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 blues singer Little Esther Phillips. Enjoy!
Little Esther Phillips - Cupid's Boogie
“In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.”
-- Thucydides
News and Opinion
Ukraine: pro-Russia separatists set for victory in eastern region referendum
There were no international observers, no up-to-date electoral lists, and the ballot papers were photocopies. With heavily armed men keeping watch, ambiguous wording on the ballot slip and a bungled Ukrainian attempt to stop voting in one town that ended with one dead, it was clear that this was no ordinary referendum.
But as pro-Russia separatists announced a landslide victory for the proposition that called for the creation of two new, quasi-independent entities in eastern Ukraine, it was equally clear that Sunday's voting marked a new watershed in the country's crisis. ...
The head of the de facto electoral commission said on Sunday night that nearly 90% of voters in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk voted for self-rule. "89%, that's it," Roman Lyagin said.
On Monday, organisers in the neighbouring Lukansk region said 96% had voted for independence.
"All military troops on our territory after the official announcement of referendum results will be considered illegal and declared occupiers," Denis Pushilin said. "It is necessary to form state bodies and military authorities as soon as possible." ...
There was a further bloody incident on Sunday as a detachment of Ukraine's National Guard arrived in the town of Krasnoarmeisk. According to witnesses, they were angrily accosted by unarmed locals and subsequently opened fire, killing one and wounding two.
Ukraine’s Dueling Elections
Despite many procedural shortcomings, the referenda for secession in eastern Ukraine confront the post-coup regime in Kiev and its Western backers with a growing problem, the realization that major ethnic Russian population centers near the Russian border reject the new right-wing national leaders and favor independence.
The U.S. State Department and the mainstream U.S. press will, of course, dismiss the significance of the voting in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk because of the chaotic circumstances in the region, but the seemingly high turnout and overwhelming vote for secession indicate that there is widespread popular support for the armed resistance to the Kiev authorities who took power in February after the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.
Popular support for the anti-regime rebels was not entirely clear despite the apparent public tolerance of the separatist forces that seized control of about a dozen towns and cities in the industrial region known as the Donbass. But now, even the New York Times, which has been an unabashed supporter of the Kiev regime, acknowledged that “the referendums demonstrated that there was substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas.” ...
One of Kiev’s special units, known as the Dnepr Brigade, attacked a polling place at the City Hall in the town of Krasnoarmiysk on Sunday afternoon, causing the vote organizers to grab ballot boxes and run. When a civilian tried to block other soldiers from entering the building he was shot dead, according to an account in the New York Times.
Two other civilians were wounded in the village of Baranikovka in the Luhansk region when, according to the Interfax news agency, Ukrainian soldiers fired into a crowd blocking National Guard armored vehicles.
After Chaotic Autonomy Votes, Negotiations Could Be Sole Path to Prevent Ukraine’s Disintegration
Russia calls for Ukraine dialogue between Kiev and regions
Russia has said it "respected" the results of independence referendums in eastern Ukraine, but has called for dialogue between the government in Kiev and the south-east regions of the country, suggesting that a Crimea-style annexation of the region for Moscow is not on the cards.
According to preliminary results announced by the de facto authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk, about 90 and 96% respectively voted for state sovereignty on Sunday. The referendums – which Kiev has dismissed as illegitimate – were hastily organised and marked by numerous violations.
Nevertheless, there has been an increasing mood of defiance in the region, especially as a Ukrainian army operation against the armed separatists has resulted in multiple casualties. It is hard to judge how many people support the armed takeover of government buildings and attempts to separate from Ukraine, but feelings are running high.
"In Moscow, we respect the will of the people of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and are counting on practical implementation of the outcome of the referendum in a civilised manner, without any repeat of violence and through dialogue," said the Kremlin in a statement.
Ukraine: Rebels declare victory - Turchinov accuses Russia of working to overthrow legitimate state power
Ukrainian leader Oleksander Turchinov accused Russia of working to overthrow legitimate state power in Ukraine on Monday after pro-Russian rebels declared a resounding victory in rebel referendums on self-rule in eastern regions.
Turchinov said the Kremlin was trying to disrupt a presidential election later this month which is taking centre stage in a confrontation pitting Moscow and the separatists against the government in Kiev and its Western backers.
RIA news agency quoted a rebel leader as saying the eastern Luhansk region would boycott the May 25 election. What he called the "Republic of Luhansk" may hold a further referendum on union with Russia, as Ukraine's Crimea region did under Russian military occupation before its annexation by Moscow in March. ...
But there was some hint of compromise in the port city of Mariupol, scene of fierce fighting between Ukrainian forces and rebels over the last week.
Turchinov said local police had begun patrols with a volunteer militia set up by a company, Metinvest, mostly owned by Ukraine's wealthiest businessman, Rinat Akhmetov.
A photograph on the company's website showed steelworkers from the company, dressed in working overalls and helmets, but unarmed, walking with police through city streets. Akhmetov had offered to provide the militia as part of an arrangement with loyalist police to restore order in the city.
Akhmetov had also proposed that the military should not be brought again into Mariupol.
Kiev's St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral collects money for the military. How very Christ-like!
Ukraine’s poor military can only hope it never has to fight Russia
KIEV, Ukraine — Understanding the depths of the crisis Ukraine faces today takes only a visit to historic St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral.
There, beneath distinctive blue and gold onion domes, as the cathedral’s patriarch prays for “calm and security for all Ukraine,” parishioners peel away to visit two donation boxes. Each box is labeled. One is “For the church” while the other is “To support our armed forces.” On a recent night, parishioners typically slid folded bills into each.
Boxes urging support for Ukraine’s armed forces can be found seemingly everywhere: in shops, along Kiev’s Independence Square, or Maidan, and in thousands of other spots around the country. In the past month, they’ve gathered about 116 million Ukrainian hryvnia, or $10 million.
In the scheme of a modern military, that amounts to pennies. But Adm. Ihor Kabanenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense, used a news conference this week to express the gratitude of a traditionally woefully underfunded military.
“The money will be used to support our forces, with equipment and ammunition, uniforms and provisions,” Kabanenko said. “It has been a great help.”
Burning Ukraine’s Protesters Alive
In Ukraine, a grisly new strategy – bringing in neo-Nazi paramilitary forces to set fire to occupied buildings in the country’s rebellious southeast – appears to be emerging as a favored tactic as the coup-installed regime in Kiev seeks to put down resistance from ethnic Russians and other opponents.
The technique first emerged on May 2 in the port city of Odessa when pro-regime militants chased dissidents into the Trade Unions Building and then set it on fire. As some 40 or more ethnic Russians were burned alive or died of smoke inhalation, the crowd outside mocked them as red-and-black Colorado potato beetles, with the chant of “Burn, Colorado, burn.” Afterwards, reporters spotted graffiti on the building’s walls containing Swastika-like symbols and honoring the “Galician SS,” the Ukrainian adjunct to the German SS in World War II.
This tactic of torching an occupied building occurred again on May 9 in Mariupol, another port city, as neo-Nazi paramilitaries – organized now as the regime’s “National Guard” – were dispatched to a police station that had been seized by dissidents, possibly including police officers who rejected a new Kiev-appointed chief. Again, the deployment of the “National Guard” was followed by burning the building and killing a significant but still-undetermined number of people inside. (Early estimates of the dead range from seven to 20.)
[A]s resistance to Kiev’s right-wing regime expanded in the ethnic Russian east and south, the coup regime found itself unable to count on regular Ukrainian troops to fire on civilians. Thus, its national security chief Andriy Parubiy, himself a neo-Nazi, turned to the intensely motivated neo-Nazi shock troops who had been battle-tested during the coup.
These extremists were reorganized as special units of the National Guard and dispatched to the east and south to do the dirty work that the regular Ukrainian military was unwilling to do.
400 US mercenaries 'deployed on ground' in Ukraine military op
About 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious US private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in the Ukrainian military operation against anti-government protesters in southeastern regions of the country, German media reports. [link added, and here is one from Der Spiegel, too.. - js]
The Bild am Sonntag newspaper, citing a source in intelligence circles, wrote Sunday that Academi employees are involved in the Kiev military crackdown on pro-autonomy activists in near the town of Slavyansk, in the Donetsk region.
On April 29, German Intelligence Service (BND) informed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government about the mercenaries’ participation in the operation, the paper said, RIA Novosti reported. It is not clear who commands the private military contractors and pays for their services, however.
Did CIA’s Fake Polio Vaccination Program in Pakistan Help Fuel a Global Health Emergency?
This is an excellent discussion of the issues surrounding the USA Freedom Act; it's worth clicking the link to read it all:
‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’
Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.
Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”
It is precisely this power to collect our metadata that has prompted one of Congress’s most bipartisan initiatives in recent years. On May 7, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 to adopt an amended form of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to rein in NSA spying on Americans, initially proposed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. On May 8, the House Intelligence Committee, which has until now opposed any real reform of the NSA, also unanimously approved the same bill. And the Obama administration has welcomed the development.
So, one might well ask, if Congress and the White House, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all now agree on reform, how meaningful can the reform be? ... This is a reasonable question. This compromise bill addresses only one part of the NSA’s surveillance activities, and does not do nearly enough to address the many other privacy-invasive practices that we now know the NSA has undertaken. But it’s nonetheless an important first step, and would introduce several crucial reforms affecting all Americans.
Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers
For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a "threat" because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing.
The drumbeat of American accusations against Chinese internet device manufacturers was unrelenting. ... The constant accusations became such a burden that Ren Zhengfei, the 69-year-old founder and CEO of Huawei, announced in November 2013 that the company was abandoning the US market.
But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers, and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.
The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal, and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. ... Warning the world about Chinese surveillance could have been one of the motives behind the US government's claims that Chinese devices cannot be trusted. But an equally important motive seems to have been preventing Chinese devices from supplanting American-made ones, which would have limited the NSA's own reach. In other words, Chinese routers and servers represent not only economic competition but also surveillance competition.
Grassroots Outcry Pushes FCC Chair to Backpedal on Internet Rules
Federal Communications Commission chair Tom Wheeler is backpedaling on his proposed rules that would threaten the democracy of the Internet, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday evening.
The updated draft follows widespread outcry against Wheeler's proposal, unveiled last month, which would allow Internet service providers to charge an extra fee to content companies for preferential treatment in the form of "fast lanes," effectively marginalizing the content of users who do not pay. Critics charged that this "pay-to-play" model would threaten the democratic nature of the open Internet, destroying net neutrality.
However, supporters of an open Internet say that the changes fall short and are a "non-fix," according to TechCrunch, because they preserve the option of pay-for-speed.
According to the WSJ,
In the new draft, Mr. Wheeler is sticking to the same basic approach but will include language that would make clear that the FCC will scrutinize the deals to make sure that the broadband providers don't unfairly put nonpaying companies' content at a disadvantage, according to an agency official.
The official said the draft would also seek comment on whether such agreements, called "paid prioritization," should be banned outright, and look to prohibit the big broadband companies, such as Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc., from doing deals with some content companies on terms that they aren't offering to others.
The one significant change reported by the WSJ, according to advocates, is that Wheeler is now seeking comment on whether broadband Internet service should be reclassified as a public utility—instead of its current classification as an information service—which would allow for it to be subject to greater regulation. In the past, Internet service providers, or ISPs, have fiercely opposed such a move.
Calls to class far-right Jewish settlers as terrorists after Israeli soldiers attacked
Last week, the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, and the internal security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, both argued that rightwing extremists should be classified as terrorists following attacks on soldiers at the hardline West Bank settlement of Yitzhar.
And on Friday, the Israeli prize laureate author Amos Oz described the hardline Jewish settlers that carry out so-called "price tag" attacks on Palestinians as neo-Nazis.
"Our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the support of numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who give them what is in my view pseudo-religious justification," the 75-year-old said at an event in Tel Aviv.
It is not the first time that politicians and public figures in Israel have called for the branding of rightwing settlers as terrorists, but recent events have coalesced into something of a perfect storm.
A spate of vandalism in Jerusalem and Galilee has seen rightwing groups target Christians ahead of the visit of Pope Francis, including a graffiti attack on the Vatican building where he is due to stay later this month.
Egypt's Sisi says he will step down as president if people rise against him
Egypt's likely next leader, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, will resign from office if his presidency sparks mass protests, the former army chief has said.
"If people go down to protest, I will say: I am at your service," Sisi said in an interview with Sky News Arabia aired late on Sunday. "I can't wait until the army asks me to [resign]."
Sisi has just one competitor in Egypt's presidential run-off, which culminates in a two-day poll on 26-27 May – a contest he is widely expected to win.
His remarks echo those of the man he ousted from Egypt's presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. On his election in June 2012, Morsi similarly promised to step down if the masses rose against him, before refusing to resign when millions did fill the streets a year later – a decision that prompted Sisi to force him from office.
Sisi's comments appear at odds with other recent statements, in which he defended a controversial new law that several rights groups say severely curbs the freedom of assembly. Demonstrations put off tourists and harm the country's recovery, Sisi has argued. "The right to protest is guaranteed for all but we will not let the country be destroyed."
Exiles captured in Cuba during armed infiltrations cannot return to the US
Branded as a terrorist by both the Cuban and U.S. governments, Tomas Ramos says he is essentially a nonperson in Havana - ha has no job and no identification papers. But he says he gets lots of harassment by State Security agents.
"We are always persecuted," said Ramos, 70, one of several former South Florida men freed after serving long sentences in Cuban prisons for armed raids against the island in the 1990s - but prohibited from returning to the United States.
Cuban authorities monitor them tightly and with deep suspicion. And the U.S. State Department has denied them visas and political asylum, they say, because of their past involvement in political violence.
"We are watched all the time, even in our private lives. Our lives in Cuba are worth nothing. They can kill us anytime," Ramos said. "And nevertheless, the U.S. does not allow us to go there because they say that we are violent."
All told, 21 raiders from South Florida are known to have been captured on the island from 1991 to 1996, when some exiles believed Cuba was vulnerable to an anti-Castro revolt during the devastating crisis after the Soviet Union's collapse.
Does a Higher Minimum Wage Cost Jobs?
Obama draws criticism over Walmart visit
Labor unions and advocacy groups slammed the president for praising Walmart for energy efficiency while failing to address the big box retailer’s low wages and meager benefits.
Obama’s visit “sends a terrible message to workers across America,” said Joe Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, in a statement.
“He is lending credibility to a bad actor when he should be joining the calls for Walmart to change,” Hansen said. “A federal agency—the National Labor Relations Board—is prosecuting Walmart for retaliating against workers who stand up and speak out. Taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart which pays many of its own workers so little that they must rely on food stamps and Medicaid.”
Hansen urged the president to meet with Walmart workers after Friday’s event so they “can tell him firsthand about their struggles.”
Thirty two groups including Global Exchange, Jobs with Justice, Moveon.org, and Rainforest Action Network issued a joint statement to protest the president’s visit as workers and their supporters rallied at the store in Mountain View, Calif. ...
[W]hen Obama was a senator in 2007, he told an AFL-CIO town hall forum that he wouldn’t shop there, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“As profitable as they are, there's no reason they can't afford to pay” higher wages, Obama said at the time. ...
A White House spokesman was dismissive when asked whether the president’s promotion of Walmart for its energy efforts clashed with his pay equity message.
Hagel open to review of US military ban on transgender individuals
The defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, on Sunday opened the door to a review of the US military’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the armed forces, saying that “this is an area we have not defined enough”.
The US military has come under mounting criticism in recent months for its ongoing prohibition on transgender personnel. The department of defence instructs military recruiters to reject anyone with a “history of major abnormalities or defects of the genitalia including but not limited to change of sex”, and categorises anyone in that position as having a “psychosexual condition”.
Hagel’s comments, made on ABC's This Week, suggest that the Pentagon is inching towards a reconsideration of the issue.
He said: "I'm open to those assessments, because … every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.”
Hagel made clear that change will not come immediately, if at all. He said the military’s position regarding transgender people was “a bit more complicated because it has a medical component – these issues require medical attention”.
The Evening Greens
BP oil spill: methane persisted in sea after microbe cleanup
Scientists on Sunday said that methane which leaked from the 2010 oil-rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico persisted in the sea for months beyond a presumed cleanup of the gas by marine microbes.
As much as half a million tonnes of natural gas, 80 percent of it methane, leaked into the deep sea as a result of the blowout on April 20, 2010, on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.
The leak triggered a surprising "bloom" of marine bacteria that feasted on the gassy hydrocarbon plume.
The bugs performed a valuable environmental service, helping to prevent gas from lingering in the sea – where it would contribute to ocean acidification – or from escaping to the air, where it would add to the greenhouse-gas problem.
The bloom was so dramatic that, by the end of August, tests suggested all the gas had been mopped out by these natural little helpers.
But in a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday, US marine scientists said the bloom abruptly declined at the end of June, even as methane concentrations remained about 5,000 times above background levels.
The bugs did indeed remove a significant amount of the gas, but their population crashed while the leak was still in progress, it said.
Canadians Protest Against Pipelines, Climate Change Policy
US failed to inspect thousands of at-risk oil and gas wells, report finds
The government has failed to inspect thousands of oil and gas wells it considers potentially high risks for water contamination and other environmental damage, congressional investigators say. ...
Investigators said weak control by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resulted from policies based on outdated science and from incomplete monitoring data.
The findings, from the Government Accountability Office, come amid an energy boom in the country and the increasing use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. That process involves pumping huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals underground to split open rocks to allow oil and gas to flow. It has produced major economic benefits, but also raised fears that the chemicals could spread to water supplies.
The audit also said the BLM did not co-ordinate effectively with state regulators in New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah. ...
The report said the BLM had failed to conduct inspections on more than 2,100 of the 3,702 wells that it had specified as "high priority" and drilled from 2009 through 2012. The agency considers a well "high priority" based on a greater need to protect against possible water contamination and other environmental safety issues.
The agency had yet to indicate whether another 1,784 wells were high priority or not.
What Happens If Your Town Runs Out of Water?
How 'Big Corn' lost the ethanol battle to Philadelphia refiners
Six months ago the U.S. oil industry scored a surprise win against farm groups when the Obama administration proposed slashing the amount of ethanol refiners must blend into gasoline, a move that could save them billions of dollars.
Stunned by the reversal, producers of the corn-based biofuel and their supporters are now fighting back ahead of a June deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make a final decision on the cut.
The clash has been portrayed as a battle between "Big Oil" and "Big Corn," two powerful and deep-pocketed lobbies. But a Reuters review of public records and interviews with lawmakers, lobbyists and executives reveals a more complex picture.
A private equity firm and an airline helped convince the Obama administration to backtrack, at least temporarily, on a policy it has supported for years: requiring steadily-rising volumes of ethanol to be blended into gasoline each year, a key to shifting U.S. energy consumption toward renewable sources.
The ethanol industry, blindsided by the proposed cut, has said it was orchestrated by "Big Oil." However, some of the most effective players in the fight weren't traditional oil majors but rather The Carlyle Group and Delta Air Lines, owners of two Philadelphia-area refiners.
Together with their allies, the refiners helped convince policymakers that the rising mandates would cripple their businesses and threaten thousands of jobs.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Attempts to stay anonymous on the web will only put the NSA on your trail
Chris Hedges: The Power of Imagination
What Happened In Seattle is Good Economics, Good Politics, and a Small Start to Something Bigger!
If You Don't Like Money in Politics
A Little Night Music
Esther Phillips - The-Double Crossing Blues
Esther Phillips - LIttle Esther's Blues
Little Esther - Wild Child
Little Esther - If its News To You
Esther Phillips - Release Me
Little Esther Phillips - MoJo Hannah
Little Esther Phillips - Cherry Wine
Esther Phillips - No Headstone On My Grave
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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