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 a fine slide guitarist, the underappreciated Chicago bluesman Johnny Littlejohn. Enjoy!
Johnny Littlejohn - Bloody Tears
"The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments."
-- George Mason
News and Opinion
Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt: DOJ's Seizure Of Phone Records Was 'Unconstitutional'
Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes
Yet another serious escalation of the Obama administration's attacks on press freedoms emerges
It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined - in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions. But as last week's controversy over the DOJ's pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the newsgathering process in general.
New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ's attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US. Instead, the DOJ alleges that he merely communicated this innocuous information to a journalist - something done every day in Washington - and, for that, this arms expert and long-time government employee faces more than a decade in prison for "espionage".
The focus of the Post's report yesterday is that the DOJ's surveillance of Rosen, the reporter, extended far beyond even what they did to AP reporters. The FBI tracked Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department, traced the timing of his calls, and - most amazingly - obtained a search warrant to read two days worth of his emails, as well as all of his emails with Kim. In this case, said the Post, "investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material." It added that "court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist".
But what makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that the DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that not only Kim, but also Rosen - the journalist - committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information - something investigative journalists do every day - Rosen himself broke the law.
Conspiracy to commit journalism?
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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange reveals British government eavesdropping messages speculating he’s being framed
WikiLeaks founder uses subject access request to access British agency chatter, which allegedly calls extradition 'a fit-up'
Authorities at GCHQ, the government eavesdropping agency, are facing embarrassing revelations about internal correspondence in which Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is discussed, apparently including speculation that he is being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition on rape allegations. ...
A message from September 2012, read out by Assange, apparently says: "They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate."
A second instant message conversation from August last year between two unknown people saw them call Assange a fool for thinking Sweden would drop its attempt to extradite him.
The conversation, as read out by Assange, goes: "He reckons he will stay in the Ecuadorian embassy for six to 12 months when the charges against him will be dropped, but that is not really how it works now is it? He's a fool… Yeah … A highly optimistic fool."
"This is what the spies are discussing amongst themselves," Assange told the Spanish television presenter Jordi Evolé.
Aaron Swartz's Last Gift: Site Launches Whistleblower Safe House
In era of "most aggressive government assaults on press freedom," new open source dropbox provides "secure route" for leaks
One month before his January 11th suicide, web pioneer and creative commons architect Aaron Swartz completed one last project—an "opensource drop box for leaked documents along the lines of WikiLeaks."
Launched Thursday, Deaddrop is the brainchild of former hacker turned Wired editor, Kevin Poulsen, who approached Swartz with the idea. Swartz built the code for the project—one last gift to journalists and whistleblowers worldwide and the open-source internet community.
"He agreed to do it," writes Poulsen, "with the understanding that the code would be open-source—licensed to allow anyone to use it freely—when we launched the system." ...
The New Yorker magazine is the first to apply Deaddrop technology—posted under the name Strongbox—as a safe house for sources and journalists, allowing readers to "communicate with our writers and editors with greater anonymity and security than afforded by conventional email."
Homeland Insecurity: Terror suspects slip through $700bn US net?
Obama to discuss al Qaeda, drones, Guantanamo Bay in Thursday speech
President Barack Obama, under fire for security lapses at a U.S. mission in Libya, will in a speech on Thursday lay out his wide-ranging counter-terrorism policy, from the controversial use of drones to efforts to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Obama's use of military drone aircraft to attack extremists has drawn fire and increased tensions in countries like Pakistan and been criticized by human rights activists in the United States.
His inability to follow through on a 2008 campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison has been dramatized by a hunger strike among many of the terrorism suspects being held there.
And the resurgence in recent weeks of questions surrounding the deaths of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in an attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, last year has put Obama on the defensive.
Losing Power: Iraqi oil flows while locals lack electricity, water
Fears of Civil War Grip Iraq as Bombings and Death Skyrocket
More than decade after US invasion, Iraq besieged by violence, instability, and fear
Providing further evidence that Iraq is already experiencing the violence of a civil war, multiple bombings in two major cities on Monday killed dozens of people and injured many more. ...
Following last week's violence, Al-Jazeera correspondent Omar Al Saleh said: "Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the occupying US forces withdrew over a year ago ... many Iraqis fear the sectarian nature of the recent attacks means the country is heading towards a civil war."
Political and sectarian violence spiked last month, making April the most deadly month in Iraq in more than five years. Though the US media has largely ignored the violence and political instability, experts on the country are saying a civil war is simmering, is very much real, and as one Iraqi politician told foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn earlier this month, it will be "worse than Syria" when it ultimately takes hold.
Occupy No Longer in Headlines But Activism Continues Nationwide
Rise Up or Die
We stand helpless before the corporate onslaught. There is no way to vote against corporate power. Citizens have no way to bring about the prosecution of Wall Street bankers and financiers for fraud, military and intelligence officials for torture and war crimes, or security and surveillance officers for human rights abuses. The Federal Reserve is reduced to printing money for banks and financiers and lending it to them at almost zero percent interest; corporate officers then lend it to us at usurious rates as high as 30 percent. I do not know what to call this system. It is certainly not capitalism. Extortion might be a better word. The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, relentlessly trashes the ecosystem for profit. The melting of 40 percent of the summer Arctic sea ice is, to corporations, a business opportunity. Companies rush to the Arctic and extract the last vestiges of oil, natural gas, minerals and fish stocks, indifferent to the death pangs of the planet. The same corporate forces that give us endless soap operas that pass for news, from the latest court proceedings surrounding O.J. Simpson to the tawdry details of the Jodi Arias murder trial, also give us atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide that surpass 400 parts per million. They entrance us with their electronic hallucinations as we waiver, as paralyzed with fear as Odysseus’ sailors, between Scylla and Charybdis. ...
More than 100 million Americans—one-third of the population—live in poverty or a category called “near poverty.” Yet the stories of the poor and the near poor, the hardships they endure, are rarely told by a media that is owned by a handful of corporations—Viacom, General Electric, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Clear Channel and Disney. The suffering of the underclass, like the crimes of the power elite, has been rendered invisible. ...
It is time to build radical mass movements that defy all formal centers of power and make concessions to none. It is time to employ the harsh language of open rebellion and class warfare. It is time to march to the beat of our own drum. The law historically has been a very imperfect tool for justice, as African-Americans know, but now it is exclusively the handmaiden of our corporate oppressors; now it is a mechanism of injustice. It was our corporate overlords who launched this war. Not us. Revolt will see us branded as criminals. Revolt will push us into the shadows. And yet, if we do not revolt we can no longer use the word “hope.”
Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” grasps the dark soul of global capitalism. We are all aboard the doomed ship Pequod, a name connected to an Indian tribe eradicated by genocide, and Ahab is in charge. “All my means are sane,” Ahab says, “my motive and my object mad.” We are sailing on a maniacal voyage of self-destruction, and no one in a position of authority, even if he or she sees what lies ahead, is willing or able to stop it. Those on the Pequod who had a conscience, including Starbuck, did not have the courage to defy Ahab. The ship and its crew were doomed by habit, cowardice and hubris. Melville’s warning must become ours. Rise up or die.
Banks Win Big as Regulators Refuse to Rein in $700 Trillion Derivatives Market
The Toxic Politics of Science
Native American tribes challenge Obama over Keystone XL pipeline
Leaders from 11 Native American tribes from South Dakota to Oklahoma walked out of a meeting with federal officials in Rapid City on Thursday to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
They then issued a direct challenge to President Obama: Talk to us directly or not at all.
The meeting was arranged amid mounting tension in Indian Country about the pipeline, which would pump oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries. Although the pipeline would not go directly through any Native American reservation, tribes in proximity to its proposed path say it will encroach on their traditional lands and that the project is fraught with environmental risks.
To help ease those concerns, representatives from the Department of State, which is deciding whether to approve the pipeline, agreed to meet with tribal leaders on Thursday morning in the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City.
But before the talks could begin, tribal leaders walked out, upset that the government had sent what they considered low-level officials. In a press conference held by the tribes after the walkout, leaders took turns issuing angry statements against the project and the Obama administration.
"I will only meet with President Obama," said Bryan Brewer, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who added that was the only true way to conduct nation-to-nation talks.
Obama DOE Approves 2nd Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal
Friday is the proverbial "take out the trash day" for the release of bad news among public relations practioners and this Friday was no different.
In that vein, yesterday the Obama Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional approval of the second-ever LNG (liquefied natural gas) export terminal. ...
The name of the terminal: Freeport LNG.
Freeport LNG is 50-percent owned by ConocoPhillips and located in Freeport, Texas, an hour-long car ride south of Houston. The export facility is the second one approved by the Obama DOE, with the first one - the Sabine Pass terminal, owned by Cheniere and located in Sabine Pass, Louisiana - approved in May 2011. ...
The announcement comes in the aftermath of an April DeSmogBlog investigation revealing that recently confirmed Energy Department Secretary Ernest Moniz - a former member of the Board of Directors of ICF International - has a binder full of conflicts-of-interest in any decision the DOE makes to export the U.S. shale gas bounty. ...
"Exporting LNG will lead to more drilling -- and more drilling means more fracking, more air and water pollution, and more climate fueled weather disasters like last year's record fires, droughts, and superstorms," Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Natural Gas campaign said in a press release in response to the DOE announcement.
Geoengineering: Can We Save the Planet By Messing With Nature?
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Obama’s Headlong Rush to Counterterrorism Transparency
Stuff That Really Matters™☮ ♥ ☺
How Many Former NSA and FBI Counterterrorism Employees Will It Take For This Story To Reach The MSM?
Journalist Surveillance Goes Far Beyond AP
Pentagon acknowledges transgender veterans
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Barack Obama, Occupy Wall Street and Martin Luther King's Mission and Legacy
A Little Night Music
Johnny Little John - Kitty O
John Littlejohn - What In The World You Goin' To Do
John Little John - Hoochie Koochie Man
John Littlejohn - Shake Your Moneymaker
Johnny Littlejohn - Worrried Head
Johnny Little John - I Need Lovin
John Littlejohn - 19 years old
John Littlejohn - Treat Me Wrong
John Littlejohn - Johnny's Jive
John Littlejohn - I Wanna Go Home
John Littlejohn - Can't Be Still
John Littlejohn - Dream
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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