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 a great songwriter, "The Poet Laureate of the Blues," Percy Mayfield. Enjoy!
Percy Mayfield - Stranger in My Own Home Town
“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...”
-- Raymond Chandler
News and Opinion
Missouri Deploys National Guard to Ferguson; Autopsy Shows Police Shot Michael Brown 6 Times
Missouri national guard to be deployed at Ferguson protests
The national guard in Missouri is to be deployed to the city of Ferguson after the most intense night of violence since the shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old, in which police used teargas against protesters hours before a midnight curfew came into effect.
Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, announced in the early hours of Monday that he had signed an executive order directing national guard troops to protect the northern suburb of St Louis from “deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent attacks on lives and property in Ferguson. ...
Bouts of gunfire rang out around Ferguson throughout Sunday night and early Monday morning. Three people were injured and a series of shops and restaurants were vandalised and looted. Heavily armed police repeatedly fired teargas and rubber bullets during running battles with the crowds. Several people were arrested for failing to disperse and journalists were detained and threatened by police with guns.
Ferguson teenager Michael Brown Shot Six Times
Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager killed by a police officer in the Missouri city of Ferguson, was shot multiple times and finally felled by a mortal wound to the head, according to a preliminary autopsy and an account of the shooting provided by the officer, Darren Wilson. ...
Sunday’s revelation of an autopsy report of the 9 August killing, which has polarised opinion across the US, threatened to inflame tensions further. Brown, 18, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, according to a preliminary private autopsy performed on behalf of his family on Sunday, the New York Times reported.
One of the bullets entered the top of the skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck and caused a fatal injury, according to Michael Baden, a former chief medical examiner for the City of New York. He flew to Missouri at the family’s request to conduct the autopsy, which follows an earlier examination carried out for St Louis County, which is investigating the killing. ...
The absence of gunpowder on the body suggested the bullets were not fired from close range. That determination could change if there was gunshot residue on Brown’s clothing, to which Baden did not have access, he told the New York Times.
"A Human Rights Crisis": In Unprecedented Move, Amnesty International Sends Monitors to Ferguson
Ferguson Protests Erupt Near Grave of Ex-Slave Dred Scott, Whose Case Helped Fuel U.S. Civil War
Federal Officials Rethink Giving Excess Military Gear To Police
After a decade of sending military equipment to civilian police departments across the country, federal officials are reconsidering the idea in light of the violence in Ferguson, Missouri.
The public has absorbed images of heavily armed police, snipers trained on protesters and tear gas plumes. Against that backdrop, Attorney General Eric Holder said that when police and citizens need to restore calm, "I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message."
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said police responses like that in Ferguson have "become the problem instead of the solution." Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said he will introduce legislation to curb the trend of police militarization.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee will review the program to determine if the Defense Department's surplus equipment is being used as intended.
One night after the violence that accompanied the presence of military-style equipment in Ferguson, tensions eased when a police captain, unprotected and shaking hands, walked through a crowd in a gesture of reconciliation. The contrast added to the perception that the tanks and tear gas had done more harm than good.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Ferguson, MO and Police Militarization
Police tell Detroiters to buy guns in city riven by race issues and crime
Detroit police chief James Craig – nicknamed “Hollywood” for his years spent in the LAPD and his seeming love of being in front of the camera – has repeatedly called on “good” and “law-abiding” Detroiters to arm themselves against criminals in the city. ...
The city, strapped for cash, has only 2,300 police officers – unchanged from a year ago, before the bankruptcy, but still not enough. Many Detroiters feel they have to rely on themselves first for their own security and survival. ...
Indeed, if it is an anomaly for a police chief to go on record and speak in favor of his citizens arming themselves against criminals, what might strike some as more noteworthy within the current national climate of racially tense shootings is that Detroit is 82% black. The police-sanctioned arms race stacking so-called “good” Detroiters against presumably bad ones may be fulfilling a stigma of armed black people, rather than trying to dismantle it. ...
Implicit in Craig’s statements and residents’ understanding of those statements is that should good Detroiters shoot, they would be in the right, protected by the law.
But in a 2013 study analyzing FBI data and stand-your-ground laws across the United States, John Roman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, found that stand-your-ground laws in practice disproportionately protected white shooters, and held black shooters – regardless of race of the person they’ve shot – more likely to be found guilty.
The starkest of differences was found between cross-racial shootings. A white shooter of a black victim is 10 times more likely to have his or her homicide ruled justified compared to the homicide of a black shooter on a white victim.
These differences are so strong that it is almost impossible to conclude racial bias does not play a role, says Roman the author of the study, who is also executive director at the District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute.
lyrics here
James Risen calls Obama 'greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation'
The New York Times reporter James Risen, who faces jail over his refusal to reveal a source and testify against a former CIA agent accused of leaking secrets, has called President Barack Obama “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation”. ...
Risen faces jail over his reporting of a botched intelligence operation that ended up spilling nuclear secrets to Iran. The Justice Department has long been seeking to force him to testify and name the confidential source of the account, which is contained in his 2006 book State of War.
Risen recently failed in an attempt to have the supreme court review an order for him to testify, and acknowledges that he has exhausted all his legal options against the Justice Department’s pursuit of him under the controversial Espionage Act. ...
Risen is furious at statements from the likes of Obama and the attorney general, Eric Holder, about supporting press freedom – including condemnation of the police in Ferguson, Missouri, for this week arresting journalists reporting on riots there.
Obama and Holder said journalists should not be arrested or harassed for doing their jobs and covering “a story that needs to be told”. In May, Holder said of the Sterling case: “No reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen, however, could be behind bars within weeks.
James Risen and Phil Donahue on Obama's War on Press Freedoms
Julian Assange speaks of 'leaving' Ecuador embassy
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has suggested he will be leaving London's Ecuadorean embassy "soon".
He said he understood from Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson he would be "leaving the embassy" after two years' refuge but gave no more details.
Speaking at the news conference, Mr Assange said: "I understand that Kristinn Hrafnsson has said that he can confirm I am leaving the embassy soon".
But he added it was not because he needed medical treatment, as had been reported in some of the UK press.
California “Kill Switch” Bill Could Be Used to Disrupt Protests
This week the California legislature passed a bill that requires all smartphones to include a “kill switch” that can remotely render the device inoperable. Although created to deter smartphone theft, this kill switch mandate could actually become a nefarious tool co-opted by government to suppress protests. ...
The legislation states that government agents may use the kill switch so long as their activities comply with Section 7908 of the Public Utilities Code. This law allows governments to disrupt communications under certain guidelines with judicial authorization, but also includes an “emergency” exception that requires no independent approval. ... It’s not hard to imagine law enforcement putting such a label on a protest: Managers of the BART subway system shut down cell service in four stations just prior to planned anti-police demonstrations in 2011, claiming the disruptive measure was justified by public safety concerns.
This week’s events in Ferguson, Missouri highlight the risks of abuse all too clearly. Police have repeatedly attempted to disrupt protests and ordered both demonstrators and press to turn off recording devices. If the California bill were in place in Missouri, these officers might deploy the government kill switch alongside tear gas and rubber bullets, using the mandated technology to stop coordination between protesters, cut off access to outside information, and shut down video recordings that can deter police misconduct.
Gaza ceasefire expires at midnight with deal to end conflict yet to be reached
The five-day ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip expires at midnight, with no firm indications that Egyptian mediators in Cairo have succeeded in securing a deal to end the five-week conflict.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday that Hamas should not expect to achieve a diplomatic victory out of the war, which has left almost 2,000 Palestinians – many of them civilians – 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians dead. ...
A military official told the Guardian on Monday that the Israeli delegation was still pushing for action on the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip, a divisive issue as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have repeatedly ruled out giving up their weapons.
But he added that the delegation was hoping for an extension to the ceasefire later on Monday, and that Israel would be content for the time being for an "exchange of quietness for quietness".
Palestinian sources in Cairo also suggested to the Haaretz newspaper that there was a general appetite for the truce to continue, saying that the conflict was "being talked about in the past tense".
Four arrested at Arab-Israeli wedding in Tel Aviv
Police barricade ceremony against 200 far-right protesters objecting to marriage of Jewish woman and Muslim man
Israeli police on Sunday blocked more than 200 far-right Israeli protesters from rushing guests at a wedding of a Jewish woman and Muslim man as they shouted "death to the Arabs" in a sign of tensions stoked by the Gaza war. ...
A group called Lehava, which organised the wedding demonstration, has harassed Jewish-Arab couples in the past, often citing religious grounds for their objections to intermarriage. But they have rarely protested at the site of a wedding. ...
Protesters, many of them young men wearing black shirts, denounced Malka, who was born Jewish and converted to Islam before the wedding, as a "traitor to the Jewish state", and shouted slogans of hatred towards Arabs including "Death to the Arabs". One song included the words "May your village burn down." ...
Lehava spokesman and former lawmaker Michael Ben-Ari denounced Jews intermarrying with non-Jews of any denomination as "worse than what Hitler did", alluding to the murder of six million Jews across Europe in the second world war. ...
Malka's father, Yoram Malka, said on Israeli television that he objected to the wedding, calling it "a very sad event". He said he was angry that his daughter had converted to Islam. Of his now son-in-law, he said: "My problem with him is that he is an Arab."
Over 10,000 Turn Out to Tel Aviv Peace Rally
More than ten thousand of Israelis turned out Saturday night in Tel Aviv demanding peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
The peaceful rally was the largest demonstration in Israel since it launched operation "Protective Edge on July 8, an offensive that has seen at least 1,980 Palestinian deaths and 67 on the Israeli side.
It was organized by the progressive Meretz party and Peace Now, an activist group opposed to Jewish settlement building on occupied territory.
Protesters also expressed anger at the Netanyahu government, chanting “Bibi, go home!”
Activists declare first victory as Israeli ship delays docking at Oakland
San Francisco Bay Area Palestine activists have declared their first victory in attempting to prevent the offloading of an Israeli cargo vessel at the Oakland Port. Originally planning to show up at 5:00 am Saturday morning to block the ship, activists sent word out late last night that the meeting time had been moved up to 3:00pm, as the ship had delayed its arrival at Oakland in an apparent attempt to avoid the protest. ...
A Zim Lines ship docks every Friday night around 9:00 pm at the Oakland port for an early morning offload. Activists have been working with members of the local chapter of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), and hope that port workers will agree not to offload the Israeli cargo.
In 2010, when activists successfully prevented the offloading of a Zim Lines ship in an historic first, Local 10 relied on the port’s arbitrator to declare the working conditions unsafe. ... ILWU has a long history of refusing to load ships from countries engaging in gross violations of human rights. In the 1930s, West Coast dockworkers refused to load and offload ships belonging to Italy after they invaded Ethiopia, and Japan after it invaded Manchuria.
In 1978 and 1980, ILWU refused to load military cargo headed for Chile and El Salvador respectively. And in 1984, the union refused to unload a South African ship for 11 straight days.
Russia: no ceasefire agreed but Kiev's objections to relief convoy dropped
Russia's foreign minister has said that talks with Ukraine have failed to agree a ceasefire but all objections to a Russian humanitarian convoy entering the country have now been dropped.
Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that "all questions" regarding the mission had been removed and agreement had been reached with Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but it was unclear if he was referring to security guarantees, which the ICRC wants to receive from all sides including pro-Russia rebel fighters, before accompanying more than 200 trucks into Ukraine.
An ICRC spokeswoman in the region where the trucks were parked said earlier it was still waiting for the security guarantees.
Ukraine troops claim breakthrough in battle for Luhansk
Ukrainian forces have raised their national flag over a police station in the rebel stronghold of Luhansk, Kiev said on Sunday, in what could be a breakthrough in Ukraine’s efforts to crush pro-Moscow separatists.
Ukrainian officials said, however, the rebels were fighting a desperate rearguard action to hold on to Luhansk – which is their supply route into neighbouring Russia – and that the flow of weapons and fighters from Russia had accelerated. ...
Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said government forces fought separatists in Luhansk on Saturday and took control of the Zhovtneviy neighbourhood police station. ...
If confirmed, the taking of the police station is significant because Luhansk has for several months been a rebel redoubt where Kiev’s writ has not run. Separatists still control sections of the border linking Luhansk region to Russia.
Foreign Oil Interests in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Rise of ISIS
The Evening Greens
Tahltans Blockade Imperial Metals’ Red Chris Mine in Response to Mount Polley Spill
After the catastrophic breach of a toxic tailings pond at its Mount Polley mine on August 4th, British Columbians across the province have called into question the safety of the company’s other mega mine projects.
The Red Chris mine, located in B.C.’s northwestern corner is now under intense scrutiny by protestors from the Tahltan Nation who are blocking access to the company’s site, saying they won’t leave until independent reviewers address mine safety concerns. ...
Located on Toddagin Mountain, near the Tahltan village of Iskut, the Red Chris mine is scheduled to begin operations later this year.
Like Mount Polley, Red Chris is an open pit copper and gold mine. And, like Mount Polley, the Red Chris mine is expected to produce millions of tons of toxic tailings over its projected 28-year life span.
The company has set aside a pristine mountain lake called Black Lake as a tailings holding pond. Black Lake is located above lakes and creeks which drain into the salmon bearing Iskut and Stikine Rivers – the lifelines of the Tahltan people.
For the elders, the current blockade is not only a show of solidarity with those affected by the Mount Polley disaster, but an act of self-defense.
Alaska's Financial Future at Center of Battle Over Oil Tax
Voters will decide whether to repeal Alaska's year-old oil tax system, which cuts taxes on the fossil fuel industry by $1 billion to $2 billion a year. If Alaskans approve the ballot proposal, the state will reverse the tax reductions now enjoyed by ConocoPhillips, Exxon and BP and revert to a previous system that helped the state bank a $17 billion surplus. ...
With no income or sales tax, Alaska gets 90 percent of its revenue from the oil industry. But the financially and politically powerful fossil fuel industry says the previous, higher taxes choked its ability to invest in new oil fields and increase production. ...
No matter which system is in place after the Aug. 19 vote, the assumption is that Alaska's rich reserves will continue pumping oil. Neither side deals with what will happen to the state's financial future if national climate legislation or a global climate treaty force companies to keep oil in the ground.
Oilsands, deepwater among riskiest energy plays in the world, report says
CALGARY – Some of the world’s costliest energy projects are in Alberta’s oilsands and some could be cancelled without higher oil prices, according to a new report by a London-based financial think-tank that focuses on climate risk.
The study by the Carbon Tracker Initiative highlighted 20 of the biggest projects around the world that need a minimum oil price of US$95 a barrel to be economically viable.
Most on the list require prices well north of US$110 a barrel and a few in the oilsands even need prices higher than US$150, said the report.
Crude for September delivery was at around US$97 a barrel in New York on Friday.
In Australia, Businesses Are Getting Hit With A $500 Fee Designed To Kill Solar Power
The government of Queensland, Australia is just beginning to implement a new energy policy that changes the way businesses are charged for electricity, a policy that the solar industry says is designed to make sure businesses have no reason to install commercial-scale rooftop solar panels.
According to a report in RenewEconomy, the policy reduces the price of actual energy consumption for businesses, but increases the price for energy service in general. That “service fee” has made it so businesses that were originally charged $42 dollars a day are now being charged $488 a day. With the area’s Goods and Services Tax, that amounts to a charge of $533 every day for electricity use. Prices on energy consumption have fallen to 10.4 cents per kilowatt hour from 11.6 center per kilowatt hour, the report said.
This fee is “horrifying” members of the solar industry, the report said, because now businesses have no monetary incentive to lower their electricity consumption by installing solar panels or investing in energy efficiency machinery and lighting.
“The changes are clever in their design,” Steve Madson, director of Country Solar, one of the country’s largest installers of commercial-scale solar, told RenewEconomy. “They do not actually result in an increase in total electricity costs, and in some cases they actually cause a fall. But they kill the possibility of reducing the bills by installing solar.”
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 Lash May Change, But The Pain Remains The Same: The Enduring Legacy of Slavery in Mississippi
Man Describes How Police in Ferguson Arrested Him for Smoking Cigarette in His Parked Car After Curfew
Kim Dotcom: from playboy entrepreneur to political firebrand
Burning the Future of Gaza’s Children
Chris Hedges: Rebellion in Ferguson: A Rising Heat in the Suburbs
Iraq and the Oil Wars
Japanification and the end of the American Dream
dkmich:
Hands Up/Don't Shoot: Occupy & Terrify
bigalinwashst:
Peace and the Antiwar Movement
yours truly:
Rand Paul must want somebody’s vote
A Little Night Music
Percy Mayfield - Ha Ha in the Daytime
Percy Mayfield - Hit The Road Jack
Percy Mayfield - Hit The Road Jack
Percy Mayfield - Hopeless
Percy Mayfield - Strange things happening
Percy Mayfield - Cookin' In Style
Percy Mayfield - Please Send Me Someone To Love
Percy Mayfield- River's Invitation
Percy Mayfield - Baby Please
Percy Mayfield w/The Phillip Walker Blues Band - The Highway Is Like A Woman, My Jug and I
Percy Mayfield - Louisiana
Percy Mayfield and Orch.- Loose Lips
Percy Mayfield - Gone Astray
Percy Mayfield - My Blues
Percy Mayfield - Walking on a Tightrope
Percy Mayfield - Never no more
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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