean much
link
As if we don't do the exact same thing
the horror
Boy, it's a good thing that nations don't do this.
But ISIS is "recruiting" boys as young as 10
at least the "good" nations wait until the poor boys are 18.
To thine own self be true.
I sense a sad in tonight's EB ...
... and it was again the best EB ever, like every night.
It's always good to hang together and not hang alone. So, see you tomorrow. Life goes on. What doesn't kill you, makes you strong.
https://www.euronews.com/
The world is mostly very optimistic
…about the future.
Yes, the Developed nations are downbeat because their consumer markets are saturated, and they can only exploit their own consumer class — a zero-sum game at best. If they have income inequality, then they are circling the drain toward oblivion. Developed economies must become more sustainable; less material. This is causing a lot of social stress and people are are looking for scapegoats to blame. (The US is having a unique tantrum. They make a living selling weapons of mass slaughter, and by attacking other nations and privatizing their resources for profit. Fortunately, the US is the only nation that roams the globe destroying other nations. This situation won't last much longer.)
But the rest of the world is optimistic. They have everything to look forward to. Dreams and ambitions. They are visualizing a brighter future.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
ah, thank you, Pluto, so good to read your comments,
I observed a change in some people immigrating from African countries into the US. They have more and more second thoughts and the younger generation is busy building small businesses in their home countries, it looks as if they have more hope to do that than to make it here in the US. Still it's not something that most people left behind in the villages or towns are certain of. For most it's still a dream come through to "make it" to the US.
The charts are very interesting. I am amazed about the results for France. And I don't know if the results for Germany reflect a more general disposition of Germans to complain easily of social unfairness and hardship, when they in fact have very little of it compared to other countries. It's all so puzzling.
https://www.euronews.com/
Well. 4 of the "Advanced" are white genocide nations.
Most of the remainder, were the Colonizers of the Genocide nations. Once the gun was invented, white Europeans began global colonization. In those four genocidal Colonies — the US, Canada, Australia, and Israel — the ethnic native population (hundreds of millions of indigenous people) was hunted down and killed; survivors were put in concentration camps, where they remain to this day. The indigenous people were completely replaced by white European colonists. The two Asian nations are geo-strategic military outposts for the white Colonizers.
The Advanced nations are also demographically inverted, compared to the Emerging and Developing nations. There are more older people and fewer young people. This inversion requites a socioeconomic reset. Instead, they bring in more and more immigrants (young workers) to lower the median age. But it feels like reverse colonization to them.
Consequences.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
so ... if I understand you correctly there were
genocidal colonies (US, Canada, Australia and Israel) and genocidal colonists (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Japan, Spain) What is with South Korea, where do they fit in? Hmm, the ethnic native population of most African colonies was not replaced with white people, they were oppressed and managed by a tiny minority of white powerful colonizers, right? Aren't the American Indians the only native people, who were literally replaced by white people and murdered or caged into their reservations? And the Jewish population was murdered by white people, but not colonized, rather forced to migrate to save their lives if they could do so at all.
As always I am a bit dumb and confused. Who feels reversely colonized by exactly whom? I am sorry, I hope I don't upset anyone with my question.
https://www.euronews.com/
I took too many shortcuts.
Sorry about that.
The genocidal colonists spoke English. They are the UK. Colonizers who spoke other European languages were more into sex than murder. They mated with the natives instead. Their colonial offspring are known as Latin American.
Japan and South Korea are both defined by this sentence :: "The two Asian nations are geo-strategic military outposts for the white Colonizers."
You say:
Wrong era.
The Israel genocide is ongoing. There will not be a single living Palestinian in the region when Israel is done, except for those in concentration camps.
There are degrees of genocide. Both Canada and Australia were already populated before the non-idigenous white people arrived from the other side of the globe, with their guns. North America, including Canada, had a population of one hundred million that was decimated.
The American people feel they are being colonized by Mexicans. They forget that the western half of the US was the top half of Mexico, until quite recently.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Thanks Pluto, and we are in a less dangerous world
according to a report on the CBC radio, we only think the world is more dangerous today because of the news broadcasts but it was much more dangerous in past times.
To thine own self be true.