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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features west coast r&b singer Johnny Fuller. Enjoy!
Johnny Fuller - Haunted House
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
News and Opinion
Congress does not have votes to block Iran deal, says Nancy Pelosi
House minority leader says Republicans will not be able to veto the deal in the House, as Senate also seems secure
Barack Obama has enough votes to get the Iran deal through the House of Representatives, despite Republican efforts to block the historic nuclear accord, the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has said.
With a Senate vote looking increasingly secure for the president, Pelosi’s comments suggest it is now extremely unlikely that Congress will halt the deal.
Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said on Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press that she was confident House Democrats would have the votes if necessary to see the Iran deal through.
"The Danger of a Failed Iran Deal": Could GOP Rejection of Nuke Pact Lead to War?
Bogus AP Claim of Iran ‘Self-Inspection’ at Parchin Fuels Condemnation
As with most of the really big Iran scandals, it all starts and ends withunsourced and bogus allegations by Associated Presswriter George Jahn.
Today, Jahn alleged that the AP had seen a document which would allow Iran to “investigate” the Parchin military site itself in the IAEA’s stead. The article itself makes this allegation in a single sentence, providing no evidence, and then is packed with condemnations from Republican hawks and other opponents of the Iran nuclear deal. ...
Ironically, the allegation isn’t even a brand new one. Last month, theclaims surrounded testimonyfrom John Kerry and the narrative was that Iran would be using its own inspectors to collect samples at Parchin as part of an attempt to limit IAEA access.
Which was itself partially true, but misleading. The Parchin site is a massive, active military facility, and it was always an assumption that the IAEA access to the site would not be absolute. There were always assumed by everyone to be parts of the conventional military facility to which IAEA access would be limited. US officials affirmed as much in the last days of negotiations, saying they wouldn’t agree to give the IAEA unrestricted access either. Iran would be providing additional samples from such sites within the Parchin compound. ...
Jahn has spent so many years manufacturing false claims about Parchin that he can’t even keep the story straight, referring to it in today’s story as the “Parchin nuclear site,” even though it is a conventional military site that was only alleged to have had some past, limited explosives testing related to possible nuclear triggers.
UN Watchdog Says Access to Suspected Iran Nuclear Site Meets Demands
The International Atomic Energy Association said Thursday that it was satisfied by the access its inspectors would receive to the Parchin military site, where the Iranians are suspected of experimenting with components to create a nuclear bomb. ...
An AP expose of the draft agreement reached between Iran and the IAEA initially said Wednesday that Iranian representatives would be able to inspect Parchin without any intervention by UN inspectors, who would not even be allowed into the suspected compound.
A few hours after AP released the initial details of the agreement, a revised report emerged overwriting some of the more troubling issues pertaining to the inspection of Parchin.
For instance, the news agency removed from its report the claim that it was Iranian scientists themselves who would be inspecting the air and soil samples at Parchin, rather than UN inspectors. It also removed the claim that the number of air and soil samples taken from within suspected nuclear sites would be limited to seven.
It is not clear why the original report was updated to this extent, with some of the original points removed. The Associated Press did not release a statement of clarification or explanation regarding the updates of the report, which it has presented as an exclusive expose based on the agreement reached between Iran and the IAEA.
Later on Thursday, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano issued a statement rejecting the report, saying "Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work." Amano further said that he was not able to discuss the details of the agreement with Iran as he was legally bound to confidentiality but added that "The Road-map between Iran and the IAEA is a very robust agreement."
Erdogan’s anti-PKK campaign seen backfiring at polls
As Turkey heads toward its second general election in six months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign against the surprise victor of the first ballot may backfire – again.
The pro-Kurdish HDP won 13 percent of votes in June, helping to deny a wounded ruling party the supermajority it sought to transform Erdogan’s office into the nation’s power center. Since then, Turkey’s leaders have redoubled their efforts to tie the HDP to Kurdish PKK rebels, designated terrorists by Turkey and the U.S. They sent the air force to bomb the guerrilla’s bases, reigniting a three-decade conflict.
The rising tide of nationalist rhetoric and the spreading conflict in Turkey’s southeast haven’t dented support for the HDP, according to two opinion polls published in the last week which put the party on 12.8 percent and 14.1 percent.
Both are above the 10-percent threshold it must cross to seat lawmakers in parliament.
“Escalating violence may chip away at support for the HDP in the west of the country,” said Naci Sapan, who analyzes Kurdish politics at the Tigris Communal Research Center in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. But the party will benefit from a widespread feeling in the Kurdish southeast “that the president rekindled violence” for electoral benefit, he said.
US Confirms Saudis Using Cluster Bombs in Yemen
US officials are confirming tonight what has already been widely reported, that the Saudi military is using cluster munitions in its war on Yemen, despite their strikes targeting areas with a heavy civilian presence and cluster munitions having a notorious reputation for killing civilians months and even years after use.
Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and has been provided with the weapons by the US, a provision that traditionally comes with at least an implicit admonishment not to use them except under very particular circumstances, to which the Saudi war against Yemen would certainly not apply.
This has raised the possibility that the US, which is openly endorsing the Saudi war, may have provided them with a secret “understanding” on the matter, though the Pentagon is at this point refusing to say whether they’ve even brought the use of cluster munitions up in conversations with the Saudis at all.
Children paying highest price in Yemen's brutal armed conflict
'Beyond Bleak': Why Nobody in the World Wants to Know the Horror That Is Yemen
'In Yemen, over 21 million people need aid; 13 million people don’t have enough food to eat... We need to find a permanent end to the fighting and a negotiated peace.'
In a situation that can only be described as 'beyond bleak,' the combined threats of war, food shortages, and an acute water crisis in Yemen have come together to put the Middle East's poorest nation on the brink of one of the world's most ignored humanitarian disasters.
Amnesty International said this week that likely war crimes on all sides of Yemen's ongoing fighting are leaving a "bloody trail of civilian death and destruction" in the poverty-stricken nation. In addition, the U.N. Food Program on Wednesday warned of famine while the international aid group UNICEF announced that young people are experiencing the brunt of the conflict with an average of eight children being killed or maimed every single day.
"This conflict is a particular tragedy for Yemeni children," said Julien Harneis, the UNICEF representative in Yemen. "Children are being killed by bombs or bullets and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition. This cannot be allowed to continue."
In its new report—Yemen: Childhood Under Threat—UNICEF says that nearly 400 children have been killed and over 600 others injured since the violence escalated in March of this year.
Ertharin Cousin, head of the U.N.'s World Food Program,told reporters that while some food aid is flowing in, ongoing battles near major ports are stalling deliveries and the ability of aid agencies to reach the country's interior is proving increasingly difficult. A recent assessment by the agency showed that lack of food and water is putting Yemen "one step away from famine levels." Food insecurity and water scarcity are most severe for the country's 1.3 million internally displaced people, the group said.
Israel's Supreme Court orders release of high-profile Palestinian hunger striker
Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the release of Mohammed Allaan, a high-profile Palestinian political prisoner whose 65-day hunger strike has drawn international attention to his detention without trial.
An attorney defending Allaan told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the decision to suspend his detention was made after the court studied the detainee’s medical report. Lawyer Sawsan Zaher said that having accepted that Allaan had sustained brain damage “the court accepted our petition and froze the administrative detention order as long as his health obliges it.” The development came as Allaan was placed back into a coma, just a day after medics had taken him off sedation.
"We regret that this decision happened only now when we submitted our petition on Sunday,” Zaher said, adding that the delay allowed Allaan's condition to continue to spiral downward.
Allaan's rapidly deteriorating health and the issue of whether to force-feed the detainee had caused a split between Israeli politicians, who recently enacted a law demanding that he be kept alive through enteral feeding, and a medical community that has been refusing to comply on the grounds that to do so would be unethical. ...
Despite a suspension in his detention, Allaan's freedom may not be guaranteed.
"If Allaan's health does not improve, then his administrative detention will be canceled permanently," Supreme Court spokesperson Ayelet Filo said.
However, if his condition does improve, it is unclear if the state will allow him to go home or resume under detention.
The court "left this question open," Zaher said.
North Korea and South Korea Have Just Started Firing at Each Other
Tensions are on the rise again between North and South Korea, as the two nations have begun exchanging rocket and artillery fire across their border, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.
Officials say this the first armed clash between the two countries in five years.
North Korea appears to have launched the first attack by firing a shell across the border. South Korean media reported it was likely that the North was aiming at a propaganda-blaring loudspeaker situated in a border town about about 35 miles north of Seoul in the western part of the border area.
The South then reportedly retaliated with tens of 155mm artillery rounds targeted towards the location where the shell originated, according to their defense ministry.
"Our military has stepped up monitoring and is closely watching North Korean military movements," the ministry said in a statement.
The South's Defence Ministry also said that the North has threatened "new military action" if the loudspeaker broadcasts are not stopped within 48 hours.
South Korea's presidential office announced that the National Security Council would hold an emergency session imminently.
El Salvador ex-colonel fights extradition for notorious murder of Jesuit priests
In court, Inocente Orlando Montano, who was once El Salvador’s vice-minister of defense and public safety wore an orange jumpsuit stamped with the initials of the North Carolina prison where he currently resides. A blue walker was parked behind him.
Wednesday’s argument centred on whether Montano, 73 and an ex-colonel in the Salvadorian military, would be extradited from the United States to Spain, where a judge eagerly waits to prosecute him for one of the most notorious crimes of his country’s horrific 12-year civil war: the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s teenage daughter, on a university campus in San Salvador in 1989.
There was no decision from the US magistrate judge on Wednesday, surprising many watching the case unfold in US district court who thought extradition would be quickly granted under the firm prodding of the State Department. ...
Colonel Montano was a member of President Alfredo Cristiani’s cabinet in November 1989, when the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite army unit originally trained at the US-run School of the Americas, raided the residence of Jesuit priests on the campus of the Central American University in El Salvador’s capital.
The country’s military leaders believed that the priests were helping leftist fighters with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, in the civil war.
The soldiers forced their way into the house, ordered five priests to lie face down in the garden, and shot them all.
On orders to leave no witnesses, they then searched the house and murdered a sixth priest, along with housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos and her 16-year-old daughter, Celina Mariceth Ramos, according to a 1993 reportby a United Nations-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission. ... Montano was later identified as one of the architects of the massacre by several informants, including those with the truth and reconciliation commission.
The Beat Up Squad: NY Prison Guards Accused of Brutally Killing Prisoner & Covering Up Death
Protests Erupt After St. Louis Police Fatally Shoot Black Man
Protests erupted in a St. Louis neighborhood Wednesday after police shot and killed an armed black man while carrying out a search warrant.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told local reporters officers arrived at a north St. Louis home and spotted two men with guns running outside the back door around 11:30 am. Police began chasing the two and told them to drop their weapons. One suspect turned to point his gun at the police, and in response both officers opened fire, discharging four shots and striking one of the fleeing suspects, Dotson said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The second suspect, who was described as a teenager, was not apprehended.
Police said the man killed in the incident was a black male in his 20s, but did not release any other details about his identity. Neither of the police officers involved in the incident was injured, according to police. The incident in now being investigated by the department, which has placed the two officers on administrative leave. Dotson said they will be put back to work after they are deemed "fit for duty," per protocol.
Police returned to the home after the shooting and found four other guns along with crack cocaine in the premises, according to police.
Protests broke out on the block shortly after the incident, with residents of the neighborhood yelling at officers who had swarmed the scene.
After NY Prison Escape, Other Inmates Faced Beatings, Solitary Confinement, Threats of Waterboarding
Greece Gets Nearly $14.4 Billion to Pay E.C.B. and I.M.F.
Greece received new aid from other eurozone countries on Thursday, allowing it to meet the deadline for a crucial payment to the European Central Bank and to narrowly avoid defaulting on its debt.
The release of 13 billion euros, or nearly $14.4 billion, is part of €86 billion in new aid to Greece that cleared the last remaining political hurdles on Wednesday, including approval by the German Parliament.
The European Stability Mechanism, the agency responsible for administering aid money on behalf of the 19 countries in the eurozone, said in a statement on Thursday that it had approved giving Greece €13 billion immediately in order to meet obligations to the central bank and the International Monetary Fund. ...
Most of the €86 billion in new aid will be used to repay existing debt rather than to rebuild the shattered Greek economy, leading to criticism that eurozone creditors are repeating the same austerity policies that delivered six years in a row of recession in Greece.
Greek Prime Minister To Resign, Announce Snap Elections
In a move that came as a surprise to many, sources have told Reuters that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will announce Thursday that he will 'step down' from his post as soon as this evening and that new elections for control of the government will be held next month. ...
Though a call for snap elections was ultimately expected, many assumed they would not be held until after a confidence vote in Parliament. Tsipras' preemptive resignation was not widely foreseen, though the ruling government is compelled to give over power once the election is officially announced. Media outlets report that Tsipras will address the nation tonight to make his resignation official and make clear his reasons for doing so.
Greek PM poised to seek snap election to quell party rebellion
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is set to seek early elections, state television said on Thursday, hoping to quell a rebellion in his leftist Syriza party and seal support to implement a tough bailout program.
Ministers have openly debated for days about what the government should do after a large number of hard left Syriza lawmakers refused to back the 86 billion euro ($96 billion)bailout in parliament on Friday.
However, a government official said on Thursday that the option of calling a parliamentary confidence vote had been shelved and the idea of seeking snap polls as early as mid-September had become more likely.
Greece halts activity at Canadian-run mine
Greece has suspended the mining operations of Canada’s Eldorado Gold in northern Greece, saying the company violated contract terms, in a setback to one of the top foreign investment projects in the country.
The $1-billion project is considered a test case for Greece’s ability to attract foreign investment to help revive its economy, but has been beset by problems due to opposition by local residents on environmental grounds. ...
Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said on Wednesday that the project had been halted but could resume if the company fulfills contract terms. The project includes gold mines already in operation and two factories under construction that will enable the company to process gold and other minerals in Greece rather than overseas. Greece, which has just secured its third international bailout, badly needs such projects to help diversify its ailing economy.
“We are recalling our approval of the technical studies, which will result in the halting of operations at Skouries and part of operations in Olympiada,” Skourletis told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. “The company has violated some terms.”
Conflict Mineral Ruling 'Sets Dangerous Precedent' on Corporate Personhood
In a ruling that rests on what one rights group described as "a warped interpretation of the First Amendment," a three-judge panel has said that corporations have a constitutional right to conceal information about whether minerals in their supply chains may have funded conflict.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cannot force public companies to declare whether their products may contain "conflict minerals" from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because it violates their right to free speech. Such disclosure rules only apply to advertisements, the three-judge panel ruled, 2-1.
The National Association of Manufacturers and other business groups have worked to overturn the disclosure rule since its inception.
And they are sure to be emboldened by Tuesday's decision, which the pro-democracy group Move to Amend said "sets a dangerous precedent" on corporate personhood.
"Rulings such as this one send the message that so-called corporate 'rights' actually trump 'We the People's' rights," stated Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, national director of Move to Amend. "In this case a corporation is hiding behind the First Amendment to avoid accountability for their actions, and the Court has ruled their right to secrecy is more important than the public's right to know."
Costco and CP Foods face lawsuit over alleged slavery in shrimp supply chain
Three California law firms are seeking an injunction to stop the US retail chain Costco selling shrimp unless they are labelled as the produce of slavery.
The firms have filed a class action lawsuit against Costco and its Thai seafood supplier, alleging that Costco knowingly sold shrimp from a supply chain tainted by slavery.
The claim, lodged in the federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, alleges that Costco has for several years bought and resold farmed shrimp from the leading Thai food group CP Foods, and other companies, that have sourced the raw material for their feed from ships manned by slaves. ...
The action follows a Guardian investigation in 2014 that tracked the complex shrimp supply chain and reports by the UN and non-governmental organisations, including the Environmental Justice Foundation, that human trafficking for forced labour and slavery have become endemic in the Thai fishing sector.
The investigation established that large numbers of men who were bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand were integral to the production of farmed shrimp sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature A. M. Simons on "Comrade Lawyers and De Leon at the IWW Founding Convention"
Tune in at 2pm!
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As Fight Goes Global, McDonald's Under Fire for 'Low Road' Business Model
As McDonald's comes under increased scrutiny for both its treatment of workers and its questionable corporate citizenship around the world, workers from five continents, elected officials, and international labor leaders are gathered in Brasília this week to testify before the Brazilian Federal Senate on how the corporation is "driving a global race to the bottom."
The hearing also marks "a major escalation of the global effort to hold McDonald’s accountable for its mistreatment of workers and bad corporate citizenship," according to a press statement from Fight for $15, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-backed protest movement advocating for higher wages and union protections for fast food workers.
In particular, the testimony will address how the corporation's "low-road" business model—which involves alleged tax dodging, unfair competition, and violations of franchise laws—is harming workers, consumers, governments, suppliers, and competitors.
In Brazil, a coalition of trade unions has filed two lawsuits accusing the company of widespread and systematic labor and health and safety violations. And earlier this week, Brazil's General Workers' Union filed a complaint asking the country's Public Prosecution Service to launch a wide-ranging civil investigation into the burger giant's alleged illegal business practices in the country.
As Fight for $15 points out, Thursday's hearing places the Golden Arches "under the microscope in one of its most important markets overseas."
Private prisons get Bern-ed: Sanders proposes abolishing for-profit facilities
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is taking his criminal justice reform platform from the campaign trail to the Senate with a plan to introduce legislation outlawing private prisons when Congress returns from August recess.
Daily Kos first noted that at his Reno, Nevada, rally on Tuesday night, the Independent senator told a gathered crowd of 4,500 supporters that “when Congress reconvenes in September, I will be introducing legislation, which takes corporations out of profiteering from running jails.”
Sanders, who is opposed to building any new prisons, has long advocated against draconian sentencing laws, voting in favor of investments in alternative sentencing and telling the Nevada crowd that he also plans to tackle mandatory minimums for certain crimes:
We want to deal with minimum sentencing. Too many lives have been destroyed for non-violent issues. People that are sent to jail have police records. We have got to change that. Our job is to keep people out of jail, not in jail
Sanders previously called on President Obama to take executive action to curtail certain tax breaks like a loophole that allows private prisons to avoid corporate income taxes by claiming that they make money from rent:
It is morally repugnant and a national tragedy that we have privatized prisons all over America. In my view,…
Posted by Bernie Sanders on Saturday, August 1, 2015
This is an excellent article, well worth reading in full. Here's a taste:
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders & the unacknowledged crimes of American justice
When Hillary Clinton met with the members of Black Lives Matter chapters in Massachusetts last week, they were very interested in hearing her speak about her personal transformation on race. In a later CNN interview, Daunasia Yancey and Julius Jones, BLM leaders who participated in the meeting, indicated that they needed to hear her personal narrative in order to trust her. They began talking to Clinton about what the movement “needs to do to change white hearts,” but she replied, “I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way that systems operate.”
This tension over capturing hearts and minds versus changing the operation of systems — and, in particular, over which must come first — is a long-standing one. In 1963, Martin Luther King argued,
“Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.”
Feelings matter for politics. And if “white hearts” don’t change, they are always capable of reconfiguring systems to maintain white hegemony. Moreover, I think when Black millennial voters continue to express their hesitancy about voting, that part of their desire for measures that fully overhaul the current system has to do with a fundamental distrust of white politicians and their white constituents. ...
Hillary Clinton conceded to the Boston BLM leaders that their mistrust and skepticism are “historically fair,” “psychologically fair,” and “economically fair.” She also conceded that for the most part we should not expect “white hearts” to change.
Thus she sounds a King-ian note when calling for legislation, sanctions and systemic changes to do what moral suasion cannot do.
The problem is that nearly 50 years after the death of King, young Black people are not convinced that changing systems and laws without changing social consciousness will fix the problem either.
Placing Their Bets Early, DC Lobbyists Put Biggest Money on Clinton
Though the presidential election is more than 14 months away and competitive primary races for both major parties are in full swing, lobbying firms in Washington, DC and the people who work for them are so far placing their political bets on the establishment campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton and to a slightly lesser degree Republican Jeb Bush.
According to an analysis of filings from registered K Street firms by The Hill, Clinton and Bush combined have received approximately $1 million so far this year from professional influence peddlers who play such an outsized role on Capitol Hill – substantially more than other candidates in the field.
Hillary Clinton's emails, data erased from server before handed to FBI
Letter to senate committee from attorney David Kendall is made public after Clinton told reporters she was not aware if contents had been wiped
Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer has told a senate committee that emails and all other data stored on the Democratic presidential hopeful’s private server were erased before it was turned over to US government authorities.
In a letter sent last week to Ron Johnson, chairman of the senate homeland security committee, attorney David Kendall said the server was transferred to the FBI on 12 August by Platte River Networks, a Denver firm hired by Clinton to oversee it. The senate committee made Kendall’s letter public on Wednesday. In exchanges with reporters earlier this week Clinton said she did not know whether the data on her server had been erased.
Federal investigators, prompted by a request from the inspector general for the state department, requested custody of the server to learn whether the data stored on it was secure. NBC News has reported that an FBI team is now examining the server. Forensics experts said some emails and other data may still be extracted from servers even after deletion.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told reporters on Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina that to his knowledge no other copy had been made of the server’s contents other than what her lawyers had turned over to the FBI.
Donald Trump beware: apprentice Deez Nuts is top-polling independent
It may be Donald Trump who has raised this presidential campaign to new levels of frivolity, but in a poll that is arguably frivolous by nature one “candidate” has managed to go viral – and it turns out he’s a 15-year-old from Iowa. ...
Wednesday was a big day for Deez Nuts. First he won 9% of the vote as an independent in a Public Policy Polling poll of voters in North Carolina – which, on top of recent results of 8% in Minnesota and 7% in Iowa from previous polls, makes him what experts confirmed is the most successful independent candidate for president in two decades.
It was also the day of his high school sophomore orientation. ...
There are 585 registered candidates for president in 2016, including Sydneys Voluptuous Buttocks (independent), President Emperor Caesar (Democrat), Buddy The Cat (Democrat), Crawfish Crawfish (other), Bailey D Dog (independent), Buddy The Elf (write-in) and Lindsey Graham (Republican), none of whom – unlike Deez Nuts – received any support whatsoever in PPP’s North Carolina poll. ...
And while Trump was the headline figure – at 24% in the Republican primary race, double digits clear of his next rival, Ben Carson, at 14% – Nuts’s showing as an independent was the real surprise. Asked the question “If the candidates for President next year were Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump, and independent Deez Nuts, who would you vote for?” respondents in North Carolina voted Trump 40%, Clinton 38%, and Nuts 9%.
The Evening Greens
Ancient Tribe Being Flooded Out of Its Pakistani Valley Thanks to Climate Change
High up in the Hindu Kush mountain range of Pakistan, homes, crops, roads, and bridges are being washed away by flooding caused by climate change.
Up to 40 people have died since torrential rain hit the district of Chitral — which sits along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan — on July 16. In three valleys that run down from the Afghan province of Nuristan, parts of which are controlled by the Taliban, a 3,000-strong group of people called the Kalash are struggling to survive as their world is washed away.
Struggling to survive and preserve their way of life is nothing new for the Kalash. They are animists in an Islamic state. There is a myth — which is now thought to have some truth to it — that they are descended from a rogue division of Alexander the Great's army. They are poor and in their remote valleys are largely cut off from the outside world. ...
Last week, Taj Khan, a Kalash activist who is organizing disaster relief for the valleys, told VICE News that "the Kalash have an ecosystem they have been living in for thousands of years and there has been no policy work on how that ecosystem can be preserved." The house Khan was born in has been washed away in the floods. ...
Beyond religious speculation concerning the peddling of moonshine, climate scientists and the Kalash themselves point to climate change as the reason behind the floods. Monsoon conditions, which never existed in the mountains, have moved up to the Hindu Kush because of increased temperatures, leading to a volume of rainfall the land cannot cope with. The Kalash say they are not used to having excessive rainfall at this time of year.
Last year, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a 2,600-page report that detailed the affects climate change was having in real time. Heavy rains of the kind seen in the north of Pakistan are a major byproduct of climate change and — as with so many things — it is the world's poorest communities that are hit hardest. As the geographer Maggie Opondo, one of the report's authors, put it: "This would really be a severe challenge for some of the poorest communities and poorest countries in the world."
Vast areas of California are sinking as groundwater is pumped in drought
Vast areas of California’s Central Valley are sinking faster than in the past as massive amounts of groundwater are pumped during the historic drought, Nasa said in new research released on Wednesday.
The research shows that in some places the ground is sinking nearly two inches each month, putting infrastructure on the surface at growing risk of damage.
Sinking land has occurred for decades in California because of excessive groundwater pumping during drought conditions, but the new data shows it is happening faster. ...
The report said land near the city of Corcoran sank 13 inches in eight months and part of the California Aqueduct sank eight inches in four months last year.
Long-term subsidence has already destroyed thousands of public and private groundwater well casings in the San Joaquin Valley. Over time, subsidence can permanently reduce the underground aquifer’s water storage capacity.
Scientists figured out just how much of California’s drought can be blamed on climate change
Droughts happen. ... This most recent megadrought, historic as it may be in length and severity, is by no means unprecendented; and it is, say the authors of a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, primarily the result of national weather variations. ... But climate change, they found, made it measurably worse.
How much worse? Likely somewhere between 15 and 20 percent, said A. Park Williams, the study’s lead author and a bioclimatologist at Columbia University, in a statement, although it can be blamed for as much as 27 percent of the drought conditions experienced between 2012 and 2014. His team looked at data for precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind and other factors going back to 1901, and found that while rainfall patterns have remained random, temperatures have been steadily increasing with global warming. And that, they say, has been enough to have an impact on drought conditions.
He explained the phenomenon in more detail in an interview with the New York Times:
Since 1895, California has warmed by a little more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That increase sounds small, but as an average over an entire state in all seasons, scientists say, it is a large number. The warmer air can hold more water vapor, and the result is that however much rain or snow falls in a given year, the atmosphere will draw it out of the soil more aggressively.
Dr. Williams calculated that the warmer atmosphere over California is able to absorb about 8.5 trillion more gallons of water in a typical year than would have been the case in the cooler atmosphere at the end of the 19thcentury. The air does not always manage to soak up that much, however, because evaporation slows as the soils dry out.
There are 45 fracked wells within 2 miles of my daughter's school
California is illegally discriminating against students of color by permitting wells that are disproportionately close to the schools they attend
Earlier this summer, two weeks after California’s first-ever hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, regulations went into effect, my family filed a lawsuit against Governor Jerry Brown and California Oil and Gas Supervisor Steve Bohlen. We are challenging the regulations for illegally discriminating against students of color by permitting wells that are disproportionately close to the schools they attend.
There are 45 fracked wells within a mile and a half of my daughter’s junior high school. At Sequoia Elementary School, which she attended for years, there are three separate fracked wellswithin a half-mile of the school, and one that is just 1,200 feet from the school.
Many students at the school suffer from asthma and serious, debilitating illnesses. What is causing this spike in health problems in normally healthy children? Fracking. It exposes our children to unsafe levels of air toxins that can cause a broad variety of serious health complications, including asthma. Students at my daughter’s schools were often forced to stay inside for weeks at a time because of the noxious fumes from the fracking sites. They think it’s strange when people don’t get nosebleeds every day. For too many of California’s Latino public school students, this is normal. ...
This is unacceptable for any Californian, but it is especially disturbing given the fact that fracking overwhelmingly occurs close to schools that serve predominately Latino public school students, the majority of whom live in communities already overburdened by pollution and the resulting negative health impacts. My own town of Shafter is ranked in the top 10% of the most polluted communities in the state - our children can’t afford exposure to these additional toxins.
Notorious Insecticides Found in Half of Sampled Streams in US
A class of insecticides linked to the decline of bees has more found in more than half of the streams in the United States where samples were taken, new research has found.
Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) say it is the first national-scale study of the presence of neonicotinoids, or "neonics," in urban and agricultural land use settings across the nation.
Neonics can be used as a seed coating or foliar spray, and they are widely used, despite a body of evidence calling them a threat to global biodiversity and linking them to lethal and sub-lethal harm to bees.
The USGS reserachers detected at least one of six neonics in 63 percent of the 48 streams they sampled. ...
A USGS study published last year focusing on just Midwest waterways detected neonics in all the 9 rivers and streams sampled, prompting Emily Marquez, PhD, staff scientist at Pesticide Action Network, to say, "The fact that neonics are pervasively contaminating surface waters should be a wake-up call for state and federal regulators, that must move more quickly to reduce and restrict use on farm fields."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Loss of Manufacturing Jobs Isn’t ‘Tectonic’–It’s a Policy Choice
Chitral floods: Why melting glaciers may not be the cause
It hurts to say it, but sometimes Donald Trump speaks the truth
Ukraine crisis: Soldiers accuse commanders of lying as both warring sides make repeated claims of victories and broken ceasefires
In Confronting Hillary, Did Black Lives Matter Miss Opportunity to Make Demands?
"Reconstruction" author Eric Foner talks Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and what's become of the GOP
California's resident grey wolves (with pups!)
Transgender health research announcements
A Little Night Music
Johnny Fuller - Train Train Blues
Johnny Fuller - Troubles (Mean Old World)
Johnny Fuller - Weeping and Mourning
Johnny Fuller & Group - Sister Jenny
Johnny Fuller & Phillip Walker Band - Fool's Paradise
Johnny Fuller - You Got Me Whistlin
Johnny Fuller - These Young Girls
Johnny Fuller - Mercy Mercy
Johnny Fuller - All Night Long
Johnny Fuller - No More
Johnny Fuller - The Power
Johnny Fuller - She's too much
Johnny Fuller - Strange Land
Johnny Fuller - Don't Slam That Door
Johnny Fuller - Deep In My Heart
Johnny Fuller - Wyatt Earp Shot Stagger Lee
Johnny Fuller - First Stage Of The Blues
Johnny Fuller & Phillip Walker Band - Tin Pan Alley
Johnny Fuller - Swingin' At The Creek