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 Chicago bluesman Howlin' Wolf. Enjoy!
Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lightning
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
-- Albert Einstein
News and Opinion
Militants seize Tikrit after taking Mosul
Islamist insurgents in Iraq have seized the city of Tikrit, their second major gain after capturing Mosul on Tuesday, security officials say.
Tikrit, the hometown of former leader Saddam Hussein, lies just 150km (95 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.
Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has vowed to fight back against the jihadists and punish those in the security forces who have deserted.
The insurgents are from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
ISIS, which is also known as ISIL, is an offshoot of al-Qaeda.
It controls considerable territory in eastern Syria and western and central Iraq, in a campaign to set up a Sunni militant enclave straddling the border.
[There's some more background on ISIS here. - js]
'Questions rise after US trained Iraqi police flee for lives in Mosul'
White House calls on Iraq government to 'step up to the plate' over Mosul
The US on Tuesday pressed for a strong response to push Islamic extremists out of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, as a sudden withdrawal of Iraqi government forces from the city led the White House to question whether prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was doing enough to hold his country together.
The White House called on the Iraqi government to “step up to the plate” and do more to address political concerns across the country after the fall of Mosul to forces from the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria (Isis) – also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) – left officials in Washington warning of an “extremely serious” threat that could impact the entire region.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the events that have transpired in Mosul over the last 48 hours where elements of the Islamic State of Iraq (Isil) have taken over significant parts of the city,” added the State Department in a statement.
“Isil continues to gain strength from the situation in Syria, from which it transfers recruits, sophisticated munitions, and resources to the fight in Iraq … Isil is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq, but a threat to the entire region.”
Obama’s Attempt at Intimidating Russia
Less than 24 hours after Ukraine’s new president Petro Poroshenko announced his determination to retake Crimea from Russia, US Admiral Cecil Haney confirmed that the US Air Force had deployed two B-2 stealth bombers to Europe to conduct military exercises. The addition of the multipurpose B-2, which is capable of delivering nuclear weapons, is intended to send a message to Moscow that the United States is prepared to provide backup for Ukraine’s fledgling government and to protect its interests in Central Asia. News of the deployment was reported in the Russian media, but was excluded by all the western news outlets. ...
The United States is ratcheting up the pressure in order to widen the conflict and force Russian president Vladimir Putin to meet their demands. It’s clear that the threat of sanctions, Poroshenko’s belligerent rhetoric, and the steady buildup of military assets and troops in the region, that Obama and Co. still think they can draw Putin into the conflict and make him look like a dangerous aggressor who can’t be trusted by his EU partners. Fortunately, Putin has not fallen into the trap. He’s resisted the temptation to send in the tanks to put an end to the violence in Donetsk, Lugansk and Slavyansk. This has undermined Washington’s plan to deploy NATO to Russia’s western border, assert control over the “bridgehead” between Europe and Asia, and stop the further economic integration between Russia and the EU. So far, Putin has out-witted his adversaries at every turn, but there are still big challenges ahead, particularly the new threats from Poroshenko.
If Poroshenko is determined to take Crimea back from Moscow, then there’s going to be a war. But there are indications that he is more pragmatic than his speeches would suggest. In a private meeting with Putin at the D-Day ceremonies in France, the Ukrainian president said he had a plan to “immediately stop the bloodshed”
If the report is accurate, then there’s reason to hope that Poroshenko is moving in Russia’s direction on most of the key issues which are; greater autonomy for the people in East Ukraine, Constitutional provisions that will protect them from future abuse by Kiev, and an immediate end to the violence. Putin has sought assurances on these issues from the very beginning of the crisis. Now it looks like he might get his way. Of course, it is impossible to know, since Poroshenko is sending mixed messages.
Russia launches Baltic drills alongside NATO Saber Strike war games
The Baltic Sea and skies are getting crowded as Russia launches military training of its assault forces in the exclave of Kaliningrad in answer to the double war-games being conducted by joint NATO forces on the territory of the three Baltic States.
NATO’s decision to conduct dual war games next to Russian borders in the Baltic has not been left unaddressed by Russia’s Defense Ministry, which prepared a surprise training of first strike forces – marines, paratroopers and long-range bombers - right in the backyard of the NATO military maneuvers. ...
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already dubbed even the rotational military build-up near the Russian borders as an act of hostility directly violating the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, Lavrov’s First Deputy Vladimir Titov told Interfax.
With the background of developments in Ukraine, the beef-up of NATO’s military presence near Russian borders, “just like during the 08.08.08 war in the North Caucasus, it rather creates additional problems instead of helping to solve them, Titov said.
'NATO war game is message to Russia'
Ukraine’s demand for gas price below $385 leads to deadlock - Putin
Russia has offered Ukraine a final gas price of $385 per 1,000 cubic meters, and if Kiev continues to ask for a lower price, rapport between the two countries will fall apart, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.
“We believe our proposals offered more than a partnership aimed to support the Ukrainian economy during its difficult period when it was in need. But if our proposals are rejected, then we move into a completely different stage, it’s not our choice,” Putin said at a meeting with government officials.
The price has now been set at $385 per thousand cubic meters, $100 less than the previous $485 price Moscow set but more than the $268.50 price Kiev demanded.
“Gazprom has offered its Ukrainian partners the exact same conditions that the government had under Viktor Yanukovich - a $100 discount on the contract price, with a final price of $385 per thousand cubic meters,” Putin said.
"Gas price for Ukraine in the $ 385 would be acceptable, and Russia can still provide discounts depending on volume," EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.
Kiev is still unsatisfied with Moscow's offer and said it will take the appeal to an arbitration court in Stockholm, Ukraine's Energy Minister Yury Prodan said.
Former Ukraine Tax Minister Organized $11B Scam
As Ukraine's tax chief tells it, the billion-dollar theft was planned at a see-through plastic table in a vault of sound-proof steel.
The table and six matching transparent chairs sit in a secret chamber on an upper story of the Tax Ministry in Kiev. It was the epicenter, he and other tax officials say, of a massive fraud suspected of squeezing 130 billion hryvnias ($11 billion) from Kiev's coffers over the past three years — an amount equal to more than half a year's tax revenue for the entire country.
Deputy Tax Minister Ihor Bilous, the country's new tax boss, says his predecessor was in on the scam, helping to organize a wide network of phantom firms in return for a cut of the cash. The criminals, he says, operated with impunity.
"They didn't care about the police, the security services. Nobody was checking," Bilous told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "That's why this cancer ... spread over the whole country."
[D]ocuments reviewed by the AP — including tax records, a list of alleged phantom companies drawn up by a Ukrainian anti-corruption group, and data from the business intelligence website Arachnys — support Bilous' description of a wide-ranging scheme, and outside experts support the claims.
Thousands of Ukrainians seek asylum in Russia
About 5000 Ukrainian citizens fleeing the civil war have applied for asylum in Russia, and many more are asking the authorities to prolong their visa-free stay, the head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service has said.
Konstantin Romodanovsky told the Russian government’s newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the number of asylum-seekers from Ukraine has grown five times compared with the same period last year.
He outlined the top priority of his agency is setting up and maintaining refugee camps. He added that the work was done together with Russian regional authorities. Romodanovsky also said that Russia was receiving little help from international humanitarian organizations despite the fact that several months ago he warned them about the nearing humanitarian disaster.
Debate: Is Human Rights Watch Too Close to U.S. Gov't to Criticize its Foreign Policy?
Yes, Nixon Scuttled the Vietnam Peace Talks
Did Richard Nixon’s campaign conspire to scuttle the Vietnam War peace talks on the eve of the 1968 election to capture him the presidency?
Absolutely, says Tom Charles Huston, the author of a comprehensive, still-secret report he prepared as a White House aide to Nixon. In one of 10 oral histories conducted by the National Archives and opened last week, Huston says “there is no question” that Nixon campaign aides sent a message to the South Vietnamese government, promising better terms if it obstructed the talks, and helped Nixon get elected.
Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell, “was directly involved,” Huston tells interviewer Timothy Naftali. And while “there is no evidence that I found” that Nixon participated, it is “inconceivable to me,” says Huston, that Mitchell “acted on his own initiative.” ...
Like many of Nixon’s actions, this particular transgression was born of paranoia. As the 1968 election approached, Nixon and his aides feared that Johnson would try to help the Democratic nominee—Vice President Hubert Humphrey—by staging an October surprise. When LBJ announced to the nation, just days before the balloting, that he was calling a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam to help fuel progress in ongoing peace talks, the Republicans thought their fears were realized.
Anna Chennault, a Republican activist with ties to the South Vietnamese government, sent word to Saigon that it would get better terms if Humphrey lost and Nixon took office, the FBI would discover. The South Vietnamese dragged their feet, infuriating LBJ who, in a taped conversation released by the Johnson presidential library several years ago, can be heard denouncing Nixon for “treason.”
Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor Defeated by Anti-NSA Challenger
David A. Brat, a professor of economics and a trenchant critic of the National Security Agency’s spying on American citizens is clobbering the pro-NSA Cantor with a little less than 60 percent of the vote so far.
Brat started out with $50,000 of his own money to launch what many viewed as a quixotic campaign against a well-funded and well-entrenched opponent. At the starting bell, Cantor had over a million and a half in his campaign war chest.
Brat is an incisive critic of the Surveillance State. On his campaign web site, he went after Cantor for voting for the NDAA and against Rep. Justin Amash’s legislation that would have reined in the NSA. As the Brat campaign put it:
"Dave believes that the Constitution does not need to be compromised for matters of national security. He supports the end of bulk phone and email data collection by the NSA, IRS, or any other branch of government."
Now watch the bipartisan Washington Establishment go into shock and try to attribute their shocking defeat to low turnout. There’s already talk it’s all about the immigration issue.
Edward Snowden's NSA leaks 'an important service', says Al Gore
Edward Snowden has secured his highest endorsement yet in the US when former vice-president Al Gore described the leaking of top secret intelligence documents as "an important service".
Asked if he regarded Snowden as a traitor or whistleblower, Gore veered away from the "traitor" label. He refused to go as far as labelling him a whistleblower but signalled he viewed him as being closer to that category than a traitor, saying: "What he revealed in the course of violating important laws included violations of the US constitution that were way more serious than the crimes he committed." ...
Gore called on the internet companies to work with the public to help draw up a "digital Magna Carta" that provides protection of freedoms. "They need to pay attention to correcting some of these gross abuses of individual privacy that are ongoing in the business sphere," he said.
New York settles with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators
New York City has agreed to pay $583,000 in compensation and legal fees to a group of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who alleged they were wrongfully arrested, in what their lawyers called the largest settlement reached with members of the protest movement.
A group of 14 protesters, who alleged in a federal lawsuit that their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly were violated by their arrests on 1 January 2012, will each receive between $5,000 and $20,000 in compensatory damages, their lawyers said on Tuesday.
The protesters were arrested in the East Village and charged with blocking pedestrian traffic after marching from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They said that they were ordered to disperse despite being penned in by police – a claim they said was supported by video footage. ...
Announcing the settlement at a press conference outside City Hall on Tuesday, David Thompson, another attorney for the group of marchers, said: “The mass arrest of non-violent protesters has no place in any democracy”.
“The NYPD pursued a policy of arresting thousands of people who had done nothing wrong,” said Thompson. “I hope that the resolution of this lawsuit will show that the NYPD policy must change. It is my hope that this case and others like it will free our streets and parks for peaceful protest.”
An ex-banker and Occupier walk into a jail. Guess which one's serving time?
A former banker visits the only member of Occupy Wall Street to receive a prison sentence: it sounds like the set-up of a joke or a parable of the modern age. Instead, it was a real scene last Thursday, when I went to see jailed OWS activist Cecily McMillan at Rikers Island. ...
Cecily has spent most of the last month focused on trying to find a way to use her story to broaden her social activism, and to refocus the attention on her sentence to help people understand that incarceration is commonplace for many communities.
I had two years to prepare for this, she explained. Most everyone else in here had no time to prepare – but a lifetime of realizing it will happen to them at some point. Jail, and negative confrontations with the police, is for many a reality.
Being jailed has forced Cecily to rethink her prior approach toward activism, Activism, and activists, she explained, need to move into the communities they are working for. We have to get out from behind our books, our hand-painted signs, and really put ourselves at risk, she insisted.
She doesn't regret being the one who did end up in jail, she told me: It was going to happen to someone in the movement, the police were going to find someone to make an example of. And it just happened to be her.
But if a jail sentence is supposed to reform those unlucky or ill-fated enough to receive one, then the people who prosecuted Cecily aren't going to get their money's worth. I am far more committed to the movement, to social work, to exposing the power structures, than I was before, she explained.
Torture in American Prisons - Class Action Law Suit Approved
US may blacklist Thailand after shrimp trade slavery revelations
The US is considering downgrading Thailand on a human trafficking blacklist, following revelations in the Guardian that slaves are being used in the production of prawns sold in leading American, British and European supermarkets.
Washington will directly address allegations of human trafficking in Thailand's trade in prawns – known in the US as shrimp – in an imminent report that could result in economic sanctions against Bangkok. The state department has confirmed it intends to review the country's response to abuses such as migrants being bought by shipowners and forced to work as slaves for years at sea without pay.
The review, expected in the middle of this month, could result in Thailand being downgraded to the lowest level in a US system that ranks 188 nations according to their willingness and efforts to combat slavery and human trafficking. A relegation to tier three could trigger economic sanctions and loss of development aid, although such punishments can be waived under certain national security considerations. ...
Although slavery is illegal everywhere in the world, including Thailand, the south-east Asian country is considered a major source, transit and destination country for slavery, where nearly half a million people are believed to be enslaved, according to the Global Slavery Index.
A tier-3 ranking would rank Thailand alongside Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia for categorically failing to comply with the most basic international requirements to prevent trafficking and protect victims.
BP allowed commercial drones by US regulators in unprecedented decision
The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday it has granted the first permission for commercial drone flights over US land to the BP energy corporation, the latest effort by the agency to show it is loosening restrictions on commercial uses of the unmanned aircraft.
Drone maker AeroVironment of California and BP energy corporation have been given permission to use a Puma drone to survey pipelines, roads and equipment at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the agency said. The first flight took place on Sunday.
The Puma is a small, hand-launched craft about 4.5ft long and with a 9ft wingspan. It was initially designed for military use.
AeroVironment chief executive Tim Conver said the Puma "is now helping BP manage its extensive Prudhoe Bay field operations in a way that enhances safety, protects the environment, improves productivity and accomplishes activities never before possible."
Last summer, the FAA had approved the Puma and the ScanEagle, made by Boeing subsidiary Insitu Inc of Washington, for flights over the Arctic Ocean to scout icebergs, count whales and monitor drilling platforms. ...
Last week, the FAA said it was considering giving permission to seven filmmaking companies to use drones for aerial photography, a potentially significant step that could lead to greater relaxation of the agency's ban on commercial use of drones. So far, the only exceptions to that ban have been limited flights that have been approved over the Arctic Ocean and now Alaska.
The Evening Greens
How El Niño will change the world's weather in 2014
The global El Niño weather phenomenon, whose impacts cause global famines, floods – and even wars – now has a 90% chance of striking this year, according to the latest forecast released to the Guardian.
El Niño begins as a giant pool of warm water swelling in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, that sets off a chain reaction of weather events around the world – some devastating and some beneficial.
India is expected to be the first to suffer, with weaker monsoon rains undermining the nation’s fragile food supply, followed by further scorching droughts in Australia and collapsing fisheries off South America. But some regions could benefit, in particular the US, where El Niño is seen as the “great wet hope” whose rains could break the searing drought in the west.
The latest El Niño prediction comes from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which is considered one the most reliable of the 15 or so prediction centres around the world. “It is very much odds-on for an event,” said Tim Stockdale, principal scientist at ECMWF, who said 90% of their scenarios now deliver an El Niño. "The amount of warm water in the Pacific is now significant, perhaps the biggest since the 1997-98 event.” That El Niño was the biggest in a century, producing the hottest year on record at the time and major global impacts, including a mass die-off of corals.
“But what is very much unknowable at this stage is whether this year’s El Niño will be a small event, a moderate event – that’s most likely – or a really major event,” said Stockdale, adding the picture will become clearer in the next month or two. “It is which way the winds blow that determines what happens next and there is always a random element to the winds.”
The Truth and Consequences of Climate Change Denial
Supreme Court upholds North Carolina limits on pollution lawsuits
The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a blow to North Carolina families trying to sue over groundwater contamination at a big Marine Corps base.
In a technical decision with real-world consequences, the court upheld North Carolina's limits on how long people have to bring certain pollution-related lawsuits. By upholding the state’s 10-year limit, called a statute of repose, the court undercut lawsuits centering on Camp Lejeune. ...
The North Carolina law starts a 10-year clock running from the last culpable act of the defendant; for instance, from when a company stops polluting or sells its property. After the clock runs out, lawsuits are banned.
The 10-year statute of repose is a stricter standard, and potentially friendlier to polluters, than a federal law that starts a two-year clock running only after people discover they have been harmed.
But though it was not close, the court’s 7-2 majority decision also drew a sharp retort from dissenting justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
“Instead of encouraging prompt identification and remediation before it can kill, the court’s decision gives contaminators an incentive to conceal the hazards they have created until the repose period has run its full course,” Ginsburg wrote.
Arctic Sea Ice Loss Prompts Biggest Change to Maps 'Since Breakup of USSR'
Cartographers working on the latest edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World say that Arctic sea ice loss is the greatest visible change compared with previous editions of the map outside of the "breakup of the U.S.S.R."
According to National Geographic, in the 10th edition of the Atlas, which will be released on September 30, the depiction of multiyear ice—or ice that has survived for at least two summers—is now a significantly smaller area than on previous maps.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Why It Shouldn't Be Criminal to Report Government Secrets
AMA endorses changing birth certificate gender without surgery
Iraq: the crazy relative in the attic no one talks about
A Little Night Music
Rolling Stones and Howlin Wolf - How Many More Years
Howlin' Wolf - Evil
Howlin' Wolf - Shake For Me
Howlin Wolf - Highway 49
Howlin' Wolf - Meet Me In The Bottom
Howlin Wolf - Back Door Man
Howlin' Wolf - Dust My Broom
Howlin' Wolf - Sittin' On Top Of The World
The Howlin' Wolf - Moanin' At Midnight
Howlin' Wolf - Forty Four
Howlin' Wolf - If you hear me howlin'
Howlin' Wolf - Tail Dragger
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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