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 blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. Enjoy!
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Superstition
"You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
News and Opinion
Excellent analysis by Patrick Cockburn, it's worth a full read:
War Against Isis: US Strategy in Tatters as Militants March on
The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.
Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. .. In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”
Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. ... The US’s failure to save Kobani, if it falls, will be a political as well as military disaster. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the loss of the beleaguered town are even more significant than the inability so far of air strikes to stop Isis taking 40 per cent of it. At the start of the bombing in Syria, President Obama boasted of putting together a coalition of Sunni powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to oppose Isis, but these all have different agendas to the US in which destroying IS is not the first priority.
Sanders: Real Fear Not ISIS, But 'Perpetual Warfare Year After Year After Year'
As U.S. officials repeated their message that the American public should prepare for "a long-term" war against the Islamic State militant group (also known as ISIS) in the Midde East, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday was among those calling out the Obama administration for pursuing a failed and misguided policy towards the group and the region overall.
"The question we have got to ask," said Sanders on CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley, "Is why are the countries in the region not more actively involved? Why don't they send see this as a crisis situation? Here's the danger [...] if the Middle East people see this as the United States vs. ISIS, the West vs. East, Christianity vs. Islam—we're going to lose that war."
Sanders acknowledged that ISIS is a serious regional threat, but said that his larger worries come from what he hears from constituents in his home state of Vermont and around the country, that "people are saying, 'Yeah, we're concerned about ISIS, but we're also concerned about the collapse of the American middle-class and our infrastructure which is falling apart and the need to create jobs.'"
The military brass continue to tell us that Obama's statements about not putting boots on the ground are improbable at best.
Joint Chiefs Chairman: Ground Role for Troops in Iraq Likely
Though the civilian leadership in the Obama Administration is continuing to insist that they’ve ruled out a ground war in Iraq, top Pentagon brass continue to indicate the exact opposite.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey today said his “instinct at this point” is that the war will eventually require the “advisers,” US ground troops sent to Iraq, will have to engage in ground combat, particularly in the push to retake the major city of Mosul.
Turkey Allows US to Strike Islamic State From Its Bases
Turkey will allow American and coalition forces to launch missions against Islamic State (IS) jihadists from its bases, US officials said on Sunday.
Washington has been pushing Turkey to play a more active role in the broad anti-IS coalition it assembled in Paris last month with little success. However, officials told the Associated Press that Ankara had agreed to allow coalition aircraft to operate from its bases, including Incirlik, around 100 miles from the Syrian border. ...
President Erdogan has said that Kobane would not be allowed to fall. However, proposed solutions, like a buffer zone on its border, are unlikely to be agreed upon by the US and other allies and are perceived by some observers as being proposed on that basis only. A buffer zone would require a large commitment of ground forces and would almost certainly result in politically unpopular deaths of Turkish troops. The US has not asked "the Turks to send ground forces of their own into Syria," President Barack Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice told NBC.
Kurdish officials have called for Turkey to allow supplies and weapons into the town. However it has been reluctant to do so, possibly because the People's Protection Units (YPG) defending the city have links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group that fought for more than 30 years for greater autonomy within Turkey and is considered by authorities to be a terrorist organization.
I guess the Obama administration's statement that it had an agreement with Turkey to use their airbases was an aspirational statement...
Turkey denies new deal reached to open air bases to US in fight against Isis
Turkey has not reached a new agreement to let the US use its Incirlik airbase in the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants, and talks are continuing on the subject, the prime minister’s office has said, in comments that run contrary to a statement made by US national security adviser Susan Rice on Sunday.
The prime minister’s office said an agreement had been reached to train moderate Syrian rebels on Turkish soil, but that it was not yet clear “where [and] in what way” that would happen.
On Sunday, the US said Turkey had agreed to let US and coalition forces use its military bases, including the key Incirlik airbase close to the southern city of Adana, 100 miles from the Syrian border.
US and Iran are Indirectly Coordinating Efforts Against IS
UNC legal team, rights advocates take up cause of tortured ex-prisoner
North Carolina human rights advocates and a legal team from the University of North Carolina School of Law are pressing for an apology on behalf of a man who was tortured in Pakistani and Moroccan prisons over nine years, and, according to documents, secretly transported by the CIA on a North Carolina-based plane.
“I would like recognition of the injustice I went through,” Abou Elkassim Britel, an Italian of Moroccan descent who lives in Italy, said in an email Friday to McClatchy, written with his wife, Anna. “My honor and my dignity have been violated. I was deprived of family and freedom, or a future and career. I returned home after a 10-year exile with my health and mental state ruined, with no work and with much suffering.”
Britel said he wanted the apology as a public recognition of his wrongful suffering and to press the United States and other governments involved “to put an end to abuse and torture.”
Britel is one of more than 135 people who, the group Stop Torture Now says, survived extraordinary rendition, the CIA’s secret and controversial transport program to other countries, where they were imprisoned and tortured.
Investigation Into Missing Iraqi Cash Ended in Lebanon Bunker
Not long after American forces defeated the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein in 2003, caravans of trucks began to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on a regular basis, unloading an unusual cargo — pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills. The cash, withdrawn from Iraqi government accounts held in the United States, was loaded onto Air Force C-17 transport planes bound for Baghdad, where the Bush administration hoped it would provide a quick financial infusion for Iraq’s new government and the country’s battered economy.
... Exactly what happened to that money after it arrived in Baghdad became one of the many unanswered questions from the chaotic days of the American occupation, when billions were flowing into the country from the United States and corruption was rampant.
Finding the answer became first the job and then the obsession of Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a friend from Texas of President George W. Bush who in 2004 was appointed to serve as a special inspector general to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq. Before his office was finally shut down last year, Mr. Bowen believed he might have succeeded — but only partly — in that mission.
Much of the money was probably used by the Iraqi government in some way, he concluded. But for years Mr. Bowen could not account for billions more until his investigators finally had a breakthrough, discovering that $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion had been stolen and moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping. ...“Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last 10 years illegally,” he said. “In this investigation, we thought we were on the track for some of that lost money. It’s disappointing to me personally that we were unable to close this case, for reasons beyond our control.”
He is equally frustrated that the Bush administration, apart from his office, never investigated reports that huge amounts of money had disappeared, and that after his investigators found out about the bunker, the Obama administration did not pursue that lead, either.
Israel intends to "mow the grass" some more.
Israel Sidelined as Nations Pledge $5.4 Billion to Rebuild Gaza
Israeli officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to condition the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, badly damaged during the summer Israeli invasion, on a full disarmament of Hamas and other factions within the strip. ...
Israeli Transportation Minister Israel Katz was particularly critical of the [$5.4 billion] pledges, saying the countries were wasting their money on “worthless donations” and that more Israeli invasions were to be expected going forward.
Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs
“It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve had conversations with executives at tech companies about this precise thing. How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?”
Previous disclosures about the NSA’s corporate partnerships have focused largely on U.S. companies providing the agency with vast amounts of customer data, including phone records and email traffic. But documents published today by The Intercept suggest that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them, companies have also cooperated more broadly to undermine the physical infrastructure of the internet than has been previously confirmed.
In addition to so-called “close access” operations, the NSA’s “core secrets” include the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems; the fact that the NSA spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on technology to defeat commercial encryption; and the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to penetrate computer networks, possibly without the knowledge of the host countries. Many of the NSA’s core secrets concern its relationships to domestic and foreign corporations. ...
There is a long history of overt NSA involvement with American companies, especially telecommunications and technology firms. Such firms often have employees with security clearances who openly communicate with intelligence agencies as part of their duties, so that the government receives information from the companies that it is legally entitled to receive, and so that the companies can be alerted to classified cyber threats. Often, such employees have previously worked at the NSA, FBI, or the military.
But the briefing document suggests another category of employees—ones who are secretly working for the NSA without anyone else being aware. This kind of double game, in which the NSA works with and against its corporate partners, already characterizes some of the agency’s work, in which information or concessions that it desires are surreptitiously acquired if corporations will not voluntarily comply. The reference to “under cover” agents jumped out at two security experts who reviewed the NSA documents for The Intercept.
Hat tip
bobswern:
Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters
Millions of voiceprints quietly being harvested as latest identification tool
Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice.
Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.
“We sometimes call it the invisible biometric,” said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field.
Those companies have helped enter more than 65m voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
Activists worry that the popularity of voiceprinting has a downside.
“It’s more mass surveillance,” said Sadhbh McCarthy, an Irish privacy researcher. “The next thing you know, that will be given to border guards, and you’ll need to speak into a microphone when you get back from vacation.”
Beijing Supporters Clash with Pro-Democracy Camp in Hong Kong
Hundreds of anti-Occupy protesters are rallying against Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, which has waged a weeks-long campaign against Beijing's refusal to allow free and open elections, and recently set up a tent city blocking key areas of the city's financial hub ...
Police held both groups of protesters back while they shouted at each other. Amid the clamor, accusations of "American dogs" could be heard coming from the blue-ribbon line, referencing China's claim that western powers are fueling the pro-democracy movement.
On the other side, chants like "go back to China," were hurled by yellow ribbon-wearers, while some sung "Happy Birthday," a song which has been increasingly used to drown out the voices of counter-protesters.
Opposition to the pro-democracy movement has been growing in recent days as local business owners and residents voice anger at protesters blocking thoroughfares and access to buildings and roads. ...
"We want to have a peaceful life. I don't want anybody to occupy Hong Kong. They are making our home a mess," retired civil servant Stanley Yeung, 63, told AFP. "They cannot threaten the central government with a knife at its neck. China is a very powerful country now. Too much freedom and democracy is no good."
Bolivia elects Evo Morales as president for third term
Evo Morales has coasted to victory in Bolivia’s presidential elections, winning an unprecedented third term as voters rewarded the former coca grower for delivering economic and political stability.
Morales, a native Aymara Indian, received 60% of the vote against 25% for cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, the highest polling of four challengers in Sunday’s election, according to a quick count of voting stations by the polling firm Ipsos for ATB television. Official partial results were expected early on Monday. ...
In a victory speech from the balcony of the presidential palace in La Paz, Morales dedicated his victory to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.
“It is a triumph of the anti-colonialists and anti-imperialists,” Morales said in a booming voice. “We are going to keep growing and we are going to continue the process of economic liberation.”
Ferguson October: Thousands March in St. Louis for Police Reform & Arrest of Officer Darren Wilson
St Louis protests: Ferguson activists reject religious leaders’ platitudes
Frustration and anger among young black Americans at an older generation’s apparent failure to adequately respond to the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson upended a key event at a weekend of mass protest on Sunday. ...
The fuse was lit when hundreds of people who came to hear the intellectual and activist Cornel West speak were subjected to speeches by a succession of preachers from the major religions offering essentially the same message about loving one’s fellow man and standing up against injustice. ... Some in the audience grew restless and then angered at the series of reverends, imams and rabbis until a small group of activists demanded to speak.
Tef Poe, a St Louis rapper and activist for Hands Up United, a campaign group seeking racial justice in Ferguson, took the microphone and noted that the Christian, Jewish and Muslim preachers on the stage were not the people on the street trying to protect people from the police.
West did not disappoint the audience, telling listeners that an older generation of African Americans had failed them.
“The older generation has been too well adjusted to injustice to listen to the younger generation. The older generation has been too obsessed with being successful rather than being faithful to a cause that was zeroing in on the plight of the poor and working people,” he said. “Thank God the awakening is setting in. And any time the awakening sets in it gets a little messy.”
A little later he drew loud cheers as he sharpened his argument. “What our young people are also upset about is that they understand that too many of our black middle class brothers and sisters have been ‘reniggerised’. All you’ve got to do is give big positions, give them some status, give them a little money, but walking around they’re still intimidated, they don’t want to tell the truth about the situation.”
St. Louis Protesters Arrested in Weekend of Mass Civil Disobedience
Thousands gathered this weekend for the coordinated four-day campaign dubbed "Ferguson October." The resistance movement began with peaceful rallies on Friday, when no clashes or injuries reported. Riot police stood alert while some 300 people gathered outside the Ferguson Police Department and shouted slogans like, "Indict. Convict. Send those killer cops to jail." ...
The next day, some 3,000 demonstrators marched through downtown St Louis, united by various organizers such as Hands Up United, and joined by hundreds of others belonging to groups ranging from gay rights and Occupy activists to students and pro-Palestinian supporters who held placards that read, "#Palestine2Ferguson." ...
Following the march downtown, many protesters decamped to Ferguson and St. Louis' Shaw neighborhood, where another teen, Vonderrit Myers Jr. was shot and killed by an off-duty uniformed policeman Wednesday night. Myers' parents say their son was unarmed at the time, but police contend the boy was shot after he opened fire at the unnamed officer. ...
Late Saturday, demonstrators took the movement to a gas station near South Vandeventer Avenue, in symbolic acknowledgement of the QuikTrip set alight on the first day of Ferguson protests. ... They were met by police dressed in riot gear who arrived in trucks and large armored vehicles.
The protesters announced their intention to stage a peaceful rally, and they sat down and linked arms outside the entrance. Police began to use pepper spray to disperse them, which caught some passers by as they exited nearby bars. Arrests followed in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Seattle Marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day Amid Calls for End to Federal Holiday Celebrating Columbus
The Evening Greens
Report Documents Walmart Heirs' Efforts to Destroy Rooftop Solar Revolution in Order to Advantage Their Own Investments
The Walton family—who, as heirs to the Walmart fortune, have more wealth than 42 percent of American families combined—are impeding the nation's transition to a clean energy future, a new study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) finds.
"The Waltons claim to have a deep commitment to sustainability, but their support for anti-solar initiatives tells a different story," said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at ILSR and author of How the Walton Family is Threatening America's Clean Energy Future (pdf). "The Waltons are investing in efforts that both undercut clean energy and prevent average Americans from benefiting economically from solar power."
The report reveals that since 2010, the Waltons have donated $4.5 million to more than 20 organizations, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, and the American Enterprise Institute, which are leading state campaigns against clean energy polices such as those that encourage utilities to source a share of their electricity from renewables or allow customers with rooftop solar systems to feed any excess electricity they produce back into the grid and be paid the going retail rate for it. ...
What's more, the Waltons are also the largest stockholders of First Solar, an Arizona-based company that builds solar arrays to supply power to utilities. While ILSR acknowledges that "utility-scale solar as a replacement for fossil fuels has significant environmental benefits," First Solar's "Walmart-style approach to energy" runs counter to any attempts to expand decentralized renewable energy, the report states.
"In contrast to the U.S. solar industry at large, as well as environmental and consumer groups, First Solar views rooftop solar as a threat to its profits and is actively engaged in campaigns in states like Arizona and Nevada to maintain a stronghold over solar electricity, at the expense of local environmental and economic benefits," the Institute says.
'Global Frackdown' Aims to Slay Myths and Force End to Fracking Bonanza
Anti-fracking activists all over the world turned up their megaphones and took to the streets of their communities on Saturday to partipate in the "Global Frackdown" as they demanded an end to the destructive practice of hydraulic-fracture drilling that the oil and gas industries are aggressively trying to expand in regions across the planet.
“Across the globe a powerful movement is emerging that rejects policies incentivizing fracked natural gas as a bridge fuel to as sustainable future. Any initiative claiming to promote sustainable energy for all must stimulate energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, not foster fracking for oil and gas,” said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of U.S.-based Food & Water Watch, which spear-headed the day of action.
In a mission statement signed by the international anti-fracking movement, more than 200 groups from over 40 nations declared:
Fracking for oil and gas is inherently unsafe and the harms of this industry cannot be fully mitigated by regulation. We reject the multi-million dollar public relations campaign by big oil and gas companies and urge our local, state, and national officials to reject fracking. We stand united as a global movement in calling on governmental officials at all levels to pursue a renewable energy future and not allow fracking or any of the associated infrastructure in our communities or any communities. We are communities fighting fracking, frac sand mining, pipelines, compressor stations, LNG terminals, exports of natural gas, coal seam gas, coal bed methane and more. Fracking is not part of our vision for a clean energy future and should be banned.
Australia elected the love child of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin:
Australian PM Tony Abbott says 'coal is good for humanity' while opening mine
Tony Abbott has declared “coal is good for humanity” while opening a coalmine in Queensland.
The prime minister, who describes himself as a conservationist, said coal was vital to the world and that fossil fuel should not be demonised.
“Coal is vital for the future energy needs of the world,” he said. “So let’s have no demonisation of coal. Coal is good for humanity.”
Abbott said the opening of the $4.2bn Caval Ridge coalmine in Moranbah, operated by BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA), was “a great day for the world”.
“The trajectory should be up and up and up in the years and decades to come,” Abbott said.
“The future for coal is bright and it is the responsibility for government to try to ensure that we are there making it easier for everyone wanting to have a go.
“It is a great day for the world because this mine will keep so many people employed … it will make so many lives better.
“This mine epitomises the have-a-go spirit,” he said.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Russell Brand: What monkeys and the Queen taught me about inequality
Why a Very Specific Kind of Coup May Explain Kim Jong-un's Disappearance
The future of Navajo Nation depends on the election issue everyone should be talking about
Obama took Netanyahu’s threats to attack Iran seriously
Greenwald: "Why Privacy Matters." PrivacySOS: Why Privacy Matters In Ferguson, Missouri.
State Department expands insurance coverage to transgender services
A Little Night Music
Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King & Albert Collins - Texas Flood
Albert Collins & Stevie Ray Vaughan - Frosty Live
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Pride And Joy
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Voodoo Chile
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Crossfire
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Scuttle Buttin'
Stevie Ray Vaughan + Johnny Copeland - Look At Little Sister
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Little Wing
Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Cold Shot
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Nashville 1987
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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