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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features country bluesman and slide guitarist Casey Bill Weldon. Enjoy!
Casey Bill Weldon - I believe I'll make a change
"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
News and Opinion
As Assad Regime Accepts Russian Plan on Chemical Weapons, A Debate on Syria’s Path Forward
AARON MATÉ: Rania Masri, I wanted to ask you about the comments of Alon Pinkas. He’s the former Israeli consul general in New York. And speaking to The New York Times last week, Pinkas described his take on how Israel is viewing the conflict in Syria. He said, quote, "This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win—we’ll settle for a tie. Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the [strategic] thinking here."
RANIA MASRI: Yes.
AARON MATÉ: "As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria." Are you worried that that is basically the international approach to Syria right now, is let them bleed?
RANIA MASRI: Well, I mean, I take issue with the term "international," because we do have very different state parties here. I think it is one of the objectives of the U.S. government, yes, and of course its allies, be they in Israel or be they in the Gulf, that, yes, one of the objectives is to continue to have them, quote, "kill each other," as was the objective of the U.S. government during the Iraq-Iran War. Yes, I do see that as being one of the objectives, the continuous destruction of Syria as a country and of its people, on all sides, yes.
But I also want to raise this issue. And I’m not just creating a debate for the objective of debate, but I’m actually understanding what’s being said by the other party. While we sit here and we’re opposed to the use of chemical weapons—and, I would argue, opposed to the use of all weapons, not just chemical weapons—it’s important to point out that according to statements made by the United Nations itself, they’ve released statements that, quote, they have "strong suspicion" that the rebels themselves have access and have used sarin gas. And these statements were made earlier this year. So, again, I just want to say that what we need to be working on is a full halt of the arms trade.
Now, with regards to the French proposal, one thing that scares me, as an expert to what the United States did to Iraq during the 13 years of sanctions, is once we put a threat—once we make a statement related to weapons of mass destruction—any way, shape or form—and we back it up with a threat of weapons and a threat of a bombing campaign or a threat of further economic sanctions, we know who will end up getting punished by these. And the people that will end up being punished are the people that have no voice and that are completely vulnerable and that are the Syrian people itself. So, with regards to this resolution that the French are proposing in the United Nations, I think it is wise so long as it is not backed up by a threat of a bombing campaign. Again, we need to be unequivocal here and say absolutely no bombing campaign by anyone under any circumstances.
How Putin Saved Obama, Congress and the European Union from Further Embarrassing themselves on Syria
conference in London Monday morning if there was anything that could forestall a US missile attack on Damascus, and he replied off the cuff that Syria could surrender its chemical weapons stockpile to the international community within a week.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pounced on Kerry’s comment, abruptly announcing that Russia would see what it could do. Lavrov said, “If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country would allow avoiding strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus . . . We are calling on the Syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on prohibition of chemical weapons,”
Syria’s portly Foreign Minister Walid Muallim clearly knows how to chow down while the meal is still hot, and he wasted no time embracing Lavrov’s suggestion. Muallim said, “The Syrian leadership welcomes the Russian initiative because of its own eagerness to preserve the lives of Syrian citizens and ensure the security of the country, and given our confidence in the desire of the Russian leadership to prevent an attack on our country.”
Can France alleviate Obama's wargasm interruptus?
Russia balks at French plan for U.N. Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical arms
An unexpected Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international monitoring and ultimately destroy them had appeared to be gaining traction earlier in the day, as Syria embraced it, China and Iran voiced support, and the United States said it would explore the idea seriously.
But a telephone conversation between French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, revealed a deep divide over their visions of the Security Council’s role — and particularly over the prospect of military action to ensure that an agreement would be honored.
There were also doubts about how Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons could be transferred to international monitors in the midst of a bloody and protracted civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
In Washington, Secretary of State John F. Kerry told a House committee that the proposal “is the ideal way” to take chemical weapons away from the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But he warned that the United States would not tolerate “delay” or “avoidance,” adding: “We’re waiting for that proposal, but we’re not waiting for long.”
Putin: Syria plan will work if US rejects force
Russian President Vladimir Putin says that a plan for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile will only work if the United States agrees not to use force.
Putin told reporters on Tuesday that the plan "can work, only in the event that we hear that the American side and those who support the U.S.A, in this sense, reject the use of force."
President Barack Obama has thrown his support behind a French resolution to the U.N. Security Council even as he pushes the idea of U.S. airstrikes against Assad's regime if that effort fails.
The resolution would demand that Syria open its chemical weapons program to inspection, place it under international control, and ultimately dismantle it.
Do warmongers dream of playing chess?
Not even hardcore Beltway junkies have been able to keep track in real time of the Obama administration's ever-shifting "policy". This is how it (theoretically) stands. "Assad is responsible for the gas attack." Translation; he did not order it, directly (no one with half a brain, apart from the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons, believes the current White House "evidence" sticks). But he's still "responsible". And even if Jabhat al-Nusra did it - with "kitchen sarin" imported from Iraq, as I proposed here - Assad is still "responsible"; after all he must protect Syrian citizens. ...
Obama may have read the writing on the (bloody) wall; forget about convincing the US Congress to bomb Damascus when there's a real diplomatic way out on the table. Yet nothing changes in the long run. Those who are paying or cheering in the sidelines for this operation - from Bandar Bush to Tel Aviv - want by all means to smash Damascus, for the benefit of Israel in terms of strategic balance, and for the benefit of the House of Saud in terms of isolating Iran in the Middle East.
So Lavrov's chess move is not a checkmate; it is a gambit, meant to prevent the United States from becoming al-Qaeda's Air Force, at least for now. The quagmire would then move to a negotiating table - which would include those chemical weapons inspections.
No wonder assorted Western-weaponized psychos and jihadis on the ground in Syria don't like this one bit. It's happening just as more damning circumstantial evidence of false flags galore surface.
Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold
For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. ... Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.
Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice.
But now, as the veto powers of two permanent members (Russia and China) obstruct its attempt to pour petrol on another Middle Eastern fire, the US suddenly decides that the system is illegitimate. Obama says: "If we end up using the UN security council not as a means of enforcing international norms and international law, but rather as a barrier … then I think people rightly are going to be pretty skeptical about the system." Well, yes.
Never have Obama or his predecessors attempted a serious reform of this system. Never have they sought to replace a corrupt global oligarchy with a democratic body. Never do they lament this injustice – until they object to the outcome.
The Russia-Syria Deal: What It Means and What Now?
Watching Syrian FM Walid Muallem on the TV news announcing his country’s acceptance of Russia’s plan to consign all Syria’s CW stockpile to international control and then destruction was an amazingly powerful sight. With this one stroke, all the air went out of the campaign Pres. Obama has been ramping up, to win public and Congressional support for a U.S. “punitive” military attack against Syria. (Shortly after Mouallem’s announcement, the Democratic leader of the senate, Harry Reid, withdrew the war resolution from consideration there…) ...
Oh boy, am I glad that we will not be marking the 12th anniversary of 9/11 by seeing a U.S. military attack against Syria that aids the local affiliates of Al-Qaeda there. ...
So what now? The first task, of course, will be to organize the internationally-mandated body that will go to Syria to collect the CW. Obviously, Russia will have a big part in that body, but it should also have a strongly credible international flavor to it; and of course, it should act under a clear mandate from the U.N. Security Council.
But the Security Council needs to go a lot further. It needs urgently to resume a high-level, internationally supervised process of intra-Syrian political negotiations: the ‘Geneva II’ that has been so long promised, but was always being postponed so long as Washington held to its insistence that “Asad must go before there are negotiations.” That position is no longer credible. Geneva II must be a determinedly all-party deliberation– that is, all the actually Syrian parties to the conflict should be represented; and all the thousands of outsiders who have flocked to the country to fight there should, of course, not be.
Syria Accepts Deal over Weapons, But Will Obama Abandon War Push?
As the Obama administration continues to make its "myth-addled" case for war against Syria to an unconvinced Congress and an even more skeptical American public, new developments in the international arena are showing that the U.N. Security Council may still have a role to play in avoiding an attack by the U.S. and its allies. ...
Asked to weigh in on the idea of a renewed role for the U.N. Security Council, President Obama said Monday that though he was skeptical of Russian intentions on the matter, an international agreement could "potentially be a significant breakthrough." ...
Despite that, Obama said he would continue to push Congress for authorization to use military force. "I don't think we would have gotten to this point unless we had maintained a credible possibility for a military strike and I don't think now is the time for us to let up on that," Obama added.
However, that prospect continued to dim for the White House, as members in both houses of Congress remain deeply divided and skeptical over the president's case for war.
Obama's Syria Strike Driven By Oil Interests, Not Concern Over Gas Attacks
Doubts linger over Syria gas attack evidence
The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence.
How the White House and the CIA Are Marketing a War in the YouTube Era
Governments have always used fear and manipulation of emotion to get the public to support wars. The Bush administration did it in 2002 in Iraq and it is happening again in Obama's push for war in Syria.
In possibly the biggest development yet in the story, we learned this weekend that the CIA has now been enlisted to sell this new war with unproven evidence. On Saturday, U.S. intelligence officials claimed they "authenticated" 13 videos that show the horrific aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria in August. What exactly did they "authenticate"?
Why are these videos suddenly news when they have been publicly circulating the web for weeks? Here's why: The videos are meant to market the war, not to "prove" who committed the atrocities. (CBS News and others have reported that the White House case for war has been described as "largely circumstantial.")
We've seen this movie before and it doesn't end well. A decade after the Bush administration used the CIA's "yellow cake" tale and other faulty evidence, the government is yet again relying on the CIA to lead a domestic propaganda effort for military action abroad. If these videos can sway American public opinion, as they're intended to do, and influence Congress to vote to attack Syria, this could become the first YouTube war.
Some in US Intel. Community Reject Obama Admin Case for Syria Attack
Saudis sent death-row inmates to fight Syria
Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.
Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.
According to an English translation of the memo, besides Saudis, the prisoners included Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Somalis, Sudanese, Syrians and Yemenis. All faced "execution by sword" for murder, rape or drug smuggling.
Hat tip PhilJD
Help Kickstart World War III!
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff accuses U.S. of spying for ‘economic’ interests
Brazil President Dilma Rousseff accused the United States of spying on oil giant Petrobras for its own “economic and strategic” reasons — not for national security.
The latest allegations of online snooping by the National Security Agency emerged Sunday night when TV Globo reported Brazilian oil giant Petrobras — world leader in deep-water oil exploration — was among those targeted, along with Google and the French foreign ministry.
Rousseff said in a statement that, “if the facts are confirmed, it would be clear the espionage was not for security or the fight against terrorism, but to respond to economic and strategic interests.”
“Without doubt, Petrobras is not a threat to the security of any country,” the president said.
Steve Jobs is ‘big brother’ and smartphone users are ‘zombies’ in NSA cell phone tapping presentation
Just in case you're not convinced the intelligence community views the public (American or otherwise) as little more than exploitable data generators, two paragraphs from Der Spiegel's full article on the NSA's cell phone exploits should do the trick.
The first deals with former NSA boss Michael Hayden and his iPhone experience.
Michael Hayden has an interesting story to tell about the iPhone. He and his wife were in an Apple store in Virginia, Hayden, the former head of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), said at a conference in Washington recently. A salesman approached and raved about the iPhone, saying that there were already "400,000 apps" for the device. Hayden, amused, turned to his wife and quietly asked: "This kid doesn't know who I am, does he? Four-hundred-thousand apps means 400,000 possibilities for attacks."
What most people would view as a feature list, the NSA views as a way to turn a person's phone into an informant. ... [T]he NSA blames you for creating such attractive data.
In three consecutive transparencies, the authors of the presentation draw a comparison with "1984," George Orwell's classic novel about a surveillance state, revealing the agency's current view of smartphones and their users. "Who knew in 1984 that this would be Big Brother …" the authors ask, in reference to a photo of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. And commenting on photos of enthusiastic Apple customers and iPhone users, the NSA writes: "… and the zombies would be paying customers?"
No doubt whoever put together this presentation was pretty pleased with applying the Big Brother epithet to a private corporation. ... But private corporations aren't Big Brother because, for one thing, they're not the government. Apple can't spy on you and then use that data to imprison you. Only the government can.
Judge declares Indiana ‘right to work’ law unconstitutional
Indiana’s much-derided “right-to-work” law was ruled unconstitutional on Monday by a state Superior Court judge, paving the way for another legal battle with the state Supreme Court.
WXIN-TV reported that Judge John Sedia’s ruling found that a provision in the law requiring unions to represent workers who do not pay union dues violates the state constitution.
State Attorney General Greg Zoeller (R) reportedly signaled his intention to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
The Evening Greens
Chevron brings up ‘new evidence’ to fight $19 billion pollution fine in Ecuador
U.S. oil giant Chevron, hit in Ecuador with a record $19 billion fine for pollution, asked Monday for the court to consider what it claimed was “new evidence” the judge in the case was corrupt.
In a statement in Quito, the company — which has been castigated by President Rafael Correa for refusing to pay the fine — said it had presented the prosecutor with “4,000 pages of new evidence” concerning the judge’s alleged fraud and breach of trust.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The speaker of the Syrian Parliament writes the House of Representatives a letter (pdf)
The Hidden Rot: We Don't Fully Understand the Consequences of Budget Cuts
Ten Things We've Learned About The NSA From A Summer Of Snowden Leaks
World War III... with hybrid Prius tanks
Coming to Rest
I.R.S.: U.S. Income Inequality Has Reached Record Level
A Little Night Music
Casey Bill Weldon - The Big Boat
Casey Bill Weldon - We Gonna Move On The Outskirts Of Town
Casey Bill Weldon - Go Ahead,Buddy
Casey Bill Weldon - You Shouldn't Do That
Casey Bill Weldon - You Just as Well Let Her Go
Casey Bill Weldon - Somebody changed the lock on that door
Casey Bill Weldon - W P A Blues
Casey Bill Weldon - Back Door Blues
Casey Bill Weldon + Casey Bill Weldon - New Orleans Stop Time
Casey Bill Weldon - Sold My Soul to the Devil
Casey Bill Weldon - New Round and Round
It's National Pie Day!
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