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 jump blues shouter Wynonie Harris. Enjoy!
Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin' Tonight
“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
-- -John Quincy Adams
News and Opinion
Washington’s Latest War Fever
Americans, following a long tradition of finding monsters overseas to destroy, are now focusing their attention and their energy on a relatively new one: the group variously known as ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State. The group has become a major disruptive factor in the already disrupted internal affairs of Iraq and Syria, and it is legitimately a significant object of concern for U.S. policy as far as instability and radicalism in the Middle East are concerned.
The outsized role that this group has come to play in discourse about U.S. foreign policy, however — including hyperbolic statements by senior officials — risks a loss of perspective about what kind of threat it does or does not pose to U.S. interests, and with that a possible loss of care in assessing what U.S. actions in response would or would not be wise. ...
We Americans need to exercise some introspection regarding how and why we are reacting to the ISIS phenomenon the way we are, beyond the way we interpret shadings on a newspaper map (and beyond the usual politicized biases that infect any policy discussion in Washington).
To some extent the group is filling a need for a well-defined, personified adversary. We don’t have Osama bin Laden to fight anymore, but now we have Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We also are reacting quite understandably to the group’s methods, which are despicably inhumane, and to its objectives, which are disgustingly medieval.
The burst of attention to the group over the past week clearly results largely from the grisly killing of a captured American photojournalist. We all abhor that event, and we should. But we also should bear in mind that an emotional reaction to such an incident produces the wrong frame of mind for debate, and cool-headed deliberation, about public policy.
Why America Failed to Anticipate the Rise of the Islamic State
Likely US Airstrikes in Syria Just Another Stop on Endless Mission Creep
From announcing the authorization of airstrikes on ISIS earlier this month in the area around Mosul, the US war in Iraq has already seen an amount of mission creep so substantial that the term “creep” doesn’t seem anywhere near appropriate.
The initial goal was to stop ISIS from attacking Irbil. That expanded to Baghdad, then to wiping out ISIS in Iraq. Now, the war is set to be expanded into Syria, even though the US has almost no intelligence on where any targets are in Syria.
Expanding into Syria is just the next stop on an Iraq War that seems to be escalating without any end in sight, and with reports of ground troop deployments coming in Anbar Province, the war could quickly become a land war spanning multiple countries with no well-defined goals at all.
Syrian Rebels Seize Israel Border Crossing
Syrian rebel factions, including al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, seized the nation’s only border crossing into neighboring Israel, in the Golan Heights. The takeover puts al-Qaeda directly on the Israeli frontier.
The clashes ahead of the takeover saw a stray mortar shell entering into Israeli occupied Golan, lightly wounding an Israeli soldier. Israel responded by attacking multiple Syrian Army positions in the area.
Perhaps the Saudis should have done something about the flow of money from their country to ISIS...
Iraq and Syria pose Saudi dilemma - failed states or Iran proxies
With militant Islamists gaining the upper hand in Syria's rebel movement and grabbing big tracts of Western Iraq, Saudi Arabia's ruling family faces an increasingly uncomfortable dilemma.
The Al Saud have long seen the conflicts in Iraq and Syria as a pivotal battle for the future of the Middle East, pitting Sunni Muslims against a radical, revolutionary, Shi'ite Iran.
But in both Syria and Iraq the kingdom's preferred Sunni allies have lost out to more militant groups, and Riyadh faces its nightmare scenario of watching two key Arab states become proxies for its rival Tehran or, worse, perpetual failed states. ...
While Islamic State's territory does not yet extend to the Saudi border, and appears unlikely to pose a military threat, many of the kingdom's citizens have joined the group, raising fears they will turn against their own government.
For the Al Saud, most Islamist factions represent a dangerous ideological challenge to their system of dynastic rule, leading to their campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and cooperation with Washington to tackle al Qaeda.
The ruling family has grown so worried, spurred by memories of attacks by Saudi veterans of Iraqi fighting last decade, that King Abdullah in February decreed tough new laws and has mobilized the powerful clergy to preach against radicalism.
Gaza begins to pick up pieces after 'worst war'
Gaza began the long process of picking up the pieces of shattered lives and homes on Wednesday after 50 days of bloodshed and destruction.
The streets of Gaza City were clogged with tuk-tuks and donkey-drawn carts, many laden with women, children and pitiful possessions, heading towards homes which in thousands of cases have been reduced to rubble and twisted metal. ...
The rehabilitation of Gaza is expected to take years, even if unlimited quantities of construction materials are permitted to enter. Under the terms of the ceasefire deal Israel will increase capacity at the Kerem Shalom industrial crossing to expedite the inflow of cement, steel and other materials, as well as allowing more people to leave Gaza. It will also extend its restricted fishing zone.
A joint assessment of needs by the Palestinian Authority and the UN is expected to last up to six weeks, with priority being given to displaced families, water and electricity supplies, and urgent healthcare.
Elizabeth Warren finally speaks on Israel/Gaza, sounds like Netanyahu
The last time Elizabeth Warren was asked about her views on the Israeli attack on Gaza – on July 17 – she, as Rania Khalek put it, “literally ran away” without answering. But last week, the liberal Senator appeared for one of her regularly scheduled “office hours” with her Massachusetts constituents, this one in Hyannis, and, as a local paper reported, she had nowhere to run.
One voter who identified himself as a Warren supporter, John Bangert, stood up and objected to her recent vote, in the middle of the horrific attack on Gaza, to send yet another $225 million of American taxpayer money to Israel for its “Iron Dome” system. Banger told his Senator: “We are disagreeing with Israel using their guns against innocents. It’s true in Ferguson, Missouri, and it’s true in Israel . . . The vote was wrong, I believe.” To crowd applause, Bangert told Warren that the money “could have been spent on infrastructure or helping immigrants fleeing Central America.”
But Warren steadfastly defended her “pro-Israel” vote, invoking the politician’s platitude: “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one.” According to the account in the Cape Cod Times by reporter C. Ryan Barber, flagged by Zaid Jilani, Warren was also asked about her Israel position by other voters who were at the gathering, and she went on to explain:
“I think the vote was right, and I’ll tell you why I think the vote was right. America has a very special relationship with Israel. Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren’t many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law. And we very much need an ally in that part of the world.”
Warren said Hamas has attacked Israel “indiscriminately,” but with the Iron Dome defense system, the missiles have “not had the terrorist effect Hamas hoped for.” When pressed by another member of the crowd about civilian casualties from Israel’s attacks, Warren said she believes those casualties are the “last thing Israel wants.”
“But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they’re using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself,” Warren said, drawing applause.
Warren even rejected a different voter’s suggestion that the U.S. force Israel to at least cease building illegal settlements by withholding further aid: “Noreen Thompsen, of Eastham, proposed that Israel should be prevented from building any more settlements as a condition of future U.S. funding, but Warren said, ‘I think there’s a question of whether we should go that far.’”
Ceasefire Ends Bombing of Gaza, But Lasting Peace Has Larger Demands
The indefinite ceasefire between representatives from Israel and Palestine announced Tuesday brought an immediate relief from the Israeli military operation dubbed Operation Protective Edge. However, it raised many questions regarding the future for the Gaza Strip following the 50-day assault that left roughly 2,200 people, over 95 percent Palestinians, dead.
"Unless long-term solutions are found to ensure economic growth and sustainable development in Gaza, frequent military escalations will only continue, increasing insecurity for Israelis and Palestinians alike," said international aid organization Oxfam in a report published Wednesday.
The report, Cease Failure: Rethinking seven years of failed policies in Gaza (pdf), lists a number of recommendations that, according to Oxfam, must be immediately implemented to ensure a just and lasting peace. Among those actions, the group says that Israel must "permanently lift its restrictions on Palestinian development and allow freedom of movement," including the re-establishment of permanent and open connections through the Erez and Rafah crossings.
Oxfam warns that this moment may be the "last opportunity to implement lasting solutions."
The terms of the current ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, are similar to those following the 2012 conflict, which many believe was a missed opportunity to implement more lasting, structural changes.
Pro-Russian rebels take strategic port of Novoazovsk on the Azov Sea
Pro-Russian rebel forces entered a key town in south-eastern Ukraine today after three days of heavy shelling, the town’s mayor said, capturing new territory far from most of their battles with government troops.
The town of Novoazovsk lies in a strategically significant location – on the Azov Sea and on the road linking Russia to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. It was the first time in the four-month-long conflict that fighting has reached as far south as the coast and suggests that the rebels, who Ukraine says are being supported by Russia, are emboldened and reinforced.
The new south-eastern front has raised fears the separatists are seeking to create a land link between Russia and Crimea. If so, that could also give the rebels or Russia control over the entire Azov Sea and any oil or mineral riches it contains.
Ukrainian president: Russian troops have crossed border
Ukraine's president has effectively accused Russia of invading his country, saying troops have been moved across the border to support separatists now fighting on two fronts in the east.
"Recent Russian actions clearly demonstrate that Moscow is bluntly drawing Ukraine and the entire world into a full-scale war," Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement.
Petro Poroshenko, the president, cancelled a planned trip to Turkey and demanded an urgent meeting of the UN security council after the six-month crisis deepened with reports of fresh Russian incursions along Ukraine's south-eastern coast.
"Russian forces have actually entered Ukraine," he said in a statement. The accusation comes just two days after the Ukrainian leader met with Vladimir Putin in Minsk on Tuesday, since when the situation in the east has deteriorated.
Poroshenko stopped short of calling the movements an outright invasion, but convened an urgent meeting of the country's national security council to discuss the Russian moves.
In Senate-CIA fight on interrogation report, another controversy
The background of a key negotiator in the battle over a Senate report on the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques widely denounced as torture has sparked concerns about the Obama administration’s objectivity in handling the study’s public release.
Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a former defense lawyer who represented several CIA officials in matters relating to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Now he’s in a key position to determine what parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report will be made public.
Litt’s involvement doesn’t appear to be an ethics issue, at least by the legal definition. But experts say that while it may be acceptable on paper, his involvement in the review should have been a red flag.
“It does not cross the very low bar that the profession sets for an impermissible conflict of interest,” said Jack Marshall, the president and founder of ProEthics Ltd., a national ethics consulting and training company that has provided seminars to government lawyers, including those employed by the CIA. “But it is the kind of conflict of interest that should be avoided at all costs. The government has to be held to a higher standard.”
Blackwater trial reaches emotional and legal climax as prosecution rests
One of the darkest days of the US occupation of Iraq was relived in a Washington courtroom on Wednesday as the prosecution of four Blackwater security contractors accused of killing 14 civilians in a mistaken attack in Baghdad reached an emotional and legal climax.
Seven years after the bloody shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that left a total of 17 Iraqis dead and more than 20 seriously wounded, jurors were told of the “shocking amount of death, injury and destruction” that saw “innocent men, women and children mowed down” by private guards working for the US State Department.
In closing arguments, assistant US attorney Anthony Asuncion claimed three of the four defendants were guilty of manslaughter and a fourth of murder for showing extreme disregard for human life in retaliating against what they mistakenly believed was a car bomb attack on their convoy.
But the defence summed up its case with a blistering attack on the government for ignoring evidence of alleged incoming machine gun fire at the convoy, which it also accused Iraqi police of helping to cover up.
The controversial case, which will go to the jury next week, is one of the few in which US forces have been tried for civilian deaths in Iraq and has already been abandoned once after an earlier judge questioned the way evidence was gathered.
The Battle for Justice in Ferguson Runs through the Soul of the Democratic Party
Michael Brown shooting: governor appoints only black cabinet member
The Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, has appointed his administration's only black cabinet member nearly three weeks after the shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer led to violent protests in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson.
Nixon said the former St Louis police chief, Daniel Isom, would take over as director of the Missouri department of public safety on 1 September.
The appointment comes after Nixon faced criticism both for the lack of racial diversity among his department leaders and for the state's response to protesters and looters following the shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on 9 August.
Nixon did not directly say whether the leadership change was related to the events in Ferguson. He said Isom "has experience and training in law enforcement that are almost unmatched".
After Police Abuses Caught on Video, a New Guide Teaches How to Best Archive and Distribute Footage
Bernie Sanders: I Want To Know If Ordinary People Are Ready to Stand and Fight
The Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders has a hunch about the American electorate, but he says the only way to be sure is to go out and meet them.
It's called the 'Fight For Economic Justice Tour,' but it's really what the self-identified Social Democrat described earlier this year as his attempt to travel the country in order to guage the country's hunger for a grassroots 'political revolution'—couched in a possible presidential bid—to challenge the economic inequality and corporate malfeasance that have severly wounded the nation's democary and are strangling its promise of shared prosperity. ...
"This is about seeing whether ordinary people are prepared to stand up and fight and create a political revolution in the sense of what we have not seen in a very long time," Sanders declared on Wednesday.
In an interview with the Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, Sanders stated his position that economic inequality and the everyday suffering of ordinary people is at the core of his thinking on the country's current situation. "The main issue that I have is that in America today the middle-class is disappearing while the gap between rich and poor is growing wider," he said. "We need more people in politics working for ordinary people and not just the top 1 percent."
Market Basket CEO welcomed back to end supermarket standoff
A six-week standoff between thousands of employees of a New England supermarket chain and management has ended with the news that the beloved former CEO is back in control after buying the entire company.
Tractor-trailers bearing the Market Basket logo and laden with the tons of food it will take to restock the chain’s 71 stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, as well as vendor vehicles, pulled up to loading docks before business Thursday, just hours after the announcement late Wednesday that Arthur T. Demoulas paid $1.5 billion for shares of the company owned by the rival family faction, led by cousin Arthur S. Demoulas.
Market Basket said in a statement late Wednesday that Arthur T. Demoulas would be returning to the company and that he and his management team would handle day-to-day operations while the purchase is completed.
“All associates are welcome back to work with the former management team to restore the company back to normal operations,” Arthur T. Demoulas said in a statement. ...
Arthur T. Demoulas was ousted in June by a board of directors controlled by Arthur S. Demoulas, causing workers to stage protests. Hundreds of warehouse workers and drivers refused to deliver food, leading to empty shelves and tens of millions in lost revenue. Customers stopped shopping at Market Basket, with some even taping their receipts from competitors in Market Basket store windows.
The Evening Greens
As Obama Settles on Nonbinding Treaty, "Only a Big Movement" Can Take on Global Warming
U.N. Draft Report Lists Unchecked Emissions’ Risks
Runaway growth in the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts" over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report.
Global warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a result of human emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control. ...
“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reduction in snow and ice, and in global mean-sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the draft report said. “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”
Federal Protection Sought for Iconic Pollinators 'In Deadly Free Fall'
The alarming decline of the monarch butterfly population necessitates federal action to save the iconic orange and black pollinators.
Such is the urging of the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety, joined by the Xerces Society and monarch expert Dr. Lincoln Brower, who sent a petition (pdf) Tuesday to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the butterflies.
Over the last two decades, the groups say, population has plummeted by more than 90 percent. To put that "staggering" figure in perspective, Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "in human-population terms it would be like losing every living person in the United States except those in Florida and Ohio.”
The request for federal protection follows stacking evidence against corporate agriculture for its role in these declining numbers. A primary threat to the pollinators, the petition states, is widespread plantings in the Midwest of genetically modified crops and the herbicides used on them, which are wiping out the monarch's larval food, milkweed..
Clear choice on Keystone XL in Nebraska Gov. race
When it comes to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, Nebraska’s two gubernatorial candidates would have to search long and hard to find common ground.
Republican Pete Ricketts and Democrat Chuck Hassebrook hold polar opposite views on whether or not the pipeline should be built: Ricketts is a yes, Hassebrook a no.
They also differ sharply on several of the issues that flow from the pipeline.
Ricketts is “skeptical” of the idea that mankind is behind climate change, while Hassebrook believes that science has settled the case against fossil fuels.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
BBC2 to air transgender-themed sitcom
A Little Night Music
Wynonie Harris - Lovin' Machine
Wynonie Harris - Put It Back
Wynonie Harris - Keep On Churnin' (Til The Butter Come)
Wynonie Harris - All She Wants To Do Is Rock
Wynonie Harris - Sittin' On It All The Time
Wynonie Harris with Sun Ra - Dig This Boogie
Wynonie Harris and His All Stars - I Want My Fanny Brown
Wynonie Harris - Destination Love
Wynonie Harris - Shake That Thing
Wynonie Harris - Quiet Whiskey
Wynonie Harris - Bad News Baby (There'll Be No Rockin' Tonight)
Wynonie Harris - Around The Clock Parts 1 and 2
Wynonie Harris - Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes At Me
Wynonie Harris - Rock Mr. Blues
Wynonie Harris - Tell a Whale of a Tale
Wynonie Harris - Lollipop Mama (Jump Mr Blues)
Wynonie Harris - Lightning Struck The Poorhouse
Arnett Cobb & Wynonie Harris - Good Morning Corrine
Wynonie Harris - Big Old Country Fool
Wynonie Harris - A Tale Of Woe
Wynonie Harris - Rebecca's Blues
Wynonie Harris - All She Wants To Do Is Mambo
Wynonie Harris - Good Mambo Tonight
Wynonie Harris - Stormy Night Blues
Wynonie Harris - Luscious Woman
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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