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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features soul singer O.V. Wright. Enjoy!
O.V. Wright - You're Gonna Make Me Cry
“There would be an end of war and preparations for war if the cost were borne by those responsible for war. There would be an end of armaments and preparedness if incomes and inheritances and the landed estates of the feudal classes paid for the protection which their privileges enjoy. War and preparations for war are possible only because the ruling classes are able to shift a great part of the cost onto the poor by indirect taxation and loans. War expenditures are tolerated only because the burdens are concealed in the increased cost of the things people consume. ‘The art of plucking the goose without making it cry out’ has been developed to a high state of perfection at the hands of the war makers.”
-- Frederic Clemson Howe
News and Opinion
With US-led air strikes on Isis intensifying, it’s a good time to be an arms giant like Lockheed Martin
So who is winning the war? Isis? Us? The Kurds (remember them?) The Syrians? The Iraqis? Do we even remember the war? Not at all. We must tell the truth. So let us now praise famous weapons and the manufacturers that begat them.
Share prices are soaring in America for those who produce the coalition bombs and missiles and drones and aircraft participating in this latest war which – for all who are involved (except for the recipients of the bombs and missiles and those they are fighting) – is Hollywood from start to finish.
Shares in Lockheed Martin – maker of the “All for One and One for All” Hellfire missiles – are up 9.3 per cent in the past three months. Raytheon – which has a big Israeli arm – has gone up 3.8 per cent. Northrop Grumman shares swooped up the same 3.8 per cent. And General Dynamics shares have risen 4.3 per cent. Lockheed Martin – which really does steal Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers quotation on its publicity material – makes the rockets carried by the Reaper drones, famous for destroying wedding parties over Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by Iraqi aircraft. ...
Let me give you a real-time quotation from reporter Dan De Luce’s dispatch on arms sales for the French [Agence France-Presse] news agency. “The war promises to generate more business not just from US government contracts but other countries in a growing coalition, including European and Arab states… Apart from fighter jets, the air campaign [sic] is expected to boost the appetite for aerial refuelling tankers, surveillance aircraft such as the U-2 and P-8 spy planes, and robotic [sic again, folks] drones… Private security contractors, which profited heavily from the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, also are optimistic the conflict will produce new contracts to advise Iraqi troops.”
US Airdrops Weapons to Kobane, Turkey to Allow Kurdish Peshmerga Into Town
US aircraft have airdropped arms to Kurdish forces defending Kobane from Islamic State (IS) jihadists, as Turkey says it will allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters passage into the Syrian border town.
American C-130 planes delivered weapons, ammunition and medical supplies provided by Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters on Sunday, according to a statement from US Central Command. The operation was intended to "enable continued resistance against ISIL's attempts to overtake Kobane," CentCom added, using the former name for the Islamic State.
YPG spokesperson Redur Xelil told Reuters that the weapons would "help greatly" in the fight against IS. "The military assistance dropped by American planes at dawn on Kobane was good and we thank America for this support," he said.
Meanwhile Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusogl, told reporters on Monday that authorities were helping KRG peshmerga troops to cross into Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab, and that talks on the subject were ongoing. "We never wanted Kobane to fall," he insisted at a press conference in Ankara, a reference to criticism from the Kurds and the international community over Turkey's lack of action against the jihadists on its doorstep.
Turkey will not cooperate in US support for Kurds in Syria, says Erdogan
Turkey would not agree to any US arms transfers to Kurdish fighters who are battling Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Sunday, as the extremist group fired more mortar rounds near the Syrian-Turkish border and fighting around the besieged town of Kobani intensified.
Turkey views the main Syrian Kurdish group, the PYD, and its military wing which is fighting Isis militants as an extension of the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terror group by the US and Nato.
Washington has said recently that it has engaged in intelligence sharing with Kurdish fighters and officials have not ruled out future arms transfers to the Kurdish fighters.
“The PYD is for us, equal to the PKK. It is a terror organisation,” Erdogan told a group of reporters on his return from a visit to Afghanistan. “It would be wrong for the United States with whom we are friends and allies in Nato to talk openly and to expect us to say ‘yes’ to such a support to a terrorist organisation.”
Fiercest fighting in days hits Syrian border town
The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobani overnight as Islamic State fighters attacked Kurdish defenders with mortars and car bombs, sources in the town and a monitoring group said on Sunday.
Islamic State, which controls much of Syria and Iraq, fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday and some of the shells fell inside nearby Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more mortars were fired on Sunday. ...
Raids on Islamic State around Kobani have been stepped up, with the fate of the town seen as an important test for U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign against the Islamists.
Rival Governments Dispute Control of Libyan Oil
A dispute between rival Libyan governments over control of the North African nation’s oil industry is escalating, potentially complicating the production and sale of its most vital resource.
Islamist rebels took control of the Libyan capital Tripoli in August and set up their own government, while the internationally recognized government led by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani and parliament fled to the east of the country.
A United Nations-sponsored dialogue between the two sides in the western city of Ghadames failed to resolve their differences last month.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this month called on a renegade general fighting Islamist militias in the east to stop his operations. But fighting has continued there and at least 18 people lost their lives in fierce street battles in the eastern city of Benghazi on Friday. ...
Libya is normally one of Europe’s largest oil suppliers, but disruptions since the fall of strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 have reduced its contribution to the continent’s oil supply.
Stephen Cohen - New Cold War
Executions, Mass Graves, and Torture 'Misreported' in Eastern Ukraine, Amnesty Report SaysSummary Killing During the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine — details a series of interviews conducted by human rights investigators in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region over late August and September. It says both Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have have manufactured or misrepresented the death and torture of civilians.
"There is no doubt that summary killings and atrocities are being committed by both pro-Russia separatists and pro-Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine, but is difficult to get an accurate sense of the scale of these abuses," John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. "It is likely that many have not yet been exposed and that others have been deliberately misrecorded." ...
The human rights situation in eastern Ukraine is deteriorating rapidly amid reports of constant shelling, gunfire, and reprisal attacks, the UN said in its own bi-annual report released this month. The fighting has disrupted the lives of millions of residents, whose homes, businesses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed.
U.S. Soldiers Get Just Four Hours of Ebola Training
American military operations to fight Ebola in Africa are unfolding quickly—forcing the military to come up with some procedures and protocols on the fly.
Soldiers preparing for deployment to West Africa are given just four hours of Ebola-related training before leaving to combat the epidemic. And the first 500 soldiers to arrive have been holing up in Liberian hotels and government facilities while the military builds longer-term infrastructure on the ground. ...
A team of two can train as many as 50 personnel over that four-hour time frame, USAMRIID told The Daily Beast. The training includes hands-on instruction on how to put on, remove, and decontaminate personal protective equipment, followed by a practical test to ensure that soldiers understand the procedures. ...
“I’m not an epidemiologist, but it’s been shown that this disease is most manifest when handling bodily fluid—blood, other sorts of fluids, and there is no plan right now for U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to do that,” Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, the officer in charge of America’s operations center in Liberia, told reporters Thursday. “As long as you exercise basic sanitation and cleanliness sort of protocols … I think the risk is relatively low.”
26 Arrested, 60 Injured in Weekend of Violent Clashes in Hong Kong
Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators have redoubled efforts to rebuild occupation barricades in the streets of the city's financial center after 26 people were arrested and more than 60 injured in violent clashes with police over the weekend.
Protesters reclaimed occupation zones and established new barricades in parts of a main protest area in Mong Kok Saturday and Sunday after a clearing operation Friday evening riled up — but ultimately failed to disperse — the crowd of roughly 9,000.
Activists armed with yellow hardhats, goggles, and cloth masks used umbrellas to shield themselves from police batons and pepper spray as authorities in riot gear charged protest lines. Umbrellas have become an unofficial symbol of the resistance, which some have dubbed the "umbrella revolution."
Dr. Chan Kin-man, one of the organizers and co-founder of the Occupy Central movement, told local media that the scene over the weekend was "weird because the police knew that they couldn't… stop people from gathering by using pepper spray, but they still used it."
The heavy-handed police response "was only arousing conflict," he said.
Hong Kong protests: ‘external forces’ blamed by chief executive
Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive Leung Chun-ying on Sunday blamed “external forces” for the unprecedented pro-democracy protests which continue to paralyse large swathes of the city in their 22nd consecutive day.
In an interview with the station Asia TV, which has a pro-mainland reputation, he called the protests “out of control even for the people who started it”.
“There is obviously participation by people, organisations from outside of Hong Kong, in politics in Hong Kong, over a long time,” he said. “This is not the only time when they do it, and this is not an exception either.” He declined to elaborate.
Mainland authorities have repeatedly condemned the protests using similar language – numerous state media editorials have blamed them on “foreign forces” attempting to subvert China by fomenting a “color revolution”. Central authorities “fully support” Leung, the editorials said.
What ‘Democracy’ Really Means in U.S. and New York Times Jargon
One of the most accidentally revealing media accounts highlighting the real meaning of “democracy” in U.S. discourse is a still-remarkable 2002 New York Times Editorial on the U.S.-backed military coup in Venezuela, which temporarily removed that country’s democratically elected (and very popular) president, Hugo Chávez. ... Eleven years later, upon Chávez’s death, the Times editors admitted that “the Bush administration badly damaged Washington’s reputation throughout Latin America when it unwisely blessed a failed 2002 military coup attempt against Mr. Chávez” [the paper forgot to mention that it, too, blessed (and misled its readers about) that coup]. The editors then also acknowledged the rather significant facts that Chávez’s “redistributionist policies brought better living conditions to millions of poor Venezuelans” and “there is no denying his popularity among Venezuela’s impoverished majority.”
If you think The New York Times editorial page has learned any lessons from that debacle, you’d be mistaken. Today they published an editorial expressing grave concern about the state of democracy in Latin America generally and Bolivia specifically. The proximate cause of this concern? The overwhelming election victory of Bolivian President Evo Morales (pictured above), who, as The Guardian put it, “is widely popular at home for a pragmatic economic stewardship that spread Bolivia’s natural gas and mineral wealth among the masses.”
... [T]he real reason the NYT so vehemently dislikes these elected leaders and ironically views them as threats to “democracy” becomes crystal clear toward the end of the editorial (emphasis added):
This regional dynamic has been dismal for Washington’s influence in the region. In Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the new generation of caudillos [sic] have staked out anti-American policies and limited the scope of engagement on development, military cooperation and drug enforcement efforts. This has damaged the prospects for trade and security cooperation.
You can’t get much more blatant than that. The democratically elected leaders of these sovereign countries fail to submit to U.S. dictates, impede American imperialism, and subvert U.S. industry’s neoliberal designs on the region’s resources. Therefore, despite how popular they are with their own citizens and how much they’ve improved the lives of millions of their nations’ long-oppressed and impoverished minorities, they are depicted as grave threats to “democracy.”
Russell Brand & Alec Baldwin
There's lots of food for thought in this article, it's worth clicking the link for a full read:
Chris Hedges: The Imperative of Revolt
I met with Sheldon S. Wolin in Salem, Ore., and John Ralston Saul in Toronto and asked the two political philosophers the same question. If, as Saul has written, we have undergone a corporate coup d’état and now live under a species of corporate dictatorship that Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism,” if the internal mechanisms that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible remain ineffective, if corporate power retains its chokehold on our economy and governance, including our legislative bodies, judiciary and systems of information, and if these corporate forces are able to use the security and surveillance apparatus and militarized police forces to criminalize dissent, how will change occur and what will it look like? ...
Wolin and Saul said they expect the state, especially in an age of terminal economic decline, to employ more violent and draconian forms of control to keep restive populations in check. This coercion, they said, will fuel discontent and unrest, which will further increase state repression. ...
“They decided that capitalism and the market was about the right to have the cheapest possible goods,” Saul said. “That is what competition meant. This is a lie. No capitalist philosopher ever said that. As you bring the prices down below the capacity to produce them in a middle-class country you commit suicide. As you commit suicide you have to ask, ‘How do we run this place?’ And you have to run it using these other methods—bread and circuses, armies, police and prisons.” ...
“It is extremely important that people are willing to go into the streets,” Saul said. “Democracy has always been about the willingness of people to go into the streets. ... If you look at that, at what is happening in Canada, at the movements in Europe, the hundreds of thousands of people in Spain in the streets, you are seeing for the first time since the 19th century or early 20th century people coming into the streets in large numbers without a real political structure. These movements aren’t going to take power. But they are a sign that power and the respect for power is falling apart. ... But none of these mass mobilizations, Saul and Wolin emphasized, will work unless there is a core of professional organizers. ...
“You need a professional or elite class devoted to profound change,” Saul said. “If you want to get power you have to be able to hold it. And you have to be able to hold it long enough to change the direction. The neoconservatives understood this. They have always been Bolsheviks. They are the Bolsheviks of the right. Their methodology is the methodology of the Bolsheviks. They took over political parties by internal coups d’état. They worked out, scientifically, what things they needed to do and in what order to change the structures of power. They have done it stage by stage. And we are living the result of that. The liberals sat around writing incomprehensible laws and boring policy papers. They were unwilling to engage in the real fight that was won by a minute group of extremists.”
Top NSA Official Has a Lucrative Side-Business
A new report suggests that a high-ranking NSA official may have a profitable side-gig in the “electronics” business.
Last month a Buzzfeed’s Aram Roston published a story documenting potential self-dealing by the head NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, Teresa O’Shea. O’Shea happens to be married to the Vice President of DRS Signal Solutions – a company which circumstantial evidence suggests was the beneficiary of significant contracting work from the agency.
Yet another company, apparently focused on the office and electronics business, is based at the Shea residence on that well-tended lot. This company is called Oplnet LLC.
Teresa Shea, who has been at the NSA since 1984, is the company’s resident agent. The company’s articles of organization….show that the firm was established in 1999 primarily “to buy, sell, rent and lease office and electronic equipment and related goods and services.
The NSA declined to comment to Buzzfeed about this story. But with the potential suggestion of high-level corruption in the agency, it’s clear that that some answers are going to be needed. After all, if top NSA officials are apparently spending their time running secret side-businesses, it’s going to be difficult for them to focus on their day jobs of spying on American citizens and eroding the country’s civil liberties.
The FBI Director’s Evidence Against Encryption Is Pathetic
FBI Director James Comey gave a speech Thursday about how cell-phone encryption could lead law enforcement to a “very dark place” where it “misses out” on crucial evidence to nail criminals. To make his case, he cited four real-life examples — examples that would be laughable if they weren’t so tragic.
In the three cases The Intercept was able to examine, cell-phone evidence had nothing to do with the identification or capture of the culprits, and encryption would not remotely have been a factor.
Court May Reveal Details about UK Spying on Attorney-Client Communications
British spy agencies have secret policies on the interception of private communications between lawyers and their clients, attorneys told a judge Thursday, arguing that the documents should be made public.
The lawyers — acting on behalf of two men who claim they were kidnapped under a UK rendition program, taken to Libya, held captive, and tortured — demanded the documents in a rare public hearing of the UK's secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). ...
Client-lawyer communications are "privileged" under longstanding rules in British courts. But in documents discussed at the hearing Thursday, the government admitted that its intelligence agencies have policies that provide "guidance" on the interception of privileged material by security service personnel.
The UK government maintains that releasing the "guidance" documents would be "damaging to the public interest or prejudicial to national security, the prevention or detection of serious crime and the continued discharge of the functions of the intelligence services." ...
Further preliminary hearings will be held in the case to decide whether the documents should be disclosed, and whether the tribunal even has the power to order the government to release the documents.
"Women Are Being Driven Offline": Feminist Anita Sarkeesian Terrorized for Critique of Video Games
Do Democrats want to fix inequality? Or just complain about it?
On Friday, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen warned that “income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years”. On Saturday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for federal student loan refinancing, and declared: “The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it.” On Sunday, along with a secret memo that threatened “crushing” defeats, there was the headline on the front page of the New York Times: “Black Vote Seen as Last Hope for Democrats to Hold Senate”.
Inequality: it’s all anybody can talk about ... except Democrats on the campaign trail who, with two weeks before Election Day, desperately need to turn out the very people so disproportionately affected by it – young and minority voters. ...
[H]ousing and education are issues of inequality that have solutions, not just stump-speech lines or YouTube-ready complaints. And if Democrats have any hope left in the midterms, they cannot be this shamefully muted on bold progressive policies that could dramatically improve the lives of voters who just happen to hold the keys to a majority of the United States Senate.
Barack Obama’s neglect on foreclosure has been well-documented. The housing crisis turned countless former homeowners into renters and, now, into would-be voters in dire straits. ... And if liberal candidates are so afraid to align themselves with Obama, why not speak out against one of his biggest failures?
Like the housing crisis, which decimated minority wealth, the failure to tackle spiraling student debt is another blight on Obama’s already terrible economic legacy. ... Warren – the most progressive senator in America the most unequal nation on Earth – stumped for Democrats in tight races in Iowa and Colorado and Minnesota, pushing her debt refinancing plan and “a giant pipeline of ideas”. The crowds roared. Now imagine how they’d respond to tuition-free college, to a home they could actually afford. Imagine that instead of an attack ad. Imagine how they’d vote.
Protests Sweep Philippines Following US Marine's Alleged Murder of Transgender Woman
Protests continue across the Philippines following news of the murder of Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina woman, allegedly at the hands of a U.S. marine in Olongapo City. Coming just months after the U.S. signed a controversial pact to boost its military presence in the Philippines, protesters say the killing is stoking deep-rooted anger over the U.S. military's treatment of Philippine civilians and prompting renewed calls to boot U.S. troops from the country.
"We are not only hoping to be able to bring justice to our fellow Filipina, but also to force the U.S. and Philippine governments to rethink their strategy in the region," Joms Salvador, Secretary General of GABRIELA—a Philippine alliance of women's movement organizations—told Common Dreams on Friday over the phone from Manila.
Jennifer Laude, 26 years old, was killed in a Olongapo City hotel room on October 11, with signs that she may have been beaten and strangled. Philippine police on Wednesday charged a U.S. marine, Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton, with the murder. Pemberton was one of 3,500 U.S. military service members taking part in a joint military exercise with the Philippines. ...
The Philippine government served a subpoena for Pemberton on Friday. However, past atrocities, and relative immunity for U.S. troops in the Philippines, leave many skeptical that the U.S. service member will be held to account.
US artist Paul McCarthy brings giant inflatable 'Tree' to Paris
The Evening Greens
Death of white rhino in Kenya leaves only six alive in the world
Fears grow for future of northern white rhino species after loss of 34-year-old Suni, one of last two breeding males in the world
An endangered northern white rhino has died in Kenya, a wildlife conservancy has said, meaning only six of the animals are left alive in the world.
Suni, a 34-year-old northern white, and the first of his species to be born in captivity, was found dead on Friday by rangers at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy near Nairobi. While there are thousands of southern white rhinos in the plains of sub-Saharan Africa, decades of rampant poaching has meant the northern white rhino is close to extinction.
Suni was one of the last two breeding males in the world as no northern white rhinos are believed to have survived in the wild. ...
The conservancy said in a statement: “The species now stands at the brink of complete extinction, a sorry testament to the greed of the human race."
'Major' Oil Spill Strikes Louisiana, Threatens Waterways
Officials on Sunday are continuing work to contain what an EPA representative called a major oil spill in northwestern Louisiana that could take months to clean up.
The rupture of Sunoco Logistics' Mid-Valley pipeline near Mooringsport in Caddo Parish on Monday released an estimated 4,000 barrels of crude oil.
That amount makes it one of this year's largest spills, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing federal records.
KTBS reports: "Raw oil is coating around a four mile section of Tete Bayou." The spill response team is attempting to stop the oil from flowing into Caddo Lake, which provides drinking water for several municipalities in Louisiana and Texas.
Proving Power of Renewables, Wind Making Dirty Fuels Obsolete in Northern Europe
The wind power boom in Nordic countries is making fossil fuel-fired power plants obsolete and is pushing electricity prices down, according to reporting by Reuters published Friday.
Power prices in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have dropped sharply as renewable energy floods the market, efficiency measures lower energy use overall, and growth remains stagnant, reporter Nerijus Adomaitis writes. This, in turn, will lead to the "mothballing" of 2,000 megawatts (MW) of coal capacity in Denmark and Finland over the next 15 years, a Norway-based consultant tells Adomaitis.
According to the article, "Pushing fossil-fueled power stations out of the Nordic generation park is part of government plans across the region."
It seems to be working. One gas-fired power plant in Norway was put in "cold reserve," or decommissioned, this January; a coal-fired power plant in Finland was shut down earlier this year; and Swedish-owned power company Vattenfall said in May it will shut down its coal-fired power plant in Denmark in May 2016.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Blowing the Whistle on CIA Torture from Beyond the Grave
The state wants to spy on us – but is it up to the job?
The Forever-War President: Obama’s ‘Transformational’ War Powers Legacy
History of Key Document in IAEA Probe Suggests Israeli Forgery
A Little Night Music
O.V. Wright - A Nickel And A Nail
O.V. Wright - I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled, and Crazy
O.V. Wright - I'm into something, I can't shake loose
O.V. Wright - I don't want to sit down
O.V. Wright - Eight men four women
O.V. Wright w/The Keys - That's How Strong My Love Is
O.V. Wright - I'll take care of you
O.V. Wright - Ace Of Spades
O.V. Wright - Everybody Knows
O.V. Wright - Drowning On Dry Land
O.V. Wright - Your good thing is about to end
O.V. Wright - I Don't Know Why (I Love You Like I Do)
O.V. Wright - The Bottom Line
O.V. Wright - Poor Boy
O.V. Wright - Rhymes
O.V. Wright - Don't Let My Baby Ride
O.V. Wright - There Goes My Used To Be
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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