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 Washington DC blues band, The Nighthawks. Enjoy!
The Nighthawks - Howlin' for my darlin', You Better Leave My Woman Alone, A Damn Good Time, 4:44 am, Crawfish
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
-- Mark Twain
News and Opinion
A Message From Edward Snowden, One Year Later
It's been one year.
Technology has been a liberating force in our lives. It allows us to create and share the experiences that make us human, effortlessly. But in secret, our very own government -- one bound by the Constitution and its Bill of Rights -- has reverse-engineered something beautiful into a tool of mass surveillance and oppression. The government right now can easily monitor whom you call, whom you associate with, what you read, what you buy, and where you go online and offline, and they do it to all of us, all the time.
Today, our most intimate private records are being indiscriminately seized in secret, without regard for whether we are actually suspected of wrongdoing. When these capabilities fall into the wrong hands, they can destroy the very freedoms that technology should be nurturing, not extinguishing. Surveillance, without regard to the rule of law or our basic human dignity, creates societies that fear free expression and dissent, the very values that make America strong.
In the long, dark shadow cast by the security state, a free society cannot thrive.
That's why one year ago I brought evidence of these irresponsible activities to the public -- to spark the very discussion the U.S. government didn't want the American people to have. With every revelation, more and more light coursed through a National Security Agency that had grown too comfortable operating in the dark and without public consent. Soon incredible things began occurring that would have been unimaginable years ago. A federal judge in open court called an NSA mass surveillance program likely unconstitutional and "almost Orwellian." Congress and President Obama have called for an end to the dragnet collection of the intimate details of our lives. Today legislation to begin rolling back the surveillance state is moving in Congress after more than a decade of impasse.
I am humbled by our collective successes so far. When the Guardian and The Washington Post began reporting on the NSA's project to make privacy a thing of the past, I worried the risks I took to get the public the information it deserved would be met with collective indifference.
One year later, I realize that my fears were unwarranted.
Americans, like you, still believe the Constitution is the highest law of the land, which cannot be violated in secret in the name of a false security. Some say I'm a man without a country, but that's not true. America has always been an ideal, and though I'm far away, I've never felt as connected to it as I do now, watching the necessary debate unfold as I hoped it would. America, after all, is always at our fingertips; that is the power of the Internet.
But now it's time to keep the momentum for serious reform going so the conversation does not die prematurely.
Only then will we get the legislative reform that truly reins in the NSA and puts the government back in its constitutional place. Only then will we get the secure technologies we need to communicate without fear that silently in the background, our very own government is collecting, collating, and crunching the data that allows unelected bureaucrats to intrude into our most private spaces, analyzing our hopes and fears. Until then, every American who jealously guards their rights must do their best to engage in digital self-defense and proactively protect their electronic devices and communications. Every step we can take to secure ourselves from a government that no longer respects our privacy is a patriotic act.
We've come a long way, but there's more to be done.
-- Edward J. Snowden, American
Snowden's global revolution: 1 yr of revelations
You must not know what your government does. It is not right for you to know what your taxes pay for. The government is keeping you safe (from knowing what they are doing, because if you knew they'd have to do something awful to you).
U.S. Marshals Seize Cops’ Spying Records to Keep Them From the ACLU
A routine request in Florida for public records regarding the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray took an extraordinary turn recently when federal authorities seized the documents before police could release them.
The surprise move by the U.S. Marshals Service stunned the American Civil Liberties Union, which earlier this year filed the public records request with the Sarasota, Florida, police department for information detailing its use of the controversial surveillance tool.
The ACLU had an appointment last Tuesday to review documents pertaining to a case investigated by a Sarasota police detective. But marshals swooped in at the last minute to grab the records, claiming they belong to the U.S. Marshals Service and barring the police from releasing them.
ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler called the move “truly extraordinary and beyond the worst transparency violations” the group has seen regarding documents detailing police use of the technology.
“This is consistent with what we’ve seen around the country with federal agencies trying to meddle with public requests for stingray information,” Wessler said, noting that federal authorities have in other cases invoked the Homeland Security Act to prevent the release of such records. “The feds are working very hard to block any release of this information to the public.”
Stingrays, also known as IMSI catchers, simulate a cellphone tower and trick nearby mobile devices into connecting with them, thereby revealing their location. A stingray can see and record a device’s unique ID number and traffic data, as well as information that points to its location. By moving a stingray around, authorities can triangulate a device’s location with greater precision than is possible using data obtained from a carrier’s fixed tower location.
Heh. Look what happens when Pelosi has to answer a real question. Awkward!
Teen Confronts @NancyPelosi on #NSA
Germany opens criminal probe into U.S. tapping of Merkel’s phone
“Let me be clear: Espionage is a crime in Germany regardless of whether those spying are friends or enemies,” Federal Public Prosecutor Harald Range said as he opened a news conference to announce the investigation, which he disclosed first during a closed session of the Parliament’s judicial committee.
Range’s decision _ and his unusual candor in branding the surveillance of Merkel’s phone a crime _ underscored just how raw German nerves remain over the revelation that the United States had been eavesdropping on Merkel’s cellphone for years. Range noted that an espionage conviction would carry a 10-year prison sentence.
He said his office had developed information that specific individuals, not impersonal computer programs, had been involved in tapping Merkel’s phone _ and that that was one reason his office had decided to pursue the case. ...
Range said he’d contacted former NSA contractor Edward Snowden through Snowden’s German attorney to testify. Snowden, who’s been living in Moscow since he leaked hundreds of thousands of secret documents last year that revealed the extent of NSA electronic surveillance, has yet to respond, Range said.
What role Snowden’s documents may have had in the revelation that the U.S. was eavesdropping on Merkel’s phone remains uncertain, however.
Families of Drone Victims: No Hope for Justice in US Courts
The surviving family members of three American citizens killed in U.S. drone strikes in Yemen decided this week to discontinue an effort to hold top military and CIA officials accountable in U.S. courts for targeted executions without trial, saying their faith that they can achieve justice has been "shattered."
"I have now spent years asking American courts to decide whether the U.S. government can deprive even its own citizens of life as part of a killing program that has devastated families like ours, and the courts have repeatedly accepted the government's broad claims of national security and told me they will not decide," said Nasser Al Aulaqi, who lost his son and grandson in the attacks, in a statement emailed to Common Dreams. "This isn't justice."
U.S. drone strikes in September 2011 killed U.S. citizens Anwar Al Aulaqi, who had been placed on a "kill list," and Samir Khan, as well as three other people. Just weeks later, another U.S. drone attack on a restaurant in Yemen killed Anwar Al-Aulaqi's son Abdulrahman, also a U.S. citizen, and six other civilians.
The father of Anwar and grandfather of Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, Nasser Al-Aulaqi, and mother of Samir Khan, Sarah Khan, sued four top officials—including Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Leon C. Panetta and former CIA Director David Petraeus—in July 2012, charging they had taken the lives of U.S. citizens without due process. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union helped levy the lawsuit. ...
In April 2014, years after the lawsuit was filed, federal judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the DC District Court dismissed of the case.
Family members chose not to appeal the dismissal, and the deadline for filing an appeal expired Tuesday.
Hilary Clinton 2016: A Recipe for Endless War
This is an excellent essay worth reading in full:
The Only Standards Are Double Standards
An election in an embattled country is valid and even inspiring if it turns out the way Official Washington wants, as in Ukraine last month; otherwise it’s a sham and illegitimate, as in Syria this month.
Similarly, people have an inalienable right of self-determination if it’s Kosovo or South Sudan, but not if it’s Crimea or the Donbass region of Ukraine. Those referenda for separation from Ukraine must have been “rigged” though there is no evidence they were. Everything is seen through the eye of the beholder and the beholders in Official Washington are deeply biased.
When it comes to military interventions, U.S. officials such as Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power assert a “responsibility to protect” transcending national sovereignty if civilians are threatened in Libya or in Syria, but not when the civilians are being slaughtered in Gaza, Odessa, Mariupol or Donetsk. When those killings are being done by U.S. allies, the allies are praised for their “restraint.”
The hypocrisy extends to the application of international law. If some leaders in Africa engage in actions that cause civilian deaths, they must be indicted by the International Criminal Court and dragged before The Hague for prosecution by jurists representing an outraged world.
But it’s unthinkable that there would be any accountability for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and other “respectable” leaders who invaded Iraq and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands last decade.
G7 presses Putin to pursue peaceful end to Ukraine crisis
Heads of the G7 leading industrial nations, chaired by David Cameron, on Wednesday called on Vladimir Putin to engage with Ukraine's incoming President Petro Poroshenko, but stopped short of triggering fresh sanctions against Russia at a curtailed two-day summit in Brussels. The group is keeping its options open, saying it is willing to escalate sanctions if Russia fails to engage in a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
The G7 leaders – many of whom are due to see the Russian president individually later this week about the D-day commemorations in Normandy – are likely to impress on Putin to meet Poroshenko to open a dialogue on the kind of federal structure Ukraine might develop, as well as future trade relations. ...
Russia sought an emergency meeting of the UN security council this week to call for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and the introduction of humanitarian corridors for refugees from Ukraine into Russia.
'Ready to go anywhere': Ukrainians flee as Kiev intensifies military op
Rebels Seize 3 Government Bases in Eastern Ukraine
Pro-Russian insurgents captured three government bases in eastern Ukraine in a series of humiliating defeats for the beleaguered armed forces on Wednesday, as the president-elect promised new initiatives to help end the mutiny in the country's industrial heartland.
Petro Poroshenko, speaking in Warsaw after meeting with President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, rejected a call from Ukraine's interim authorities to introduce martial law in the restive east, saying he would seek to pacify the region with an offer of amnesty and a promise of early regional elections.
Poroshenko's overture, expected to be detailed in his inaugural address on Saturday, came as the Ukrainian troops suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks on Wednesday.
National Guard forces ran out of ammunition and had to flee their base near the eastern city of Luhansk after hours of battle in which six militants were killed and three Ukrainian servicemen were injured.
The defeat came as rebel forces seized a border guard headquarters on the city's outskirts after besieging it for two days, then forced guards out of another base in the nearby town of Sverdlovsk on the Russian border. The guards there were granted safe passage and left with their weapons.
Elections in Syria: The People Say No to Foreign Intervention
Defying threats of violence, tens of thousands of ordinary Syrians went to the polls to cast a vote that was more about Syrian dignity and self-determination than any of the candidates on the ballot. After three years of unimaginable atrocities fomented by a demented and dying U.S. empire, with the assistance of the royalist monarchies of the Middle East and the gangster states of NATO, the Syrian people demonstrated, by their participation, that they had not surrendered their national sovereignty to the geo-strategic interests of the U.S. and its colonial allies in Europe and Israel.
The dominant narrative on Syria, carefully cultivated by Western state propagandists and dutifully disseminated by their auxiliaries in the corporate media, is that the conflict in Syria is a courageous fight on the part of the majority of the Syrian people against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. As the story goes, the al-Assad “regime,” (it is never referred to as a government), can only maintain its power through the use of force. By attacking “its own citizens,” the regime, representing the minority Alawite community, can only maintain its dominance over the rest of the country through sheer terror.
However, events in Syria, with the election being a dramatic example, continue to reveal fissures in that story.
First, it became clear that substantial numbers of non-Alawite people and communities support the government. And even those elements of Syrian society that were not enthusiastic supporters of the government grew to understand that the legitimate indigenous opposition had been displaced by powerful non-Syrian forces from the U.S. and the Gulf States who provided material, political and diplomatic support to an opposition that not only had tenuous ties to the country but seemed only committed to waging war. This convinced many that the only politically consistent option was to support the government, as an expression of support for Syria’s sovereignty and its’ national project. ...
And while the U.S. press uncritically propagated the position of the U.S. state, which wrote off the election as illegitimate and a farce, the media seemed not to notice the contradictory position of the U.S. writing off the election in Syria because of conflict but giving enthusiastic support to the election in Ukraine in the midst of a conflict and contested legitimacy. The Western media could explore a few obvious questions if it was really independent, such as: what makes the election in Ukraine legitimate when half of the country boycotts the vote and the national army violently attacks its own citizens in Eastern Ukraine who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the coup-makers in Kiev?
Israel to build 1,500 more homes in settlements
Israel's housing ministry has announced new plans for almost 1,500 new settlement housing units in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, described as a "fitting Zionist response" to the new Palestinian unity government, backed by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The announcement by housing minister Uri Ariel was immediately condemned by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who accused Israel of planning a "major escalation" in response to the new unity government, and by the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro.
"When Israel is spat upon, it has to do something about it," said Ariel, a far-right member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition. Asked who had insulted Israel, he replied: "Our neighbours, and to a certain extent, the world."
The disclosure of the planned settlement construction was described by the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, as a political mistake. Livni was Israel's chief negotiator in the recently collapsed peace talks. She added that the move would "only distance us from the ability to recruit the world against Hamas."
'Walmart moms' walk off the job in protest at pay and conditions
Working mothers at Walmart staged a series of strikes on Wednesday in protest over wages and conditions at the world's largest retailer, as a new report claims the company's top executives received $104m in taxpayer subsidies over a six-year period.
The majority of mothers working at Walmart, which drew a $16bn profit last year, earn less than $25,000 a year.
This week, a study by thinktank Demos detailed how 1.3 million women working in retail live on or near the poverty line. It said that if the major retailers in the US raised wages to the equivalent of $25,000 for full-time work, it could lift almost half a million women out of poverty or near-poverty.
“Walmart moms” walked off their jobs to take part in protests outside their stores in a number of cities including Orlando and Chicago, joining those who have already staged strikes earlier this week in Dallas, Pittsburgh, southern California and the Bay area.
Strikes were expected to take place in 20 cities on Wednesday. The protesters, who include current Walmart workers as well as members of the allegiance Our Walmart, are demanding annual wages of at least $25,000, more full-time openings and an end to retaliation against workers who speak out against their conditions.
Seattle’s Socialist City Council Member Kshama Sawant Hails Historic Vote For $15/Hour Minimum Wage
This is a really good read. If you are intrigued by Piketty's Capital, this is an excellent review by the most readable Marxist economist around.
Afterthoughts on Piketty’s Capital
Piketty assembles a lot of data to support his arguments. His account of the differences between income and wealth is persuasive and helpful. And he gives a thoughtful defense of inheritance taxes, progressive taxation and a global wealth tax as possible (though almost certainly not politically viable) antidotes to the further concentration of wealth and power.
But why does this trend towards greater inequality over time occur? From his data (spiced up with some neat literary allusions to Jane Austen and Balzac) he derives a mathematical law to explain what happens: the ever-increasing accumulation of wealth on the part of the famous one percent (a term popularized thanks of course to the “Occupy” movement) is due to the simple fact that the rate of return on capital (r) always exceeds the rate of growth of income (g). This, says Piketty, is and always has been “the central contradiction” of capital.
But a statistical regularity of this sort hardly constitutes an adequate explanation let alone a law. So what forces produce and sustain such a contradiction? Piketty does not say. The law is the law and that is that. Marx would obviously have attributed the existence of such a law to the imbalance of power between capital and labor. And that explanation still holds water. ... Piketty’s formulation of the mathematical law disguises more than it reveals about the class politics involved. As Warren Buffett has noted, “sure there is class war, and it is my class, the rich, who are making it and we are winning.” One key measure of their victory is the growing disparities in wealth and income of the top one percent relative to everyone else.
There is, however, a central difficulty with Piketty’s argument. It rests on a mistaken definition of capital. Capital is a process not a thing. It is a process of circulation in which money is used to make more money often, but not exclusively through the exploitation of labor power. Piketty defines capital as the stock of all assets held by private individuals, corporations and governments that can be traded in the market no matter whether these assets are being used or not. ... Money, land, real estate and plant and equipment that are not being used productively are not capital. If the rate of return on the capital that is being used is high then this is because a part of capital is withdrawn from circulation and in effect goes on strike. Restricting the supply of capital to new investment (a phenomena we are now witnessing) ensures a high rate of return on that capital which is in circulation. The creation of such artificial scarcity is not only what the oil companies do to ensure their high rate of return: it is what all capital does when given the chance. This is what underpins the tendency for the rate of return on capital (no matter how it is defined and measured) to always exceed the rate of growth of income. This is how capital ensures its own reproduction, no matter how uncomfortable the consequences are for the rest of us. And this is how the capitalist class lives.
The Evening Greens
Weather Versus Climate Change
Greenpeace Erects Fracking Site at Prime Minister's Estate
As British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared for the announcement of a controversial new fracking law in the UK, Greenpeace activists gave the leader a taste of his own policy early Wednesday when they set up a mock fracking operation at his country estate.
Police were called after the activists, wearing hard hats and day-glo vests, erected security fencing around Cameron's cottage in the Cotswold hamlet of Dean, Oxfordshire. Signs were posted that read: "We apologise for any inconvenience we may cause while we frack under your home," and ordered complaints to be directed to the PM's office.
“David Cameron wants to rob people of their right to stop fracking firms drilling under their homes – surely he won’t mind if we kick off the under-house fracking revolution below his own garden," wrote Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Simon Clydesdale in a statement.
Appeals Court Rejects BP, Anadarko Attempt to Skirt Blame for Gulf Disaster
A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected BP and Anadarko Petroleum's efforts to evade billions of dollars in fines for Clean Water Act violations for the millions of barrels of oil that spewed from their well in the 2010 Gulf disaster.
The opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirms a lower court ruling that found oil giants, as co-owners of the fated Macondo Well, liable.
BP and Anadarko had sought to shift blame onto Transocean, which owned the riser. That equipment cnnects the well to the rig at the surface, and BP and Anadarko's argument was that the oil that ended up in the Gulf was released from the riser; therefore, they were not to blame.
But the appeals court ruling rejected that argument and found that there is "no dispute" that the oil was discharged from the well, which BP and Anandarko affirm they were owners of.
EPA Moves to Cut Coal Pollution, But Critics Say Plan Falls Short on Real Emissions Reduction
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The Duplicity of the Ideologues - U.S. Policy & Robert Kagan's Fictive Narrative
Russia faces struggle to wean Crimea economy off Ukraine supplies
This is an interesting half-hour interview of Putin by French media:
Putin to French media: Russian troops in Ukraine? Got any proof?
5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent
Four ways Edward Snowden changed the world – and why the fight's not over
Just Gender
A Little Night Music
The Nighthawks w/Gregg Allman - Crossroads
The Nighthawks - If You Go
The Nighthawks - Moving Up in Class
The Nighthawks - Red Hot Mama
The Nighthawks - Nine below Zero
The Nighthawks w/Hubert Sumlin - Spoonful
The Nighthawks - Born in Chicago
The Nighthawks - Long distance call
The Nighthawks w/Billy Price - Start All Over Again
The Nighthawks - Hush Hush
The Nighthawks - Where Do You Go?, Jenny Lee
The Nighthawks - Same thing
The Nighthawks - Louisiana Blues, Let's Work Together
The Nighthawks
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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