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 Chicago blues harmonica player and singer Billy Branch. Enjoy!
Billy Branch - Hoodoo Man Blues
“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
-- George Orwell
News and Opinion
Senate Democrats are trying to start a war with Iran.
It is inarguably in America's best interest to negotiate with Iran to settle issues that have arisen around Iran's interest in the use of nuclear energy and uranium enrichment rather than engage in a military struggle. Why are Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez pushing a bill that will kill efforts at diplomacy (with the likely alternative being another military conflict) with a total of 16 Senate Democrats supporting it?
What nation do these Democrats claim to represent?
Eyes on Silent Dems as Hawks Push for War with Iran
A majority of Senate Democrats are refusing to reveal where they stand on a bipartisan Iran sanctions bill that experts warn risks a catastrophic war with Iran. ...
The bill would advance further sanctions on Iran and impose near-impossible conditions on a final agreement. It stands in direct violation of an interim agreement reached in late November in Geneva that the U.S. will "refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions" during the six-month period the agreement is in effect, and critics charge it amounts to a call for war.
Introduced by Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), the bill is strongly backed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and is opposed by the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, a rift in the Democratic party appears to be deepening. Last week, Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, urged Democratic backers of the bill to admit their support is tantamount to a call for for war. "If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so," she stated. "Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to proceed."
Invading Iraq was dumb enough. Now Congress wants to derail the Iran deal
No step the United States could take anywhere in the world would bring strategic benefits as great as detente with Iran
Congress, it turns out, is filled with Republicans and Democrats eager to act as enablers for the most repressive forces in Iran. It is an astonishing spectacle: an alliance between brutal Iranian institutions, principally the Revolutionary Guard, and elected representatives of the American people. Both are deeply invested in the paradigm of hostility, and both are in a state of near-panic at the prospect of reconciliation between Tehran and Washington.
Hostility toward Iran may not be the silliest of all American foreign policies –that would probably be the continuing trade embargo of Cuba – but it is undoubtedly the most self-defeating. No step the United States could take anywhere in the world would bring strategic benefits as great as détente with Iran. It has tantalizing potential. Iran's interest in stabilizing the violence-torn countries on its eastern and western borders, Iraq and Afghanistan, closely parallels that of the United States. ...
It is a safe bet that many of members of Congress, including more than a few of the 59 senators now trying to kill the US-Iran peace process, would struggle to identify Iran on a map. Many, however, cling to the belief that the only true test of any American foreign policy is whether Israeli leaders support it. The Israel lobby in Washington has turned the Iran deal into a life-or-death struggle. It is no accident that leaders of the war party, like Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, have received huge amounts of campaign money from that lobby. Nor is it strange that Hillary Clinton, who is eager for the lobby's support in her upcoming presidential campaign, has been deafeningly silent on this issue.
AIPAC Still Trying to Torpedo Iran Nuke Deal
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Meanwhile, it looks like trench warfare has erupted between the Israeli leadership and the Obama administration:
U.S. calls Israeli minister's reported comments 'offensive'
The United States on Tuesday rebuked Israel for comments attributed to the Israeli defense minister suggesting that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace is messianic and obsessive.
"The remarks of the Defense Minister (Moshe Yaalon) if accurate are offensive and inappropriate especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel's security needs," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a brief statement that constituted a rare rebuke to close ally Israel.
Egyptians vote ‘yes’ on constitution as Islamists boycott
Egyptians queued outside polling stations on Tuesday to vote on a new constitution many said they had not read but would approve anyway in support of the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The referendum has been billed by authorities as the first in a series of polls that will restore elected government by the end of the year.
For many, it has also become a vote of confidence for army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the man who overthrew Morsi in July and is now mulling a presidential bid. ...
Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected and civilian president, was pushed aside by Sisi following massive street protests against his one year rule that was marred by allegations of power grabs and mismanagement of the economy.
His ouster and the subsequent deadly government crackdown on his Islamist supporters from the Muslim Brotherhood has left the most populous Arab country deeply polarised.
The Brotherhood, now designated as a terrorist organisation by the military-installed authorities, called for a boycott of the referendum.
With Muslim Brotherhood crushed, Egypt sets sights on Hamas
After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt's military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.
The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas's political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.
Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt's military has squeezed Gaza's economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.
Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organizations that threaten its national security. ...
According to the Egyptian officials, Hamas will face growing resistance by activists who will launch protests similar to those in Egypt that have led to the downfall of two presidents since the Arab Spring in 2011. Cairo plans to support such protests in an effort to cripple Hamas.
Al Qaida’s ISIS takes 2 Syrian cities, executes scores of rivals
Al Qaida-linked militants, forced last week from many of their strongholds in northern and eastern Syria, have launched a fierce counterattack, retaking control of the capital of Raqqa province, seizing another city that’s a key border crossing with Turkey and executing hundreds of prisoners, witnesses and activists reported Monday.
The resurgence of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an al Qaida affiliate whose tough interpretations of Islamic law had earned it the enmity of fellow rebels, suggested that last week’s predictions that moderate factions were retaking control of the rebellion against President Bashar Assad were premature.
Reports from Syrian activists and accounts from a Western military attache based in neighboring Lebanon said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had launched its offensive Sunday morning and quickly regained control of Raqqa city, the only provincial capital not in government hands. It immediately began executing prisoners from rival rebel groups, including its onetime ally, the Nusra Front, which is also affiliated with al Qaida.
'Blaming Assad a red herring, West still intends to destabilize Syria'
Democrats concede to curb funds for Wall Street regulators in spending bill
• GOP drops demands for cuts to food stamp programme
• House to vote on bipartisan bill on Wednesday
Republican negotiators have reined in funding for Wall Street regulators as part of agreeing a $1.1tn federal budget, but dropped demands for further reductions in federal food stamp programmes that would have hit America's poorest families. ...
Hal Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House appropriations committee, singled out the budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission in a press release, which received $324m less than it requested and $25m taken from reserves he called “a slush fund”.
Wall Street lobbyists have been pressing Congress to curb the growing power of regulators like the SEC in the wake of the financial crisis and Rogers said the spending bill had also designating $44m to an economic review of its rule-making process.
This decision, and similar cuts to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, brought an angry response from Wall Street campaigners.
“It is shameful that Wall Street’s allies in Congress have again failed to fund the very agencies that are charged with protecting Main Street and preventing another financial crisis,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, an independent nonprofit organisation that promotes the public interest in the financial markets.
Yves Smith: Banks are still getting away with a lot
The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico's Most Notorious Drug Cartel
An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels.
Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.
There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker," coordinates with American authorities.
But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.
A True 'War on Poverty' Would Place Poor People at the Forefront
NSA phone collection does not prevent terrorism, according to report
A new analysis of 225 terrorism cases in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks indicates that the National Security Agency's massive collection of phone records had a "minimal" on preventing acts of terrorism, according to a report released Monday by the New America Foundation, a Washington nonprofit group.
Traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the evidence to begin most cases. The NSA program provided information to launch one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly Moalin, convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia.
"Our investigation found that bulk collection of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group," said Peter Bergen, director of New America's National Security Program. "And the NSA has also exaggerated the role of its bulk collection program of international communications in the investigations of the terrorism cases it has cited to defend this program."
The study makes similar conclusion as an advisory group appointed by President Barack Obama to examine the federal government's vast surveillance programs. Their report, released last month, said the program "was not essential to preventing attacks."
US will not enter bilateral no-spy deal with Germany, reports media
America is refusing to enter a bilateral no-spy agreement with Germany and has declined to rule out bugging the calls of German political leaders in the immediate future, according to reports in the German media.
Last October, revelations that the National Security Agency had been bugging Angela Merkel's mobile were met with outrage in Berlin and apologetic soundbites from Washington.
President Barack Obama had reportedly assured the German leader that the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of chancellor Merkel". Barely three months on, the mood seems to have changed.
Initial hopes in Germany that the US would enter into some kind of non-spying pact similar to the one between America and Britain have been dashed, according to information obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
"We are not getting anything," the newspaper quotes a source from within the German foreign intelligence agency. "The Americans have lied to us," said another source.
Let's Encrypt the Internet!
GPS and smartphone car technology raises questions about drivers' privacy
Speaking at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, [US transportation secretary] Anthony Foxx said a balance had to be struck between the convenience and safety of drivers with their expectations of privacy.
A senior executive at the Ford motor company was forced to hastily withdraw claims he made last week about the ability of the carmaker to track its drivers using new technology. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week Ford's Jim Farley, global vice-president of marketing and sales, initially claimed the GPS units installed in the company's cars meant the company knew when drivers were speeding and where they weren't. ...
On Monday, Foxx told reporters in Detroit that new technologies being developed for cars raised potentially thorny issues. He said: "The technology that's emerging raises questions, and we're going to be responsive to those questions. But each technology is different, and each application of it is different, and we want to make sure that we're striking the right balance between helping folks be safe but also making sure that their expectations of privacy are also weighed carefully." ...
Foxx’s comments came after the US government accountability office (GAO) found inconsistencies in the way automakers handle data from car owners, raising fears of privacy breaches. The study looked at information collected by Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan and Toyota as well as navigation device-makers Garmin and TomTom and map and navigation app developers Google and Telenav.
Reclaiming the Radical Imagination: Challenging Casino Capitalism's Punishing Factories
We now live under a form of casino capitalism that revels in deception, kills the radical imagination, depoliticizes the American public and promulgates what might be called disimagination factories and punishing machines. Idealism has been replaced by a repressive punishing machine and a surveillance state that turns every space into a war zone, criminalizes social problems and legitimates state violence as the most important practice for addressing important social issues. Racism now fuels a mass incarceration system that expands the reach of the punishing state to those viewed as excess and excluded from American society. The carceral state and the surveillance state now work together to trump security over freedom and justice while solidifying the rule of the financial elite and the reigning financial services such as banks, investment houses and hedge funds, all of which profit from the expanding reach of the punishing state. The drug war has become a war on racial minorities just as the war on poverty has become a war on the poor.
Chris Hedges is right when he argues that "any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through [the] control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian." [7] While Hedges is aware that this disciplinary culture of fear and repression is rooted in a political economy that treats people as objects and makes the accumulation of capital the subjects of history, he underestimates one important element of the new authoritarianism produced by casino capitalism. That is, what is novel about existing registers of discipline and control is that they operate in a new historical conjuncture in which the relationship among political power, cultural institutions and everyday life has become more powerful and intense in the ability to undermine the radical imagination and the power and capacities of individuals to resist repression and make the crucial decisions necessary to take control over the forces that shape their lives. The machineries of public pedagogy and consent have taken on an Orwellian presence in the age of digital technologies, and when challenges to authoritarian rule emerges, the state resorts to the overt and unapologetic repression of critical thought and dissent.
The anonymity of the corporate state becomes invisible as historical and public memory are erased and the American public is increasingly infantilized. Stupidity is normalized through a consumer/celebrity culture, and where that does not work, the machinery of state repression, with its endless culture of fear, punishes those willing to question authority. Authorities try to blind people to the courage exhibited by whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden, painting them instead as traitors. Courage is now under attack by the sterile and dangerous call for unchecked security. Fear becomes the only value left in the arsenal of the machinery of surveillance, control and social death.
Judge: Ohio 'Free to Innovate' When It Comes to State Murder
A federal judge in Ohio has approved the state's plan to kill convicted killer Dennis McGuire by using an untested mixture of drugs that his lawyers, informed by experts, say could leave the man writhing in pain from the "agony and terror of air hunger" as his lungs shut down.
A state prosecutor in the case told the court that McGuire—convicted in the rape and murder of a woman named Joy Stewart in 1989—"is not entitled to a pain-free execution" as he won the case before presiding Judge Gregory Frost.
“Ohio is free to innovate and to evolve its procedures for administering capital punishment," Frost said in his ruling against McGuire's lawyers who were pushing for a stay of exectuion based on the use of the un-tested drugs.
The Evening Greens
Erin Brockovich: After Chemical Spill, West Virginians Organizing "Stronger Than I’ve Ever Seen"
West Virginia Water Crisis: Behind Chemical Spill, Gaping Holes in State and Federal Regulation
New Carbon Rules for Power Plants A Missed Opportunity To Rein in Natural Gas Emissions
One of the linchpins of the Obama administration’s high-stakes plan to address climate change moved one step closer to implementation this week, as the EPA officially published proposed new carbon emissions standards for power plants, drawing fire from environmentalists who say the rules for natural gas power plants are too lenient.
The proposed rules cover both natural gas and coal-fired electrical plants, which are responsible for 40 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The rules would make it virtually impossible for new coal-fired power plants to be built, unless carbon capture and sequestration technology is used, but sets standards that can be easily achieved by natural gas power plants without using any similar tools. ...
Mr. Obama’s climate plan calls for a heavy reliance on natural gas, which produces roughly 50 to 60 percent as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned, to help transition away from coal. But there is strong evidence that natural gas, which is primarily composed of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, may be worse for the climate than coal. The Obama climate plan, in that case, would represent a move from the frying pan into the fire.
EPA: California Offshore Frackers Must Disclose Chemicals Dumped Into Ocean
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new rule last week requiring oil and gas firms that use fracking technology in federal waters off the coast of southern California to regularly report the volume and chemical makeup of any fracking fluids or wastewater dumped into the ocean.
The EPA said it issued the new requirements to gather information on the chemicals discharged into the ocean during offshore fracking operations. Regulators, state lawmakers, environmental groups and the California Coastal Commission had expressed concerns to the EPA that the dumping of fracking fluids could be impacting marine environments.
The groups took action after a Truthout investigation revealed that federal regulators had approved several fracking operations off the California coast in recent years.
The new rule also requires offshore frackers and rig operators to maintain an inventory of chemicals used during certain phases of production. This inventory must be made available to the EPA upon request, and the EPA is free to enhance its regulations if new information indicates that fracking fluids are harming the environment. ...
"The new reporting rule is a step in the right direction, but the oil companies shouldn’t be allowed to dump toxic fracking chemicals in the ocean at all," said Miyoko Sakashita, the oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Erin Brockovich Hosts Town Hall In Charleston
Hat tip Don midwest:
Drowning in money: the untold story of the crazy public spending that makes flooding inevitable
Wolf Richter: How the Fed’s “Wealth Effect” Quack Medicine Hurts Renters and With Them, Consumption
Not Pono
A Little Night Music
Billy Branch + Lurrie Bell & The Sons Of Blues - Help Me
Billy Branch + Sons of the Blues - Going Down Slow
Billy Branch - Roaches
Billy Branch + Sons of the Blues - Blue Bird Blues
Hubert Sumlin w/Billy Branch - You Can't Change Me
Billy Branch - Everything gonna be alright
Billy Branch - Hoochie Coochie Man
Billy Branch - You're So Fine
Billy Branch - Juke
Billy Branch & The Sons Of Blues - Bring It on Home
Billy Branch & The Sons of Blues - I'm a man
Hubert Sumlin and Billy Branch - Just Your Fool
John Primer, Billy Branch - Sugar Sweet
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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