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 "The King of Soul," Sam Cooke. Enjoy!
Sam Cooke - Twisting The Night Away
"In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization."
-- Nikola Tesla
News and Opinion
ACLU seeks accountability for Obama's fleet of flying death robots:
ACLU files new lawsuit over Obama administration drone 'kill list'
As the US debates expanding its campaign against the Islamic State beyond Iraq and Syria, the leading US civil liberties group is intensifying its efforts to force transparency about lethal US counterterrorism strikes and authorities.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will file a disclosure lawsuit for secret Obama administration documents specifying, among other things, the criteria for placement on the so-called “kill list” for drone strikes and other deadly force.
Information sought by the ACLU includes long-secret analyses establishing the legal basis for what the administration terms its “targeted killing program” and the process by which the administration determines that civilians are unlikely to be killed before launching a strike, as well as verification mechanisms afterward to establish if the strike in fact has caused civilian deaths.
The suit, to be filed in a New York federal court, also seeks basic data the Obama administration has withheld about “the number and identities of individuals killed or injured” in counterterrorism strikes, according to the ACLU filing. In February 2013, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who favors the drone strikes, estimated they had killed 4,700 people. ... A November report by the human-rights group Reprieve found that Obama’s drone strikes had killed 1,147 people in pursuit of only 41 men, prompting questions about the rigor of the process employed by the administration to launch attacks. ...
“Over the last few years, the US government has used armed drones to kill thousands of people, including hundreds of civilians. The public should know who the government is killing, and why it’s killing them,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the ACLU, told the Guardian.
Could The Use Of Flying Death Robots Be Hurting America's Reputation Worldwide?
Pentagon denies UN investigator chance to interview Guantánamo detainees
Shortly after the Pentagon took a battery of pro-Guantánamo US senators for a tour of its infamous detention center, it confirmed that it will deny the United Nations’ torture investigator interviews with Guantánamo Bay detainees.
Juan Méndez, the UN’s special rapporteur on preventing torture, “has been invited to visit Guantánamo; however, he will not be permitted to interview detainees”,Army Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, the Pentagon’s detentions spokesman, told the Guardian.
Méndez told reporters in Geneva last week that he had spurned what he considered hollow offers by the US to visit Guantánamo, citing unacceptable restrictions on his ability to examine the facility for himself.
“I am not allowed to have any unmonitored or even monitored conversations with any inmate in Guantánamo Bay,” Méndez said, according to AFP.
Méndez, who has been in fruitless negotiations with the Obama administration over touring Guantánamo since 2010, has said he considers indefinite detention “itself a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. Forced feedings, which can include the insertion of tubes, used by Guantánamo officials to break detainee hunger strikes – and defended by Barack Obama – “in some cases can amount to torture,” Mendez’s office has said.
After Petraeus Plea Deal, Lawyer Demands Release of Stephen Kim
The lawyer for imprisoned leaker Stephen Kim has asked the Department of Justice to immediately release him from jail, accusing the government of a “profound double standard” in its treatment of leakers following a comparatively lenient plea deal for former Gen. David Petraeus.
Petraeus avoided prison time for disclosing a trove of classified information to his lover and lying to the FBI about it. Kim, meanwhile, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act by talking to a Fox News reporter about a single classified report on North Korea. Kim pleaded guilty after a five-year legal battle that depleted his finances and sent him to the brink of suicide. Petraeus, in the wake of his plea arrangement, is expected to continue his lucrative career working for an investment bank and giving speeches.
Kim’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, noted in a scathing letter to the DOJ that Petraeus, in his plea deal, admitted leaking a range of highly-sensitive material “at least as serious and damaging to national security as anything involved in Mr. Kim’s case” to Paula Broadwell, his lover and authorized biographer. Petraeus also acknowledged that when he was director of the CIA he lied to the FBI about leaking to Broadwell, as well as about keeping classified information at his home.
Yet while Kim, a former State Department official, was prosecuted under a draconian law against leaking — even though he merely discussed a single document that a government official later described in court filings as a “nothing burger” — Petraeus was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense of mishandling classified information, and he was not charged at all for the felony of lying to the FBI. Under the deal, he is expected to be placed on probation for two years and pay a fine of $40,000.
Senate Dems Prepared to Defy Obama, Oppose Iran Deal
Outrage over last week’s letter from Senate Republicans to Iran threatening to dishonor any nuclear deal President Obama reached is beginning to subside, and with it, a new round of comments are coming from Democrats indicating their support for, if not the letter, the sentiment behind it.
Several Democratsare now publicly expressing their support for various resolutions that aim to sabotage the talks, either by imposing new sanctions on Iran in violation of the interim deal, or by seeking a “veto” over the deal that would make it impossible for the US to be a part of the process.
Netanyahu Tried to Block Mossad Briefing US Senate on Iran
Israeli spy agency Mossad warned US Congressmen earlier this year against imposing new sanctions on Iran, saying the move would almost certainly sabotage negotiations.
During a visit of those Congressmen to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to prevent Mossad from briefing them on the danger of the sanctions, cancelling the meeting. ... Netanyahu has made clear his opposition to the talks, and has pushed for sanctions very much with an eye on ruining the negotiations. He feared Mossad telling the US officials of the consequence would harm the chances of getting those sanctions imposed.
The Future of Israel Might Be Decided by the Joint List Arab Coalition
There's just one day left before the Israeli public votes to decide who will lead their nation as the Middle East region continues to smolder. However, it's still anyone's guess as to whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party will continue the policies of the past six years of rightwing power, or the Zionist Union, a partnering of the Israeli Labor Party headed by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah party, will move Israel to the left.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that the party who might well decide isn't Jewish, Zionist, left, or right wing. It's the Joint List, a ticket made up of four predominately Arab political parties ranging from Communist to Islamist, and it's the first time that they're in a position to be Israel's kingmakers. But, if they have their way, they may end up killing the king.
"If it was our decision, it wouldn't be Netanyahu, Livni, or Herzog as the next prime minister," MK Hanin Zoabi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Balad party, one of the four in the Joint List, told VICE News.
According to recent polls, Zionist Union, which has the expressed purpose of pre-empting a fourth term for Netanyahu, will win 26 seats, with Likud coming in second at 22. The Joint List will come third, with 13 seats. If the Joint List doesn't throw its support behind the Zionist Union, a center-left coalition governing Israel becomes highly unlikely. ...
For Dr. Yousef Jabareen, the Joint List spokesman, the most important issue blocking cooperation with Herzog is what he sees as the unfair treatment of Palestinians. "We can't be part of a government that is going to continue the occupation of West Bank, the siege and constant attacks on Gaza, or the discriminatory policies towards our constituency, mainly the Arab community," he told VICE News.
Israelis and Palestinians See Little Hope For Change In Upcoming Election
Why Are US Taxpayers Subsidizing Right-Wing Israeli Settlers?
A few weeks before Benjamin Netanyahu's delivered his controversial address to Congress, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Prime Minister wasconsidering a campaign trip to Hebron, a right-wing settler community in the Israel-occupied West Bank. The proposed March 10 trip to Hebron, which would have been the first by an Israeli PM in more than a decade, raised eyebrows among Israel's political class and inflamed tensions with Palestinian groups. Last week, Netanyahu called it off, citing security threats.
Here in the United States, meanwhile, few politicians have questioned why American taxpayers continue to subsidize the Hebron settlers, accused by international observers of human rights violations that include thefts, battery, and murder. In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, an estimated 45 percent of the settler community's funding came from the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund, whose status as a tax-exempt nonprofit allows Americans to write off donations to the group.
"The Hebron Fund has supported, either directly or indirectly, a wide array of acts that are definitely not charitable," says John Tye, the legal director for the global activist group Avaaz, which last week petitioned the IRS to revoke the Hebron Fund's nonprofit status. "They are basically using a small group of Jewish settlers in the West Bank to push Palestinians out of their homes. These settlers are arming themselves, they are engaged in military and paramilitary acts, some of them have connections to terrorism, and they are committing a wide range of crimes against Palestinians."
C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda
In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.
They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.
Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.
State Department mouthpiece Marie Harf wins the diplomatic doubletalk of the week award:
Kerry says Syrian transition would have to be negotiated with Assad
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and was exploring ways with other countries to pressure him into agreeing to talks.
But State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said later that Kerry, in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday, was not specifically referring to Assad. She reiterated that Washington would never negotiate with the Syrian leader.
Harf added: "By necessity, there has always been a need for representatives of the Assad regime to be a part of this process. It has never been and would not be Assad who would negotiate - and the Secretary was not saying that today." ...
In the CBS interview, Kerry did not repeat the standard U.S. line that Assad had lost all legitimacy and had to go. Syria's civil war is now into its fifth year, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of Syrians displaced.
"We have to negotiate in the end," Kerry said when asked whether the United States would be willing to negotiate with Assad. "We've always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process," he added, referring to a 2012 conference that called for a negotiated transition to end the conflict.
Ex-hostage: ISIS built ‘Guantanamo’ for prisoners
Extremists belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) staged mock executions of Western captives held in a Syrian compound intended to be the jihadist answer to Guantanamo, former hostage Javier Espinosa revealed Sunday. ...
Espinosa said ISIS grouped as many as 23 hostages from 11 Western countries in a villa north of Aleppo, where his captors wanted to replicate the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, used to detain enemy jihadist combatants.
Quoting information he’d been told by American journalist James Foley, who was decapitated by ISIS in 2014, Espinosa wrote: “‘They had this project for a long time. The [head guard] told us at the beginning they wanted to intern Westerners in a high-security prison with cameras and lots of guards.’”
“‘They told us that we would be here for a very long time, because we were the first ones they captured,’” Foley confided to Espinosa.
He said the group of 22 European, American and Latin-American journalists and humanitarian workers held in the compound were submitted to repeated mock executions by a trio of particularly brutal guards that prisoners nicknamed “The Beatles.”
Iraqi offensive on Tikrit stalls, Kurds say Islamists used chlorine
Islamic State fighters traded sniper fire and mortar rounds with Iraqi troops and allied Shi'ite militia forces on Sunday in the city of Tikrit amid further reports the militants had obtained chlorine for possible use as a chemical weapon.
A military official returned from the front in Tikrit said no major advances were made by either side nearly two weeks into an operation to win back the city IS fighters seized last June.
Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday they had proof the radical Islamist militants occupying large parts of the country's north and west used chlorine against Kurdish peshmerga fighters in January in a car bombing attempt west of the city of Mosul.
US Quietly Abandons Troop Reduction Plans in Afghanistan
The Obama administration is dropping its plans to reduce the amount of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 5,500 by the end of the year, significantly altering the timeline which officials had said would see troops largely withdraw from the country by 2016, according to reports.
In fact, officials say, the administration could allow up to 9,800 American troops to remain in Afghanistan well into next year's "fighting season."
The announcement on Saturday came a few weeks after new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicatedthat the White House was "rethinking" its counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan and would slow down its troop withdrawal from the country, despite long-held promises from Washington to remove the U.S. military presence there.
Ukraine Ceasefire Holding, But Poroshenko Still Complaining
Another day has come and gone, and another 24-hour period of calm in Eastern Ukraine, with no casualties reported on either side. ... As required by the Minsk ceasefire deal, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has submitted to parliament a draft law that will grant a status of comparative autonomy in the rebel east, with an eye toward settling the conflict.
You’d think everything was going exceedingly well, but Poroshenko is still griping, claiming Russia is “breaking the ceasefire” constantly, and demanding that the international community impose punitive sanctions on them.
Ukraine conflict: Vladimir Putin 'was ready for nuclear alert'
Moscow was ready to put its nuclear forces on alert to ensure Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in a pre-recorded documentary aired on Sunday.
Putin also said that Russia had saved the life of Ukraine’s former pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovich, who he said had been in danger after ‘revolutionaries’ seized power following weeks of violent street protests in Kiev last year.
“For us it became clear and we received information that there were plans not only for his capture, but, preferably for those who carried out the coup, but also for his physical elimination. As one famous historical figure said: ‘No person, no problem’,” Putin said.
Protests over Yanukovich’s decision to back away from a trade agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Moscow forced him from power in February last year. Yanukovich’s overthrow ultimately prompted Russia to seize and annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Orwellian Euphemisms: It's not 'mass surveillance', it's 'bulk collection' now
Canadians Protest Proposed Anti-Terror Law
Thousands of Canadians protested a proposed sweeping anti-terror bill this Saturday, claiming the legislation would rob citizens of their privacy and freedom.
The legislation, called Bill C-51, would allow police to detain terrorism suspects more easily and expand the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's ability to obtain and release data.
If Parliament passes C-51, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) would have broad powers to "disrupt" acts of terrorism, according to the bill. The agency could "enter any place or obtain access to any thing," to copy any document, and "to do any other thing that is reasonably necessary to take those measures."
The law would also outlaw the "promotion of terrorism" and let the government add people to a "no-fly" list — all measures protesters say overstep appropriate federal powers. ...
Protests were held around the country, in cities including Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, against the legislation proposed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Secret Police Bill C-51 is Eerily Familiar
New Zealand Used NSA System to Target Officials, Anti-Corruption Campaigner
New Zealand’s eavesdropping agency used an Internet mass surveillance system to target government officials and an anti-corruption campaigner on a neighboring Pacific island, according to a top-secret document.
Analysts from Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, programmed the Internet spy system XKEYSCORE to intercept documents authored by the closest aides and confidants of the prime minister on the tiny Solomon Islands. The agency also entered keywords into the system so that it would intercept documents containing references to the Solomons’ leading anti-corruption activist, who is known for publishing government leaks on his website. ...
A number of GCSB’s XKEYSCORE targets are disclosed in a top-secret document that was obtained by The Intercept and New Zealand newspaper the Herald on Sunday. The document raises questions about the scope of the surveillance and offers an unprecedented insight into specific people monitored by New Zealand’s most secretive agency. ...
Most of the targets, in fact, had a prominent role in the Solomon Islands government. Their roles around the time of January 2013 suggest GCSB was interested in collecting information sent among the prime minister’s inner circle. ... The seventh person caught up in the GCSB’s surveillance sweep is the leading anti-corruption campaigner in the Solomon Islands, Benjamin Afuga. For several years he has run a popular Facebook group that exposes corruption, often publishing leaked information and documents from government whistleblowers. ...
Andrew Little, leader of New Zealand’s Labour Party, told the Herald on Sunday the surveillance was at odds with the country’s diplomatic relationship with the Solomons. “You would assume we have relations with government at the highest level and constructive dialogue,” he said.
After Swedish Prosecutors Back Down, Is WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Close to Freedom?
Greece makes IMF payment
The Greek government has handed over the €580m due to the International Monetary Fund today, according to Bloomberg.
That means Greece has cleared most of the money owed to the IMF this month, but still faces another €350m bill on Friday.
These IMF repayments are depleting its cash reserves, raising the pressure on Greece to satisfy its creditors and unlock fresh bailout funds [the eurozone has been withholding a €7.2bn payment for several months now].
Greek insiders: Germany is engaged in “psychological warfare"
Greek officials are accusing Germany of “psychological warfare” as relations between the two countries become ever more strained, reports our correspondent in Athens Helena Smith.
Greece’s governing coalition is finding it ever harder to hide its infuriation with Berlin. The latest “verbal assault” lobbed at Athens triggered thinly veiled outrage from officials this morning.
One said:
“It’s a two-pronged war: We’re being worn down economically and psychologically. It’s deliberate.”
The complaint echoed similar statements over the weekend by Panos Kammenos, who heads the Independent Greeks party, the junior partner in prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist-led administration.
Syriza - a Necessary Compromise or Avoiding an Inevitable Conclusion?
Local officials call for end to Madison's 'shameful racial disparities'
The 19-year-old who was killed by a Madison police officer on March 6 was shot multiple times, the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday.
An autopsy completed the day after officer Matt Kenny fatally shot Tony Robinson showed Robinson was shot in the head, torso and right arm, according to Barry Irmen, director of operations for the Medical Examiner’s Office. ...
More than 40 Madison City Council members, School Board members and Dane County Board members signed a joint statement released Friday calling Robinson’s death a “horrible tragedy.”
“Many of the incidents, shootings and deaths that we see reported on the news find their root cause in the intolerable (racial) disparity present in our community,” they said in the letter.
“We are here to ask each of our constituents to accept along with us the challenge of ending the shameful racial disparities in our community,” the letter said. “Every one of us must be a part of the solution. Black lives have to matter to each and every one of us.”
Police Charge Man With Shooting Cops in Ferguson
Police on Sunday charged a 20-year-old man with the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, early Thursday morning.
Jeffrey Williams, a resident of the north St. Louis area, was arrested Saturday night and claimed he had accidentally shot the officers, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch said at a press conference Sunday.
Williams had been at the Ferguson demonstrations and got into a dispute with someone when he shot the officers from a moving vehicle on a side street, Williams said. ...
Williams has been charged with two counts of first-degree assault, firing a weapon from a vehicle, and three counts of armed criminal action, KSDK reported. He could face life in prison if convicted of his charges.
Oregon man facing no charges remains in jail 900 days after arrest
Nine hundred days ago today, Benito Vasquez-Hernandez and his son Moises were arrested in Madera, California. Since that day, Benito Vasquez-Hernandez has languished in a county jail near Portland, in Oregon.
Both father and son were at first charged with hindering prosecution, but those charges were dropped. Benito has not been charged with any other crime.
He is being held as a material witness in the trial of another of his sons, Eloy Vasquez-Santiago, who is charged with killing Maria Bolanos-Rivera, a 55-year-old mother of six, in Hillsboro, Oregon in 2012. ...
Moises Vasquez-Hernandez was kept locked up for 727 days, also as a material witness. He was released after he was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
In their first court appearance of the trial, last Tuesday morning – reported in the Oregonian – serious communication issues became clear. Father and son repeated “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything” and failed to respond to questions.
“Why am I in jail? It’s been two years. It’s been too long,” Benito Vasquez-Hernandez said. In answer to the question “Do you swear to tell the truth?” he said: “That question, no. I want to get out.” He was eventually dismissed by the judge.
Edits to Wikipedia pages on Bell, Garner, Diallo traced to NYPD Computers
Computers operating on the New York Police Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been used to alter Wikipedia pages containing details of alleged police brutality, a review by Capital has revealed.
“The matter is under internal review,” an NYPD spokeswoman, Det. Cheryl Crispin, wrote in an email to Capital after examples of the changes were presented to the NYPD.
Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters' network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the department’s range of IP addresses.
Social Security records show 6.5 million Americans are aged 112
Americans are getting older, but not this old: Social Security records show that 6.5 million people in the US have reached the ripe old age of 112. In reality, only few could possibly be alive. As of last fall, there were only 42 people known to be that old in the entire world.
But Social Security does not have death records for millions of people, with the oldest born in 1869, according to a report by the agency’s inspector general.
Only 13 of the people are still getting Social Security benefits, the report said. But for others Social Security numbers are still active, so a number could be used to report wages, open bank accounts, obtain credit cards or claim fraudulent tax refunds. ...
The agency said it is working to improve the accuracy of its death records. But it would be costly and time-consuming to update 6.5m files that were generated decades ago when the agency used paper records, said Sean Brune, a senior adviser to the agency’s deputy commissioner for budget, finance, quality and management.
“The records in this review are extremely old, decades-old, and unreliable,” Brune said.
From DOE to CEO: Revolving Door Spins in Washington as Top Official Hired by Nuclear Company
Government watchdogs are raising ethics concerns that Dan Poneman, who served for years as a high-ranking Department of Energy official, has just taken a job as president and CEO of a nuclear enrichment company that has long received special treatment from the federal government, including on his watch.
During his tenure as Deputy Secretary of Energy from 2009 to 2014 (including a brief stint as Acting Energy Secretary), Poneman was a strong advocateof nuclear power, touting it as a reliable energy source and a possible solution to the climate crisis.
Also during Poneman's reign, Centrus Energy Corp., known formerly as U.S. Enrichment Corp., was a major beneficiary of federal deals.
In fact, the DOE was accused (pdf) by the Government Accountability Office of breaking laws by conducting four uranium transfers in 2012 and 2013 to favor the company, which enriches uranium for the U.S. military and the nuclear industry.
However, this censure did not stop Washington's revolving doors from spinning.
Centrus Energy Corp. announced that Poneman "has been selected by its Board of Directors as president and chief executive officer of the Company." The gig pays up to $1.7 million a year, according to Politico reporter Darius Dixon.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on a plan devised by a Joint Council whereby the Teamsters of Chicago will aid striking Garment Workers.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Kshama Sawant: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party.
The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year. It will pit a socialist, who refuses all corporate donations—not that she would get many—and who has fearlessly championed the rights of workingmen and workingwomen, rights that are being eviscerated by the corporate machine. The elites cannot let the Sawants of the world proliferate. Corporate power is throwing everything at its disposal—including sponsorship of a rival woman candidate of color—into this election in the city’s 3rd District. ...
I met Sawant in a restaurant a block from City Hall in Seattle. She is as intense as she is articulate. Sawant, born in India, is a leader of the Socialist Alternative Party. She holds a doctorate in economics from North Carolina State University and before her election to the City Council was a professor at a community college. She knows that there will be no genuine reforms, let alone systemic change, without the building of radical mass movements and a viable third party. She is as familiar at Seattle street demonstrations, where she has been arrested, as she is in City Council hearings. If there is any hope left for the absurdist political theater that characterizes election campaigns it is in renegades such as Sawant.
"The idea that things have to get a lot worse to have some sort of awakening and bring about an alternative to this corrupt and defunct corporate political system is inaccurate,” she said to me. “What we need is a big surge for an independent working-class political alternative while people are experiencing a sense of confidence, after decades of bitter defeat. The $15-an-hour victory in Seattle is going nationwide. And while unions are under massive attack, as you see in Wisconsin with Scott Walker, there are also successful labor initiatives getting onto the ballot. Four states—two of them Republican states—increased the minimum wage last year. Occupy and the Black Lives Matter movement have radically shaken U.S. consciousness. Now is the time for us to strike.”
Sawant said it is incumbent upon socialists and the entire U.S. left to swiftly begin the task of building working-class political campaigns independent of the Democratic Party in order to create the space for a viable national party. Efforts to reform the Democratic Party, whose leaders are in the service of the corporate oligarchy, amount to pouring energy into “a black hole,” she said. The Democratic elite dominate Seattle government, and the Democratic elite, as they did with Ralph Nader, have declared war against Sawant. As long as she remains in office she will expose the leaders in the Democratic Party for who they are—corporate puppets.
Internet Freedom Fighters, Against TPP, Turn Spotlight on Sen. Ron Wyden
On Friday and Saturday, shining a spotlight on how so-called "free trade" deals could affect "the future of the internet"—and putting pressure on a key Democrat in the debate over the TPP—activists flew a 30-foot blimp over Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden's town hall meetings, declaring: "Ron Wyden: It’s up to you. Don’t betray us! Save the Internet. No Fast Track for the TPP."
Wyden is an obvious target for those who oppose the TPP and the Fast Track authority necessary to get the sweeping 12-nation agreement passed with limited congressional input.
As ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, where the Senate bill will be introduced, Wyden has a significant amount of influence over the outcome of Fast Track.
The Evening Greens
Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu's president blames climate change for extreme weather
The president of Vanuatu says climate change is contributing to more extreme weather conditions and cyclone seasons, after cyclone Pam ripped through the island nation.
The damage from the category five storm to the island nation has been extensive, and is still being assessed as aid workers scrambled to get to affected areas on Monday morning.
The official death toll remains at six, with many more injured, and is expected to rise as communication begins to be restored.
Vanuatu’s president, Baldwin Lonsdale, spoke at a United Nations world conference in Sendai, Japan, on Monday, and said the storm was a major setback for the people, virtually wiping out Vanuatu’s development.
Vanuatu Blames Global Warming as Cyclone Causes Nation’s Worst Climate Disaster in Recent Memory
'Age of Burn What You Like' is Over: UN Makes Landmark Call for Divestment
The United Nations body charged with guiding and implementing international climate policy has thrown its weight behind the growing fossil fuel divestment movement, lending "moral authority" to a campaign aimed at stemming global warming, the Guardian reported on Sunday.
"We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Rail Industry Lobbied Against New Oil-by-Rail Safety Regulations The Day After Rail Accident
With the recent run of exploding oil train accidents, it isn’t surprising that the rail industry has publicly expressed concern about hauling highly flammable oils like Bakken light crude and diluted tar sands. But that's all the industry has done: express concern. It certainly hasn't done anything to act on its concerns.
For instance, Hunter Harrison, CEO of Canadian Pacific railway and the man who is on record as saying that regulators “overreacted” to the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, recently said Canadian Pacific might get out of the oil hauling business. ...
Just like rail company BNSF’s early 2014 public relations stunt in which the company said it was buying 5,000 safer rail cars to haul oil but then never did, Harrison is also just feeding the media a good story. ...
Two days after Harrison was telling the media he wanted out of the oil hauling business, and one day after the exploding oil train accident in Galena, Illinois, Glen Wilson, Canadian Pacific’s Vice President of Safety, Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, was in Washington, D.C. lobbying against new oil train safety regulations.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Portland man: I was tortured in UAE for refusing to become an FBI informant
The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming
The Best Congress Money Can Buy
Guiding Obama Into Global Make-Believe
4 Reasons to Question the Official ‘Poverty Eradication’ Story of 2015
Stretching gender boundaries
A Little Night Music
Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson - Cha Cha Cha
Sam Cooke - Bring it on home to me
Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke - Chain Gang
Sam Cooke - Trouble Blues
Sam Cooke - Hold on
Sam Cooke - Another Saturday Night
Sam Cooke - Cupid
Sam Cooke - Comes Love
Sam Cooke - I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues
Sam Cooke - You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
Sam Cooke - Having A Party
Sam Cooke - You Send Me
Sam Cooke - That's Where It's At
Sam Cooke - Get Yourself Another Fool
Sam Cooke - Win Your Love (For Me)
Sam Cooke - Rome wasn't built in a day
Sam Cooke - I'll Come Running Back To You
Sam Cooke - That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On
Sam Cooke - Twist In The Old Town Tonight
Sam Cooke - Fool's Paradise
Sam Cooke - Frankie And Johnny
Sam Cooke - Wonderful World
Sam Cooke - Good Times
Sam Cooke - Crossing Over
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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