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 piano player, best known for his long association with Chuck Berry, Johnnie Johnson. Enjoy!
Johnnie Johnson - Everyday I Have The Blues
“Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.
That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.”
― Glenn Greenwald
News and Opinion
The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control
At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a 'totalitarian mentality'
On 5 July [William Binney] spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.” ...
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control”, Binney said, “but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone.” ...
Unlike Snowden, Binney didn’t take any documents with him when he left the NSA. He now says that hard evidence of illegal spying would have been invaluable. The latest Snowden leaks, featured in the Washington Post, detail private conversations of average Americans with no connection to extremism.
It shows that the NSA is not just pursuing terrorism, as it claims, but ordinary citizens going about their daily communications. “The NSA is mass-collecting on everyone”, Binney said, “and it’s said to be about terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks.” ...
Binney recently told the German NSA inquiry committee that his former employer had a “totalitarian mentality” that was the "greatest threat" to US society since that country’s US Civil War in the 19th century. Despite this remarkable power, Binney still mocked the NSA’s failures, including missing this year’s Russian intervention in Ukraine and the Islamic State’s take-over of Iraq.
Buyer's remorse from the guy who gave a cool $million to the Obama 2012 campaign?
Bill Maher Blasts 'Useless Obama Hacks without a Shred of Intellectual Honesty'
Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet
The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.
The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.
But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an “emergency” to “help keep us safe,” a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.
The “tools” have been assigned boastful code names. They include invasive methods for online surveillance, as well as some of the very techniques that the U.S. and U.K. have harshly prosecuted young online activists for employing, including “distributed denial of service” attacks and “call bombing.” But they also describe previously unknown tactics for manipulating and distorting online political discourse and disseminating state propaganda, as well as the apparent ability to actively monitor Skype users in real-time—raising further questions about the extent of Microsoft’s cooperation with spy agencies or potential vulnerabilities in its Skype’s encryption.
[Click the link for The Intercept's full coverage and listing of tools. - js]
Newly Obtained Emails Contradict Administration Claims on Guardian Laptop Destruction
On July 20, 2013, agents of the U.K. government entered The Guardian newsroom in London and compelled them to physically destroy the computers they were using to report on the Edward Snowden archive. The Guardian reported this a month later after [Glenn Greenwald's partner], David Miranda, was detained at Heathrow Airport for 11 hours under a British terrorism law and had all of his electronic equipment seized. At the time, the Obama administration—while admitting that it was told in advance of the Heathrow detention—pretended that it knew nothing about the forced laptop destruction and would never approve of such attacks on press freedom. ...
But emails just obtained by Associated Press pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) prove that senior Obama national security officials— including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-NSA chief Keith Alexander—not only knew in advance that U.K. officials intended to force The Guardian to destroy their computers, but overtly celebrated it. ...
How many times do Obama administration officials have to be caught misleading the public before U.S. media outlets will stop assuming their claims to be true? Just this weekend, The Washington Post described the tens of thousands of FISA-collected emails that are in Snowden archive: the very material that Keith Alexander just two months ago unequivocally denied Snowden had obtained (Alexander: “He didn’t get this data. They didn’t touch —”; the New Yorker: “The operational data?”; Alexander: “They didn’t touch the FISA data … That database, he didn’t have access to”).
Now we have proof that Obama’s most senior officials were aware in advance of the very events that Obama’s spokesman pretended they knew nothing about. It’s possible, though unlikely in the extreme, that both Clapper and Alexander knew about this and neglected to tell anyone in the White House. Incredibly claiming that Obama was unaware of what his most senior national security officials get caught doing is this administration’s modus operandi: See, for instance, this and this. But that should raise the question—yet again—of whether these national security agencies are completely rogue and operating without any controls. ...
At least as notable as what the Obama administration disclosed in response to AP’s FOIA request is what they suppressed. Look at the documents the administration produced: Virtually all of it is censored, even though it pertains to discussions by public officials of the U.K. government’s attack on The Guardian‘s news gathering process. ... Also, recall how we have constantly heard from people like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and even the president himself that when the government collects “only metadata,” that does not even constitute real spying (it “is not surveillance,” Feinstein wrote; “we don’t have a domestic spying program,” proclaimed Obama). Yet here, the administration is concealing not only virtually all of its own email content but also substantial portions of the metadata of those emails.
In justifying its concealments, the administration has the audacity to claim that disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy.”
Civil Rights Organizations Demand Answers From White House on Surveillance of Muslim Leaders
In the wake of The Intercept's reporting on the FBI and NSA’s monitoring of prominent Muslim-Americans, a coalition of 44 civil rights groups organized by the American Civil Liberties Union has sent a letter to President Obama demanding a “full public accounting” of the government’s “targeting of community leaders” for surveillance. Separately, the White House told the Guardian that it has asked the intelligence community to “review their training and policy materials for racial or religious bias” after we published an internal instructional memo that referred to a hypothetical surveillance target as “Mohammed Raghead.”
The joint letter, which also requests meetings with President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and FBI Director James Comey, compares the surveillance detailed by the Intercept—including the monitoring of Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Committee on American-Islamic Relations—to the government’s history of spying on political dissidents:
In an earlier era, during the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights leaders, activists and members of minority communities were subjected to unlawful and abusive government surveillance based not on what they had done, but what they believed and who they were. Despite reform efforts, abusive practices continue today. Federal, state, and local law enforcement are targeting entire communities—particularly American Muslims—for secret surveillance based on their race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to the letter. But White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Guardian that the administration takes the publication of the memorandum using an ethnic slur “extremely seriously”
From citizens to suspects: Cameron pledges £800 million on nation's cyber intelligence
Edward Snowden condemns Britain's emergency surveillance bill
The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has condemned the new surveillance bill being pushed through the UK's parliament this week, expressing concern about the speed at which it is being done, lack of public debate, fear-mongering and what he described as increased powers of intrusion.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in Moscow, Snowden said it was very unusual for a public body to pass an emergency law such as this in circumstances other than a time of total war. "I mean we don't have bombs falling. We don't have U-boats in the harbour."
Suddenly it is a priority, he said, after the government had ignored it for an entire year. "It defies belief."
He found the urgency with which the British government was moving extraordinary and said it mirrored a similar move in the US in 2007 when the Bush administration was forced to introduce legislation, the Protect America Act, citing the same concerns about terrorist threats and the NSA losing cooperation from telecom and internet companies.
"I mean the NSA could have written this draft," he said. "They passed it under the same sort of emergency justification. They said we would be at risk. They said companies will no longer cooperate with us. We're losing valuable intelligence that puts the nation at risk."
Time Is Running Out: Tell the FCC Why Net Neutrality Is Important to You
You have until July 15 to tell the FCC what you think of its loathsome proposal to allow rampant discrimination online.
Already close to 50,000 Free Press members have submitted comments urging the agency to scrap Chairman Tom Wheeler’s pay-to-play plan and take steps to protect real Net Neutrality.
"Israel Targets Civilians, the Casualties Speak Volumes": Int’l Protection Urged for Besieged Gaza
Palestinians Plead for 'International Protection' as Israel Pummels Gaza
President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has called on the United Nations "to officially put the State of Palestine under the UN international protection system."
Abbas sent his request in the form of a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Middle East Special Envoy Robert Serry.
UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed receipt of the letter in New York but only said the UN would "need to study it before responding further."
Abbas' plea for protection comes as Palestinians in Gaza continue to flee the aerial bombardment of the Israeli military on Monday, flooding towards shelters managed by the UN's Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) which has declared a state of emergency across the entire Gaza Strip. ...
From inside Gaza, the UNWRA released a specific warning to the global community that Israeli forces may have begun targeting the territories drinking water infrastructure.
Chris Hedges: Israel Is Captive to Its ‘Destructive Process’
Raul Hilberg in his monumental work “The Destruction of the European Jews” chronicled a process of repression that at first was “relatively mild” but led, step by step, to the Holocaust. It started with legal discrimination and ended with mass murder. “The destructive process was a development that was begun with caution and ended without restraint,” Hilberg wrote.
The Palestinians over the past few decades have endured a similar “destructive process.” They have gradually been stripped of basic civil liberties, robbed of assets including much of their land and often their homes, have suffered from mounting restrictions on their physical movements, been blocked from trading and business, especially the selling of produce, and found themselves increasingly impoverished and finally trapped behind walls and security fences erected around Gaza and the West Bank.
There will never be transports or extermination camps for the Palestinians, but amid increasing violence against Palestinians larger and larger numbers of them will die, in airstrikes, targeted assassinations and other armed attacks. Hunger and misery will expand. Israeli demands for “transfer”—the forced expulsion of Palestinians from occupied territory to neighboring countries—will grow.
The Palestinians in Gaza live in conditions that now replicate those first imposed on Jews by the Nazis in the ghettos set up throughout Eastern Europe. Palestinians cannot enter or leave Gaza. They are chronically short of food—the World Health Organization estimates that more than 50 percent of children in Gaza and the West Bank under 2 years old have iron deficiency anemia and reports that malnutrition and stunting in children under 5 are “not improving” and could actually be worsening. Palestinians often lack clean water. They are crammed into unsanitary hovels. They do not have access to basic medical care. They are stateless and lack passports or travel documents. There is massive unemployment. They are daily dehumanized in racist diatribes by their occupiers as criminals, terrorists and mortal enemies of the Jewish people.
“A deep and wide moral abyss separates us from our enemies,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently of the Palestinians. “They sanctify death while we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty while we sanctify compassion.”
When bombs receive applause
On a hilltop a few kilometers from Gaza Israelis sit with popcorn to follow the bombing of the area
While most of the 25,000 inhabitants of the southern town of Sderot in the evening try to stay safe indoors from the rain of rockets from Gaza, you will meet a different image on a small hill on the outskirts of the city. This place changes the ghostly atmosphere into something resembling a party.
"We are here to see Israel destroy Hamas," says Eli Chone, a 22-year-old American living in Israel.
He is one of the more than 50 people gathered on the dark hill to see Israel bomb Gaza from close distance. The hill has been transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre. It offers a direct view of the densely populated Gaza Strip.
People have dragged camping chairs and sofas to the top of the hill. Several sit with crackling bags of popcorn, while others smoke hookahs and talk cheerfully. People come and go from the site in a steady stream. ...
The talk on the hill falls silent for a moment. Suddenly the night sky lights into a powerful flash, while a high column of fire rises in Gaza. A few seconds later the earth is shaken by a dull roar.
Now cheers break out on the hill, followed by solid applause.
Israel Orders Gazans to Flee, But Most Have Nowhere to Go
Israeli warplanes are dropping leaflets on the Gaza Strip today, warning civilians to “move away” from areas that Hamas controls to avoid being hit in ongoing Israeli attacks.
That sounds great in theory, but apart from the lucky few with citizenship somewhere else, there is no place to go The strip isn’t that big, and everyplace is conceivably a target. ...
Gaza is densely populated, and even if there was some place that isn’t being constantly bombarded, which there isn’t, it couldn’t possibly fit the million-plus residents.
Majority of Israelis support airstrikes of Gaza
Israel says it has shot down drone launched from Gaza
Israel claims to have downed a drone from the skies above its southern coastline. The unmanned aircraft, which Israel says was launched from Gaza and shot down with a Patriot missile near the city of Ashdod, is the first weapon of its kind Israel has encountered in this conflict.
Rockets were also fired into Israel from Lebanon early on Monday morning, drawing retaliatory fire from Israeli forces. This is the third such rocket attack from Lebanon since Friday. There were no reported casualties.
In the West Bank, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed in Hebron after clashes between the Israeli military and protesters against the war in Gaza – the first Palestinian casualty in the West Bank since the conflict began. ...
At least 172 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli offensive began seven days ago. The UN estimates that 77% of those killed have been civilians.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was set to discuss moves to seek UN intervention at an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Monday after another night of air strikes on Gaza in which Israeli war planes struck more than 40 sites, including three training facilities used by Hamas's armed wing, killing two people.
"We are Human Beings": Gaza Doctor Pleads for End to Israeli Bombing of Civilian Population
U.N. Security Council Calls for Israeli-Palestinian Ceasefire
The U.N. Security Council called on Saturday for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and expressed serious concern about the welfare and protection of civilians.
"The Security Council members called for de-escalation of the situation, restoration of calm, and reinstitution of the November 2012 ceasefire," the 15-member body said in a unanimous statement.
Netanyahu finally speaks his mind
At his Friday press conference, the prime minister ruled out full Palestinian sovereignty, derided the US approach to Israeli security, and set out his Middle East overview with unprecedented candor. His remarks were not widely reported; they should be
[U]ncertainties were swept aside on Friday afternoon, when the prime minister, for the first time in ages, gave a press conference on Day Four of Operation Protective Edge.
He spoke only in Hebrew, and we are in the middle of a mini-war, so his non-directly war-related remarks didn’t get widely reported. ...
He made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. He indicated that he sees Israel standing almost alone on the frontlines against vicious Islamic radicalism, while the rest of the as-yet free world does its best not to notice the march of extremism. And he more than intimated that he considers the current American, John Kerry-led diplomatic team to be, let’s be polite, naive. ...
The priority right now, Netanyahu stressed, was to “take care of Hamas.” But the wider lesson of the current escalation was that Israel had to ensure that “we don’t get another Gaza in Judea and Samaria.” Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”
Not relinquishing security control west of the Jordan, it should be emphasized, means not giving a Palestinian entity full sovereignty there. It means not acceding to Mahmoud Abbas’s demands, to Barack Obama’s demands, to the international community’s demands. This is not merely demanding a demilitarized Palestine; it is insisting upon ongoing Israeli security oversight inside and at the borders of the West Bank. That sentence, quite simply, spells the end to the notion of Netanyahu consenting to the establishment of a Palestinian state. A less-than-sovereign entity? Maybe, though this will never satisfy the Palestinians or the international community. A fully sovereign Palestine? Out of the question.
Ukraine's shelling could have irreversible consequences, says Russia
Russia's foreign ministry says the Ukrainian army is responsible for the shelling that killed a man inside Russian territory, warning that the incident could have "irreversible consequences".
Russian investigators say a man was killed and a woman injured when a shell fired from Ukrainian territory landed in the courtyard of a private house in the village of Donetsk, in Russia's Rostov region.
"Naturally, this action will not be left without a corresponding reaction," the deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, said in a radio interview on Sunday. "The talk with the Ukrainian side on this issue is going to be serious and tough." ...
As the violence increases, fears are mounting that Russia and Ukraine could be edging towards some kind of military confrontation again, after a period when it had appeared that the tension was decreasing.
"This incident is evidence of the very dangerous escalation of tension in the Russian-Ukrainian border area, and could have irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies with the Ukrainian side," said the foreign ministry's official statement, referring to the shelling of Russian territory.
Russia vows 'rigorous' response to Ukraine shelling Russian city
Ukraine says it has made gains against rebels as Russia 'considers strikes'
Ukrainian troops say they have made gains around one of the main remaining separatist strongholds, as Moscow reportedly weighed up "targeted" cross-border strikes following the alleged deadly shelling of a Russian town.
Ukraine's western-backed president, Petro Poroshenko, said government forces had managed to break through a blockade by pro-Moscow rebels to reach soldiers camped out at the strategic airport in the insurgent-held bastion of Luhansk.
Ukraine's army has also seen its losses spike in recent days after militias – which the west and Kiev allege are being armed by the Kremlin – killed 19 soldiers and wounded 100 more in a multiple-rocket attack late on Friday.
The military losses have profoundly dented emerging hopes in Kiev that its recent string of battlefield successes had finally convinced the rebels to sue for peace.
The conflict risked spiralling even further amid reports that Moscow was considering strikes against Ukrainian positions after a shell allegedly crossed the border and killed a Russian civilian on Sunday. ...
Kiev has denied that its forces were behind the shelling and on Sunday Poroshenko called on the west to condemn "attacks by Russian soldiers on positions held by Ukrainian servicemen" in a phone conversation with the European council president, Herman van Rompuy.
Poroshenko has previously vowed to kill "hundreds" of gunmen for every lost soldier and ordered an airtight military blockade of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine says Russian army officers fighting with rebels
Ukraine on Monday accused Russian army officers of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country and said Moscow was once more building up its troops on the joint border.
A missile that downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said.
President Petro Poroshenko held an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell.
The war of words between Kiev and Moscow and intense fighting, in which Ukrainian forces say they inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, marked a sharp escalation in the three and a half month conflict in which several hundred Ukrainian servicemen, civilians and rebels have been killed. "Information has ... been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces," Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko made similar complaints of Russian incursions on Sunday to the European Union with an eye to pushing the bloc to exert greater pressure, and possibly more sanctions, on Moscow.
Iraqi factions hit new delay in forming government
Iraq's parliament failed on Sunday to break a political deadlock that is holding up the formation of a new government to tackle an Islamist-led insurgency raging less than 50 miles (80 km) from Baghdad.
After a brief session, parliamentary officials put off until Tuesday efforts to reach agreement between Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians on the posts of prime minister, president and parliamentary speaker.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose State of Law coalition is the largest individual list in parliament, is seeking a third term but faces opposition from Sunnis and Kurds who say he has ruled for the Shi'ite majority at the expense of minority communities. Even rival Shi'ite parties want to unseat him.
The political impasse has been given added urgency by the Islamist-led insurgency which swept through Sunni provinces of northern Iraq last month, encouraging Maliki's opponents to try to force his departure.
Bomb attacks struck the capital and its outskirts after the inconclusive session. A blast near a busy street in the southwestern district of Bayaa killed three people and wounded seven, police and hospital sources said. In Yusifia, 15 km (10 miles) south of the capital, a bomb went off near a crowded market, killing another three people, medics and police said.
How Saudi Arabia Helped Isis Take Over the North of Iraq
How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”
The fatal moment predicted by Prince Bandar may now have come for many Shia, with Saudi Arabia playing an important role in bringing it about by supporting the anti-Shia jihad in Iraq and Syria. Since the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) on 10 June, Shia women and children have been killed in villages south of Kirkuk, and Shia air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit. ...
There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al-Qa’ida-type jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasised the significance of Prince Bandar’s words, saying that they constituted “a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed”.
He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. He said: “Such things simply do not happen spontaneously.” This sounds realistic since the tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with Isis without their consent.
Bashar al-Assad is west's ally against Isis extremists, says Syria
Syria is determined to "eliminate" the Sunni extremist group Isis, according to a senior minister, who urged western countries to recognise "new realities" by joining the battle against terrorism and ending their support for rebels trying to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad.
"The only way to resolve the situation is to work with president Assad," Faisal Mekdad, Syria's vice foreign minister, told the Guardian. Mekdad said that "many countries" were now seeking security cooperation with Damascus, but "security matters could not be separated from the political cooperation".
He rejected suggestions that Assad is in league with Isis, which controls large parts of northern and eastern Syria as well as contiguous areas of Iraq. Assad's enemies accuse him of tolerating the group or tacitly cooperating with it to foment fighting between rival rebel units and present himself as a secular bulwark against al-Qaida and jihadi fanaticism. ...
Mekdad, dismissing what he called cheap propaganda, used a wide-ranging interview to broadcast Syria's determination to defeat Isis with the help of Iraq and "all those who are willing to fight terrorism". ... European countries, including Britain, were changing their minds about Syria, Mekdad suggested. "Deep in their hearts they know that what they did is a grave crime against the people of Syria. Thinking that the regime would fall in few weeks [in 2011] has led to the flourishing of terrorism inside Syria and threatening the security of European countries themselves. They have started to understand that what is happening in Syria is not a revolution but a threat to Europe.
Human Blowback from US Interventions
The number of children attempting to cross the Mexican border into the United States has risen dramatically in the last five years: In fiscal year 2009 (Oct. 1, 2009 – Sept. 30, 2010) about 6,000 unaccompanied minors were detained near the border. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates for the fiscal year 2014 the detention of as many as 74,000 unaccompanied minors.
Approximately 28 percent of the children detained this year are from Honduras, 24 percent from Guatemala, and 21 percent from El Salvador. The particularly severe increases in Honduran migration are a direct result of the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president, Manuel Zelaya, after he did things like raising the minimum wage, giving subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education.
The coup – like so many others in Latin America – was led by a graduate of Washington’s infamous School of the Americas.
As per the standard Western Hemisphere script, the Honduran coup was followed by the abusive policies of the new regime, loyally supported by the United States. The State Department was virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere in not unequivocally condemning the Honduran coup. ...
Those in the U.S. generally opposed to immigration make it a point to declare that the United States does not have any moral obligation to take in these Latino immigrants. But the counter-argument to this last point is almost never mentioned: Yes, the United States does indeed have a moral obligation because so many of the immigrants are escaping a situation in their homeland made hopeless by American intervention and policy.
In addition to Honduras, Washington overthrew progressive governments which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty in Guatemala and Nicaragua; while in El Salvador the U.S. played a major role in suppressing a movement striving to install such a government.
“Your Body Is No Longer Your Own": Freed OWS Activist Cecily McMillan on Plight of Women in Jail
Hillary’s Candid Motto for Democratic Party: “Represent Banks”
In 1992, a 44-year-old attorney made the following remarkable assertion: “For goodness’ sake, you can’t be a lawyer if you don’t represent banks.”
The attorney was Hillary Clinton. She made the statement to journalists during her husband’s first campaign for president. Her legal representation of a shady savings and loan bank while working at a top corporate law firm in Arkansas (and her firm’s relations with then-governor Bill Clinton) had erupted briefly into a campaign controversy. ...
I’ve never forgotten Clinton’s remark about representing banks because it tells us much about her worldview – both then and now that she’s even more embedded in the corporate elite (and had Rupert Murdoch host one of her senate fundraising events).
More importantly, Clinton’s comment speaks to the decline of the Democratic Party as a force that identifies with the broad public, those who often get stepped on by big banks and unbridled greed. Her remark is an apt credo for a party leadership that has spent the last quarter-century serving corporate power (through Wall Street deregulation, media dereg, NAFTA-style trade pacts, etc.) as persistently as it spews out empty rhetoric about “the needs of working families.”
Back then, it was a minor controversy that Hillary Clinton had represented a shifty S&L. Today’s Democratic elite is inextricably tied to far more powerful interests – Wall Street, big pharma, giant insurers and other pillars of the corporate 1-percent.
Speaking of Democrats "representing the banks" - Eric Holder
still can't bring himself to send a bankster to jail.
Citigroup pays $7bn to settle sub-prime mortgage investigation
Citigroup agreed to pay $7bn on Monday to settle a federal investigation into the toxic mortgage products the bank sold in the run-up to the financial crisis.
The agreement comes after months of tense negotiations and comes as Justice Department continues to negotiate a similar settlement with rial Bank of America.
“The bank’s misconduct was egregious,’’ attorney general Eric Holder said in a statement. “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, Citigroup was able to expand its market share and increase profits.”
Citigroup will pay $4bn in cash to the Justice Department – the largest payment of its kind – and a further $500m will go to state attorneys general and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
A payment of $2.5bn has been earmarked for struggling consumers and will be used to help struggling homeowners with principal reductions on home loans and other relief programmes as well as financing the construction and preservation of affordable rental housing.
The Evening Greens
Oklahoma shaken by seven earthquakes in 14 hours
Quakes part of an increase in across Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas that some scientists say could be connected to fracking
The US Geological Survey has recorded seven small earthquakes shaking central Oklahoma in a span of about 14 hours.
The temblors are part of an increase in earthquakes across Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas that some scientists say could be connected to the oil and gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, and especially the wells in which the industry disposes of its wastewater.
Sunday's quakes ranged from magnitude 2.6 to 2.9 and were centered in the Guthrie, Jones and Langston areas, 15 miles to 30 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. The USGS said the quakes were recorded between 7:57 p.m. Saturday and 9:51 a.m. Sunday. No injuries or damage were reported.
Seismologists know that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — which involves blasting water, sand and chemicals deep into underground rock formations to free oil and gas — can cause microquakes that are rarely strong enough to register on monitoring equipment.
However, fracking also generates vast amounts of wastewater, which is pumped into injection wells thousands of feet underground. Scientists wonder whether they could trigger quakes by increasing underground pressures and lubricating faults. Another concern is whether injection well operators could be pumping either too much water into the ground or pumping it at exceedingly high pressures.
One Year after Historic Oil Train Disaster, Risks Abound
First Nation Suffers Defeat in Court, Vows to Continue Fight for Land
Supreme Court of Canada rules provincial government does not need federal approval to issue land use licenses
The Grassy Narrows First Nation suffered a defeat on Friday when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a lower court ruling that the provincial government of Ontario has the right to issue logging licenses on their traditional lands.
While Friday's ruling was in reference to the 141-year-old treaty, known as Treaty 3, between the Crown and Ojibway Indians, it will likely influence how Canadian courts and natural resource companies approach lands under treaty nationwide.
"I agree with the Ontario Court of Appeal that Ontario and only Ontario has the power to take up lands under Treaty 3," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the unanimous decision.
The Grassy Narrows' appeal of the lower court's ruling argued that because the treaty was made with the federal Crown the provincial government should be forced to receive federal approval before issuing licenses for land use like logging and mining.
"The promises made in Treaty 3 were promises of the Crown, not those of Canada," according to the court. "Thus, when the lands covered by the treaty were determined to belong to the province of Ontario, the province became responsible for their governance with respect to matters falling under its jurisdiction."
However, the court also made it clear that the provincial government's rights for development are not absolute. A “harvesting clause” in Treaty 3 gives the First Nation the right “to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract surrendered,” meaning that "if the taking up leaves the Ojibway with no meaningful right to hunt, fish or trap in relation to the territories over which they traditionally hunted, fished, and trapped, a potential action for treaty infringement will arise."
Detroit Must Do What Is Right—Turn the Water Back On
The brutal policy of shutting off access to drinking water has rightly drawn the world’s ire. Like the suspension of democratic rights via emergency management, mass water shutoffs are not a humane or viable response to Detroit’s crisis. United Nations experts have said this is a violation of the human right to water, and may violate some international treaties.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s mass water shutoff policies have created emotional and physical upheaval for families — including children, seniors and people with disabilities — forced out of their homes to live with neighbors and family. The human and social cost of this uncivil process — in the face of overwhelming unemployment and abject poverty — creates the potential for disease and medical injury. It puts everyone — the whole community — at risk.
The future of DWSD is being determined behind closed doors. Mediation by U.S. district judges and local political leaders will determine the utility’s future after the city’s bankruptcy.
We hope that these actors would consider that equitable funding for DWSD and its services are vital in ensuring economic and social justice, as well as sound environmental management. This is in keeping with the public trust doctrine and the human right to water. No matter the outcome of the mediation and pending privatization bids, these core values and objectives must guide the process and its eventual outcome.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Fractured Communities: How Fracking Is Widening The Gap Between The Haves & Have-Nots in Rural Ohio
Assata Shakur: from civil rights activist to FBI's most-wanted
Why the Two-State Solution Is Dead
Michael Ventura: “If you want to change what is, speak of what is.”
A Little Night Music
Johnnie Johnson - Johnnie's boogie
Johnnie Johnson - Frances
Johnnie Johnson - Real Good Woman
Johnnie Johnson - Tanqueray at the 1993 DC Blues Festival
Johnnie Johnson - Key To The Highway
Johnnie Johnson - I'm Goin' Fishin'
Johnnie Johnson Band - Tossin' and Turnin'
Johnnie Johnson - Movin' Out
Johnnie Johnson and The Kentucky Headhunters - That'll Work
Johnnie Johnson - Stepped In What?
Johnnie Johnson & John Lee Hooker - I Want To Hug You
Johnnie Johnson - Honky Tonk Train Blues
Johnnie Johnson w/Ry Cooder - Honky Tonk
Johnnie Johnson, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards - Mean Old World
Johnnie Johnson, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards - jam
Johnnie Johnson - Live At The Basement 2003
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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