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 Chicago bluesman Eddy Clearwater. Clearwater has been playing the blues in Chicago since the early 1950's and was heavily influenced by Chuck Berry, but he has evolved his own unique take on the blues. Enjoy!
Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater and Carey & Lurrie Bell - Sail The Ship
"QE3 was basically a program for the Federal Reserve to give money to the banks until Beethoven writes his 10th Symphony. There is no connection to employment whatsoever."
-- Michael Hudson
News
QE3 Another Fed Give Away to the Banks
"The QE2 was $800 billion, and all of QE2 was used by the banks to speculate on foreign currencies and interest rate arbitrage. Most was used—lent to the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. You could—the banks borrowed 0.25 percent and lent money to Brazil at 11 percent and pocketed the interest rate arbitrage. All this $800 billion, so much went out that it pushed up the value of Brazil's cruzeiro, so that banks made a foreign exchange profit on top of the interest rate arbitrage. None of this money went into the U.S. economy."
German economic miracle leaves the poorest behind
The economic “miracle” that has enabled Germany to escape the worst of Europe’s debt crisis is largely passing by some of the most vulnerable people in society, critics say.
And as Germany finally begins to feel the pinch from a crisis that has pushed most of its neighbours into recession, it is the low-wage workers and the old-age pensioners who are being hit hardest, the critics charge.
According to a new four-yearly poverty report drawn up by the labour ministry, the gap between rich and poor in Europe’s top economy is continuing to widen.
In 1998, 45 percent of Germany’s total wealth was owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.
Ten years later, that proportion had risen to 53 percent, while around half of all households owned just 1.0 percent, the study found.
Taking Stock of the Occupy Movement
Civilian Blood Continues to Spill in Afghanistan
UN: August was second deadliest month for civilians
The UN's special representative in Afghanistan, Ján Kubiš, stated that in August 374 civilians were killed and 581 were injured, and added that "a greater number of civilian deaths and injuries occurred in July and August than in the same period last year."
“Even where there are not armed clashes, an insidious campaign of intimidation and targeted killings is claiming lives of Government officials, women’s rights activists, tribal elders and community leaders -- including those actively working for peace,” said Kubiš.
Kubiš noted that "Aerial attacks continue to be the main cause of civilian casualties" by "pro-Government forces."
Kubiš made the comments at the UN Security Council in New York on Thursday, days after a NATO airstrike killed at least 8 women in Afghanistan.
Afghan children killed in suicide attack
The Neocons and 9/11
US hosts largest ever naval exercise in the Gulf
Why Does the Government So Desperately Want Indefinite Detention for Terror Suspects?
When President Obama signed the NDAA into law on December 31 last year, he tried to allay fears about the military detention provisions. He claimed that Section 1021 “breaks no new ground and is unnecessary,” because “[t]he authority it describes was included in the 2001 AUMF [the Authorization for Use of Military Force], as recognized by the Supreme Court and confirmed through lower court decisions since then.” ...
And yet, despite President Obama’s supposedly soothing statements in December, the administration responded to Judge Forrest’s ruling with hysteria, issuing an emergency appeal, and arguing that her injunction “threatens irreparable harm to national security and the public interest by injecting added burdens and dangerous confusion into the conduct of military operations abroad during an active armed conflict.” ...
A plausible explanation was provided by one of the lawyers in the case, co-lead counsel Bruce Arfan, who stated, “A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots. ... The NDAA would give the government such power. ... If the administration has other views regarding military detention without charge or trial — such as finding an excuse to hold people indefinitely on suspicion of what they might do — senior officials need to stop before they start down this road. Men are dying at Guantánamo after ten years against whom no actual evidence of wrongdoing exists, and this and all the other ruinous lawlessness that was implemented by the Bush administration does not, in the end, make Americans safer. Obama once claimed to know that the kind of injustices enshrined at Guantánamo only serve to recruits enemies for America.
White House pressured to tell more about Benghazi attack
President Obama is under increasing pressure to explain and respond more fully to the Sept. 11 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the American ambassador and three other embassy personnel were killed. ...
Early on, the Obama administration said the protest against a crude US-made anti-Islam YouTube video “seems to have been hijacked … by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons," as UN Ambassador Susan Rice said last Sunday. In other words, it wasn’t a coordinated, pre-planned attack but something more spontaneous for which there was no “actionable intelligence,” as Ambassador Rice put it, that might have alerted officials able to protect against it.
Since then, White House officials have acknowledged that it was a sophisticated “terrorist attack.” Meanwhile, news reports have suggested that there was no video-related anti-US protest before the armed attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the three other men.
Golden Buddha, Hidden Copper
Twelve years after the Taliban blew up the world-famous Bamiyan Buddhas, a Chinese mining firm -- developing one of the world's largest copper deposits -- threatens to destroy another of Afghanistan's archeological treasures.
Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan's Logar Province, boasts one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world. But it is also home to vast archeological ruins, including 5th century Buddhist monasteries and even older Bronze Age settlements. Preservationists -- working furiously to excavate the nearby ruins before they are buried under mining rubble -- have urged restraint in developing the copper deposits. But those focused on Afghanistan's economic development have urged the country to move full speed ahead, citing the dire need for the $1 trillion in revenue that the mine could bring to the impoverished country. Is the potential for economic growth worth more than the loss of cultural heritage?
Click the link above for a photo display of the archeological dig:
Foxconn plant closes after brawl
A brawl involving as many as 2,000 workers forced Foxconn to close its Taiyuan plant in northern China late on Sunday, and left a number of people needing hospital treatment.
“The fight is over now … we’re still investigating the cause of the fight and the number of workers involved,” said Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo, adding it was possible it involved “a couple of thousand workers.” ...
Comments posted on Chinese internet bulletin boards said it might have erupted after a security guard hit an employee.
The Taiyuan plant, which employs about 79,000 workers, makes parts for automotive electronics and assembles various electronic devices, according to Woo. Other staff sources said it makes parts for and assembles Apple’s new iPhone 5, released last week.
Follow the link to submit a comment to the EPA:
Hope for bees -- 48 hours to act!
A pesticide called Clothianidin is potentially killing bees and threatening our food supply. An EPA consultation on whether to suspend the use of these toxic pesticides closes on Tuesday.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
TV Stations Accept Political Ad Cash -- and Leave Viewers in the Dark
A Little Night Music
Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater - A Good Leavin' Alone
Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater - Came Up The Hard Way
Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater - Boogie Woogie Baby
Eddy Clearwater - Too Old To Get Married
Eddie Clearwater - Hillbilly Blues
Eddie Clearwater - A Minor Cha Cha
Eddy Clearwater w/ The Sean Carney Band - Sweet Little Rock & Roller
Eddy Clearwater - Just Want To Make Love To You
Eddy Clearwater & The Juke Joints - They Call Me the Chief
Eddie Clearwater - Blue Over You
Eddy Clearwater - Chicago Blues Festival (1991)
Eddy Clearwater - Blues Hang Out
Eddy Clearwater - Blues for a living
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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