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 San Francisco area one man band Jesse Fuller. Enjoy!
Jesse Fuller - San Francisco Bay Blues
“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”
-- Montesquieu
News and Opinion
Detainee alleges CIA sexual abuse, torture beyond Senate findings
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a wider array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture than was disclosed in a Senate report last year, according to a Guantanamo Bay detainee turned government cooperating witness.
Majid Khan said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his "private parts" – none of which was described in the Senate report. Interrogators, some of whom smelled of alcohol, also threatened to beat him with a hammer, baseball bats, sticks and leather belts, Khan said.
Khan's is the first publicly released account from a high-value al Qaeda detainee who experienced the "enhanced interrogation techniques" of President George W. Bush's administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
Khan's account is contained in 27 pages of interview notes his lawyers compiled over the past seven years. The U.S. government cleared the notes for release last month through a formal review process. ...
"I wished they had killed me," Khan told his lawyers. He said that he experienced excruciating pain when hung naked from poles and that guards repeatedly held his head under ice water. ...
Khan's description of his experience matches some of the most disturbing findings of the U.S. Senate report, the product of a five-year review by Democratic staffers of 6.3 million internal CIA documents. ... Years before the report was released, Khan complained to his lawyers that he had been subjected to forced rectal feedings. Senate investigators found internal CIA documents confirming that Khan had received involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration.
FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities
The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.
The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found. ...
U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department's inspector general. ...
"These are not your grandparents' surveillance aircraft," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant "if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft."
Vast Majority of Spying Will Continue Despite Expiration of Patriot Act Provisions
The bulk surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act expired Monday, allowing people to speak freely. But the NSA’s supporters can still eke out a win
Facing no other choice, the Senate also voted on Sunday night to move forward on the USA Freedom Act, the compromise-of-a-compromise NSA reform bill that will bring portions of the Patriot Act back from the dead, but will nonetheless permanently make end the NSA’s bulk records program as we know it ... at least, it will if it remains as it’s written now.
But Senators could now add amendments to the bill in an attempt to weaken its reforms out of existence, an opportunity that, due to procedural hurdles, they would not have had if they had passed it anytime in the last week. ...
There are those who claim that the NSA – that magnificent benevolent keeper of all our personal secrets – never has (and would never dream!) of abusing its great power. It’s by far the biggest misnomer about the whole debate; of course the NSA’s gigantic phone database has been abused. You can just ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court itself: in 2011, Judge Bates wrote that the privacy rules and restrictions placed on the agency by the court were “so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall … regime has never functioned effectively.” But yeah, other than that, no abuse at all.
This week, Congress will decide the future of NSA surveillance, and if you want your representatives to permanently restrict the NSA you have to tell them.
Bill to curtail U.S. domestic spying advances but political fight looms
The U.S. Senate voted to move ahead on Tuesday with a bill that would end the ability of spy agencies to collect Americans' telephone records in bulk and install a more targeted system, but a political fight loomed over potential changes to the bill. ...
Senate security hawks have proposed four amendments they say would plug important holes in the surveillance system outlined in the Freedom Act, which passed the House of Representatives by a 338-88 vote on May 13. ...
Privacy advocates, however, who have opposed the program since it was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden two years ago, have balked. They say the changes would weaken privacy protections in the Freedom Act and hold up the bill. ...
Senate rules provide for up to 30 hours of debate before lawmakers vote on amendments, although Senate leaders said they expect votes later on Tuesday.
If any of the amendments pass, the amended measure would have to be sent back to the House for its approval before it could be sent to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law. ... The amendments, if passed, could also cause problems in the House.
Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Ron Wyden who helped block proposed extensions of the existing surveillance programs offered their own slate of nine amendments to the Freedom Act on Tuesday. ... None of those amendments was expected to come up for a vote in the Senate.
Senate Republicans, White House Blast Rand Paul Over Surveillance Opposition
The Senate is full of career politicians who know how to tow the party line. After last night’s failure to force through an extension of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, those politicians are blind with impotent rage, shaking their fists at Sen. Rand Paul (R – KY) for not just going along to get along. ...
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R – KY) is so unfamiliar with internal opposition he seemed at a loss to even process it, saying Paul had his opportunity to say his peace and that “now is the time” for him and everyone else to vote the way the leadership wants.
The White House wants the bill passed too, and is likewise slamming Sen. Paul, accusing him of making America “less safe,” and blasting the Senate in general, warning them against any discussion of amendments to the extension that would make the debate take any longer, and insisting they just give the president what he wants immediately.
You can find your Senator’s contact information here.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance
Man Under Surveillance by Joint Terrorism Task Force Shot Dead in Boston
A police officer and FBI agent investigating possible terror suspects shot and killed a man outside a Boston drugstore early Tuesday, officials told NBC News. ...
The man was fatally shot in the city's Roslindale neighborhood, and later pronounced dead at a hospital, officials said. He had been under surveillance by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Authorities have not released the name of the man, who was said to be in his early 20s. Officials said when a Boston police officer and an FBI agent approached him around 7 a.m. ET near a CVS parking lot, he pulled out a large knife and ignored repeated commands to drop the weapon.
Your tax dollars at work:
Despite Security Mania Since 9/11, TSA Failed to Find 95% of Fake Weapons in Mock Tests
Despite untold billions spent on airport security over the last fourteen years, DHS agents with fake bombs and other weapons marched right through checkpoints 67 out of 70 times.
Despite creating a world where you have to take off your shoes, empty every drop out of a water bottle, dispose of toenail scissors, and expose yourself to a full-body scanner (or submit to a physical pat-down) every time you want to get on an airplane, the Transportation Safety Administration failed to find a full 95 percent of fake weapons which passed through airport security checkpoints during covert tests performed recently by the Department of Homeland Security. ...
As a result of the high failure rate, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has reassigned the TSA chief to a new role at the agency and ordered a full review of security procedures and ordered immediate improvements.
Strikingly, as ABC noted, the review by DHS determined that "despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time."
Army War College recommends New Detente
The unexpected May 12 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at Sochi, Russia, suggested the beginning of a new direction for the Ukraine crisis. Suddenly, it seemed possible that the U.S. would join last winter’s Minsk 2 agreement drawn up to resolve Ukraine’s civil war.
It is therefore disappointing to see that developments since the parley have been uniformly negative. But a surprising source, the U.S. Army War College, sees a possibly promising outcome. It recently issued a report exploring different scenarios of how U.S.-Russian tensions may play out over Ukraine and suggesting that Washington and its NATO allies adopt a more conciliatory and accommodationist approach to Moscow. ...
With this deterioration in relations since mid-May, it is striking to find a promising recommendation at the close of a study (PDF) out this month from the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, titled “From Cooperation to Competition: The Future of U.S.-Russian Relations.” ...
The study’s half-dozen hypotheticals seem at first glance to be rehearsals for an imminent disaster. Collectively, however, they demonstrate that there is no stable solution without accommodation with Russia — what is likely to be disdained by more hawkish members of the U.S. national security establishment as appeasement. ...
The study concludes that the U.S. has fallen into a “reactive posture” that creates a risk of “misunderstanding” and threat of serious violent confrontation. By shaping the present stand-off in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe into scenarios that largely favor Moscow’s options, the study makes a strong case that Washington and its NATO allies would be wise to stand down.
How the US Helped ISIS
A recently declassified US military intelligence document is further evidence of US complicity. Formerly classified as “secret,” an August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report was among a batch of documents obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch. ...
American officials claimed the ascendancy of ISIS had caught American intelligence by surprise. Yet in the 2012 report — which was circulated widely through the US government — the DIA foresaw the creation of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria. It also said that Islamic State of Iraq could “return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” and declare an “Islamic state” in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
More than that, the report says the creation of an Islamic state was precisely the goal of the foreign governments that support the opposition:
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
The document previously identifies, in a slightly different context, “supporting powers” as “Western countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey.” Even if one interprets the document to exclude the United States from the “supporting powers” — indeed, why would its intelligence agency tell the US government what its policy was? — it reveals that at least as early as 2012, the United States knew that its client states sought the creation of an “Islamic state.” Two years would pass before the United States offered its peep of performance protest.
More broadly, the United States participated in a war against the Syrian government that turned Islamic State of Iraq into a regional power encompassing — and devastating — large parts of two countries. Such an outcome was predictable — and indeed predicted by the US government itself.
While American politicians and pundits have blamed the ascendance of ISIS on former Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki and Assad — or on the removal of American troops from Iraq — the DIA report reminds us that the key event in the rise of ISIS was the corresponding rise of the insurgency in Syria.
While nobody was looking, the Islamic State launched a new, deadly offensive
Syrian rebels appealed for U.S. airstrikes to counter a new offensive by the Islamic State in the northern province of Aleppo that could reshape the battlefield in Syria.
The surprise assault, launched over the weekend, opened a new front in the multi-pronged war being waged by the extremist group across Iraq and Syria, and it underscored the Islamic State’s capacity to catch its enemies off guard.
The push — which came on the heels of the miltants’ capture of the Syrian city of Palmyra and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month — took them within reach of the strategically vital town of Azaz on the Turkish border.
Azaz controls access to one of the most important border crossings between Syria and Turkey. If the town were to fall, the supply lines to Aleppo city would be cut and the entire rebel presence in the province would be jeopardized, rebel commanders said.
“Automatically, the Islamic State would gain control of Aleppo city,” said Abu Mohammed, the nom de guerre of a leader of the rebel group Thuwar al-Sham, based in the Turkish town of Gaziantep. “The situation is dire.”
Defense Secretary: Nothing Will Stop US Operations in South China Sea
In an interview today with the BBC, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter threatened further US military involvement in the South China Sea, saying nothing would stop the United States from carrying out overflights and naval patrols through the area as they have for years.
The comments are a continuation of increasingly bellicose US rhetoric against China over the construction of artificial islands in the Spratly chain. China is one of several nations with competing claims in the Spratlys, and the US has claimed China’s land reclamation program threatens a regional war.
Bernanke blames Congress as China flexes economic muscles
Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday rebuked US lawmakers for allowing China to steal a march with a new Asian bank that threatens to upend Washington's oversight of the world economic order.
Speaking in Hong Kong, Bernanke also echoed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in saying China's currency was "much better aligned" today, after Western criticism that Beijing cheats in global trade by distorting the yuan's exchange rate.
With the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its plans to gradually roll out the yuan as an international currency, China is flexing its economic muscles to the consternation of some US critics.
But, Bernanke said, the US Congress only had itself to blame after refusing to ratify reforms agreed in 2010 that would have given greater clout to China and other emerging powers in the IMF.
It remains "better to have a global unified system" playing to standardised rules, he told an audience of investors on the sidelines of the World Business Forum in Hong Kong.
"But I understand entirely that if the Congress will not allow the (IMF's) governance system to appropriately reflect the changing economic weights, then I understand why other countries would say 'let's take our marbles and go home'," Bernanke said.
As U.S. Drops Havana from Terror List, Cuba Aims to Preserve Sovereignty & Independence
Greek PM Says the Ball Is Now in Europe's Court as Time Runs Out to Avoid Default
Greece has submitted what it says is a "realistic proposal" for an agreement with its international creditors, as time runs out for the country to avoid default on Friday.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras said on Tuesday it was now up to Europe to prevent the potential breakup of the continent. He gave no indication as to what the deal might include, other than to say it included "concessions that will be difficult."
His comments came the morning after the leaders of Germany, France, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank, and European Commission held an emergency meeting about Greece in Berlin on Monday.
"It is now clear that the decision for whether they want to adapt to realism and emerge from the crisis without the division of Europe, the decision belongs to the political leadership of Europe," said Tsipras.
Greece, creditors line up rival reform proposals to unlock aid
Greece's creditors are close to finishing a draft agreement to put to the leftist government in Athens, a source close to the talks said on Tuesday, injecting new momentum into long-running negotiations to release aid for the cash-strapped country.
Hours earlier, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Athens had submitted its own proposal to lenders - an apparent effort to pre-empt a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the creditors and to show Greek voters that Athens made its move first.
The statements of proposal and counter-proposal came after leaders of Germany, France and the lending institutions held emergency talks on the Greek debt crisis in Berlin late on Monday in a sign of top-level concern about the impasse.
Starved of aid and access to bond markets, Athens is precipitously close to running out of money. It has threatened to default on an IMF payment this week without a deal, though it also says it will reject any ultimatums.
Failure to reach agreement this month could trigger a Greek default and lead to the imposition of capital controls and a potential exit from the euro zone, dealing a serious blow to Europe's supposedly irreversible single currency.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature From the Chicago Day Book: "Ludlow Disaster Blame Is Placed on Shoulders of John D., Jr., by Wlash."
Tune in at 2pm!
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WikiLeaks Launches Campaign to Offer $100,000 "Bounty" for Leaked Drafts of Secret TPP Chapters
Wanted Dead or Alive: $100,000 for Full Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership
WikiLeaks issues bounty for secret treaty which has been negotiated by corporate executives and government officials while the global public remains in the dark
The media outlet Wikileaks on Tuesday announced a campaign to raise a $100,000 cash reward for the complete text of the agreement in order to end the mystery surrounding the actual contents of the deal that involves the U.S. and eleven Pacific Rim nations.
Despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps, WikiLeaks has been able to obtain and publish three leaked chapters of this super-secret global deal over the last two years. However, there are believed to be 26 other chapters of the deal to which only appointed negotiators, trade officials, and chosen representatives from big corporations have been given access.
Hillary Clinton’s “Grassroots Campaign” Sets $1,000 Minimum for a “Conversation”
To take part in a “Conversation with Hillary” at a home in Chestnut Hill on June 10, three days before the Clinton campaign’s official launch in New York, attendees are asked to pay $2,700 per person. For the “Conversation with Hillary” earlier that day in Boston, a “Friend” of the campaign can attend for as little s $1,000.
The private events are described in the invitation as part of Clinton’s “grassroots campaign.”
Bullish on Bernie: Populist Presidential Platform Draws Overflow Crowds
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who spoke to overflow crowds in Iowa and Minnesota over the weekend following his official campaign kick-off in Vermont last Tuesday, is gaining traction with both the press and the public.
Several news outlets have pointed out that Sanders appears to have more momentum behind his nascent White House bid than former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, the Democrat who announced his own presidential aspirations in Baltimore on Saturday.
"O’Malley, who formally launched his candidacy Saturday, not only faces a dominant front-runner in Hillary Rodham Clinton but is also being upstaged by Sanders, the shrewd self-styled socialist senator from Vermont who has made an early and successful play for Clinton skeptics in the party base," wrote Michael A. Memoli in the LA Times.
The Evening Greens
Organic Farming Flourishes in Cuba, But Can It Survive Entry of U.S. Agribusiness?
Was this indigenous leader killed because he fought to save Ecuador's land?
Dark clouds loom over the Tundayme bus station where José Isidro Tendetza Antún said goodbye to his family for the last time.
The moody skies above the Cordillera del Condor would have been a familiar sight to the indigenous leader as he set out on 28 November to join a protest meeting against a huge Chinese-backed mine being carved out of his ancestral homeland.
He never arrived. Four days later, his son Jorge found Tendetza’s body in an unmarked grave, showing signs of torture and strangulation. ...
Tendetza was a prominent critic of President Rafael Correa’s government, which he accused of making a U-turn on its pledge to respect nature and indigenous lands. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to legally recognise the rights of nature in its constitution, but it has since approved a series of mega-projects, including large-scale mines and hydroelectric dams – mostly in Chinese hands. ...
José Tendetza grew up in the Cordillera del Condor, learning to farm, hunt and fish just as his forefathers had. This biodiverse cloud forest is the home of the Shuar, Ecuador’s second-largest indigenous group who fought both the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors, but are now struggling to cope with the arrival of El Mirador – a $1.4bn gold and copper mine. ...
Shuar families have already been displaced by the project, which – if completed – will result in the destruction of 450,000 hectares of cloud forest. Tendetza’s family, supporters and lawyers suspect that his opposition to the mine led to his death – the third violent death of a Shuar leader in six years.
Shell's Arctic oil drilling faces fresh court challenge from environmental groups
A dozen environmental groups have told a US federal court they are renewing a challenge to the leasing in 2008 of areas off Alaska’s north-west shore, where Royal Dutch Shell hopes to drill exploratory wells this summer.
The groups have twice obtained court rulings that said environmental analysis preceding the Chukchi sea sale was flawed. The Department of the Interior in March concluded it had corrected mistakes. ...
Conservation and Alaska native groups said in their lawsuit the former Minerals Management Service had based the sale’s environmental review on projected extraction of only 1bn barrels of oil. A court-ordered supplemental review assumed an extraction of 4.3bn barrels.
The environmental groups indicated in the filiing on Monday that they would continue their claim that the environmental review for the lease sale was insufficient, Grafe said. ...
The revised environmental analysis also failed to assess the climate effect of burning 4.3bn barrels of oil, he said.
“This is an energy decision,” he said. “It’s about where we’re going to get our energy in the future. That needs to be made in the context of climate policy and that wasn’t done here.”
Deepwater Horizon: jury selection begins for BP exec charged in oil spill
David Rainey accused of obstructing congressional investigation as prosecutors say he misled officials about quantity of oil entering Gulf of Mexico
Jury selection began on Monday for the trial of the most senior BP executive charged in connection with 2010’s fatal Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
David Rainey, BP’s former vice president for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, will stand trial in New Orleans, charged with obstructing a congressional investigation in the weeks after the oil spill, the largest in US history.
Prosecutors allege he deliberately withheld information about how much oil was being pumped into the Gulf following the explosion at the BP well.
Rainey is the most senior of a handful of individuals facing charges over the Deepwater disaster, which claimed 11 lives. Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, BP’s top two supervisors on the rig, face involuntary manslaughter and other charges. BP engineer Kurt Mix still faces accusations that he deleted texts about the amount of oil flowing from the blown-out well. Mix’s first trial ended in mistrial.
Rainey was the second in command at BP’s “unified command center” in Robert, Louisiana, where cleanup and response efforts were coordinated.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Danish cowboy bares all in bid to be prime minister
Turkey at a crossroads as Erdoğan bulldozes his way to lasting legacy
Watering Israel's Image
Cracks Appear In America’s Two-Family Political Dynasty In Latest CNN/ORC and ABC/WaPo Polls
ISIS and Assad Regime working together?
AP does it wrong: Sexualization of trans women
A Little Night Music
Jesse Fuller - Beat It On Down The Line
Jesse Fuller - The Monkey And the Engineer
Jesse Fuller - You're No Good
Jesse Fuller - Hesitation Blues
Jesse Fuller - Running Wild
Jesse Fuller - Leavin Memphis, Frisco Bound
Jesse Fuller - I got a mind to ramble
Jesse Fuller - Railroad Worksong
Jesse Fuller - Memphis Boogie
Jesse Fuller - Stealing
Jesse Fuller - 1962 Ida Noyes Hall, University of Chicago,