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 guitarist and songwriter Chuck Berry. Enjoy!
Chuck Berry - You Can't Catch Me
“We have seen segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action, adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as "vacuum cleaners", sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings. Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data. And once intelligence has been collected, there are strong pressures to use it against the target.”
-- Church Committee
News and Opinion
Judge Says Government Can’t Use State Secrets to Toss No Fly List Challenge
Under both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, the government has on occasion invoked the so-called state secrets privilege in order to toss out lawsuits. Merely allowing certain cases into the courtroom, the argument goes, would necessarily reveal secret information and endanger national security.
Yesterday, that argument failed, when a federal judge rejected the government’s attempts to dismiss a case brought by a man who is challenging his inclusion on the no-fly list. Gulet Mohamed was nineteen in 2011 when he was barred from coming home to his family in Virginia from Kuwait. A naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, Mohamed was allegedly detained at the behest of the U.S. and beaten by Kuwaiti officials before finally being allowed back into the country (a picture taken just after his arrival is shown above).
In allowing Mohamed’s case to proceed, Judge Anthony Trenga, in the Eastern District of Virginia, said that the state secrets privilege was “not a doctrine of sovereign immunity.” ...
Trenga demanded that he be allowed to review the secret documents related to the watchlisting in August, and wrote yesterday that he believed the case could still go forward without them. ...
The CIA famously used the state secrets privilege in 2006 to dismiss the case of German citizen Khaled El-Masri, an innocent man who was mistakenly turned over to the CIA, imprisoned, and tortured.
President Who Had Yemeni Journalist Jailed Criticizes Impunity for Mistreatment of Journalists
Sunday, November 2, 2014, was the first annual International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
To mark the date, the President issued this statement
History shows that a free press remains a critical foundation for prosperous, open, and secure societies, allowing citizens to access information and hold their governments accountable. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reiterates the fundamental principle that every person has the right “to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Each and every day, brave journalists make extraordinary risks to bring us stories we otherwise would not hear - exposing corruption, asking tough questions, or bearing witness to the dignity of innocent men, women and children suffering the horrors of war. In this service to humanity, hundreds of journalists have been killed in the past decade alone, while countless more have been harassed, threatened, imprisoned, and tortured. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists go unpunished.
All governments must protect the ability of journalists to write and speak freely. On this first-ever International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, the United States commends the priceless contributions by journalists to the freedom and security of us all, shining light into the darkness and giving voice to the voiceless. We honor the sacrifices so many journalists have made in their quest for the truth, and demand accountability for those who have committed crimes against journalists.
It’s a wonderful sentiment, but I wonder if President Obama has thought this through.
After all, as Jeremy Scahill reported several years ago, President Obama personally intervened to ensure that Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye would remain in prison after having been tortured and subjected to a trumped up trial. ...
Does President Obama decry the impunity he has enjoyed for imprisoning Shaye for his journalism?
US-Backed Rebels Surrender to a United ISIS-Nusra
The Obama Administration continues to insist that its strategy in Syria is “working,” but the setbacks on the ground are growing more dramatic by the day, and the Syrian Revolutionary Front, one of the largest “vetted, moderate” US-backed rebel forces, has been effectively wiped out.
The Revolutionary Front was routed by both ISIS and al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra in recent days, and has now surrendered outright after the fall of Deir Sinbal, agreeing to hand over all their weapons and bases to Nusra. ...
Nusra and ISIS had been at odds for most of the year going into the US war, but the administration’s decision to attack the both of them has driven them into a growing coordination, and turned the already massive ISIS into an even bigger group with even more international contacts. ...
The US policy of throwing weapons and funds at such factions has not only failed, it has failed spectacularly, giving ISIS and Nusra a steady stream of advanced weapons to loot from smaller forces.
Not only has the administration clearly not learned that lesson, but the plan to create a new rebel force seems destined to repeat it, on an even larger scale.
Syrian rebels armed and trained by US surrender to al-Qaeda
Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.
The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles. ...
For the United States, the weapons they supplied falling into the hands of al-Qaeda is a realisation of a nightmare.
It was not immediately clear if American TOW missiles were among the stockpile surrendered to Jabhat al-Nusra on Saturday. However several Jabhat al-Nusra members on Twitter announced triumphantly that they were.
Also the loss of a group that had been held up to the international media as being exemplary of Western efforts in Syria is a humiliating blow at the time that the US is increasing its military involvement in the country, with both air strikes and training of local rebels.
How Would a GOP-Controlled Senate Affect US-Iran Negotiations?
Ukraine's Separatist Rebel Republics Hold First Election
While most the region has been relatively calm for the last week, a spokesman for the Novoazovsk region of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) told VICE News that Sakhanka's proximity to the frontline makes it "one of the most dangerous places to live" in the rebel-held territory.
Despite the risks, a steady stream of people still trickled through the village's polling station Sunday to cast ballots in the first election in the separatist territories since the armed uprising in Ukraine's east began in mid-April.
The vote failed to meet mainstream Western standards. It was a one-horse race with no real competition challenging the incumbent authorities. Ballots were cast under the guard of armed men, and without proper electoral rolls. A motley assortment of "international observers" that included Russian Cossacks and extremist European politicians monitored the polls. ...
Despite the irregularities — and the fact that only Russia and a handful of other former Soviet states currently recognize the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, known collectively as NovoRossiya — voter turnout appeared to be high, highlighting how the protracted conflict has fueled anger with Kiev.
According to the DPR Central Election Commission, more than 1 million people cast ballots. With roughly 50 percent of the votes tallied Sunday night, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the acting prime minister of the DPR, appeared headed for an easy victory.
Russia tells Ukraine to halt military offensive in wake of rebel elections
Russia has called on Ukraine to halt its military offensive against pro-Moscow rebels in the east, saying the insurgent leaders have enough authority to hold talks with Kiev after elections in parts of the country under their control.
The deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, made the appeal after Moscow recognised separatist elections in two eastern Ukraine regions dismissed as illegal by Kiev and the west.
The hastily arranged polls were boycotted by mainstream international observers and only a handful of marginal rightwing politicians from Europe claimed to be monitoring the vote. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called the elections a new obstacle for peace.
Vote results announced on Monday showed Alexander Zakharchenko, the rebel leader in Donetsk, claiming an easy victory. The head of the separatists in Luhansk region, Igor Plotnitsky, won by a similarly large margin.
“The elected representatives of Donetsk and Luhansk regions obtained a mandate to hold negotiations with central Ukrainian authorities to solve problems … via a political dialogue,” Karasin said.
But an angry European response, likely to be echoed in Washington, raises the temperature in the west’s dispute with Russia over its support for the separatists.
China unveils laser drone defence system
Laser has 1.2-mile range and can bring down small low-flying aircraft within five seconds of locating target
China has developed a highly accurate laser weapon system that can shoot down light drones at low altitude, state media reported.
The machine has a 1.2-mile range and can bring down “various small aircraft” within five seconds of locating its target, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a statement by the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), one of the developers.
Xinhua showed pictures of large metal boxes in camouflage paint and the wreckage of a small drone, some of it burning.
The laser system is expected to “play a key role in ensuring security during major events in urban areas” and address concerns on unlicensed mapping activities, according to Xinhua. It is effective up to a maximum altitude of 500 metres and against aircraft flying at up to 50 metres per second (112mph), Xinhua said.
Hedges and Wolin (6/8): Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?
A Small Band of Activists Is Humiliating an Israeli Shipping Giant
Capping a series of victories by a modest band of pro-Palestinian activists, an Israel-based shipping company has re-routed a container ship from the Port of Oakland, where protestors had vowed to keep the ship from unloading, to an alternate destination in Russia.
The company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services is one of the largest cargo shipping outfits in the world, but of late it has seen its operations seriously disrupted by a small group of activists motivated by the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS), which targets companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Zim is an Israel-based company, and the “Block the Boat” movement – a combined effort of labor activists and Palestinian solidarity groups – has successfully stopped its ships from docking at Oakland ports several times since this summer. ...
Zim has drawn particular ire for its role in shipping Israeli armaments. ... Activists associated with the movement at least temporarily prevented Zim ships from unloading in August, when a ship was blocked from unloading and headed toward Los Angeles before turning back and successfully unloading, and again in September. But what appears to be their greatest victory came this week, when Zim decided reroute its cargo Russia rather than attempt to dock in Oakland once more. Their decision came just nine days after the company vowed to dock, in defiance of protests.
Ex-CIA Officer Ray McGovern describes his brutal arrest by NYPD
Pentagon’s plans for a spy service to rival the CIA have been pared back
The Pentagon has scaled back its plan to assemble an overseas spy service that could have rivaled the CIA in size, backing away from a project that faced opposition from lawmakers who questioned its purpose and cost, current and former U.S. officials said.
Under the revised blueprint, the Defense Intelligence Agency will train and deploy up to 500 undercover officers, roughly half the size of the espionage network envisioned two years ago when the formation of the Defense Clandestine Service was announced.
The previous plan called for moving as many as 1,000 undercover case officers overseas to work alongside the CIA and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command on counterterrorism missions and other targets of broad national security concern.
Instead, the training schedule has been cut back, and most of those involved will be given assignments that are more narrowly focused on the DIA’s traditional mission of gathering intelligence for the Defense Department.
Congress Still Has No Idea How Much the NSA Spies on Americans
The biggest lie Americans are told about the NSA is that it is subject to "strict oversight." ... The truth is that Congress is alarmingly ignorant about NSA spying. ... [E]ven the most diligent, knowledgeable members of the Senate Intelligence Committee consistently lack basic information that's plainly needed for adequate oversight. No one who assesses the relevant evidence can credibly deny this.
Take Senator Ron Wyden. No one could dispute that the Oregon Democrat zealously seeks information about America's intelligence agencies. No one disputes that he is far more knowledgeable about the intricacies of surveillance policy than the typical member of Congress. So it is instructive to reflect on what he hasn't known.
Though a member of the intelligence committee beginning in 2001, he didn't know about the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program until The New York Times reported on it in 2005 (after holding the story for more than a year). "He was surprised again when, six months later, USA Today published a different story revealing for the first time that the NSA was secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, records that US telecoms were willingly handing over without a warrant," Kim Zetter notes at Wired.
These two examples are sufficient to show that during the Bush years he was denied information of the utmost relevance to an overseer. And now under President Obama there are equally clear examples of information he requires but is denied. ...
In response to Edward Snowden's revelations about the phone dragnet, legislators are considering steps to better protect the private communications of Americans. But Congress cannot strike whatever balance it desires between surveillance and privacy if members don't even know what the spy agency does under legal cover of executive orders. Wyden suspects that the White House and intelligence community "agreed to halt the phone records collection program, in the wake of intense criticism, only because the spy agency has other tricks to get the same data."
Is he correct? The fact that one of the most interested members of the Senate Intelligence Committee doesn't know is a glaring problem.
Ferguson no-fly zone aimed at media
The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.
On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, FAA air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to let commercial flights operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and police helicopters fly through the area — but ban others.
"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out," said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. ...
The conversations contradict claims by the St. Louis County Police Department, which responded to demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, that the restriction was solely for safety and had nothing to do with preventing media from witnessing the violence or the police response.
Police said at the time, and again as recently as late Friday to the AP, that they requested the flight restriction in response to shots fired at a police helicopter.
But police officials confirmed there was no damage to their helicopter and were unable to provide an incident report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager described the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed "rumors."
The AP obtained the recordings under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. They raise serious questions about whether police were trying to suppress aerial images of the demonstrations and the police response by violating the constitutional rights of journalists with tacit assistance by federal officials.
New York Abandons ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Nonsense
The City of New York will be allowed to legally abandon the racially discriminatory “stop-and-frisk” searches used by New York police for more than a decade.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals granted the city’s request to withdraw its appeal in Floyd v New York, a 2008 case challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program as implemented under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The federal judge in the case ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional in August 2013, finding the NYPD liable for stopping innocent citizens — mainly young black and brown people — in the streets essentially because of their race. Bloomberg’s administration appealed the ruling, but new mayor Bill De Blasio and his staff agreed to drop the case in January while seeking reforms for NYPD behavior.
New York’s police unions pushed back, trying to continue the appeal, but the Second Circuit today denied their request and lifted a hold on stop-and-frisk program reforms put in place in October 2013.
Slave homes at Madison's Montpelier estate to be rebuilt
Homes of slaves who served President James Madison at his Montpelier estate in Virginia will be rebuilt for the first time over the next five years, along with other refurbishments to the home of one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, thanks to a $10m gift announced on Saturday.
David Rubenstein, a leading Washington philanthropist and history buff, pledged the $3.5m needed to rebuild the slave quarters next to the mansion in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. Another $6.5m will be devoted to refurnishing parts of the home where Madison drafted ideas that would become the US constitution and the Bill of Rights. ...
“It’s this dichotomy. You have people who were extraordinarily intelligent, well-informed, educated; they created this incredible country – Jefferson, Washington, Madison – yet they lived with this system of slavery. Jefferson, Washington and Madison all abhorred slavery, but they didn’t do, they couldn’t do much about it,” he said. “We shouldn’t deify our Founding Fathers without recognising that they did participate in a system that had its terrible flaws.”
Jim Crow Returns: Interstate "Crosscheck" Program Could Strip Millions of the Right to Vote
Sanders: Only If 'Millions and Millions' Rise Up, Can Progressive Agenda Win
In an interview with journalist Bill Moyers that will air Friday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who has announced he is seriously considering a run for president in 2016—said that though voter turnout is key in order to keep Republicans and their regressive polices from making gains in Congress and local elections nationwide, the real challenge for progressives in the coming days, months, and years is to build a powerful grassroots movement that is able to break the stranglehold that big money and corporate interests have placed on the nation's democratic insitutions.
"What we have got to do is mobilize the American people in a way that we have not seen in recent history around a progressive agenda," said Sanders.
When asked by Moyers how such a mobilization might be realized, Sanders admitted that he does "not have any magical solutions," but said that when people begin to stand up and say "Enough is enough"—and talk about doing well by their kids, protecting the environment, fighting corporate interests, winning healthcare for all, and taking on the billionaire class—the movement from below will inevitably shift the current debate. "When people begin to move, the people on top will follow them," he said.
"What I do know," Sanders continued, is that the landscape of U.S. politics will not change for the better "if we do not create an economy that works for ordinary people, if we do not end the fact that 95 percent of all new income now goes to the top one percent. We've got to end it, and the only way I know to do that is to rally ordinary people around the progressive agenda. So our job is to create a 50 state, grassroots movement around a progressive agenda."
The Evening Greens
The video that goes with this piece is really exceptionally well done, well worth your while to watch it.
The Coal Vote: Showdown in West Virginia's Midterm Elections
This year's midterm elections are projected to be the most expensive in American history. One of the most notable races, where outside interests are pouring in millions of dollars, is in West Virginia's third district — and the campaign is centered on one thing: coal.
The coal industry has dominated West Virginia for the past 150 years, exerting great influence over its economy and politics. Obama's push to drastically reduce carbon emissions to combat climate change has convinced many West Virginians that the federal government is waging a "war on coal" and, in turn, on West Virginia, as mines close and jobs are cut.
The IPCC is stern on climate change – but it still underestimates the situation
This week, with the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new synthesis report, they are trying the words “severe, widespread, and irreversible” to describe the effects of climate change – which for scientists, conservative by nature, falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola. It’s hard to imagine how they will up the language in time for the next big global confab in Paris.
But even with all that, this new document – actually a synthesis of three big working group reports released over the last year – almost certainly underestimates the actual severity of the situation. As the Washington Post pointed out this week, past reports have always tried to err on the side of understatement; it’s a particular problem with sea level rise, since the current IPCC document does not even include the finding in May that the great Antarctic ice sheets have begun to melt. (The studies were published after the IPCC’s cutoff date.)
But when you get right down to it, who cares? The scientists have done their job; no sentient person, including Republican Senate candidates, can any longer believe in their heart of hearts that there’s not a problem here. ... Our political leaders could do much more, of course. If they put a serious price on carbon, we would move quickly out of the fossil fuel age and into the renewable future. But that won’t happen until we break the power of the fossil fuel industry. ... Breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry won’t be easy, especially since it has to happen fast. It has to happen, in fact, before the carbon we’ve unleashed into the atmosphere breaks the planet. I’m not certain we’ll win this fight – but, thanks to the IPCC, no one will ever be able to say they weren’t warned.
Obama works toward non-binding, "handshake" global agreement on climate change
In speeches this week, Obama’s lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, has given the clearest indication to date that America is pushing for an agreement with some elements of a full-scale, legally binding international treaty. But other key components of a global agreement would be more in line with a handshake deal among leaders.
The combo deal would allow America to join other countries in cutting carbon dioxide emissions but avoid having to obtain Senate ratification, which is generally acknowledged as politically impossible. ... As outlined this week by Stern, countries would be required to make a public pledge on cutting their greenhouse gas emissions to reach a 2025 target. Countries would also be required to report on progress they have made towards reaching those targets.
However, the countries would be left to determine the scale of their own cuts, and critics point out there are no guarantees that all of the actions taken by individual countries would be enough to avoid crossing the 2C threshold that scientists say would result in catastrophic climate change. ...
The approach spelled out by Stern this week is broadly similar to that which Obama and other officials have been promoting in the international arena since the ruinous Copenhagen summit five years ago.
Australia's "Direct Action" is like a dodgy laundry powder that never gets the climate clean
Direct Action is the brand name of the freshly mintedAustralian Government policy to try and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
But with a name that sounds more like a dodgy box of laundry powder, Australia’s “Direct Action” is unlikely to leave the country looking any cleaner or smelling any fresher in the climate change stakes.
That’s because instead of removing the many stubborn stains that fossil fuel use leaves on the planet’s climate systems, Australia’s box of Direct Action comes with added coal dust.
How can it be seen otherwise when in the same week that Australia’s Senate passed the Direct Action legislation, the finance minister Mathias Cormann told parliament “coal is good”?
Cormann was responding to a question from Greens senator Larissa Waters who had pointed out that in India, coal burned in power plants was so good it was responsible for killing an estimated 80,000 to 115,000 people a year.
This just a couple of weeks after prime minister Tony Abbott told us “coal is good for humanity” and the treasurer Joe Hockey similarly spruiked the coal industry’s sudden concern for the world’s poor.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
War. Torture. The NSA. And Jerusalem? The American president's addiction to king-like power must end
Disparate Outrage: 150 Deaths is a Tragedy; 500,000? Just a Statistic
A Little Night Music
Chuck Berry - Maybellene
Chuck Berry - My Mustang Ford
Chuck Berry - Little Queenie
Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
Chuck Berry - Back in the USA
Chuck Berry - Havana Moon
Chuck Berry - House Of Blue Lights
Chuck Berry - Downbound Train
Chuck Berry - Let It Rock
Chuck Berry - Nadine
Chuck Berry - Reelin and Rockin
Chuck Berry & Eric Clapton - Wee Wee Hours
Chuck Berry & Keith Richards - Oh Carol
Chuck Berry - No Particular Place To Go
Chuck Berry - Down the road apiece
Chuck Berry - Too Much Monkey Business
Chuck Berry - Rip It Up
Chuck Berry - Around And Around
Grateful Dead - Around and Around
Chuck Berry Punched Keith Richards in the Face
Chuck Berry - Rock and Roll Music - Toronto, Canada 1969
Chuck Berry live at the Roxy 1982
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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