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 singer and dancer Chubby Checker who had the good fortune to record a copy of Hank Ballard's, "The Twist" which led to a dance craze. I got carried away and included a lot of music to Twist to. Enjoy!
Chubby Checker - The Twist
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
-- Søren Kierkegaard
News and Opinion
Former Israeli PM War Criminal Ariel Sharon Dies at 85 After Eight-Year Coma
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, known for his brutal tactics against Palestine during the course of his career as a military and political leader, died Saturday after 8 years in a coma.
Sharon, who had suffered a stroke at the age of 78 during the 2006 Israeli elections campaign, had multiple organ failures over the new year, his family said, leading ultimately to his death on Saturday.
Noam Chomsky on the Legacy of Ariel Sharon: Not Speaking Ill of the Dead "Imposes a Vow of Silence"
Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon dies after eight-year coma
[F]or many Israelis he will be mourned as a giant figure who played a key role in shaping Israel both as a soldier and a statesman. His passing severs the last link to the iconic generation which fought in the 1948 war that followed the declaration of the state. His reputation as a fearless – and controversial - soldier was matched by his uncompromising ideology as a politician.
Among Palestinians and leftwing Israelis, he will be remembered as a powerful and reviled champion of Israel's colonial settlement project, and the political force behind the construction of the vast concrete and steel separation barrier that snakes through the West Bank. Many will not forgive him for failing to prevent the killing by Lebanese Christian forces of hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Shia in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982.
Noam Chomsky: Sabra & Shatila Massacre That Forced Sharon’s Ouster Recalls Worst of Jewish Pogroms
Ariel Sharon should have been Tried for War Crimes
Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Sharon also escaped accountability for other alleged abuses, such as his role expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, prosecutable as a war crime. Sharon ordered the removal of all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements in 2005, but the overall number of settlers in occupied territory increased significantly during his term as prime minister. ...
In February 1983, the Kahan Commission, Israel’s official commission of inquiry investigating the events, found that the “serious consideration… that the Phalangists were liable to commit atrocities… did not concern [Sharon] in the least.” Sharon’s “disregard of the danger of a massacre” was “impossible to justify,” the commission found, and recommended his dismissal as defense minister. He remained in the Israeli cabinet as a minister without portfolio and later became prime minister in 2001, serving until his stroke in January 2006.
Israeli justice authorities never conducted a criminal investigation to determine whether Sharon and other Israeli military officials bore criminal responsibility. In 2001, survivors brought a case in Belgium requesting that Sharon be prosecuted under Belgium’s “universal jurisdiction” law. Political pressure led Belgium’s parliament to amend the law in April 2003, and to repeal it altogether in August, leading Belgium’s highest court to drop the case against Sharon that September.
The limits of President Obama’s power on NSA reform
President Barack Obama on Friday will try to put the ongoing surveillance controversy behind him, laying out reforms to U.S. intelligence-gathering activities aimed at reassuring Americans that his administration will right the balance between civil liberties and national security.
But Obama’s powers have significant limits.
Many of the key reforms he’s expected to endorse — including changes to the National Security Agency’s practice of gathering information on telephone calls made to, from or within the U.S. — will require congressional action. Like the public — and seemingly the president himself — lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are divided on what needs fixing and how to do it. ...
The snooping saga has been a loser for Obama in nearly every respect. Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked a trove of top-secret documents detailing the surveillance, is still camping out in Russia. The activities angered the international community. And disclosures that widespread and intrusive surveillance continued into Obama’s presidency undercut his reputation as a reformer who would end over-the-top anti-terrorism practices and civil liberties violations many liberals — including Obama and Vice President Joe Biden — denounced under President George W. Bush. ...
“No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient,” Obama said in a 2007 speech. “This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security.”
The way the public learned about the snooping efforts — through a massive security breach involving a low-level NSA computer technician — also undermined Obama’s claims to be a champion of transparency.
John McCain seeks congressional investigation into 'broken' NSA
John McCain, the Republican senator and former presidential candidate, has called for a congressional investigation into America’s “broken” National Security Agency, ahead of week in which the White House will announce its own reforms. ...
The Obama administration is desperate to draw a line under the controversy that has engulfed the NSA over the last six months. The president’s proposals are partly based on the findings of a major review, commissioned in the aftermath of the Snowden disclosures, which recommended, among other things, that the agency should no longer collect and store domestic phone records.
McCain told CNN on Sunday that Congress was probably going to need to pass legislation to implement Obama’s recommendations, and was obliged to run its own investigation into the wider controversy over US surveillance.
“Is there anybody believes that this system is not broken in many respects? I think not,” he said.
“There has been overreach, it seems to me,” he added. “Sometimes these agencies have done things just because they can. I think we need a select committee in Congress to go over this whole scenario, because it does overlap many committees.”
How New Mexico’s Sen. Heinrich came to be a critic of NSA
Elected to the Senate in 2012 after two terms in the House, Heinrich was coming off tenures on the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Natural Resources. He was angling for similar assignments in the Senate.
Then came the call from Reid. Heinrich could get a spot on the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but Armed Services was out. Instead, Reid thought Heinrich would be well suited to the intelligence panel. ...
There was little in Heinrich’s House voting record that would have telegraphed his transformation into one of the NSA’s fiercest critics. Across his four years as a congressman, he voted to extend USA Patriot Act provisions that allow for the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ data, a vote he says he wouldn’t have cast had he known the extent to which the provisions were being used.
The discrepancies in his own positions highlight a problem with congressional oversight of intelligence, Heinrich said.
“You’ll hear some people say, ‘Well, Congress had been briefed, and this information was available to everyone.’ That’s not a particularly intellectually honest perspective, in my view,” he said.
While the smaller size of the Senate makes it easier for members to fully understand classified matters, most House members are left to rely on that chamber’s intelligence panel to make the calls, Heinrich said.
“I absolutely did not know the scope of what was going on under Section 215,” Heinrich said of his time in the House, referring to the Patriot Act provision that authorizes the NSA program.
NSA and GCHQ activities appear illegal, says EU parliamentary inquiry
Mass surveillance programmes used by the US and Britain to spy on people in Europe have been condemned in the "strongest possible terms" by the first parliamentary inquiry into the disclosures, which has demanded an end to the vast, systematic and indiscriminate collection of personal data by intelligence agencies.
The inquiry by the European parliament's civil liberties committee says the activities of America's National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, appear to be illegal and that their operations have "profoundly shaken" the trust between countries that considered themselves allies.
The 51-page draft report, obtained by the Guardian, was discussed by the committee on Thursday. Claude Moraes, the rapporteur asked to assess the impact of revelations made by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, also condemns the "chilling" way journalists working on the stories have been intimidated by state authorities.
Though Snowden is still in Russia, MEPs are expected to take evidence from him via video-link in the coming weeks, as the European parliament continues to assess the damage from the disclosures. Committee MEPs voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to have Snowden testify, defying warnings from key US congressmen that giving the "felon" a public platform would wreck the European parliament's reputation and hamper co-operation with Washington.
Pt.2 Hedges and Binney on NSA Policy
One Year Later, Web Legends Honor Aaron Swartz
Internet activist Aaron Swartz took his own life one year ago today. He was 26 years old and facing federal hacking and fraud charges for downloading millions of academic articles using MIT’s network. Before his passing, he was on outspoken advocate for freedom of information and a founder of Demand Progress, the nonprofit that invigorated a successful grassroots effort to fight the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2012.
Swartz was, as WIRED’s Kevin Poulsen wrote a “coder with a conscience,” and in a clip premiering today on WIRED from director Brian Knappenberger’s forthcoming documentary The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, more than a few web visionaries remember him for the important work he did and the legacy he created.
Chris Hedges - The Trouble With Chris Christie
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been Wall Street’s anointed son for the presidency. He is backed by the most ruthless and corrupt figures in New Jersey politics, including the New Jersey multimillionaire and hard-line Democratic boss George Norcross III. Among his other supporters are many hedge fund managers and corporate executives and some of the nation’s most retrograde billionaires, including the Koch brothers. The brewing scandal over the closing of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge apparently in retaliation for the Fort Lee mayor’s refusal to support the governor’s 2013 re-election is a window into how federal agencies and the security and surveillance apparatus would be routinely employed in a Christie presidency to punish anyone who challenged this tiny cabal’s grip on power.
Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot. He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth. He is gripped by a bottomless hedonism that includes a demand for private jets, huge entourages, exclusive hotels and lavish meals. Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power, someone with the moral compass of Al Capone, in order to ruthlessly silence and crush those of us who are working to overthrow the corporate state. They have had enough of what they perceive to be Barack Obama’s softness. Christie fits the profile and he is drooling for the opportunity.
Activists, Democratic and Republican rivals for power, liberals, reformers and environmentalists will, if Christie becomes president, see the vast forces of the security state surge into overdrive to stymie and reverse reform, gut our tepid financial and environmental regulations, further enrich the corporate elite who are pillaging the country, and savagely shut down all dissent. The corporate state’s repression, now on the brink of totalitarianism, would with the help of Christie, his corporate backers and his tea party loyalists become a full-blown corporate fascism.
'New Hampshire Rebellion' Kicks Off Fight Against Money in Politics
Staging what they have dubbed "the New Hampshire Rebellion," a group lead by Harvard intellectual and activist Lawrence Lessig set out for a 185 mile journey across the "live free or die" state on Saturday, calling attention to what they see as one of the most important issues in U.S. politics today—the dire need for campaign finance reform.
The march will pay homage to a similar attempt by famed activist Dorris Haddock, or "Granny D," who, fifteen years ago at the age of 88, marched across the United States from Los Angeles to Washington DC with a sign reading “Campaign Finance Reform” across her chest.
"Haddock is credited with helping to galvanize public will around the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act," Al Jazeera America reports, "which was signed into law in 2002." However, two months after Haddock passed away at the age of 100, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of big donors, and the politicians who use them, in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, "which undid many of the limits put in place on campaign finance and heralded a new era in unprecedented spending by special interests and corporations."
Here's The Real Reason Conservatives Love Tax Breaks
U.S. has deployed military advisers to Somalia, officials say
The U.S. military secretly deployed a small number of trainers and advisers to Somalia in October, the first time regular troops have been stationed in the war-ravaged country since 1993, when two helicopters were shot down and 18 Americans killed in the “Black Hawk Down” disaster.
A cell of U.S. military personnel has been in the Somali capital of Mogadishu to advise and coordinate operations with African troops fighting to wrest control of the country from the al-Shabab militia, an Islamist group whose leaders have professed loyalty to al-Qaeda, according to three U.S. military officials.
The previously undisclosed deployment — of fewer than two dozen troops — reverses two decades of U.S. policy that effectively prohibited military “boots on the ground” in Somalia. Even as Somali pirates and terrorists emerged as the top security threat in the region, successive presidential administrations and the Pentagon shied away from sending troops there for fear of a repeat of the Black Hawk Down debacle. ...
Drones from a U.S. base in Djibouti — a neighboring Horn of Africa country — conduct surveillance missions and occasional airstrikes from Somalia’s skies. Elite Special Operations forces have also set foot on Somali territory on rare occasions to carry out counterterrorism raids and hostage rescues, but only in the shadows and for no more than a few hours at a time.
Three Children Died During The Polar Vortex After Their Heat Was Cut Off
Like the rest of the mid-west, the town of Hammond, Indiana, spent the first part of last week plunged below zero degrees. But while some families tried to shut out the cold by turning up their heat and staying under blankets, the bitter temperatures turned deadly for the family of a man named Andre Young.
The house that Young was renting for himself, his wife, and five children had its electricity cut off since March, gas since April, and water since October, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune. On that fateful night last week, the family was getting by on propane space heaters. Authorities suspect that’s what sparked a flame that engulfed the house around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 8th.
According to witness accounts, Young ran in to the house to try to rescue his five children inside. He successfully saved two — a two-year-old and a six-year-old — before the flames caused serious injury and he collapsed into the snow. Another man tried to kick in the door and save the three children who remained inside, ages four, three, and seven months. But the attempts were unsuccessful; when first responders arrived, they found the three and the four-year-old holding on to one another, just feet from the door. The seven-month-old was nearby. All three children died.
Young, who remains hospitalized in critical condition, works in lawn care, according to the Tribune. His wife worked at Walmart, but most recently was a stay-at-home mom. As is the case with so many low-income families across the U.S., neighbors say the money was not enough to make the utility payments.
The Evening Greens
Hold onto your hats, this appears poised to become a big story:
Chemical Spill Battering W. Virginia Residents
Four days after a chemical spill in West Virginia left 300,000 people without usable tap water, causing illness across the area, those residents are still left without answers, or solutions, to their toxic problem.
West Virginia was declared in a stated of emergency by Gov. Earl Ray Tombli Thursday following the chemical leak, which occurred at the Freedom Industries coal plant along the Elk River, a source of drinking water for nine counties and hundreds of thousands of people.
Dozens were hospitalized and at least four people have been admitted to the Charleston Area Medical Center, reportedly due to the spill.
The leaked chemical, 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, which is used for coal processing, causes nausea, dizziness, vomiting and eye and skin irritation upon exposure.
Residents Sunday were still advised not to drink, bathe, wash clothes or dishes, or any other such activity until further notice.
Critics Say Chemical Spill Highlights Lax West Virginia Regulations
Last week’s major chemical spill into West Virginia’s Elk River, which cut off water to more than 300,000 people, came in a state with a long and troubled history of regulating the coal and chemical companies that form the heart of its economy. ...
Critics say the problems are widespread in a state where the coal and chemical industries, which drive much of West Virginia’s economy and are powerful forces in the state’s politics, have long pushed back against tight federal health, safety and environmental controls. ...
In 2009, an investigation by The New York Times found that hundreds of workplaces in West Virginia had violated pollution laws without paying fines. In interviews at the time, current and former West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection employees said their enforcement efforts had been undermined by bureaucratic disorganization; a departmental preference to let polluters escape punishment if they promised to try harder; and a revolving door of regulators who left for higher-paying jobs at the companies they once policed.
Local Reporter Refuses to Let Smug President of Company Responsible for Poisoned WV Water Off the Hook
In an unbelievable display of arrogance and detachment, the President of a company that just poisoned huge swaths of a city in West Virginia had the nerve to repeatedly chug a bottle of water on camera during a press conference — while 300,000 Charleston residents spent a second night unable to bathe, shower or drink tap water on Saturday after a chemical spill into the Elk River.
Many are giving praise to a persistent reporter from local Channel 8 named Kallie Cart, who pressed Freedom Industries president, Gary Southern, while he was clearly trying to cut the press conference short and leave with giving as little information as possible.
West Virginia chemical spill probe falls to overburdened Chemical Safety Board
Among the authorities responding to the massive chemical spill near Charleston, W.Va., which has left hundreds of thousands without water, is the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, whose investigative backlog was detailed in a Center for Public Integrity probe last year.
Last week’s spill of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a chemical used in processing coal, into the Elk River adds an urgent new case to the federal agency’s workload. The CSB is akin to the National Transportation Safety Board — an independent federal board whose inquiries are intended to unmask systemic breakdowns, paving the way for reform. ...
The Center’s report, published last April, revealed how investigations into fatal accidents remain open, sometimes for years, amid what critics cite as a sluggish investigative pace. One former board member called the agency “grossly mismanaged.”
'Polar Vortex' Hysteria: News frozen out by US media weather frenzy
Toll of U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation Continues to Climb
The roll call of U.S. sailors who say their health was devastated when they were irradiated while delivering humanitarian help near the stricken Fukushima nuke is continuing to soar.
So many have come forward that the progress of their federal class action lawsuit has been delayed.
Bay area lawyer Charles Bonner says a re-filing will wait until early February to accommodate a constant influx of sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other American ships.
Within a day of Fukushima One’s March 11, 2011, melt-down, American “first responders” were drenched in radioactive fallout. In the midst of a driving snow storm, sailors reported a cloud of warm air with a metallic taste that poured over the Reagan. ...
Had the Navy known, says Bonner, it could have moved its ships out of harm’s way. But some sailors actually jumped into the ocean just offshore to pull victims to safety. Others worked 18-hour shifts in the open air through a four-day mission, re-fueling and repairing helicopters, loading them with vital supplies and much more. All were drinking and bathing in desalinated water that had been severely contaminated by radioactive fallout and runoff. ...
When it did leave the Fukushima area, the Reagan was so radioactive it was refused port entry in Japan, South Korea and Guam. It’s currently docked in San Diego.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
One year ago today...
WV: Freedom Industries Has Ties to Koch Brothers
We Have to Destroy Our Constitution to Save It
The 6 Most Terrifying Facts About The Chemical Spill Contaminating West Virginia’s Drinking Water
Fukushima Update: The Nuclear Disaster That Won't Go Away
Canada's Tar Sands: "We've got Neil Young!"
Two Seats from Disaster in New Mexico
A Little Night Music
Hank Ballard - The Twist
Gary US Bonds - Dear Lady Twist
Chubby Checker - Let's Twist Again
Joey Dee & The Starliters - Peppermint Twist
Sam Cooke - Twistin' The Night Away
Isley Brothers - Twist and Shout
King Curtis - Soul Twist
Genies - Twistin Pneumonia
The Ventures - Dark eyes twist
The Marvelettes - Twistin' Postman
Dovells - Bristol Twistin' Annie
Roosevelt Grier - Struttin' 'N Twistin'
Duane Eddy - Twistin' and Twangin'
Danny & The Juniors - Twistin USA
Little Betty - Twistin School
Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Twistin' Goin' On
The Marvelettes - Slow Twistin'
Jimmy Donley - Honey Stop Twistin'
Blues Brothers - Twist it
Los Straitjackets & the Pontani Sisters: Twistin' Gorilla
Traveling Wilburys - Wilbury Twist
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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