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!
Tonight's music features J.B. Hutto, a fine slide guitarist in the tradition of Elmore James and a singer with unique phrasing and delivery. Enjoy!
J.B. Hutto - Got My Mojo Workin'
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H.L. Mencken
News
Corporations, Donors With Billions at Stake Fund Lavish Events at DNC
Interview with Spain's Robin Hood Mayor
FBI denies tracking Apple users
Will the youth of Quebec queue up for the polls?
LAPD continues controversial anti-terrorism spying program with little oversight
The Los Angeles Police Commission recently approved weighty new revisions to the LAPD’s controversial Special Order 1 policy and the agency’s intelligence guidelines amid strong public opposition, enabling police officers to continue to gather, record and share intelligence and information based solely on observed behavior. ...
SAR guidelines detail that innocuous activities like taking pictures or using binoculars can be seen as potentially criminal behavior. Accordingly, the order has been under considerable fire by civil rights organizations and community activists for the space it affords police officers to misuse the authority by relying on their own instincts or their subjective bias.
Seemingly in response to concerns raised by community members, the order underwent a series of slight revisions last Tuesday. These included conducting regular audits of the program and new terminology that bans racial and religious profiling, but gives no amended strategy or new training procedure to ensure that such discrimination is institutionally avoided. Despite the policy’s altered language, the same civil liberties concerns persist.
In addition, the LAPD also proposed a complex expansion to the unit’s intelligence guidelines that gives police officers unprecedented access into the private lives of citizens who not only reside in Los Angeles, but outside the LAPD’s jurisdiction as well. The chilling implications of these broadening guidelines are strikingly similar to the NYPD’s strategy of surveillance of the Muslim community in the past decade.
Obama Refuses to Talk About Drone 'Kill List' with Ohio Reporter
For months now, President Obama has refused to hold a press conference with the national press -- choosing instead to talk with local media in the swing states that could decide November's election.
This past Monday, while visiting Toledo, Ohio, Obama granted an interview with Cincinnati's FOX19 TV reporter Ben Swann. ...
Swann asked Obama about the targeted killings without trials — including the death of two American citizens — Obama refused to confirm or deny the program.
Obama said:
"First of all, you're basing this on reports in the news that have never been confirmed by me. And I don't talk about our national security decisions in that way. Our goal has been to focus on al-Qaeda, to focus narrowly on those who pose an eminent threat to the United States of America."
In a May 29, 2012 New York Times piece titled "Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will" three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s role in the 'Kill List' program.
Protests, Fury After US Drone Strike Kills 13 Civilians in Yemen
Protests have erupted in Yemen after a U.S. drone strike killed 13 civilians on Sunday.
Agence France-Presse reports that three women and a child were among the dead in the strike near the town of Radaa, about 80 miles from the capital of Sanaa.
"This was one of the very few times when our target was completely missed. It was a mistake, but we hope it will not hurt our anti-terror efforts in the region," an unnamed senior Yemeni Defense Ministry official told CNN. ...
Xinhua news reports that a massive demonstration denouning the U.S.' death by drone campaign in Yemen took place on Monday, with protesters including youth activists and "prominent tribal leaders." They held signs saying "No for killing innocent people" and "End alliance with the U.S government."
Afghanistan’s Base Bonanza
Afghanistan may turn out to be one of the great misbegotten “stimulus packages” of the modern era, a construction boom in the middle of nowhere with materials largely shipped in at enormous expense to no lasting purpose whatsoever. With the U.S. military officially drawing down its troops there, the Pentagon is now evidently reversing the process and embarking on a major deconstruction program. It’s tearing up tarmacs, shutting down outposts, and packing up some of its smaller facilities. Next year, the number of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition bases in the southwest of the country alone is scheduled to plummet from 214 to 70, according to the New York Times.
But anyone who wanted to know just what the Pentagon built in Afghanistan and what it is now tearing down won’t have an easy time of it.
At the height of the American occupation of Iraq, the United States had 505 bases there, ranging from small outposts to mega-sized air bases. Press estimates at the time, however, always put the number at about 300. Only as U.S. troops prepared to leave the country was the actual -- startlingly large -- total reported. ... When you add in ISAF checkpoints -- those small baselets used to secure roads and villages -- to the already bloated number of mega-bases, forward operating bases, combat outposts, and patrol bases, the number jumps to 750. Count all foreign military installations of every type, including logistical, administrative, and support facilities, and the official count offered by ISAF Joint Command reaches a whopping 1,500 sites.
Rainfall in the Amazon may drop by 20 percent because of deforestation
Deforestation may cause rainfall in the Amazonian basin to decline disastrously, British scientists said in a study published on Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Rainfall across the vast basin could lessen by 12 percent during wet seasons and 21 percent during dry seasons, potentially inflicting astronomical costs on farmers and reducing hydro-electricity output from receding river flows. ...
Tropical forests are highly efficient at sucking water out of the soil, much of which is then delivered to the atmosphere as vapour through leaf pores. ...
Deforested land, though, is far less effective at recycling water this way, which means the air above it is less moist.
Factoring in logging trends in the early part of the century, which indicate 40 percent of the Amazon will be deforested by 2050, the team say the loss of rainfall across the river basin, from east to west, will be dramatic.
'Fire' at French Fessenheim nuclear power station
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
US-Funded Armies Slaughtering Record Number of Elephants
A Little Night Music
J.B. Hutto - Thank You For Your Kindness
J.B. Hutto - Too Much Alcohol
J.B. Hutto - Pretty Baby
J B Hutto - Lone Wolf
J B Hutto - I feel so good
J B Hutto - Married Woman Blues
JB Hutto & His Hawks - Hide & Seek
J.B. Hutto - Send Her Home To Me
J.B. Hutto - Why Do Things Happen To Me
J B Hutto and his Hawks - Please Help
J.B. Hutto - Walking the dog
JB Hutto - Landromat Blues
J B Hutto and The New Hawks - That's The Truth
J.B. Hutto - You Don't Have To Go
J.B Hutto - Lulabelle's Here
JB Hutto - Now She's Gone
J.B. Hutto - Worried Life Blues
J B Hutto - Serves Me Right To Suffer
JB Hutto - Blues Do Me A Favor
J B Hutto - 20% Alcohol
J.B. & His Hawks - Lovin' You
J.B. Hutto And The Houserockers - Hip Shakin'
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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