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!
This evening's music features soul singer and composer Otis Redding. Enjoy!
Otis Redding - Satisfaction
"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses."
-- Shirley Chisholm
News and Opinion
Why the NSA has landed us all in another nice mess
Fans of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy will fondly remember Oliver's complaint to Stanley: "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" In a future remake, Hardy will be played by Barack Obama, suitably enhanced with a toothbrush moustache, while Keith Alexander, currently head of the NSA, will star as Laurel. The scene in which this particular bit of dialogue occurs is the Oval Office, which for the purposes of the scene is littered with flip charts summarising the various unintended consequences of the NSA's recent activities, as relayed by Edward Snowden. ...
The "mess" that the NSA (and our own dear GCHQ) has landed us in is a symptom of a major failure of our political systems. All democracies are impaled on the horns of the same dilemma: they need openness, because the consent of the governed requires that people know what is being done in their name; but sometimes openness undermines the efficacy of the secret (and perhaps necessary) things that are done in their name. The choice is then between sacrificing accountability or sacrificing secrecy.
What we have learned recently is the extent to which our rulers dodged that choice: they lifted the veil just a bit to give a semblance of accountability. What Snowden has shown us is that it was just a semblance. We urgently need something better and if we don't get it then we could be, as one spook put it, "a keystroke away from totalitarianism". And that would be a different kind of mess altogether.
Watching the Watch List: Landmark Case Goes to Trial over Massive U.S. Terrorism "No-Fly" Database
Australian spy agency offered to share data about ordinary citizens
Australia's surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share "medical, legal or religious information", and increases concern that the agency could be operating outside its legal mandate, according to the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC. ...
The working document, marked secret, sheds new light on the extent to which intelligence agencies at that time were considering sharing information with foreign surveillance partners, and it provides further confirmation that, to some extent at least, there is warrantless surveillance of Australians' personal metadata.
The DSD joined its four intelligence-sharing partners – the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, collectively known as 5-Eyes – to discuss what could and what could not be shared under the different jurisdictions at a meeting hosted by Britain’s GCHQ at its headquarters in Cheltenham on 22-23 April, 2008. ...
The record of the Cheltenham meeting does not indicate whether the activities under discussion in April 2008 progressed to final decisions or specific actions. It appears to be a working draft.
Major Corporations Employ Former U.S. Intelligence Agents As Spies
Surveillance as a Business Model
Google recently announced that it would start including individual users' names and photos in some ads. This means that if you rate some product positively, your friends may see ads for that product with your name and photo attached—without your knowledge or consent. Meanwhile, Facebook is eliminating a feature that allowed people to retain some portions of their anonymity on its website.
These changes come on the heels of Google's move to explore replacing tracking cookies with something that users have even less control over. Microsoft is doing something similar by developing its own tracking technology.
More generally, lots of companies are evading the "Do Not Track" rules, meant to give users a say in whether companies track them. Turns out the whole "Do Not Track" legislation has been a sham. ...
If these features don't sound particularly beneficial to you, it's because you're not the customer of any of these companies. You're the product, and you're being improved for their actual customers: their advertisers. ...
Surveillance is the business model of the Internet -- Al Gore recently called it a "stalker economy.: All major websites run on advertising, and the more personal and targeted that advertising is, the more revenue the site gets for it. As long as we users remain the product, there is minimal incentive for these companies to provide any real privacy.
Obama’s Ludicrous Afghanistan Declarations
The most ridiculous actor in the fictitious U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is not President Hamid Karzai, the hustler the U.S. installed as its puppet after the American invasion in 2001. The real clowns in this charade are those Americans that pretend to believe President Obama when he says the U.S. war in Afghanistan will end on the last day of next year. Obama is, of course, lying through his teeth. The United States and its NATO allies plan to keep 10,000 to 16,000 troops in the country, occupying nine bases, some of them set aside for exclusive American use – and would remain there at least ten years, through 2024. Shamelessly, Obama claims these troops – including thousands from the Special Operations killer elite – will have no “combat” role. It’s the same lie President Kennedy told in 1963, when he called the 16,000 U.S. troops then stationed in Vietnam “advisors,” and the same bald-faced deception that Obama, himself, tried to pull off, unsuccessfully, in Iraq – until the Iraqis kicked the Americans out.
Barack Obama has arrogated to himself the right to redefine the very meaning of war, having two years ago declared that the 7-month U.S. bombing campaign against Libya was not really a war because no Americans were killed. In Afghanistan, Obama waves his semantic magic wand to transform the past 12 years of war into 10 more years of not-war, simply by changing the nomenclature. This is hucksterism from Hell.
China, India cut back Iranian crude, duck US sanctions
China and India are among countries that have dodged US sanctions by cutting back on Iranian crude, Washington said Friday as it pledged to "aggressively" enforce such punitive measures despite a recent nuclear deal with Tehran.
President Barack Obama determined that global crude production was enough "to permit foreign countries to reduce significantly their purchases of Iranian oil" after taking note of a report on the topic, the White House said.
"In this context, it is notable that many purchasers of Iranian crude oil continue to reduce, or have ceased altogether, their purchases from Iran," it added.
This biannual evaluation is mandated by a 2012 law aimed at drying up Tehran's oil revenues by forcing third countries to stop buying Iranian crude or face sanctions.
Pentagon Approves Record Sale of Advanced Arms to Countries at War
Today’s high-tech weapons manufacturers are enjoying record sales. The State Department’s Military Assistance Report stated that it approved $44.28 billion in arms shipments to 173 nations in the last fiscal year. One of the more controversial is the Defense Department’s plans to sell Saudi Arabia $6.8 billion and the United Arab Emirates $4 billion in advanced weaponry, including air-launched cruise missiles and precision munitions. The trouble is – has anyone asked where these weapons will ultimately end up?
Boeing Co. (BA) and Raytheon Co. (RTN) sent a message of support from the Obama administration for setting up the deal with these two close allies in the Middle East.
This historic deal will be the first U.S sales of new Raytheon and Boeing weapons that can be launched at a distance from Saudi F-15 and U.A.E. F-16 fighters. But this is just part of Saudi Arabia’s military shopping list.
The Saudi Kingdom is also purchasing the Boeing Expanded-Response Standoff Land Attack Missile and Raytheon Joint Standoff Weapon, which can strike at air defense sites and radar installations from beyond the range of enemy air-defense systems. The Royal Saudi Navy is acquiring Boeing missiles, a derivative of the Harpoon anti-ship missile that can be launched more than 135 nautical miles from a target and be redirected in flight. With such a big order should the U.S question the need for this military arsenal?
Transformation of Community Policing Into Military Policing Sanctions Government Violence
Last month ... a 13-year-old boy carrying a toy replica of an AK-47 was shot and killed on the outskirts of that town by a Sonoma County deputy sheriff with a reputation for being trigger-happy. The officer had ordered the boy to drop the “gun,” then in a matter of two or three seconds opened fire, giving him no chance to comply. ...
Deputy Sheriff Erick Gelhaus, the officer who killed Andy Lopez, instantly firing seven rounds at him, was a firearms instructor for his department and an Iraq war vet. Strikingly, “the deadly encounter recalled how soldiers might confront an insurgent in a war zone,” Dennis Bernstein wrote recently at ConsortiumNews, quoting a former member of the military police who lives in the neighborhood where the shooting took place. Military training seeks to override recruits’ moral compunctions about taking human life and establish “muscle memory” that allows them to kill on command. Such a quality is alarming to contemplate in local sheriff’s deputies, putting residents of the neighborhoods they patrol at the same risk as those who live in occupied territory.
Obama spends $600 million on rail projects that benefit private companies
The railroad industry brags in its national publicity campaign that it spends billions of dollars improving its infrastructure “so taxpayers don’t have to.”
But the ads don’t tell everything. The nation’s freight rail network has been the quiet recipient of more than $600 million in federal investment during the Obama administration.
According to Federal Railroad Administration numbers, at least half that amount has gone to projects that benefit the nation’s four largest railroads, the same companies at the heart of the industry’s ubiquitous “Freight Rail Works” campaign.
That doesn’t even include tens of millions more that states have contributed for additional investment in ports and high-speed passenger trains that’s boosted the nation’s freight railroads.
Over 110 Arrested as Record Black Friday Protests Challenge Wal-Mart, Major Retailers on Low Wages
Why Is Obama's Department of Labor Bringing On a Top McDonald's PR Person?
Labor Secretary Tom Perez has taken a lead role in President Barack Obama's push to increase the federal minimum wage. The fast food industry is one of the nation's largest employers of low- and minimum-wage workers. So why has the labor secretary brought on a top McDonald's PR person as a senior adviser?
Ofelia Casillas worked as a national media relations manager for McDonald's until she was hired as Perez' director of public outreach. At McDonald's, Casillas was in charge of overseeing "media crises" for the company. That would include the wave of fast-food strikes designed to draw attention to poverty wages. McDonald's average wage is $7.81 an hour. ...
At the Department of Labor, Casillas will be meeting with business and community groups about the secretary's policy priorities, one of which is raising the minimum wage. That means she will inevitably be dealing with companies like McDonald's as well as the striking fast-food workers, says Craig Holman, a government ethics expert at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen. Her previous work for McDonald's could color how she presents their concerns to Perez, he argues, which means there is "clearly an appearance of a conflict of interest."
Obama boycott: Major US news outlets refuse to use White House photos
The coalition of major news outlets protesting the White House’s photo policy continues to grow, with McClatchy newspapers adding their name on Wednesday to the list of publications that will no longer print official administration images.
McClatchy’s announcement that it will not be running official White House images in its papers except in extreme circumstances follows a similar promise made over the weekend by USA Today amid growing complaints waged by photojournalists and those in the news industry who oppose this administration’s tendency to exclude independent reporters from official events.
Last week, the Associated Press, ABC News, the Washington Post and Reuters all signed a letter to White House press secretary Jay Carney imploring the administration of President Barack Obama to provide photographers with increased access to the commander-in-chief. According to those outlets, this White House has more than any other administration prevented credentialed photographers from shooting images of the president, and instead has relied on Mr. Obama’s official photography team on a routine basis to exclusively take pictures to be disseminated among the press.
The selective nature of the White House’s process of hand-picking which images to release — as well as its shuttering of a free press — has raised numerous complaints as of late by news outlets and media experts. “Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the president while he is performing his official duties,” last week’s letter reads. “As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government.”
Obama's pardoned turkeys courtesy of lobbyists
Lobbyists are strictly for the birds, President Barack Obama regularly asserts. But an influential lobbying powerhouse will on Wednesday provide Obama a pair of well-pampered turkeys that the president plans to pardon.
The National Turkey Federation, which raised and transported the lucky gobblers known as "Popcorn" and "Caramel" to the nation's capital, spent $105,000 on lobbying between January and September, federal records show — pressing lawmakers and agencies on issues ranging from renewable fuel standards to immigration reform.
And during the same period, the National Turkey Federation's political action committee doled out an additional $125,000. Nearly three-fourths of that sum aided Republicans.
Of course, this makes President Obama look almost mean-spirited, or at least lacking in the compassion of a Ronald Reagan. Actually, President Obama is probably the most compassionate of all Presidents in terms of emptying out jail cells. His virtually invisible pre-pardon program for war criminals, torturers, bankster thieves, lying criminal spies, etc. has been pretty much unprecedented in its mercy, albeit only for rich and powerful people.
Pardoning Turkeys, Not People? Obama Urged to Reverse Lowest Clemency Rate of Modern Presidency
Obama Has Pardoned Almost As Many Turkeys As Drug Offenders
When President Barack Obama pardons two overweight turkeys named Carmel and Popcorn during a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, the number of pardons bestowed on semi-flightless birds during his presidency will almost match the number he has granted to human beings convicted of drug crimes.
Despite the administration's recent talk of reforming the criminal justice system, Obama has granted the fewest pardons of any modern president. Of the 39 pardons Obama has granted, just 11 have been for people convicted of drug crimes, according to Department of Justice records. He's granted 10 turkey pardons, sparing the birds from Thanksgiving execution to live out their lives on a farm. ...
Obama's human pardon number this year actually was higher than his turkey pardons. In both 2009 and 2012, Obama pardoned more turkeys than people. By comparison, Ronald Reagan, by this point in his presidency, had pardoned 313 people. Obama's total, including his one commutation, stands at 40.
Leaked paper reveals UN split over war on drugs
Latin American nations call for treatment strategy, claiming UN's prohibition stance plays into hands of paramilitary groups
Major international divisions over the global "war on drugs" have been revealed in a leaked draft of a UN document setting out the organisation's long-term strategy for combating illicit narcotics.
The draft, written in September and seen by the Observer, shows there are serious and entrenched divisions over the longstanding US-led policy promoting prohibition as an exclusive solution to the problem. ...
The divisions highlighted in the draft are potentially important. The document will form the basis of a joint "high-level" statement on drugs to be published in the spring, setting out the UN's thinking. This will then pave the way for a general assembly review, an event that occurs every 10 years, and, in 2016, will confirm the UN's position for the next decade. "The idea that there is a global consensus on drugs policy is fake," said Damon Barrett, deputy director of the charity Harm Reduction International. "The differences have been there for a long time, but you rarely get to see them. It all gets whittled down to the lowest common denominator, when all you see is agreement. But it's interesting to see now what they are arguing about." ...
Experts said the level of disagreement showed fault lines were opening up in the globally agreed position on drug control. "Heavy reliance on law enforcement for controlling drugs is yielding a poor return on investment and leading to all kinds of terrible human rights abuses," said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program. "The withdrawal from the most repressive parts of the drug war has begun – locally, nationally and globally."
Los Angeles to join New York and 50 other U.S. cities with ban on feeding homeless people
As the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County continues to rise, the City Council is weighing a ban on feeding homeless people in public areas.
City Council members Tom LaBonge and Mitch O'Farrell, both Democrats, introduced the resolution after complaints from Los Angeles residents. Arguing that meal lines should be moved indoors, the legislators said the proposal would benefit both the homeless and residential neighborhoods. ...
Los Angeles would join "dozens of cities in recent years" including Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., and Orlando, Fla. that have either enacted or at least debated legislation aimed at regulating the public feeding of the homeless. Over 50 cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
Michael Hudson: Oligarchs Will Never Cancel Debts We Owe Them
The Evening Greens
The Saboteurs
The man who waged North America’s first significant war against hydraulic fracturing was from Alberta, an eccentric, messianic Christian preacher named Wiebo Ludwig who died last year. He, with his small Christian community in the remote north of the province, sabotaged at least one wellhead by pouring cement down its shaft and blew up others. The Canadian authorities, along with the oil and gas barons, demonize Ludwig as an ecoterrorist, an odd charge given that they are the ones responsible for systematically destroying the environment and the planet. And as the ecosystem deteriorates—and the drive by corporations to extract the last remaining natural resources from the earth, even if it kills us all, becomes more and more relentless—the resistance of Wiebo Ludwig is worth remembering. ...
Ludwig’s farm happened to be atop one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. In Canada when you own land you own only the top six inches of soil; the mineral rights below it belong to the state and can be sold without the knowledge or acquiescence of the landowner. Beneath Ludwig’s farm lay a fossil fuel known as sour gas, a neurotoxin that if released from within the earth can, even in small amounts, poison livestock, water tables and people. ...
The oil and gas companies soon began a massive drilling effort. At first, like many other reformers and activists, Ludwig used legal and political channels to push back against the companies, which were drilling on the edge of his 160-acre farm. He spent the first five years attending hearings with civil regulators, writing letters—he even wrote to Jane Fonda—and appealing in vain to elected officials, government agencies, the press, environmentalists and first nations groups. ... Ludwig’s first acts of sabotage were minor. He laid down nail beds on roads. He smashed solar panels. He blocked roads by downing trees. He disabled vehicles and drilling equipment. But after two leaks of hydrogen sulfide sour gas from nearby wells—which forced everyone on the farm to evacuate and saw numerous farm animals giving birth to deformed or stillborn offspring, as well as five human miscarriages or stillbirths within Ludwig’s community—and after the destruction of two of his water wells, he declared open war on the oil and gas industry. He began to blow up oil and gas facilities. He said he had to fight back to “protect his children.”
Ludwig referred to the biblical story of David and Goliath in justifying his struggle against colossal forces, saying “the war is won before it is fought.” He believed that if you fought for righteousness you always were ensured spiritual victory, even if you were defeated in the eyes of the world. “It’s not size,” he said. “It’s whether a man is right or not. The fight is won on principle.”
Pennsylvania fracking boom coincides with increase in fossil fuel industry money
New analysis by Oil Change International, in partnership with Berks Gas Truth, released today shows that, since 2006, the fossil fuel industry has provided over $4.4 million in direct campaign contributions to members of the state legislature in Pennsylvania. In that time, overall contributions have doubled, from roughly $800,000 during the 2006 cycle, to over $1.6 million in total giving during the 2012 election cycle.
The analysis is based on data compiled in the new States.DirtyEnergyMoney.com database, launched this month by Oil Change International. The new database tracks fossil fuel industry contributions to members of state legislatures in seven key fossil fuel states across the country. More details can be found here. ...
“This new analysis shows that just as the oil and gas industry has invaded our communities and backyards with their dirty fracking waste, they are simultaneously invading our democracy as well,” said Karen Feridun of Berks Gas Truth. ... “The influx of campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry in Pennsylvania paints a scary picture. It’s clear that industry interests are trying to grease the skids in the state legislature so they can continue fracking up the state,” said David Turnbull, Campaigns Director at Oil Change International. “It’s time we kicked fossil fuel money out of our politics and demand representatives in State Houses all around the country start listening to the people, not the polluters.”
Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity
Guide Claims Warsaw COP19 Climate Talks Were Captured By Corporate Fossil Fuel Interests
In a guide released during the talks, research groups Corporate Europe Observatory and the Transnational Institute rebranded the event the "Conference of Polluters" and documented the full extent of the corporate involvement at COP19. The report said:
Big business, industry and finance, keen to set the agenda and shape the rules in the interests of their profits - and at the expense of climate justice - have infiltrated COP19.
Corporate capture on the scale that is exhibited at COP19 runs the risk of rendering the UN climate negotiations not merely ineffective, but counterproductive to tackling climate change.
It is time for the UN and the international community to open its eyes to corporate spin and powerful vested interests, and work towards real alternatives that embody the principles of social, environmental and climate justice.
The report - COP19 Guide to Corporate Lobbying: Climate crooks and the Polish government's partners in crime - also details some of the lobbying and industry organisations that are currently registered to attend the series of COP talks, including COP19.
These include the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, the World Coal Association, the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association and the International Chamber of Commerce.
The report is also critical of groups such as the Carbon Markets and Investors Association and the International Emissions Trading Association, which in advocating for expansion of carbon markets and emissions trading the report says are part of a "false solution."
Memo suggests U.S. light oil threatens approval of Keystone pipeline
Booming U.S. oil production poses a new threat to TransCanada Corp.’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, Canada’s top energy expert in Washington warned in a memo to the ambassador to the U.S.
In an analysis prepared last summer and obtained under Access to Information, Canadian embassy energy counsellor Paul Connors warned Ambassador Gary Doer that Canada could not rely on a previous State Department finding that the pipeline would not increase greenhouse gas emissions, and said the jury was still out on whether the U.S. would approve the project.
In June, U.S. President Barack Obama laid out an aggressive new climate policy and said he would only approve the Keystone XL pipeline if it did not “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”
Keystone supporters – including Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver – have noted that a State Department draft environmental impact statement concluded last March that the oil sands bitumen would get to market with or without the Keystone XL pipeline, and that therefore approval of the project would have little impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr. Connors, however, warned that booming production of unconventional light oil in North Dakota and Texas could give rise to a new rationale for denying the pipeline, since light oil is less greenhouse-gas intensive than oil sands crude. The e-mail – written the day after Mr. Obama’s climate policy announcement – was sent to several embassy staff and obtained by the Calgary-based environmental think tank Pembina Institute after an access request.
TEPCO Downplays Huge Risks Involved in Removing Fukushima Fuel Rods
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Julian Assange’s Warning ‘Urgent’ for Developing World
A Little Night Music
Otis Redding - Cigarettes and Coffee
Otis Redding - Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa
Otis Redding - Hard To Handle
Otis Redding - I Got Dreams To Remember
Otis Redding - Any Ole Way
Otis Redding - Sitting on the dock of the bay
Otis Redding - 634-5789
Otis Redding - A Change Is Gonna Come
Otis Redding - Call Me Mr Pitiful
Otis Redding - Nobody's fault but mine
Otis Redding - Shake
Otis Redding - R E S P E C T
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!
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