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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago bluesman and harmonica player Willie Cobbs. Enjoy!
Willie Cobbs - You Don't Love Me
"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
-- Thomas Jefferson
News and Opinion
Inequality for All: Robert Reich Warns Record Income Gap Is Undermining Our Democracy
This whole article is well worth a read:
5 Years Later, Wall Street Still Sucking Life Out of America Like Vampires at a Blood Drive
It’s perfectly obvious that if ginormous Wall Street banks don’t fear prosecution— and Attorney General Eric Holder told us flat-out they needn’t—then the cheating, lying, casino games, and law-breaking will continue. ... Nothing but massive reform and no-holds-barred prosecutorial assault will drive a stake into the heart of this monster.
Yet on Tuesday, the smart financial reformer Eliot Spitzer lost his bid for NYC comptroller, a role in which he could keep public money out of the hands of financial predators, whose scams he understands. It can't escape notice that NYC is the home of several of the most powerful banking institutions on Earth: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Or that newspapers, presumably on different sides of the political spectrum, melted into one giant anti-Spitzer bullhorn; ignoring positive polls, running biased stories and denouncing him on their editorial pages. ...
It's not easy to find potent weapons against Wall Street predators, and in the meantime, we’re still waiting for reform. We wanted it so badly that we pitched tents in city parks during the Occupy movement to send the message, but the politicians wouldn’t hear us, because their ears were stuffed with Wall Street money. Thanks to an army of lobbyists unleashed in Washington, we can’t even seem to get the relatively timid Dodd-Frank rules designed to stop bankers from playing casino games with our savings. ...
If you think things have gotten pretty ugly, just stick around. Another financial crisis is likely. Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just told a group of bankers and economists in Manhattan to expect it, and he has a unique perspective on the topic, having helped bring on the last one.
Paulson knows something else: This time the Democrats will likely be held responsible.
"Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene" - Policy Brief, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Bottom lines:
• The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong. Libya's 2011 uprising was never peaceful, but instead was armed and violent from the start. Muammar al-Qaddafi did not target civilians or resort to indiscriminate force. Although inspired by humanitarian impulse, NATO's intervention did not aim mainly to protect civilians, but rather to overthrow Qaddafi's regime, even at the expense of increasing the harm to Libyans.
• The Intervention Backfired. NATO's action magnified the conflict's duration about sixfold and its death toll at least sevenfold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If Libya was a "model intervention," then it was a model of failure.
• Three Lessons. First, beware rebel propaganda that seeks intervention by falsely crying genocide. Second, avoid intervening on humanitarian grounds in ways that reward rebels and thus endanger civilians, unless the state is already targeting noncombatants. Third, resist the tendency of humanitarian intervention to morph into regime change, which amplifies the risk to civilians.
Nigel Farage takes down Eurocrat warmongers on Syria
US and Russia revive hopes for wider Syria peace process
US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday the prospects for resuming the Syrian peace process are riding on the outcome of talks aimed at securing Syria's chemical weapons arsenal that lurched into a second day.
As American and Russian chemical weapons experts huddled in a Geneva hotel to haggle over technical details that will be critical to reach a deal, Kerry and Lavrov met a short distance away at the UN's European headquarters with UN and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to examine political developments and plot a new international conference in Geneva to support the creation of a Syrian transitional government.
Brahimi acknowledged the high stakes when he told the diplomatic pair that their chemical weapons negotiation "is extremely important in itself, and for itself, but it is also extremely important for us who are working with you on trying to bring together the Geneva conference successfully." ...
Lavrov said he, Kerry and Brahimi discussed ways of preparing for a second conference along with the document, which "means that the Syrian parties must reach mutual consent on the transitional governing organ, which would come with full executive authority. And the communique also says that all groups of Syrian society must be represented."
'Clear from rebel exchanges they were behind chem attack' - ex-hostage
What Putin Wants: Moscow's Fear of Jihad Drives Policy on Syria
Obama said the United States' willingness to act when its ideas and principles are challenged abroad is "what makes us exceptional." Putin, an Orthodox Christian, calls this idea "extremely dangerous," and cautions Americans that "when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."
What at first glance appears to be a small quip actually touches on an important point. The American elite holds stubbornly fast to the belief that their country can use its military to act as the arbiter of global democracy, even without a mandate from the UN. That leads God's own country to look down with sovereign contempt upon "Old Europe," and other states.
But this view is coming up against increasing opposition in the world. Putin simply says openly what many in Berlin and elsewhere are saying in a shamed whisper.
Hat tip suejazz. Juan Cole provides an excellent quick and dirty description of Syria. Here are two of the 10 things to know about Syria:
Top Ten things Americans need to Know about Syria if they’re going to Threaten to Bomb It
4. The Syrian revolution and civil war did not begin as primarily sectarian. It is to some extent a class struggle High population growth rates and economic stagnation made the state unable to provide jobs to a burgeoning youth population. Droughts and the bad effects of global warming also created a water crisis that harmed farmers and pushed youth off the farms into city slums where, after the 2008 world crash, there were no jobs. The big protests in 2011 originated in the slums around the cities in the center of the country, where young men who had moved there for work from the countryside found themselves locked into long-term unemployment. The governmental and business elite in Damascus benefits from the regime and has mostly remained loyal or neutral, whether they are Sunnis or Alawites. About half of the large northern city of Aleppo is still with the regime, as well. Because the upper ranks of the ruling Baath Party are disproportionately dominated by the Alawite minority, and because so many discontented youth in the cities of the center are Sunni, the conflict took on a sectarian tinge. But its underpinnings are economic.
8. Contemporary Westerners imagine they are the pinnacle of civilization, but they are newcomers to the phenomenon by Syrian standards. Syria is the site of the ancient civilization of Ebla, between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. It was later ruled by Assyria, the Pharaohs of Egypt, Babylon, Persia/ Iran, Macedonia, and Rome/ the Byzantines. Along with Palestine, after the death of Jesus around 33 AD/ CE, Syria was a site of the spread of Christianity. St. Paul had his conversion on the road to Damascus, and I was once shown a building he was said to have stayed in in what is now a Christian quarter of the city. Between the time of Jesus and around 600, it gradually became mostly Christian. Beneath Damascus are the catacombs where early Christians hid from persecution. It was conquered by the Arab Muslims in 634-640. Over many centuries thereafter, the people of Syria gradually began speaking Arabic instead of Aramaic, and gradually converted to Islam from Christianity and Judaism. There is no evidence that violent coercion was at the root of this conversion, though there were tax advantages and it was a way to move up socially. Arab Muslim rule of Syria was challenged in the medieval period by the Crusaders and the Mongols, both of which were fought off. Medieval Syria may have been 50% Shiite, but the dynasty founded by Saladin imposed Sunni orthodoxy after he conquered it in 1175-1185.
Russia sends missile cruiser to Mediterranean as Syria tension mounts
Russia has dispatched a "carrier killer" missile cruiser and other ships to the eastern Mediterranean in its largest naval deployment since Soviet times. ...
The missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, is also on its way to the Syrian coast to lead the Russian force there. The ship is reportedly known as a "carrier-killer" because it is outfitted with Vulkan missiles, that are designed to destroy large ships.
Observers have speculated that the buildup is in preparation for an evacuation of Russian citizens in Syria or even to repel a possible US attack against the Assad regime. According to a scientist working on military research, who asked not to be named, the deployment will put Russia in a position to evacuate its citizens currently in Syria and serve as a deterrent against military actions by Turkey and other players in the region.
Freedom Rider: Obama Comes Undone
The United States is the clear loser in the battle to destroy the Syrian government. For the past two weeks the president and the secretary of state have publicly said that a military attack on Syria was imminent. They kept up the steady drumbeat of claims that the Syrian government committed atrocities against civilians and they tried to round up support for military action both in the American congress and around the world. Now the president has announced that he is postponing a congressional vote and sending John Kerry off to Russia to talk to the Russians who so shrewdly stopped them in their tracks. ...
Assad lives another day but our government is desperate to continue making war. Notions of good and bad must be forgotten if the world is to be free of American aggression. The former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, is trying to stop a wider war but the Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama is trying to start one. The supposedly evil Russians offered to assist in giving up Syrian chemical weapons but the virtuous Americans initially said no to the offer. The ironies abound.
The common phrase among American politicians is that Russia “sticks its finger in America’s eye.” That is true and something to be grateful for. We must be grateful for our own opposition within but also to the people outside of our country who will stand up to the bully that is Uncle Sam. The sight of an American president coming on television and announcing that there won’t be a war is a singular event. It is not what our system demands but then we all live to see another day.
Peace Pushes Back: How the People Won Out (For Now)
Just two weeks ago, the United States stood at the brink of yet another war. President Obama was announcing plans to order U.S. military strikes on Syria, with consequences that no one could predict.
Then things shifted. In an extraordinarily short time, the people petitioned, called their representatives in Congress, held rallies, and used social media to demand a nonviolent approach to the crisis. The march toward war slowed. ...
To many ordinary Americans, it felt like a racing freight train had suddenly been brought to a halt. The pause gave the public a chance to weigh in, and they showed up in force. Members of Congress reported an avalanche of calls and emails from constituents, almost all opposing military involvement. Many have questioned the usefulness of contacting members of Congress in recent years, as Washington, D.C., has become something of a corporate controlled bubble.
But this time, the message got through.
Media Shield law broadens definition of 'journalist'
A new media shield law expected to pass committee on Thursday broadens the definition of "journalist" to include, among other things, any individual deemed appropriate by a federal judge. ..
Now, a journalist would be defined as someone employed by or in contract with a media outlet for at least one year within the last 20 years or three months within the last five years; someone with a substantial track record of freelancing in the last five years; or a student journalist.
In addition, the law would protect a person deemed appropriate by a federal judge, so long as their newsgathering practices have been consistent with the law. ...
The Senate Judiciary Committee spent significant time debating the definition of "journalist" this summer, chiefly because some Senators, including Feinstein, had feared that the media shield law could be used to protect WikiLeaks, Julian Assange's whistleblowing organization.
Snowden Nominated for Freedom of Thought Prize
Members of the European Parliament are officially nominating fugitive US leaker Edward Snowden for a prize celebrating freedom of thought, a parliamentary representative said Wednesday.
Snowden is a candidate for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, which honors people or organizations for their work in the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. ...
Laureates of the Sakharov Prize – whose past recipients include anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African president Nelson Mandela, Chinese dissident Hu Jia, and Reporters Without Borders, a France-based NGO that advocates freedom of the press – receive 50,000 euros.
An official presentation of all the Sakharov Prize candidates will take place September 16. Parliament leaders will announce the winner in October, and the awards ceremony will take place in Strasbourg in December.
Obama's NSA surveillance review panel did not discuss changes, attendees say
A review panel created by President Obama to guide reforms to US government surveillance did not discuss any changes to the National Security Agency's controversial activities at its first meeting, according to two participants.
The panel, which met for the first time this week in the Truman Room of the White House conference center, was touted by Obama in August as a way for the government to consider readjusting its surveillance practices after hearing outsiders' concerns.
But two attendees of the Monday meeting said the discussion was dominated by the interests of major technology firms, and the session did not address making any substantive changes to the controversial mass collection of Americans' phone data and foreigners' internet communications, which can include conversations with Americans. ...
"My fear is it's a simulacrum of meaningful reform," said Sascha Meinrath, a vice president of the New America Foundation, an influential Washington think tank, and the director of the Open Technology Institute, who also attended. "Its function is to bleed off pressure, without getting to the meaningful reform."
Zuckerberg: US government 'blew it' on NSA surveillance
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, struck back on Wednesday at critics who have charged tech companies with doing too little to fight off NSA surveillance. Mayer said executives faced jail if they revealed government secrets.
Yahoo and Facebook, along with other tech firms, are pushing for the right to be allowed to publish the number of requests they receive from the spy agency. Companies are forbidden by law to disclose how much data they provide. ...
Zuckerberg said the government had done a "bad job" of balancing people's privacy and its duty to protect. "Frankly I think the government blew it," he said.
He said after the news broke in the Guardian and the Washington Post about Prism, the government surveillance programme that targets major internet companies: "The government response was, 'Oh don't worry, we're not spying on any Americans.' Oh, wonderful: that's really helpful to companies trying to serve people around the world, and that's really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies."
"I thought that was really bad," he said. Zuckerberg said Facebook and others were pushing successfully for more transparency. "We are not at the end of this. I wish that the government would be more proactive about communicating. We are not psyched that we had to sue in order to get this and we take it very seriously," he said.
'Talking about NSA would amount to high treason' - Yahoo CEO
Obama’s James Clapper’s Committee To Make You Love the Dragnet Has a Kiddie Table
Spencer Ackerman has a review of how the first two meetings of Obama’s Non-Tech Tech Review panel have gone. And while they went about as horribly as I suspected — certainly there was no talk of actually fixing obvious problems with the dragnet — there are a few details that show how “most exceptional” this effort is. ...
The Non-Tech Tech Review Panel comes with a kiddie table — or rather, a conference room almost two miles away from the White House, where the tech giants got to eat.
During its first round of meetings, the panel, known as the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, separated two groups of outside advisers. One group included civil libertarian organizations such as the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. It met in a conference room on K and 20th Streets. Morrell and Clarke did not attend.
The other, which met in the White House Conference Center, included technology companies that have participated – sometimes uneasily and at court behest – in NSA surveillance. All five panel members participated.
I’m not surprised the CIA’s representative on the Committee to Make You Love the Dragnet refused to be seen at the kiddie table with civil libertarians. But Richard Clarke?
NSA Apparently Undermining Standards, Security, Confidence
The big NSA revelation of last week was that the agency’s multifaceted strategy to read encrypted Internet traffic is generally successful. The story, from the New York Times and ProPublica, described NSA strategies ranging from the predictable—exploiting implementation flaws in some popular crypto products; to the widely-suspected but disappointing—inducing companies to insert backdoors into products; to the really disturbing—taking active steps to weaken public encryption standards. ...
In security, the worst case—the thing you most want to avoid—is thinking you are secure when you’re not. And that’s exactly what the NSA seems to be trying to perpetuate.
Suppose you’re driving a car that has no brakes. If you know you have no brakes, then you can drive very slowly, or just get out and walk. What is deadly is thinking you have the ability to stop, until you stomp on the brake pedal and nothing happens. It’s the same way with security: if you know your communications aren’t secure, you can be careful about what you say; but if you think mistakenly that you’re safe, you’re sure to get in trouble.
So the problem is not (only) that we’re unsafe. It’s that “the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way.” The NSA wants to make sure we remain vulnerable.
Senator Asks Cellphone Carriers: What Exactly Do You Share With Government?
Last year, Edward J. Markey, then a member of the House of Representatives, asked the country’s major cellphone carriers to disclose how many data requests they received from federal and local law enforcement agencies. More than one million in 2011 alone, they said, revealing for the first time how ubiquitous cellphone records had become in criminal investigations.
Now a member of the Senate, Mr. Markey is asking for this year’s numbers and with more details. What exactly does the government seek from the carriers, he wants to know. How often do they ask for cellphone tower dumps, location data, content of text messages, browsing history and so on. How many of those requests did the companies comply with and how many did they deny and why?
The letter to eight companies, including the largest carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, was sent Thursday. It comes against the backdrop of mounting revelations about secret surveillance of Americans communications.
NSA-Israel bombshell bolsters whistleblowers' claims about NSA spying on US government officials
NSA whistleblower Russ Tice has been shouting from the rooftops about secret, compartmentalized NSA programs geared towards spying on high-profile public officials and government employees. He has repeatedly stated that he was personally tasked with spying on then-Senator Barack Obama in 2004, and that during his tenure the NSA spied on Supreme Court Justices.
Th[is] ... excerpt from the latest Guardian report bolsters Tice's assertions. After all, why would the NSA find fit to include in its memorandum with Israel a direct order to destroy USG official communications if the NSA didn't collect them in the first place?
Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".
It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on "the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip".
The Evening Greens
Forget Keystone. Tar Sands Drilling Is On In Utah
While tar sands have become synonymous with Alberta, few know that the United States may soon see its own oil boom. Last March, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved more than 800,000 acres for tar sands and oil shale development over a vast stretch of land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado known as the Green River Formation.
"With all eyes on Keystone, there's an equally or even bigger GHG problem brewing right here on American soil -- and on Obama's watch," said Taylor McKinnon of the Grand Canyon Trust, a nonprofit environmental group that has sued the federal government over the decision.
These lands may hold more recoverable oil than has been used so far in human history -- 3 trillion barrels, according to a U.S. government report. They also contain two to seven times the oil -- and potential green house gas emissions -- as Alberta's tar sands and could set off a "carbon bomb" that would hasten climate change, said McKinnon.
Vernal, Utah, a town perhaps best known to outsiders for its 40-foot tall pink dinosaur that greets travelers passing through, will be the epicenter of tar sands development. The U.S Department of Energy says there are nearly a billion barrels of oil contained at nearby Asphalt Ridge.
Pipeline Safety Chief Says His Regulatory Process Is 'Kind of Dying'
Jeffrey Wiese, the nation's top oil and gas pipeline safety official, recently strode to a dais beneath crystal chandeliers at a New Orleans hotel to let his audience in on an open secret: the regulatory process he oversees is "kind of dying."
Wiese told several hundred oil and gas pipeline compliance officers that his agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA), has "very few tools to work with" in enforcing safety rules even after Congress in 2011 allowed it to impose higher fines on companies that cause major accidents.
"Do I think I can hurt a major international corporation with a $2 million civil penalty? No," he said.
Because generating a new pipeline rule can take as long as three years, Wiese said PHMSA is creating a YouTube channel to persuade the industry to voluntarily improve its safety operations. "We'll be trying to socialize these concepts long before we get to regulations."
Wiese's pessimism about the viability of the pipeline regulatory system is at odds with the Obama administration's insistence that the nation's pipeline infrastructure is safe and its regulatory regime robust. In a speech last year, President Obama ordered regulatory agencies like PHMSA to help expedite the building of new pipelines "in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people."
Why environmentalists turned against fracking bill
Late Wednesday night, when California's state Senate approved a hotly contested bill to regulate fracking and sent it to Gov. Jerry Brown for approval, it did so without the endorsement of some normally supportive environmentalist groups.
The bill from State Sen. Fran Pavley had provoked intense opposition not just from the oil industry but from fracking opponents, who had been urging Brown to ban the practice outright. Word that he plans to sign the bill appears to have dashed those hopes, at least for now. ...
Language in the bill ... could exempt fracking projects from review on California's bedrock environmental protection law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The state agency that oversees oil drilling - the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources - doesn't require an environmental impact report from a company that wants to frack a well. Some environmentalists argue that the division, known by its acronym DOGGR, is violating CEQA in the process. They've sued DOGGR, hoping to force the state to require environmental impact reports for fracking.
Under Pavley's bill, companies would need a specific permit to frack a well. The bill also would order DOGGR to have in place a new set of regulations for fracking and acidizing by the start of 2015. From now until then, however, the bill says that if the head of DOGGR determines that a fracking application meets all the basic requirements of CEQA, "no additional review or mitigation shall be required.
Oh my. The fracking gas drillers and their allies are in quite a tizzy. They're even shrieking about "hostile business climates" and "chilling effects" on investment in the state of Pennsylvania:
Shale criminal charges stun drilling industry
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's decision to prosecute a major Marcellus Shale natural-gas driller for a 2010 wastewater spill has sent shock waves through the industry. ...
Kane's office announced charges Tuesday against XTO Energy Inc. for discharging more than 50,000 gallons of toxic wastewater from storage tanks at a gas-well site in Lycoming County.
XTO in July settled federal civil charges over the incident by agreeing to pay a $100,000 fine and deploy a plan to improve wastewater-management practices. The consent decree included no admissions of liability. ...
Kane's office said it did not need to prove intent to prosecute the company for crimes. XTO is charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law and three counts of unlawful conduct under the Solid Waste Management Act.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Who's a "Moderate" Rebel in Syria? Check the Handwritten Receipts
Obama’s Exceptionally Weird Speech on Syria
When the Police Become a Standing Army, Liberty is Sacrificed Without Security
AFL-CIO gives transgender equality a big push
A Little Night Music
Willie Cobbs - Eating Dry Onions
Willie C. Cobbs My Little Girl & Mistreated Blues
Willie Cobbs - Slow Down Baby
Willie Cobbs - You're So Hard To Please
Willie Cobbs - Worst Feeling (I Ever Had)
Willie Cobbs - Come On Home
Willie Cobbs - Reconsider Baby
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
|