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 r&b singer Sugarpie Desanto. Enjoy!
Sugarpie DeSanto - Slip In Mules
“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
-- William Shakespeare
News and Opinion
White House moves to 'kill off the password'
The White House says it is making progress in its effort to kill the online password.
Security alternatives to the password funded by the administration will start rolling out in six to 12 months, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said Tuesday at the Chamber of Commerce.
“We simply have to kill off the password,” he said. “It's a terrible form of security.” ...
Daniel did not give specifics on exactly which of the pilot programs — ranging from using a mobile device for identification to using a wearable ring or bracelet — will be rolled out. But they will be “widely available" once they are ready, he said.
White House Aims to Replace Website Passwords With Federal Authentication Scheme
The White House has announced today that a long-standing plan to roll out a federal “Internet ID” authentication scheme that would be used to log in to all websites across the Internet will move forward, and the service will launch in six to twelve months. ...
Private multiple site authentication systems like OpenID have been around for years, and logging in to websites with a Facebook or Twitter account is also becoming popular. The downside to this, from the administration’s perspective, seems to be that they don’t have direct control over the backbone of such a system.
Given the huge privacy implications of such a federally-run scheme, it’s hard to imagine eager adoption. Distrust in the wake of the NSA surveillance leaks, along with the federal government’s other fiascos in the webspace, like the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website, make this a recipe for monumental failure.
Details are scant, and in the past the administration insisted the program would be “purely voluntary,” though if the goal is really to “kill off the password” nationwide, it clearly will not remain voluntary for long, and full-scale government control over your ability to log in to websites seems to be the ultimate goal.
White House’s unclassified computer network hacked
Hackers have recently breached the White House’s unclassified computer network. ...
An official said “activity of concern” was detected while assessing numerous possible cyberthreats that the Executive Office of the President is made aware of daily.
The situation was dealt with immediately and work continues, although the new measures have led to temporary shut-downs of the network and loss of connectivity for some White House employees, the official said. The Washington Post reports that the intranet and VPN were both intermittently unavailable, but that email was unaffected apart from “minor delays”.
Eyebrows had been raised when National Security Council meetings, typically held in the White House’s situation room, were moved to a number of other locations throughout October. CBS News’ Mark Knoller reports that one was held in the Pentagon in early October, and another in the State department last Friday.
GCHQ Can Access Raw Data From NSA Without a Warrant, Government Discloses
GCHQ was forced to reveal ... previously unknown 'arrangements' at a secret hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the UK's surveillance watchdog. ... The documents were released in response to a challenge to GCHQ's surveillance practices brought by Privacy International, Liberty and Amnesty International in the wake of leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.
In July 2013 the Intelligence Services Committee conducted an investigation of GCHQ's access to the NSA's PRISM programme, clearing GCHQ from "circumventing" UK law in any way because it held unpublished policies and procedures which ensured that its role in the intelligence-sharing programme with the Americans complied with the Human Rights Act.
In the report the Committee said "in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000."
However, campaigners say this assurance is contradicted by the newly disclosed 'arrangements', which state that a Ripa interception warrant "is not as a matter of law required in all cases in which unanalysed intercepted communications might be sought from a foreign government."
The 'arrangements' described in the new documents would allow Britain's intelligence agencies to trawl through foreign intelligence material without restrictions and retain both content and metadata for up to two years.
The FBI Was So Hapless Hunting a Teen Kid, It Had To Pretend To Be from a Newspaper
[T]he FBI wanted to identify the owner of an anonymous MySpace account connected to bomb threats against a high school in Lacey, Washington. So the bureau created a fake news story about the bomb threats and ginned up an email appearing to come from the Seattle Times, which it sent to the MySpace account, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Included in the email were links that appeared to point at the Times‘ website but which, in fact, linked to servers controlled by the FBI. Those servers, in turn, installed spyware on the target’s computer. The ruse worked: The owner of the account clicked on the links, compromising his identity as a 15-year-old student. He was subsequently arrested and convicted. ...
“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” Times editor Kathy Best was quoted as saying in her paper. “Not only does that cross a line, it erases it.”
The FBI says to be wary of hackers ... and to let the FBI hack what it wants
Even as the FBI warns US citizens that their personal data is increasingly likely to be hacked by criminals, the agency – without any public debate – is quietly ramping up its own abilities to hack anyone in the world. And, as we found out this week, their underhanded tactics are even ensnaring news organizations.
In the six years since the FBI impersonated the Seattle Times and AP to hack a suspect, it’s only ramped up its exploits. Since at least 2007, the FBI has had what it calls a “Secure Technologies Exploitation Group” – which is a more polite way of saying they have a team that hacks computers.
In an extraordinary report published in August, Wired’s Kevin Poulsen detailed how the FBI has been setting up honeypots on certain websites to ensare all sorts of suspects. The websites deliver malware to every visitor of the website and will tell the FBI who has been visiting it – even if the Internet users are using anonymity tools like the Tor Browser. It’s one thing if this is being done for child porn websites – where even visiting the site is a crime – but this is yet another tactic that the FBI uses without telling us how often or against whom it’s aimed.
We do know that the FBI is attempting to alter the nationwide court rules known as the Federal Rules of Procedure, so that it will be even easier for them to hack suspects no matter where the investigation is occurring. ... Recently, FBI director Jim Comey complained that Apple and Google shouldn’t be encrypting Americans’ smartphones by default “without careful thought and debate”. It’d be nice if he used the same standard for the FBI’s hacking abilities – which seems to have become a go-to FBI tactic without Comey ever granting the public the right to either think or debate about it.
Odds Are, You Are Suspicious
When you get off a train, do you get off ahead of passengers? Or do you get off behind passengers? When you're going on a trip, do you come off as nervous? Or are you an unusually calm traveler? How about if you make a phone call at a station, do you look around? Or do you stare straight ahead?
If you don't know the answers to these questions, you'd better figure them out now. Because unless you get off in stride with other train passengers, live at the elusive intersection between anxiety and tranquility, and close your eyes during phone calls, you're a suspicious person subject to questioning by Amtrak police.
According to the Guidelines for Amtrak Customer Service Employees in Texas, which the ACLU has received as a result of a FOIA request, ticket agents may come in contact with travelers whose conduct is "indicative of criminal activity." Amtrak says supposed indicators of such activity should immediately be reported to trained law enforcement personnel. They include:
- Unusual nervousness of traveler
- Unusual calmness or straight ahead stare
- Looking around while making telephone call(s)
- Position among passengers disembarking (ahead of, or lagging behind passengers)
- Carrying little or no luggage
- Purchase of tickets in cash
- Purchase tickets immediately prior to boarding
Is Filming a Police Officer a "Domestic Threat"? Austin Activist on Trial for Videotaping an Arrest
Syrian rebels enter Kobani from Turkey
A small group of Syrian rebels entered the embattled border town of Kobani from Turkey on Wednesday on a mission to help Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State (Isis) in Syria, activists and Kurdish officials have said.
The group of about 50 armed men is from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and is separate from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who are also en route to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border.
Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said the FSA group had crossed to Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey. Nassan, who spoke in Mursitpinar, said they had travelled in cars but did not have more details.
Reports on Wednesday morning in the Turkish media that dozens of peshmerga fighters had also crossed the border were later retracted.
A convoy of 150 peshmerga troops arrived in Turkey from Iraq at Habur early on Wednesday, where they were met by enthusiastic crowds and Turkish security forces. The convoy is carrying heavy artillery and weapons along with armoured vehicles and ambulances.
US Airstrikes in Syria Badly Damaging Civilian Economy
The US war on ISIS in Syria, when it hasn’t centered on the offensive near Kobani, has mostly been a war on oil. Airstrikes have pounded oil wells and refineries across ISIS territory, which is also the primary oil-producing part of Syria.
It’s being couched as an effort to cut off ISIS funding, but the oil wells and other infrastructure being targeted are actually privately owned, and the attacks are badly damaging the civilian economy across Syria.
As winter nears prices are soaring, and not just on fuel. Knock-on effects have raised the price of almost everything, including basic food. The prices of grain are no doubt also effected by US airstrikes on grain silos in the north.
Egypt Troops Expel Civilians, to Level Homes Near Gaza Border
Will Indefinitely Close Only Non-Israeli Gaza Crossing
Egypt’s military junta is following up its blaming of Gaza militants for a major attack on a military checkpoint in northern Sinai late last week with an ambitious plan to essentially seal off the tiny Gaza Strip from Egyptian territory.
Troops are out in force ordering civilians who live within half a kilometer of the border to evacuate their homes, declaring a “state of emergency” and a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area, which they plan to level.
Binyamin Netanyahu 'chickenshit', say US officials in explosive interview
US relations with Israel have plunged to new depths of bitterness and hostility as senior officials in the Obama administration decried Binyamin Netanyahu as a “chickenshit prime minister”, “coward” and a man more interested in his own political survival than peace. ...
The Obama officials’ comments underline the dismal state of relations between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu after a series of damaging announcements by Israel – including again this week – regarding its determination to push ahead with settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The temperature of relations plunged again last week when Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, was pointedly snubbed by senior administration officials during a visit last week to Washington, which itself followed a public warning from the White House that Israel risked alienating its “closest allies”.
Despite the deepening frustration in Washington, Netanyahu continued to hit back over the latest settlement announcement, saying US criticism was “detached from reality”, even on the eve of the publication of the latest remarks.
“The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” said one official quoted in the Atlantic. “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.
“The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here
The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.
This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program. ...
What does all this unhappiness mean for the near future? For one thing, it means that Netanyahu—who has preemptively “written off” the Obama administration—will almost certainly have a harder time than usual making his case against a potentially weak Iran nuclear deal, once he realizes that writing off the administration was an unwise thing to do.
This also means that the post-November White House will be much less interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement policies. ...
It would also be unsurprising, post-November, to see the Obama administration take a step Netanyahu is loath to see it take: a public, full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu's horror, would be based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.
Sanctions bind Russia's energy elite to Putin
An offer by Gazprom to help rival Rosneft salvage an Arctic oil project shows how tightly sanctions have bound Russia's political and business elite together in the Ukraine crisis - an unintended consequence of the West's punitive measures.
Some Gazprom executives now say this month's little noticed proposal to loan Rosneft a drilling rig was "theoretical". It was quietly made after U.S. sanctions put in doubt a project with ExxonMobil to drill for oil in the Kara Sea.
The offer was certainly surprising.
The relationship between the two state run firms has long been strained. Most recently Gazprom, successor to the Soviet gas ministry, has been worried by Rosneft's ambition to increase its gas output having become Russia's biggest oil producer, borne out in an intensifying price war for domestic gas consumers.
The mere suggestion that such rivals could cooperate to reduce the impact of sanctions is one of the strongest signals yet of how, after seven months, Western measures are having the opposite effect to the one intended.
Far from dividing those closest to President Vladimir Putin, they have forced the main players in the energy sector to rally behind him. This circle has by necessity become more focused, Western and Russian businessmen, diplomats and politicians said.
Arming the Warrior Cop: From Guns to Drones, Inside the Booming Business of Police Militarization
Civil Rights Groups Call on Obama to Drop Test-Based 'Accountability' System in Schools
The national turn towards a high-stakes testing-based system of education "is leaving millions of low-income students and students of color behind," charged a coalition of national civil rights groups in a Tuesday letter to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Congressional and State education leaders.
Putting forth a set of recommendations, the letter urges the government officials to consider a curriculum that is less tied to a standardized-test based "accountability system" and is more focused on "advancing opportunity and supporting school integration, equity, and improved accountability within our nation’s systems of public education."
The letter comes as the Education Department under Duncan faces growing resistance to its widespread implementation of assessment-driven exams, with students, teachers and parents voicing growing discontent and staging walk-outs and other protests over the practice. Critics of high-stakes testing argue that the tests unfairly discriminate against minorities and less affluent students while "driving the professionalism out of teaching and the joy out of learning," as the group Rethinking Schools wrote this spring.
"The current educational accountability system has become overly focused on narrow measures of success," the group writes.
At Current Rates, Global Gender Pay Gap Won't Close for More Than 80 Years
No single country has closed the income gap between men and women, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum, and if current trajectories hold it will be nearly another century before pay equity for women is finally achieved.
Among the key findings in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2014 (pdf), women currently have 60 percent of the economic opportunities men have worldwide, an increase of just four percentage points since WEF began its study in 2006.
"Much of the progress on gender equality over the last 10 years has come from more women entering politics and the workforce," said Saadia Zahidi, head of the WEF Gender Parity Program and lead author of the report. "While more women and more men have joined the workforce over the last decade, more women than men entered the labor force in 49 countries." ...
Out of the 142 countries studied, the U.S. sits at number 20 in the overall gender gap index.
Will Mike Brown’s Killer Avoid Charges in Ferguson? Cops Stockpile Riot Gear Amid "Troubling" Leaks
The Evening Greens
So much for building a constituency and creating a mandate for green action...
Pssttt!!! Hold the green talk until after the election
Green billionaire Tom Steyer vowed to make the November congressional elections about climate change. Now he's talking about abortion and the economy to get his candidates across the finish line.
Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned environmentalist, launched a state-of-the-art operation to push voters to elect governors and senators willing to confront global warming. His NextGen Climate Action political committee is on track to spend more than $55 million in this election - an unprecedented amount for an environmentalist group.
But NextGen and other green groups are not talking about climate change as much as one would expect.
Instead, they are paying for TV ads that attack Republican candidates on job creation and corruption, not carbon emissions. Door-to-door canvassers talk about clean water and reproductive rights, not the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada to U.S. refineries.
The reason is simple: climate change isn't a top concern for most voters. Only 3 percent think it should be the country's top priority, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
NextGen and other green groups say they're simply doing what it takes to elect the candidates they support.
Scientists Say An Area The Size Of Rhode Island Is Coated With Oil From The BP Well Explosion
Millions of gallons of oil released following the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 have settled at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, covering at least 1,250 square miles — an area nearly the size of Rhode Island. That is the conclusion of a new study led by University of California researcher David Valentine and published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As a result of the explosion and subsequent leak, nearly five million barrels of crude oil gushed into the sea. About one million barrels were recovered, and another two million floated to the sea surface, says Valentine. That left another two million barrels, or about 84 million gallons, which was believed to be trapped in the Gulf's deep water currents, the oil breaking into discrete particles too small to float to the surface.
"This is a phenomenon that had been theorized before, but this really came to the forefront during this event," Valentine told VICE News.
Those tiny bits of oil, through a process that's still unknown, clumped together into bits that were more dense than water and fell to the seafloor, Valentine said, accumulating in a pattern that forms a giant "bathtub ring" on the ocean floor.
Dozens of Vermonters Arrested for Protesting 'Road to Ruin' Energy Policy
Protesting continued government support of fossil fuels, more than 60 demonstrators were arrested in Montpelier, Vermont after staging a sit-in at the State House Monday evening.
The civil disobedience action followed a mass rally, dubbed Time's Up, Rise Up! Rally for Climate Justice, during which over 300 Vermont residents converged on the State House lawn to demand that Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, rescind his support for the expansion of a fracked gas pipeline, put an end to new fossil fuel infrastructure, and take "real action to protect our communities from the climate crisis."
The protest was organized after the state's Public Service Board issued a renewed Certificate of Public Good for the Vermont Gas pipeline project, also known as the Addison Natural Gas Project. The proposed pipeline will significantly expand natural gas throughout the state by connecting the region south of Burlington with pipes that transport shale gas from Alberta, Canada.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Ed Snowden Taught Me To Smuggle Secrets Past Incredible Danger. Now I Teach You.
Comforting the NSA and Afflicting Its Dissenters
Reports: “Sneak and Peek” Search Warrants Metastasizing Throughout U.S. Law Enforcement
Are FBI and NCTC Trying to Pressure Prosecutors to Charge the Second Intercept Source?
Transgender parenting
Odds & Ends
A Little Night Music
Sugar Pie Desanto - Rock Me Baby
Sugar pie Desanto - Soulful Dress
Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - In The Basement (Part 1& 2)
Sugar Pie Desanto - Baby what you want me to do
Sugar pie de Santo - I don't wanna fuss
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Hello San Francisco
Sugar Pie De Santo - Do The Whoo-pee
Sugar Pie Desanto - Use What You Got
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Git Back
Sugar Pie DeSanto - (That) Lovin' Touch
Sugar Pie de Santo w/Etta James - I don't feel sorry
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Can't Let You Go
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Go Go Power
Sugar Pie Desanto - A Little Taste Of Soul
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Witch For A Night
Sugar Pie DeSanto - Baby It Ain't Right
Sugar Pie DeSanto - She`s Got Everything
Sugar Pie DeSanto - The One That Loves You
Sugar Pie DeSanto - I Want to Know
Sugar Pie De Santo - Going Back Where I Belong
Sugar Pie Desanto - Mama Didn't Raise No Fool
Pee Wee Kingsly feat Sugar Pie De Santo - Nickel And A Dime
Sugar Pie Desanto - There's Gonna Be Trouble
Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - Do I Make Myself Clear
Sugar Pie DeSanto at the 2008 Pioneer Awards
Sugar Pie DeSanto & Pee Wee Kingsley - One Two Let's Rock
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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