Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 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!
Tonight's music features Duke Ellington, the best thing ever to emerge from Washington DC. B)
Duke Ellington - C Jam Blues
"Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty."
-- Samuel Adams
News
Ecuador Grants Julian Assange Asylum; U.S. Seen as "Hidden Hand" Behind U.K. Threat to Raid Embassy
"Back Off": Assange Attorney Michael Ratner Urges U.K., U.S. To Respect Asylum Decision, Int’l Law
TrapWire: Spying On YOU?
Judge: Former ACORN worker can sue James O’Keefe
A federal judge last week allowed a lawsuit against conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hanna Giles to proceed, according to Courthouse News Service.
Former ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera sued O’Keefe and Giles in 2010 for allegedly illegally taping their confidential conversation to make the now infamous “ACORN pimp” video. After the heavily-edited video was released in 2009, Vera was fired from ACORN and Congress later voted to defund the organization, which led to its bankruptcy. ...
O’Keefe argued that Vera had no expectation of privacy. But U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz said that Vera “reasonably believed that the conversation was private because it was held in his office with no one else present, and he believed that no one else was listening in on his conversation.” He denied O’Keefe’s motion for a summary judgement.
U.S. lawmakers accuse Walmart of tax evasion and money laundering
Two US lawmakers probing bribery allegations against Walmart in Mexico say they have documents suggesting the US retail giant may also have engaged in tax evasion and money laundering.
The congressmen, Elijah Cummings and Henry Waxman, made their claim in a letter to Walmart Chief Executive Michael Duke dated Tuesday, urging him to respond to requests for information about allegations that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“We have obtained internal company documents, including internal audit reports, from other sources suggesting that Walmart may have had compliance issues relating not only to bribery, but also to ‘questionable financial behavior’ including tax evasion and money laundering in Mexico,” said the letter, dated Tuesday.
Leaked Israel memo: propaganda or Iran war plan?
Richard Silverstein - the American blogger who says he has been given the text of a memo outlining Israel's plans for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities - is clear about what he thinks it is.
He says it came from a senior Israeli politician - a former minister - and he describes it as a "sales pitch", used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak to try to win round sceptical members of Israel's divided inner security cabinet. ...
He believes it was passed by a serving officer to the politician and then leaked by him precisely to alert the outside world to the scale of Israel's military plan to strike at Iran and thus to reduce its chances of ever happening.
An unprecedented public debate is underway in Israel on the wisdom of launching an attack against Iran. And this leaked document, whatever its source, and whatever its original purpose, has become an element in that debate.
The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers
Tapping Into the Land, and Dividing Its People
BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION, Mont. — The mountains along the eastern edge of Glacier National Park rise from the prairie like dinosaur teeth, their silvery ridges and teardrop fields of snow forming the doorway to one of America’s most pristine places.
Yes, there is beauty here on the Blackfeet reservation, but there is also oil, locked away in the tight shale thousands of feet underground. And tribal leaders have decided to tap their land’s buried wealth. The move has divided the tribe while igniting a debate over the promise and perils of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in a place where grizzlies roam into backyards and many residents see the land as something living and sacred. ...
Blackfeet elders say they have already collected about $30 million, primarily from three oil companies, the Anschutz Exploration Corporation, the Newfield Exploration Company and Rosetta Resources. The tribe has used signing bonuses to pay off debts from building the Glacier Peaks Casino. It built a tribe-owned grocery to compete with the IGA in Browning, the reservation’s largest town. The tribe’s approximately 16,500 members each got $200 in trickle-down payments from the drilling last year, and the oil companies have donated money to the local basketball team and to buy children toys and jackets last Christmas. ...
Chas Cartwright, the superintendent of Glacier National Park, has asked for a full-scale environmental review of drilling on the reservation. In a July 31 letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he raised concerns about how drilling might affect grizzly bear populations, air quality and the vistas from mountain perches inside the park.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Helena Coal Export Action day 3 Four more Opponents of Coal Exports are Arrested
My letter. Dear General Clark Re: Stars Earn Stripes
A complete lack of accountability for Wall Street
Fines Not Commensurate with the Crime
A Little Night Music
Django Reinhardt and the Duke Ellington Orchestra - Tiger Rag
Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - The Mooche
Duke Ellington - Such Sweet Thunder
Duke Ellington - Don't Get Around Much Anymore
Duke Ellington - Jumpin' At The Woodside
Duke Ellington - Blues In Orbit
Duke Ellington - Black And Tan Fantasy
Duke Ellington - Isfahan
Django Reinhardt + Duke Ellington - Honeysuckle Rose
Joe Pass - Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me
Duke Ellington - Blues to be there
Duke Ellington - East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
Duke Ellington - Jubilee Stomp (1928)
Duke Ellington - Five O'Clock Drag
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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