The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 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 James Brown. Enjoy!
James Brown - Get On The Good Foot
Note: We here at the Evening Blues Weekend Edition often step beyond the boundries of traditional blues music. Joe shikspack so adeptly covers the blues genre in his weekday series that we at the Weekend Edition would find most trad blues offerings we could serve up as being redundant. Therefore Joe, in magnanimous manner has allowed us to color outside of the lines and we appreciate and thank him for that. Almost all modern American music has it's roots in traditional blues music anyway, so ultimately we do not stray far from the mother language. As Muddy Waters sang:
The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, let us add to that list (jazz, country, bluegrass, ragtime, folk, gospel, soul, swing and rhythm and blues) and all subsets thereof. -- JtC
The long hair hippies and the afro blacks, they all get together across the tracks, and they party. ~James Brown~
The Juke Joint is open, let's party!
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors: enhydra lutris
What is the Mainstream Media NOT Reporting?
In George Orwell’s oft-quoted and insightful book 1984, we clearly see how this work of fiction has become reality, and in turn how reality is turned back into fiction through the manipulative, inaccurate and deceptive reporting of mainstream media. As Orwell accurately wrote:
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
Indeed, this is the “reality” we face when we turn to mainstream news networks, a reality coloured and created through corporate interests which reflect their own agendas instead of the truth.
For example, political leaders and the mainstream media continue to explain to us that the reason for NATO’s armed interventions is to bring freedom and democracy to the subjugated masses. However, as Global Research has been consistently pointing out through deep analysis and on-the-ground reporting, the concept of “humanitarian war” is a gross oxymoron.
US Consulate to Citizens: Stay Away From New Zealand TPP Protest
Stay away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership protest taking place Saturday in New Zealand's capital, the United States Consulate has warned its citizens.
The Auckland action is one of over 20 that organizers have planned as part of a national day of action against the controversial pending trade deal.
The Consulate's security message reads, in part: "Approximately 8,000 people are expected to attend the protest. We urge citizens to avoid the protest march route as even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational. We remind citizens to always exercise caution when in the vicinity of any large gatherings, protests, or demonstrations."
80 Years Later, Republicans Are Still Fighting Social Security
Some things never change. “The lash of the dictator will be felt,” a Republican House member said in 1935 when Social Security was first proposed. “Social Security is the delinquent child of the left,” a Fox News commentator said this week, “that grew up to be an evil dictator.”
“Dictator”? A program created by popularly elected politicians, and which enjoys widespread support among voters?
Polls have consistently shown that Americans are extremely pleased with Social Security, which provides benefits are costs far below those in the private sector. But, as the program celebrates its 80th birthday today, Republicans are still working to erode the public’s trust in it, just as they did when GOP presidential candidate Alf Landon called it “a fraud on the workingman” in 1936 and said “the saving it forces on our workers is a cruel hoax.”
To campaign against Social Security is to court political suicide. (It certainly didn’t help Alf Landon; he was trounced.) It therefore becomes imperative to convince voters instead that the program is unreliable. That’s the Republican strategy.
Social Security at 80: Defending a Program Which Has Defended All of Us
Social Security was signed into law eighty years ago, on August 14, 1935. In those eight decades, it has taught us a number of important lessons.
Social Security has demonstrated that there are some undertakings that government does better than the private sector. Social Security is more efficient, universal, secure, and fair than any counterpart private sector arrangement is or could be.
Planned Parenthood Videos Released Strategically To Ensure Abortion Is Addressed In 2016
This summer has been all about Republican candidates condemning Planned Parenthood, thanks to the never-ending succession of undercover videos about the organization.
According to reporting done by The Hill’s Peter Sullivan, the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, has been planning this attack on abortion providers for years. It is all part of a scheme to make sure abortion is a hot topic in the 2016 presidential race - and it's working.
Rachel Maddow Shows Just How Much Bernie Sanders Has Changed Over Three Decades
Even if a person were to consider Bernie Sanders their mortal enemy, they would have to admit that he is consistent with his message. This consistency was the subject of a segment on The Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow showed how, for three decades, Sanders has maintained his populist message of income inequality – even before it became popular.
Despite being in his seventies, Sanders is one ironic mustache away from being a total hipster as far as politicians concerned with the economic status quo go.
Linguistics Analysis CONFIRMS: Donald Trump Talks Like A 4th Grade Boy…A Very Bigoted 4th Grade Boy
If you’ve been waiting for GOP 2016 frontrunner Donald Trump to finally act his age, you might be waiting for a while. According to a linguistics analysis performed by Politico’s Jack Schafer, “The Donald” succeeds splendidly in speaking to conservatives on their level — which is that of a fourth grader.
Politico’s Jack Schafer looked into the nuances of Trump’s speech patterns, and determined that he is probably the perfect candidate for those on the Right who can’t grasp the intricacies of operating a toaster.
Funny Or Die Reenacts The Republican Debate - With Kids
Those hilariously creative people at Funny or Die have created this masterpiece, memorializing the Fox News Republican debate by casting kids to play the candidates. Need a laugh? Have a look.
Norman Hsu, the ghost of US elections past
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
The resurfacing of Norman Hsu reminds us that he was a well-known bundler for Hillary Clinton just two election cycles ago. Today he is ensconced in prison making $40 per month as a high school tutor for his fellow prisoners.
By giving his first interview since he was convicted and sent to prison (WSJ, 8/12/15), we are reminded that he once lived the American dream. He took money for the gullible promising handsome returns. He then gave some to the politicians. The photo-ops with politicians gave him credibility, which enabled him to take more money from more gullible people.
Acoustic Cannon Sales to Police Surge After Black Lives Matter Protests
During a company conference call with financial analysts last week, Tom Brown, the chief executive of LRAD, a military contractor, informed investors that sales were rolling in, not just from Chinese government agencies and the U.S. Navy, but also from American law enforcement.
LRAD manufactures an acoustic cannon that can be used either as a mounted loudspeaker or as a weapon to fire deafening noises at crowds of people.
Federal court nixes Sheriff Arpaio's bid to stop Obama immigration plan
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
A federal appeals court ruled that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio does not have the legal standing to bring claims against President Obama's executive actions on immigration because he couldn’t demonstrate he was being directly harmed by the administration’s policies.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's decision put an end to Mr. Arpaio's latest challenge the administration’s immigration policy.
Jeb Bush, Hosted By Defense Contractor-Backed Group, Calls Iraq War “A Pretty Good Deal”
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said today that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein was a “pretty good deal.”
Bush was speaking at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security (APPS), a group formed and backed by a number of people associated with major defense contractors.
Egypt's dictator murdered 800 people today in 2013. He's now a US ally and GOP folk hero.
Two years ago today, Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi committed one of the deadliest atrocities of the 21st century, killing at least 817 civilians, a number of them women and children.
No one has been punished for the massacre, and in the 24 months since it happened, Sisi has been embraced as an American ally and a folk hero among segments of the Republican Party.
Terrorism is “Made in the USA”. The “Global War on Terrorism” is a Fabrication, A Big Lie
Prominent academic and author Dr Michel Chossudovsky warned that the so-called war on terrorism is a front to propagate America’s global hegemony and create a New World Order.
Dr Chossudovsky said terrorism is made in the US and that terrorists are not the product of the Muslim world.
According to him, the US global war on terrorism was used to enact anti-terrorism laws that demonised Muslims in the Western world and created Islamophobia.
Elaborating on his argument, Dr Chossudovsky said that NATO was responsible for recruiting members of the Islamic state while Israel is funding “global jihad elements inside Syria”.
Dr Chossudovsky, who is also the founder of the Centre for Research and Globalisation, further emphasised that the global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity.
Echoing Dr Chossudovsky’s arguments, Malaysia’s prominent political scientist, Islamic reformist and activist Dr Chandra Muzaffar said that the US has always manipulated religion to further its global hegemony on sovereign states.
Americans Are Finally Learning About False Flag Terror
Governments from around the world admit they carry out false flag terror:
A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939, and declared that the fire originated from Finland as a basis launching the Winter War four days later
Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister ...
US Government “Protection” of Al-Qaeda Terrorists and the US-Saudi “Black Hole”
For almost two centuries American government, though always imperfect, was also a model for the world of limited government, having evolved a system of restraints on executive power through its constitutional arrangement of checks and balances.
Since 9/11 however, constitutional American government has been overshadowed by a series of emergency measures to fight terrorism. The latter have mushroomed in size and budget, while traditional government has been shrunk.
As a result we have today what the journalist Dana Priest has called
two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God.
More and more, it is becoming common to say that America, like Turkey before it, now has what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman have called a deep state behind the public one. And this parallel government is guided in surveillance matters by its own Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which according to the New York Times “has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court.” Thanks largely to Edward Snowden, it is now clear that the FISA Court has permitted this deep state to expand surveillance beyond the tiny number of known and suspected Islamic terrorists, to any incipient protest movement that might challenge the policies of the American war machine.
The US Doesn’t Want to Stop The Islamic State (ISIL) – Only Exploit them for Other Means
Doubts have been raised over the alleged alignment of al-Nusra and ISIL. Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has reasonably argued that perhaps the western-backed FSA factions are falsifying this link as a means to justify more US-Support.
Brandon Turbeville has also reasonably argued that this could be a marketing ploy by western media to justify more US-aid. If reports of this alignment are false, the facts remain that large amounts of US-backed rebels (SRF/FSA/Hazm) have defected to Nusra and ISIL, many, as the above Washington Post report states, have done so peacefully and without a fight. If the Nusra-ISIL link is true, then my argument stands that this in no way justifies more US-aid to rebel groups, and it instead means that al-Nusra has taken US-aid given to it by western-backed rebels to ally with ISIL
Instead of deterring the radical Islamist group, American airstrikes against them have accomplished two things: they have increased ISIL recruitment while at the same time have destroyed and degraded Syria’s infrastructure, murdering innocent Syrian civilians along the way.
Ecuador's Cotopaxi volcano sputters back to life
Contributed by: enhydra lutris
Residents in Ecuador woke up to find the Cotopaxi volcano “coming back to life” Friday after two early blasts released bursts of ash reaching two miles high.
Observers at Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute detected a swarm of earthquakes Thursday, the largest of which had a magnitude of 2.7, which led to minor explosions heard by climbers on Friday.
They stressed that the nearly 20,000-foot snow-capped volcano is not about to erupt. Yet authorities closed the surrounding Cotopaxi National Park, a popular tourist site, and suspended mountain climbers’ hikes up the peak as a precaution.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
China: The Green Leap ForwardWhy the world’s biggest coal consumer is winning the race to develop clean energy.
When Michael Pareles came to Beijing in 2004 it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Fluent in Chinese, he worked as a trade specialist for the American meat industry just as the Chinese economic juggernaut was beginning to take off.
But life presents its own challenges to residents of Chinese cities. “People have to change their behavior to protect themselves from air pollution,” he says, referring to the ubiquitous face masks worn by Chinese urbanites.
China’s pollution problem is a cause of severe health problems for its citizens. In 2008, a year after the People’s Republic boasted a record 14.2 percent GDP growth, air pollution caused more than 470,000 premature deaths.
Regular exercise is often difficult. “I got a mild respiratory infection in 2012, and it lasted so long that I had to put off my marathon training,” Parales says. He returned to the United States in 2014; one of the reasons for his departure was the intensity of the air pollution.
Parales’ experience is a common one for many foreign residents in China. The country is now facing an expatriate exodus, with foreigners unwilling to put their health on the line to live in a place with an increasing number of smoggy days. For the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have nowhere else to go, the problem of air pollution has become a matter of life and death.
Israel PM announces major offshore gas deal
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday announced a major deal between his government and a consortium including US firm Noble Energy on natural gas production in the Mediterranean Sea.
The agreement is aimed at ending months of uncertainty and setting a framework for the exploitation of gas discoveries that are expected to bring major new government revenue.
Political risks however remain, including a possible vote in parliament, where Netanyahu holds only a one-seat majority.
El Niño could be strongest ever — but can it match El Niño mania?
The El Niño brewing in the tropical Pacific is getting really big. So is the hype.
In California, after four dry years, people are hungry for wet weather, not only prattling on about precipitation but also tracking monsoons on the Internet and schooling themselves on the fine points of the jet stream — all in hope that the climatic pattern named after a child delivers an adult-size punch of moisture this winter.
The U.S. Climate Prediction Center’s monthly update, released Thursday, fueled the enthusiasm. The agency noted that ocean conditions are on par with what forecasters saw before the monster El Niño winters of 1997-98 and 1982-83, when record storms pummeled the state.
Earth's 2015 quota of renewable resources used up: NGO
Just under eight months into the year, humanity has already consumed its annual allotment of renewable resources, a thinktank that tracks mankind's impact on Earth said Thursday.
"If you think of the whole year as a total budget, it turns out we have used it up by August 13," Mathis Wackernagel, president of Global Footprint Network, told AFP.
Referred to as Earth Overshoot Day, it is the estimated date when humanity's demand on nature for the year exceeds what Earth can regenerate annually.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
Hellraisers Journal: "It is the theory of..West that the two Rockefellers are red-handed murders."
Update x3, largest crowd ever-Bernie on the Soapbox-Liveblog/stream 3pm EST today
Photo Diary: The Frick Estate--How the Gilded Age 1% Lived
A Little Night Music
James Brown - Soul Power
James Brown - Sex Machine
James Brown - Super Bad
James Brown- Boogaloo
James Brown - Cold Sweat
James Brown - Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose
James Brown - Jabo
James Brown - Mother Popcorn
James Brown - Get up offa that thing
James Brown - Blind Man Can See It
James Brown - Hot Pants
James Brown - Ants in my Pants
James Brown - Gonna Have A Funky Good Time
James Brown - Just Plain Funk
James Brown - Funky Drummer
James Brown - Papa Don't Take No Mess, My Thang, Hell