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 r&b singer Hank Ballard. Enjoy!
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - The Twist
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
-- Oscar Wilde
News and Opinion
Mike Gravel to Senator Mark Udall: Make Full Torture Probe Public Like I Did with Pentagon Papers
U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims
Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.
Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization. That, in turns, is what enables American elites first to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that - despite some isolated and well-intentioned bad acts – they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.” Not having to think about actual human victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime.
That’s the process by which the reliably repellent Tom Friedman seized on the torture report to celebrate America’s unique greatness. “We are a beacon of opportunity and freedom, and also [] these foreigners know in their bones that we do things differently from other big powers in history,” the beloved-by-DC columnist wrote after reading about forced rectal feeding and freezing detainees to death. For the opinion-making class, even America’s savage torture is proof of its superiority and inherent Goodness: “this act of self-examination is not only what keeps our society as a whole healthy, it’s what keeps us a model that others want to emulate, partner with and immigrate to.” ...
This self-glorifying ritual can be sustained only by completely suppressing America’s victims. If you don’t hear from the human beings who are tortured, it’s easy to pretend nothing truly terrible happened. That’s how the War on Terror generally has been “reported” for 13 years and counting: by completely silencing those whose lives are destroyed or ended by U.S. crimes. That’s how the illusion gets sustained.
Torture, ‘Meet the Press’ and Cheney’s Quest for Revenge
Parrying questions from Chuck Todd with what he must have figured were winning talking points about the 9/11 terror attacks, Cheney unwittingly demonstrated how profoundly he has renounced fundamental American concepts of morality and justice.
Cheney’s most telling response was to Todd’s questions about people who were detained completely by mistake but who were nevertheless tortured — in at least one case to death.
You have to be something other than a normal human being not to be troubled by that. ...
What Cheney was saying is basically: If you have a goal and you kill innocent people while you’re at it, tough shit. That is how terrorists think; it’s not how moral people think — or at least are supposed to think.
After listening to him on Sunday, it has never been clearer that to Cheney the interrogation of detainees was all about revenge — and about having, feeling and exercising power after feeling impotent in the face of an attack on the homeland. (After all, if he or anyone else in a position of power in the White House had paid an iota of attention to the issue before 9/11, the attack could likely have been averted.)
Dick Cheney’s dark victory: Torture and the demise of American democracy
If 9/11 was a test of America’s national character, we failed it. As distant as this possibility seems now, Americans of all creeds, colors and political affiliations felt united for a few weeks after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Yes, that soon gave way to jingoism, to strip-mall attacks on presumed Muslims and to the invasion of Afghanistan, which even a cursory, Cliffs Notes history of the Near East will tell you is the place where empires go to die. ...
If the attacks themselves seemed like a latter-day Pearl Harbor, a call to unified national purpose, it soon became apparent that there was no purpose around which we could unite. The “war on terror” had no clear enemy, no clear goals and no conceivable end point. There was no Berlin to capture, no Wehrmacht troops who could surrender and go home to lead peaceful lives. Although the war may be endless, a great victory has already been won: the victory over democracy by the “imperial executive” and the forces of the “deep state,” a new form of soft totalitarianism more cleverly disguised than the older and more obvious ones. A democratic government is supposed to operate with the consent of the governed. When the governed are conditioned by fear, bathed in paranoid propaganda and offered only one choice – trust us to keep you safe, or face the wrath of a world that hates you – consent becomes a matter of instinct, or pathological compulsion. ...
I also think it’s a mistake to depict the relatively contained torture regime of the Bush-Cheney administration as some kind of bizarre aberration that violated the norms of our post-9/11 national conduct. It’s almost the opposite: Our torture policy distilled all the self-destructive and counterproductive policies of the “war on terror” into one unbearable image, a human body subjected to sadistic extremes of pain and abuse for undisclosed reasons or no reason at all, without even the pretense of due process or any recognition of his human rights. That goes along with a costly and disastrous invasion of a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11, and a successor president who has moved on from the threadbare legal arguments used to classify torture as non-torture to the breathtaking position that he holds the right to order the push-button execution of anyone in the world. ...
In order to save democracy, the torturers had to destroy it. Somewhere in Nietzsche’s discussion of “decadence,” an important concept in his philosophy, he defines it as a quality that leads people or societies to seek their own deterioration and destruction. (Nietzsche was certainly no fan of democracy, but he also noted that decadent societies were characterized by severe social and economic inequality and a lack of moral and intellectual leadership.) I don’t suggest that Dick Cheney and his Fox News acolytes harbor a conscious death-wish; they lack the imagination and insight for that. But their nightmarish fantasies all point toward that outcome. It’s as good an explanation of America’s insane response to 9/11 as any. What kind of society produces physicians who will supervise waterboarding and “rectal feeding,” or psychologists who spin the supervision of a secret torture program into an $80 million government contract? What ideal of America is being preserved by such methods, and will it bear their mark forever?
After Duo Created CIA Torture Methods, Did World’s Largest Group of Psychologists Enable Abuses?
CIA torture: health professionals 'may have committed war crimes'
Health professionals who assisted in the CIA’s torture programme of terror suspects “betrayed the most fundamental duty of the healing professions” and may have committed war crimes, according to a hard hitting report released on Tuesday.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) called for a federal commission to investigate the full extent of health professionals’ participation in CIA torture following last week’s release of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programme.
“Under the auspices of the Bush administration, the CIA systematically tortured suspected terrorist detainees, in at least one instance to the point of death. This torture program heavily relied on the participation and active engagement of health professionals to commit, conceal, and attempt to justify these crimes,” PHR concludes.
The report comes days after Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, defended the practices disclosed in the report including “rectal feeding” – arguing the practice was done for medical reasons. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has also claimed that the practice was carried out on medical grounds.
According to PHR rectal hydration is almost never practiced in medicine because there are more effective methods, and it is never considered as a first option for rehydration or nutritional support. PHR notes that the report indicates that rectal hydration was used to “control and/or punish the detainees ... Insertion of any object into the rectum of an individual without his consent constitutes a form of sexual assault.”
Doing Harm: Health Professionals’ Central Role in the CIA Torture Program
This analysis by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report’s executive summary builds on years of investigation and research documenting the systematic use of torture by the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks. A detailed review of the 500-page SSCI executive summary was conducted by a team of PHR experts.
The torture report’s executive summary describes in detail the acts and omissions of CIA health professionals who violated their professional ethics, undermined the critical bond of trust between patients and doctors, and broke the law. Based on PHR’s detailed review of the SSCI summary, health professionals who participated in the CIA torture program violated core ethical principles common to all healing professions, including the following obligations:
- To do no harm;
- To protect the lives and health of patients under their care from harm and brutality;
- To prevent and report torture;
- To uphold standards of professionalism, be honest in professional interactions, and report incompetence, fraud, and deception;
- To never engage in unethical research on human subjects;
- To receive the informed consent of the patient before providing medical treatment;
- To only perform roles consistent with their ethics and professional competencies; and
- To find an ethical resolution when health professionals’ obligations to persons under their care and to society conflict with the agenda of state institutions.
PHR calls for a federal commission to investigate, document, and hold accountable all health professionals who participated in the CIA torture program.
Full report: here. (pdf)
The US paid torture doctors millions. Why is it last in the world in punishing them?
Governments that torture protect their torture doctors. Their medical communities help them do so. And that is exactly why torture doctors, including those who work for the United States, must be punished.
Torturing regimes need torture doctors. They routinely hire torture doctors to invent, monitor and conduct techniques like waterboarding and rectal feeding that crush the soul without leaving a tell-tale scar for a human-rights advocates to point to as evidence. Torture doctors watch the torture to keep alive those who are not supposed to die. They falsely certify “no signs of injuries” on medical records and “natural causes” on death certificates to protect their collaborators in torture from punishment – to protect the governments that pay them well and protect them from punishment.
President George W Bush’s regime tortured, and as the Senate’s report on the CIA makes clear, doctors and psychologists were hired to help every step of the way. ...
When courts and medical boards in some countries move too slowly, civil society strikes back. Town councils have declared some physicians persona non grata. Hospitals and clinics have revoked privileges. Medical societies have revoked honors. Other groups name and shame torture doctors by naming their victims and posting of them pictures on websites and plastering indictments on the doctors’ homes and offices.
But in the United States, so-called “War on Terror” cases have brought a couple clinicians before state licensing boards that have mumbled about military orders. The American Medical Association touts its codes of conduct and makes sure to “remind physicians of their ethical obligations” – but calls for no punishment and no independent medical truth commission. The bravest it got was to ask the Defense Department to investigate itself.
Army Cancels Gitmo Hearing on FBI Infiltration
The US Army today announced that it has cancelled the two-day pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Bay related to FBI infiltration of the defense teams for detainees. They provided no reason for the cancellation.
The hearing was to examine the extent to which the FBI had infiltrated the defense teams of five different detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In April, one of the security contractors working for Mohammed’s defense team revealed that he had been pressured to sign an agreement with FBI to keep them informed on the inner workings of the defense.
Brazil president weeps as she unveils report on military dictatorship's abuses
The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, wept on Wednesday as she unveiled the findings of a Truth Commission investigation into the systematic murder, torture and other abuses carried out during the country’s military dictatorship.
After a nearly three-year study, the commission confirmed that 191 people were killed and 243 “disappeared” under military rule, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. More than 200 have never been found.
The 2,000-page report named 377 officials who were blamed for serious human rights violations and recommended a revision to the 1979 Amnesty Law so that perpetrators can be prosecuted.
It also called on the military to recognise its responsibility for “grave violations” of the law and human rights, noting that even today the armed forces were uncooperative in providing materials and granting interviews about alleged abuses.
A share of the blame went to the United States and the UK, which were found to have trained Brazilian interrogators in torture techniques.
Among the victims of abuse was Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who was beaten and jolted with electric shocks during her three-year detention at Tiradentes prison in the 1970s.
United Nations Peacekeeper Soldiers Fire on Protestors in Haiti
Haitian police and UN peacekeepers have attacked protesters with live ammo and chemical agents as several thousand opposition supporters tried to march on the presidential palace, demanding new leadership.
Haiti has seen many anti-government protests in recent months calling for President Michael Martelly to step down, amid a growing anger over the high levels of government corruption. Elections have been delayed now for years.
Japanese PM finds himself hampered by piece of paper in pursuit of getting his war on:
Shinzo Abe sets sights on Japan's pacifist constitution after election win
Japan’s re-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a conservative, has made no secret of his desire to remove what he regards as unfair constraints on Japan’s military, seven decades after its surrender at the end of a war that saw it occupy neighbours including China and attack countries further afield in the Pacific.
“Revising the constitution has always been an objective since the Liberal Democratic party was launched,” Abe told reporters. ...
Amending article 9 of the constitution, which prohibits the use of force to settle disputes, would require a two-thirds majority in both houses and a simple majority in a nationwide referendum.
Early on in his term Abe appeared to have stepped back away from outright constitutional revision after polls indicated he would struggle to win public support for it. ...
While the subject has divided the public, Abe at least appears to have enough backing among MPs. A poll by Kyodo found that more than 80% of candidates elected on Sunday supported amending the constitution.
A Small Business Owner Is Fighting the FBI Over Surveillance Program Gag Orders
The owner of a small New York internet company is waging a Goliath-sized battle against the US government over a secret surveillance program that has left him living under a gag order for the past 10 years.
Nicholas Merrill was the owner of Calyx, a website hosting and security consulting company, in 2004 when the FBI sent him a national security letter (NSL) ordering him to turn over information on one of his clients — and not mention the letter to any person, ever. The letters were part of an expansion of government surveillance techniques under the USA Patriot Act.
Last week, Merrill and a team of lawyers from the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York alleging that the FBI and federal government are violating his First Amendment rights by keeping him under what is essentially a permanent gag order. ... Merrill, 42, told VICE News that he has been fighting to speak freely about the FBI's demands because he is worried about the precedent his case sets for the future of the country.
"I feel it ultimately comes from a place of patriotism and concern for the country and the future of the nation," Merrill said. "I just thought, the government has decided to say 'screw the Bill of Rights,' and is gathering information on whoever they want, whenever they want, and what is the ultimate implication of that?"
The Not so New Data Collection Law on Excessive Force Passed on the Hill
Protesters chain themselves to Oakland police HQ; 25 arrested
Twenty-five protesters were arrested Monday after they chained themselves to doors and a flagpole at the Oakland Police Department headquarters.
The demonstrators were protesting killings by police in New York and Missouri, including the slayings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. ...
One protester climbed a flagpole and raised a banner, which protesters said commemorated men and women killed by police. Protesters chained shut four of the building's entrances and then chained themselves to the doors. ...
Elsewhere, Oakland police said a dozen protesters were chained to each other and were blocking the intersection of Broadway and 7th Street. Protesters also were chained together on the northbound Interstate 880 at Broadway, closing access to the freeway ramp.
San Jose police officer placed on leave after threatening protest tweets
A northern California police department put one of its officers on leave on Monday and is investigating threatening comments from his Twitter account about demonstrators who have participated in protests over the recent deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri and New York.
The San Jose police department said officer Phillip White was sidelined after officials learned of statements made on Saturday from his Twitter account.
In the tweets, White said he would kill anyone who threatens him or his family. He also said he would be off-duty at the movies with his gun if anyone “feels they can’t breathe or their lives matter”.
Nationwide Strikes Over Austerity Cuts Brings Belgium to a Standstill
Mass strikes across Belgium brought daily operations in cities across the nation to a grinding halt Monday as protests paralyzed air traffic and public transport and forced many government offices, schools, and businesses to close.
Monday's general strikes are the latest round of industrial protests to sweep the nation in recent weeks, following the new coalition government's announcement to implement a raft of controversial austerity measures.
Three of Belgium's largest trade unions came together to form "a common front," after prime minister Charles Michel's center-right government announced reforms that it claims would save the country 11 billion euros ($13.7 billion) over five years. ...
Marc Goblet, the secretary general of the Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique, one of the unions involved in organizing the strikes, told VICE News that the protests were triggered by the feeling that workers had been backed into a corner.
"The government never sat down with worker representatives, but did sit down with employer representatives," said Goblet, "so we had no other choice but to call for industrial action in order to be heard, and to organize roving regional strikes."
Hat tip aliasalias from a
comment last night:
A Conundrum Many Corporate Democrats Have Solved: How To Appear Progressive While Backing The Banksters
Democratic senators who wanted to both please their Wall Street financiers and to still appear to be taking the side of their own constituents were able to vote against the legislation. That's because by 10PM when the vote was taken, the decision was already set in stone. As we explained yesterday, a vote less than an hour earlier seemed like "just" a procedural one, but it's passage-- shutting off the debate and allowing the CRombinus to move for an up-or-down vote, decided the matter. Democrats who were serious about killing it voted against cloture-- and there were only six who did:
• Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Al Franken (D-MN)
• Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)
...
For those who keep track of this sort of thing, here's the full list of Democratic senators who voted against the CRomnibus after they made sure it would pass:
• Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
• Cory Booker (D-NJ)
• Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
• Tom Harkin (D-IA)
• Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Carl Levin (D-MI)
• Ed Markey (D-MA)
• Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
• Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
• Jack Reed (R-RI)
• Jon Tester (D-MT)
• Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature an article from the Appeal to Reason by Eugene V Debs: "A Tribute to Martin Irons"
Tune in at 2pm!
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Nader: Federal Budget For Militarism, Against the People
Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession
The Great Recession is officially over, but Americans are still 40% poorer today than they were in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis.
The net worth of American families — the difference between the values of their assets, including homes and investments, and liabilities — fell to $81,400 in 2013, down slightly from $82,300 in 2010, but a long way off the $135,700 in 2007, according to a new report released on Friday by the nonprofit think-tank Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
“The Great Recession, fueled by the crises in the housing and financial markets, was universally hard on the net worth of American families,” the report found.
The Evening Greens
Reindeer Populations Are Declining Worldwide — And It's Mostly Our Fault
As images of reindeer prance across our television screens and adorn our greeting cards this holiday season, real-life reindeer populations are on the decline around the world, largely due to human activity.
According to a new study in the Journal for Nature Conservation, one population in China has declined nearly 30 percent in the last four decades as poachers, predators, and tourists exacerbate threats from climate change and habitat loss. ...
Though these semi-domesticated reindeer face unique threats, they're not alone in their dwindling numbers. The first-ever comprehensive census of reindeer, published in 2009, found that at least 34 of the world's 43 major monitored herds had declining numbers, with an average population drop of 57 percent from their historic highs, largely due to climate change.
Earlier spring thaws mean plants sprout before the migrating herds arrive to eat them and warmer summers mean more insects, which harass the reindeer and prevent them from feeding. Freezing rain, instead of snow, can kill off lichens, which the reindeer feed on during colder parts of the year.
hat tip dharmafarmer:
Freedom Industries has plea deal with feds, court records show
Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak, has approved a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, according to bankruptcy court records filed this week.
Neither criminal charges against Freedom nor a copy of the plea agreement have been made public yet, and details of the plea weren’t available today. But in submitting bills to the bankruptcy court for work performed for Freedom, the company’s lawyers made it clear an agreement had been approved. ...
U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin -- who last week said the public should expect “further results very soon” from his office’s investigation of Freedom Industries -- declined comment today on the bankruptcy court filings regarding a plea agreement with Freedom. Goodwin’s office has been investigating potential criminal charges related to the chemical leak, including potential violations of the federal Clean Water Act. ...
Also Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Wright sought seizure warrants covering more than $7 million from at least three different accounts listed in the name of Southern or a company he owns called IWL Inc., according to documents filed in federal court.
Public Tax Dollars Financing Oil-By-Rail Expansion
Reuters exposes '10 federal and state grants either approved or pending approval, totaling $84.2 million, that helped boost the number of rail cars carrying crude oil across the nation'
According to journalist Jarrett Renshaw, Reuters "identified 10 federal and state grants either approved or pending approval, totaling $84.2 million, that helped boost the number of rail cars carrying crude oil across the nation."
"The public assistance in states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon comes as railroads are posting record profits, and as state and federal authorities press for safety overhauls that the oil and rail industries have opposed, following several explosive derailments," the article continues.
Rail transportation of oil is playing a role in driving the fracked shale oil boom across North America.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
How to Fix Poverty: Write Every Family a Basic Income Check
Chris Rock: 'If Poor People Knew How Rich Rich People Are, There Would Be Riots'
Hat tip bobswern:
Section 309: A Band-Aid for a Gaping Wound in Democracy
Hat tip Don midwest:
Dear Chelsea Manning: birthday messages from Edward Snowden, Terry Gilliam and more
American media features torturers, but not victims
Thomas Frank: The New Republic, the torture report, and the TED talks geniuses who gutted journalism
Hat tip mimi:
Saving the Colorado River Delta, One Habitat at a Time
Women's colleges move toward opening doors to trans women
A Little Night Music
Hank Ballard - Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go
Hank Ballard & Midnighters - Work With Me Annie
Etta James - Dance With Me Henry
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Annie Had A Baby
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Annie's Aunt Fannie
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Teardrops On Your Letter
Hank Ballard and The Midnighters - The Hoochie Coochie Coo
Hank Ballard and The Midnighters - Finger Poppin Time
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Tore Up Over You
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters I'm Going Back To The House On The Hill
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters - I'm gonna miss you
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters - Sexy Ways
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters - Sugaree
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Keep On Dancing
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - The Coffee Grind
Hank Ballard - Do It Zulu Style
Hank Ballard - How You Gonna Get Respect
Hank Ballard & The Midnight Lighters - From The Love Side
Hank Ballard - Come On Wit' It
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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