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 r&b guitarist and bandleader Jimmy Liggins. Enjoy!
Jimmy Liggins - I Ain't Drunk
“Congress may carry on the most wicked and pernicious of schemes under the dark veil of secrecy. The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
-- Patrick Henry
News and Opinion
Battle set in Congress after privacy board says NSA program is illegal
A government oversight board’s finding that the National Security Agency’s massive collection of cellphone data is illegal and should never have been approved by the federal court created to deal with sensitive intelligence issues set off a furor in Washington on Thursday that presages the bitter battle likely to come in Congress over how to change the country’s intelligence operations.
Even before the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released its report, members of Congress were lining up to either praise it or denounce it in a preview of what will surely be the debate as the nation’s lawmakers take up issues that President Barack Obama left unresolved in his announcement of NSA changes last week. ...
Rep. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, pronounced himself “disappointed” in the report, particularly in the decision of three members of the five-member board to declare the program illegal. He said that move went “well beyond their policy and oversight role.”
But the report was heartily endorsed by Rogers’ fellow Republican, Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and was the author of the USA Patriot Act, under which the NSA collection was authorized. Sensenbrenner in a statement said the privacy board’s report confirmed his belief that the Patriot Act had been misinterpreted to justify the NSA surveillance program.
“This report adds to the growing momentum behind genuine, legislative reform,” he said, adding, in a slap at Obama, that “the president has failed to deliver on his promises of transparency and the protection of our civil liberties. It is up to Congress to rein in abuse and restore trust in our intelligence community.”
Federal Oversight Board: NSA Program Ineffective & Illegal
This is an interesting article that I can't really do justice in an excerpt...
The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs
Before Edward Snowden showed up, 2013 was shaping up as the year of reckoning for the much criticized federal anti-hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). The suicide of Aaron Swartz in January 2013 brought the CFAA into mainstream consciousness, so Congress held hearings about the case, and legislative fixes were introduced to change the law.
Finally, there seemed to be a newfound scrutiny of CFAA prosecutions and punishment for accessing computer data without or in excess of “authorization” — which affected everyone from Chelsea Manning to Jeremy Hammond to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer (disclosure: I’m one of his lawyers on appeal). Not to mention less illustrious personalities and everyday users, such as people who delete cookies from their browsers.
But unfortunately, not much has changed; if anything, the growing recognition of the powerful capabilities of modern computing and networking has resulted in a “cyber panic” in legislatures and prosecutor offices across the country. Instead of reexamination, we’ve seen aggressive charges and excessive punishment. ...
The panic has even spread to how crime is investigated. To prevent digital contraband from coming into the United States, border officials can now search electronic devices without any suspicion of wrongdoing. To get to illicit files on a seized computer, the government can force you to decrypt your computer and threaten you with jail for noncompliance. To get information about one customer, the FBI can demand a service provider turn over the key that unlocks communications from all of the service’s customers. And let’s not even get started on what the NSA has been up to.
US hints at Edward Snowden plea bargain to allow return from Russia
The attorney general, Eric Holder, has indicated that the US could allow the national security whistleblower Edward Snowden to return from Russia under negotiated terms, saying he was prepared to “engage in conversation” with him.
Holder said in an MSNBC interview that full clemency would be “going too far”, but his comments suggest that US authorities are prepared to discuss a possible plea bargain with Snowden, who is living in exile in Russia. ...
The Obama administration’s official line is that Snowden is a suspected felon and should be extradited from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum, to face trial in the US. Snowden has yet to be publicly indicted by the Justice Department, but in June it charged him with violations of the Espionage Act.
But Holder is the third senior administration official, including the president, who has made comments that raise the question of Snowden returning to the US under some kind of negotiated terms. ...
In [yesterday's] webchat, Snowden said he did not believe he would receive a fair trial in the US. "The 100-year-old law under which I’ve been charged, which was never intended to be used against people working in the public interest, and forbids a public interest defence," he said. "This is especially frustrating, because it means there’s no chance to have a fair trial, and no way I can come home and make my case to a jury."
Edward Snowden won't be pressured to end asylum, Russia says
Edward Snowden may stay in Russia longer than first thought.
Snowden has said the time isn't right for him to return to the United States, where he could face criminal charges for leaking classified information. Russia gave him asylum for a year.
Now Russia says it will continue to extend asylum protections to Snowden and won't send him back home.
That word came Friday from Alexy Pushkov, a legislator who is head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Duma, Russia's lower house. He spoke about Snowden at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Intelligence Officials Make Direct Threats on Snowden's Life
Google and Verizon report explosion in government data requests, heavy reliance on metadata spying
Google and Verizon have released relatively detailed transparency reports, showing for the first time how many subpoenas, court orders, search warrants, and wiretap orders they received during the first six months of 2013 and the year, respectively. The results confirm what we already knew: When law enforcement officials can obtain our private records without warrants, they use that power to the max.
The charts below show how many of each type of request Verizon and Google received during the year 2013 (for Verizon) and the first six months of 2013 (for Google). They show that law enforcement officials submit vastly more subpoenas than search warrants. That's no surprise, given that subpoenas require zero showing of probable cause, and typically do not require any sort of judicial approval or even administrative oversight. As we've long suspected, when we give the police and prosecutors the power to conduct fishing expeditions completely in the dark, they go big.
Google reports that it received three times the number of government surveillance orders in the first six months of 2013 than it did in the last six months of 2009. Like with Verizon, the vast majority of those requests were subpoenas, which do not require a showing of probable cause or a judge's approval. A frequently deployed tool in the prosecutor's arsenal, the administrative subpoena is just a piece of paper that she fills out and sends to a company like Google or Verizon, demanding user information. In Massachusetts, we found that most prosecutors do not even keep internal records of how many subpoenas their offices file each year.
This week in police militarization
South Carolina’s Richland County Sheriff department announced “secretive,” likely “loud” training exercises to be held with unnamed military units from Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg is home to some of the US Army’s most elite fighting units, including the notorious Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As journalists Jeremy Scahill, Nick Turse, and Tom Engelhardt have demonstrated, JSOC commandos operate as a sort of Presidential Kill Force in hundreds of countries worldwide. These highly-trained killers were responsible for a raid on a civilian home in Gardez, Afghanistan, where numerous people from one family were killed in cold blood. Survivors say US special forces dug their bullets out of the bodies of their victims, the first step in what would become a failed coverup that finally ended when then JSOC commander Admiral McRaven admitted responsibility and apologized to the family. Do you feel safer knowing these special operations forces may be training your local police?
Kiev protesters occupy government building amid uneasy truce
About 1,000 protesters have moved from Kiev's Independence Square to occupy a government building in response to opposition calls to observe a truce with riot police after long talks with President Viktor Yanukovych ended without a major breakthrough.
Early on Friday, the protesters broke into the agricultural policy ministry building in central Kiev, meeting no resistance. The move followed the seizure of local governors' offices in several western regions on Thursday.
The government's failure to grant key concessions was met with anger by thousands of protesters manning the barricades in the capital on Thursday evening, while the anti-government protests that have rocked Ukraine spread to other parts of the country during the day.
On Wednesday, after three people were killed in clashes with riot police, the opposition politician Vitali Klitschko had asked protesters in central Kiev to observe an eight-hour truce while talks went on. Klitschko had promised to "go on the attack" if Yanukovych did not launch snap elections within 24 hours, while Arseniy Yatsenyuk, of the Fatherland party, said he was ready to take a "bullet in the head". ...
"The only thing we were able to achieve was not much," a grim Klitschko told the crowd. He was booed by some of those at the barricade as he asked for a truce.
On Independence Square, the nationalist leader Oleh Tyahnybok, who was part of the negotiations, put the idea of continuing discussions with the president to a midnight vote among the crowd, and it was overwhelmingly rejected. There are now difficult decisions to make for the opposition leaders, who have been unable to achieve their key demand of snap elections from Yanukovych but are uneasy about being held responsible for any further violence.
Ukraine crisis exposes Europe's policy vacuum
Two months ago Ukrainians took to the streets and squares of Kiev because of Europe. They felt betrayed and cheated by their president, who capped years of negotiating strategic political and trade agreements with the European Union by ditching them and instead turning to Moscow for a lifeline in the form of money and energy and trade privileges.
With Kiev burning and blood on the streets in the fierce mid-winter, Europe now appears at a loss over how to respond to a crisis it played a big role in creating. ...
The Ukrainian conflict is conventionally seen as cultural and geographical – Yanukovych and the pro-Russian east against the educated classes of Kiev and the pro-European west of the country.
But it is as much about power and money for the Yanukovych clan faced with broad popular disgust at the corrupt and self-serving regime the president embodies.
In terms of quick and easy fixes to such a contest, the EU struggles to be nimble, while Putin can open the gas taps and write cheques instantly. Putin offered Yanukovych €15bn (£12bn) , cheaper gas supplies, and trade benefits now, while the EU pacts amount to a medium-term modernisation and reform programme which may benefit Ukraine once Yanukovych is long gone. ...
[Head of the European commission, José Manuel] Barroso's options appear very limited. What can Europe do except put Yanukovych in the same box as the dictator next door, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, and blacklist his cronies and oligarch financiers to stop them shopping in London, skiing in Switzerland or holidaying in the Mediterranean?
In Syria Both Sides Fear Annihilation If They Lay Down Arms
Syria's foreign minister threatens to walk out of peace talks
Long-awaited direct peace talks between the Syrian government and rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad failed to get under way as expected on Friday morning after Damascus insisted on ending "terrorism" before seeking a political solution to end nearly three years of war and misery. ...
Face-to-face talks were due to follow on from where Wednesday's 40-nation international conference in nearby Montreux left off. It would be the first direct contact between the opposing parties since the anti-Assad uprising began in March 2011. ... Angry remarks in Montreux by Muallem left the western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) claiming that it alone was committed to the 2012 agreement – known as Geneva I – to create a "transitional governing body". ...
Muallem warned, however, that the SOC did not represent the opposition. He said efforts to achieve a political result were premature. The priority was "to fight terrorism and this paves the way for the start of the political process", he said, according to Syria's state news agency.
Many Syrians still see Assad as indispensable in saving their country
Alawites, who belong to the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as Assad, see their country’s civil war as a fight for survival against rebels of the Sunni Muslim majority bent on imposing Taliban-style Islamic rule on Syria’s diverse mix of religious and ethnic groups.
But conversations with dozens of people over 10 days in Tartous, Damascus and other regime-held areas show that it is not just Alawites who support the head of this iron-fisted police state. Backing for Assad also comes from Christians, other religious minorities, and even some Sunnis. There’s one overwhelming reason: They see him as the only leader dedicated to defend them from the thousands of al Qaida-linked foreign jihadis who’ve poured into Syria over the last two years. Many believe that foreigners planned and are directing the insurgency and, unlike some Syrian rebels, can’t be negotiated with. ...
The presence and excesses of the foreign jihadis have been major boons to Assad, who a year ago seemed headed for defeat. Now, his popular support – bolstered by successes in securing key areas with help from Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia – poses a significant problem for the United States and other powers as they seek to initiate talks on ending the war, which has claimed more than 125,000 lives and uprooted some 8 million others. ...
[T]he involvement of foreign Islamists “put us in a position where we had to choose sides,” said a Damascus university student, a Sunni who initially supported anti-regime protests that grew into war in mid-2011 after Assad’s security forces wantonly fired on demonstrators. “In the beginning everybody thought we’d have a chance. But they (the rebels) didn’t give us freedom. They’ve given us chaos.”
We Are the Giant: Bahrain’s Top Family of Activists Pays Heavy Price for Challenging US-Backed Gov’t
Bombs targeting police kill 5 in Cairo ahead of anniversary of anti-Mubarak uprising
Three explosions rocked Cairo Friday morning in the span of four hours, killing at least five people on the eve of the third anniversary of an uprising that was supposed to usher in democratic government, but many Egyptians now believe has sowed instability instead. ...
While larger attacks have struck police stations around Egypt, Friday’s attacks were the deadliest against security forces in the nation’s capital. Egypt already was on edge as Saturday marks the three-year anniversary of the uprising that led to the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. A polarized nation has emerged since between those who support Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood and those who want a military-governed state to return to power.
Argentinian peso in freefall as economic crisis deepens
The peso is suffering its fastest fall since Argentina's 2002 economic collapse as dwindling reserves keep the central bank from trying to prop up the currency by intervening in the foreign exchange market.
The 16 percent loss in the peso's official value against the dollar over Wednesday and Thursday could worsen the country's inflation, which is among the worst in Latin America, analysts said.
The peso fell from 6.88 per dollar on Tuesday to 7.14 on Wednesday. By Thursday's close, it was at 8 to the dollar. On the black market, where Argentina's currency is even weaker, the peso dropped 6 percent Thursday to 13 per dollar.
The sharp depreciation is likely due to a new government strategy of seeking a sudden devaluation instead of a gradual one, said Juan Pablo Ronderos of economic consulting firm abeceb.com.
"There was a first sign of this change on Tuesday because the central bank didn't show up (to intervene) until midday, and on Wednesday and today it just disappeared from the market," Ronderos said. "The gradual devaluation wasn't working because the central bank kept on sacrificing lots of its reserves and it kept on being reflected on consumer prices."
Pfffffftttt!!!!
No bank too big to indict, U.S. attorney general says
No American financial institution is too large to indict and no bank executive immune from criminal prosecution, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a television interview.
In an interview with MSNBC scheduled to be broadcast on Friday, Holder cited the case against JPMorgan Chase & Co, which in November agreed to a civil settlement under which it would pay $13 billion to end a series of government investigations into its marketing and sale of mortgage-backed securities.
The settlement with JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, allowed prosecutors to pursue criminal charges if warranted, and that investigation is ongoing.
Nuclear Attack on Japan was Opposed by American Military Leadership - Gar Alperovitz
The Evening Greens
Court Denies Offshore Oil Lease Sale in America's Arctic
Today the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the Department of the Interior violated the law when it sold offshore oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Alaska Native and conservation groups made up of: the Native Village of Point Hope, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Oceana, Pacific Environment, Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and World Wildlife Fund. Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, represented the groups.
In response to the decision, the organizations issue the following joint statement:
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the Arctic Ocean. The government has no business offering oil companies leases in the Chukchi Sea. The area is home to iconic species such as polar bear, bowhead whales, and walrus and to a vibrant indigenous subsistence culture. Drilling for oil puts at risk the region’s wildlife and people, and it takes us off the path toward a clean energy future.
For the second time, a court has found that the government ignored basic legal protections for our ocean resources in deciding to open the Chukchi Sea to offshore oil leasing. We should not have to depend on courts to protect our oceans. President Obama must now take seriously his obligation to re-think whether and under what conditions to allow risky industrial activities in the Chukchi Sea. As Shell’s problems clearly demonstrated, companies are not ready to drill in the Arctic Ocean.”
NTSB to Industry: Reroute Oil Trains Away From Population Centers
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) expressed growing concern Thursday that accidents involving oil trains can cause “major loss of life,” and recommended that they be rerouted where possible to avoid populated areas.
The safety board's proposal, a direct response to last July’s oil train disaster in Quebec, reverberates in the Twin Cities, where 100-car crude oil trains have become a common occurrence.
But diverting oil tankers away from cities, especially historic rail hubs such as Minneapolis and St. Paul, represents a daunting challenge because most major tracks pass through urban areas.
Some Alberta doctors reluctant to treat oilsands patients, report says
Some family physicians around the oilsands area of Peace River, Alta., are reluctant to treat patients who draw connections between the burgeoning oil industry and their personal health problems, says a report commissioned by the Alberta Energy Regulator.
The report was prepared by Dr. Margaret Sears, an Ottawa-based PhD who specializes in toxicology and public health, for public hearings scheduled to begin in Peace River on Tuesday.
In her report, Sears writes: “There were reports from various sources that physicians would not diagnose a relationship between bitumen exposures and chronic symptoms.”
She continues: “Physician care was refused for individuals suggesting such a connection, and that analytical services were refused by an Alberta laboratory when told that the proposed analysis was to investigate exposure to emissions related to bitumen extraction.”
Will the US Open a National Forest to Fracking?
Proposed fracking in George Washington National Forest puts 4.5 million people at risk of water contamination
The U.S. Forest Service is considering opening up the George Washington National Forest in Virginia to the oil and gas drilling process known as fracking, causing alarm over the potential destruction to the park as well as the contamination of drinking water for the millions of residents in Washington D.C. and surrounding areas, the Los Angeles Times reports Thursday.
An original draft plan for the forest preserve, released by the Forest Service in 2011, included a ban on fracking that spawned "an outcry from industry." That outcry pushed the Forest Service to reconsider. A final decision on the ban has now been delayed several times as the industry has continued pressure on the agency.
However, as the Los Angeles Times reports, the potential risk has "drawn widespread opposition, including from most of the towns and counties nearby, members of Virginia's congressional delegation and Washington's mayor."
In total, roughly about 4.5 million people depend on the water from the park and could potentially face contamination if proposals to open the park to "high-volume hydraulic fracturing" goes through.
"The Potomac is our exclusive water source. We don't have anywhere else to go for our drinking water if there's a mistake or problem," said George Hawkins, general manager of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority. "And if there is, it would affect everyone at the [Environmental Protection Agency], every member of Congress."
Response to Governor Brown’s drought declaration in California
In response to Governor Brown’s drought declaration, David Turnbull, Campaigns Director of Oil Change International and the BigOilBrown.org campaign, released the following statement:
“The Governor’s drought declaration should be the final straw for fracking in the state. To frack for oil in California is to deny the facts of climate change, which tell us we have to leave this oil in the ground if we want a safe future. To allow water-intensive fracking for oil to continue in a drought is to deny the reality of what California’s farmers and communities are facing every day, and will face with ever more frequency in a climate changed future.
Our state cannot afford to waste more water digging up oil causing the very climate changes that will lead to more droughts like these in the future. With the Governor’s drought declaration, it’s clear the time is now to stop fracking in California immediately.”
Hat tip Keith930:
Exporting the Colorado River to Asia, Through Hay
As the West suffers long-term drought, experts look for ways to save water while still supporting local farmers.
When Robert Glennon, a water policy expert at the University of Arizona and author of the book Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What to Do About It, first learned that the U.S. was exporting alfalfa crops that had been grown with the very limited western irrigation water, his reaction was "utter disbelief."
Glennon crunched some numbers and figured that in 2012, roughly 50 billion gallons of western water—enough to supply the annual household needs of half a million families—were exported to China. Not literally bottled up and shipped, but embedded in alfalfa crops grown with irrigation water. And that's just to China, which still trails Japan and the United Arab Emirates as a top destination for American alfalfa. ...
Critics argue that the water itself, available to farmers at a fraction of true market value, is a form of indirect subsidy. ...
For every two container ships that bring [imported goods] to California ports from China, one goes back empty.
As a result, "it costs less today to ship a ton of alfalfa from Long Beach to Beijing than it does to ship it from the Imperial Valley in California to the Central Valley." ... All of this leads to alfalfa and hay exports that have more than doubled since 1999 and increased by 60 percent since 2007.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
The Information Counter-Revolution
Louie Louie: the ultimate rock rebel anthem
Leahy: NSA surveillance ‘not making us safer’
The Woman Who Knows the NSA's Secrets
Death by data: how Kafka’s The Trial prefigured the nightmare of the modern surveillance state
The Road To Hell And The Forks In The Road: Where We Went Wrong
Behaving Badly
A Little Night Music
Jimmy Liggins and His Drops Of Joy - Cadillac Boogie
Jimmy Liggins - That's What's Knockin' Me Out
Jimmy Liggins - Drunk
Jimmy Liggins - Saturday Night Boogie Woogie Man
Jimmy Liggins - Brown Skin Girl, Dark Hour Blues
Jimmy Liggins - Boogie Woogie King
Jimmy Liggins & His Drops of Joy - I Can't Stop It
Jimmy Liggins & His Drops of Joy - Tear Drop Blues
Jimmy Liggins - Talking That Talk
Jimmy Liggins and His Drops of Joy - Ada From Decatur
Jimmy Liggins - Working Man Blues
Jimmy Liggins & His Drops Of Joy - Nite Life Boogie
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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