An “epic deluge” continues to wreak havoc on Colorado for a third day.
Record rainfall caused massive flooding, which the United States Geological Survey called a “100-year event,” forced the evacuation of thousands from the Boulder area, and killed at least three people.
“It’s really something here. I tell you, I’ve never seen rain like this. It’s endless,” Boulder resident Lauren Sundstrom told Reuters.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper called the floods “life threatening,” and told KBCO radio, “Given the drought situation we’ve had, it was almost a year’s worth of rain.”
CNBC has video:
* * *
Twitter users have been uploading pictures showing the raging floodwaters’ impacts:
Tweets about “#coflood OR #cowx OR #boulderflood lang:en”
________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
The recent hopes of a possible political détente between the U.S. and Iran culminated in what some media outlets and observers are describing as a “breakthrough” meeting between the top diplomats from each country in New York City on Thursday night.
Following a multi-lateral discussion attended by representative from seven interested nations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a closed-door session designed to lay the groundwork for future talks surrounding the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.
The Iranians have repeated time and again that their nuclear program is designed solely for scientific and domestic energy production, but the U.S. continues to state, though it offers no conclusive evidence, that Iran maintains nuclear weapon aspiration.
According to foreign policy expert Phyllis Bennis, who wrote about U.S./Iran relations in the aftermath of speeches by President Obama and his counterpart Hossan Rouhani at the U.N. this week, if real progress is to be made in the diplomatic region, “more flexibility will be required than the United States is usually known for.”
However, reports that followed the meeting showed both Kerry and Zarif regarding the progress made as a promising and necessary step.
From The Guardian:
And McClatchy adds:
According to Bennis, “It’s been too long coming, it’s still too hesitant, there’s still too much hinting about military force behind it… but we’re talking. Foreign minister to foreign minister, Kerry to Zarif, it’s all a good sign.”
An estimated 40,000 people rallied in Tokyo on Sunday to say “We oppose nuclear power” and urge the country to not restart any of the nation’s 50 nuclear reactors currently offline.
At the demonstration, which was organized by three anti-nuclear power groups, protesters marched past government offices as well as the head office of Fukushima plant operator TEPCO.
“We need to win back a world where our future children can live,” said Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe at the rally.
Takanori Teraoka, a Tokyo worker and father, said, “Something that could leave future generations with irreparable damage must not be done.”
On September 15, Japan switched off its last nuclear reactor, but many in the country are fearful that—despite the ongoing crisis at Fukushima—some of the nuclear reactors are on track to restart. The Asahi Shimbun reports that
TEPCO’s application is to restart the world’s largest nuclear plant.
“If an opportunity to restart the nuclear reactors is given at some point in six months or a year, it will be impossible to push back the momentum to the restarting of the nuclear plants,” Oe warned.
A TEPCO official said on Monday that the country has no plans of abandoning nuclear power.
“The Japanese government still considers nuclear as an option for the energy mix. It must not be excluded from the overall energy mix,” said TEPCO Vice President Zengo Aizawa while speaking at the World Energy Congress being held in Daegu, South Korea.
A tar sands showdown in a small town in Maine, a battle to label genetically modified foods in Washington and a fracking fight in Colorado are some of the issues to watch on Election Day.
Common Dreams zooms in on six hotly-contested battles poised to set a course for progressive politics:
Washington State’s I-522 would require foods that have been genetically modified, or GMOs, to be labeled as such for retail purposes in the state.
Following legal pressure from anti-GMO campaign groups such as Moms for Labeling and Yes on 1-522 and the Washington State Attorney General’s office, the pro-GMO trade group Grocery Manufacturers Association was forced to release a list of its high rolling donors who have financed the NO on I- 522 drive.
As was expected, major food corporations and GMO users such as PepsiCo, Nestle USA, The Coca-Cola Co. and General Mills, among many others, had secretly donated millions of dollars to the GMA campaign.
GMA spending made up $7 million of the $17 million dollar No on I-522 push.
A similar initiative in California, Proposition 37, lost on last year’s ballot due to a similar flood of campaign money from pro-GMO food companies.
The following is the ballot text:
Initiative Measure No. 522 concerns labeling of genetically-engineered foods.
This measure would require most raw agricultural commodities, processed foods, and seeds and seed stocks, if produced using genetic engineering as defined, to be labeled as genetically engineered when offered for retail sale.
Environmentalists are facing off with the tar sands industry in a hotly contested election in the coastal Maine town of South Portland. At issue is the Waterfront Protection Ordinance, a land-use zoning ordinance up for referendum Tuesday that would prevent oil industry efforts to build a massive tar sands export facility at the waterfront of this town of 25,000.
South Portland grassroots organizations are putting the ordinance to referendum in a proactive bid against industry plans to use a 70-year-old, 236-mile pipeline, currently employed to transport crude oil from freighters in the South Portland harbor to Montreal, to instead transport tar sands oil from Canada by reversing the flow of the pipeline. Under this industry scheme, tar sands oil would be distributed internationally by oil tankers and an ‘upgraded’ terminal in South Portland. The so-called upgrade would include two 70-foot smokestacks on the waterfront and storage tanks near local schools.
Big oil is throwing big money at the campaign, out-spending green groups six to one. “Oil industry spending is completely over the top,” said Robert Sellin, from the group Protect South Portland, in a previous interview with Common Dreams. “Clearly they have all the money. We are talking about some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. They do not want a community to stand up for itself.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
The election is poised to have nation-wide ramifications as the dirty oil industry looks for other options for tar sands transport in the face of nation-wide opposition to Keystone XL.
If passed, Question One on the ballot in Portland, Maine would make it legal for adults 21 and over to possess — but not purchase or sell — up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana.
“I think there’s national implications, keeping the momentum that Washington and Colorado started last November in ending marijuana prohibition,” said David Boyer, the Marijuana Policy Project’s political director in Maine. “This is just the next domino.”
Likewise, ballot proposals in three Michigan cities, Lansing, Jackson and Ferndale, would amend city charters to legalize the use or possession of up to one ounce of marijuana on private property by anyone 21 years or older.
Tim Beck, a the chairman of the Safer Michigan Coalition, an organization working with local groups to pass new marijuana laws, told Michigan Live that he is confident voters in the three cities will vote to decriminalize marijuana, and may lead to wider reaching state ballots in the future.
Earlier this month a national Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, the majority of Americans want to legalize marijuana.
With 58 percent support, the number of those favoring the drug has jumped a dramatic 10 percentage points since November 2012—with the momentum showing “no sign of abating,” Gallup notes.
Colorado’s Proposition AA: The Marijuana Tax
Now that marijuana has been legal in Colorado for a year, residents are grappling over exactly how much to tax it. Colorado’s Proposition AA, on the table for the Tuesday election, with hit marijuana with a 15 percent in excise tax, and 10 percent sales tax if passed. The taxes would pay for school construction and enforcement of marijuana law respectively.
Supporters of marijuana legalization fall on both sides of the issue. The ‘No’ campaign charges that the tax is excessive and will drive pot users back underground, and it is gaining support from some conservatives, including gubernatorial candidate Greg Brophy and former Senator John Andrews.
The ‘Yes’ side argues that, in order to build a national case for pot legalization, it is necessary to show the public just how socially beneficial this legalization can be. “Taxes are an opportunity for marijuana to show it can play a valuable role in the community,” said Joe Megyesy, spokesman for the campaign promoting the tax measure, in an interview with the Associated Press.
Polls indicate the proposition will pass.
The race to succeed billionaire Mayor Bloomberg pits heavily-favored Democrat Bill de Blasio against Republican Joe Lhota.
City Public Advocate de Blasio has campaigned on a “tale of two cities” narrative that focuses on the city’s inequality, has voiced strong opposition to stop-and-frisk policies and has promised to tax the city’s wealthiest to fund universal pre-kindergarten and after school programs.
Challenging the progressive is Lhota, Rudy Giuliani’s deputy mayor and former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who has defended stop-and-frisk, promised an increase in charter schools, a decrease in taxes, and has warned that crime would increase under de Blasio.
A de Blasio victory would mark the first Democratic mayor in the city in over 20 years.
Anti-fracking opponents will have their eyes on four cities in Colorado–Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins and Lafayette–on Tuesday.
Voters in Lafayette will vote on a ban of the fossil fuel extraction method, while the other three cities have a five-year moratorium on their ballots.
The Denver-based Colorado Oil and Gas Association has poured money into the issue, spending 32 times what anti-fracking activists have spent.
“Can the richest and most powerful industry on the planet — which pollutes our air, water, land and neighborhoods — also buy and pollute our local democracy in Fort Collins?” asked Gary Wockner of Save the Poudre and Clean Water Action. “We’ll find out.”
_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Striking a blow to the rights and wellbeing of women across Texas, a federal appeals court has ruled to reinstate a restrictive anti-choice law that will shutter at least one-third of all abortion providers across the state.
As the Associated Press reports:
“The decision is a disappointing failure to protect the constitutional rights of women in Texas, who now face a health crisis of catastrophic proportions,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Years of legislative attacks on women’s health and rights,” she added, “now pose an imminent threat to send countless women back to the dark days before Roe v. Wade.”
Northrup, however, was not alone in vowing to continue the legal battle.
“This fight is far from over,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in a statement. “This restriction clearly violates Texas women’s constitutional rights by drastically reducing access to safe and legal abortion statewide.”
And Northrup said her group was “committed to standing with Texas health care providers, Texas women, and our partners in taking every necessary step to end this emergency and restore the essential health care that has been unconstitutionally stripped away.”
______________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Lewis Hamilton says that winning the F1 Constructors’ championship with Mercedes is “almost as exciting” as winning the drivers’ title.
With four races to go this season, Hamilton is on the path to a seventh coronation in F1, having surpassed in Portugal Michael Schumacher’s outstanding record of 91 wins in Grand Prix racing.
Next week in Turkey, the Briton could eclipse another Schumacher milestone, the record for the most wins in F1 by a driver with a single team, with Hamilton seeking a 73rd victory with Mercedes.
The 35-year-old’s individual achievements in the sport, which include many other impressive statistics, are nothing short of remarkable.
Yet, Hamilton says he derives almost as much satisfaction from Mercedes’ success as a team, with the Brackley squad clinching its seventh consecutive Constructors’ title at Imola.
“It’s almost more exciting winning the team one,” he said after his outfit’s crowning in Italy last weekend.
“It’s a very strange sport in the sense that it is as team sport but there are two championships and then there is an individual championship, but what is at the core our job is to deliver points and results for the team,” he added.
“So when you win a team championship I think it’s almost better than an individual because it’s something you do collectively, with a large group of people.
“Whilst we are the ones standing on top of the podium we are not above anybody. We are on the same level, we are all part of the chain links.
“You can tell that everyone is so happy when they get the constructors’ title. When we do the Christmas party and we celebrate with everyone, everyone just knows that they did a remarkable job and that they have done something that nobody else has done before.
“That’s cool to be a part of. Even if I was to stop today that would be something that I would be able to share with that large group of people for the rest of my life.”
Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas, who has contributed to Mercedes his fair share of success since joining the Black Arrows team in 2017, said his team’s incredible track record feels “quite unreal”.
“It’s crazy to think that I’ve now been part of the team four years in a row to be part of winning the constructors’ championship,” the Finn said.
“It’s quite unreal – I’m so proud of every single team member, what they’re doing. All the factories and in the race team.
Hamilton: Not enough credit for ‘incredibly fast’ Bottas
“We keep raising the bar for every single team member but we do it united. We support each other but the spirit the team has, it’s making these things possible. And I’m really, really proud to be part of it.
“I think for all of us in the team, it takes a bit of time to understand what we’re doing and what we are achieving – but we should definitely enjoy it because it is amazing and I’m really proud of everyone.”
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
Shady Wall Street dealings and massive corporate subsidies are responsible for Detroit’s financial nosedive, not worker and retiree pensions, a report published Wednesday reveals.
Released by Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who now works for the think tank Demos, the study takes aim at Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr’s claims that workers and retirees are to blame for Detroit’s shortfall.
“To say the pension fund killed the city, it’s like if you were stabbed, strangled and blown up, did you die from the strangling?” Turbeville said, according to The Huffington Post. “That’s why I find this whole thing illogical, except for the fact somebody didn’t like pensions.”
Turbeville singles out Detroit’s risky financial dealings with big banks as “a great threat to the city.” In 2005 and 2006, the city financed its $1.6 billion in debt through a series of complex swap deals with “hidden risks.” The report explains,
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Turbeville states, “These swap deals were particularly ill-suited for a city like Detroit, which had been hovering on the edge of a credit rating downgrade for years… A strong case can be made that the banks that sold these swaps may have breached their ethical, and possibly legal, obligations to the city in executing these deals.”
Furthermore, massive tax subsidies to corporations—which climbed as high as $20 million annually—were a “burden on city revenues at a time when it was particularly damaging,” the report finds. These revenues were further depleted by unemployment and depopulation connected the Great Recession. This coincided with a reduction of Michigan state sharing of revenue.
Contrary to widespread belief, Detroit’s overall spending is not the culprit behind the city’s shortfall and in fact decreased 38 percent since the Great Recession. Rather, it was declining revenue, “exacerbated by complicated Wall Street deals,” that threatened Detroit’s ability to pay its expenses, the study finds.
The report accuses Orr of grossly inflating Detroit’s alleged $18 billion in debt to accelerate the push for bankruptcy filings. “While emergency manager Kevyn Orr has focused on cutting retiree benefits and reducing the city’s long-term liabilities to address the crisis, an analysis of the city’s finances reveals that his efforts are inappropriate and, in important ways, not rooted in fact,” the report concludes.
The study comes as Detroit’s bankruptcy case makes its way through the courts. Orr has been slammed by unions for forcing through bankruptcy proceedings with the support of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in a bid to subvert local democratic process and state law. Orr has been blasted for gutting public services and diverting public dollars to pay off the big banks largely responsible for the city’s financial spiral while threatening workers’ hard-earned pensions.
_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
In the latest example of local residents organizing in opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s “fracking boom,” which has staked its claim in many communities around the world, U.S. oil giant Chevron has found itself engaged in a showdown in rural Romania.
“On a frozen field braving police, Romanian villagers hold vigil in a makeshift camp set up to block US energy giant Chevron from exploring for shale gas,” Agence France-Presse reports.
“We have potatoes to eat, an improvised stove. We protest to protect our way of life and our health,” said Romanian farmer, Alexandru Focsa, from the camp, which until now had successfully blocked Chevron from its prospects in the village of Pungesti, North-Eastern Romania since October when the company won approval to drill exploratory wells.
However, on Monday night riot police moved in wielding batons and cleared the camp, allowing Chevron to begin its exploration.
“Police arrived at night, they beat us up with batons and dragged us away,” Focsa told AFP.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
“The authorities do not want to listen to us but we are determined to go on despite the abuses and the fines handed by the police,” he said.
The fight, however, is not over, as many of the protesters have returned to the protest camp since Monday night. While the blockade no longer holds, protesters are taking turns in a vigil against the operation.
“Villagers have been taking turns guarding the site since October, sleeping in tents,” Reuters reports. “They oppose the project and say they do not want what they say are the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – the process of injecting water and chemicals at high pressure into shale formations to release the gas.”
The remaining protesters are not alone, however. As fracking has become a hot-button issue in the country, many anti-fracking protests have popped up throughout the year and has spread to a nation-wide battle.
As Reuters reports, “Thousands of people have rallied across Romania in recent months to protest against government support for shale gas exploration and separate plans to set up Europe’s largest open cast gold mine in a small Carpathian town.”
_______________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
They were held for 12 years without charges, subject to torturous interrogation methods, and ordered to be released by a U.S. federal judge in 2008.
Yet, it was not until the final days of 2013 that the last three of 22 ethnic Uighurs from China were freed from the U.S. military’s notorious offshore prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The Department of Defense announced Tuesday that the three men — Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghuper and Saidullah Khalik — have been “resettled” to Slovakia, making them “the last ethnic Uighur Chinese nationals to be transferred from the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.”
“These men have became a symbol of the tragedy of Guantánamo,” said Wells Dixon, senior attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, in an interview with Common Dreams.
The 22 men were erroneously detained in eastern Afghanistan in 2001, where they said they had come to escape persecution in China, where they are an ethnic minority.
“They were given to the U.S. for detention at a time when U.S. forces were heavily reliant on Afghan proxies who had their own agendas and who accepted bounties for captives,” writes Spencer Ackerman for The Guardian.
During the early period of their captivity, the men were subject to sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures, and isolation, according to a 2009 congressional testimony.
As early as 2003, the U.S. military determined that the three Uigher captives were “not affiliated with Al Qaeda or a Taliban leader” according to leaked dossiers reported by The New York Times.
“All of the Uighurs were ordered released to the United States in October 2008 by a federal judge,” explained Dixon. “The Bush administration appealed that decision, and they were able to successfully block that effort. The Obama administration had a plan to bring the Uighurs to the United States in 2009, but Obama was unwilling to exert the political capital necessary to bring the men here.”
The inmates languished in the prison throughout the lengthy and bureaucratic process of finding them countries for transfer, as China exerted political pressure to block countries from accepting them. “They really became pawns in a large diplomatic saga between the U.S. and China,” said Dixon.
Uighur captives were eventually released to countries including El Salvador, Bermuda, Palau, and Albania.
“Slovakia and the other countries that accepted Uigher transfers deserve a lot of credit for doing what larger countries like the U.S., Germany, Australia, and Canada have refused to do,” said Dixon. “Those are the countries that have sizable Uighur populations outside of China.”
“In the case of the U.S., the decision not to accept the men and resettle them here in the Washington, DC area was due largely to politics and fear mongering,” said Dixon.
The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Obama last week, loosens some restrictions on transferring Guantánamo inmates to other countries, but retains the ban on their transfer to the U.S..
There are 155 detainees remaining in Guantánamo, most of whom have not been charged for a crime.
“The irony is when these Uighur men were captured and turned over to the United States, they thought they had been saved,” said Dixon.
_____________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
In a move that would have been almost
unthinkable under ousted Islamist president Omar al-Bashir, Sudanese designers
have organised a series of mixed-gender fashion shows to present their new
lines.
The shows in upmarket Khartoum hotels saw female and male models parading
down the catwalk together for the first time since before Bashir seized power
more than three decades ago.
“In the old days, it was very difficult to organise a show like this. One
would not dream of getting approval for it from authorities,” Sudanese
designer Khaled Onsa told AFP.
“We used to face repression instead, but now we are ruled by a system that
guarantees public freedoms.”
Bashir, a general who seized power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989,
ruled Sudan with an iron fist until his ouster in a palace coup in April last
year following months of mass protests on the streets.
He imposed a harsh form of Islamic law, criminalising everything from
drinking alcohol to women wearing clothes deemed as “revealing”.
The transitional government installed after his overthrow has set about
dismantling his legacy of repression.
It scrapped Sudan’s 1996 public order laws which empowered policemen to
take action against people dressed “indecently”.
Female designer Nermin Awad Sharif, who organised one of the shows, said
there had never been much opposition to such events among the people.
“What we offer are outfits that everyone will accept,” she told AFP. “I
don’t think anyone in Sudanese society would object to them.”
Model Barza Mostafa said the show was an opportunity t
o introduce fashion
to the Sudanese people and Sudan to the fashion world.
“We want to introduce the world to our culture,” she said. “Previously,
people did not understand the idea of a fashion show but now we can see the
audience watching and interacting.”
Spectator Sawsan Hassan recalled how policemen under Bashir used to stop
her for simply not wearing a headscarf.
A decade ago, Hassan had attended a fashion show in Sudan that ended with
organisers and models behind bars.
“Some were even flogged,” she said.
Designer Hossam Mohamed Ahmed believes the shows are testament to the
spirit of change in Sudan.