Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Conjunto, Norteño and Tejano music accordionist extraordinaire Flaco Jimenez. Enjoy!
Flaco Jimenez - Hasta La Tumba
The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the dust and blood of our ancestors. On these plains the Great White Father is Washington sent his soldiers armed with long knives and rifles to slay the Indian. Many of them sleep on yonder hill where Pahaska - White Chief of the Long Hair [General Custer] - so bravely fought and fell.
A few more passing suns will see us here no more, and our dust and bones will mingle with the same prairies. I see as in a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal.
The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white man's medicine is stronger than ours; his iron horse [the railroad] rushes over the buffalo trail. He talks to us through his "whispering spirit" [the telephone].
We are like birds with a broken wing. My heart is cold within me. My eyes are growing dim - I am old.
Chief Plenty Coups - Crow
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
NCTim
enhydra lutris
US-led airstrikes kill 52 Syrian civilians in a day, not 1 ISIS fighter
US-led airstrikes have killed 52 Syrian civilians in one day, a monitoring group reports. There was fighting in the vicinity, but the strike allegedly failed to kill even a single Islamist fighter.
"Airstrikes by the coalition early on Friday on the village of Birmahle in Aleppo province killed 52 civilians," the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Seven of the victims were children. A further 13 were buried under the rubble, he added.
The scene was precipitated by clashes between Kurdish militiamen and Syrian rebels on the one hand and the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists on the other, about a mile away.
Targeting ISIS, US-Led Strike Kills 52 Civilians, Including 7 Children
A U.S. military strike on Friday targeting fighters with the Islamic State has killed 52 civilians, including 7 children and 9 women, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday.
According to the human rights watchdog group, an additional 13 Syrian civilians are missing following the attack on a village in the northern province of Aleppo. The deaths mark the highest civilian loss from a single attack since the U.S.-led coalition began its war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in September 2014.
"[We] condemn in the strongest terms this massacre committed by the U.S led coalition under the pretext of targeting the IS in the village, and we call the coalition countries to refer who committed this massacre to the courts, as we renew our calls to neutralize all civilians areas from military operations by all parties," the group said in a statement.
Coalition airstrikes have killed an estimated 118 civilians. However, Reuters notes, the U.S.-led attack has "had little impact on the hardline Islamic State group, slowing its advances but failing to weaken it in areas it controls."
How Many Islamic State Fighters Are There?
By Ray McGovern
Why was I reminded of Vietnam when Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Iraq to “get a firsthand look at the situation in Iraq, receive briefings, and get better sense of how the campaign is progressing” against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL?
For years as the Vietnam quagmire deepened, U.S. political and military leaders flew off to Vietnam and were treated to a snow job by Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander there. Many would come back glowing about how the war was “progressing.”
Dempsey might have been better served if someone had shown him Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent entitled “War with Isis: Islamic militants have an army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader.” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told Cockburn that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize Arab young men in the territory they have taken.”
Hussein estimated that Isis rules about one-third of Iraq and one-third of Syria with a population from 10 million to 12 million over an area of 250,000 square kilometers, roughly the size Great Britain, giving the jihadists a large pool of potential fighters to recruit.
Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda
After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria. In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda. This has become evident ever since Jisr Ash-Shughur, a small town in the northeastern part of the country, fell on April 25 to a Saudi and Turkish-backed coalition consisting of the Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al Sham, and an array of smaller, more “moderate” factions as well.
Al Nusra, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, is Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate. Ahrar al Sham, which is heavily favored by Qatar, is also linked with Al Qaeda and has also cooperated with ISIS. The other groups, which sport such monikers as the Coastal Division and the Sukur Al Ghab Brigades, are part of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army and are supposedly as anti-terrorist as they are anti-Assad. Yet they nonetheless “piggybacked” on the offensive, to use The Wall Street Journal’s term, doing everything they could to further the Al-Nusra-led advance.
American clients thus helped Al Qaeda conquer a secular city. But that is not all the U.S. did. It also contributed large numbers of optically-guided TOW missiles that the rebels used to destroy dozens of government tanks and other vehicles, according to videos posted on social media websites. A pro-U.S. rebel commander named Fares Bayoush told The Wall Street Journal that the TOW’s “flipped the balance of power,” giving the Salafists the leverage they needed to dislodge the Syrian army’s heavily dug-in forces and drive them out of the city.
With Syria charging the Turkish military with providing “logistical and fire support,” it appears that the rebels transported the missiles across the Turkish border, located less than eight miles to Jisr Ash-Shughur’s west. Whether the pro-U.S. factions or Al Nusra carried the TOW’s over is unknown. But there is little question as to the ultimate source.
US, Iran at odds over sanctions relief: Was making it public a mistake?
Two months before a deadline for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the 'fact sheet' made public in Lausanne has left US and Iranian negotiators politically exposed.
Submitted by: NCTim
Istanbul, Turkey — It didn’t take long for the initial elation over the Iran nuclear framework deal announced April 2 in Lausanne, Switzerland – greeted by dancing in the streets of Tehran and hailed by President Barack Obama as “historic” – to be replaced by criticism from hard-liners on both sides.
And it took only a little while longer for seemingly irreconcilable differences to emerge – especially on the issue of sanctions relief. In public statements, Mr. Obama said the sanctions would be phased out after Iran’s steps were verified, while Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said they would be lifted immediately with the signing of the agreement.
Two months before the final deadline for Iran and the so-called P5+1 powers to conclude a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program to peaceful uses, the detailed “parameters” made public in Lausanne have revealed sensitive negotiating positions and compromises, and left US and Iranian negotiators politically exposed.
A central question now is how they allowed themselves to become so vulnerable – especially given the time invested in recent years and the critical nature of the talks. The answer, say analysts, may lie in negotiators' foot-dragging and brinkmanship, combined with the political needs in Washington. But, they add, rhetorical disputes will not likely prevent a deal.
Why NATO Is Terrified of Russia
Someone get NATO a tissue
The twin-pronged attack - oil price war/raid on the ruble – aimed at destroying the Russian economy and place it into a form of Western natural resource vassalage has failed.
Natural resources were also essentially the reason for reducing Iran to a Western vassalage. That never had anything to do with Tehran developing a nuclear weapon, which was banned by both the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The ‘New Great Game’ in Eurasia was always about control of the Eurasian land mass. Minor setbacks to the American elite project do not mean the game will be restricted to a mere “war of attrition”. Rather the contrary.
All about PGS
In Ukraine, the Kremlin has been more than explicit there are two definitive red lines. Ukraine won’t join NATO. And Moscow won’t allow the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk to be crushed.
Why the U.S. “war on terra” is a fraud
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
By Pepe Escobar
A new scathing report by the Nobel prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility has revealed that more than 1.3 million people were killed only during the first ten years of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. What was formerly known as GWOT — or, in Dubya-speak, “war on terra” — was Orwellianized by the Obama administration into “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO).
Crucially, the report does not even cover OCO’s trail in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen (one war “won” by NATO/AFRICOM; one ongoing civil war; and two targets of Obama’s nefarious “kill list”.) Moreover, the figures on AfPak and Iraq are far from being the latest. And the total estimate of lethal casualties is considered “conservative”.
The record shows that this OCO killing machine ran amok for almost 15 years against whole swathes of the planet — not to mention burning trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds — and had absolutely zero effect in containing terrorism. Rather the contrary; Asia Times readers are aware of how I’ve defined GWOT as the gift that keeps on giving.
And it all started way before 9/11 — and the official Dubya enshrinement of GWOT.
As Israel Lobby Pushes Full-Access Inspections, US Makes False Claims on Iran Nuclear Deal
Senior US officials have been claiming that Iranian negotiators had agreed in Lausanne to accept a demand that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect any site it considered suspicious anywhere in the country, including military bases. Such a provision would have given Israel license to make an endless series of bogus intelligence claims such as the ones that had been labeled "possible military dimensions" aimed at preventing the lifting of sanctions against Iran.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repudiated the claims that Iran had agreed in Lausanne to such inspections on demand. He declared in a speech on April 9 that the IAEA would not be allowed to inspect the country's military sites "under the excuse of nuclear supervision." Khamenei's speech came the day after the Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan had made it clear that no international inspections of Iranian military sites would be allowed under the nuclear agreement.
In his press availability in Lausanne on April 2, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, "Iran has agreed to allow the IAEA to investigate any suspicious site or any allegation of covert activities anywhere."
The US "fact sheet" on the "parameters" of the agreement makes the same claim, stating, "Iran will be required to grant access to the IAEA to investigate suspicious sites or allegations of a covert enrichment facility, centrifuge production facility or yellow cake production facility anywhere in the country."
Media in Japan under growing pressure to toe the line
A former bureaucrat and media commentator has accused PM Abe's administration of using threats and incentives to ensure the Japanese public does not get the whole picture. And he fears a dictatorship is a possibility.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Shigeaki Koga was on the fast-track to important roles at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry when he deliberately stepped out of line. Fiercely critical of the government's handling of the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in March 2011 at Fukushima, the final straw came when he was sidelined for making radical proposals to reform personnel policies in the ministry.
Disgusted, he resigned and became a commentator on news programs. But the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe still had him in its sights.
In February, in an exchange on live television with the anchor of the Hodo Station program on TV Asahi, Koga insisted that he was being forced out of the company because of pressure on the broadcaster from the government.
Officials have waved away Koga's claims as fanciful and they deny the government is making any effort to muzzle the media.
With new defense guidelines, U.S. and Japan look south
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
On the occasion of the U.S.-Japan summit and Prime Minister Abe’s address to a joint session of the US Congress, the U.S. foreign policy and media apparatus experienced what I would term The Abomagasm.
In the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Brown wrote:
With his folksy charm, a nostalgic reference to a Carole King love ballad, and contrition for the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a vintage performance at a joint session of the U.S. Congress… There’s just no stopping Mr. Abe.
Not because of Abe’s rather turgid, laboriously ingratiating speech, or his rather niggardly “condolences” on U.S. losses in the war against Japan. And despite Abe’s political platform and personal convictions, which are diametrically opposed to the “victor’s justice” narrative Abe believes that the United States unfairly imposed on Japan’s history, constitution, defense posture, and ambitions as leader of maritime Asia.
Bernie Sanders: Liberal Democrats' savior or Ralph Nader spoiler?
Sen. Bernie Sanders has jumped into the 2016 presidential race. He insists he won’t be a 'spoiler' undercutting Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But the memory of Ralph Nader in 2000 remains.
Submitted by: NCTim
Democrats can get really exercised over Ralph Nader’s role in the 2000 presidential election, which Republican George W. Bush won – in the Electoral College, but not in the popular vote, which he lost by about half a million votes – when five Republican-appointed US Supreme Court justices stopped a vote recount in Florida that might have made Democrat Al Gore the winner, changing the course of US history, especially the Iraq War.
That whisker-close result and Mr. Nader’s role in it comes painfully to mind for many Democrats with the entry of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont into the race. First, some history.
When the polls closed in Florida in 2000, just 537 votes (out of nearly 6 million total) separated Bush and Gore there, with Bush having that miniscule lead when the Supreme Court halted the recount. But Nader, running as the Green Party candidate, tallied 97,488 votes in Florida – less than 2 percent of the total but a whopping figure when factored into the outcome.
If just a fraction of Nader voters – 10 percent or so – had held their noses and voted for (in their view) the less-objectionable major party candidate, the results might have been very different. That’s the lament of many Democrats who saw Nader as a spoiler.
How the Establishment Is Trying to Deep-Six Sanders’s Campaign
The Hillary Clinton campaign is now focusing its public pitch at liberal fools to get them to ignore her record and believe her words. Here are examples:
The NBC ‘News’ political analyst (and perhaps a future President Clinton’s Press Secretary) Chuck Todd posted, on May 1st, the following item, under the heading “Why Bernie Sanders Likely Helps Hillary Clinton”:
“* Why Bernie Sanders likely helps Hillary: Bernie Sanders’ official entrance into the 2016 presidential race is most likely a good outcome for Hillary Clinton. Why? He will elevate many of the issues that Clinton and the entire Democratic Party want to discuss during the primary season (income inequality, curtailing the role of big money in presidential politics, climate change). And he’ll do so as someone who isn’t interested in scoring political points – especially in the form of negative attacks – against Hillary. Hillary’s Harlem (err Brooklyn) Globetrotters now has its Washington (err Vermont) Generals. The question we have is whether it’s enough competition to up Hillary’s game.”
Trans-Pacific Partnership: Obama pushes US lead role in Asia
President Obama wants to anchor Asian countries that are increasingly tied to China’s economy to a free-market economy upholding Western standards and values.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s quest for a vast trade agreement of 12 Pacific Basin countries involving 40 percent of the global economy may sound like it’s all imports and exports, jobs and commerce. To a certain extent, that’s what it is.
But more broadly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Mr. Obama would like to conclude this year is about securing and enhancing America’s lead role in the community of Pacific nations. It’s about anchoring Asian countries that are increasingly tied to China’s economy – and overshadowed by China’s assertive behavior in its neighborhood – to a free-market economy upholding Western standards and values.
And it’s about advancing the “Asia pivot,” or “rebalancing” of US interests from the Middle East to Asia, that Obama has touted since taking office, but which most regional analysts say has not got very far as old and new Mideast crises have thwarted the shift.
This week’s congressional compromise on granting Obama special negotiating authority paves the way to swift consideration of new trade pacts – and that puts the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, and the Asia pivot, back on the agenda.
CISPA is Big Brother’s Friend
Submitted by: NCTim
This is “cybersecurity week,” according to Brock Meeks at Wired.com when CISPA (the Orwellian-named Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) is scheduled to move to the House floor for a vote. Offered originally before SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and its sister PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) were blown up in January, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich., left) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) have offered some amendments to the bill (H.R. 3523) to soften some of its critics and to avoid the same result.
The primary problem, according to Meeks, is that it tries to kill a flea with a baseball bat: Any alleged security the bill offers against potential hackers “comes at the expense of unfettered government access to our personal information, which is then likely to be sucked into the secretive black hole of the spying complex known as the National Security Agency.”
Despite some window dressing by Mssrs. Rogers and Ruppersberger, the bill still has major problems. First it has “an overly broad, almost unlimited definition of the information [that] can be shared [by private Internet companies] with government agencies.” It overrides existing federal or state privacy laws with its language that says information between private and public agencies is shared “notwithstanding any other provision oflaw.”
In addition, the bill would create a “backdoor wiretap program” because the information being shared isn’t limited specifically to issues of cybersecurity but could be used for any other purpose as well. The language is unclear about what would trigger a CISPA investigation: “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” a network. Would that apply to someone innocently downloading a large file — a movie, perhaps — that is perceived, under the bill, to be an “effort to degrade, disrupt or destroy” a network?
Is Baltimore the worst city in America?
Baltimore's law enforcement has a lot to answer for, but so do police in other cities. Baltimore has 25 percent of its population living below the poverty line, Detroit has 42 percent. Sixteen US cities are more segregated than Baltimore.
Submitted by: NCTim
Baltimore — How bad is Baltimore compared with other cities in America?
This question comes up because much coverage of Baltimore’s rioting and its aftermath intentionally or not has depicted Charm City as one of the nation’s worst-off metropolitan areas, if not the worst, a dystopian scarscape that was just waiting to burn.
That implication is the result of the media’s narrow, hot focus. Baltimore’s problems are the news, and the city’s real and terrible challenges get studied minutely in that glare. The national context? That doesn’t always get mentioned.
When you widen the lens a little bit, all of a sudden Baltimore doesn’t look so apocalyptic.
Why Police Brutality Is So Hard to End—And What It Will Take to Stop It
Has the country finally reached a tipping point with the fight to bring bad cops to justice?
The Baltimore uprising seemingly scored a major victory on Friday, when Baltimore’s chief prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, announced the six police officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death have been charged with murder, manslaughter and other counts.
Still, activists have planned protests across the nation this weekend to keep the momentum going. It would seem that the outrage at acts of police brutality has reached a tipping point. Protesters will not back down, until there are concrete signs that justice will be done in these cases and that lawmakers will reform the system that enables police to brutalize and kill people without recourse.
The events in Baltimore in the past week are on a continuum of responses to decades of police abuse targeting black and brown citizens. Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and Walter Scott are just the well-known faces of a pervasive trend. Black males are 21 times more likely to be killed by cops than their white counterparts; in central New Jersey, 99 percent of police brutality complaints are not upheld; black people are targeted in SWAT raids 42 percent of the time, way out of proportion to their presence in the population; and black drivers are 31 percent more likely than white drivers to be pulled over.
Meanwhile, police officers are rarely prosecuted for killing and brutalizing unarmed black men, like Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and are often acquitted if they do have their day in court. Think Rodney King. One of the reasons it is so challenging to end police brutality is because police officers are still held in such high regard by the public. A recent poll reveals that 52 percent of white Americans believe that police officers are treating black people fairly. Only 12 percent of black Americans think that.
Baltimore Activists Recount How Police Unions Crushed Accountability Reforms
Submitted by: NCTim
Only weeks before Freddie Gray’s death while in custody of Baltimore police, cops from around the state filled a committee hearing room in Annapolis to aggressively lobby against a wave of reform bills aimed at increasing police accountability in Maryland. The police won: every bill to make it easier to investigate and prosecute police misconduct went down to defeat, leaving the state’s extraordinarily cop-friendly laws in place. (It’s a measure of the egregious circumstances of Gray’s death and the public outcry afterward that six police officers have nevertheless been indicted.)
Civil rights advocates say they were heavily outgunned — metaphorically — by the police.
Police unions play a significant role in Maryland politics, from campaign endorsements to influence peddling. According to public records, the largest police associations, including the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, donated $1,834,680 to state politicians over the last decade and retained several of most prominent lobbyists in the state.
The Maryland State FOP organized its members to show up in force during the hearing on the police reform bills. The Facebook page for the group shows officers packing the legislative room when the reform bills were debated.
May Day demos staged around the world; Turkey square blocked
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
HAVANA (AP) — Left-wing groups, governments and trade unions were staging rallies around the world Friday to mark International Workers Day.
Most events were peaceful protests for workers' rights and world peace. But May 1 regularly sees clashes between police and militant groups in some cities.
International Workers Day originates in the United States. American unions first called for the introduction of an eight-hour working day in the second half of the 19th century. A general strike was declared to press these demands, starting May 1, 1886. The idea spread to other countries and since then workers around the world have held protests on May 1 every year, although the U.S. celebrates Labor Day on the first Monday in September.
Millions Of Workers Rally Against Social And Economic Injustice On May Day
Submitted by: NCTim
This year International Workers Day, observed in many countries around the world on May 1, brought millions of marchers and demonstrators into the streets to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
From Seattle, Washington to Dhaka, Bangladesh, demonstrators came together to rally against income inequality, along with the growing imbalance of power between the rich and the working class.
In Chicago, protesters gathered in Haymarket Square, site of the infamous 1886 Haymarket massacre. Bob Reiter, Secretary and Treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, joined with other prominent speakers, to address the crowd from the historic Chicago location.
May Day demonstrators clash with police in Pacific Northwest
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
SEATTLE (AP) — Demonstrators clashed with police in two cities in the Pacific Northwest late Friday, with marchers throwing rocks and chairs at officers as the evening gatherings spiraled into mayhem.
Earlier demonstrations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, to decry racism and income inequality were largely peaceful, but protesters who gathered later in the day confronted police, who attempted to keep them from damaging property and disrupting traffic.
In Seattle, police said black-clad marchers threw wrenches, sticks and rocks at officers in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood Friday evening, injuring three officers. Police responded with pepper spray and pepper balls and arrested 15 people. Several dozen vehicles were damaged, police said.
"This is no longer demonstration management, this has turned into a riot," said Seattle police Capt. Chris Fowler, who has been in charge of planning police response to May Day activities.
Drive to Drill: Energy Lobbyists Behind Governors' Crusade for Atlantic Oil
Submitted by: NCTim
When the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in flames off the Louisiana coast five years ago this month, the disaster killed 11 workers, injured 17 others and unleashed an undersea geyser that spewed more than 160 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The BP disaster would go on to pollute 1,100 miles of coastline and has been blamed for long-term damage to marine life and the health of cleanup workers and coastal residents, as well as costing the tourism and fishing industries an estimated $30 billion through 2020.
The scale of the calamity — the biggest oil spill in history — led many lawmakers and Gulf Coast advocates to not only call for safer approaches to offshore drilling, but to rethink the nation's reliance on offshore oil. After a halting response that drew criticism, President Obama declared two months after the spill began that "no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. … The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now."
Five years later, however, little has changed. Oil and gas production in the Gulf is expected to reach pre-spill levelsthis year. Congress has not passed any far-reaching new safety legislation for offshore oil and gas drilling, and the U.S. Interior Department has implemented only piecemeal reforms, on well casings in 2010 and cementing of wells in 2012. Earlier this month, it announced new safety requirements for blowout preventers for oil and gas wells — a reform the industry had already adopted voluntarily.
Maldives police arrest opposition leaders after clashes
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
MALE, Maldives (AP) — Authorities in the Maldives arrested three opposition leaders and nearly 200 other people after clashes erupted between police and protesters demanding the resignation of the Indian Ocean islands' president and the release from jail of his predecessor and the main opponent.
With the arrests, nearly the entire opposition leadership behind Friday's anti-government protests were detained, opposition lawmaker Eva Abdulla said Saturday. The detentions could exacerbate an acrimonious political climate in the archipelago nation, which is still in its early years of democracy.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, said "there are troubling signs that democracy is under threat in the Maldives, where former President Nasheed has been imprisoned without due process. That is an injustice that must be addressed soon."
Police arrested Sheik Imran, leader of the Islamic conservative Adhaalath, or Justice Party; Ali Waheed, chairman of the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party, and Ameen Ibrahim, deputy leader of Jumhooree, or the Republican Party.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature more reporting from the Appeal to Reason on the Walsh Commission's investigation into the conditions of tenant farmers in Texas.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Third World America: Manufacturing Jobs Return Because U.S. Workers Are Cheaper No
Submitted by: NCTim
The good news? Manufacturing jobs are finally starting to return to the U.S. The bad news? It’s only because those Chinese workers are getting all uppity these days and demanding higher wages and better working conditioners. Now U.S. workers seem so cheap and docile in comparison.
MarketWatch reports manufacturing jobs are returning to our shores in record numbers. Not only are U.S. companies “reshoring” jobs to the U.S., foreign companies are moving their factories here too.
"Sixty thousand manufacturing jobs were added in the U.S. in 2014, versus 12,000 in 2003, either through so-called reshoring, in which American companies bring jobs back to the U.S., or foreign direct investment, in which foreign companies move production to the U.S., according to a study from the Reshoring Initiative. In contrast, as many as 50,000 jobs were “offshored” last year, a decline from about 150,000 in 2003."
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lobbying: The National Petroleum Council
Submitted by: NCTim
The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly “makes recommendations” to the U.S. Secretary of Energy — as in its recent report “Arctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources,” which advocates changes to regulations that “are limiting Arctic exploration activity.”
So the NPC looks, walks and quacks like lobbyists. But legally it’s a “federal advisory committee,” a little-known type of organization that in appearance and often in reality provides yet another way for corporations to get what they want out of the government.
There are more than 1,000 federal advisory committees, including one about organ transplantation. The Department of Energy alone has 21 others in addition to the NPC. In theory all these federal advisory committees could provide a useful way for a range of experts and regular people to provide feedback on complex issues like the fossil fuel industry. In practice, the NPC is dominated by the industry itself. Of the NPC’s 210 members (all selected by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and his predecessor), 173, or 82 percent, are from oil and gas companies, corporations that provide them support services, and large utility consumers.
You don’t even have to be a U.S. citizen or represent a U.S. corporation so long as you’re a big enough player in the oil industry — other members include Russell Girling, Canadian CEO and president of Transcanada (the company behind the Keystone XL); Canadian president and CEO of Enbridge, Al Monaco; and Michel Bénézit of the French multinational Total S.A. Members of the financial industry, such as the managing director of JPMorgan Securities, have a seat at the table as well.
Ex-Colombia spy chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado jailed for 14 years
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The former head of Colombia's secret police, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, has been jailed for 14 years for spying on politicians, judges and journalists.
The 51-year-old was in charge of the now-defunct Administrative Security Department (DAS), when the offences occurred between 2007 and 2008.
She was convicted of intercepting phone calls and abusing public office.
Those targeted were political opponents of Alvaro Uribe, who was president at the time.
Export freeze sows bitterness in Venezuela chocolate trade
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
EL CLAVO, Venezuela (AP) — William Machado worked all winter harvesting palm-sized yellow cacao pods and drying the flavorful beans inside. He's part of a chocolate trade that is one of this South American county's most prized industries, but Machado increasingly fears his hard work may be in vain, squandered by a freeze on exports.
"We have nothing. We're not reaping any benefits from our harvest because we don't have buyers for the cacao," he said amid a grove of spindly cacao trees in a densely vegetated farming village on Venezuela's northern coast.
Two weeks after Venezuela's agriculture minister announced that he would make the resumption of cacao exports a priority, piles of beans are still sitting in warehouses.
The government's surprise revocation of export licenses this winter for some of Venezuela's biggest cacao exporters adds to a string of problems plaguing an industry that the socialist government once saw as a way to help wean the nation off its dependence on petroleum, which accounts for 96 percent of the country's export revenue.
Fossil of tiny, winged dinosaur, found in China, puzzles experts
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A farmer in China’s Hebei province has discovered the fossil skin and bones of a strange feathered dinosaur, and its curious wings are puzzling scientists from Beijing to Berkeley.
The previously unknown creature is 160 million years old and a remote cousin of today’s bird. Its leathery wings have scientists wondering whether the ancient animal could use them to glide or to flap them in active flight — or do both or neither.
A team of Chinese dinosaur experts reported Thursday in the journal Nature that they have gathered the animal’s fossil fragments and are trying to determine just where its wings might fit into evolution’s long history of experiments toward bird flight.
They have named the little dinosaur Yi qi — roughly pronounced “ee chee” — which means “strange wing” in Mandarin.
Wave of future: 3D printing industry to quadruple by 2020
3D printing can produce almost everything from human stem cells to a car,and is at its most popular in the industry's 29–year history. It has grown by 35.2 percent in 2014 and is expected to become a $20.2 billion global industry by the end of the decade.
The global industry for 3D printing, or additive manufacturing as it is sometimes called, was worth $4.1 billion last year following a 34.9 percent growth on 2013, according to Wohlers Report 2015. The industry has experienced a compound annual growth rate of 33.8 percent over the last three years.
It’s impossible to find another industry with more than 25 years of experience that could have such kind of growth, says consultancy founder Terry Wohlers, who has been tracking the growth of the additive manufacturing industry since the 1980s
The 3D printing technology industry began in 1986, and was worth just $295 million in 1995. The worldwide market for 3D printers,
associated materials and services is expected to grow by 56 percent this year to $5.2 billion compared with $3.3 billion in
2014, according to the data from research firm Canalys.
A "contagious" cancer is infecting clams
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Only two known forms of cancer are contagious, affecting dogs and Tasmanian devils. Now a third has been discovered -- infecting clams by spreading through the water in the Northeast Atlantic.
It's fascinating stuff, and freaky. For years, the only contagious cancers were a facial tumor that spreads between Tasmanian devils when they bite each other, and a venereal tumor that affects dogs, spread via sexual contact.
This new tumor spreads even more promiscuously -- the cells appear to float around the ocean, going from clam to clam. There's a paywalled article in Cell by the scientists who've been studying this, and Ed Yong did a great writeup over at National Geographic's Phenomena blog.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
U.S. to evaluate uranium mine cleanups on Navajo land -Justice Dept
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government will put $13.2 million into an environmental trust to pay for evaluations of 16 abandoned uranium mines on land belonging to the Navajo Nation in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, the Justice Department said on Friday.
The Justice Department said the agreement was part of its increased focus on environmental and health concerns in Indian country, “as well as the commitment of the Obama Administration to fairly resolve the historic grievances of American Indian tribes and build a healthier future for their people.”
The investigation of the sites is a necessary step before final cleanup decisions can be made, it said in a statement, adding the work would be subject to the approval of both the Navajo Nation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The site evaluations focus on the mines that pose the most significant hazards and will form a foundation for their final cleanup,” Assistant Attorney General John Cruden of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in the statement.
Dam removal study reveals river resiliency
More than 1000 dams have been removed across the United States because of safety concerns, sediment buildup, inefficiency or having otherwise outlived usefulness. A paper published in Science finds that rivers are resilient and respond relatively quickly after a dam is removed.
"The apparent success of dam removal as a means of river restoration is reflected in the increasing number of dams coming down, more than 1,000 in the last 40 years," said lead author of the study Jim O'Connor, geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Rivers quickly erode sediment accumulated in former reservoirs and redistribute it downstream, commonly returning the river to conditions similar to those prior to impoundment."
Dam removal and the resulting river ecosystem restoration is being studied by scientists from several universities and government agencies, including the USGS and U.S. Forest Service, as part of a national effort to document the effects of removing dams. Studies show that most river channels stabilize within months or years, not decades, particularly when dams are removed rapidly.
"In many cases, fish and other biological aspects of river ecosystems also respond quickly to dam removal," said co-author of the study Jeff Duda, an ecologist with USGS. "When given the chance, salmon and other migratory fish will move upstream and utilize newly opened habitat."
Tropical marine ecosystems most at threat from human impact
An international team of scientists has used the fossil record during the past 23 million years to predict which marine animals and ecosystems are at greatest risk of extinction from human impact.
In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers found those animals and ecosystems most threatened are predominantly in the tropics.
"Marine species are under threat from human impacts, but knowledge of their vulnerabilities is limited," says study co-author, Professor John Pandolfi from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at the University of Queensland.
The researchers found that the predictors of extinction vulnerability, geographic range size and the type of organism, have remained consistent over the past 23 million years.
Sustainability progress should precede seafood market access, researchers urge
Demand for seafood from wild fisheries and aquaculture around the world has nearly doubled over the past four decades. In the past several years, major retailers in developed countries have committed to source their seafood from only sustainably certified fisheries and aquaculture, even though it is not clear where that supply will come from.
A team of researchers led by the University of California, Davis, has focused its attention on fishery improvement projects, or FIPs, which are designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market, with only a promise of sustainability in the future. They conclude that FIPs need to be fine tuned to ensure that fisheries are delivering on their promises.
The researchers' policy forum titled "Secure Sustainable Seafood from Developing Countries" will be published May 1 in the journal Science.
"We're cautiously optimistic that fishery improvement projects, which fast-track access to international markets, can lead to sustainable fisheries, especially in developing countries," said UC Davis Professor James Sanchirico, associate director of the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute.
Tesla unveils the 'missing piece’ — a battery to change the world
Calling it the “missing piece” in the renewable power revolution, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled the electric automaker’s latest products — batteries big enough to power homes, businesses or communities.
Paired with rooftop solar panels, Tesla batteries promise the ability to tap the sun’s energy, day or night. They could upend the way we produce and use electricity. And at a nighttime ceremony powered entirely by stored sunlight, Musk cast the batteries as essential to ending the reign of fossil fuels and fighting global warming.
“It’s the only path I know that can do this,” Musk told a crowd gathered at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne (Los Angeles County). “It’s something we must do, and we can do, and we will do.”
Musk unveiled two basic battery offerings — one tailored for homes, the other for businesses. The home Powerwall, true to its name, can be mounted on a wall, with the smallest, $3,000 version capable of storing 7 kilowatt-hours of electricity. It will be built initially in Tesla’s Fremont auto factory before production moves to Tesla’s $5 billion battery Gigafactory, now under construction in Nevada.
US, Canada unveil rules to boost oil train safety
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rail tank cars used to transport crude oil and many other flammable liquids will have to be built to stronger standards to reduce the risk of a catastrophic train crash and fire, under sweeping new safety rules unveiled Friday by U.S. and Canadian transportation officials.
The regulations are a long-awaited response to a series of fiery train crashes in the U.S. and Canada, including four so far this year. The most serious accident occurred in July 2013, when a runaway oil train derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just across the border from Maine, killing 47 people and destroying most of the town's central business district.
"I witnessed Lac-Megantic firsthand, and I believe that we truly have to act to honor those who died and honor those who were injured" to show that safety is "our most important priority in transportation," said Canada's Minster of Transport, Lisa Raitt. She joined U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in announcing the new regulations.
Under the rules, new tank cars carrying the most volatile liquids, including crude oil and ethanol, must have an outer shell, a thermal lining to withstand fire, improved valves and thicker, 9/16ths-inch steel walls to keep them from rupturing.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Rapid Rise in Super PACs Dominated by Single Donors
Congrats on the 10-Year Anniversary YouTube, Now Please Fix Content ID
The New USA Freedom Act: A Step in the Right Direction, but More Must Be Done
Pluto @ c99p: Seventeen Useful Techniques for Suppressing the Truth, Online
Utah school selects transgender prom queen
Hellraisers Journal: Father Hagerty's Wheel of "Perfect Industrial Unionism" Offered for Study
Bernie HAS to Differentiate Himself from HRC
A Little Night Music
Flaco Jimenez & Raul Malo - Seguro Que
Flaco Jiménez & Max Baca - Beer-Drinking Polka
Flaco Jimenez & Ry Cooder - The Girls from Texas
Flaco Jimenez - NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Flaco Jimenez & Buck Owens - Love Me Do
Flaco Jiménez - Dos Cosas
Flaco Jimenez - En El Cielo No Hay Cerveza
Flaco Jimenez y Tomas Ortiz - La Tumba Sera El Final
Flaco Jimenez - La Mojadita / El Pantalon Blue Jean
Texas Tornados - Little Bit is Better Than Nada
Texas Tornados - Hey Baby Que Paso?
Little Joe with Flaco Jimenez
Flaco Jimenez y Toby Torres - MI BORRACHERA
Flaco Jimenez Y Su Conjunto - El Pesudo
Flaco Jimenez - Marina
Flaco Jimenez & Ry Cooder - La Bamba
Linda Ronstadt & Flaco Jimenez - El Puente Roto
Flaco Jimenez - No los Quieren corazon
Flaco Jimenez - Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio
Flaco Jiménez - EL Perdido
flaco Jimenez - los recuerdos del troquero
Flaco Jimenez - La Piedrera
Flaco Jimenez - brincando cercas
Flaco Jimenez- Clavelito Clavelito