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 one of the most prolific songwriters of the Chicago Blues (and a fine bandleader, singer and bass player among other things) Willie Dixon. Enjoy!
Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor - I Make Love
"The truth about war comes out, but always too late. And by the time the drums begin beating, the flags waving and the politicians and press hyperventilating as they shout out their nationalist cant, once again we have forgotten what we learned, as if the debacles of the past had no bearing on the debacles of the future."
-- Chris Hedges
News and Opinion
The Lies That Lead to War
Obama Orders More Troops, Gunships, and Drones to Iraq
The Obama administration said on Monday it has sent yet another complement of US troops to safeguard its Baghdad embassy, a measure intended to ward off another Benghazi-style assault on American diplomats.
It brings the number of US military personnel flowing into Iraq to 750, up from 100 barely two weeks ago.
The latest troop deployment, announced by the Pentagon on Monday, adds 300 US troops for the task of protecting the embassy, including 100 whom the administration announced weeks ago had been pre-positioned outside Iraq on standby. Specialising in tasks like airfield management and logistics, the new deployment more than doubles the 170 marines and others already in charge of embassy security.
They are separate from the army special forces "advisers" whom President Barack Obama ordered into Iraq to help plan the Iraqi security forces' military response to the sudden loss of much of its territory to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), which on Sunday declared an Islamic caliphate and, seemingly heralding its ambitions, changed its name to simply the Islamic State.
Sunnis, Kurds abandon Iraq parliament after no replacement for Maliki named
Sunnis and Kurds abandoned the first meeting of Iraq's new parliament on Tuesday after Shi'ites failed to name a prime minister to replace Nuri al-Maliki, wrecking hopes that a unity government would be swiftly built to save Iraq from collapse.
The United States, United Nations, Iran and Iraq's own Shi'ite clergy have pushed hard for politicians to come up with an inclusive government to save the country as Sunni insurgents bear down on Baghdad.
But with Shi'ites failing to name a prime minister, Sunnis and Kurds refused to return from recess at the parliamentary chamber in the fortified "green zone" where they were meeting for the first time since an election in April.
Parliament is not likely to meet again for at least a week, leaving the country in a state of political limbo and Maliki clinging to power as a caretaker, rejected by Sunnis and Kurds.
Under Iraq's governing system put in place after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the prime minister has always been a member of the Shi'ite majority, the speaker of parliament a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd.
The Shi'ite bloc known as the National Alliance, in which Maliki's State of Law coalition is the biggest group, has met repeatedly in recent days to bargain over the premiership but has so far failed either to endorse Maliki for a third term or to name an alternative.
Pentagon: Iraq Violence Could Further Delay F-16 Shipments
Iraq’s Air Force looks like it’s going to have to make do with Soviet hand-me-downs for the foreseeable future, as the Pentagon says that the escalating violence in the country is likely to further delay the shipments of F-16s.
Iraq ordered F-16s from the US in 2011, and has not gotten any yet. ... On Friday, they ordered Su-25s from Russia, and they were delivered on Sunday.
Turkey rejects Kurdish independence, wants Iraq unity government, officials say
Turkey opposes independence for a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and wants a unity government in Baghdad to counter the threat by Islamist Sunni rebels who have seized large swathes of territory in recent weeks, Turkish officials said.
Iraqi Kurds have benefited from the recent turmoil sweeping the country by occupying territory abandoned by government forces fleeing the advance of Sunni fighters led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which took Iraq's second city Mosul earlier this month.
Turkey has good relations with the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq but would not support moves to push for independence from Baghdad, a Turkish government official said in response to questions from Reuters on Monday. ...
Turkey has in the past been cool to efforts for greater autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan for fear of stirring up separatist feelings among its own Kurds, who fought a decades-long insurgency in which an estimated 40,000 people were killed.
War in Ukraine: 'Sense of never-ending fear'
Ukraine fighting intensifies as Poroshenko ends ceasefire
Fighting has intensified in eastern Ukraine after the president, Petro Poroshenko, announced an end to a ceasefire and said he was ordering his forces to attack pro-Russian separatists.
In a televised address on Monday night, Poroshenko said the 10-day ceasefire had ended, and vowed that Ukrainian government forces would "attack and liberate our land".
Clashes were reported around both the Donetsk and Lugansk regions on Tuesday morning. Four people were killed and five wounded when a small bus came under fire in Kramatorsk, local news outlets reported. Photographs from the scene showed a woman's body lying in the aisle amid broken glass and blood.
Other images published by InfoResist, an analytical group with close ties to the Kiev government, showed gaping holes and destroyed balconies in several residential buildings in Kramatorsk. ...
Poroshenko's decision followed four-way talks in search of a solution with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Francois Hollande, on Monday as the deadline approached. He issued a statement after the talks ended, saying the key conditions needed to continue the ceasefire had not been met.
On Tuesday, Russia urged Kiev to reinstate the ceasefire. "We demand that the Ukrainian authorities refrain from shelling civilian cities and villages in their own country, return to a real, not a fake, ceasefire to safeguard the lives of the people," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine forces attack rebel positions, Putin growls
Ukrainian forces struck at pro-Russian separatist bases in eastern regions with air and artillery strikes on Tuesday after President Petro Poroshenko announced he would not renew a ceasefire but go on the offensive to rid Ukraine of "parasites".
His decision quickly drew fire from Russian President Vladimir Putin who said Poroshenko had disregarded the advice of himself and German and French leaders. ...Repeating a threat he made in March when Russia annexed Crimea, Putin said Moscow would continue to defend the interests of ethnic Russians abroad - up to three million of whom live in the east of Ukraine which has been in separatist ferment since April.
Putin bluntly suggested Poroshenko had been isolated in Monday's phone-in with himself, Merkel and Hollande.
"Unfortunately President Poroshenko took the decision to restart military operations and we – I mean myself and my European colleagues – could not convince him that the road to stable, strong and long-lasting peace does not lie through war," he said.
"Up until now (Poroshenko) was not directly linked to the order to start military operations but now he has taken on this responsibility fully, not only militarily but also politically," he said.
It was not immediately known whether Berlin and Paris agreed with this version of Monday's discussions.
Earlier in Moscow, before Putin spoke, the Russian foreign ministry hinted that the United States stood behind Poroshenko's decision.
EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats
NSA searched data troves for 198 'identifiers' of Americans' information
The National Security Agency searched through its data troves of emails and other communications data for 198 "identifiers" of Americans' information in 2013 alone, a practice civil libertarians denounce as a way to evade constitutional privacy protections.
The figures were disclosed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence following pressure from Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat on the intelligence community who termed the data dives a "backdoor search."
They also showed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency also comb through NSA content databases – not simply data about communications – for Americans' information.
Exploiting leeway in rules to limit unreasonable data dissemination under a critical 2008 surveillance law, first revealed in August by the Guardian, the NSA relies on such content searches, which do not require judicial orders like subpoenas or warrants, to a previously unknown degree. The searches are conducted in secret, and they occur despite an assurance last year from President Obama that "nobody is listening to your telephone calls."
WikiLeaks Editor Sarah Harrison on Helping Edward Snowden, Being Forced to Live in Exile
Purging Dissent - The real enemies of press freedom are in the newsroom.
Three hundred years of press freedom are at risk, the newspapers cry. The government’s proposed press regulator, they warn, threatens their independence. They have a respectable case, when you can extract it from the festoons of sticky humbug. Because of the shocking failures, so far, of self-regulation, I’m marginally in favour of the state solution. But I can also see the dangers.
Those who gnash loudest against the regulator, however, recognise only one kind of freedom. In countries like ours, the principal threat to freedom of expression comes not from government but from within the media. Censorship, in most cases, is what happens in the newsroom.
No newspaper has been more outspoken about what it calls “a chill over press freedom” than the Daily Mail. Though I agree with almost nothing it says, I would defend its freedom from state censorship as fiercely as I would defend the Guardian’s. But, to judge by what it publishes, within the paper there is no freedom at all. There is just one line – echoed throughout its pages – on Europe, social security, state spending, tax, regulation, immigration, sentencing, trade unions and workers’ rights. Labour is always too far to the left, even when it stands for nothing at all. Witness the self-defeating headline on Monday: “Red Ed ‘won’t unveil any policies in case they scare off voters’”. Ed is red even when he’s grey.
This suggests that one of two processes is taking place: either any article suggesting dissenting views is purged with totalitarian rigour, or General Secretary Dacre’s terrified minions, knowing what is expected of them, never make such mistakes in the first place.
A similar political monoculture, though not always as rigid as the Daily Mail’s, afflicts much of the press. Reports that might reveal a different side of the story remain unwritten; alternative views unaired. A free market in news is not the same as a free press, unless freedom is defined so narrowly that it refers only to the power of government, rather than to the power of money.
Hard Numbers - Freedom of the press
60 percent of US journalists in 1982 said they had “almost complete freedom” in selecting their stories
33.6 percent of US journalists in 2013 said they had “almost complete freedom” in selecting their stories
Federal Appeals Court: No Impunity for Abu Ghraib Torturers
In a ruling that "affirms that U.S. corporations are not entitled to impunity for torture and war crimes," a federal appeals court Monday
overturned a lower court's decision that had prevented accountability sought by Iraqi victims of torture at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. ...
The suit, Al Shimari v. CACI International, Inc., was brought on behalf of four victims of torture at Abu Ghraib, against the Arlington, Virginia-based contractor, which was hired by the United States to conduct interrogations at the prison, and whom the plaintiffs say "instigated, directed, participated in, encouraged, and aided and abetted conduct towards detainees that clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, the Army Field Manual, and the laws of the United States." They state that the contractor engaged in abuse, ignored reports of mistreatment and attempted to cover up the torture. ...
The appeals court found that the district court erred in its interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kiobel v. Shell/Royal Dutch Petroleum regarding the Alien Tort Statute. That 2013 Supreme Court
decision ruled that in cases that "touch and concern" the United States "with sufficient force," the "presumption against extraterritorial application" could be overcome.
In the opinion for the three-judge panel for 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, Obama-appointed Judge Barbara Milano Keenan states that the case should not have been dismissed and must proceed, because "upon applying the fact-based inquiry articulated by the Supreme Court in Kiobel, we hold that the plaintiffs' claims 'touch and concern' the territory of the United States with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute."
9/11 trial dealt blow as defendant asks for alleged CIA torture records
The Obama administration's military trial for the accused 9/11 architects was dealt another blow on Monday when lawyers for one of the co-defendants asked the court to review evidence of his alleged torture in CIA custody.
Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, requested the disclosure days after the military judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, reaffirmed his order for CIA documentation of its treatment of a different defendant in a separate war-crimes case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. ...
Baluchi attorney James Connell, who has for two months announced his intention to seek his client's CIA history following Pohl's ruling, said that a proper defence of his client required disclosure around the alleged torture.
"Torture has corrupted everything in the military commissions. It touches everything: pretrial confinement, tainted interrogations, the reliability of witness statements, and ultimately whether or not the United States can sentence Mr al Baluchi to death," Connell said in a statement.
Baluchi's attorneys seek the same sort of information Pohl authorised for Nashiri's attorneys. Among them are the locations of the prisons that held Baluchi; names and correspondences of CIA personnel that handled or interacted with Baluchi; and accounts of brutal interrogation techniques applied to him.
Americans Deserve an Explanation for Targeted Killings
The most important parts of the drone memo are the parts you can’t see. ...
The first 11 pages of the memo, in which the Justice Department’s factual assumptions are set out in detail, have been redacted – censored – on the grounds that their disclosure would compromise sources and methods. Many other sections of the memo have been redacted on the same grounds. The memo’s conclusions depend entirely on factual assumptions that are stated but never explained, let alone defended. The redacted memo is like a play in which the main characters never appear on stage.
The debate over the memo’s legal analysis is important, and those who are asking questions about the way the government has (or has not) defined key terms, and about the way it has described the scope of the armed conflict, are entirely right to do so. But even the most searching evaluation of the memo’s legal analysis won’t tell us whether the government’s killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was lawful. To answer that question, one needs access to the pages the government has redacted.
Even access to those pages would not be enough, because those pages include only the intelligence agencies’ allegations. The intelligence agencies have never been compelled to substantiate these allegations to anyone outside the executive branch, or submit them to cross-examination, or establish them beyond a reasonable doubt. The entire memo rests atop a foundation whose solidity we can’t know.
There is no justification for this secrecy. If the government had indicted al-Awlaki for a terrorism-related offense and prosecuted him in an ordinary federal court it would have had to present its evidence to a judge and jury. Defense counsel would have reviewed and challenged it. Members of the public would have been able to attend the proceedings, and journalists would have been able to report on them. ...
The government should not be able to avoid this kind of accountability simply because it killed al-Awlaki summarily rather than charged him with any offense.
Israeli jets pound Gaza as Netanyahu blames Hamas for teenagers' deaths
Israeli jets and helicopters launched dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight on Monday, just hours after the bodies of three abducted Israeli teenagers were found in a shallow grave near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The air strikes, ostensibly in response to an ongoing barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, came after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, vowed the militant Islamist group Hamas, blamed by Israel for the kidnapping, would "pay a heavy price". ...
The search for the missing teenagers prompted a vast Israeli military operation in the West Bank and the arrest of some 400 Palestinians – mainly Hamas members. The incident has dramatically increased tensions across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Prior to the discovery of the bodies, five Palestinians had been killed during the search operation.
The case, which has received rolling Israeli media coverage, has gripped the Israeli public, prompting mass rallies and a huge outpouring of public sympathy for the mothers of the three teenagers.
The families of Palestinians killed during the search – some of them also teenagers – have complained that the death of their children have been largely ignored in press coverage.
"It’s a Basic Healthcare Issue": Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards Reacts to Birth Control Ruling
Hobby Lobby's Hypocrisy: The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers
When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, the company's owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have stock holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
The Forces Behind SCOTUS Anti-Union Ruling
Harris v Quinn: US supreme court deals blow to unions in fees ruling
The US supreme court has chipped away at the collective bargaining power of public sector unions by issuing a limited ruling that prohibits unions from demanding fees from all state employees in specific areas of public services.
In a 5-4 split, with the conservative justices in the majority and their liberal colleagues all dissenting, the supreme court ruled that unions could only extract fees to cover the costs of collective bargaining from fully fledged state employees. The ruling split off a whole class of workers – in this case homecare aides who are paid by the state but, in the court’s view, still essentially employed by the individuals they care for – and ordered that in these cases, compulsory union dues were a violation of free speech rights.
The ruling, Harris vs Quinn, stopped short of the nuclear option: a full rejection of a legal principle upheld in successive supreme court judgments for the past 40 years – and on which the enduring strength of public sector unions in America depends – that allows for “fair-share agreements” in which public sector unions extract fees from all workers covered by the contracts they negotiated, even those that refuse to belong to them, on grounds that everyone should pay a fair share of the costs incurred in collective bargaining.
In his 39-page opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, did not destroy that principle entirely. But he did hack into it, in an attack that is certain to embolden conservative political and corporate interests who want to see the crippling of the powerful public sector unions, which are important Democratic allies.
In one memorable sentence that will cause particular alarm in trade union circles, Alito wrote: “except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”
Supreme Court Ruling in ‘Harris v. Quinn’ Will Undermine Gains Made by Low-Wage Home Healthcare Workers
The Supreme Court reached into the living rooms of homebound people with disabilities today and weakened the institutional backbone of public sector unions. ...
The workers in Harris aren’t typical government bureaucrats; they are homecare assistants with Illiinois’s Medicaid-funded in-homecare program, serving thousands of people with disabilities. After being authorized to vote to unionize with SEIU years ago, this workforce became a relatively recent addition to Illinois’s public sector. In many other states, home health attendants not only lack union coverage; their jobs are precarious, low-paid and disproportionately done by women and people of color. ...
The ruling claws back on the real material gains that collective bargaining won for homecare workers. Outside of Illinois’s state program, workers in the sector typically earn around $20,000 per year and suffer tremendously stressful, often exploitative working conditions. Only last year did they officially become eligible for federal minimum wage and overtime rules, following a hard-fought campaign by domestic workers’ advocates to end the Labor Department’s longstanding exemption for homecare providers.
Illinois health aides, by contrast, made real progress after joining SEIU as direct employees of the state. Part of a national campaign to unionize the sector, the workers collectively bargained for higher wages and labor protections typical of union workers but long denied to other health aides, including health benefits and training.
The Evening Greens
New York towns can prohibit fracking, state appeals court rules
Opponents of hydraulic fracturing celebrated a major victory over the oil and gas industry on Monday after the highest court in New York state agreed that cities and towns can prohibit drilling within their boundaries.
In a 5-2 ruling, the New York state court of appeals affirmed previous court decisions that two towns in upstate New York – Dryden and Middlefield – had the authority to use zoning ordinances to control land use, effectively banning hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. Drillers and landowners that brought the suits against the towns argued that state law prohibited them from blocking fracking.
A statewide moratorium imposed in 2008 has kept oil and gas companies from digging into New York's share of the Marcellus Shale, and this decision deals another blow to the industry. ...
Before Monday's court decision, 77 municipalities had passed permanent bans against fracking, and more than 100 municipalities had enacted temporary moratoriums, according to Karen Edelstein, a New York program coordinator at FracTracker Alliance. And roughly 40 towns have passed resolutions in support of gas development, according to the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York.
All eyes are now on New York governor Andrew Cuomo who must decide whether to uphold the statewide moratorium he inherited when taking office in 2011.
New York ruling on fracking bans might send tremors across U.S.
New York state’s highest court ruled Monday that cities and towns have the power to ban fracking, a decision that comes as local governments across the nation are increasingly trying to use zoning laws to stop the contentious spread of drilling.
“I hope our victory serves as an inspiration to people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, California and elsewhere,” said Mary Ann Sumner, the town supervisor of Dryden, N.Y. ...
Municipal bans are a growing phenomenon nationwide as localities target hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are pumped underground to break shale rock and release the oil and natural gas inside. Such cities and towns are often in conflict with state governments that want the revenue and the employment associated with the drilling technique that’s spurred an American oil and natural gas boom.
The battle is especially fierce in Colorado, where the governor and oil and gas companies have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn bans passed by local voters.
Pennsylvania tried to prevent its local governments from prohibiting fracking, but it lost in court. The Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether cities and towns have the right to ban the practice.
Exxon Hates America
Ocean Acidification Could Be Creating Friendless Fish
As CO2 levels rise, coral-reef fish seem to lose the ability to recognize each other.
Fish seem like chummy enough creatures, often schooling with fish they're familiar with to avoid predators and increase the chances of finding a mate. ... A team led by Lauren Nadler wanted to know how fish will react to ocean acidification caused by more and more human-generated CO2 in the atmosphere. So they created two experimental setups, one with regular ocean water and the other enriched with CO2, and into them dumped a bunch of tropical damselfish.
Juvenile damselfish ordinarily take about three weeks to bond to the point that they'll recognize each other. And that is indeed what happened with the control-environment fish, who later chose to school with their childhood buddies. But in the altered one, which had CO2 levels comparable to what the IPCC estimates for 2100, the fish showed signs of developmental impairment: When put among schools of fish they grew up with and with ones they didn't, they displayed no preference for hobnobbing with their old tank mates. They'd just as soon swim with strangers.
[L]osing the ability to find friends spells possible trouble for damselfish, as well as other species more valuable to the international economy, according to the study:
These results could have serious implications for tropical fish, whose habitat is already threatened by climate change. "Familiarity is an important trait for defence, particularly in a predator-rich environment like a coral reef," says Miss Nadler. "Since half of all fish species in the world school at some point during their lives, including economically important species, these effects could be critical for species that rely on group-living to avoid predators."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Obama’s Half-Billion to Syria’s ‘Moderates’
Chris Hedges: Pity the Children
The Hobby Lobby ruling proves men of the law still can't get over 'immoral' women having sex
Hat tip Azazello - this is a very interesting conversation:
Free markets killed capitalism: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Wal-Mart, Amazon and the 1 percent’s sick triumph over us all
White House to protect transgender employees via executive order
A Little Night Music
Willie Dixon - I'm Nervous
Willie Dixon - I can't quit you, baby
Willie Dixon - You Shook Me
Willie Dixon - I Just Want To Make Love To You
Billy Branch / Willie Dixon Little Red Rooster
Willie Dixon - Study War No More
Willie Dixon - Bassology
Koko Taylor ft;Little Walter,Willie Dixon;- Wang Dang Doodle
Willie Dixon - Trouble
Willie Dixon - Crazy For My Baby
Willie Dixon - I ain't superstitious
Willie Dixon - 29 Ways
Blasters w/ Willie Dixon - Built For Comfort
Charles Clark - Hidden Charms
Willie Dixon - Back Door Man
Willie Dixon - I Am The Blues
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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