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 jazz and blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon. Enjoy!
Jimmy Witherspoon & Richard ''Groove'' Holmes - Goin' to Chicago
“The only problem with politicians taking two week vacations every year is it’s about 50 weeks too short.
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-- Jarod Kintz
News and Opinion
Facing National Outcry, Ferguson Police Drop Military-Grade Gear as Protests Continue over Shooting
Ferguson police release name of officer who shot Michael Brown
The police officer who shot and killed an unarmed teenager in the Missouri city of Ferguson, sparking days of protests and violent clashes, was named on Friday. But police also released security camera footage and an incident report that implicated the victim, 18-year-old Michael Brown, in an earlier robbery at a convenience store, infuriating his family and prompting concerns of new tensions in the area.
The Browns’ attorney said they were “beyond outraged” by the revelation, which came unaccompanied by any further details of the shooting. The family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump, described the report as a “brutal assassination” of Brown’s character.
In a further development, police later disclosed that the officer who shot Brown was not even aware of the robbery, which had taken place a few minutes earlier. Ferguson’s local police chief, Thomas Jackson, was pressured to explain why the information about the robbery had been released at the same time. Crump accused police of playing a game of “smoke and mirrors”.
Jackson identified the officer who shot Brown as Darren Wilson, a six-year veteran of the city police department. He said that Wilson had a clean disciplinary record before the shooting on Saturday.
The disclosure brought an end to wide-ranging speculation and rumour that residents said was stoking disgruntlement. Several names had previously been published online and circulated locally, forcing police to issue denials.
Cops or Soldiers? Pentagon, DHS Helped Arm Police in Ferguson with Equipment Used in War
Rand Paul: Demilitarize Police
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is calling for demilitarization of America’s local police forces in the wake of the heavily armed response to the protests in Ferguson, Mo. ...
“Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.” ...
“Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them...Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention,” Paul wrote.
Eric Garner protest march moved amid new calls for independent investigation
A New York City group protesting about the death of Eric Garner, who died after a New York police officer put him in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes, dropped plans for a march across the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which connects Staten Island with Brooklyn, something local politicians had said would cause traffic havoc.
The announcement of the change to the protest on Saturday 23 August comes among growing calls for an independent investigation into Garner’s death, which a medical examiner ruled a homicide after an autopsy. A video of the encounter that led to the death of Garner recorded by a bystander shows Garner, who had asthma, gasping, “I can’t breathe.” Chokeholds are banned by NYPD policy.
... Now, instead of crossing the bridge, NAN will gather in Staten Island on Saturday and march to the 120th police precinct.
The alteration to the march plan was made public one day after six members of New York’s congressional delegation called on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Garner’s death.
“Eric Garner is dead. The person who videotaped the incident was arrested. And the officer who killed Mr Garner in broad daylight remains free and on the NYPD’s payroll. There’s something wrong with that picture,” said Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn in the US House of Representatives. “Instead of focusing on broken windows, we should focus on the broken portrait of justice in New York City.”
Palestinians accuse Israel of violating Gaza truce
The Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza accused Israel on Friday of a cross-border shooting in violation of a truce that has largely held since getting off to a shaky start on Thursday.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We have no knowledge of such an incident."
The Palestinian ministry in the coastal territory dominated by Hamas Islamists said Israeli troops shot at houses east of the town of Khan Younis.
The ceasefire, renewed on Thursday for five days after a previous truce expired, has largely halted more than a month of fighting in which 1,945 Palestinians, many of them civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel were killed.
The truce got off to a rocky start with Israel launching an air raid early on Thursday in response to rocket fire from Gaza in violation of the earlier truce.
There were no reported casualties in any of these incidents.
Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian vehicles that crossed border
Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian military vehicles in the country's east, a day after a column was spotted moving across the border.
Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron in a phone call that his country's armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that the Guardian saw moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.
There was no immediate proof, and it was impossible to establish whether the Ukrainians had targeted the same convoy observed by the Guardian. The Russians categorically denied that any of their troops were even in Ukraine. But the claim marks a new escalation in the six-month confrontation over Ukraine and if verified would amount to the first confirmed military engagement between the two adversaries since the crisis blew up in the spring. ...
On Friday the Guardian again travelled to the site of the crossing to look at the area in daylight. A fence which demarcates the border and runs along the outer suburbs of the Russian border town of Donetsk is permeated by informal crossings and dirt tracks. Around the area where the Guardian saw the convoy the day before, a truck with Russian military plates was parked on the Russian side. It was not possible to linger as the area is a restricted zone, but military vehicles with no plates were seen coming from the direction of Ukraine, and a car carrying three men in fatigues sped in the direction of Ukraine. Several military-style vehicles with no licence plates were visible inside the Russian town of Donetsk.
Retired army general Jay Garner: 'The Iraq that we knew no longer exists'
The retired US army general who served as Washington’s first occupation chief in Iraq said the country has functionally ceased to exist and urged the Obama administration to decisively support and arm the forces of Iraqi Kurdistan as a fallback.
“The Iraq that we knew no longer exists,” Jay Garner told the Guardian.
Garner is a longtime supporter of Iraqi Kurds, whose relationship with Baghdad is forever marked by Saddam Hussein’s 1987-8 Anfal genocide. In 1991, Garner led US humanitarian operations in Kurdistan following the first Gulf war, when the national survival of the beleaguered minority was precarious.
Last Friday, Garner returned from his latest trip to Irbil, the capital of pro-US Iraqi Kurdistan, where he saw the autonomous region again hanging in the balance. Later that day, Navy F/A-18 fighter jets launched the first of the new US air strikes against Isis positions near the city, but what Garner saw was the tense conditions of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians fleeing the Islamic State (Isis) – a significant number of refugees placed upon Kurdistan’s population of about five million.
Pentagon Hands Lucrative Guantanamo Bay Deal to Notorious Private Security Company
A British private security company that has been accused of numerous human rights violations has been handed a $118 million deal by the Pentagon to provide "operating support services" for the Guantanamo Bay naval base that houses the U.S. military's notorious prison.
The Department of Defense announced earlier this week that G4S has been granted the contract to provide services that include "family housing, facility management, facility investment, other (swimming pools), custodial, pest control, integrated solid waste management, grounds maintenance and landscaping, base support vehicles and equipment, electrical, wastewater, water, and limited facilities support functions." The statement did not mention any duties relating to the Guantanamo Bay prison, which currently holds 149 men without charge or trial.
But Kat Craig, legal director for UK-based legal charity Reprieve, told the Independent that "G4S must make clear exactly what the nature of its work at Guantanamo is."
"Any company which associates itself with the legal black hole which is Guantanamo Bay has serious questions to answer," she added. "Guantanamo has been the site of detention without trial and brutal mistreatment for over a decade—even now, Reprieve's clients are being subjected to torturous force-feedings in response to their peaceful protests."
British authorities are currently investigating G4S for fraud, following evidence that the company over-charged for the electronic monitoring of incarcerated people, including alleged prisoners who were actually dead.
German security recorded Clinton conversation: media
German security agents recorded a conversation involving Hillary Clinton while she was U.S. Secretary of State, media reported on Friday, a potential embarrassment for Berlin which has lambasted Washington for its widespread surveillance.
Clinton's words were intercepted while she was on a U.S. government plane, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and German regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR said, without giving details of where she was or when the recording was made.
The respected broadsheet quoted German government sources saying the conversation had been picked up "by accident" and was not part of any plan to spy on Washington's top diplomat. The fact the recording had not been destroyed immediately was "idiocy", said one of the sources.
Both Germany's government and a spokeswoman for the National Security Council at the White House declined to comment on the reports on Friday.
So today's news is a little short because I went off to Longwood Gardens for a ramble around. I figured that you guys wouldn't mind. B)
The Evening Greens
Fracking Operators Illegally Injecting Diesel Fuel, Study Finds
Fracking companies have continued to illegally inject diesel fuel into the ground over the last four years, despite repeated denials by the drilling industry, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) released Wednesday.
EIP’s report, “Fracking Beyond the Law,” uses self-reported data from drilling companies and federal records to document at least 33 companies fracking at least 351 wells across 12 states with fluids containing diesel from 2010 through early August 2014. Diesel fuels were used to frack wells in Texas, Colorado, North Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Montana without required Safe Drinking Water Act permits.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reconfirmed as recently as February of this year that drilling operators are prohibited from from injecting diesel fuels into oil and gas wells unless authorized by such a permit. In fact, the controversial Energy Policy Act of 2005 — also known as the "Halliburton Loophole" because it was championed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of Halliburton— exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act except when diesel fuel is used.
"We thought this problem was a thing of the past," EIP senior attorney Mary Greene said in a teleconference. "That's what we've been told by industry for the last decade."
Oil companies fracking into drinking water sources, new research shows
Energy companies are fracking for oil and gas at far shallower depths than widely believed, sometimes through underground sources of drinking water, according to research released Tuesday by Stanford University scientists.
Though researchers cautioned their study of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, employed at two Wyoming geological formations showed no direct evidence of water-supply contamination, their work is certain to roil the public health debate over the risks of the controversial oil and gas production process. ...
Fracking into underground drinking water sources is not prohibited by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted the practice from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But the industry has long held that it does not hydraulically fracture into underground sources of drinking water because oil and gas deposits sit far deeper than aquifers.
The study, however, found that energy companies used acid stimulation, a production method, and hydraulic fracturing in the Wind River and Fort Union geological formations that make up the Pavillion gas field and that contain both natural gas and sources of drinking water.
Nebraska court ruling on Keystone XL pipeline not expected until 2015
The Nebraska Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a dispute over the planned route for the Keystone XL pipeline but a court ruling on the controversial project is likely to be delayed until the new year, lawyers and activists say.
The court has scheduled oral arguments for Sept. 5 in Lincoln over the proposed path of the 1,200-mile (1,900-km) pipeline from Canada to Texas.
Although it will be a talking point in several Congressional races, Keystone's fate is likely to remain in limbo during the Nov. 5 U.S. mid-term elections. ...
The Nebraska ruling will address a dispute that has involved the state's politicians, ranchers and regulators. State lawmakers last year cleared the way for the pipeline but a group of landowners challenged the decision.
In February, a district court sided with landowners who want the siting decision left to the five-member Nebraska Public Service Commission. Governor Dave Heineman asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to overrule.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
TERF Wars
Week Before Ezell Ford's Murder, Cops From Same LAPD Div. Had Beaten Man to Death in Front of Home
Militarizing the Police: What happens when you hype Fear
A Little Night Music
Jimmy Witherspoon - In The Evening
Jimmy Witherspoon & Don Weller - Money's Getting Cheaper
Jimmy Witherspoon - It's a Low-down Dirty Shame
Jimmy Witherspoon - Blues in the morning
Jimmy Witherspoon & T-Bone Walker - I've been treated wrong
Jimmy Witherspoon - Good Jumping
Jimmy Witherspoon - Love Me Right
Eric Burdon & Jimmy Witherspoon - Steam Roller
Jimmy Witherspoon - Fast Women And Sloe Gin
Jay McShann & His Sextette with Jimmy Witherspoon - Strange Woman Blues
Jimmy Witherspoon & Groove Holmes - Take this hammer
Jimmy Witherspoon - One Fine Gal
Jimmy Witherspoon & Robben Ford - Walkin' By Myself
Jimmy Witherspoon - Drunk, Broke and Hungry
Jimmy Witherspoon - Drinkin' Beer
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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