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 delta bluesman Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes. Enjoy!
Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes - Heart Broken Man
"It's time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning. When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won't work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values.”
-- Barack Obama, 2007
News and Opinion
Doctor Calls Guantanamo Force-Feeding Video ‘Disturbing’
Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s court case is being carefully watched because U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled on Friday that videos of Dhiab’s force-feeding – which involves the repeated insertion and removal of a rubber tube up his nose – should be publicly released. ...
In a short closed session, Sondra Crosby, a Boston University medical professor who examined Dhiab on behalf of his legal team, was shown a few minutes of footage and asked her medical opinion.
Afterwards, all she would say was that the footage was “disturbing.”
In her open-court testimony, Crosby said Dhiab complained of pain and bleeding associated with the insertion of the nasal tubes, and said he had been forcibly extracted from his cell – an aggressive practice that involves physical force and restraints – about 1,300 times since arriving at Guantanamo in 2002. ...
Lawyers displayed medical records that appeared to show decisions such as depriving Dhiab of a wheelchair, his socks and underwear, being made for disciplinary reasons.
“That’s completely inappropriate and cruel, to take a wheelchair away from someone who is not able to walk,” Crosby said. “It looks like medical care is being withheld as part of disciplinary status and that should never happen.”
Judge orders US govt to release video of force-feeding procedure
Guantanamo's Controversial Force-Feeding Policies Go on Trial
Jon Eisenberg, an attorney on Dhiab's legal team, said the blacked-out portions of the hunger strike standard operating procedure [obtained by VICE News last March in response to a FOIA lawsuit] concealed information pertaining to the quantity and speed of force-feeding. This information, he said, was crucial, because it would show that the new procedures are "a form torture colloquially known as 'the water cure.'"
"The water cure dates back to the Spanish Inquisition and was used by the Imperial Japanese Army against US and allied prisoners of war during World War II," Eisenberg wrote in an op-ed published in the Hill. "At Guantanamo Bay, military doctors and nurses have medicalized the water cure. They are now using excessively thick nasogastric feeding tubes to force as much as two-thirds of a gallon of fluid into hunger-striking detainees in as little as 20 minutes, twice each day, while they are tightly strapped to a specially made restraint chair." ...
In a statement issued through his attorneys at the international legal organization Reprieve, Dhiab said he wants the videotapes of his force-feeding to be released publicly.
"I want Americans to see what is going on at the prison today, so they will understand why we are hunger-striking, and why the prison should be closed," he said. "If the American people stand for freedom, they should watch these tapes. If they truly believe in human rights, they need to see these tapes."
Panetta describes the new neoliberal plan, a 30-year war where the United States goes after the countries that it missed in the first round of full spectrum dominance:
Panetta Predicts ’30-Year War’ Against ISIS
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was harshly critical of President Obama’s handling of the new ISIS war, saying the US could have sustained the 2011 Iraq occupation and started arming Syrian rebels even sooner than they did.
But perhaps the most eye-opening comment in has new book tour was that he believes the conflict is a “30-year war” that will extend across the world, including campaigns in Nigeria, Somalia, and Libya, among other places. ...
He went on to argue that the 30-year world war he envisions is a chance to “repair the damage” caused by not launching massive wars in the previous few years, calling the lack of wars “missed opportunities.”
Air strikes hit Isis positions as jihadists push into Kobani
The US-led coalition has launched several air strikes over the past two weeks near Kobani in a bid to help Kurdish forces defend the town, but the sorties appear to have done little to slow Isis, which captured several nearby villages in a rapid advance that began in mid-September.
Hours after two Isis flags were raised on the outskirts of Kobani on Monday, the militants punctured the Kurdish front lines and advanced into the town itself, said the local co-ordination committees activist collective.
“They’re fighting inside the city. Hundreds of civilians have left,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director, Rami Abdurrahman. “Islamic State controls three neighbourhoods on the eastern side of Kobani. They are trying to enter the town from the south-west as well.”
The centre of the town was still in Kurdish hands, Abdurrahman said. The two Isis flags were still flying in the east of the city on Tuesday, with a Kurdish flag flying in the centre. ...
Capturing Kobani would give Isis a direct link between its positions in the Syrian province of Aleppo and its stronghold of Raqqa to the east. It would crush a lingering pocket of resistance and give the group full control of a large stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkish President Says Key Border Town Is “About To Fall” To ISIS
Speaking in a televised speech in the eastern city of Gaziantep, Erdogan said, “The terror will not be over … unless we cooperate for a ground operation. Months have passed but no results have been achieved. Kobane is about to fall.”
An estimated 400 people have died in the three weeks of fighting in the town, according to monitoring organization the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Around 160,000 people, mainly Syrian Kurds, have fled the area.
ISIS flags have been spotted flying over a large building and on top of a hill in the town.
Fall of Kobani Reveals Failure of U.S. Bombing Campaign
Kobane: Islamic State widens attack on border town
At least 400 people have died in three weeks of fighting for Kobane, monitors say, and 160,000 Syrians have fled.
If IS captures Kobane, its jihadists will control a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.
In the latest clashes, the UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said IS had crossed into a southern district of Kobane, taking over many buildings. ...
Turkey, a regional superpower with significant troops and armour in the area, seems extremely reluctant to intervene despite a government pledge to do whatever it takes to prevent the Kurdish town of Kobane from falling.
It wants the US-led coalition to agree on a number of things first, including setting up a no-fly zone and a buffer zone in northern Syria and, crucially, a renewed focus on getting rid of President Assad - which remains Turkey's principal objective.
Reports: US Attacked Iraqi Market, Killing 22 Civilians
According to multiple reports coming out of Iraq today, US warplanes attacked the town of Hit in Anbar Province, a town recently taken over by ISIS. But the airstrikes hit a crowded marketplace and nearby apartment buildings, killing 22 civilians and wounding 43 others.
The target appears to have been an error, with reports that an ISIS meeting was going on in a building just down the street from the one attacked. It is the first major civilian death toll in Iraq from US strikes in the new war.
'Boots in the Air': US Combat Helicopters Join Fight over Iraq
Hopes that the strategy announced by President Barack Obama a month ago against the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) might yield a relatively quick victory have disappeared amidst growing fears that the U.S.-led air campaign has at most only slowed the radical group’s advance. ...
In a significant escalation of Washington’s direct involvement in the fighting, the U.S. Central Command (CentCom) announced Sunday that it had sent attack helicopters into battle against ISIL positions just west of Baghdad.
“It’s definitely boots in the air,” Jeffrey White, a veteran military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), told McClatchy Newspapers.
“Using helicopter gunships in combat operations means those forces are in combat,” he noted, adding that the resort to slower-moving and low-flying aircraft posed a much greater threat of U.S. casualties and an implicit recognition that air strikes so far had failed to stop ISIL forces from launching offensive operations.
ISIL forces also appear to have taken control of Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad suburb made infamous by abuses committed at a prison there by U.S. troops against Iraqi detainees during Washington’s occupation.
More than one commentator has noted that Baghdad’s International Airport, which hosts a U.S. command centre and aircraft, including helicopter gunships, is now within range of artillery and rockets – considerable quantities of which ISIL captured from military bases abandoned by Iraqi forces earlier this summer — fired from the town.
James Risen on Why Journalists Must 'Fight Back'
Accepting award for journalistic courage, Risen declares, "If you’d rather live in a society in which you don’t know anything, then that’s the alternative."
Accepting Colby College's Elijah Parish Lovejoy award for courageous journalism on Sunday, New York Times investigative reporter James Risen had a message for other writers:
"Journalists have no choice but to fight back because if they don’t, they will become irrelevant." ...
Speaking at an award ceremony at Lorimer Chapel at Colby College, Risen stated, "I would go to jail to protect the confidentiality of sources," local media reports. "Today, the U.S. government treats whistle-blowers as criminals, much like Elijah Lovejoy," he declared.
[Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an alum of Colby College, was a minister, journalist, newspaper publisher and an abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Ill., in 1837 for condemning slavery and defending his publication. - js]
"I don’t think any of this would be happening under the Obama administration if Obama didn’t want to do it," Risen said. "I think Obama hates the press. I think he doesn’t like the press and he hates leaks."
Risen said the only reason the public is aware of a host of government abuses, including secret prisons, is because whistle-blowers and courageous journalists have exposed them. "If you’d rather live in a society in which you don’t know anything, then that’s the alternative," he said.
National Crime Agency director general: UK snooping powers are too weak
Britons must accept a greater loss of digital freedoms in return for greater safety from serious criminals and terrorists in the internet age, according to the country’s top law enforcement officer.
Keith Bristow, director general of the National Crime Agency, said in an interview with the Guardian that it would be necessary to win public consent for new powers to monitor data about emails and phone calls.
Warning that the biggest threats to public safety are migrating to the internet and that crime fighters are scrambling to keep up, the NCA boss said he accepted he had not done a good enough job explaining to the public why the greater powers were necessary.
“What we have needs to be modernised … we are losing capability and coverage of serious criminals.”
But the boss of the organisation known informally as Britain’s FBI warned that support must be gained from the public for any new powers that would give the state greater access to communications data, dubbed the “snoopers’ charter” by critics.
He said: “If we seek to operate outside of what the public consent to, that, for me, by definition, is not policing by consent … the consent is expressed through legislation.”
He added that it was necessary to win “the public consent to losing some freedoms in return for greater safety and security.”
New York Quickly Nixes Cellphone Tracking Devices in Phone Booths
New York City quickly announced it would get rid of devices that could turn phone booths into cellphone trackers after the program was revealed this morning.
A Buzzfeed investigation published today found that the city allowed 500 radio transmitters, called “beacons,” to be installed in pay phone booths, apparently thickly concentrated in lower and mid-Manhattan. A few hours later, the Mayor’s office said they would have them removed.
Though they could be woven into a location-aware advertising network, the beacons are there for maintenance notifications only and are not yet being used for commercial purposes, according to Titan, the firm that runs the advertising displays for thousands of city phone booths. There was no public announcement when the devices were installed.
Titan uses beacons made by a company called Gimbal, which connect with phones and have the ability to send notifications – for instance, a store might use them to alert customers to discounts – and to collect data. ...
If you do connect to its Bluetooth beacons, Gimbal is supposed to anonymize your information before sending it to customers — no name or email address — but it can still see when and where you passed a beacon. In some cases, Buzzfeed reported, Gimbal can “collect data about the websites you visit, the apps on your phone, and the ‘frequency and duration of app usage,’” and develop profiles of users, guessing at your age, gender, ethnicity, income, interests, and where you spend your time.
Financial Ebola
Police allege Occupy activist Cecily McMillan threatened officer's family
An Occupy Wall Street activist threatened to kill the family of a police officer after being arrested for interfering with the arrest of a couple accused of fare-dodging on the New York subway, it was alleged on Monday.
Cecily McMillan, who was jailed earlier this year after being convicted of assaulting a police officer, returned to Manhattan criminal court charged with obstructing governmental administration during an incident in Union Square station last December.
Officer Luis Castillo told a pretrial hearing on Monday morning that he heard McMillan, 26, accuse his partner, officer Brian Rothermel, of being a “male chauvinist pig” in the cells area of their transit police precinct inside the subway station.
“And he probably doesn’t have any kids or a wife,” Castillo recalled McMillan going on to say, “but if he did, she’ll kill them.”
McMillan denies the misdemeanour charge, which carries a potential prison sentence of a year. She previously told the Guardian that she did not make the alleged remarks to Rothermel. In a statement, a spokesman for McMillan’s support network said that McMillan was “arrested for attempting to document by video the arrests” and had been attempting to defend the couple against police harassment and abuse.
High cost of college education reinforces racial inequality in America
The dropout rate for black students is now at 8%, a record low. At the same time, the number of black 18-to-24-year-olds who have a high school diploma or an equivalent has increased to 82%, according to Pew Research Center.
A high school degree, however, will only get you so far.
Higher education has long been viewed as the way out of poverty. Unfortunately, it comes at a cost: student loan debt. For black students this cost is often greater than for their white classmates. This burden often follows them for decades after school, reinforcing income and racial inequalities that are so prominent in the US.
A Gallup poll released in September found that in the last 14 years about half of black college students graduated with student debt over $25,000 – whereas only 35% of white students did. During that same time, the number of black Americans enrolled in college had increased by 74%. In 2012, the total number of black college students was 2.96 million, up from 1.7 million in 2000. Black students make up 15% of US college students.
Often, the only way for these students to afford the college education that eludes many of their friends and classmates is by taking on loans. Four out of five black students take out loans to go to college.
Seattle to mark Indigenous Peoples' Day at same time as Columbus Day
The Seattle City Council has voted to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same day as the federally recognized holiday, Columbus Day.
The resolution that passed unanimously Monday honors the contributions and culture of Native Americans and the indigenous community in Seattle. Indigenous Peoples’ Day will be celebrated on the second Monday in October.
Tribal members and other supporters say the move recognizes the rich history of people who have inhabited the area for centuries.
“This action will allow us to bring into current present day our valuable and rich history, and it’s there for future generations to learn,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula. She is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
“Nobody discovered Seattle, Washington,” she said to a round of applause.
The Evening Greens
Cuomo administration edited and delayed key fracking study
ALBANY—A federal water study commissioned by the Cuomo administration as it weighed a key decision on fracking was edited and delayed by state officials before it was published, a Capital review has found.
The study, originally commissioned by the state in 2011, when the administration was reportedly considering approving fracking on a limited basis, was going to result in a number of politically inconvenient conclusions for Governor Andrew Cuomo, according to an early draft of the report by the U.S. Geological Survey obtained by Capital through a Freedom of Information Act request.
A comparison of the original draft of the study on naturally occurring methane in water wells across the gas-rich Southern Tier with the final version of the report, which came out after extensive communications between the federal agency and Cuomo administration officials, reveals that some of the authors' original descriptions of environmental and health risks associated with fracking were played down or removed.
The final version of the report also excised a reference to risks associated with gas pipelines and underground storage—a reference which could have complicated the Cuomo administration's potential support for a number of other controversial energy projects, including a proposed gas storage facility in the Finger Lakes region that local wine makers say could destroy their burgeoning industry.
Email communications over a period of several months between Cuomo administration officials and federal researchers were obtained by Capital, in heavily redacted form, through a Freedom of Information Act request. The messages reveal an active role by Cuomo's Department of Environmental Conservation in shaping the text, and determining the timing of the report's release. The emails also show that the department then tracked people who read the study online, grouping them by institutions with which they were affiliated.
Naomi Klein Live - This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate
Tar Sands Victory Threatens to Flood Europe with World's Dirtiest Fuel
The European Commission on Tuesday unveiled proposed legislation to toss out a requirement to label tar sands oil as dirtier than other fossil fuels—a move that is likely to bolster Canada's bitumen industry as it jockeys to break into European markets.
Five years ago the Commission agreed to a piece of climate legislation called the 'Fuel Quality Directive,' which was to be implemented in 2010 with the aim of cutting transport fuel emissions by 6 percent by the year 2020. The Commission previously proposed under this directive to require that that tar sands be reported as a greater carbon emitter than conventional crude, which could have led to a penalty on bitumen, most of which comes from Canada.
However, following years of heavy industry pressure and government stalling, the plan still has not gone into effect.
According to a report released this summer by Friends of the Earth Europe, Canada and the United States have aggressively lobbied to weaken the proposal by using negotiations over a "free trade" deal with Europe—the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—to press for a loosening of protections against tar sands.
The proposed legislation unveiled Tuesday suggests this lobbying was successful. Under the submitted rules, corporations sending raw fuel to European refiners would not have to single out tar sands as more polluting, but rather, would be allowed to report on the "average default value" of all raw fossil fuels when meeting their 6 percent emissions cuts. Critics charge that the new methodology, which was first revealed to the press in June, undermines efforts to disincentivize tar sands imports into Europe.
Rate of Ocean Warming Vastly Underestimated: Study
The ocean is getting warmer at a rate that far outpaces previous estimates, a new study published Sunday has discovered.
Since 1970, the top 700 meters (roughly 2,296 feet) of the ocean have been heating up 24 to 55 percent faster than scientists have been estimating, the report, published in Nature Climate Change, found—a massive miscalculation that was caused by “poor sampling of the Southern Hemisphere, and limitations of the analysis methods.”
“It's likely that due to the poor observational coverage, we just haven't been able to say definitively what the long-term rate of Southern Hemisphere ocean warming has been,” the study’s lead author, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) oceanographer Dr. Paul Durack, told the BBC. “It's a really pressing problem—we're trying as hard as we can, as scientists, to provide the best information from the limited observations we have.”
Ocean heat storage accounts for more than 90 percent of the Earth's excess heat caused by climate change, LLNL said. Rising temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere are a result of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, as the oceans heat up, the world's two largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting at the fastest rates ever recorded—enough to change the planet's gravitational pull.
Summer's over but heatwave pushes southern California towards meltdown
The San Fernando valley hit 104F (40C) on Saturday, making Pasadena’s 102F seem merciful, and Torrance’s 96F positively cool. Most Angelenos hunkered indoors, close to a fan or air-conditioning, or splashed in the sea, swimming pools and fountains. ...
A high-pressure system over the western US, along with Santa Ana winds, which blow across deserts before hitting southern California, generated the heat.
Combined with three years of drought, which has turned many farms to dust, wilderness areas are a tinderbox. The US Forest Service and LA County fire department have bolstered firefighting crews and sent extra equipment to strategic locations.
“We’ve got wind, heat, the perfect combination, everything in alignment for a potential brushfire,” fire captain Rich Moody warned last week as he patrolled a southern California hillside.
A recent report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which investigated 16 extreme weather events in 2013, found that human-caused climate change played a role in heatwaves.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Marriage Equality End Game
Inside the Terrordome: ISIS and America’s Soundtrack of Hysteria
When the Government’s Secrecy Arguments Are Not Blindly Accepted by Judges
Transgender, mental instability and suicidal ideation
If you haven't already, check out this excellent series of diaries by bobswern:
Marcy Wheeler Explains Why Yves Smith’s Posts On Fmr AIG CEO’s Lawsuit Are Must-Reads
"AIG Bailout Trial Bombshell I: Paulson Rejected Chinese Offer..." by Yves Smith
"AIG Bailout Trial Bombshell II: Fed and Treasury Cornered AIG’s Board..." by Yves Smith
A Little Night Music
Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes & The Playboys How Long This Must Go On
Roosevelt Booba Barnes - Love Like I Wanna
Roosevelt Booba Barnes - I'm going back home" & "Bluebird
Roosevelt Barnes - Ain't Goin' To Worry, About Tomorrow
Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Blind Man + I pity the fool
Roosevelt Booba Barnes - Rocking Daddy
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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