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 Texas bluesman Albert Collins. Enjoy!
Albert Collins - If trouble was money
The dog wags his tail, not for you, but for your bread.
-– Portuguese proverb
News and Opinion
Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?
Why has the media pushed the Obama administration’s war frame instead of playing the role of skeptic by questioning official assertions, insisting for corroboration on “anonymous leaks” and seeking alternative points of view? After years of government lies – from claims of WMDs in Iraq to zero civilian casualties in drone strikes – you’d think the members of the fourth estate would have learned a lesson.
But the mainstream US media plays the role of government lapdog more than watchdog.
They sensationalized the supposed threat from Isis even as intelligence agencies insisted that the group poses no immediate threat to the United States. A chorus of fearmongers, Republicans and Democrats alike, appeared on TV to insist that the American way of life is at stake. The hysterical Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that Isis is out to murder each and every one of us. Senator Bill Nelson advocated cutting off the “head of the snake” before Isis could fly its black flag over the White House. Former CIA and Pentagon chief Leon Panetta warned Americans to brace for a 30-year crusade. The media even trotted out “experts” on war – or at least war-mongering – like John McCain, Dick Cheney and even former presidential envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer.
Obsessed with maintaining access to power, the mainstream media just keeps handing their megaphone to the powerful and self-interested. Rarely do we hear from people who opposed the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq or rightly predicted the chaos that would result from NATO intervention in Libya. The few anti-war voices who manage to slip into the dialogue are marginalized and later silenced.
Let’s face it: fear sells, violence sells, war sells. The vicious Isis beheadings, discussed ad infinitum, attracted large audiences. So did talk about exploding toothpaste. People whipped into a state of fear always want to know more.
Sadly, the public is not getting what it deserves: a well-rounded debate about the pros and cons of military action.
Speaking of the pros and cons of military action, David Mizner has an excellent article published at the Jacobin site. I pulled a few highlight paragraphs out of it, but this is an article that needs to be read in full.
David Mizner: A War for Power
How much death and destruction would American terror warriors have to cause before their ostensible opponents rejected their claims of noble intent? During the thirteen years of the “war on terror,” actions of the United States government have consistently and predictably strengthened anti-American terrorist groups. To chalk this all up to stupidity — rather than unstated imperial imperatives — is to choose ignorance. ...
“War is not the answer.” In response to that slogan, supporters of war sometimes quip, “It depends what the question is.” They’re right. War is indeed the answer, or one of them, if the question is, “How does the US government seek to maintain power and advance its own economic interests?”
America’s enabling of terrorism goes well beyond military action against them. The US response to the uprisings in both Libya and Syria reveals a government willing to empower terrorist groups in pursuit of its actual core goals: amassing wealth and combating Iran, which is itself a largely economic priority in that Iran is the primary threat to American hegemony in this oil-rich region. ...
The US has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the name of fighting terrorism. The war is all too real. But it’s also fake. There is no clash of civilizations, no ideological battle, no grand effort on the part of the United States to defeat terrorism. As long as terrorism doesn’t threaten core US interests, American elites are content to allow it — and help it — flourish. They don’t want to win this war. It will go on forever, unless we make them end it.
Critics to Obama: 'Draconian Cuts' Have Been to US Public Services, Not War Budget
President Obama's comments on Wednesday that U.S. military spending is under threat of "draconian" cuts were met with immediate rebuke from analysts, who say the poor are bearing the brunt of austerity while the war budget remains largely untouched. That the president's comments came in the midst of the expansion of the costly U.S.-led war against Iraq and Syria sparked concern that the president could be signaling further escalation to come. ...
Raed Jarrar, policy impact coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, told Common Dreams, "The crisis within Iraq and Syria is being used to promote the vision that the world is a scary place, we need more weapons to protect ourselves, and the military is facing these crazy cuts. But the premise that we have military cuts is not accurate. Obama's remarks signal there will not be any push-back from the White House."
Mattea Kramer, research director at National Priorities Project, argues in a March article that the Pentagon, in fact, is "crying wolf." When it went into effect in March 2013, sequestration was supposed to cut $54.6 billion from the $550 billion Pentagon budget. But thanks to intervention from Congress, as well as the Pentagon's manipulation of budgeting rules, the Pentagon only ended up cutting $31 billion from its 2013 budget, explains Kramer.
The 2014 budget tells a similar story. Sequestration was supposed to slash $54.6 billion from the military budget in 2014, but thanks to a deal between lawmakers, and war funding from other stashes—including extra congressional funds and the "Overseas Contingency Operations" budget—the 2014 budget was only cut by $3.4 billion, less than one percent. "After two years of uproar over mostly phantom cuts, 2015 isn’t likely to bring austerity to the Pentagon either," Kramer writes.
USAF turns $500 million worth of airplanes, purchased for Afghans into $32,000 worth of scrap metal
A U.S. government watchdog agency is asking the Air Force to explain why it decided to destroy 16 aircraft initially bought for the Afgan air force and turn them into $32,000 of scrap metal instead of finding other ways to salvage nearly $500 million in U.S. funds spent on the program. ...
The U.S. government spent $468 million to buy and refurbish 20 older C-27A airplanes from Alenia, a unit of Italy's Finmeccanica SpA , but later canceled the program because a lack of spare parts was severely limiting their availability for military use.
Instead, the Pentagon decided to buy four larger C-130 planes built by Lockheed Martin Corp to do the work.
Airstrikes Continue Around Kobane As Kurds 'Drive Back' Islamic State Fighters
US-led airstrikes continued to hit Islamic State (IS) targets around the Syrian border city of Kobane on Friday as local officials and activists reported that Kurdish forces had begun to push the jihadists back.
Loud explosions accompanied runs by low flying jets in what appeared to be airstrikes to the west of the city. There were also blasts on its eastern edge abutting the Turkish border, while heavy machine gun and small arms fire echoed across the frontier.
Reports suggested that IS forces had been driven back to the city's outskirts by the aerial bombardment and advances by the Kurdish YPG fighters who are battling to save it.
"Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out" against IS, the US Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday night.
Does Turkey Want Kobane to Fall?
Turkey condemns violence in Kurdish areas
Thousands of people "will most likely be massacred" if Kobani falls to Islamic State fighters, a U.N. envoy said on Friday, as militants fought deeper into the besieged Syrian Kurdish town in full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene. ...
The plight of mainly Kurdish Kobani has unleashed the worst street violence in years in Turkey, which has 15 million Kurds of its own. Turkish Kurds have risen up since Tuesday against President Tayyip Erdogan's government, which they accuse of allowing their kin to be slaughtered.
At least 31 people have been killed in three days of riots across the mainly Kurdish southeast, including two police officers shot dead in an apparent attempt to assassinate a police chief. The police chief was wounded. ...
The Kurdish uprising in Turkey provoked a furious response from the Turkish government, which accuses Kurdish political leaders of using the situation in Kobani to destroy public order in Turkey and wreck its own delicate peace process.
Turkish Kurds fought a decades-long insurgency in which 40,000 people were killed. A truce last year has been one of the main achievements of Erdogan's decade in power, but Abdullah Ocalan, jailed co-founder of the Kurdish militant PKK, has said the peace process is doomed if Turkey permits Kobani to fall.
In a televised speech on Friday, Erdogan accused Kurdish leaders of "making calls for violence in a rotten way". ...
The three days of riots in southern Turkey were the worst street violence in many years. The attempted assassination of a police chief in eastern Bingol province was the first incident of its kind since 2001.
Islamic State fighters are threatening to overrun Iraq’s Anbar province
Islamic State militants are threatening to overrun a key province in western Iraq in what would be a major victory for the jihadists and an embarrassing setback for the U.S.-led coalition targeting the group.
A win for the Islamic State in Anbar province would give the militants control of one of the country’s most important dams and several large army installations, potentially adding to their abundant stockpile of weapons. It would also allow them to establish a supply line from Syria almost to Baghdad and give them a valuable position from which to launch attacks on the Iraqi capital. ...
[I]n recent weeks, Islamic State fighters have systematically invaded towns and villages in Anbar, besieged army posts and police stations, and mounted attacks on Iraqi troops in Ramadi, the provincial capital. The Islamic State secured a major foothold in Anbar province in January when it seized the city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi. It pushed farther into the province in June, but Iraq’s government was able to maintain small pockets of authority in the majority-Sunni region.
“If the Islamic State controls Anbar, they would be able to threaten serious targets in Baghdad,” said an Iraqi security expert, Saeed al-Jayashi. “The government would lose the Haditha Dam, and the security forces would have to retreat,” he said. “There would be a blood bath.”
Non-existent group, created for propaganda purposes surprisingly not destroyed by 47 cruise missiles!!! Duck and cover!!!
Syria Airstrikes Failed To Cripple Khorasan
The barrage of U.S. cruise missiles last month aimed at a Syrian terrorist cell killed just one or two key militants, according to American intelligence officials who say the group of veteran al-Qaida fighters is still believed to be plotting attacks against U.S. and European targets.
The strikes on a compound near Aleppo did not deal a crippling blow to the Khorasan Group, officials said, partly because many important members had scattered amid news reports highlighting their activities. Among those who survived is a French-born jihadi who fought in Afghanistan with a military prowess that is of great concern to U.S. intelligence officials now. ...
In public, U.S. officials have offered seemingly contradictory assessments of the attacks on the Khorasan Group.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the strikes disrupted the group's plotting, but he did not know for how long. FBI Director James Comey said he believed the plots had not been disrupted and that the group remains a threat to the U.S. Other intelligence officials embraced Comey's view.
Obama Weighs Options to Close Guantanamo
The White House is drafting options that would allow President Barack Obama to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by overriding a congressional ban on bringing detainees to the U.S., senior administration officials said.
Such a move would be the latest and potentially most dramatic use of executive power by the president in his second term. It would likely provoke a sharp reaction from lawmakers, who have repeatedly barred the transfer of detainees to the U.S.
The discussions underscore the president’s determination to follow through on an early campaign promise before he leaves the White House, officials said, despite the formidable domestic and international obstacles in the way.
Administration officials say Mr. Obama strongly prefers a legislative solution over going around Congress. At the same time, a senior administration official said Mr. Obama is “unwavering in his commitment” to closing the prison—which currently has 149 inmates detained in connection with the nation’s post-9/11 war on terrorism—and wants to have all potential options available on an issue he sees as part of his legacy. ...
Unilateral action “would ignite a political firestorm, even if it’s the best resolution for the Guantanamo problem,” said American University law professor Stephen Vladeck. Republicans are sure to oppose it, while Democrats could be split, he said.
Report on Disclosures to the Media is Classified
The notion of an authorized disclosure of classified information is close to being a contradiction in terms. If something is classified, how can its disclosure be authorized (without declassification)? And if something is disclosed by an official who is authorized to do so, how can it still be classified? And yet, it seems that there is such a thing. ...
In the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2013 (sec. 504), Congress directed that “In the event of an authorized disclosure of national intelligence” to the media, the government official responsible for authorizing the disclosure shall notify Congress in a timely fashion whenever the intelligence disclosed is classified (or declassified for the purpose of the disclosure).
The purpose of that requirement was to ensure that the congressional intelligence committees are made aware of authorized disclosures to the press “so that, among other things, these authorized disclosures may be distinguished from unauthorized ‘leaks’,” according to the Senate report on the FY2013 intelligence bill.
So what disclosures of classified intelligence to the media were approved by government officials and reported to Congress, we asked earlier this year? The National Security Agency refuses to disclose those disclosures.
“The document responsive to your request has been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and has been found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526,” according to an October 2 letter signed by retiring NSA FOIA chief Pamela N. Phillips. “The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
NSA: Even the Secrets We Tell You Are Too Secret For You To Know About
It’s an assertion that defies common sense but speaks volumes about how the U.S. intelligence complex dodges accountability: The National Security Agency is arguing that even the secrets it has intentionally disclosed to reporters are still so secret that disclosing their disclosure threatens national security.
Has it ever been more clear that the NSA uses the phrase “could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security” as a euphemism for “could gravely embarrass us?” ...
One of the biggest open secrets in Washington is that, despite officialdom’s intensive efforts to demonize whistleblowers like former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, the vast majority of disclosures of secret information are not “leaks” but “pleaks” — a term Columbia Law Professor David E. Pozen coined to describe something that is more like an official “plant” than a “leak.” ...
So the NSA wants to “pleak” when that serves its interests. But it doesn’t want anyone to know about it, because then it would make it even more unseemly to be persecuting someone for a “leak” that doesn’t.
Hat tip dharmafarmer:
The Government War Against Reporter James Risen
Ever since New York Times reporter James Risen received his first subpoena from the Justice Department more than six years ago, occasional news reports have skimmed the surface of a complex story. The usual gloss depicts a conflict between top officials who want to protect classified information and a journalist who wants to protect confidential sources. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Sterling—a former undercover CIA officer now facing charges under the Espionage Act, whom the feds want Risen to identify as his source—is cast as a disgruntled ex-employee in trouble for allegedly spilling the classified beans.
But the standard media narratives about Risen and Sterling have skipped over deep patterns of government retaliation against recalcitrant journalists and whistleblowers. Those patterns are undermining press freedom, precluding the informed consent of the governed and hiding crucial aspects of US foreign policy. ...
The absurd pretense of merely wishing to “protect” classified information certainly didn’t begin with the Obama presidency. While publicly abhorring leaks, every administration in memory has leaked large quantities of classified information to serve its own ends—especially to journalists with a reliable record of propagating these authorized plants. But the customary gap between pretense and reality has grown into a canyon under Obama. ...
For nearly four years, the Obama administration has been on record with the broad claim that whistleblowing to inform the public is apt to be worse than spying to aid a foreign power. In a January 2011 brief against Sterling, the Justice Department declared that his alleged disclosures “may be viewed as more pernicious than the typical espionage case where a spy sells classified information for money.” That stance implicitly views the people of the United States as a potential enemy force to be deprived of key information, and whistleblowers as hostile agents.
Court Spotlights the FBI’s Super-Secret National Security Letters
Last year, in a sharp rebuke to the government, a judge found that the gag order that comes with [National Security Letters] NSLs violated the First Amendment. The nondisclosure rule “significantly infringe[s] on speech regarding controversial government powers,” U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of Northern California, wrote in March 2013. She also ordered that the FBI stop sending out NSLs entirely, but put the order on hold to give the government a chance to appeal.
The government, predictably, did appeal, and in arguments yesterday before the 9th Circuit, a Justice Department lawyer said that they would lose “an extremely useful tool” if the court upholds the ban on NSLs. ...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the unnamed communications companies, argues that the FBI can get [the needed] information with a subpoena or another method with some judicial oversight.
One of the judges seemed to question why there was no end-date on the gag orders, and why the burden was on the recipients of NSLs to challenge them. “It leaves it to the poor person who is subject to those requirements to just constantly petition the government to get rid of it,” said the judge, N. Randy Smith. ...
Twitter also announced this week that it was suing the U.S. government over restrictions on how it can talk about surveillance orders. Tech companies can currently make public information about the number of NSLs or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders they receive in broad ranges, but Twitter wants to be more specific.
How The NSA Plans To Recruit Your Teenagers
The NSA has begun sponsoring cybersecurity camps for middle and high school students, agency recruiter Steven LaFountain told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a recent interview. Six prototype camps launched this past summer, and the NSA hopes to eventually have a presence in schools in all 50 states.
The camps, LaFountain told CNBC, teach “low-level programming… where most cybersecurity vulnerabilities are” and sponsor activities like a “wireless scavenger hunt” in which 10th graders were dispatched to hunt down “rogue access points.” The general idea is to eliminate “threats out there on the Internet”
“The students are really, really into it,” LaFountain added. ...
No word yet on if the curriculum offers students an Intro to
Executive Order 12333 or gives them spark notes on
using FISA warrants to surveil American activists.
Alexander Financial Forms Vice News
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture
Michael Brown jury: putting a value on a black life in the United States
In September 1955, an all-white jury took just 67 minutes to acquit Emmett Till’s killers. Till, 14, said either “Bye, baby” or wolf-whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Mississippi. Three days later his body was fished out of the Tallahatchie river with a bullet in his skull, an eye gouged out and his forehead crushed on one side. “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop,” said one juror, “it wouldn’t have taken that long.”
In 2014, racism is more sophisticated but no less deadly. The grand jury investigating the killing of Michael Brown is taking its time. Brown, 18, was unarmed when he was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, in August. Wilson has been suspended on full pay and has not been charged. The four-month period that a panel usually convenes for expired last month. The judge gave the grand jury 60 more days to make a decision, so it has until January 7 to decide whether to indict Wilson. That’s a lot of pop. ...
The grand jury decision is not just about the fate of one police officer, it is also about the value of black life. It will determine whether there is a price to pay for summarily removing a man from the planet or whether it’s the cost of doing business when one man has a badge and a gun and the other has too much melanin. Under slavery, an owner would have to be reimbursed for a slave who was deemed unreasonably slaughtered. Under Jim Crow they would leave lynched bodies hanging to warn others of the price of transgression – real or imagined. When Brown’s body was left lying lifeless in the street for four hours before the police collected it, it was an ugly metaphor for the contempt for black life in this post-civil rights, post-industrial moment – dispensable, despised and discarded.
Ferguson October: Activists Call for Nationwide Convergence to Demand Justice for Michael Brown
Ferguson Prepares For 'Weekend of Resistance' as Protests Erupt Once Again
It's been exactly two months since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and the protests and anger over his death have not stopped. ...
The Ferguson movement grew spontaneously, in response to Brown's death at first, then to the harsh police response to protesters. But as the days went by, and the tear gas and arrests continued, they grew organized.
Over the last few weeks, several groups born in the wake of the August's protests began to organize and coordinate with each other, and in solidarity with social justice groups across the country.
And this weekend, the protests will be back once again in full swing, as up to 10,000 people, according to organizers, are expected to descend on Ferguson for a weekend of action and resistance dubbed "Ferguson October." ...
Planned events include a march to the office of Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor in Wilson's case, on Friday, a rally in downtown St. Louis on Saturday, and a "hip hop & hope" rally on Sunday, featuring appearances by public intellectual Cornel West and St. Louis rapper Tef Poe, among others.
On Monday, protesters promised a series of "civil disobedience" actions throughout Ferguson and St. Louis.
St Louis area braces for protests after police shoot dead black teen
Authorities in Missouri are braced for a weekend of reinvigorated protests around the city of Ferguson over the killing of Michael Brown, after another black 18-year-old was shot dead by a police officer in nearby St Louis. ...
Mike O’Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri department of public safety, told the Guardian that authorities had been meeting “to get ready for this weekend’s protests.” He said that the response of law enforcement would be “appropriate and measured”.
This weekend’s planned protests also come amid tensions highlighted by the release of footage showing white fans of the St Louis Cardinals, the city’s baseball team, taunting black protesters demonstrating over Brown’s death, and endorsing Wilson, the officer who shot him.
Revolution Wheels Turning
Wisconsin voter ID law blocked by US supreme court weeks before elections
The US supreme court has blocked a controversial voter ID law in Wisconsin that had theatened to cause chaos at the polls, as a federal court struck down a similar requirement in Texas.
The surprise move by the supreme court on Thursday restored a lower court ruling that postponed the introduction of the Wisconsin new law, pending a full trial. On 12 September, an appeals court had unexpectedly lifted a stay, meaning the law would be implemented with just weeks to go before the November elections.
The court wrote that it based its decision to stop implementation of the law due to the “proximity of the upcoming general election”. The order added: “It is particularly troubling that absentee ballots have been sent out without any notation that proof of photo identification must be submitted.” Three conservative justices – Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – dissented.
The action means the Wisconsin law, which requires voters to present photo identification when they cast ballots, will not be in effect in the runup to the elections next month.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: women, don't ask for a raise
Satya Nadella, the Microsoft chief executive officer, has said women don’t need to ask for a raise and should instead put their trust in the system – one that at technology companies is overwhelmingly male.
Nadella spoke on Thursday at an event for women in computing held in Phoenix. He was asked to give his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a raise.
“It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,” he answered. Not asking for raise, he added, was “good karma” that would help a boss realise the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility.
His interviewer, Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College and a Microsoft director, told him she disagreed, drawing cheers from the audience. She suggested women do their homework on salary information and then practice how to ask with people they trust.
After getting blasted on Twitter for his remarks, Nadella tweeted: “Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias.”
The Evening Greens
Global Warming Reducing Fisheries and Destroying Livelihoods
New "Environmental Sheriff" Says Canada Failing Climate Commitments
The Canadian government, under the direction of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is not doing enough to address rising greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously neglecting to regulate the industries driving those soaring levels, charged an internal government report published Tuesday.
The report, 2014 Fall Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, was put forth by the Auditor General's office and is the first released under Julie Gelfand, who took over the reins as Commissioner in March.
The series of audits analyzed Canada's actions related to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental monitoring of tar sands development, and marine navigation in the Canadian Arctic.
Gelfand found is that Canada has made "unsatisfactory progress" in addressing its carbon output and has no detailed plan to do so, despite pledging under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce its emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020.
"The evidence is pretty strong that we will not meet the target," Gelfand said.
Also, the Commissioner slammed the Canadian government's failure to implement emissions regulations for the oil and gas industries.
Detroit Faces "Humanitarian Crisis" as City Shuts Off Water Access for Thousands of Residents
A Shift from Fossil Fuels Could Provide $1.8 Trillion in Savings, Two New Reports Conclude
A worldwide transition to low carbon fuels could save the global economy as much as $1.8 trillion over the next two decades, according to two reports published Thursday by the Climate Policy Initiative.
By switching to renewable energy sources, the high costs associated with extracting and transporting coal and gas could be avoided, the reports, titled Moving to a Low Carbon Economy: The Financial Impact of the Low-Carbon Transition, and Moving to a Low Carbon Economy: The Impact of Different Policy Pathways on Fossil Fuel Asset Values, conclude.
This would free up funds to bolster financial support for wind, solar and other renewables – with enormous sums left over, the reports conclude. Following an approach aimed at capping climate change at 2 degrees Celsius will require walking away from massive reserves of fossil fuels, stranding the assets of major corporations, many researchers have warned. The new reports give this issue a closer look, demonstrating that more than half of the assets at risk are actually owned by governments not corporations.
This finding could be double-edged, since that means taxpayer money in many countries is at stake and those governments have the power to establish policies that could promote or repudiate the fossil fuels they control. But the reports' conclusion that trillions could be freed up if governments and private companies abandon those assets could make it easier for governments to leave those fossil fuels in the ground.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Family Farmers, Not Green-Washed 'Climate Smart' Agriculture Is the Solution to Climate and Hunger
Crypto wars redux: why the FBI's desire to unlock your private life must be resisted
From Cradle to Grave, the US Protected Jean-Claude Duvalier
Washington Wields the Oil Weapon
Fighting the Islamic State — how much will it cost?
Flaws found in Ukraine's probe of Maidan massacre
A Little Night Music
Albert Collins - Iceman
Albert Collins - I Ain't Drunk
Albert Collins - Dirty Dishes
Albert Collins - Honey Hush
Albert Collins - My Woman Has A Black Cat Bone
Albert Collins - Frosty
Albert Collins - The Moon is Full
Albert Collins - Same Old Thing
Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan & Lonnie Mack - Further On Down The Road
Albert Collins 1988
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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