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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features "The High Sheriff of Hell," bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw. Enjoy!
Peetie Wheatstraw - Police Station Blues
“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”
-- Napoléon Bonaparte
News and Opinion
‘5yrs of humiliation over’ Anti-austerity Syriza to form govt in Greece
Syriza forms government with rightwing Independent Greeks party
A new chapter in Greece’s uphill struggle to remain solvent – and in the eurozone – has begun in earnest as anti-austerity politicians assumed the helm of government following the radical left Syriza party’s spectacular electoral victory on Sunday night.
Ushering in the new era, Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister-designate, announced that he would not be sworn in, as tradition dictates, in the presence of Archbishop Iernonymos but would instead take the oath of office in a civil ceremony. At 40, he becomes the country’s youngest premier in modern times.
The leftist, who surprised Greeks by speedily agreeing to share power with the populist rightwing Independent Greeks party, Anel, is expected to be handed a mandate by president Karolos Papoulias to form a government later on Monday. Earlier, Panos Kammenos, Anel’s rumbustious leader, emerged from talks with Tsipras lasting an hour saying the two politicians had successfully formed a coalition. ...
With 36.3 % of the vote, Syriza fell two seats short of the 151 MPs it needed to govern alone. The Independent Greeks, who have huge ideological differences with the leftists but are bonded by the desire to end biting EU-IMF-mandated cutbacks, won 4.75% of the vote and 13 seats. The conservative New Democracy party – the dominant force in a coalition lead by the outgoing prime minister Antonis Samaras – suffered ignominious defeat, collapsing to 76 seats in the 300-seat parliament. ...
Yanis Varoufakis, the internationally renowned economist, newly installed as a Syriza MP and tipped to become the finance minister, likened the Greek economy to a “poisoned chalice”.
“Fiscal waterboarding has turned us into a debt colony,” he told the BBC.
Anti-Austerity Syriza Party Sweeps to Power in Greece
Who are the Independent Greeks?
The populist, rightwing Independent Greeks (Anel) would at first sight make for a strange bedfellow for the radical leftists Syriza and the deal makes an unusual alliance, but they are brought together by a mutual hatred for the bailout programme keeping Greece afloat.
The two parties have vastly diverging world views, standing well apart on issues such as illegal migration, Greece’s ever-fractious relationship with Nato rival Turkey, gay marriage and the role of the Greek Orthodox church.
Under their leader Panos Kammenos, who defected from the centre-right New Democracy party to form Anel at the height of the crisis in February 2012, the group has proved to be rabidly nationalistic in foreign affairs.
The politician is particularly virulent on the issue of the need to reclaim war reparations that he argues were never properly dealt with after the Nazis’ brutal occupation of the country. He was accused of being antisemitic when he claimed last month that Greek Jews paid less tax than other citizens. ...
Both Syriza and Independent Greeks agree on the need to end austerity. And both hold strident views on the especially sensitive issue of Greek sovereignty having been denuded as a result of six years of stewardship under Athens’ hated “troika” of creditors. Anel, like Syriza, says foreign lenders have turned the debt-crippled country into a “debt colony”.
Now in Power, SYRIZA Faces Herculean Task
Syriza’s historic win puts Greece on collision course with Europe
The damning popular verdict on Europe’s response to financial meltdown is a haunting outcome for the EU’s political elite. For the first time, power has been handed to populist outsiders deeply opposed to Brussels and Berlin, albeit not anti-European, unlike their counterparts on the far right across the EU. For the first time a child of the European crisis, an explicitly anti-austerity party, will take office in the EU.
“There’s a sense that these populist movements are led by people who didn’t go to university with [the leaders] and that if you ignore them they will go away. They’ve been ignored and patronised,” said a senior EU policymaker in Brussels. “The underlying causes are economic. We want a Europe that is delivering tangible benefits to citizens. That’s not what it feels like at the moment.” ...
Tsipras now holds Greece’s European fate in his hands. Athens and its creditors – the EU and the International Monetary Fund, which have bailed the country out to the tune of €240bn (£178bn) since 2010 – will spend weeks in wrenching negotiations over the terms of continued assistance and whether his new government will do enough in terms of further cuts and reforms to keep Greece in the euro. ...
The clock is already ticking. When the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande, British prime minister David Cameron et al assemble for an EU summit in Brussels in just over a fortnight, they will be joined at Europe’s top table by Tsipras, probably the only man there not wearing a tie. The symbolism will be enormous. Europe’s anti-mainstream mavericks and populists are no longer just hammering on the doors.
As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes
Hedge fund managers are preparing getaways by buying airstrips and farms in remote areas, former hedge fund partner tells Davos during session on inequality
With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.
Johnson, who heads the Institute of New Economic Thinking and was previously managing director at Soros, said societies can tolerate income inequality if the income floor is high enough. But with an existing system encouraging chief executives to take decisions solely on their profitability, even in the richest countries inequality is increasing.
Johnson added: “People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else. There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money.” ...
Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and a Davos star attraction after giving the closing address in 2014, said he had spent a lot of time learning from the leaders behind recent social unrest in Ferguson. He believes that will prove “a catalytic event” which has already changed the conversation in the US, bringing a message from those who previously “didn’t matter”.
This Week, US Will Send 1,000 More Ground Troops to Iraq
This week, 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airbornewill be sent to Iraq on what is being called a “training mission” for the Iraqi Army. The troops will join 250 from the same brigade already there
Some of the US ground troops already in Iraq have faced indirect fire from ISIS, and as more troops are added, so too does the chance that they will come into direct contact with ISIS forces on the ground.
The Saudis - Oil, ISIS and Revolution
Parts of Yemen Are Now Threatening to Secede After the Houthi Rebel Takeover
Yemen's rapidly deteriorating political and military crisis showed no signs of abating Sunday, as the country's parliament again postponed sessions amid continued reports of southern moves toward secession.
The Yemeni parliament, which hasn't been elected since 2003, was set to meet Sunday to discuss last week's resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Hadi, who technically is unable to leave office without the consent of legislators, stepped down last Thursday after Houthi rebels fought his personal guards and stormed the presidential palace in Sana'a.
The Houthis — named for Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, their leader until his death in battle in 2004 — hail from Yemen's northern Zaydi Shia minority. Zaydis make up about a third of Yemen's population and have pushed for decades for greater representation in a national political dialogue dominated by Sunnis. From 2004 to 2010, the rebels fought a series of wars with the government of autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Saleh was forced out power in 2012 after ruling for 33 years, part of sweeping regime changes in the region during the Arab Spring. The former strongman — who retains significant power in the country via supporters that still dominate parliament and remain in state institutions — later reached an alliance of sorts with the Houthis.
If Hadi's resignation becomes official, the presidency would revert to Yahia al-Rai, the parliament speaker and Saleh's close ally.
Iranian Parliament Vows Retaliation if US Imposes New Sanctions
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has warned that there are “retaliatory plans”in place in the event that the US Congress follows through on efforts to impose new sanctions against them.
Larijani promised a “jump in expanding Iran’s nuclear technology” if new sanctions are put in place, saying there should be no question about Iran’s capability to do that.
Nuclear expansion would likely violate the P5+1 interim nuclear deal, though so would new US sanctions, so both countries’ legislatures are drawing up plans to kill the pact, and likely the negotiations.
Even When Sharing Top Billing with Edward Snowden, the NSA Is Unrepentant
A year and a half after NSA contractor Edward Snowden shocked the world with evidence of pervasive government surveillance, the NSA is still defending its actions, with an agency director saying the organization acted lawfully and with an eye toward preserving privacy and civil liberties.
The comments, from the Director of the NSA’s Commercial Solutions Center, John DeLong, came at a symposium on surveillance and digital privacy at which Snowden also appeared. The event, “Privacy in a Networked World,” was hosted by Harvard University’s Institute for Applied and Computational Science.
Although the top-billed participants could not actually share a stage for obvious reasons, Snowden appeared live via videolink and was interviewed by cryptography expert Bruce Schneier. Describing the evolution of the NSA from a “primarily defensive to primarily offensive” agency with regards to digital subterfuge and surveillance, Snowden alleged that NSA activities had become increasingly aggressive until the media scrutiny from the 2013 leaks ultimately forced the agency to focus on issues of transparency and accountability.
Speaking of the NSA’s own internal auditing processes, Snowden was dismissive, citing his experience that internal auditors were often “the friends and associates of those being audited,” as opposed to professional external auditors who could vet internal practices impartially.
He closed his remarks by saying that his former colleagues at NSA were not “villains”, but rather people who had been enabled to make dangerous decisions as a result of a culture of impunity which had purportedly developed at the agency.
WikiLeaks demands answers after Google hands staff emails to US government
Google took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the US government, under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge.
WikiLeaks has written to Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, to protest that the search giant only revealed the warrants last month, having been served them in March 2012. In the letter, WikiLeaks says it is “astonished and disturbed” that Google waited more than two and a half years to notify its subscribers, potentially depriving them of their ability to protect their rights to “privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches”.
The letter, written by WikiLeaks’ New York-based lawyer, Michael Ratner of the Center For Constitutional Rights, asks Google to list all the materials it provided to the FBI. Ratner also asks whether the California-based company did anything to challenge the warrants and whether it has received any further data demands it has yet to divulge.
Google revealed to WikiLeaks on Christmas Eve – a traditionally quiet news period – that it had responded to a Justice Department order to hand over a catch-all dragnet of digital data including all emails and IP addresses relating to the three staffers. The subjects of the warrants were the investigations editor of WikiLeaks, the British citizen Sarah Harrison; the spokesperson for the organisation, Kristinn Hrafnsson; and Joseph Farrell, one of its senior editors.
When it notified the WikiLeaks employees last month, Google said it had been unable to say anything about the warrants earlier as a gag order had been imposed. Google said the non-disclosure orders had subsequently been lifted, though it did not specify when.
Harrison, who also headsthe Courage Foundation, told the Guardian she was distressed by the thought of government officials gaining access to her private emails. “Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick,” she said.
The war on leaks has gone way too far when journalists' emails are under surveillance
In the past four years, WikiLeaks has had their Twitter accounts secretly spied on, been forced to forfeit most of their funding after credit card companies unilaterally cut them off, had the FBI place an informant inside their news organization, watched their supporters hauled before a grand jury, and been the victim of the UK spy agency GCHQ hacking of their website and spying on their readers.
Now we’ve learned that, as The Guardian reported on Sunday, the Justice Department got a warrant in 2012 to seize the contents – plus the metadata on emails received, sent, drafted and deleted – of three WikiLeaks’ staffers personal Gmail accounts, which was inexplicably kept secret from them for almost two and a half years.
The warrant for WikiLeaks staffers’ email is likely connected to the grand jury the government convened in 2010 to investigate the WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked State Department cables, along with the Afghan and Iraq war logs.
Most journalists and press freedom groups have been inexplicably quiet about the Justice Department’s treatment of WikiLeaks and its staffers ever since, despite the fact that there has been a (justified) backlash against the rest of the Justice Department’s attempt to subpoena reporters’ phone call records and spy on their emails. But almost all of the tacticsused against WikiLeaks by the Justice Department in their war on leaks were also used against mainstream news organizations.
Unfortunately the news world has never rallied around WikiLeaks’ First Amendment rights they way they should – sometimes even refusing to acknowledge they are a journalism organization, perhaps because they dare to do things a little differently than the mainstream media, or because WikiLeaks tweets provocative political opinions, or because they think its founder, Julian Assange, is an unsympathetic figure.
Those are all disgraceful excuses to ignore the government’s overreach: the rights of news organizations everywhere are under just as much threat whether the government reads the private emails of staffers at WikiLeaks, Fox News or the Associated Press. In the eyes of the law, the organizations are virtually indistinguishable, as legal scholars from across the political spectrum have documented for years.
Guantanamo's Detainee Library Won't Carry a Guantanamo Detainee’s Acclaimed New Book
A Guantanamo detainee who just published a critically acclaimed book about his life in captivity won't get the opportunity to see his own book. Nor will 121 of the detainee's fellow inmates.
Guantanamo spokesman Captain Tom Gresback told VICE News that "at this time" the detainee library has no intention of purchasing Mohamedou Ould Slahi's memoir Guantanamo Diary, which cracked Amazon's top 100.
"The detention center library at Guantanamo has more than 19,000 titles," Gresback said. "Books are provided as a means of intellectual stimulation. All titles available are culturally sensitive, non-extremist in nature and generally non-controversial."
Slahi's lawyer, Nancy Hollander, told VICE News that her client "has not seen Guantanamo Diary and I don't know if he will."
The book, portions of which are heavily redacted — pages 302 to 307 are entirely blacked out — recounts in vivid and harrowing detail the Mauritanian's rendition, his torture by interrogators, and the grave conditions of his confinement at the detention facility where he has been held, without charge, since August 2002. The book has been translated into 20 languages.
PEGIDA Holds First Protest in Germany Since Leader's Hitler Selfie Went Viral
Just days after their leader stepped down when a "Hitler selfie" of him went viral, Germany's "anti-Islamization" group PEGIDA marched through Dresden yet again Sunday.
Thousands of people paraded through the streets with signs demanding their chancellor stop letting "followers of Allah" enter Germany, the LA Times reported. While the crowd was massive — at about 17,500 — it was lower than the record demonstration two weeks ago, which drew about 25,000. ...
The group may officially claim they are just pushing for tighter immigration regulations into Germany, but many citizens, and even elected officials, have criticized the movement as hateful and dangerous. Germany's foreign minister warned hours before the Sunday march that PEGIDA was tarnishing the nation's image abroad.
Black Lives Matter: New Film on Jordan Davis Captures Family’s Struggle to Convict White Vigilante
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature the news which caused a huge sensation across the nation: John D. Rockefeller Jr. invites Mother Jones to meet with him to discuss conditions among the miners of Colorado.
Tune in at 2pm!
|
Pennsylvania Court Hands Down Big Win for Teachers' Union
In what the Philadelphia teachers' union is describing as "a victory for collective bargaining," the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled Thursday that the School Reform Commission (SRC) does not have the power to cancel union contracts, as it abruptly did last fall.
On October 6, 2014, the SRC voted to terminate the teachers' contract and unilaterally impose new health care provisions on the union's 10,000 members. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) was given no advance word of the action, which district officials said would free up an additional $50 million for severely underfunded schools. The action was set to go into effect on December 15, but the union won an injunction against the SRC.
At the time, the PFT's Caucus of Working Educators described the Commission's actions as "not really about funding. This is an attempt to dismantle the union that defends public education in Philadelphia." Student and teacher protests and walk-outs took place in the wake of the SRC's decision.
In its ruling (pdf), the court stated that "[t]he requisite authority of the SRC to cancel a [collective bargaining agreement] and unilaterally impose new terms and conditions of employment is not present in the relevant statutory provisions," unless negotiations reach a formal impasse. While contract negotiations had dragged on for nearly two years in October and the two sides were still far apart, neither party had declared a stalemate.
The Evening Greens
Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behavior Goes to Chevron
As global elites gather in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, the oil giant Chevron was singled out on Friday for a highly competitive—if unflattering—international distinction: the Public Eye Lifetime Award for its extraordinary corporate irresponsibility, which includes monumental environmental destruction in northern Ecuador.
Granted by grassroots organizations at a public ceremony at a hotel in Davos, the winner of the satirical prize was determined by tens of thousands of online voters. The race was close, with Glencore and Walmart coming in a close second, but voters ultimately determined that Chevron deserves the top distinction.
The oil giant, however, declined to attend the ceremony, so Greenpeace Switzerland accepted the award on Chevron's behalf.
"Chevron is uniquely deserving of a lifetime award for the lifetime of misery they have caused the Ecuadorian Amazon," Paul Paz y Miño, of the U.S.-based organization Amazon Watch, told Common Dreams over the phone from Davos. "This is not only because of their original pollution—dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste—but because they have ignored every judicial process to hold them to account, even though they were determined liable for $9.5 billion in court of their own choosing."
"Not only did they refuse to pay," Paz y Miño added, "but they pointed their finger at their own victims, accusing the people that they poisoned of a global conspiracy to commit fraud. It undermines the very fabric of our society because you can't simply evade justice because you have the wealth to litigate in perpetuity."
NRC: We're Keeping Fukushima-Style Nuclear Reactors Going
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected an appeal to halt operations at the nearly two dozen reactors in the nation that have the same containment system as those at the ill-fated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.
The decision was posted (pdf) in the Federal Register on Friday.
Watchdog group Beyond Nuclear filed the appeal in April, 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, charging that the then-21 Mark 1 design General Electric Boiling Water Reactors were "accidents waiting to happen."
The filing (pdf) sought emergency enforcement action to protect the public from the "unreliability of [the design's] containment system to mitigate a severe accident and the lack of emergency power systems to cool high density storage pools each containing hundreds of tons thermally hot and extremely radioactive used reactor fuel assemblies located atop the reactor building s and outside a rated containment."
The suspension is necessary "in response to the dramatic and ongoing failure of similarly designed and constructed GE Boiling Water Reactors systems, structures and components at one or more units at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan," the group wrote.
In response to the decision posted Friday, Beyond Nuclear stated that though it acknowledges that "a portion of the actions that we requested in April 2011 have been taken at some of these reactors," it says it rejects the NRC decision that the issues raised have been resolved.
Obama, India's Modi Hail 'Breakthrough' Nuclear Deal that Limits US Corporate Liability
President Barack Obama and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday announced a "breakthrough" after reaching a deal on commerce that appears to shield U.S. companies from liability from nuclear accidents.
Obama is in India for a three-day visit.
A decade-old deal that would allow the U.S. to provide India with nuclear reactor components and fuel had met obstacles, one of which was about tracking where the material went. Siddharth Varadarajan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory at Shiv Nadar University, explained the second at the Huffington Post:
Nuclear commerce is stuck because American companies like GE and Westinghouse -- which regard being sued for a nuclear accident as part of the risk of selling reactors inside the U.S. -- are unwilling to subject themselves to any claims for damages in the event of an accident in India. India's liability law is seen by them as an obstacle and the Obama administration has spent the past four years trying to get the Indian side to dilute its provisions.
According to reporting on Sunday, the sticking point may have been resolved. Reuters reports that the deal reached "could open the door for U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in India by promising insurance cover to U.S. companies that had shied away from an Indian law placing liability on suppliers in case of an accident."
Now that he's little more than a useless appendage, Obama suddenly has the hots to preserve the Arctic; stay tuned as a largely powerless president finds new ways to say "fuck you" to progressives and environmentalists.
Obama proposes to make ANWR a wilderness
The White House is proposing to designate the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness permanently off limits to drilling.
The proposal sets up a showdown with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who said the White House also intends to put much of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling in the new five-year offshore leasing plan to be released this week.
Murkowski described the moves as "a stunning attack on our sovereignty and our ability to develop a strong economy that allows us, our children and our grandchildren to thrive."
"It’s clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory," Murkowski said in a written statement. "I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska. But we will not be run over like this. We will fight back with every resource at our disposal."
Obama’s proposal to designate 12.3 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness would require Congressional approval, and there is no chance the Republican-controlled Congress will agree. But there are heightened protections the Interior Department will start implementing on its own.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
AQAP Develops Its Own Version of Reddit’s AMA and Twitter’s Blue Checkmark Verification
Greek election: ‘The hour of the left has come. Hope has arrived’
The United States of fear: Alec Soth photographs the death of community in America
The Chilling First Amendment Implications of Journalist Barrett Brown's Five-Year Sentence
Chris Hedges: Killing Ragheads for Jesus
NYT Is Lost in Its Ukraine Propaganda
Nonviolence
A Little Night Music
Peetie Wheatstraw - Shack Bully Stomp
Peetie Wheatstraw - Devil's Son-In-Law
Peetie Wheatstraw - Stomp
Peetie Wheatstraw - You Can't Stop Me From Drinking
Peetie Wheatstraw- I Want Some Sea Food
Peetie Wheatstraw - More Good Whiskey Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Kidnapper's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - A Working Man's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Gangster's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Cake Alley
Peetie Wheatstraw - Mama's Advice
Peetie Wheatstraw - Working On The Project
Peetie Wheatstraw - Four O' Clock In The Morning
Peetie Wheatstraw - I Don't Feel Sleepy
Peetie Wheatstraw - When I Get My Bonus
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!
|