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 bluesman and slide guitar innovator Tampa Red. Enjoy!
Tampa Red - I'm Gonna Get High, It's Tight Like That
News and Opinion
Court orders U.S. to release memo on drones, al-Awlaki killing
A federal appeals court ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to turn over key portions of a memorandum justifying the government's targeted killing of people linked to terrorism, including Americans.
In a case pitting executive power against the public's right to know what its government does, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling preserving the secrecy of the legal rationale for the killings, such as the death of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.
Ruling for the New York Times, a unanimous three-judge panel said the government waived its right to secrecy by making repeated public statements justifying targeted killings.
These included a Justice Department "white paper," as well as speeches or statements by officials like Attorney General Eric Holder and former Obama administration counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, endorsing the practice.
The Times and two reporters, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, sought the memorandum under the federal Freedom of Information Act, saying it authorized the targeting of al-Awlaki, a cleric who joined al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate and directed many attacks.
"Whatever protection the legal analysis might once have had has been lost by virtue of public statements of public officials at the highest levels and official disclosure of the DOJ White Paper," Circuit Judge Jon Newman wrote for the appeals court panel in New York.
He said it was no longer logical or plausible to argue that disclosing the legal analysis could jeopardize military plans, intelligence activities or foreign relations.
Jesselyn Radack Speaks about Whistleblowers Under Fire
Clapper bans US intelligence employees from 'unauthorised' media contact
Months after the Edward Snowden surveillance disclosures presented US intelligence with a more skeptical media landscape, the intelligence community’s leader has instituted a new media policy: substantive contact with journalists without prior approval can be a firing offense.
Unlike other policies designed to protect classified information, a directive signed on Sunday by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, is agnostic about the classification status of information his spies, analysts and technical specialists might communicate with the media.
“No substantive information should be provided to the media regarding covered matters in the case of unplanned or unintentional contacts,” reads the directive, which defines “covered matters” as “intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources, methods, activities, and judgments.” ...
Violations of the policy can result in “administrative actions that may include revocation of security clearance or termination of employment.” Should a violation result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, “referral to the Department of Justice for prosecution may occur.”
The directive is less clear on what may happen to an official who engages in an authorized disclosure of classified information, something that senior officials often do with journalists for the purposes of crafting sympathetic or positive stories.
The top spook’s stupid gag order
The nation’s top spy has prohibited all of his spies from talking with reporters about “intelligence-related information” unless officially authorized to speak. Intelligence Community Directive 119, signed by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper last month and made public Monday in a report by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, threatens to reduce the flow of information from the national security establishment to the press — and hence the public.
As Aftergood notes, Directive 119 does not merely bar intelligence community employees from sharing classified intelligence information with reporters. It also bars the discussion with the media of unclassified intelligence information “related” to intelligence. Under Directive 119, any and all conversations between spooks and reporters not explicitly authorized by top officials will be criminalized at the worst or potentially put intelligence employees out of a job at the least. The same discussion of unclassified matters between an intelligence community employee and a non-reporter would be allowed, Aftergood further notes. ...
The tussle between secret-keepers in government and the secret-sharers in the press goes back to the founding of the republic, as Rahul Sagar delineates in his recent book Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy, which I reviewed earlier this year. Efforts like Directive 119 — designed to restrict the flow of information — can lead to unintended results, Sagar found. By tightening the normal circle of secrecy, a president automatically reduces the number of advisers he can draw on to make decisions, and this reduces the amount of brainpower that can shine on an intelligence issue or a foreign crisis and increases conformity. Administrations that “turn inward” tend to exclude dissidents and doubters — emboldening loyalists and suck-ups, and hindering oversight and debate.
One excessively ingrown presidential administration, as you may recall, acted on its excessively ingrown intelligence information and analysis to invade a foreign land to capture diabolical biological and chemical weapons that didn’t exist. If ever we needed more unauthorized leaks to neutralize all the authorized leaks of bogus information to gullible reporters, it was during the prelude to that war.
Bruce Fein: "This is the Authority to Kill Anyone on the Planet"
At Least 68 Killed as US Drone Strikes on Yemen Enter Third Day
With so many of the attacks occurring against remote villages in the hills of Yemen’s rural interior, the death toll is difficult to ascertain, but at least 68 are believed to be dead over the past three days. ...
[W]hile all of the official statements from Yemen have termed the slain “militants” or at the very least “suspects,” not a single person has been identified at all so far officially, and many civilians were confirmed among the slain on Saturday.
U.S. drone strikes came despite Yemen’s hopes to limit them
SANAA, Yemen — A series of U.S. government drone strikes in Yemen over recent days has brought into sharp relief divisions among the country’s rulers over how to rein in a program that they’ve long supported.. ...
Yemen’s government has long assented to the strikes _ privately, in the case of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, but openly under the country’s current leader, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who took power in February 2012.
But a rising number of civilian casualties, particularly the December bombing of a wedding party that left 15 dead, has unnerved some Yemeni officials. ....
The strikes have long been controversial here _ many Yemenis view them as violating their nation’s sovereignty _ and popular opposition has only grown in the two years since the start of Hadi’s presidency. While American and Yemeni officials have defended them as key tools in the battle against AQAP, their frequency has left many Yemenis aghast. Local political analysts and tribal leaders in the provinces where they occur most often argue that the telltale buzz that precedes them terrorizes the local population, spurring many to sympathize with al Qaida.
Such sentiments have only heightened in the wake of a spate of civilian casualties. After the December attack on the wedding party, Yemen’s Parliament voted unanimously for the drone strikes to halt.
9/11 prosecutor asks for more time over FBI spying claims
The assistant US attorney Fernando Campoamor Sanchez says he confirmed the FBI began a preliminary criminal investigation involving classified information, but argues he needs 30 days to respond to a defense request to abate proceedings against five Guantánamo prisoners charged with orchestrating the attack on 11 September 2001.
On 17 April the tribunal was adjourned until June, derailed by an attempt by the FBI to turn a defense team expert on classified materials into an informant. When the adjournment was decided the army judge in the case, Colonel James Pohl, said he was considering appointing independent lawyers for defendants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh to advise them of possible conflicts between their defense teams’ ability to represent them and the lawyers’ interest in defending themselves against an apparent FBI investigation.
The defense told the court last week that it understood the FBI was seeking information on how an unclassified manifesto penned by Mohammed in his Guantánamo cell made its way to the Huffington Post and the UK’s Channel Four. Pohl on Thursday ordered independent counsel for two detainees as an interim measure before establishing the full extent of the FBI penetration.
But on Monday Campoamor-Sanchez, the new US justice department special counsel brought into the prosecution to address the FBI allegation, declared that the “FBI preliminary investigation” of the defense teams did not concern the release of Mohammed’s manifesto, titled Invitation to Happiness.
Latest Guantánamo disclosures further discredit the justice process
Another week of hearings at Guantánamo, another series of jaw-dropping revelations and rulings that underline the futility of the whole enterprise. That the system isn’t working has long been obvious. Now the tragedy is turning into farce.
Exhibit A: The disclosure that the FBI allegedly tried to turn a member of the defense team for 9/11 defendants into a confidential informant, spying on colleagues on behalf of the U.S. government.
Did the FBI not realize that by doing so the agency was damaging the trial procedure at Guantánamo (such as it is)? Did it really believe it could flip a member of the defense team and keep it secret? No wonder some skeptical family members of 9/11 victims believe the whole thing was a deliberate effort to derail the hearings. What else are they to think?
Army Col. James L. Pohl did the only thing he could, issuing a bench order to anyone who ever served on the defense teams of the Sept. 11 case to find out if any of them indeed were approached and asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement about the contact. The notion that you can commit an illegal act and get away with it by making the other party sign a nondisclosure agreement is itself farcical. Inspector Clouseau would approve. ...
Prolonged incarceration without formal charges, evidence withheld, limited access by the public, defendants subjected to torture after their capture, severely limited rights to object by the defense, hunger strikes, etc. Now government spying on the defense. All this and more is what passes for justice at Guantánamo, and it is only thanks to a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings for the defendants that matters aren’t even worse.
Future of 9/11 tribunal unclear after rocky week of hearings at Guantánamo
The major fissure concerning the controversial military commissions at Guantánamo Bay is no longer between civil liberties and national security. It’s between the commissions and the intelligence services, with the future of the 9/11 war crimes tribunal hanging in the balance. ... And the agencies may now have overplayed their hand. ...
The apparent investigation into Mohammed’s defense attorneys was only the latest example of intelligence or law enforcement agencies asserting their prerogatives over the 9/11 tribunal. Last year, the CIA remotely muted the courtroom when a lawyer for Mohammed attempted to discuss conditions at the agency’s now-shuttered secret prisons. The agency’s ability to mute the proceedings was a surprise to Pohl, who issued a cease-and-desist order.
Additionally, rooms used by the 9/11 defense lawyers for discussions with clients featured listening devices disguised as smoke detectors, confirming years of suspicion on the part of the defense that their conversations were under surveillance. The culprit was the FBI. Furthermore, the defense teams have faced a huge breach of their email data, which the Pentagon says was inadvertent. ...
Last week’s courtroom events may have made the intelligence agencies’ role in the tribunal more stark, but they have hung over the tribunal like a shadow. Were it not for the treatment the 9/11 defendants suffered in CIA custody, the tribunal would likely have concluded by now, as a large swath of their attorneys’ pretrial motions concerns establishing the extent of their pre-trial incarceration and its legal implications.
The intelligence value the CIA reaped from torture was minimal, according to senators who investigated it. The impact on the only legal proceedings designed to bring a semblance of closure to 9/11 may be far greater.
The Modern History of Venezuela, The Protests and Democracy
Russia FM: Ukraine Crudely Violating Geneva Deal
Russia is arguing that the text’s call for the disarmament of “illegal” factions applies to the neo-Nazi Right Sector, which launched a weekend attack on the eastern protesters, violating the Easter Truce.
The eastern protesters, who weren’t a party to the deal to begin with, insisted that the deal can’t impose any requirements on them. Likewise, that other violent factions like the Right Sector’s militias aren’t being disarmed has them feeling justified in keeping their own arms.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of “crudely violating” the terms of the deal by refusing to disarm any of the other factions in the country, acting as though it was meant to exclusively apply to the protesters in the east.
Biden pledges support for Ukraine as east edges closer to union with Russia
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, has thrown US support – and funds – behind Ukraine's interim government as anti-Kiev militia in the country's east edged a step closer towards secession from Kiev and joining Russia.
A "people's assembly" in Luhansk, where heavily armed militia have been occupying the security service headquarters for more than two weeks announced on Tuesday morning that they would hold a two-stage referendum on the region's future. ...
Speaking in Kiev following meetings with the western-allied leadership, Biden told Russia on Tuesday that it was "time to stop talking and start acting".
Biden met members of the parliament, the acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, and the acting prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and warned that the country must "fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system" before pledging $50m (£30m) to help Ukraine's government to carry out political and economic reforms, including $11m to help conduct the presidential election on 25 May.
Biden also announced an additional $8m in non-lethal military assistance for the Ukrainian armed forces, including bomb-disposal equipment, communications gear and vehicles.
Putin restores rights of Crimean Tatars repressed by Stalin
Cuban-American leaders helped 'Cuban Twitter'
Leaders with the largest nonprofit organization for young Cuban-Americans quietly provided strategic support for the federal government's secret "Cuban Twitter" program, connecting contractors with potential investors and even serving as paid consultants, The Associated Press has learned.
Interviews and documents obtained by the AP show leaders of the organization, Roots of Hope, were approached by the "Cuban Twitter" program's organizers in early 2011 about taking over the text-messaging service, known as ZunZuneo, and discussed how to shift it into private hands. Few if any investors were willing to privately finance ZunZuneo, and Roots of Hope members dropped the idea. But at least two people on its board of directors went on to work as consultants, even as they served in an organization that explicitly refused to accept any U.S. government funds and distanced itself from groups that did.
The disclosure could have wide repercussions for what has become one of the most visible and influential Cuban-American organizations. Roots of Hope has been a key player in events like Latin pop star Juanes' 2009 peace concert that drew more than a million people in Havana and in the promotion of technology on the island. ... Matt Herrick, a USAID spokesman, declined to provide the names of any individuals employed by its contractor, but said Roots of Hope did not enter into any grants or contracts related to ZunZuneo or any other project. However, documents obtained by the AP show extensive involvement at times by the organization's board members.
Asked whether agency contractors had attempted to spin the project off to Roots of Hope leaders, Herrick said only, "The project sought to attract private investment to support the effort after USAID funding ended, but private investment was never identified."
Supreme Court upholds Michigan affirmative action ban
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Michigan's ban on using race as a factor in college admissions.
The justices said in a 6-2 ruling that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution in 2006 to prohibit public colleges and universities from taking account of race in admissions decisions. The justices said that a lower federal court was wrong to set aside the change as discriminatory.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said voters chose to eliminate racial preferences, presumably because such a system could give rise to race-based resentment.
Kennedy said nothing in the Constitution or the court's prior cases gives judges the authority to undermine the election results.
"This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it," Kennedy said.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision tramples on the rights of minorities, even though the amendment was adopted democratically.
The Evening Greens
Earth Day Special: "Fierce Green Fire" Documentary Explores Environmental Movement’s Global Rise
The climate crisis has such bad timing, confronting it not only requires a new economy but a new way of thinking
One of the most disturbing ways that climate change is already playing out is through what ecologists call “mismatch” or “mistiming.” This is the process whereby warming causes animals to fall out of step with a critical food source, particularly at breeding times, when a failure to find enough food can lead to rapid population losses.
The migration patterns of many songbird species, for instance, have evolved over millennia so that eggs hatch precisely when food sources such as caterpillars are at their most abundant, providing parents with ample nourishment for their hungry young. But because spring now often arrives early, the caterpillars are hatching earlier too, which means that in some areas they are less plentiful when the chicks hatch, threatening a number of health and fertility impacts. Similarly, in West Greenland, caribou are arriving at their calving grounds only to find themselves out of sync with the forage plants they have relied on for thousands of years, now growing earlier thanks to rising temperatures. That is leaving female caribou with less energy for lactation, reproduction and feeding their young, a mismatch that has been linked to sharp decreases in calf births and survival rates.
Scientists are studying cases of climate-related mistiming among dozens of species, from Arctic terns to pied flycatchers. But there is one important species they are missing—us. Homo sapiens. We too are suffering from a terrible case of climate-related mistiming, albeit in a cultural-historical, rather than a biological, sense. Our problem is that the climate crisis hatched in our laps at a moment in history when political and social conditions were uniquely hostile to a problem of this nature and magnitude—that moment being the tail end of the go-go ’80s, the blastoff point for the crusade to spread deregulated capitalism around the world. Climate change is a collective problem demanding collective action the likes of which humanity has never actually accomplished. Yet it entered mainstream consciousness in the midst of an ideological war being waged on the very idea of the collective sphere.
This deeply unfortunate mistiming has created all sorts of barriers to our ability to respond effectively to this crisis. It has meant that corporate power was ascendant at the very moment when we needed to exert unprecedented controls over corporate behavior in order to protect life on earth. It has meant that regulation was a dirty word just when we needed those powers most. It has meant that we are ruled by a class of politicians who know only how to dismantle and starve public institutions, just when they most need to be fortified and reimagined. And it has meant that we are saddled with an apparatus of “free trade” deals that tie the hands of policy-makers just when they need maximum flexibility to achieve a massive energy transition.
Reframing the Planet
On the outskirts of Sheffield there is a wood which, some 800 years ago, was used by the monks of Kirkstead Abbey to produce charcoal for smelting iron. For local people, Smithy Wood is freighted with stories. Among the trees you can imagine your way into another world. The application to plant a motorway service station in the middle of it, wiping out half the wood and fragmenting the rest, might have been unthinkable a few months ago. No longer.
When the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, first began talking about biodiversity offsetting – replacing habitats you trash with new ones created elsewhere – his officials made it clear that it would not apply to ancient woodland. But in January Paterson said he was prepared to drop this restriction, as long as many more trees were planted than destroyed. ... Who cares whether a tree is a hunched and fissured coppiced oak, worked by people for centuries, or a sapling planted beside a slip road with a rabbit guard around it? As Ronald Reagan remarked, when contemplating the destruction of California’s giant redwoods, “a tree is a tree”. ... But this is the way it’s going now: everything will be fungible, nothing will be valued for its own sake, place and past and love and enchantment will have no meaning. The natural world will be reduced to a column of figures. ...
Costing nature tells us that it possesses no inherent value; that it is worthy of protection only when it performs services for us; that it is replaceable. You demoralise and alienate those who love the natural world while reinforcing the values of those who don’t. ... The woods are worth £x, but by pure chance the road turns out to be worth £x +1. Beauty, tranquility, history, place, particularity? Sorry, they’ve already been costed and incorporated into x – end of discussion. The strongest arguments opponents can deploy – arguments based on values – cannot be heard.
BP Uses Bribes To Do Business
Ottawa removing North Pacific humpback whales from list of ‘threatened’ species
OTTAWA — The Harper government is downgrading the protection of the North Pacific humpback whale despite objections from a clear majority of groups that were consulted.
Critics say the whales could face greater danger if two major oilsands pipeline projects get the go-ahead, since both would result in a sharp increase in movement of large vessels on the West Coast that occasionally collide with, and kill, whales like the humpback.
The decision was made under the Species At Risk Act (SARA), and declares the humpback a “species of special concern” rather than “threatened.”
The reclassification means the humpback will no longer be “subject to the general prohibitions set out in SARA, nor would its critical habitat be required to be legally protected under SARA,” states the federal government notice published this month in the Canada Gazette.
The decision removes a major legal hurdle that the environmental group Ecojustice said stood in the way of the $7.9-billion Northern Gateway pipeline project that would bring 550,000 barrels of diluted bitumen crude from Alberta to Kitimat. ...
The fate of the humpback was a major issue during the Northern Gateway public hearings that concluded last year, with many groups fearing that collisions, potential spills, and excessive noise would be a serious threat to the whales.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Putin, Petrodollars and Canada’s Useful Idiot
Hidden History: What Nazi-Tied Roots to U.S. International Media Reveals About Ukraine Crisis
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou Denied Freedom Of Speech
Respect after Death
Moyers: "Gov't Is Now A Protection Racket for the 1%," Krugman: "Why We’re In A New Gilded Age"
A Little Night Music
Tampa Red & Georgia Tom - You Can't Get That Stuff No More
Tampa Red - Hard Road Blues
Tampa Red - Let Me Play With Your Poodle
Tampa Red - It Hurts Me Too
Tampa Red The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas
Tampa Red - No Matter How She Done It
Tampa Red - Things Bout Coming My Way
Tampa Red - You Missed A Good Man
Tampa Red - Corrine Blues
Tampa Red & The Hokum Jug Band - Boot It Boy
Tampa Red - Seminole Blues
Tampa Red's Hokum Jazz Band - My Daddy Rocks Me With A Steady Roll
Tampa Red - You Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone
Tampa Red & The Chicago Five - Rock It In Rhythm
Tampa Red & Big Walter Horton - Evalena
Tampa Red - What Is That Tastes Like Gravy?
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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