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 blues (and later gospel) composer, pianist and vocalist Thomas A. Dorsey. Enjoy!
Georgia Tom Dorsey (Thomas A. Dorsey) - Levee Bound Blues
“Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.”
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
News and Opinion
50 Years After March of Washington, Tens of Thousands Say Struggle for MLK's "Dream" Continues
Obama, Surveillance, and the Legacy of the March on Washington
The aggregated moral will of the civil-rights movement is responsible for the election of an African-American President of the United States—a President who, on Wednesday, will speak at an event at the Lincoln Memorial commemorating the march, and whose tenure coincides with the most expansive capacity for government surveillance this country has ever known. The moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward irony. ...
Hoover’s F.B.I. saw an easy syllogism in which support for civil rights was evidence of Communist sympathies. The external threats of the Cold War lent authority to the paranoid suspicion that equality was a code word for Communism. The N.A.A.C.P. executive secretary Roy Wilkins, a political moderate and an outspoken anti-Communist, who addressed the march, had an F.B.I. file that dated back to the beginning of the Second World War. Bayard Rustin, who largely oversaw the logistics of the march, became a target of the bureau’s attention because of his youthful affiliation with the Communist Party, a connection that had been dormant long before that day on the Mall. Ralph Abernathy, the lieutenant to Martin Luther King, Jr., who’d helped to organize the Montgomery bus boycott, in 1955-56, had been watched since that action first attracted public attention. The surveillance files that the F.B.I. kept on King himself are extensive, and they betray an entrenched hostility toward both the man and the aspirations he represented. It went past mere surveillance—the F.B.I. planted bugs in King’s hotel rooms, then sent audio recordings of his extramarital trysts to his wife, Coretta, in an attempt to derail his efforts.
The Presidency of Barack Obama is the product of besieged citizens whose mail was read, whose telegrams were intercepted, whose phone calls were recorded and used against them. That irony doesn’t invalidate his legacy, but it does complicate the question of what was achieved on that August day five decades ago. If for no reason other than this, Obama’s position atop a dawning surveillance state should give him pause. That figures whose dissent consisted of a demand that the United States abide by its own Constitution could be vacuumed into a system meant to trace foreign threats raises the question of what other democratic demand, what present moral inconvenience, is being similarly thwarted.
Cornel West Says Civil Rights Leaders Have Failed The Movement
Dave Zirin from The Nation reports from the March with poignant commentary. Click the link, this is worth reading in full:
'New Jim Crow' Placards Seized by Police & More From the March on Washington
I spent eight hours today amongst thousands at the March on Washington, and the people present were some of the most remarkable, resilient people I have ever had the privilege to be around. The number-one face on T-shirts, placards, and even homemade drawings was not President Obama or even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was Trayvon Martin. I also witnessed homemade signs calling for jobs programs, speaking out against the school closures and in solidarity with those overseas victimized by US militarism. The people at this march are the face of resistance to what Dr. King called the “evil triplets of militarism, materialism and racism.”
The main speakers at the march, however, did not match the politics and urgency of those who gathered in the Saturday heat. Even more frustrating is that few tried. ...
Based upon the speeches during the main portion of today’s events there can be little doubt that the Dr. King who was murdered in Memphis in 1968 would not have been allowed to speak at this fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of his life. There was no discussion of the “evil triplets.” Instead, we had far too many speakers pay homage to the narrowest possible liberal agenda in broad abstractions with none of the searing material truths that make Dr. King’s speeches so bracing even today.
The day was symbolized for me on multiple levels by seeing DC Park police seize 200 professionally printed placards from activists that were distributing them for free. The placards read, “Stop Mass Incarceration. Stop the new Jim Crow.” Police said that it was "unlawful solicitation", even though they were clearly giving them away. ... Today, those “triplets of evil” King warned us about 1967 still strangle this country. If we are not talking about the New Jim Crow, Wall Street and militarism, then what are we doing? King said, “If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?” Given US foreign policy, how can one say that they stand in King’s legacy and not raise these issues?
Should Obama be Welcomed at 50th Anniversary of March on Washington?
"I wrote a piece recently where I claim, where I made the statement that Obama should not be welcome at the August 28 commemoration for the March on Washington. And I said that because I think it's sort of sacrilegious that the president of the United States would be invited to an event that represents something so special for black people and oppressed people. [incompr.] we are now in a position to begin to talk about the meaning of the march in '63, to assess where we are as a people and as a movement. To inject the politics of the state into that process by inviting the president, to me, is a move that undermines our ability to exercise autonomy and self-determination, to give meaning to our own experiences.
I said also too that it represents the turning over of the event to the state. It gives them a propaganda victory that they had been attempting to achieve ever since Dr. King was assassinated, and that is to completely absorb his image and understanding of what he was about in our movement, to merge our Dr. King and our movement with the interests of the U.S. state and the U.S. society. And for that, I think that is something we have to oppose."
"The issue I have with the invitation on the 28th is that the president of the United States, our first black president, has been invited to speak in the shadow of Dr. King, the implication, of course, being that there is a straight line between Dr. King and our movement and the person of Barack Obama as the first black president. It gives the impression that he represents our aspirations and the goals of our movement. And I think that that is something that we have to oppose. So it's politicizing the march in a way that deradicalizes our movement and suggests the dominance of one narrative, and that narrative is the narrative of the aspirations of black people wanting just to be included into the U.S. narrative. And that's something that negates our history, the totality, the comprehensive nature of our history, our struggle, struggle for liberation, struggle for social justice."
Merkel's rival to freeze deal with US over NSA scandal if wins election
Codename 'Apalachee': How America Spies on Europe and the UN
Just over two weeks ago, Obama made a promise to the world. "The main thing I want to emphasize is that I don't have an interest and the people at the NSA don't have an interest in doing anything other than making sure that (...) we can prevent a terrorist attack," Obama said during a hastily arranged press conference at the White House on August 9. He said the sole purpose of the program was to "get information ahead of time (...) so we are able to carry out that critical task," adding: "We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that." Afterward, the president flew to the Atlantic island of Martha's Vineyard for his summer vacation. ...
Obama's public appearance was aimed at reassuring his critics. At the same time, he made a commitment. He gave assurances that the NSA is a clean agency that isn't involved in any dirty work. Obama has given his word on this matter. The only problem is that, if internal NSA documents are to be believed, it isn't true.
The classified documents, which SPIEGEL has seen, demonstrate how systematically the Americans target other countries and institutions like the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the UN. They show how the NSA infiltrated the Europeans' internal computer network between New York and Washington, used US embassies abroad to intercept communications and eavesdropped on video conferences of UN diplomats. The surveillance is intensive and well-organized -- and it has little or nothing to do with counter-terrorism
Leak of Nations: Secret NSA docs show wiretapping of UN
War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist
The larger sense I get from the criticism directed at Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald is one of distaste — that they aren’t what we think of as real journalists. Instead, they represent an emerging Fifth Estate composed of leakers, activists and bloggers who threaten those of us in traditional media. They are, as one says, not like us.
“By no means was I treated as a hero when I first came forward. I was indicted and spent two years in court,” Mr. Ellsberg said in an interview. “But in those days, journalists were not turning on journalists. With Snowden in particular, you have a split between truly independent journalists and those who are tools — and I mean that in every sense of the term — of the government. Toobin and Grunwald are doing the work of the government to maintain relationships and access.” ...
The reflex is understandable, but by dwelling on who precisely deserves to be called a journalist and legally protected as such, critics within the press are giving the current administration a justification for their focus on the ethics of disclosure rather than the morality of government behavior.
“I think the people in our business who are suspicious of Glenn Greenwald and critical of David Miranda are not really thinking this through,” said Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of The Guardian. “The governments are conflating journalism with terrorism and using national security to engage in mass surveillance. The implications just in terms of how journalism is practiced are enormous.”
Feinstein Wants To Limit Who Can Be A Journalist
The most recent congressional threat to the free press in the United States comes from California Democrat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In a proposed amendment to a media shield law being considered by Congress, Feinstein writes that only paid journalists should be given protections from prosecution for what they say or write. The language in her proposal is raising concerns from First Amendment advocates because it seems to leave out bloggers and other nontraditional forms of journalism that have proliferated in recent years thanks to the Internet.
An amendment offered by Feinstein would extend shield-law protections to those who work as a “salaried employee, independent contractor, or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information,” though students working for news outlets would similarly be covered. ...
“The distinction between who gets paid to do journalism and who doesn’t is going to become essentially meaningless as we go forward with this technological revolution,” said Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school based in St. Petersburg, Fla.
McBride, the recent author of a book on journalism ethics in the Internet age, said shield laws are meant to ensure a vibrant marketplace of ideas where all voices can be heard.
“To the extent that you limit the shield law, you limit who is in that marketplace,” she said.
David Miranda's detention is a threat to press freedom, say European editors
In an open letter to David Cameron published in today's Observer, the editors of Denmark's Politiken, Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, Norway's Aftenposten and Finland's Helsingin Sanomat describe the detention of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, as harassment.
They say that the "events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern" and call on the British prime minister to "reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press". ...
The editors describe a free press as crucial to holding governments and their intelligence agencies to account. They write: "We are surprised by the recent acts by officials of your government against our colleagues at the Guardian and deeply concerned that a stout defender of democracy and free debate like the United Kingdom uses anti-terror legislation in order to legalise what amounts to harassment of both the paper and individuals associated with it."
They add: "It is deeply disturbing that the police have now announced a criminal investigation" and they warn that "the implication of these acts may have ramifications far beyond the borders of the UK, undermining the position of the free press throughout the world".
Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying
"U.S. prepares for possible retaliatory strike against Syria," announces a Los Angeles Times headline, even though Syria has not attacked the United States or any of its occupied territories or imperial forces and has no intention to do so.
Quoth the article:
"the president made no decisions, but the high-level talks came as the Pentagon acknowledged it was moving U.S. forces into position in the region."
...
Threatening to attack Syria, and moving ships into position to do it, are significant, and illegal, and immoral actions. The president can claim not to have decided to push the button, but he can't pretend that all the preparations to do so just happen like the weather. Or he couldn't if newspapers reported news.
Yes, illegal. Read the U.N. Charter:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
...
"Obama also called British Prime Minister David Cameron," says the LA Times, "to talk over the developments in Syria. The two are 'united' in their opposition to the use of chemical weapons, the White House said in a statement issued after the call." Well, except for white phosphorus and napalm. Those are good chemical weapons, and the United States government is against bad chemical weapons, so really your newspaper isn't lying to you at all.
'US fixing intelligence around Syria as unsure who's behind chemical attack'
U.S. Prepares to Attack Syria -- 60% of Americans Are Against It, Obama Has No UN Approval, and No Proof of Who Was Behind Gas Attacks
The U.S. is giving all signs of preparing for a unilateral military strike on Syria after an alleged chemical weapons attack last week. Any move to attack Syria could entangle American involvement in a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
The American people are strongly opposed to U.S. military involvement in Syria. A recent poll conducted by Reuters showed that 60 percent of Americans are opposed to intervention in Syria.
Last week, reports emerged that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad attacked the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with nerve agents. Doctors Without Borders, which operates aid centers near Ghouta, said that the victims they treated came in with symptoms consistent with a chemical attack, including breathing problems, foaming at the mouth and damaged vision. Western governments over the weekend also said that there was little doubt that chemical weapons were used. Still, no firm proof has emerged as to who exactly was behind the attacks. ...
In an interview with CNN, Obama said: “ If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it.” But given Russian opposition to a U.S. strike on Syria, a UN mandate would be hard to come by.
Military Prison Blasted for Refusing Whistleblower Chelsea Manning Care
Military prison authorities in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas declared Thursday they will deny WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning hormone therapy and other care related to gender transitioning, while forcing her to serve in a men's prison, sparking outrage at what many are calling a gross violation of her human rights and prompting David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, to vow a lawsuit. ...
The military's position flouts broad medical and legal agreement that withholding treatment for transgender and gender nonconforming people violates their medical rights.
"The position taken by the Army has been a position taken by other corrections agencies at the state and federal level and has been found by all leading medical and mental health associations, including the national commission on correctional healthcare, as well as the majority of federal courts who have discussed this issue to be both inconsistent with medical recommendations and unconstitutional under the 8th amendment," declared Chase Strangio, Staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project, on Democracy Now!.
This deserves wider attention in light of the vampire squid's recent manipulations of the aluminum market being exposed among other things:
The Leveraged Buyout of America
In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US Representative Alan Grayson and three co-signers expressed concern about the expansion of large banks into what have traditionally been non-financial commercial spheres. Specifically:
[W]e are concerned about how large banks have recently expanded their businesses into such fields as electric power production, oil refining and distribution, owning and operating of public assets such as ports and airports, and even uranium mining.
After listing some disturbing examples, they observed:
According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a “quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies.” These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach. They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the “foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce”. . . .
It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.
A “macro” risk indeed – not just to our economy but to our democracy and our individual and national sovereignty. Giant banks are buying up our country’s infrastructure – the power and supply chains that are vital to the economy.
Hungarian farmers starved of business since joining EU
The Evening Greens
Meet the Town That's Being Swallowed by a Sinkhole
One night in August 2012, after months of unexplained seismic activity and mysterious bubbling on the bayou, a sinkhole opened up on a plot of land leased by the petrochemical company Texas Brine, forcing an immediate evacuation of Bayou Corne's 350 residents—an exodus that still has no end in sight. Last week, Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the company and the principal landowner, Occidental Chemical Corporation, for damages stemming from the cavern collapse.
Texas Brine's operation sits atop a three-mile-wide, mile-plus-deep salt deposit known as the Napoleonville Dome, which is sheathed by a layer of oil and natural gas, a common feature of the salt domes prevalent in Gulf Coast states. The company specializes in a process known as injection mining, and it had sunk a series of wells deep into the salt dome, flushing them out with high-pressure streams of freshwater and pumping the resulting saltwater to the surface. ... What happened in Bayou Corne, as near as anyone can tell, is that one of the salt caverns Texas Brine hollowed out—a mine dubbed Oxy3—collapsed. The sinkhole initially spanned about an acre. Today it covers more than 24 acres and is an estimated 750 feet deep. ... But the biggest danger is invisible; the collapse unlocked tens of millions of cubic feet of explosive gases, which have seeped into the aquifer and wafted up to the community. ...
Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing industrial disaster in the United States you haven't heard of. In addition to creating a massive sinkhole, it has unearthed an uncomfortable truth: Modern mining and drilling techniques are disturbing the geological order in ways that scientists still don't fully understand. ... But disasters like the one in Bayou Corne have done little to slow the growth of injection mining. Last spring, lawmakers in Baton Rouge pushed through a handful of modest reforms in response to the sinkhole, but the toughest regulations were knocked down by the chemical industry. New caverns continue to be permitted. It's not a question of whether there will be another Bayou Corne—but where, and how big.
Yosemite wildfire could worsen as firefighters brace for strong winds
Firefighters braced for strong winds that could push a raging wildfire further into the north-west edge of Yosemite national park, threatening thousands of rural homes.
The massive blaze was also burning Sunday in the vicinity of two groves of giant sequoias that are unique the region, prompting park employees to take extra precautions of clearing brush and setting sprinklers.
The towering trees, which grow only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and are among the largest and oldest living things on earth, can resist fire. However, dry conditions and heavy brush are forcing park officials to take extra precautions in the Tuolumne and Merced groves. About three dozen of the trees are affected. ...
The fire has grown so large and is burning dry timber and brush with such ferocity that it has created its own weather pattern, making it difficult to predict which direction it will move. Steep, inaccessible terrain was hampering firefighter's effort to surround it.
Radioactive Bluefin Tuna Caught Off California Coast
Every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California has shown to be contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. Every single one.
Over a year ago, in May of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported on a Stanford University study. Daniel Madigan, a marine ecologist who led the study, was quoted as saying, “The tuna packaged it up (the radiation) and brought it across the world’s largest ocean. We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.”
Another member of the study group, Marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York State reported, “We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium 134 and cesium 137.”
That was over a year ago. The fish that were tested had relatively little exposure to the radioactive waste being dumped into the ocean following the nuclear melt-through that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March of 2011. Since that time, the flow of radioactive contaminants dumping into the ocean has continued unabated. Fish arriving at this juncture have been swimming in contaminants for all of their lives.
'Unhospitable Oceans' Acidifying at Rate Unseen in 250 Million Years (or Ever)
In both a new study published Monday and in a newspaper interview over the weekend, German marine biologist Hans Poertner warns the world that the crisis of ocean acidification—an intricately woven aspect of global warming and climate change—is now happening at a rate unparalleled in the life of the oceans for at least 250 million years and perhaps the fastest rate ever in the planet's entire existence.
"The current rate of change is likely to be more than 10 times faster than it has been in any of the evolutionary crises in the earth's history," said Poertner in an interview with environmental journalist Fiona Harvey.
Ocean acidification—often called climate change's "evil twin" by scientists and experts—happens as the pH level of seawater dwindles as it absorbs increasing amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and though such fluctuations are a normally occurring phenomenon, when the balance tips too far, the acidification can imperil numerous types of marine life and is especially threatening to coral, shell fish, and other essential members of the ocean's ecosystems.
Poertner—whose study, Unhospitable Oceans, was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change—says that if humanity's industrial carbon emissions continue with a "business as usual" attitude, the problem of the oceans will be catastrophic.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Plutocrats' New Pitch: Let Us Rob You Now So You Can Plan Ahead for Poverty
Miranda Detention: 'Blatant Attack on Press Freedom'
The Caucus Project--We're Nearly Ready to Start!
Bathroom Panic and the Fear Monger's Shoppe
A Little Night Music
Georgia Tom Dorsey - Come On Mama
Kansas City Kitty & Georgia Tom - Fish House Blues
Kansas City Kitty & Georgia Tom - Show Me What You've Got
Jane Lucas (Victoria Spivey) and 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey - What's That I Smell?
Tampa Red & Georgia Tom - You Can't Get That Stuff No More
Harum Scarums (Georgia Tom, Big Bill Broonzy, Mozelle Anderson) - Come On In
Sweet Papa Tadpole - Black Spider Blues
Ma Rainey w/Georgia Tom - Deep Moaning Blues
Stovepipe Johnson w/Georgia Tom - Devilish Blues
Tampa Red & Georgia Tom - No Matter How She Done 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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