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 early women blues singers Alberta Hunter and Lucille Bogan. Both of their recording careers started in the early twenties and featured them occasionally singing somewhat bawdy material, though some of Bogan's recordings, especially, "Shave 'em Dry" push past the limits of bawdy and fall well into, "I can't believe that they ever got away with putting that out on a record."
Alberta Hunter - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.”
-- Tacitus
News and Opinion
Jeremy Scahill: The Secret Story Behind Obama’s Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen
The High Crime of Torture
Confirmation by the Constitution Project nearly a decade late that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military and ‘intelligence’ services committed acts of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere appears a Rorschach test for the ‘sentiments’ of the American people. However, sentiments aside, formal indictments of culpable officials on war crimes charges and the start of impeachment proceedings against current President Barack Obama are the only relevant responses to the report. Torture is a crime under laws to which the U.S. is signatory. And with his war on Iraq George W. Bush and his administration murdered, or caused the premature deaths of, more than a million people and substantially destroyed a modern nation state.
By 2004, when pictures of Iraqi civilians being tortured and humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison were leaked, it was widely evident the Bush administration had established a global system of kidnapping, torture, rape and murder. The grotesque euphemisms ‘take the gloves off’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ provided cover for criminal behavior only to the extent Americans were willing to suspend judgment of what was before their eyes. ...
When Barack Obama entered office in 2009 he claimed the right to ‘look forward, not back’ that wasn’t his to claim. The law requires war crimes be investigated and prosecuted if evidence of guilt is found. Behind a veil of political pragmatism, not wanting to be caught up in ‘partisan’ politics, Mr. Obama moved America’s programs of political torture and murder into the 21st century. Had he enthusiastically prosecuted Bush administration crimes Mr. Obama could have revived international sanction against aggressive war and torture and ended, even if only temporarily, the of use of ancient imperial techniques in a world with the technological capacity to murder, maim and torture beyond the ancient imagination.
Instead of doing this Mr. Obama claimed the illegitimate and illegal rights of aggressive war, permanent incarceration of known innocents, torture and technocratic slaughter, all under the cover of opaque public relations techniques, quasi-sophisticated language and his casual demeanor. By choosing continuity and enhancement over clear, straightforward and unambiguous break with Mr. Bush’s catastrophic policies, Mr. Obama codified them into the set of ‘acceptable’ practices of American empire.
Does Force-feeding Guantanamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike Violate Their Rights?
Activists Arrested in Die-In: 'Shut Down Guantanamo, End Indefinite Detention'
'Justice is broken when men who our government has no plans to charge or put on trial are held for years'
Twelve activists were arrested outside of a Federal Courthouse in New York City on Monday after protesting in response to a recent confession by Guantanamo Bay prison officials that 84 detainees are on hunger strike and 16 of them are being force-fed, an act considered by many to be a form of torture.
The activists, representing the group Witness Against Torture, were arrested after staging a "die-in" on the steps of the court. Some dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to resemble Guantanamo prisoners and some held signs with names of the men who have already died in the prison.
“The hunger strike,” says Jeremy Varon, an organizer with Witness Against Torture, “is the predictable result of a failed policy of indefinite detention that is morally unacceptable and politically unsustainable. If action is not taken to change that policy, more prisoners will die and our nation’s shame will deepen."
Bloomberg Calls For Reinterpreting Constitution After Boston Bombing
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had enough of the Constitution, at least how everyone interprets it today. In response to the Boston Bombing, Mayor Bloomberg believes freedoms will have to be curtailed, to protect freedom.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.
“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
FBI backlash 'risks turning US into surveillance state'
US intelligence veterans are warning that mounting criticism of the FBI for not preventing the Boston bombing risks encouraging infringements of civil liberties, such as routine surveillance of mosques and blanket use of security cameras. ...
Philip Mudd, a former FBI senior intelligence adviser, said there was a risk of a backlash turning the US into a "surveillance state".
"During daily threat briefings, we would look at homegrowns all the time," he told the Guardian. "The question is: what kind of screening do you want in place to get an American into that lense? Before you want to swing that pendulum too far: be careful."
"If you want to guarantee we find those folks – and by the way, the FBI wouldn't, anyway – there is only so much you can do in a open society to penetrate a closed circle," he added during a debate at the Brookings Institution.
The intelligence community has reacted defensively to the criticism this week of the Boston case, which has been led by Republican politicians such as Michael McCaul, chairman of the House homeland security committee.
Study Debunking Austerity Research Sparks Wide Reaction
EU near austerity limit, says Barroso
The European Union's focus on austerity has hit the limits of public acceptance, according to the head of the EU's executive arm, as Brussels joined the International Monetary Fund in raising concerns over the impact of public spending cuts.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, also signalled that governments would be given more leeway if they were struggling to get their budget deficits within the required ceiling of 3% of GDP.
He said the argument raging over the merits of austerity versus more public spending was a false debate – the answer was to combine the two, although public spending cuts alone would not provide the solution.
"Socially and politically, one policy that is only seen as austerity is, of course, not sustainable," Barroso said. "We haven't done everything right … The policy has reached its limits because it has to have a minimum of political and social support.
Big Commodity Traders Pocketed $250 Billion Profit
Corporate America’s Excuses Rise as Earnings and Revenues Fall
Some of the crown jewels of corporate America have reported declining revenues and earnings, and have lowered their forecasts, and in doing so, have unleashed a flood of obfuscation and excuses – from Easter falling on the wrong date to lazy sales reps. ...
Revenues were down in other places: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa saw a 4% tumble – most of the countries were down, but Spain “returned to modest growth.” ...
A scary thought that the three largest markets in the world could weaken simultaneously – despite the prodigious amounts of money that central banks have printed and handed out. That phenomenon must be hidden under layers of lazy sales reps, sequester deadlines, and badly timed holidays. Yet, at the very end, something did slip out: “We are clearly not immune from changes in the global economy,” Loughridge said during his wrap-up, the most revealing sentence of the entire earnings call.
Animal Kingdom - Get Away With It
The Jobless Trap
Even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed. ... It goes without saying that the explosion of long-term unemployment is a tragedy for the unemployed themselves. But it may also be a broader economic disaster.
The key question is whether workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as unemployable, tainted goods that nobody will buy. This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And there is, unfortunately, growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak.
One piece of evidence comes from the relationship between job openings and unemployment. Normally these two numbers move inversely: the more job openings, the fewer Americans out of work. ... William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University recently showed, the relationship has broken down for the long-term unemployed: a rising number of job openings doesn’t seem to do much to reduce their numbers. ...
To test this hypothesis, Mr. Ghayad then did an experiment, sending out résumés describing the qualifications and employment history of 4,800 fictitious workers. Who got called back? The answer was that workers who reported having been unemployed for six months or more got very few callbacks, even when all their other qualifications were better than those of workers who did attract employer interest.
This faith in the markets is misplaced: only governments can save our living planet
In other ages, states sought to seize as much power as they could. Today, the self-hating state renounces its powers. Governments anathematise governance. They declare their role redundant and illegitimate. They launch furious assaults on their own branches, seeking wherever possible to lop them off.
This self-mutilation is a response to the fact that power has shifted. States now operate at the behest of others. Deregulation, privatisation, the shrinking of the scope, scale and spending of the state: these are now seen as the only legitimate policies. The corporations and billionaires to whom governments defer will have it no other way.
Just as taxation tends to redistribute wealth, regulation tends to redistribute power. A democratic state controls and contains powerful interests on behalf of the powerless. This is why billionaires and corporations hate regulation, and – through their newspapers, thinktanks and astroturf campaigns – mobilise people against it. State power is tyranny, state power is freedom.
But the interchangeable middle managers who call themselves ministers cannot wholly dismiss the wishes of the electorate. They must show that they are doing something to protect what people value. They resolve the contradiction between the demands of the electorate and the demands of big business by shifting their responsibilities to something they call "the market". This term is often used as a euphemism for corporations and the very rich. ...
When governments pretend they no longer need to govern, when they pretend that a world regulated by bankers, corporations and the profit motive is a better world than one regulated by voters and their representatives, nothing is safe. All systems of government are flawed. But few are as flawed as those controlled by private money.
KXL 'Public Comment' Period Ends, But Climate Activists Pledge Renewed KXL Resistance
The 45-day period for public comment on the State Department's draft supplementary environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline comes to end on Monday.
As groups opposed to the project wrapped up campaigns urging their members to write, call and otherwise voice their objections to the State Department's draft, the broader climate movement is also gearing up for the possible next stage in their protracted fight against the project. ... Groups including CREDO Action, Bold Nebraska, The Other 98%, Hip Hop Caucus, Rainforest Action Network, 350.org and Oil Change International have launched the 'Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance,' which hopes to galvanize the movement ahead of a final White House decision.
The pledge itself reads:
It is time for us to pledge to resist. That is, we are asking you to commit - should it be necessary to stop Keystone XL -- to engage in serious, dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could get you arrested.
Will you join us in pledging resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline, including - if necessary - pledging to participate in peaceful, dignified civil disobedience?
Tar Sands Timmy
Josh Fox's 'Gasland' Sequel Opens, a Tour Through a Land of Abandoned Homes and Broken Promises
Gasland Part II contends that an industry should not be allowed to break what it cannot fix.
Gasland Part II, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, takes us deep into the heartland of America, a land overtaken by gas extraction via fracking. The iconic and recurring depictions of water-on-fire seen in the first Gasland, in the new film serve as postcards from a travelogue through a land of broken promises, abandoned homes, and extinguished rights. ...
Gasland Part II continues Fox’s exploration by offering textured, in-depth profiles of half a dozen or so families in geographically diverse locations, from Australia, to Wyoming to Pennsylvania. Fox’s camera takes us into the homes of straight-talking folks who worked hard to secure their corner of the heartland. ...
Gasland Part II documents what happens when people discover that the standard American protections are as prone to fail as the cement casings on gas extraction pipelines. (Industry documents shown in the film reveal that all casings fail over the next thirty years, and many much sooner, thus setting the stage for aquifer contamination by fracking chemicals, and methane.)
Young Greeks Create Self-reliant Island Society
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The United States Shows Its Contempt for Democracy
Southern Europe's economic malaise echoes Great Depression
A few questions for the organizers of Netroots Nation '13
Robin Hood Tax Bill & March
On Monstering
A Little Night Music
Alberta Hunter - You Can't Tell The Difference After Dark
Alberta Hunter - Darktown Strutters' Ball
Alberta Hunter - Two-fisted Double-Jointed Rough & Ready Man
Alberta Hunter - My Castle's Rockin
Alberta Hunter - My Handy Man
Alberta Hunter - Bring It With You When You Come
Lucille Bogan - Shave 'em Dry
Lucille Bogan - Till The Cows Come Home
Lucille Bogan - They Ain't Walking No More
Lucille Bogan - Sloppy Drunk Blues
Lucille Bogan - Pot Hound Blues
Lucille Bogan - Skin Game Blues
Lucille Bogan - Barbecue Bess
Lucille Bogan - Groceries on the Shelf
Lucille Bogan - Coffee Grindin' 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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