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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This evening's music features blues one man band Dr. Isaiah Ross. Enjoy!
Dr. Isaiah Ross - Feel So Good
"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
-- George Bernard Shaw
News and Opinion
The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using. ...
One problem [a former JSOC drone operator explains] is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.
Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. ... “People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people,” he says. “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”
In his speech at the National Defense University last May, President Obama declared that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.” He added that, “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”
Death By Metadata: Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Reveal NSA Role in Assassinations Overseas
Obama wants to murder another American citizen
U.S. officials say an American citizen is a member of al-Qaida and is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas. The Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year. ...
Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And President Barack Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House. ...
One U.S. official said the Defense Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that has been resistant to U.S. action. ...
The senior administration official confirmed that the Justice Department was working to build a case for the president to review and decide the man's fate. The official said, however, the legal procedure being followed is the same as when the U.S. killed militant cleric and former Virginia resident Anwar al-Awlaki by drone in Yemen in 2011, long before the new targeted killing policy took effect.
The official said the president could make an exception to his policy and authorize the CIA to strike on a onetime basis or authorize the Pentagon to act despite the possible objections of the country in question.
Obama Administration Considers Assassinating Another American Overseas
John Roberts unilaterally picks Seattle judge to join super-secret spy court
A Washington state-based federal appellate judge who once represented the Seattle Mariners baseball team has now joined the roster of one of the nation’s most unique and secretive courts.
Judge Richard C. Tallman’s new appointment to the three-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review potentially gives him oversight of highly sensitive national security matters that may never see the light of day. Tallman’s selection also comes as Congress and the White House contemplate changes in surveillance litigation, potentially putting him in the middle of an uncharted legal landscape.
“The court of review has been dormant for most of its history,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said in an e-mail Friday. “But it is nonetheless an important body because it is activated only when there is a significant legal disagreement between the government and (a) lower court. So its rulings are as significant as they are rare.”
Tallman’s seven-year term on the little-known surveillance appeals court commenced Jan. 27, but only became public Friday. Unlike his 1999 nomination by then-President Bill Clinton to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a position which he will still hold, Tallman did not need Senate confirmation or a White House nod for his new responsibility. Instead, he was selected by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr.
Snowden Used Cheap, 'Web Crawler' Software to Collect NSA Files
Whistleblower Edward Snowden who alerted the world to America’s out of control National Security Agency reportedly used cheap and widely available software to scoop up thousands of files on the NSA’s online activities.
The New York Times Sunday quoted a senior US intelligence officials as saying: “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,”adding that the process was “quite automated.”
The spider can be programmed to jump from website to website following embedded links and copying everything in its way. Snowden reportedly set the right algorithm for the software that indicated subjects and how far it was to follow the links. The whistleblower was reportedly able to gain access to 1.7 million files, including NSA’s internal “wiki" materials that are used to share data across the world.
Through his lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Snowden did not specifically address the government’s theory of how he obtained the files, saying in a statement: “It’s ironic that officials are giving classified information to journalists in an effort to discredit me for giving classified information to journalists. The difference is that I did so to inform the public about the government’s actions, and they’re doing so to misinform the public about mine.”
Chris Hedges: Legalizing Oppression
The lynching and disbarring of civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, who because she has terminal cancer was recently released from prison after serving four years of a 10-year sentence, is a window into the collapse of the American legal system. Stewart—who has stood up to state power for more than three decades in order to give a voice to those whom authorities seek to crush, who has spent her life defending the poor and the marginalized, who wept in court when one of her clients was barred from presenting a credible defense—is everything a lawyer should be in an open society. But we no longer live in an open society. The persecution of Stewart is the persecution of us all. ...
Stewart, working with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and lawyer Abdeen Jabara in 1995, was the lead trial counsel for Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian Muslim known as “the Blind Sheikh,” who was convicted in October of that year for alleged involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He received life in prison plus 65 years, a sentence Stewart called “outlandish.” She said Abdel Rahman was put on trial not for any crimes he committed but because the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, as well as Washington, was frightened of his influence over the Egyptian masses. The United States, along with Egypt, wanted to “take him off the scene” and “get him put away where he would no longer exert the influence he had.” The cleric, now 75 and in poor health, is imprisoned in the medical wing of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.
The court, through numerous rulings, refused to let Stewart mount her defense, ensuring that the government prosecutors would not be challenged. The proceedings were a tawdry show trial, a harbinger of the many judicial assaults against Muslims in the United States after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. I was based in Egypt at the time of the trial as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I remember being stunned at the repeated mendacity of the government prosecutors, who blamed Abdel Rahman for terrorist attacks he had, in fact, publicly denounced. The prosecutors, for example, accused him of orchestrating the killing of 62 people in 1997 in Luxor, Egypt, although the sheikh at the time condemned the attack and had no connection with the Egyptian group that carried out the massacre. When the guilty verdict was read, Stewart burst into tears, “the only time I ever cried in the courtroom.”
Occupy activist faces up to seven years in jail for 'assault' on police officer
An Occupy Wall Street activist is due to go on trial in New York on Monday, almost two years after she allegedly assaulted a police officer.
Cecily McMillan, 25, faces up to seven years in jail after being charged with assault in the second degree, a Class D felony in New York. Police allege that McMillan elbowed an officer in the head during a protest in lower Manhattan in March 2012.
McMillan’s attorney, Martin Stolar, told the Guardian that while there was “no question” the officer was struck below the eye by McMillan’s elbow, he planned to argue that no crime had been committed.
“The question for the jury is whether she intentionally assaulted him,” Stolar said. “We’re going to present evidence that indicates: No1 that she had no idea it was a police officer behind her and No2 that she reacted when someone grabbed her right breast.”
Stolar said it was being grabbed from behind that prompted McMillan to throw the elbow.
[Previous coverage of McMillan's brutal arrest.]
80,000 March in North Carolina Proudly Pushing Back Against Radical Right Agenda
On Saturday, a crowd of riled-up citizens the North Carolina NAACP estimated to be upwards of 80,000—the largest such gathering in the South since the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march—headed to the state capitol to protest the extremist policies of North Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature.
Black and white, young and old, gay and straight, the people gave voice to a full roster of outrages, from racist attacks on voting rights to the state government's refusal to expand Medicaid to half a million vulnerable Tar Heels to limitations on women's reproductive freedom. From a four-year-old girl carrying a sign that read "Nope to Pope!" (referring to Art Pope, the state's multimillionaire budget director and Koch ally) to the indomitable Rosa Nell Eaton, a 92-year-old veteran of the Civil Rights movement, they were united with one message: "Forward together, not one step back."
The Moral March on Raleigh, organized by the North Carolina NAACP, was the eighth annual march of what is known as the Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People's Coalition, and a continuation of the Moral Monday demonstrations that took place in 2013, in which nearly 1,000 people (including my 81-year-old mother, a retired educator) were arrested. ...
As gospel singers greet marchers who reach the state capitol, I see a woman holding a sign that says, "We are gentle, angry, and determined." Nothing could better express the spirit of Tar Heel protesters, who can stare extremism in the eye and maintain an air of gentility while they do it.
The 2014 midterm elections are looming large in North Carolina, with attacks on Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan heating up. GOP-designed gerrymandering in the state in 2010 gave Republicans the advantage, and in 2012, the GOP took both the state House and Senate and sent Republican Pat McCrory to the governer's mansion. The GOP gained control of North Carolina's government for the first time in more than a century. Rev. Barber has made it clear, however, that the Moral Monday movement is not about Democrats versus Republicans, but about right versus wrong. He is reminding both parties of their moral obligations, and if February 8 is any indication, he is just getting started.
Portland Teachers Vote to Strike
Portland, Oregon, teachers have voted nearly unanimously to strike.
“What’s going on in Portland Public Schools (PPS) has shed light on a bigger problem: that for too long, education has been underfunded by design,” said teacher Adam Sanchez during debate before the vote. “It’s time to demand that the money flows into the classroom—not to corporations, not to testing and textbook companies, not to bureaucrats and high-priced consultants.”
A citywide group of mostly high school students, the Portland Student Union, has emerged as a powerful force of activism and supporter of the teachers’ fight. Its demands, which dovetail with the teachers’ contract proposals, include smaller class sizes, funding for the arts, more time with counselors, and no school closures.
Students organized acts of solidarity with teachers in every one of the district’s comprehensive high schools this week. ...
PPS claimed to be in financial crisis—but had recently taken out a lavish, no-bid contract with union-busting labor consultant Yvonne Deckard, promising her $15,000 a month to lead its bargaining strategy with teachers. ...
Throughout bargaining, the district has dismissed teachers’ demands to reduce workload and add back teachers, calling our proposal too expensive.
This argument lost credibility in January, when—in a public hearing required by state law—the district revealed a budget surplus of $29.5 million dollars over two years.
A significant part of this money is the result of cutbacks to the Public Employee Retirement System; agreed-upon benefits were taken away from teachers and other state employees. Another part is because the district over-budgeted its per-teacher expenses by 20 percent. (The over-budgeting results in a lot of money in a slush fund, which can then be used for anything the district chooses—like union-busting labor consultants, for example.)
‘F….Europe’
“F….Europe!” Such were the words used in Kiev, Ukraine by Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe.
Nuland was referring to the European Union’s reluctance to get too deeply involved in Ukraine’s current strife or to impose sanctions on the former Soviet republic. But Nuland perfectly captured Washington’s sneering view of Europe as a collection of feeble and irrelevant banana republics.
Nuland is a prominent American neoconservative. Like her fellow neocons, she disdains Europe for being unwarlike, mildly critical of Israel, and often insufficiently responsive to Washington’s demands – or even insubordinate, like the awful French.
How delicious was it that Nuland’s pithy reference to Europe and her plans for a new western-confected government in Ukrainian – where the US insists it is not at all interfering – were picked by Russian electronic intelligence and played to the world. How dim for Madame Nuland to speak so thoughtlessly on her cell phone.
Of late, Nuland and other senior US officials have been blasting Moscow for “meddling” in Ukraine. The leaked phone recording has Nuland telling the US ambassador to Kiev which of the three opposition candidates Washington wants to run Ukraine.
Nuland’s plans for regime change in Kiev have been a godsend to Moscow, which claims the US and EU are behind the uprising in Ukraine. She has just undermined the democratic Ukrainian opposition by making them look like American puppets.
The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq can't be 'countered' indefinitely
The Faustian pacts that contrived a world war a century ago resonate today across the Middle East and Asia, from Syria to Japan. Then, as now, cover-up was the principal weapon. In 1917 David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, declared: "If people knew the truth, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know."
On PJ Harvey's Today programme I referred to a poll conducted by ComRes last year that asked people in Britain how many Iraqis had been killed as a result of the 2003 invasion. A majority said that fewer than 10,000 had been killed: a figure so shockingly low it was a profanity.
I compared this with scientific estimates of "up to a million men, women and children [who] had died in the inferno lit by Britain and the US". ... There is no question that the epic crime committed in Iraq has burrowed into the public consciousness. Many recall that "shock and awe" was the extension of a murderous blockade imposed for 13 years by Britain and the US and suppressed by much of the mainstream media, including the BBC. Half a million Iraqi infants died as a result of sanctions, according to Unicef. I watched children dying in hospitals, denied basic painkillers.
In the build-up to the 2003 invasion, according to studies by Cardiff University and Media Tenor, the BBC followed the Blair government's line and lies, and restricted airtime to those opposing the invasion. When Andrew Gilligan famously presented a dissenting report on Today, he and the director general were crushed.
The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq cannot be "countered" indefinitely. Neither can the truth about our support for the medievalists in Saudi Arabia, the nuclear-armed predators in Israel, the new military fascists in Egypt and the jihadist "liberators" of Syria, whose propaganda is now BBC news. There will be a reckoning – not just for the Blairs, Straws and Campbells, but for those paid to keep the record straight.
Turkish Police Use Force to Break Up Internet Protest
Turkish police fired volleys of tear gas and used water cannons to disperse large crowds of protesters Saturday rallying in central Istanbul against new “draconian” internet laws passed to stifle dissent and stop evidence of high-level corruption being seen online..
The new bill was passed late Wednesday by the Turkish parliament which is dominated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party. ...
The legislation would give authorities the power to block web pages without a court order within just hours. It would also require internet service providers (ISPs) to store data on their clients’ online activities for two years and provide it to the authorities on request.
Turkish Unionists: 'We Are Not Terrorists'
I was in Istanbul last week to observe the court hearing for 29 Turkish public sector unionists charged with membership in, propaganda for, and leadership of an illegal terrorist organization. ... Turkey’s strict anti-terror laws are being used by the right-wing Erdogan government to crack down on an old enemy — the union movement. ...
The unionists now on trial were arrested after a suicide bomber attacked the U.S. embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on February 1, 2013. He was killed, as was one other person. Three people were injured.
A small far-left organization known as the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front claimed credit for the attack the following day. The group has carried out armed attacks on the Turkish government for more than 30 years. ... But days later, police across the country raided the offices of KESK, as well as homes of KESK leaders. ... KESK has long been a thorn in the side of the Turkish government. Founded in 1995 and closely linked (though unofficially) to the left-wing DISK union federation, KESK’s leaders come out of the radical student movement. They and the Islamist AK Party now in power in Turkey are not the best of friends.
urkey is also a deeply troubled society, riven by ethnic divisions (including a decades-long war with its Kurdish population), a corrupt government, and a bitter divide between secular and Islamist factions.
Unions play an interesting role. Not only are they strong forces for secularism and democracy, but they also manage to overcome the ethnic divisions that play so prominent a role in Turkish politics. Kurds are welcome members of most Turkish unions and sometimes play leadership roles. The government routinely accuses Kurdish leaders of unions like KESK of being supporters of the Kurdish separatist group, the PKK.
This is a great article for us grumpy old people who remember when American-made goods were nearly synonymous with quality:
James Surowiecki Promotes Myth of Consumer Empowerment in the Face of the Crappification of Almost Everything
There’s nothing like getting a missive from the alternative reality where neoliberalism works and all consumer problems can be solved by more diligent shopping (and remember, since we are all consumers first and citizens second, the corollary is that pretty much any problem can be solved by better shopping).
The current sighting is a story in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki, The Twilight of Brands, that tries to tell us, in all seriousness, that companies now have to be on their toes because consumers are more vigilant and less loyal. He starts with the backlash against yoga clothes maker Lululemon when quality fell sharply, and states his thesis:
It’s a truism of business-book thinking that a company’s brand is its “most important asset,” more valuable than technology or patents or manufacturing prowess. But brands have never been more fragile. The reason is simple: consumers are supremely well informed and far more likely to investigate the real value of products than to rely on logos. “Absolute Value,” a new book by Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford, and Emanuel Rosen, a former software executive, shows that, historically, the rise of brands was a response to an information-poor environment. When consumers had to rely on advertisements and their past experience with a company, brands served as proxies for quality; if a car was made by G.M., or a ketchup by Heinz, you assumed that it was pretty good. It was hard to figure out if a new product from an unfamiliar company was reliable or not, so brand loyalty was a way of reducing risk. As recently as the nineteen-eighties, nearly four-fifths of American car buyers stayed loyal to a brand.
This is utterly backwards. The reason “brands have become more fragile” does not not reside in demanding, disloyal customers, but in short-sighted corporate behavior. Surowiecki does point to the early 1980s as the beginning of the sea change, but the driver was a shift away from businesses focusing primarily on good old fashioned success in the marketplace (via matching product quality/price attributes versus customers needs, improving manufacturing processes, looking for new product/technology opportunities, etc) to focusing much more on financial results as the key determinant of success. That orientation arose as raiders, later rebranded as leveraged buyout firms, and now private equity, took over companies, sold unproductive assets, piled on debt, and pushed hard to wring out costs. While many companies were so fat that a lot of overhead could be reduced without affecting production and marketing, the pressure to reduce costs soon moved into areas that involved manufacturing and product quality. Companies began subtly, and then more overtly, lowering product quality and running on brand fumes.
The Economics of the 1%: Neoliberal Lies About Government
Treasury Secretary warns Feb. 27 is debt limit deadline
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Congress on Friday that the nation is likely to run short of money to pay its bills by Feb. 27 unless lawmakers agree to pass an increase in the debt limit.
“If Treasury has insufficient cash on hand, it would be impossible for our nation to meet all of its obligations for the first time in history,” Lew wrote in the letter to Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
House Republicans, though, aren’t prepared to raise the debt limit without demanding concessions from the White House and Congressional Democrats.
Sexless trend in Japan spurs demographic tragedy
The Evening Greens
North Carolina admits to unsafe arsenic in river
DURHAM, N.C. — North Carolina environmental regulators acknowledged Sunday that they had erroneously reported results of early toxic tests in the Dan River after a huge coal ash spill, specifically, that arsenic was within safe levels.
The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources said it had incorrectly reported that results of water samples taken Feb. 3 were within state standards for arsenic, a toxic heavy metal. In fact, the agency said, two samples exceeded the standard of 10 micrograms per liter. ...
The state said Friday that it had earlier found levels of arsenic, copper, iron and aluminum above state standards for surface water quality. The state failed to note that it was correcting the arsenic levels inaccurately reported the previous Monday.
Environmental groups have criticized the state and Duke Energy, the utility responsible for the spill at the company's retired coal-fired plant on the Dan River in Eden, N.C., near the Virginia border. One group, Waterkeeper Alliance, says its tests of water samples have found levels of arsenic, lead, chromium and other heavy metals that far exceed safety standards for humans or wildlife. ...
Municipal water officials downstream have said normal treatment and filtering procedures have rendered water from the Dan River safe to drink. But environmental groups say the spill poses an immediate and long-term threat to humans, wildlife and the environment.
Mayflower oil spill impaired people's health, made area uninhabitable
Amid crisis, West Virginia protesters say no to water bills
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Since West Virginia American Water Company is going to continue billing customers in the wake of the contaminated tap water from the Elk River chemical leak, some residents have decided that they're going to bill the water company right back.
At a protest in Charleston Saturday morning, affected residents filled out invoices, estimating what the water crisis has cost them. Then they stuffed the bills in envelopes with a piece of black licorice -- a nod to the smell of the chemical-tainted water -- to be delivered to the water company.
The blank invoices contain spaces for money spent on bottled water, gas to go buy bottled water, replacing home water filters, hand sanitizer and disposable plates and utensils, among other things.
There are also spaces to estimate the cost of lost wages and profits from when businesses closed, child care services when kids were not in school, sewage bills from flushing pipes and tax dollars spent on responding to the emergency.
Bill McKibben to Obama: Say No to Big Oil
Global warming 'pause' due to unusual trade winds in Pacific ocean, study finds
The contentious "pause" in global warming over the past decade is largely due to unusually strong trade winds in the Pacific ocean that have buried surface heat deep underwater, new research has found.
A joint Australian and US study analysed why the rise in the Earth's global average surface temperature has slowed since 2001, after rapidly increasing from the 1970s.
The research shows that sharply accelerating trade winds in central and eastern areas of the Pacific have driven warm surface water to the ocean's depths, reducing the amount of heat that flows into the atmosphere.
In turn, the lowering of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific triggers further cooling in other regions.
The study, which is published in the journal Nature Climate Change, calculated the net cooling effect on global average surface temperatures as between 0.1C and 0.2C (0.2-0.4F), accounting for much of the hiatus in surface warming. The study's authors said there has been a 0.2C gap between models used to predict warming and actual observed warming since 2001.
The findings should provide fresh certainty about the reasons behind the warming hiatus, which has been claimed by critics of mainstream climate science as evidence that the models are flawed and predictions of rising temperatures have been exaggerated.
New interactive map shows what Earth will look like when all the ice melts
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Don’t buy the hype of a robot-driven ‘jobocalypse’
Wall Street's Hot New Financial Product: Your Rent Check
Psychodrew:
I Have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
A Little Night Music
Doctor Ross - Cat Squirrel
Dr Ross - My Black Name Is Ringing
Doctor Ross - The Boogie Disease
Doctor Ross - Goin' Down Slow
Doctor Ross - That's All Right Now Mama
Dr Ross - Doctor Ross's Boogie
Dr. Isaiah Ross - Harmonica Medley
Doctor Ross - Thirty Two Twenty
Doctor Ross - Come back baby
Doctor Ross - My Bebop Gal
Doctor Ross - Juke Box Boogie
Doctor Ross - Industrial Boogie
Doctor Ross - The Sunnyland
Dr. Ross - Turkey Leg Women
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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