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 two Chicago blues guitarists Maurice John Vaughn and the somewhat obscure Joe Carter. Enjoy!
Maurice John Vaughn - Mojo Hand
"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance."
-- Hannah Arendt
News and Opinion
Who Tried to Silence Drone Victim Kareem Khan?
In the early morning hours of February 5, a group of armed men – some dressed in Pakistani police uniforms – appeared at Kareem Khan’s home, awoke him and his family at gunpoint, and took him away in an unmarked vehicle. ... Khan has no doubts about why he was targeted. He is the first person to attempt a legal challenge to the CIA drone program in Pakistan, after his son and brother were killed in a drone strike near his home in North Waziristan on December 31st 2009. His abduction and detention occurred just over a week before Khan was to travel with Akbar and Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer with the UK-based legal charity Reprieve, to speak with European parliamentarians about the CIA drone program. Among the topics of discussion were the extralegal nature of the program, as well as covert intelligence sharing by European spy agencies. ...
While in captivity, Khan was interrogated by men who refused to identify themselves, and who questioned him repeatedly about his plans to speak with the media and about the cases of others who had been killed by drones. As Khan described them to The Intercept, the questions posed to him were circular and repetitive, and appeared to be more about intimidation than intelligence gathering.
Since the start of the “War on Terror” it has been estimated by local human rights groups that as many as 8,000 Pakistani citizens have been “disappeared” by local intelligence agencies, often at the behest of their American counterparts. In the words of one former detainee in Islamabad, quoted in a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch, “It seemed to me that this place was controlled by the Americans. They were in charge.”
The widespread perception in Pakistan is that criticizing government collaboration with US intelligence agencies can lead to threats from local security forces. As a Pakistani lawyer representing the families of several missing persons put it: “You will not be jailed in America if you say you hate the United States…..But I, as a Pakistani, cannot criticize the policies of America or my own government while in Pakistan for fear of becoming a missing person.”
In Khan’s case, Gibson told The Intercept that while it was too early to speculate about who was behind the kidnapping, “the manner in which he was abducted and tortured clearly fits into a longstanding pattern of detention and abuse by Pakistani intelligence forces.”
Violent protest in Crimean Ukraine as Russia orders test of combat readiness
As violent protest rocked Crimea on Wednesday, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has reportedly ordered an immediate test of combat readiness of troops in central and western Russia in a move that will dramatically elevate fears of a separatist threat in Ukraine.
The Russian presidential order was confirmed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. In the Crimean administrative capital of Simferopol, pro-Russian demonstrators clashed with about 20,000 Muslim Tatars rallying in support of Ukraine's interim pro-European government. ...
Pro-European protesters filled Kiev's Maidan square – the seat of the Ukrainian revolution – preparing to meet the replacement cabinet proposed by Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting president, on Wednesday, as Turchynov dismissed the country's feared riot police.
Turchynov had warned on Tuesday that the country faced a serious threat from separatism amid fears the Kremlin may be stoking pro-Russian sentiment in the Crimean peninsula. ...
Before Wednesday's military manoeuvre, a visiting Russian parliamentarian said on Tuesday that Moscow would act in the event of heightened tension over the Crimean peninsula.
Popular Uprising, Foreign Manipulation and Rising Fascism in Ukraine
Documents reveal huge government assault was planned to ‘cleanse’ protesters from Kiev
Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovych drew up a large-scale “anti-terrorist” operation involving 22,000 security forces to “cleanse” protesters from Kiev, leaked documents show — a plan opponents say would have caused even greater bloodshed.
Parts of the operation — detailed in official memos handed to a lawmaker by security officials — appear to have been set in motion when deadly clashes erupted last week between protesters and police. But for unknown reasons, others failed to materialise, allowing protesters to resist and eventually fight back.
“These documents, detailing the criminal activities of those in charge of the security forces, were passed on to me by patriotic members of the SBU (intelligence and security services) and the interior ministry,” legislator and former deputy interior minister Gennady Moskal wrote on his site, where the documents were published. ...
Codenamed “Operation Wave”, the carefully planned assault envisaged shutting down Kiev, switching off opposition TV channels and leading crowds of demonstrators into a “trap” set by the security forces to “clean out” the main protest camp on the capital’s Independence Square.
Meanwhile, thousands of security officers would have attempted to “neutralise” a major rightwing group that made up the hard core of the protest movement’s self-defence group.
Europeans question Brussels' plan to bail out Ukraine
Maduro Calls for 'Peace Conference'
As street protests continued in Venezuela this week, President Nicolas Maduro has called for a "peace conference" on Wednesday in order to defuse the violence, though it remains unclear which, if any, representatives of his opposition will agree to attend.
Maduro has said that he supports the right of his opponents to take their message wherever they like, but said the accompanying violence—especially given repeated efforts to undermine the democratically-elected Chavista government from within, including a U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2002—would not be tolerated.
“I guarantee you the liberty to do it,” Maduro said. “But if you’re going to go out and burn and destroy, I won’t permit that."
Provincial Governor Henrique Capriles, who lost to Maduro in last year's presidential election and remains a key member of the opposition, has yet to declare whether he will accept the invitation to join talks. On Monday, however, Capriles refused to attend a larger meeting where Maduro met with the nation's other governors to discuss the ongoing political crisis.
Is Venezuela Burning?
For over a week now, the world’s press and media have carried images of a Venezuela in flames. Burning buses, angry demonstrations, public buildings under siege. But the pictures are rarely explained or placed in any kind of context, and people are left to assume that this is just one more urban riot, one more youth rebellion against the crisis, like those in Greece and Spain.
The reality is both very different and far more complex. Venezuela, after all, is a society that declared war on neoliberalism fifteen years ago.
Caracas, where this series of events began, is a divided city. Its eastern part is middle class and prosperous; to the west, the population is poorer. The political divide reflects exactly the social division. Leopoldo Lopez, who has been a leader of this new phase of violent opposition to the government of Nicolas Maduro, was mayor of one of the eastern districts. Together with another prominent right wing anti-chavista, Maria Corina Machado, he had issued a call for an open public meeting the previous Sunday to demand the fall of the government. Youth Day, on February 12, provided an opportunity to bring out students to march, demonstrate, and occupy the streets. ...
In more recent days, the class character of the demonstrations has become clearer. The government’s new bus system, offering clean and safe travel at low prices, has been attacked, 50 of them on Friday alone. The Bolivarian University, offering higher education to people excluded from the university system, was besieged Friday — though the demonstrators failed to get in to wreck it. And in several places Cuban medical personnel, who run the Barrio Adentro health system, have been viciously attacked. ... Maduro and his cabinet have responded by denouncing the increasingly violent confrontations as organized by fascists and financed and supported by the United States. And there are certainly extreme elements involved, actively engaged in trying to destabilize the situation. They include paramilitaries linked to the drug trade, whose presence has grown in this overly-weaponized country.
The US should respect Venezuela’s democracy
The United States’ disenchantment with Venezuelan politics in the last 15 years is no secret. The U.S. has a sordid history of exerting unfettered influence in Latin America. It has supported the ouster of democratically elected governments and backed strongmen whose policies advance U.S. economic and political interests, inflicting incalculable suffering on the most vulnerable citizens of those countries.
After being sworn into office in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in office last year, instituted policies that have been a thorn in the side of successive U.S. administrations and posed a lasting challenge to Washington’s hegemony in the region. The U.S. has not taken kindly to that, providing funding for “democracy promotion” initiatives in the country through organizations that have historically destabilized left-leaning governments. The 2014 U.S. foreign operations budget includes at least $5 million for supporting opposition activities in Venezuela. Despite their lofty labels, these projects did little to enhance the popular political participation of Venezuela’s people. While the U.S. casts its condemnation of the government’s response as unswerving support for principles of democracy and freedom, its position runs contrary to the democratically expressed will of the Venezuelan people. ...
Maduro supporters claim that the local and international response to the conflict is muddied by a deliberate disinformation campaign that includes old photos and videos, some of which have gone viral. The misinformation parallels a similar campaign in 2002, when manipulated footage of Chavez supporters firing at protesters was used to legitimize the coup against Chavez, under the pretext that he ordered troops to kill demonstrators. In this case, much of the disinformation spread mostly via social media, although in some cases, Venezuelan and international media outlets aided in the dissemination. ...
Barack Obama’s administration has laid blame exclusively at the feet of the Maduro government. “We are particularly alarmed by reports that the Venezuelan government has arrested or detained scores of anti-government protesters,” said Secretary of State John Kerry in a press statement on Feb. 15. Kerry’s comments implicitly reject the possibility that some of the detentions could have been part of the effort to maintain peace and security. Moreover, as Mark Weisbrot, a CEPR co-director points out, the statement’s tone was a signal to the opposition that the U.S. supports regime change in Venezuela, however undemocratic, much as it did in the 2002 coup against Chavez.
Endless War? US plans to leave 3,000 troops in Afghanistan after deadline
A Complete US Withdrawal from Afghanistan? Bring... It... On
Despite repeated statements from the Obama administration that its preferred planned is for a large residual military force and operations footprint inside Afghanistan that extends well beyond 2014, the president formally ordered the Pentagon on Tuesday to draw up plans for a full and complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of the year—the so-called 'zero option.'
Though treated like a threat and something that would be terrible for both U.S. interests and the Afghan people by many in the Washington establishment, the reality is that preparations for a coordinated and full withdrawal is exactly what the global anti-war movement and those who support Afghan sovereignty have been calling for since the country was first invaded by the U.S. and NATO more than a dozen years ago.
Obama's move was leaked to the press following a phone call between Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier on Tuesday in which the two leaders discussed the ongoing reluctance of Karzai to sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) put forth by the White House.
Trust in Troika wavers as loans fail to revive economies
Management saw nothing. Pffffttt!!
Credit Suisse CEO fights back on tax evasion claims
Credit Suisse's chief executive will hit back at allegations the Swiss bank was a willing accomplice in U.S. tax evasion on Wednesday, blaming instead a small group of its private bankers for helping Americans conceal their wealth.
Brady Dougan will tell U.S. senators that Credit Suisse only uncovered "scattered evidence" of improper conduct, and its top managers were not aware that a small group of Swiss-based private bankers helped U.S. customers hide income and assets.
"We deeply regret that - despite the industry-leading compliance measures we have put in place - before 2009, some Credit Suisse private bankers appear to have violated U.S. law," Dougan said in prepared remarks, released before his appearance later on Wednesday in front of a U.S. Senate subcommittee on offshore tax evasion.
"The evidence showed that some Swiss-based private bankers went to great lengths to disguise their bad conduct from Credit Suisse executive management."
What's this? OFA is taking over for Lloyd Blankfein?
Obama tells supporters they are doing 'God's work'
President Barack Obama rallied his political base Tuesday night, speaking to those attending a summit hosted by Organizing for Action, a group that pushes his policy agenda.
"The work you’re doing is God’s work," he told hundreds of supporters at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
Supreme Court ruling expands police authority in home searches
Police officers may enter and search a home without a warrant as long as one occupant consents, even if another resident has previously objected, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a Los Angeles case.
The 6-3 ruling, triggered by a Los Angeles Police Department arrest in 2009, gives authorities more leeway to search homes without obtaining a warrant, even when there is no emergency. ...
The case began when LAPD officers responded to reports of a street robbery near Venice Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue. They pursued a suspect to an apartment building, heard shouting inside a unit and knocked on the door. Roxanne Rojas opened the door, but her boyfriend, Walter Fernandez, told officers they could not enter without a warrant.
"You don't have any right to come in here. I know my rights," Fernandez shouted from inside the apartment, according to court records.
Fernandez was arrested in connection with the street robbery and taken away. An hour later, police returned and searched his apartment, this time with Rojas' consent. They found a shotgun and gang-related material.
In Tuesday's decision, the high court said Fernandez did not have the right to prevent the search of his apartment once he was gone and Rojas had consented.
In the past, the court has frowned upon most searches of residences except in the case of an emergency or if the police had a warrant from a judge.
Supreme Court rules against anti-nuclear activist who protested on a public road at Air Force base
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that an anti-nuclear weapons protester could not avoid prosecution simply because he demonstrated on a public road that runs through a U.S. military installation in California.
On a 9-0 vote, the court found fault with a federal appeals court decision that said the protester, John Apel, was immune from prosecution because he had been demonstrating on the road crossing the Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The court did not rule on Apel’s claim that his free speech rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution were violated by the prosecution. He can raise those objections again in lower courts.
Apel was convicted in 2010 on three counts of trespassing on the base.
The U.S. government had asked the justices to overturn the appeals court ruling on the grounds that the road is on government-owned land and under the control of the base commander.
Chokwe Lumumba: Remembering "America’s Most Revolutionary Mayor"
Spanish flamenco guitar legend Paco de Lucia dies of heart attack at 66
Paco de Lucia, the Spanish guitarist who brought flamenco to a world audience, has died in Mexico aged 66, officials in his Andalusian hometown said Wednesday.
Born Francisco Sanchez Gomez, he was credited with modernising the Spanish gypsy tradition with jazz and bossa nova influences during a decades-long career.
The mayor’s office in his southern hometown of Algeciras, deep in flamenco country, said de Lucia died in Mexico of a heart attack.
“Paco de Lucia’s death turns his genius into a legend,” said the mayor of Algeciras, Jose Ignacio Landaluce, in a statement.
The Evening Greens
Lack of coal-waste oversight is under fire after giant spill
A massive North Carolina coal waste spill into a major river is increasing pressure on the Obama administration to start policing the more than 1,000 such waste storage sites across the nation.
The federal government doesn’t regulate the disposal of “coal ash,” the dustlike material that’s left over when pulverized coal is burned to fuel electrical power plants. Pennsylvania leads the nation in coal ash production, followed by Texas, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
Coal ash can contain toxic materials such as arsenic and selenium, but the Environmental Protection Agency has left it to the states to decide what rules to put in place. The result has been an inconsistent patchwork of regulations that the EPA acknowledges is full of gaps.
The agency promises to come out with long-delayed rules by the end of the year, but it’s likely to leave the enforcement in the hands of the states.
State coal ash enforcement is under particular fire in North Carolina after a Duke Energy spill this month poured coal ash into the Dan River. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated that up to 39,000 tons of the waste traveled 80 miles downstream and coated the river bottom in a layer of sludge. It’s endangering aquatic life in the river, and health officials warn against eating fish caught in the contaminated stretch.
“If this doesn’t prove you need to have a strong federal regulation, then what proof does it take?” said Frank Holleman, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has challenged state oversight of coal ash dumps.
California awaits brief respite from drought with incoming storms
California is bracing for two storms which are expected to dump the most significant rainfall in almost three years, promising a brief respite to the state’s drought.
Moderate to heavy showers on Wednesday were due to be followed on Friday by heavier torrents, a blessing for farmers and water management authorities but unwelcome news for motorists and organisers of the Oscars.
A weather system moving in from the Pacific will “broadside” the region, with rain strenghtening throughout Wednesday and ebbing on Thursday before a second, more powerful storm hit, said Bob Benjamin, of the National Weather Service. “It has the potential to be messy.”
The deluge is expected to dump between one and three inches of rain in coastal and valleys areas and five to seven inches in hills and mountains – a dramatic event by California’s desiccated standards. ...
But it will add up to only marginal relief after 13 months of devastating drought. “It all goes in the plus column. But it is still far outweighed by the negative column,” said Benjamin.
Gosh, you'd think that the US government might be sort of interested in paying attention to a radioactive plume headed for the west coast. Hmmm... could there be political considerations that are more important than American's health?
Radioactive Fukushima Plume Due to Reach West Coast this Spring
Scientists say lack of government supported research forcing them to use volunteers, predictive models
A radioactive plume released from the Fukushima meltdown is expected to reach the west coast of the U.S. in April, said a panel of researchers in Honolulu Monday. However, without any federal or international monitoring, scientists are bereft of "actual data," guessing at the amount of radiation coming at us.
Monitors along the Pacific U.S. coast have yet to detect any traces of cesium-134, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), speaking on a panel at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences. However, sampling undertaken by Dr. John Smith at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography has helped develop models that forecast the "probable future progression of the plume."
According to Buesseler, initial traces should be detectable along the Pacific coast in April.
One of the radioactive isotopes that is formed during a nuclear accident is cesium-134. With a short half-life of two years, any traces of it detected by monitoring instruments can be specifically attributed to the Fukushima nuclear accident. ...
One shortcoming of the current models available to the scientists is that lack of solid data is creating varying predictions about the amount of radiation and when it is expected to reach the west coast.
Japan, U.S. Move to Expand Nuclear Power Programs Despite Contamination at Fukushima & New Mexico
Remember That Nuclear Dump Site That 'Was Never Supposed to Leak'?
A leak at the only underground nuclear waste dump in the United States is now believed to be releasing radiation into the air, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced Monday, sparking alarm among residents near the southeastern New Mexico site.
"There's been radioactivity from nuclear waste released on the surface into the environment," said Don Hancock, Director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, in an interview with Common Dreams. "This was never supposed to happen. That's a very serious thing. We don't know yet what caused this release, or how much has been released."
Samples taken near the federally-run Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), 25 miles east of the town of Carlsbad, showed "slightly elevated levels of airborne radioactive concentrations, which are consistent with the waste disposed," according to the DOE.
WIPP holds plutonium-contaminated military waste, generated by nuclear weapons production across the United States, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. The waste is stored deep beneath the earth's surface in salt formations. ...
The revelation of airborne radiation comes one week after the DOE announced detection of what they said was likely was an underground radiation leak at the facility — a leak that was later confirmed. Radioactive shipments to WIPP have been halted since February 5th when a vehicle caught on fire underground, forcing the evacuation of the facility.
This story kinda makes you wonder what other effects a significant reduction in winds blowing in off of the oceans might have on the environment.
Offshore wind farms can protect coastal cities from hurricanes: scientists
Huge offshore wind farms can protect vulnerable coastal cities against devastating cyclones like Katrina and Sandy by tempering winds and ocean surges before they reach land, a study said Wednesday.
Had such installations existed at the time, Hurricane Katrina which ravaged New Orleans in 2005, and Sandy, which smashed the coastlines of New York and New Jersey in 2012, would have been reduced to strong but not devastating winds, it said. ...
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to demonstrate that wind farms, deployed on a grand scale, can buffer violent hurricanes, the researchers said.
The team simulated the impact from farms of tens of thousands of turbines, placed kilometres (miles) offshore and along the coast of cyclone-vulnerable cities.
They found that turbine blades extracting energy from the wind on a very large scale can have a marked effect on the internal dynamics of a cyclone.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Venezuelan Protests from the View of Western Caracas
Washington Post Complains That Bill Gates' Riches Come at the Expense of Everyone Else
The Bakken Boom - Kid's Views
Wheeler: Senate Testimony Confirms Illegal Domestic Wiretap Program Authorization Never Cancelled
A Little Night Music
Maurice John Vaughn & Fred Brousse - Everything I Do Got To Be Funky
Maurice John Vaughn - Nothing left to believe in
Maurice John Vaughn - I got money
Maurice John Vaughn - I Want To Be Your Spy
Maurice John Vaughn + Donald Ray Johnson - Stagger Lee
Maurice John Vaughn - Generic Blues
Joe Carter - It Hurts Me Too
Joe Carter & Big John Wrencher - (Sail On) Honey Bee
Joe Carter - Stormy Monday
Joe Carter + his Chicago Broomdusters- Treat me the way
Joe Carter - Hoochie Koochie Man
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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