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Two SWAT Raids. Two Officers Dead. One Defendant Is Black, One White. Guess What Happened.

by SpencerWhitwort Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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One Friday last May, the sun had not yet risen when a SWAT team ignited a flash-bang grenade outside Marvin Guy’s apartment in Killeen, Texas. Officers were trying to climb in through a window when Guy, who had a criminal record and was suspected of possessing cocaine, opened fire. Four officers were hit; one of them was killed.

Five months earlier, 100 miles away, a SWAT officer was shot during a predawn no-knock raid on another house. In that case, too, police threw a flash-bang grenade and tried to enter the residence. Henry “Hank” Magee, according to his attorney, grabbed his gun to protect himself and his pregnant girlfriend. “As soon as the door was kicked in, he shot at the people coming through the door,” says his attorney, Dick DeGuerin. With his legally owned semi-automatic .308 rifle, Magee killed one of the officers.

The cases are remarkably similar, except for one thing: Guy is black, Magee white. And while Magee was found to have acted in self-defense, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Guy. He remains in jail while he awaits trial.

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Two SWAT Raids. Two Officers Dead. One Defendant Is Black, One White. Guess What Happened.

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The Stunning Success of the Wilderness Act

by RoseannPinedo Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Let us now praise famous laws and the year that begat them: 1964.

The first thing to know about 1964 was that, although it occurred in the 1960s, it wasn’t part of “the Sixties.” The bellbottoms, flower power, LSD, and craziness came later, beginning about 1967 and extending into the early 1970s. Trust me: I was there, and I don’t remember much; so by the dictum variously attributed to Grace Slick, Dennis Hopper, and others (that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t part of them), I must really have been there.

1964 was a revolutionary year. It was a time when Congress actually addressed the people’s business, and it gave us at least three great laws.

One was the monumental Civil Rights Act, which aspired to complete the tragic and sanguinary work of the Civil War and achieve the promise of the Thirteenth Amendment.

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The Stunning Success of the Wilderness Act

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Ruby Dee Was a Badass

by ArchieBirnie Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, actress Ruby Dee passed away at the age of 91. Her long career brought her much acclaim and many honors, including an Academy Award nomination for her work in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster. She, along with her late husband and fellow actor Ossie Davis, was also famous for her civil rights activism, which dated back to the 1950s.

Dee began attending protests as a child, joining picket lines to campaign against hiring discrimination. She and Davis emceed the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech. They rallied against apartheid in South Africa. In 1999, they were arrested while protesting the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea, who was gunned down by four NYPD officers. And the list goes on.

“I never remember, like, saying, ‘I’m gonna join the civil rights movement’—that’s all I knew all my life, some aspect of it, even before it was called the civil rights movement,” Dee once told an interviewer from the Archive of American Television. “When I first, years ago, saw my first picture of black men hanging from trees, well, I could scarcely know the meaning of things. Or, I remember things that stuck in my head, this family strung up and the woman was pregnant and they opened the belly up, the baby had fallen out…So I can’t say that I joined the civil rights movement; I was born into it. Racism is a disease of democracy. Our country could be one of the greatest countries that god ever imagined, were it not for this thing of racism…This grand experiment that is America is tainted by racism and bigotry, and these kinds of hatreds…This ridiculous thing of racism.”

Via New York’s PIX11 News, here is footage of Dee in 1969 reading the names of young black men killed by police officers:

“Ruby Dee was…a woman who believed deeply in fairness, a conviction that motivated her lifelong efforts to advance civil rights,” SAG-AFTRA president Ken Howard said in a statement. “The acting community—and the world—is a poorer place for her loss.”

Via Google News Archive

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Ruby Dee Was a Badass

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Australian Open heat was a climate-change preview, but at least nobody died

by KetaHeadraf Posted on January 29, 2014

Australian Open heat was a climate-change preview, but at least nobody died

By

Alpha

41 degrees Celsius is 106 Fahrenheit

The Australian Open ended in Melbourne on Sunday, when a Swiss man wearing a sweat-drenched shirt with yellow and red stripes won in four sets. It was bloody hot, and his nose burned red as he smooched a silver trophy.

In fact, the sweltering heat captivated the world’s media and arguably stole the show. One player burned her bum when she sat down on a chair; another’s plastic water bottle melted on the court’s artificial surface. Athletes collapsed left and right, and one of them hallucinated. Emergency rules designed to help players survive the scorching heat slowed down play.

January is Melbourne’s hottest month, where temperatures routinely break triple digits. And summertime temperatures in this capital of the southeastern state of Victoria will only keep rising as the globe keeps warming. “In Melbourne we are seeing an increase in the amount of extreme heat,” one scientist told The Guardian. Victoria’s profile as a fire-whipped example of the global climate crisis can only go up from here. The following chart, produced by the country’s nonprofit Climate Council, shows that the number of extreme heat days per year (defined as exceeding 35 C, or 95 F) is rising:

Climate Council

Extreme heat days per year. Click to embiggen.

Professional tennis players are in their athletic prime and have access to top-notch medical care when the heat gets crazy. Millions of regular Victorians might not cope as well. Unprecedented bushfires linked to climate change killed 173 Victorians in 2009. “With populations at the rural–urban interface growing and the impact of climate change, the risks associated with bushfire are likely to increase,” a team of experts working for the state government concluded in a report. Meanwhile, hundreds more in the state died during that same summer because of heat exposure. Hot and fiery conditions in southeastern Australia this summer have mirrored those of 2009 — and such conditions are forecast to become more common.

Yet even in Victoria, where global warming’s toll is so visible, doctors say the conservative state government is failing to adapt. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Doctors and public health experts are calling for the Victorian government to urgently review its management of heatwaves as the death toll from this month’s record-breaking period appears to climb.

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which works with the State Coroner to investigate reportable deaths, said that as of Friday it had recorded 139 deaths in excess of the average expected between Monday, January 13, and Thursday, January 23.

Dr Liz Hanna, a fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU, said it was ‘”unfathomable” that Victoria had not learnt enough from the catastrophic 2009 heatwave, when 374 lives were lost, and the Victorian Greens are demanding a formal inquiry into what they call the state’s ‘”clear lack of preparation” for periods of extreme heat.

While Institute of Forensic Medicine director Stephen Cordner said he could not be sure the deaths were due to the heat, most of the deceased were elderly people and those with chronic and mental illnesses, who are known to be vulnerable in extreme heat.

As somebody who spent countless parched days at Australian Open games during a childhood in Melbourne, I always felt that the city had no business hosting the Grand Slam event in January. Now I’m sure of it: It seems inevitable that the competition dates will eventually change, or that another city will need to take over.

In the scope of climate disasters with growing body counts, a too-hot tennis tournament seems a trifling matter. But it has helped broadcast Melbourne’s weather woes to the world — and if that’s what it takes to get people to rally, then it does us good service.


Source
Heatwave ‘one of the most significant’ on record, says Bureau of Meteorology, Sydney Morning Herald
Anger over spike in deaths during record Victorian heatwave, Sydney Morning Herald
Is the Australian Open tennis feeling the heat of climate change?, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The KKK Leader Haunted-House Song the Late Phil Everly Never Got To Write

by euro9 Posted on January 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Phil Everly, who with his older brother Don made up the country/rock ‘n roll duo the Everly Brothers, died on Friday in Burbank, California, due to complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 74.

The Everly Brothers’ influence on popular music in the 1950s and 1960s was immense. The songs they strummed and sang (in legendary harmonies) were often big hits. During the height of their powers, they had almost three dozen hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love.” The Everly Brothers were among the first ten acts inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The duo influenced some of the best artists of the 20th century, such as The Beatles and The Byrds. “We owe the Everly Brothers everything,” Bob Dylan said. “They started it all.”

I’m not going to pretend that I’m capable of writing the definitive or the most comprehensive Phil Everly obituary. There are a lot of remembrances already out there, and plenty of rock historians who can tell you much more about Everly’s place in musical history than I ever could. But what I can offer is my favorite Everly story—one regarding perhaps the most brilliant song that Everly never wrote.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published in June 2013, he talks about his beautiful house outside of Nashville, Tennessee, in Maury County. It was built in 1846, and has this unique bit of history to it, according to Everly:

During the Civil War, a famous Confederate lieutenant general named Nathan Bedford Forrest had a violent argument with a lieutenant named A. Willis Gould. Words were exchanged, Gould shot Forrest in the hip, and Forrest wound up fatally stabbing him. Forrest recuperated in our bedroom. I suppose there’s a song in that story someplace.

I’m not sure if Forrest’s ghost is hanging around, but I have a theory about this house. It won’t let you do anything to the structure it doesn’t like. We had a roof leak a few years back, and the carpenter impulsively wanted to solve the problem by drilling a hole in the floor. But the bit snapped right off. The house wouldn’t let him do it. This kind of thing has happened several other times.

(For the record, Forrest died in Memphis, but let’s just say it’s plausible that this Confederate ghost could find its way back to this estate.)

The idea for a Nathan Bedford Forrest death-match / freaky haunted-house country-rock song is even more interesting when you consider that Forrest was also the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the namesake of Forrest Gump, and an accused war criminal. Under Forrest’s command, Confederate troops carried out the atrocity at Fort Pillow, where hundreds of surrendered black soldiers were slaughtered.

So who knows if he was being serious about this song. I hope so, since it would make for a terrific song. Sadly, it seems that Everly never got around to writing and recording it. But what he accomplished in life was, of course, already way more than enough. Some of the greatest rock music of the ’60s would not have sounded the way it did if it weren’t for Phil and Don. That’s a hell of a legacy to leave behind.

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The KKK Leader Haunted-House Song the Late Phil Everly Never Got To Write

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French Women Don’t Get Facelifts – Mireille Guiliano

by Myrna Posted on December 24, 2013

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French Women Don’t Get Facelifts

The Secret of Aging with Style & Attitude

Mireille Guiliano

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: December 24, 2013

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.


The author of the bestselling French Women Don't Get Fat shares the secrets and strategies of aging with attitude, joy, and no surgery. With her signature blend of wit, no-nonsense advice, and storytelling flair, Mireille Guiliano returns with a delightful, encouraging take on beauty and aging for our times. For anyone who has ever spent the equivalent of a mortgage payment on anti-aging lotions or procedures, dressed inappropriate for their age, gained a little too much in the middle, or accidentally forgot how to flirt, here is a proactive way to stay looking and feeling great, without resorting to &quot;the knife&quot;-a French woman's most guarded beauty secrets revealed for the benefit of us all!

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French Women Don’t Get Facelifts – Mireille Guiliano

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The Big Irony in Charging Bob Dylan With Inciting Racial Hatred in France

by Titus1586p Posted on December 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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In case you haven’t heard, France is going after Bob Dylan.

French authorities have filed preliminary charges of “public insult and inciting hate” against the legendary singer-songwriter. Dylan was reportedly questioned and charged in November; the charge stems from a complaint filed by the Council of Croats in France (CRICCF), which flagged comments made by Dylan in a Rolling Stone interview published in September 2012.

The comments (which were also carried in the French edition of the magazine) were in response to the question, “Do you see any parallels between the 1860s and present-day America?” (Emphasis mine.)

The United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn’t give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that’s what it really was all about.

This country is just too fucked up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back—or any neighborhood back… Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery—that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.

Dylan was referring to the slaughter and persecution of Serbs at the hands of Croatian fascists during World War II. “We have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer,” Vlatko Maric, the organization’s secretary general, said. “But you cannot equate Croatian war criminals with all Croats.”

CRICCF members allege that the “Croatian blood” comment violates France’s strict racial hatred and hate speech laws. Under French law, such complaints automatically trigger formal investigations. If found guilty, Dylan could face probation and a fine, even though he is not a French citizen. It is unclear if he will appear in court.

So, yeah, this is dumb, and it highlights the problems with Europe’s hate speech laws. But the epic irony here lies in what Dylan was doing in France when he was questioned and charged. He was in Paris to play some concerts—and to accept the Legion of Honour, the country’s highest civil and military decoration. (Other non-French recipients include American WWII veterans.) Earlier this year, Dylan’s honor was temporarily blocked after the Grand Chancellor of the Legion objected to the artist’s anti-war sentiments and recreational drug use. But things went ahead anyway.

“A journalist who attended the ceremony said Dylan, 72, had looked distinctly uncomfortable,” the BBC reported.

During the ceremony, culture minister Aurélie Filippetti praised Dylan’s ability to inspire young people with his words and music, and pointed out his influence on the May 1968 Paris student protests. “More than anyone, in the eyes of France, you demonstrate the subversive power of culture that can change people and the world,” Filippetti said.

France was giving Bob Dylan a major award for exercising free speech, while they were investigating him for exercising free speech.

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The Big Irony in Charging Bob Dylan With Inciting Racial Hatred in France

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Americans cited for hiking on federal lands, but drillers can keep on drilling

by Myrna Posted on October 11, 2013

Americans cited for hiking on federal lands, but drillers can keep on drilling

By

Stuart Seeger

If you are caught sneaking into Grand Canyon National Park, you will be ordered to appear in federal court.

Americans are being cited for entering national parks during the government shutdown and ordered to appear in federal court. But drilling and logging companies are meeting no obstacles when they continue doing business on supposedly shuttered public lands.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, thinks that’s pretty unreasonable. Last week he complained about the disparity in a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell:

Despite the federal government shutdown making national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and many other important sites unavailable to the public, oil and gas drilling and other extraction activities continue on our federal public lands. The lack of oversight of these potentially hazardous activities greatly concerns me, especially because of the scarcity of manpower to respond to emergencies, pollution issues or other rapid response needs.

I am equally concerned about the many businesses that rely on our public lands. Concessionaires that operate facilities within our public parks and other federal lands have been locked out by the shutdown. So have river and trail guides who rely on public lands and waterways to make a living. Small businesses cannot afford to be cut off from their main — in some cases sole — source of income.

And now the congressman has launched an online petition calling for greater equity in how the government treats different kinds of visitors to federal lands:

Our federal lands are being mined, drilled, logged and just about everything else you can name — but because of the Republicans’ reckless and irresponsible shutdown of the federal government, we can’t be there to hike or camp, and our park rangers can’t be there to respond to emergencies. We need to get our priorities straight.

In Utah, at least, hikers will soon be able to get back on the trail. The state has agreed to pay the federal government $1.67 million to cover the costs of reopening five national parks within its borders for 10 days, starting on Saturday. State officials were worried about losing millions in tourist dollars.


Source
Nearly two dozen cited for entering Grand Canyon after budget battle forced park’s closure, Washington Post
Stop mining public lands while visitors are locked out, Credo Mobilize
Grijalva Letter Calls on Interior Sec. Jewell, Agriculture Sec. Vilsack to Halt Extraction on Federal Lands Until Visitors Can Return, Rep. Raul M. Grijalva

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Americans cited for hiking on federal lands, but drillers can keep on drilling

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Wind turbine blade manufacturer hiring at whirlwind rate

by bimfwc5k Posted on October 8, 2013

Wind turbine blade manufacturer hiring at whirlwind rate

By

Courtesy of LM Wind Power

That’s a big-ass blade.

The economies of Grand Forks, N.D., and Little Rock, Ark. are being swept up in a green bonanza.

LM Wind Power, a global manufacturer of blades for wind turbines, says it doubled its U.S. workforce to 700 in August — up from 350 in April. And it says the boom will continue: It expects to employ some 1,200 people in the U.S. next year — most of them based at its factories in North Dakota and Arkansas.

In a press release, the company credited the extension late last year of the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit with the growth of its workforce:

“We are pleased to see that the market is improving again following a period of low activity due to uncertainty around the PTC,” said LM Wind Power’s Head of US Operations, Bill Burga Jr. “With the political framework in place, our customers are winning more business again and we are ready to serve their demand for highly efficient quality blades for the US market, adding hundreds of extra jobs. Now it is crucial that the politicians remain committed to securing a stable economic framework to enable continued industry growth and increased US employment.”

By some estimates, the wind energy sector now employs about 80,000 Americans. And the decision by LM Wind Power to boost its American operations (it has factories in 14 locations all over the world) follows an encouraging trend that we told you about in August — as wind energy expands in the U.S., more of the production associated with that expansion is occurring right here in America.

But the company’s announcement also coincides with renewed uncertainty over whether the tax credit will be renewed next year. House Republicans are calling for an end to wind power subsidies, arguing that it’s time for the industry to stand on its own feet. From a story last week in The Hill:

“We keep hearing that ‘we’re almost there’ or ‘just a little bit longer.’ But the facts state that wind power has been steadily increasing over the last 10 years, and there’s this point of saying, when does wind take off on its own?” said Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Energy Policy.

An analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation found that a one-year extension of the tax credit would cost about $6.1 billion over 10 years. A five-year extension would cost about $18.5 billion.

Democrats on the panel said that, that number paled in comparison to the billions in tax breaks and subsidies granted to the oil and gas industry each year.

“Big oil still gets subsidies even though just the biggest five oil companies … made a combined $118 billion in profits in 2012,” Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said. “Oil and gas have received over $4.8 billion each year in government subsidies over 90 years.”

If the U.S. Treasury is going to subsidize any form of energy production, which would you rather it be — renewable and clean, or fossilized and world-endangering?


Source
LM Wind Power ramps up in the U.S., LM Wind Power
GOP questions need for wind farm tax credit, The Hill

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The Noticer Returns – Andy Andrews

by Myrna Posted on October 1, 2013

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The Noticer Returns

Sometimes You Find Perspective and Sometimes Perspective Finds You

Andy Andrews

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Seller: HarperCollins


Perspective is a powerful thing. Andy Andrews has spent the past five years doing a double take at every white-haired old man he sees, hoping to have just one more conversation with the person to whom he owes his life. Through a chance encounter at a local bookstore, Andy is reunited with the man who changed everything for him – Jones, also known as “The Noticer.” As the story unfolds, Jones uses his unique talent of noticing little things that make a big difference. And these “little things” grant the people of Fairhope, Alabama, a life-changing gift – perspective. Along the way, families will be united, financial opportunities will be created, and readers will be left with powerfully simple solutions to the everyday problems we all face. Through the lens of a parenting class at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Alabama, Jones guides a seemingly random group to ask specific questions inspired by his curious advice that “You can’t believe everything you think.” Those questions lead to answers for which people have been searching for centuries: How do we begin to change the culture in which we live? What is the key to creating a life of success and value? What if what we think is the end…is only the beginning? What starts as a story of one person's everyday reality unfolds into the extraordinary principles available to anyone looking to create the life for which they were intended.

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The Noticer Returns – Andy Andrews

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