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 harmonica player George "Harmonica" Smith a member of the Muddy Waters band in its heyday. Enjoy!
George Harmonica Smith - Leavin' Chicago
“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...”
-- Black Elk
News and Opinion
Lakota to file UN Genocide Charges Against US, South Dakota
In April, a grassroots movement led by Lakota grandmothers toured the country to build support for a formal complaint of genocide against the United States government and its constituent states. Though temporarily overturned, the recent conviction of Efrain Rios Montt for genocide against indigenous Guatemalans should give US officials, particularly members of the Supreme Court, pause before dismissing the UN petition as a feeble symbolic gesture. ...
An excerpt from the complaint, still being refined into its final, legal form, reads: “This letter serves notice as complaint, that the crime of genocide is being committed, in an ongoing manner, against the matriarchal Tetuwan Lakota Oyate of the Oceti Sakowin, an Indigenous First Nation people whose ancestral lands comprise a large area of the Northern Great Plains of Turtle Island, the continent known as North America.” As evidence, the Lakota cite systematic American usurpation of their land and sovereignty rights, imposition of third-world living conditions on the majority of Lakota, US assimilation policies that threaten the future of their language, culture and identity, and environmental depredations including abandoned open uranium mines and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline slated to invade the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Lakota grandmothers and their allies in the Lakota Solidarity Project have even produced a powerful, full-length documentary, "Red Cry.
But the UN complaint is just one facet of a multi-pronged legal, political and educational movement within the indigenous Lakota (Sioux) nation to stop the state removal of Native children from their families into white foster homes and institutions, arguably the most salient and best-documented evidence of ongoing US violation of the genocide convention. Article 2 of the convention defines acts of genocide as follows:
“…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Tribe moves to seize Wounded Knee site through eminent domain
RAPID CITY— When James Czywczynski first announced that he was selling the two forty acre tracts of land; one at Wounded Knee and one at Porcupine Butte, for a total of $4.9 million, many people scoffed at the notion that someone would be willing to pay that much for the land.
Nonetheless as the months have passed and several potential buyers are now negotiating a final deal on the land the Oglala Sioux Tribe has decided to take action and file in federal court under the premise of Eminent Domain to seize the land.
On Thursday, May16, the Oglala Sioux Tribal council voted 14-0 to file in federal court for Eminent Domain over the land that Czywczynski, a non-member, owns at Wounded Knee. While many have praised the tribe for exercising an established right of any government, the legal efficacy of this action is still undetermined. ...
“The land in question is private, it is on the reservation and is needed for a public purpose, given its historical, cultural and traditional significance to the tribe,” said longtime tribal judge and law professor Patrick Lee. “Jurisdiction is always an issue when nonmembers are involved. Tribal ordinance 93-12 provides that nonmembers impliedly consent to tribal jurisdiction by owning land or by possession or use of any property situated within the exterior boundaries of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Procedurally that is a very strong position for the tribe to be in should the owner challenge tribal jurisdiction” added Lee.
New York Times snookered by Obama's fancy rhetoric again...
The ‘Signature Strikes’ Program
Toward the end of a May 27 article in The Times about President Obama’s speech in which, among other things, he mentioned setting new standards for ordering drone strikes against non-Americans, there was this rather disturbing paragraph:
“Even as he set new standards, a debate broke out about what they actually meant and what would actually change. For now, officials said, ‘signature strikes’ targeting groups of unidentified armed men presumed to be extremists will continue in the Pakistani tribal areas.”
As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, those two sentences seem to contradict the entire tenor of Mr. Obama’s speech, and of a letter to Congress from Attorney General Eric Holder. ...
I guess Glenn Greenwald was right. The president’s speech did not signal a specific, immediate change in the administration’s policy on signature strikes — just a promise that they will decline over time. That’s a shame.
Obama's new FBI chief approved Bush's NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme
James Comey becomes just the latest symbol of the Obama legacy: normalizing what was very recently viewed as radical
So why, then, was there no accountability for this systematic illegal spying? That happened for two reasons. First, both the Bush DOJ and then the Obama DOJ successfully convinced obsequious federal courts that the eavesdropping program was so secretive that national security would be harmed if courts were to adjudicate its legality - in other words, top government officials should be placed above and beyond the rule of law because doing so is necessary to Keep Us Safe™. Second, the Bush DOJ's most senior lawyers - Attorney General John Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General James Comey and OLC chief Jack Goldsmith - approved a legal memorandum in 2004 endorsing radical executive power theories and warped statutory interpretations, concluding that the Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program was legal, thus making it more difficult to prosecute the Bush officials who ordered it (even if the Obama DOJ were inclined to prosecute, which they were not).
It was announced yesterday that this very same James Comey - who as Bush's Deputy Attorney General authorized the once-very-controversial, patently illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program - is President Obama's choice to be the new Director of the FBI.
How are Obama's most devoted media loyalists reacting to the news that he is about to put in charge of the FBI the Bush lawyer who authorized the illegal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program based on warped right-wing legal theories? Exactly as you would expect. Here's one of them - who wrote post after post after post in 2006 and 2007 vehemently denouncing the NSA program which Comey authorized and the theories on which it was based - hailing Comey as "not only non partisan in [his] job but consistently put constitutional equities at center [of his] thinking". ...
Then there's Comey's mixed and quite murky role in authorizing Bush's torture program. Internal DOJ emails released to the New York Times in 2009 show Comey expressing serious reservations, and even objections, to the willingness of Albert Gonzales to legally authorize any interrogation techniques the White House wanted, and he warned those officials that their involvement would be condemned by history. But even as he did so, Comey, as the New York Times explained, eventually, albeit reluctantly, gave his legal approval to those techniques. ...
James Comey is far from the worst choice to lead the FBI. I doubt it will change much of anything one way or the other, and there are undoubtedly worse people within the senior ranks of the Democratic Party who would be the likely alternatives. But it's still a potent symbol of how little has changed in the right direction and how much it has changed in the wrong direction. If you had told progressives in 2008 that the Bush lawyer who approved the NSA program would be named by Obama as the FBI Director, they would scoff in disbelief. Now they'll cheer. That is what has changed.
'Killer robots' pose threat to peace and should be banned, UN warned
"Killer robots" that could attack targets autonomously without a human pulling the trigger pose a threat to international stability and should be banned before they come into existence, the United Nations will be told by its human rights investigator this week.
Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, will address the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday and call for a worldwide moratorium on what he calls "lethal autonomous robotics" – weapons systems that, once activated, can lock on and kill targets without further involvement of human handlers.
"Machines lack morality and mortality, and as a result should not have life and death powers over humans," Heyns will say.
Heyns's call for a moratorium draws the UN into the realms of sci-fi: fully autonomous weapons have not yet been developed, and exist only in the imaginations of military planners. However, experts in warfare technologies warn that the world's leading military powers are moving so rapidly in this direction that a pre-emptive ban is essential.
"States are working towards greater and greater autonomy in weapons, and the potential is there for such technologies to be developed in the next 10 or 20 years," said Bonnie Docherty of Harvard law school's International Human Rights Clinic, who co-authored a report on the subject with Human Rights Watch.
Did McCain Go to Syria to Sabotage US Russia Negotiations?
Democrat's Vision for Economy is GOP-Lite
If you ask yourself, well, what does Obama say he wants in his second term, his principal economic objective is to make a deal with the Republicans. Now, for Obama that means not quite as much austerity as the Republicans want. But he's already passed the line where he's essentially agreed that over the next ten years, the government contribution to growth is going to slow down, more or less. ...
He says that he is for public spending on infrastructure and education and research and development, and that certainly is a good thing. The problem is that it is completely undermined by his austerity budget. And, you know, the discretionary--domestic discretionary part of the budget--I don't want to get too much in the weeds here, but that's the place where infrastructure and education and research and development come from. And his own proposal is to cut that as a percentage of the national budget by one half.
So while you get the impression that the Republicans--the Democrats know more about what the problem is, what they are promising is not enough to really do much about economic growth. Again, if nobody spends, nobody works. Foreigners aren't buying our goods, consumers aren't spending, and business is not investing because consumers aren't spending. The government is the only one that's left. Whether you like it or whether you don't like it, you know, that's the economic reality. ...
If you look at the economic reports of the president and the projections of the White House over the last four years, every year they've promised a recovery in four years. You know, in 2009 they promised a recovery in 2013. So now we're in 2013 and they've promised that by 2017 we will have 5 percent unemployment. Well, the reality is that if we take the rate of increase in employment in the labor market that we've had so far, since 2009, it will be 2022 before we get to 5 percent, and that's assuming no more recession, no collapse of the new financial bubble. It assumes that Europe recovers.
America in Decline: A Baby Born in Parts of Ohio More Likely to Die Than One Born in North Korea or the Gaza Strip
Infant mortality within a three-mile radius around one of the nation’s best children’s hospitals, in Cleveland, Ohio, is worse than that in some third-world countries, Dr. Michele Walsh, neonatology director of Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, claimed in a radio interview last week. The hospital anchors the relatively affluent University Circle neighborhood, home to Case Western Reserve University, on the east end of an otherwise pretty impoverished city. (Seventy percent of the infants that enter Walsh’s intensive care unit are on Medicaid.)
Understandably disturbed by the claim, Politifact Ohio confirmed it using a Case Western regional social and economic research database:
Infant mortality in the University Circle neighborhood … was slightly above 69 deaths per 1,000 live births. That exceeds the rate in countries that include, among others, Bangladesh, Haiti, Burma, Cameroon, Djibouti, Sudan, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, and Uganda.
As Lawmakers Target Food Stamp Funding, New Report Finds 1 in 6 in U.S. are Going Hungry
See, we told you that pinko, socialist stuff was dangerous - look, europeans actually expect their governments to prevent hunger and want and if they don't, the people dump their governments. Imagine that!
Germany fears revolution if Europe scraps welfare model
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, and dropping the continent's welfare model in favor of tougher U.S. standards would spark a revolution.
Germany, along with France, Spain and Italy, backed urgent action to rescue a generation of young Europeans who fear they will not find jobs, with youth unemployment in the EU standing at nearly one in four, more than twice the adult rate.
"We need to be more successful in our fight against youth unemployment, otherwise we will lose the battle for Europe's unity," Germany's Schaeuble said.
While Germany insists on the importance of budget consolidation, Schaeuble spoke of the need to preserve Europe's welfare model.
If U.S. welfare standards were introduced in Europe, "we would have revolution, not tomorrow, but on the very same day," Schaeuble told a conference in Paris.
Chicago Closes 50 Public Schools, Spends $100 Million in Taxpayer Funds on Private College Stadium
Max Keiser talks with David Graeber
New poll says Assange could win Australian Senate seat
Julian Assange's bid for a seat in Australia's Senate may not be just a stunt, with a new poll revealing 26 per cent of Australians consider themselves “likely” to vote for the Leaker-In-Chief.
Assange has repeatedly announced his candidacy for a seat in the Senate, the upper chamber of Australia's national Parliament which comprises 12 representatives from each of the nation's six States, plus a pair from each of its Territories. Half of each State's Senate Seats will be decided at Federal election scheduled for September 14th. ...
But Assange doesn't need 23 per cent of votes to win a seat, because voting for Australia's Senate uses compulsory preferential voting, with candidates elected if they secure a quota of one sixth of all votes cast. Once a candidate secures a quota, further votes for that candidate are passed on to voter's second preference. This system means that a candidate can be elected without many voters selecting them as their first preference.
U.S. finds unapproved genetically modified wheat in Oregon
A strain of genetically engineered wheat never approved for sale or consumption was found sprouting on a farm in Oregon, the U.S. government said on Wednesday, and grain traders warned the discovery could hurt export prospects for U.S. wheat.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported the discovery of a wheat variety developed years ago by biotechnology giant Monsanto Co to be resistant to its Roundup herbicide. It was never put into use because of worldwide opposition to genetically engineered wheat. ...
The genetically modified wheat sprouted this spring on an Oregon farm, in a field that grew winter wheat in 2012.
USDA officials explained that when the farmer sprayed the so-called "volunteer" plants with a glyphosate herbicide, some of them unexpectedly survived. Samples were then sent to Oregon State University and to USDA for analysis.
Testing showed the wheat was a Monsanto-developed strain resistant to glyphosate. Monsanto is assisting in the investigation, USDA said. Officials declined to give the location of the farm or the farmer's name and said they have not identified if the wheat was a spring or winter variety.
Parched California Ablaze With Worsening Conditions Expected
On Wednesday, firefighters continue to battle wildfires in southern California "burning like it's August or September" as the drought-covered state is left a "tinderbox" following a low-moisture winter and warm, windy weather.
"It's an out-of-control wildfire so it is a threat," said Santa Barbara County fire Capt. David Sadecki of the White Fire that broke out Monday afternoon and has already burned over 1800 acres. "There's a lot of dry vegetation in its path," he said. ...
California's "precipitation pretty much shut off at the beginning of the year," NIFC wildland fire analyst Jeremy Sullens told reporters in a phone conference. ...
"Since they're not expecting a lot more precipitation for the remainder of the summer, conditions are going to worsen as we go into the hotter part of the year," warned Sullens.
State Department Inspector General Investigating Keystone XL Contractor Conflicts of Interest
The Checks and Balances Project has announced that the U.S. State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has launched a conflicts-of-interest investigation into dirty dealings pertaining to the contractor tasked to perform the environmental review for the northern half of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on behalf of State.
Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group) declared the northern portion of Keystone XL as environmentally safe and sound on behalf of State in March, in defiance of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's assessment, among others. ...
The overarching problem with that ERM assessment, as first revealed on Grist by Brad Johnson: ERM Group was chosen not by the State Dept., but by TransCanada itself. Furthermore, as first revealed on Mother Jones by Andy Kroll, the State Dept. redacted biographical portions of the EIS that pointed to ERM's ongoing close consulting relationship with ERM Group and TransCanada.
"The American public was supposed to get an honest look at the impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline," writes Checks and Balances' Gabe Elsner. "Instead...a fossil fuel contractor, hid its ties from the State Department so they could green light the project on behalf of its oil company clients."
The Obama Tar Sands Pipeline
Terror fears keep toxic plants hidden from public
Until the local fertilizer company in West, Texas, blew up last month and demolished scores of homes, many in that town of 2,800 didn't know what chemicals were stored alongside the railroad tracks or how dangerous they were. Even rescue workers didn't know what they were up against. ...
Statistically, Americans are more likely to be hurt from chemical or industrial accidents like the one in Texas than from terrorist attacks like the one in Boston. Yet information intended to keep people safe is concealed in the name of keeping people safe.
Since the 1980s, states have been required under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act to tell people where dangerous chemicals are stored and how much is nearby.
That law followed a chemical leak in Bhopal, India, that killed more than 1,700 people and another in West Virginia that led to an evacuation. Ammonium nitrate has been responsible for some of the largest industrial disasters in history. In fact, what remains the worst industrial accident in the nation's history was an ammonium nitrate-triggered explosion in 1947 that killed more than 570 people in Texas City, Texas, and injured about 5,000.
But times have changed. Fears of chemical spills have given way to fears of terrorism.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
US Accused of Politicizing Weapons of Mass Destruction
It's time to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry
Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians
The blowback: When American violence leads to anti-American violence - David Mizner published by MSNBC!
A Little Night Music
Muddy Waters & George Harmonica Smith - Walking thru the park
George Harmonica Smith - Tight Dress
George "Harmonica" Smith - Blowin' The Blues
George Harmonica Smith - Further on up the road
George "Harmonica" Smith - Roaming
George Harmonica Smith & Bacon Fat - Too Late
George "Harmonica" Smith - Teardrops Are Falling
George Harmonica Smith - Telephone Blues
George "Harmonica" Smith - Sunbird
George Harmonica Smith - Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose
George Harmonica Smith - Astatic Stomp
George Harmonica Smith - Mellow Down Easy
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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