Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Piedmont bluesman Pink Anderson. Enjoy!
Pink Anderson - In The Jailhouse Now
“The American people want to know that when they borrow a book from the library or buy a book, the government won't be looking over their shoulder. Everybody wants to fight terrorism, but we have to do it in away that protects American freedom.”
-- Bernie Sanders
News and Opinion
Whistleblowers Back “Surveillance State Repeal Act”
There is no sign of an end to the erosion of Constitutional liberties that began under George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks and continues under Barack Obama, a group of seven national security whistleblowers said Monday.
“The government chose in great secrecy to unchain itself,” said Thomas Drake, who was working at the National Security Agency in 2001 and said he saw lawlessness spread under the name of “exigent conditions” during the Bush presidency. ...
Now, Drake said, he is throwing his weight behind H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act.
The bill would completely repeal the 2001 PATRIOT Act (which the NSA cites as the legal basis for its bulk phone metadata collection), repeal the FISA Amendments Act (which ostensibly legitimizes Internet spying) and otherwise protect people’s privacy.
It’s a bipartisan but dark-horse legislative gambit that Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have thrown into the mix as Congress debates over the next few weeks what to do before three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act expire — including the one used for bulk metadata.
Jeremy Scahill on Drones, Special Ops & ISIS
Challenging American Exceptionalism
President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages - including one American - during a drone strike in Pakistan. Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama described America as “exceptional.” When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, “Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.”
American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.
Contrary to popular opinion, the use of drones does not result in fewer civilian casualties than manned bombers. A study based on classified military data, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Center for Civilians in Conflict, concluded that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than manned fighter aircraft.
Moreover, a panel with experienced specialists from both the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations issued a 77-page report for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, which found there was no indication that drone strikes had advanced "long-term U.S. security interests."
Nevertheless, the Obama administration maintains a double standard for apologies to the families of drone victims. “The White House is setting a dangerous precedent – that if you are western and hit by accident we’ll say we are sorry,” said Reprieve attorney Alka Pradhan, “but we’ll put up a stone wall of silence if you are a Yemeni or Pakistani civilian who lost an innocent loved one. Inconsistencies like this are seen around the world as hypocritical, and do the United States’ image real harm.”
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi on Nuclear Deal, Islamic State, Women’s Rights
Republicans propose directly funding Iraqi militias in war against Isis
Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed directly underwriting the Kurdish peshmerga and Sunni irregular forces, rather than aiding US partners in the war against the Islamic State through the Iraqi government nominally controlling them.
At least $178m, and possibly as much as $429m, would go directly to “Kurdish and tribal security forces or other local security forces with a national security mission”, according to the text of next year’s half-trillion dollar defense authorization bill released on Monday by the House Armed Services Committee.
The bill, a critical legislative prerequisite for funding the US military, risks placing a wedge between the US and its ally in Baghdad and encouraging the sectarianism the provision seeks to prevent.
Unless the secretaries of state and defense jointly specify that the government of Iraq under US-backed Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi is including “ethnic and sectarian minorities within the security forces of Iraq”, the bill would block all of its proposed $715m in funding for the Iraqi security forces over the next year. US officials have testified that their retraining of the Iraqi military is critical to fielding a ground force capable of retaking the vast swaths of Iraqi territory Isis controls.
Should the specification of sectarian inclusion not arrive, 60% of the proposed funds, or $429m, would flow directly to the “Kurdish Peshmerga, the Sunni tribal security forces with a national security mission, and the Iraqi Sunni National Guard”.
A Sea of Blood - John Kiriakou
Al Qaida’s Nusra advances in northern Syria, capturing another government base
Islamist rebels led by al Qaida’s affiliate, the Nusra Front, widened their hold Monday on Syria’s Idlib province, capturing another government base and pressing an offensive near Ariha, a town of 70,000 that has been primarily in government handssince the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in 2011.
The latest rebel advance came 48 hours after insurgents seized the strategic town of Jisr al Shughour, which controls the main overland supply route to the government’s military bases in Idlib province. A month ago, rebels captured the provincial capital, Idlib city.
...
Government soldiers who survived the attack escaped in the direction of the next base to the west, Msaibin. Opposition media activists reported late Monday that rebels were focusing attacks on Msaibin, which lies just two miles east of Ariha, the last major city remaining in government hands in the province.
The Justice Department Just Declared That the War in Afghanistan Is Not Over
The war in Afghanistan is not ending, US government attorneys said in court documents unsealed Friday, undercutting statements President Barack Obama made last December and in his State of the Union address a few weeks later when he formally declared that "the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion."
But Obama didn't really mean that the war was over, the government now argues.
"Simply put, the President's statements signify a transition in United States military operations, not a cessation …" Andrew Warden, a Justice Department attorney, wrote. "Although the United States has ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, the fighting there certainly has not stopped."
Warden made the argument in a 34-page motion filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia in response to a legal challenge by Guantanamo detainee Mukhtar Yahi Naji al-Warafi. The detainee asked a federal court to grant his writ of habeas corpus and set him free because Obama said the war in Afghanistan is over and the legal authorization the US has relied upon to hold him for the past 13 years is no longer valid.
"The government's position is incoherent," David Remes, al-Warafi's Washington, DC-based attorney, told VICE News. "The president says the war is over. The brief says the war isn't over and will never be over. And the government says they are being consistent with what the president said. They are twisting the president's own words. Obama was clearly making the point that the war was over, that hostilities have ended."
Six PEN Members Decline Gala After Award for Charlie Hebdo
The decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has prompted six writers to withdraw as literary hosts at the group’s annual gala on May 5, adding a new twist to the continuing debate over the publication’s status as a martyr for free speech.
The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn from the gala, at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. ...
In an email to PEN’s leadership on Friday, Ms. Kushner said she was withdrawing out of discomfort with what she called the magazine’s “cultural intolerance” and promotion of “a kind of forced secular view,” opinions echoed by other writers who pulled out.
Greenwald: Writers Withdraw From PEN Gala to Protest Award to Charlie Hebdo
Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” there has indeed been a systematic assault on free speech: though it’s been one waged by Western governments primarily against their Muslim citizens. For that reason, it has provoked almost no objections from those who dressed up as free speech crusaders that week. That’s because, as I wrote in the aftermath of that rally, the incident was used to manipulatively exploit, not celebrate and protect, free expression. Celebrating Charlie Hebdo was largely about glorifying anti-Muslim sentiment; free expression was the pretext.
This is all quite redolent of how the U.S. government and its acolytes quite adeptly exploit social issues to advance imperial aims. U.S. officials, for instance, gin up anger toward Putin or Iran by highlighting the maltreatment of those countries’ LGBT citizens — as though that’s why the U.S. government is hostile — while at the same time showering arms and money on allied regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt whose treatment of gays is at least as bad (while LGBT groups in the U.S. say nothing because those are Obama’s policies). Or American and British officials will denounce free press attacks by governments they want to demonize while cozying up to regimes that allow no press freedoms at all. It’s also similar to how neocons tried to persuade feminists to support the war in Afghanistan because the Taliban is heinous to women or justified the invasions of Iraq because Saddam violated human rights — at the very same time that the regimes neocons love the most are at least as bad if not worse on those issues (to say nothing of the human rights records of neocons themselves and the U.S. government).
This is now a common, and quite potent, tactic: inducing support for highly illiberal Western government policy by dressing it up as support for liberal principles. And it highlights the fraud of pretending that celebrations of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are independent of the fact that the particular group they most prominently mock are Muslims, a marginalized, targeted, and largely powerless group in France and the West generally.
Dozens Killed as Taliban Overruns North Afghan Province
Afghan officials have reported dozens killed as a force of several hundred Taliban fighters pour into the northern Kunduz Province, overrunning a number ofmilitary checkpoints and seizing at least two districts.
Kunduz appears to be the first major target of the Taliban’s latest “spring offensive,” which they announced the beginning of last week. ...
Today, however, the focus appears to be on the city of Kunduz itself, the provincial capital and a city of no small strategic import in northern Afghanistan.
Food, Medicine Shortages Mount in Blockaded Yemen
Hospitals in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, out of fuel for their ambulances, are begging anyone who still has fuel to pick up the injured from Saudi airstrikes to bring them in for treatment. Once there, shortages of key medications make the treatment hit-or-miss.
The big story, increasingly, is food however. The naval blockade has been holding up cargo ships off the coast for protracted amounts of time, and entry is far from assured. This has led many of the companies that traditionally ship food to Yemen to decide that they can’t take the jobs until the war is resolved.
The Saudi and Egyptian navies have been aggressive about limiting ships reaching the Yemeni coast, and even aid groups have struggled to get permission to deliver humanitarian aid. In this environment private shippers with a cargo of wheat don’t stand a chance.
UN Inquiry Faults Israel for Attacking Gaza Schools Full of Civilians
During the brief summer Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces repeatedly attacked UN facilities, particularly schools, that they knew for a fact were full of displaced civilians.
The UN inquiry expressed “dismay” at the Israeli strikes, noting they killed 44 Palestinian civilians and wounded 227 others in attacks on emergency shelters.
Israel has defended the attacks, insisting that other, closed schools were being used to hide weapons. Oddly, those sites don’t appear to have been attacked, and Israel instead hit UN sites they knew were loaded down with civilians that had just days prior been ordered out of their homes by the Israeli military
Warmongering (expletives deleted) US military lawyers attempt to exhonerate Israeli war crimes in Gaza and push the envelope for "acceptable" civilian killings:
Major US military law experts: IDF ‘contentious’ targeting complies with international law
Two leading US experts on the law of armed conflict have concluded that IDF targeting complies with international law even where it was “contentious,” and that IDF positions “on targeting largely track those of the US military.”
Although formally their report says it is not judging specific instances from the summer Gaza War, the unmistakable conclusion of the report is to support the IDF’s approach almost across the board in the principles it brought to targeting during the war – principles at the core of the public debate over alleged war crimes. ...
The two authors of the 52-page report – a summary of which was posted on the academic legal blog Just Security on Friday, but is being reported in the mainstream media for the first time here, in The Jerusalem Post – are Michael Schmitt and John Merriam.
In the academic debate over how aggressively Western militaries can fight against adversaries such as Hamas or al-Qaida, which purposely endanger civilians in war, Schmitt is one of the leading voices in the US and globally for a more aggressive posture.
Media Sues to Get Letters from Top Officials in Support of Petraeus
A coalition of news organizations that includes The Intercept filed a suit today demanding the release of information about the sentencing of former CIA director and retired general David Petraeus, who last week pleaded guilty to mishandling classified materials. ...
More than 30 people, including high-level government and military officials, reportedly filed letters of support for Petraeus ahead of his sentencing. “The letters paint a portrait of a man considered among the finest military leaders of his generation who also has committed a grave but very uncharacteristic error in judgment,” U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler said at the sentencing.
But those letters, and the sentencing memorandum filed by Petraeus’ lawyers, remain under seal in a federal court in the Western District of North Carolina. The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media, is joining the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and other media in suing to have them released. (Here’s the motion and a memo laying out the news organization’s arguments.)
Petraeus’ Mistress Scandal Underscores Dangers of Heterosexuals in Military
Readers, it’s time we turned our attention to an oft-overlooked danger plaguing our armed services. It is a threat that has left our great nation vulnerable to attack, and has resulted in precious military secrets being spilled.
I am speaking, of course, of heterosexuals in the military. ...
Isn’t it about time we address the pressing issue of heterosexual men’s promiscuity putting our national security at risk?
Look. General Petraeus was a very powerful man with a very difficult-to-spell last name. He oversaw operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and was briefly the director of the CIA. He was privy to so much secret information he should have had “CLASSIFIED” permanently stamped on his forehead in big red block letters.
So why, precious readers, did he go spilling said private information the moment his Johnson got a little jazzed?
That’s what keeps me up at night. We as a nation have concentrated so much power and control in the hands of a very small group of people who are willing to betray us all for the booty.
National Guard Deployed as Baltimore Erupts After Years of Police Violence, Economic Neglect
How the Baltimore riots should reshape Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s agenda
In many ways, the chaos in Baltimore is just the latest iteration of one of America’s saddest and longest-running stories. It is another example of what Martin Luther King once called “the language of the unheard.” King was speaking then of the riots that traumatized much of the country during the summer of 1966. But the social ills he described as kindling for the riot’s fire — poverty, police brutality and malign neglect — are, despite the nearly 49 years that followed, still powerful forces in America today.
For this particular moment, though, it’s Baltimore Police Department’s documented history of lawless violence that’s been identified as the riots’ inspiration. ... The fact that the BPD’s reputation is such that many Baltimoreans heard Gray’s story with weary outrage rather than shock or indignation is exactly the problem. The fact that the BPD rank-and-file evidently feels so comfortable with extralegal brutality, and are so accustomed to wielding it, that demands for accountability has left them panicking — that, too, is exactly the problem.
I’m quite certain that, at least to some extent, Attorney General Lynch would agree. But that’s why it’s so unfortunate that news of her interest in “finding common ground between law enforcement and minority communities” came when it did. Because once the last stone is thrown, the fires are put out, and the state of emergency in Maryland is lifted, what Baltimore and the countless places in the U.S. like it will need is not another conversation. And finding “common ground” won’t be what America needs from its attorney general or its Department of Justice.
What will be needed instead is for the authorities in Baltimore, Maryland and D.C. to stop pandering to the police unions who demand carte blanche in the field and an endless line of officials singing about their valor. What will be needed instead are signs that the authorities take fears of the rise of the “warrior cop” and police militarization seriously, and that they will no longer see the deaths of people like Gray as “tragic.” Because they’re not cosmic acts of injustice; they’re crimes. To suspend (with pay) the officers who may be responsible is not enough — and Lynch needs to make clear that she understands that, and that her predecessor’s groundbreaking report on Ferguson, Missouri, was no aberration.
Vice News provides some fairly typical coverage, with zero attempt to understand the perspective of the angry people in the streets:
Riots in Baltimore: National Guard 'On the Ground' With City in State of Emergency
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard on Monday in response to riots and looting that escalated in Baltimore on the afternoon of Freddie Gray's funeral, according to a statement from his office.
"I have not made this decision lightly," Hogan said. "The National Guard represents a last resort."
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said in a press conference late Monday evening that the National Guard was already "on the ground here, now, in the city."
Dozens of vehicles and buildings burned across Baltimore, and looters shattered the windows of businesses and made off with armfuls of goods. Some rioters were seen on live television broadcasts poking holes in fire hoses as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames at a CVS store that billowed black smoke. Hogan blamed the violence on "lawless gangs of thugs."
At least 27 people have been arrested. Maryland State Police announced plans to deploy 500 officers to Baltimore and said they will request up to 5,000 more from neighboring states.
Freddie Gray Laid to Rest, Baltimore Youth Rise Up
Anti-Brutality Protesters Battle Police and News Media in Baltimore
For the second time in five months, an American city erupted in protests and unrest following a police killing of an unarmed black person. On Saturday evening, scores of people took to the streets of Baltimore to protest the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody a fortnight ago. ...
Christie Lleto, a reporter with CBS Baltimore, reported breathlessly, “This seems to be the work of a few outside agitators.” Another anchor on Baltimore’s Fox affiliate actually remarked, “The police have said that outside agitators are responsible for this, so it must be true.”
In fact, according to the mayor, only one of those arrested hailed from outside Baltimore.
The biases and allegiances of these journalists affected their coverage. Lleto’s voice was tinged with sadness as she and the in-studio anchor, Denise Koch, applauded the protesters who invoked the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture.
“Those are the good protesters,” the anchor said. ...
Naturally, the media doesn’t portray all rioting mobs in the same fashion.
In 2013, the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl. Mostly white fans then flooded the streets in what NBC Baltimore labeled a “celebration.” It was not entirely peaceful, however. The same station described Saturday’s demonstrations as “tense and violent.” The double standard is familiar. When white people spread chaos in the streets, they are drunks who’ve made drunken mistakes; when black people erupt in justifiable rage after decades of oppression, they are depicted as violent and intimidating agitators.
In Freddie Gray's Neighborhood, Residents Say Police Harassment is Constant
Baltimore’s Disgrace Is History of Police Violence
After Saturday’s full day of peaceful protests in Baltimore calling for justice for Freddie Gray — the 25-year-old who recently died of a spinal injury suffered while in police custody — some protesters opted Saturday evening and Sunday to pursue more hands-on expressions of frustration. On Monday, the day of Gray’s memorial service, public tensions led to rioting in West Baltimore that continued into the evening.
The media also ran riot. As of Saturday night, the protests were said to have turned “violent” and “destructive.” ABC News initially reported that protesters had simply “become rowdy” but quickly amended the headline to incorporate the V-word. Conservative news site Breitbart.com took full advantage of its lack of editorial constraints to proclaim, “War zone: Baltimore erupts into violence, chaos as #BlackLivesMatter riots rage.”
When crowds turned to rioting on Monday, CNN legal analyst and New Yorker contributor Jeffrey Toobin took the opportunity on Anderson Cooper 360 to denounce the city. “Protest is an honorable thing; looting and criminality are not,” he said. “Baltimore disgraced itself today.” For Toobin, it’s as if nothing disgraceful or criminal happened before Monday, as if the city’s long history of racist police violence weren’t disgrace enough to be worth comment. On the receiving end of that violence have been teenagers, pregnant women, and octogenarian grandmothers.
Finally, the media found, the protesters were behaving according to the script — the one that casts black communities in America as powder kegs that can be contained only by the cops. Never mind that chucking hot dog buns and condiments at police and smashing up police vehicles and store windows is inherently less destructive, at least in terms of human life, than fatally severing a person’s spinal cord or shooting an unarmed man multiple times in the back. The latter two operations were performed under the sanction of U.S. law enforcement, whose behavior, no matter how outrageous, is still defended from public outrage by media and politicians alike.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news out of Chicago: federal injunction issued against striking teamsters.
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Obama Compares Progressive Opposition to Trade Deal to ‘Death Panels’ as the Left Ramps Up Opposition
At a speech to a summit hosted by Organizing for Action, the organization created out of Obama's presidential campaigns to advocate for his policies and train organizers, Obama said he wanted to address the controversy surrounding his trade policy. ...
"If you were watching MSNBC and all this stuff, and you're thinking, 'Oh, man, I love Obama but what's going on here?'" the president joked, trying to reframe the deal as part of his push for what he calls "middle-class economics," which he said was "the idea that this country does best when everybody gets their fair shot, everybody does their fair share, everybody plays by the same set of rules."
Obama also called the deal "the most progressive trade agreement in our history," adding that it has labor and environmental enforcements. Obama compared the liberal complaints to the rumors of "death panels" during the Obamacare debate.
But the line was seen as a slap in the face to some progressives.
"It's shameful to see President Obama compare Democrats who oppose fast-tracking the TPP through Congress to Sarah Palin and the delusional 'death panels' rhetoric," said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, in a statement. "Frankly, it's beneath this president to resort to such name-calling."
Senior Congressional Democrat to D.C.’s Lobbying Community: “I’m Thankful to All of You”
At last week’s Bryce Harlow Foundation awards dinner, a party thrown by lobbyists, when Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the second ranking Democrat in the House, introduced Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, Verizon, and other corporate interests, Hoyer was effusive in thanking his hosts. The Politico Influence newsletter quoted Hoyer as saying:
“I’m thankful to all of you for what you do because I think what you do is critically important to what I do and to what our people expect us to do, and that is to understand the issues that confront us and them and make the decisions that help them.”
Why So Many Americans Feel So Powerless
A security guard recently told me he didn’t know how much he’d be earning from week to week because his firm kept changing his schedule and his pay. “They just don’t care,” he said.
A traveler I met in the Dallas Fort-Worth Airport last week said she’d been there eight hours but the airline responsible for her trip wouldn’t help her find another flight leaving that evening. “They don’t give a hoot,” she said.
Someone I met in North Carolina a few weeks ago told me he had stopped voting because elected officials don’t respond to what average people like him think or want. “They don’t listen,” he said. ...
The companies we work for, the businesses we buy from, and the political system we participate in all seem to have grown less accountable. I hear it over and over: They don’t care; our voices don’t count. ...
s voters we feel no one is listening because politicians, too, face less and less competition. Over 85 percent of congressional districts are considered “safe” for their incumbents in the upcoming 2016 election; only 3 percent are toss-ups. ...
A large part of the reason [that people feel powerless] is we have fewer choices than we used to have. In almost every area of our lives, it’s now take it or leave it.
The Evening Greens
Nevada's Lake Mead Is at Its Lowest Level Ever — and Federal Authorities Say It's Going to Get Worse
California's record-breaking drought — the worst in over a thousand years — has captured headlines. But across the western United States, high temperatures and meager amounts of snowfall are causing havoc.
And it might be the sign of a new normal in the West.
Water levels in Nevada's Lake Mead, which powers the Hoover Dam and supplies water and power to tens of millions, dropped to historic lows this morning. According to the US Bureau of Reclamation, which built and manages hundreds of dams in the West, water levels at Lake Mead dipped to 1,080.07 feet, just below last August's record of 1,080.19 feet.
According to Reuters, the Bureau projects that water levels will continue to fall through at least the end of May, when it says levels could drop to 1,073 feet — far below the record high of 1,206 feet reached in the 1980s.
Melting snowpack in the Rocky Mountains flows into the Colorado River, which in turn feeds Lake Mead. In 2013, according to Reuters, Rocky Mountain meltwater was at 47 percent of normal levels.
US drought takes its toll on clean energy production
As Lake Mead shrinks, the Hoover Dam has been trying to avoid ‘dead pool’ status – the point at which hydropower can no longer be generated
The floor rumbled under Mark Cook. His legs vibrated as he stood in a tunnel tucked into the thick base of Hoover Dam, 130 metres below the tourists looking out over Lake Mead. Beneath him, water roared through steel pipes four metres tall. Nearby, heavy turbines hummed with mechanical intensity. “We’re moving some good water today,” Cook, the dam manager, said proudly.
Moving water means making electricity. But the drought is making that harder to do. The lack of water has put a serious crimp in the hydroelectric line at Hoover Dam and other power plants across the west, limiting an inexpensive and pollution-free energy source that once was considered endless.
Power capacity at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona-Nevada border, has dropped nearly 25% since 2000. In California, home to 287 hydroelectric plants and where almost half the state today is classified as being in “exceptional drought”, hydropower has fallen 60% in the past four years. ...
Some power companies in California have raised rates as they turn to pricier, often dirtier energy sources. That makes it harder to reduce the greenhouse gases some blame for worsening the drought in the first place. Meanwhile, the risk of brief summertime blackouts could rise: hydroelectric plants often are called upon to help urban power grids deal with sudden spikes in demand. ...
Some small facilities, such as those along the Truckee river in northern Nevada, have shut down. Other plants are open but struggling. The 53 hydropower facilities run by the US Bureau of Reclamation across the west are producing 10% less power than a few years ago, despite rising demand.
New York state to turn lights out for migrating birds
New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that state buildings will turn off non-essential outdoor lighting from 11pm until dawn during peak migration in the spring and fall.
The state is along the Atlantic Flyway, one of four major routes for birds coming North in the spring from their warmer winter hideouts.
To get here, many migrating species - including colorful warblers and other song birds - fly at night and navigate by the stars, using constellations to guide them.
But outdoor nighttime lights, especially in bad weather, can disorient the birds and cause them to crash into windows, walls, floodlights or the ground.
The phenomenon, called “fatal light attraction,” has killed an estimated 500m-1bn birds annually in the US, the governor’s office said, citing US Department of Agriculture data.
Canada’s provinces try to exert climate change pressure on Harper government
In the buildup to the Paris climate conference towards the end of this year, Canada has promised to announce emissions targets for the period up to 2020 by early June. Meanwhile the country’s provinces and territories – with the exception of Alberta – have formed a common front to exert pressure on the federal government. ...
Ontario stole the show the day before the Quebec meeting when the driving force behind the Canadian economy signed up to a carbon trading market set up by California as part of the Western Climate Initiative. Quebec joined the scheme last year. Now that Ontario has joined the cap-and-trade scheme, three-quarters of all Canadians live in provinces where carbon emissions will be taxed. ...
The first ministers attending the summit did agree on one point: they were all critical of the federal government. At the closing press conference, Quebec’s premier Philippe Couillard said: “We call upon the federal government right now to start working with us, first technically, then with the ministers, in order to work together in establishing our targets for Paris and the way we’re going to present our situation, our plans in the future.”
Relations between the two echelons of government are clearly tense, each blaming the other for delays setting targets for after 2020. ...
The position of the prime minister, Stephen Harper, and the federal government is well known. The overall priority is economic growth, which depends on capitalising on Canada’s substantial oil reserves, including tar sands. Couillard condemned this stance at the summit, claiming that combating climate change could kickstart the economy, whereas doing nothing would ultimately prove very costly.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The swaggering idiot returns: George W. Bush emerges from artistic exile to rehab his disastrous legacy
Aftermath
A Little Night Music
Pink Anderson - Weeping Willow Blues
Pink Anderson - I Will Fly Away
Pink Anderson - Chicken
Pink Anderson - In The Evening
Pink Anderson + Simmie Dooley - C.C. & O. Blues
Pink Anderson - Greasy Greens
Pink Anderson - Boll Weevil
Pink Anderson - Travelin Man
Pink Anderson - I Got A Woman
Pink Anderson - I got mine
Pink Anderson - I Had My Fun (Going Down Slow)
Pink Anderson and Simmie Dooley - Every Day in the Week Blues
Pink Anderson - Meet Me In The Bottom
Pink Anderson - Mama Where Did You Stay Last Night
Pink Anderson - Thousand Woman Blues
Spartanburg Music Trail Concert: Pink Anderson's "Chicken"
Freddy Vanderford & Brandon Turner
Roy Bookbinder - Travellin' Man
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
|