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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features r&b singer, songwriter and rock and roll innovator Roy Brown. Enjoy!
Roy Brown - Good Rockin' Tonight
News and Opinion
Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance
The UN's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers of American and British intelligence agencies following Edward Snowden's revelations that they are using secret programmes to store and analyse billions of emails, phone calls and text messages.
The UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC said his inquiry would also seek to establish whether the British parliament had been misled about the capabilities of Britain's eavesdropping headquarters, GCHQ, and whether the current system of oversight and scrutiny was strong enough to meet United Nations standards.
The inquiry will make a series of recommendations to the UN general assembly next year.
In an article for the Guardian, Emmerson said Snowden had disclosed "issues at the very apex of public interest concerns". He said the media had a duty and right to publish stories about the activities of GCHQ and its American counterpart the National Security Agency.
"The astonishing suggestion that this sort of responsible journalism can somehow be equated with aiding and abetting terrorism needs to be scotched decisively," said Emmerson, who has been the UN's leading voice on counter-terrorism and human rights since 2011.
Leading U.S. news media call on U.K. Parliament to reaffirm commitment to a free press on eve of Guardian hearing
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and several leading news organizations are calling on members of Parliament to uphold Britain’s commitment to freedom of the press on the eve of a hearing of the Home Affairs Committee at which the editor of the Guardian newspaper has been ordered to testify. Editor Alan Rusbridger will be questioned about the national security implications of its publication of articles based on information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“As news organizations, editors, and journalists who often report on government actions that officials seek to keep secret, we write to the Committee on the eve of the forthcoming appearance of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to express our grave concern over pointed calls by those in authority for censorship of the Guardian and criminal prosecution of its journalists in the name of national security. Such sanctions, and the chilling impact created by even the threat to impose them, undermine the independence and integrity of the press that are essential for democracy to function,” the letter stated.
Co-signing the letter with the Reporters Committee are the American Society of News Editors; The Associated Press; The E.W. Scripps Company; The McClatchy Company; The New York Times Company; The New Yorker; Newspaper Association of America; ProPublica; The Seattle Times Company; Society of Professional Journalists; The Washington Post; and World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
The disclosures published in the Guardian “may have embarrassed or angered political leaders, but they have educated the public on critically important matters and sparked a valuable global debate over the proper exercise of the vast surveillance powers that now exist,” the media letter continued. “It is the responsibility of journalists to provide the type of accurate and in-depth news reports published by the Guardian and others that have informed the public and framed important, unresolved issues concerning the balance between security and privacy. Vigorous news coverage and the debate it fosters advance the public interest.”
When Journalists Are Called Traitors
When a government calls journalists traitors the questions should begin, not end. ...
The Guardian, Washington Post, and other outlets—including Der Spiegel—that have published stories based on the Snowden papers have also exercised editorial judgment in thinking about the scale of the secrets they are telling. (Ken Auletta writes about this process in his recent piece on the Guardian.) That is why we haven’t seen everything. This very idea enrages some observers: How is it these journalists’ place to make those kinds of calls? Governments, they say, have put labels on things for a reason, and ought to be deferred to. But this ignores all the practical experience we have about how officials actually do that job. The professional secret-keepers are phenomenally bad at distinguishing between the threat of terror and their terror at being threatened—or worse ... at being humiliated. They need the press not just to shake them up but also to keep them from being destabilized by their own weaknesses and vanities.
Glenn Greenwald Responds to Media Slander and False Accusations
The other day I referred to those who “evince zero interest in the substance of the revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying which we’re reporting on around the world”, but “are instead obsessed with spending their time personally attacking the journalists, whistleblowers and other messengers who enable the world to know about what is being done.” There are dozens of examples, one of whom is the author of a post this week at Pando.com which accuses me and Laura Poitras of having “promptly sold [the Snowden] secrets to a billionaire”, Pierre Omidyar, and claims we made “a decision to privatize the NSA cache” by joining Omidyar’s new media organization and vesting it with a “monopoly” over those documents. ...
But now, this week’s attack has been seized on by various national security establishment functionaries and DC journalists to impugn our NSA reporting and, in some cases, to argue that this “privatizing” theory should be used as a basis to prosecute me for the journalism I’m doing. Amazingly, it’s being cited by all sorts of DC journalists and think tank advocates whose own work is paid for by billionaires and other assorted plutocrats: such as Josh Marshall, whose TPM journalism has been “privatized” and funded by the Romney-supporting Silicon Valley oligarch Marc Andreesen, and former Bush Homeland Security Adviser and current CNN analyst Fran Townsend (“profiteering!”, exclaims the Time Warner Corp. employee and advocate of the American plundering of Iraq).
Indeed, Pando.com itself is partially funded by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and CIA-serving Palantir Technologies. The very same author of this week’s Pando post had previously described Thiel (before he was funded by him) as “an enemy of democracy” and the head of a firm “which last year was caught organizing an illegal spy ring targeting American political opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, including journalists, progressive activists and union leaders” (one of whom happened to be me, targeted with threatened career destruction for the crime of advocating for WikiLeaks). ...
I would think journalists would want to be very careful about embracing this pernicious theory of “privatizing” journalism given how virtually all of you are not only are paid for the journalism you do, but also have your own journalism funded by all sorts of extremely rich people and other corporate interests.
Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated With Intelligence Firm Stratfor
Serbia’s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Milošević in 2000.
Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firm Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic’s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year.
These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks' “Global Intelligence Files.” The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists for clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola. ...
In one of the emails, Popovic forwarded information about activists harmed or killed by the U.S.-armed Bahraini government, obtained from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights during the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in fall 2011. Popovic also penned a blueprint for Stratfor on how to unseat the now-deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in September 2010.
Using his celebrated activist status, Popovic opened many doors for Stratfor to meet with activists globally. In turn, the information Stratfor intended to gain from Popovic’s contacts would serve as “actionable intelligence”—the firm billed itself as a “Shadow CIA”—for its corporate clients.
Remote Control: 'Even after pullout, Afghanistan to stay under CIA'
Europe Rights Court to Hear of Secret CIA Prisons
The secret network of black site prisons across Europe that the CIA used to interrogate terror suspects is getting a rare public hearing Tuesday at Europe’s human rights court.
Lawyers for two terror suspects currently held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accuse Poland of human rights abuses. They say they fell victim to the CIA’s program to kidnap terror suspects and transfer them to third countries, and allege they were tortured in a remote Polish prison.
The case marks the first time Europe’s role in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects reaches Europe’s human rights court.
One of the cases concerns 48-year-old Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who currently faces terror charges in the U.S. for allegedly orchestrating the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in 2000, a bombing in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors and wounded 37.
The second case involves 42-year-old Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian. ...
Both men say they were brought to Poland in December 2002, where they were detained and subjected to harsh questioning in a Polish military installation in Stare Kiejkuty, a village set in a lush area of woods and lakes in the country’s remote northeast.
There they say they were subjected to waterboarding, prolonged stress positions and other abuses including being placed in a box and exposed to extreme noise.
Be Very Afraid of Terrorism, Invisible ‘Big Bombs’ & ‘Huge Malevolence’
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence committees respectively, went on CNN’s Sunday talk show yesterday to put fear into the hearts of Americans. They told us we are in more danger now than ever and the obvious corollary to this is that Americans need to take their fear of government and redirect it to nameless and faceless terrorists who are out to destroy us.
“There are new bombs, very big bombs,” Feinstain warned, “that go through (metal-detecting) magnetometers.” She warned of “huge malevolence out there.” This puts “enormous pressure” on our intelligence community, Rogers added, which means Americans have to lay off the NSA because they “are not the bad guys.”
In other words, the NSA is not your enemy. Really, it isn’t. The government is just protecting us from foreign bogeymen that are the real danger.
Democrats Protecting Republican NSA-Spy Loving Mike Rogers' Seat
Saturday, we mentioned that Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, a Boehner crony and the Republican congressman from the Lansing area of central Michigan, is leading the efforts to allow the Cheney-initiated domestic spying agenda of the N.S.A. to stay in place. Boehner made Rogers, a relatively junior member, chairman of the powerful Intelligence Committee. It's worth noting that Rogers' district, MI-08, has a PVI of R+2 and that Obama beat McCain there 52-46% and narrowly lost out to local boy Mitt Romney 51-48% last year. The DCCC doesn't back Democrats against Rogers. He has a free reelection pass from Steve Israel. This is especially strange since Rogers isn't all that well-liked in his district. A recent PPP poll of MI-08 for MoveOn showed that Rogers has a 42-40% job approval rating and that when voters are informed that he backed the government shutdown-- something the DCCC has been careful not to do-- he would be beaten by a generic Democrat 47-44%. The DCCC has not recruited anyone to run and the local Democrats I've talked to about taking on Rogers have all said it isn't worth running against him while Steve Israel is head of the DCCC.
Diebold Charged With Bribery, Falsifying Docs, "Worldwide Pattern of Criminal Conduct
One of the world's largest ATM manufacturers and, formerly, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic voting systems, has been indicted by federal prosecutors for bribery and falsification of documents. ...
The two-count criminal information and deferred prosecution agreement calls for Diebold to pay nearly $50 million in penalties: $23 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and $25 million to the Department of Justice.
The agreement with federal prosecutors also calls for the implementation of rigorous internal controls that includes a compliance monitor for at least 18 months. The government agreed to defer criminal prosecution for three years, and drop the charges if Diebold abides by the terms of the agreement.
Despite at least $1.75 million in bribes said to have been paid the company around the globe, nobody will go to jail for what U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach describes as their "worldwide pattern of criminal conduct," because they are a corporation --- and you are not.
Pope Denounces 'A New Tyranny' of Markets, But Will Trade Ministers at Bali?
Fast-food workers plan strikes in 100 US cities this week
Fast-food workers are planning strikes in 100 cities across the country Thursday in an effort to step up pressure on chains including McDonald’s, Wendy’s and others to pay $15 an hour, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Such actions have picked up significant momentum since 200 fast-food workers walked off the job in November 2012 as part of a daylong strike at more than 20 restaurants in New York.
“There’s been pretty huge growth in one year,” Kendall Fells, one of the main organizers in the movement, told The New York Times. “People understand that a one-day strike is not going to get them there. They understand that this needs to continue to grow.”
This will be the first time strikes are held in some of the cities, including Charleston, S.C.; Providence, R.I.; and Pittsburgh. Organizations called Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, as well as the Service Employees International Union, are among the groups backing the movement. SEIU is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without being retaliated against.
Mary Jo White
corporate whore is doing just what Obama appointed her to do:
The SEC Won't Force Corporations to Disclose Their Political Spending
In the summer of 2011, a group of law school professors filed a petition (PDF) with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the nation's leading financial regulator, asking it to force corporations to disclose their political spending. At the time, a small but growing number of corporations voluntarily revealed their political giving, but the law professors argued that corporate executives shouldn't ever be able to spend shareholders' money on campaigns and elections without telling shareholders where it was going.
Support for the corporate disclosure petition spread like brushfire. More than 600,000 comments—most of them supportive—were filed in response, a record for the SEC. When white-collar attorney Mary Jo White was confirmed as the new SEC chair in April, transparency advocates hoped she would take action on the issue.
Over the weekend, those hopes were dashed. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that White's SEC has dropped corporate disclosure from its 2014 to-do list.
Meanwhile in Iceland, it appears that there is at least one government that has a sensible approach to the economic crisis wrought by banksters. Not only did their government actually jail some criminal banksters, it's going to actually help the people at the bottom of the economic ladder who were screwed worst by the banksters!
Sadly, that can't happen here without a revolution. Watch wistfully:
Forgive & Forget: Iceland's $1.25 bln mortgage write-down to boost recovery
Has Congress hurt your local bank?
Lawmakers will consider this week whether financial reforms have hurt small banks and credit unions – and their customers
Just in time for It's a Wonderful Life reruns on television, the House committee on small business held a hearing this morning to determine how Dodd-Frank regulations have impacted small financial institutions, such as credit unions and independent community banks. The House committee on services will pick up the baton tomorrow morning, and hold its own hearing examining potential regulatory relief proposals for these community financial institutions. ...
"Small banks don't get any help. And they get regulated just like the big banks, which doesn't make sense," Peter F Hurst, president of The Community Bank, told The Guardian earlier this year. ...
Small banks, lacking the balance sheet of their bigger rivals, feel the costs of compliance with banking regulations more keenly. ...
Highlighting the inequality within the financial sector itself, the New Day New York Coalition will be kicking off a week of protests against big banks. A part of their efforts will be used to highlight the fact that while CEOs of big banks receive compensation in the amount of millions of dollars, 39% of bank tellers in New York State had to rely on public assistance to stay afloat, reports Al Jazeera America.
As Hospital Prices Soar, a Stitch Tops $500
A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries. The most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them, including California Pacific Medical Center, emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical procedures — closing a wound with a needle and thread — typically leads to bills of at least $1,500 and often much more. ...
The main reason for high hospital costs in the United States, economists say, is fiscal, not medical: Hospitals are the most powerful players in a health care system that has little or no price regulation in the private market.
Rising costs of drugs, medical equipment and other services, and fees from layers of middlemen, play a significant role in escalating hospital bills, of course. But just as important is that mergers and consolidation have resulted in a couple of hospital chains — like Partners in Boston, or Banner in Phoenix — dominating many parts of the country, allowing them to command high prices from insurers and employers.
“How do hospitals set prices? They set prices to maximize revenue, and they raise prices as much as they can — all the research supports that,” said Glenn Melnick, a professor of health economics at the University of Southern California. ...
Economists note that hospitals can bill for emergency room care with relative impunity, since injured patients generally rush to the nearest treatment facility.
Obamacare customers urged to double-check insurance status
Concerns over website back end after reports insurers are receiving calls from people who falsely believe they are enrolled
The White House is urging insurance customers who enrolled through its online healthcare exchange to check whether they will actually receive coverage amid continuing uncertainty over the effectiveness of the system connecting the website to insurers.
Although officials declared on Sunday that the consumer-facing front end of the federal website was now working effectively for the majority of customers, there have been separate concerns over the back end, which processes applications and passes on financial information to insurers selling the policies.
Speaking on Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted that many of the underlying causes of the problem had been addressed by weekend software upgrades, but he revealed that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency behind the troubled website, had been forced to contact existing users to make sure they did not fall between the cracks. ...
Asked directly by reporters if the White House could assure customers who have signed up that they will definitely have coverage by January 1, Carney appeared to suggest it was up to individuals to double-check for themselves.
The Evening Greens
Hat tip Agathena:
Inside the oil-shipping free-for-all that brought disaster to Lac-Mégantic
A shortage of oil pipelines in North America had created a new kind of railway industry traversing the continent. In just a few years, tankers carrying crude oil from the resource-rich West had grown from a mere 8,000 in 2009 to nearly 400,000, and Lac-Mégantic is located along one of the main routes to refineries in the East. ...
There were no new rules affecting the chain of 72 crude-laden tankers that barrelled toward the Quebec town on the night of July 6 – the same train that would explode in the worst rail disaster in modern Canadian history [killing 47 people and devastating the town]. The railway was not required to formulate a plan to deal with catastrophe, in the event the crude train derailed.
But who allowed this to happen? As more than 80,000 barrels of oil per shipment began to move on rails designed more than a century ago for shipping less volatile cargo such as lumber, coal or grain, minimal checks and balances were put in place. When the decision was made to begin shipping such huge amounts of oil by rail, the industry required no approval from government or regulators to proceed, even though documents obtained by The Globe show that U.S. government officials knew that moving such a “high concentration of hazardous materials” was inherently more risky.
In fact, the roots of the Lac-Mégantic derailment were planted five years ago, by an offshoot of Enron Corp., the failed energy giant. Enron Oil and Gas, or EOG Resources as it is now known, was among the first energy producers to begin exploiting the rich Bakken oil reserves that straddle much of North Dakota and parts of southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
New pipelines took years to build, but trains were a relatively quick and easy solution. The tracks were already in place and the railroad companies were eager for new business. Although oil had never been shipped in large quantities by rail – in 2008 not a single barrel of oil produced in North Dakota left by train – there was no reason it couldn’t be, EOG believed.
"Just the Reality:" Pipeline Safety Official Admits He’d Avoid Buying A Home Near Pipelines Like Keystone XL
A federal pipeline safety official admitted on camera recently that he made a point of ensuring his home wasn’t in the path of any pipelines before buying it, and that he wouldn't advise anyone to build in the path of a pipeline.
Tar Sands' Next Frontier: Shipments on the Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, drinking water source for over 40 million North Americans, could be the next target on tar sands marketers' bullseye according to a major new report out by the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes.
The 24-page report, "Oil and Water: Tar Sands Crude Shipping Meets the Great Lakes?" unpacks a new looming threat to the Great Lakes in the form of barges transporting tar sands along the Great Lakes to targeted midwestern refinery markets. As the report suggests, it's a threat made worse by an accompanying "Wild West"-like regulatory framework.
"The prospect of tar sands shipping on the Great Lakes gives rise to fundamental social and economic questions about whether moving crude oil by vessel across the world’s single largest surface freshwater system is a venture this region wants to embrace, despite the known risks," the report says early on.
"[A]s tar sands crude spill cleanups have proved particularly problematic, a cleanup of a deep-water tar sands crude spill in the Great Lakes would present new and extraordinary challenges," the report posits. "With the amount of tar sands crude shipped on the Great Lakes by vessel poised to expand as early as 2015, the Great Lakes will soon face a new threat that poses a substantial risk to their future."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Slow Poison - a photo essay
The Exploited Laborers of the Liberal Media
Jeremy Scahill's "Dirty Wars" makes short list for Oscar
Bernie Sanders on 2016: His candidacy, Elizabeth Warren & the Clintons
Decoding the Summer of Snowden
That Bathroom Thing
Hey kos, Afghanistan 2014 Promise?
A Little Night Music
Roy Brown - Mighty Mighty Man
Roy Brown & his Mighty-Mighty Men - Boogie At Midnight
Roy Brown - Dreaming Blues
Roy Brown - Big Town
Roy Brown - Butcher Pete
Roy Brown - 'Long About Midnight
Roy Brown - Black Diamond
Roy Brown - Hard Luck Blues
Roy Brown - Fannie Brown Got Married
Roy Brown - Whose Hat Is That
Roy Brown - Roy Brown Boogie
Roy Brown - Shake èm up Baby
Roy Brown - Saturday Nite
Roy Brown - Hip Shakin' Baby
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!
|