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 the energetic music and flamboyant performances of H-Bomb Ferguson one of rock and roll music's early inventors.
H-Bomb Ferguson - I Ain't Mad At You
"The occupation and robbery of a nation occurs under the illusion of freeing its citizens from brutal oppression."
-- Ramman Kenoun
News
Life for Pakistanis in US Drone War Detailed in New Report
A new report featuring testimony from civilians, who’ve been victims of the US drone war in Pakistan, thoroughly examines what it is like for Pakistanis to live under drones. The International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic at the New York University School of Law spent nine months conducting research and spoke with individuals, like Waziris, who agreed to be interviewed for the report and traveled long distances to share firsthand accounts, despite significant risks.
The report, “Living Under Drones,” directly challenges the “dominant narrative” that United States drones in Pakistan are a “surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling ‘targeted killings’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.” It calls this “narrative” false and flatly states that, although civilian casualties are “rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.” It suggests publicly available evidence that strikes make the US safer is “ambiguous at best” and considers the legality of the strikes to be “doubtful.”
"Harvest of Empire": New Film Recounts How U.S. Intervention Caused Mass Latin American Migrations
Occupy the Truth: Challenging the Media's Premature Post-Mortem on Occupy
The media always held the Occupy movement to high standards, demanding nothing short of revolution, then calling the movement a failure when it failed to transform society in its first few months. But the pundits could only envision their own notion of revolution—replacing one set of leaders with another, all within the confines of our two-party system. Occupy, however, never aspired to being an electoral party or player, like the Tea Party, which, once organized, was co-opted by corporate interests in a matter of minutes. Occupy instead wanted to transform the debate—to shift the zeitgeist. To a punditocracy reduced to quantifying electoral battles as horse races, reporting on electoral tactics rather than substance, Occupy made no sense.
Months went by and the Occupy movement didn't yield its diverse voices to leaders, didn't endorse liberal Democrats who would use them and sell them out, didn't elect anyone to office. Measuring the only pulse the pundits knew how to take, they declared the movement dead. Yet almost everyone in public life today, a mere year later, speaks of the 99 percent, tries to speak to the 99 percent, or feebly feigns to be one of the 99 percent, as Ann Romney did when suggesting that her husband Willard formed Bain Capital while sitting with a bunch of buddies around their kitchen table, which I suppose we are to believe was a door propped up on milk crates. (The buddies, it turns out, were Salvadoran oligarchs tied to that nation's death squads.)
Thanks to the Occupy movement, the American mainstream is doing something it hasn't done in decades—discussing the taboo topic of social class in America. Yes, there is a class war. It's been raging ever since Ronald Reagan was elected, ushering in three decades of spiraling economic inequality and a historically unprecedented upward grab of the nation's wealth. The Occupy movement mainstreamed the conversation about this war. Now politicians must at least pretend to pander to the interests of the 99 percent. That's revolutionary—at least for a one-year-old. By contrast, it took the women's suffrage movement 72 years—from its first convention in Seneca Falls, until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920—to secure women the right to vote, and we're still waiting for our first woman president. I'm sure pundits ridiculed that movement and declared it dead at many junctures during its persistent struggle.
Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Market 20 Times Global GDP
Obama May Do Social Security Reform During Lame Duck Session, Senate Democrats Worry
Concern is mounting among some Senate Democrats that President Barack Obama will make a deal with Senate Republicans during the lame-duck session that would result in changes to the benefit structure of Social Security.
One of the most progressive voices in the caucus, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said he was heartened to hear Obama tell the AARP last week that he'd be open to raising the cap on income that's taxed for purposes of paying into the Social Security trust fund. ... But the Vermont Independent worried that all of this could be posturing for the lame-duck session immediately after the election, when lawmakers are expected to rush to find another "grand bargain" on tax and entitlement reform to stave off the so-called fiscal cliff.
"That's exactly what's going to happen," Sanders said of Social Security being on the proverbial table, "Unless someone of us stops it -- and a number of us are working very hard on this -- that's exactly what will happen. Everything being equal, unless we stop it, what will happen is there will be a quote-unquote grand bargain after the election in which the White House, some Democrats will sit down with Republicans, they will move to a chained CPI."
Iran and the "Red Line" Debate
Citizens United ruling accounts for 78 percent of 2012 election spending
Almost $465m of outside money has been spent on the US presidential election campaign so far, including $365m that can be attributed to the supreme court’s landmark Citizens United ruling, according to a report released on Monday.
Super Pacs, which came into effect following the 2010 Citizens United verdict, accounted for $272m of the expenditure in the study, conducted by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organisation devoted to increasing transparency in government.
A further $93m has been spent by corporations, trade associations and non-profits which, according to the supreme court’s decision, are able to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigning without disclosing the source of their funds.
“This cycle’s outside spending mostly comes in the form of ‘independent expenditures’ supporting or opposing political candidates by unions, corporations, trade associations, non-profit groups and Super Pacs,” wrote Kathy Kiely, managing editor of the Sunlight Foundation.
Syria’s extraordinary archaeological heritage falls prey to war
Syria’s extraordinary archaeological heritage has fallen prey to the fighting ravaging the country for more than 18 months, with destruction, theft and systematic looting on the rise.
In a country where corruption and trafficking of archaeological artefacts and treasures was already a chronic problem, widespread clashes and a power vacuum in some areas have led to an explosion of looting and illicit excavations. ...
In Reyhanli, a small Turkish village near the border with Syria, a newly arrived Syrian refugee from the famed ancient desert town of Palmyra told AFP that the museum there had been looted and reported large-scale theft at the site. ...
“We have studied what our Syrian colleagues are saying, and it is indeed soldiers. Everything leads us to believe that the army is stealing antiquities in Palmyra and elsewhere,” Spanish archaeologist Rodrigo Martin told AFP.
Champions of De-Growth Offer Alternatives to Destructive 'Extractivism'
Degrowth is popular concept particularly in France, Italy and Spain, and is slowly gathering fans in other parts of Europe and North America. It argues that a democratic collective decision to consume and produce less in the global North is the most appropriate solution for the multiple crises facing the world today. ...
In practice, degrowth is compatible with grassroots projects such as food cooperatives, urban gardening, local currencies, co-housing projects, waste reduction and reuse initiatives, or the ‘transition towns’ idea originating in the UK. It allows for cooperation with local, regional and even national authorities, albeit not heavily relying on governmental measures, and it is anti-corporate.
The third international degrowth conference that took place Sep. 19-23 in Venice in Italy brought together about 600 activists and intellectuals to discuss issues as varied as food sovereignty, the energy transition, a minimum guaranteed income, the debt crisis, and participative politics. Among these, one of the most visible themes this year has been the increased attention paid to solutions to the global crises stemming from the global South and their compatibility with the degrowth vision.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
What Do a Retired Catholic Bishop, UAE Commentator & Julian Assange Have in Common
Transgender on Campus
A Little Night Music
H-Bomb Ferguson - Midnight Ramblin' Tonight & Boo Hoo
H - Bomb Ferguson - Josephine
H-Bomb Ferguson - Rock, H-Bomb Rock
H-Bomb Ferguson - Mary Little Mary
H-Bomb Ferguson - Work For My Baby
H-Bomb Ferguson - Little Tiger
H-Bomb Ferguson - She Don't Want Me
H-Bomb Ferguson - Fannie Mae
H-Bomb Ferguson - Fine Brown Frame
H-Bomb Ferguson - Shake Your Apple Tree
News Tribute to H-bomb Ferguson
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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