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 Detroit blues harmonica player Aaron "Little Sonny" Willis. Enjoy!
Little Sonny - The Creeper Returns
"Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation."
-- John Yoo
News and Opinion
Senate’s inquiry into CIA torture sidesteps blaming Bush, aides
A soon-to-be released Senate report on the CIA doesn’t assess the responsibility of former President George W. Bush or his top aides for any of the abuses of the agency’s detention and interrogation program, avoiding a full public accounting of one of the darkest chapters of the war on terror.
“This report is not about the White House. It’s not about the president. It’s not about criminal liability. It’s about the CIA’s actions or inactions,” said a person familiar with the document, who asked not to be further identified because the executive summary — the only part to that will be made public — still is in the final stages of declassification.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report also didn’t examine the responsibility of top Bush administration lawyers in crafting the legal framework that permitted the CIA to use simulated drowning called waterboarding and other interrogation methods widely described as torture, McClatchy has learned.
“It does not look at the Bush administration’s lawyers to see if they were trying to literally do an end run around justice and the law,” the person said.
As a result, the $40 million, five-year inquiry passed up what may be the final opportunity to render an official verdict on the culpability of Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials for the program, in which suspected terrorists were abducted, sent to secret overseas prisons, and subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques. ...
[T]he Democratic-controlled committee apparently dropped a demand that the White House surrender some 9,400 documents related to the program, raising questions about Feinstein’s claim. The White House had refused to turn over the records for five years, citing “executive branch confidentiality interests.”
Judge grants 30-day delay in release of Guantánamo force-feeding videos
A federal judge has granted the Obama administration a month-long pause on the release of graphic videotapes showing forced tube feedings and cell removals of a hunger striking Guantánamo Bay detainee.
Judge Gladys Kessler on Thursday permitted the 30-day delay, requested by the Justice Department, in advance of a widelyanticipated decision by the government to appeal Kessler’s earlier order for the redacted release of the tapes.
Should it take its case to the federal court of appeals, it will be gambling on a bigger victory against disclosure.
On 3 October, Kessler rejected government arguments to keep the force-feeding tapes under seal, which would have denied the public access to the most detailed accounting yet of a process a Syrian detainee says is tantamount to torture. The Justice Department had argued that release of the tapes would jeopardizse national security, a contention Kessler rubbished as “unacceptably vague”
Only 4% of Drone Victims in Pakistan Named as al Qaeda Members
As the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan hits 400, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds that fewer than 4% of the people killed have been identified by available records as named members of al Qaeda. This calls in to question US Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim last year that only “confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level” were fired at.
The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has gathered the names and, where possible, the details of people killed by CIA drones in Pakistan since June 2004. On October 11 an attack brought the total number of drone strikes in Pakistan up to 400. ...
Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few corroborating details were available for those who were just described as militants. More than a third of them were not designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda – less than 4% of the total number of people killed.
Isis targets Baghdad with wave of car bombs and mortar attacks killing 150
Islamic State militants have targeted the Iraqi capital Baghdad with a wave of devastating car bombs and mortar attacks, killing at least 150 people since Sunday, in an escalating campaign of violence and mayhem.
Four car bombs hit Shia districts of Baghdad on Thursday afternoon. At least 36 people were killed and 98 wounded within the space of two hours, Iraqi officials said. The deadliest attack took place when two parked car bombs exploded simultaneously in the northern Dolaie neighbourhood, killing 14 civilians.
In the eastern suburb of Talibiyah, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police checkpoint, killing at least 12 people, they added. The dead included seven policemen and five civilians.
These latest attacks follow a series of dramatic advances in Iraq by Isis fighters, who have succeeded in capturing most of the sprawling Anbar province to the west of Baghdad.
Gen. Allen: ISIS Making Substantial Gains in Iraq
Former Afghan War commander and President Obama’s point-man on the new ISIS War, retired General John Allen continued to offer assessments on the ongoing conflict, insisting today that it was too soon to say whether or not the US is winning the war.
That said, Allen conceded that ISIS is continuing to make “substantial gains” on the ground in Iraq, and still has “tactical momentum” in several areas around western Iraq.
Kurdish forces repel ISIS from Kobani
US Meets With Syrian Kurds Linked to Terror Group
The State Department said Thursday that it has met directly with a Kurdish political party in Syria that is linked to a guerrilla group considered by the U.S. and Turkey as a terrorist organization.
The weekend meeting in Paris with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, known as the PYD, is likely to further complicate relations between Washington and Ankara. The two countries are negotiating over how much Turkey is willing to contribute to a global coalition that aims to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq.
The Kurdish group is known as the PYD and is seen as a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Both aspire to create an independent nation for ethnic Kurds out of parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. ...
The meeting focused on the ongoing fight that Syrian Kurds have given Islamic State militants as they seek to overtake land near Turkey's border. The PYD is running the Kurdish fighters' front in the Syrian city of Kobani, a month-long battleground that has riveted much of the world and been the site of more than 100 U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic extremists, including 14 on Thursday.
Obama continues to support brutal, repressive Egyptian regime
Just a few short months after John Kerry disingenuously congratulated Egypt’s military junta for “transitioning to democracy”, the young students who helped galvanize the 2011 Egyptian Revolution are back protesting its increasingly draconian rule. Campus protests have broken out in several major cities calling for the release of imprisoned student activists and for the removal of new limits on academic freedom imposed by the regime.
As part of wide-ranging campaign to stifle popular dissent, the government of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has recently given itself broad powers to directly appoint university heads, dismiss faculty without the possibility of appeal, and force students to sign documents promising “not to participate in political activities” in their housing applications. Private security firms have also been hired to enforce order on campus and monitor activists. ...
According to Human Rights Watch, more than 100 students have been detained since the start of the school year on October 11th. ...
Despite this, the Obama administration has remained steadfast in its support of the Egyptian government. Indeed, in the face of an escalating campaign of repression by the Sisi regime – including a Tiananmen Square-scale massacre of protestors, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings and torture – the American government has seemingly doubled down on its support for him.
Earlier this year the U.S. concluded a major arms deal with the Egyptian government, even as popular activists once heralded as the vanguard of democracy languished in prison. In response to rampant human rights abuses, the American government has remained tactfully mute, even offering inexplicable praise at times for the Egyptian government’s non-existent commitment to “democracy”
Ferguson Protests at St. Louis University
Probe of silencers leads to web of Pentagon secrets
The mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence.
Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers.
The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial testimony suggest they were part of a top-secret operation that would help arm guerrillas or commandos overseas.
The silencers — 349 of them — were ordered by a little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon known as the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, according to charging documents. The directorate is composed of fewer than 10 civilian employees, most of them retired military personnel.
Court records filed by prosecutors allege that the Navy paid the auto mechanic — the brother of the directorate’s boss — $1.6 million for the silencers, even though they cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.
Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users
The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be “the safest place on the internet”, is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed.
The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users – including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services – will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives.
Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws.
The US version of the app, which enables users to publish short messages superimposed over photographs or other images, has attracted millions of users, and is proving especially popular among military personnel who are using the service to make confessions they would be unlikely to publish on Facebook or Twitter.
Whisper has developed an in-house mapping tool that allows its staff to filter and search GPS data, pinpointing messages to within 500 meters of where they were sent.
The technology, for example, enables the company to monitor all the geolocated messages sent from the Pentagon and National Security Agency. It also allows Whisper to track an individual user’s movements over time.
When users have turned off their geolocation services, the company also, on a targeted, case-by-case basis, extracts their rough location from IP data emitted by their smartphone.
FBI director attacks tech companies for embracing new modes of encryption
The director of the FBI savaged tech companies for their recent embrace of end-to-end encryption and suggested rewriting laws to ensure law enforcement access to customer data in a speech on Thursday.
James Comey said data encryption such as that employed on Apple’s latest mobile operating system would deprive police and intelligence companies of potentially life-saving information, even when judges grant security agencies access through a warrant.
“Criminals and terrorists would like nothing more than for us to miss out,” he said. Technologists have found such statements reminiscent of the “Crypto Wars” of the 1990s, an earlier period in which the US government warned about encryption constraining law enforcement.
Framing his speech at the Brookings Institution as kickstarting a “dialogue” and insisting he was not a “scaremonger”, Comey said “encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place.”
Comey also posed as a question “whether companies not subject currently to Calea should be required to build lawful intercept capabilities for law enforcement”, something he contended would not “expand” FBI authorities”. Calea is a 1994 surveillance law mandating that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have access to telecommunications data, which Comey described as archaic in the face of technological innovation.
“I’m hoping we can now start a dialogue with Congress on updating it,” Comey said.
The government wants tech companies to give them a backdoor to your electronic life
The FBI chief’s call for ‘clarity and transparency’ on surveillance wouldn’t be so laughable if the government wasn’t so aggressively secretive
FBI director James Comey wants a US government-mandated backdoor into your iPhone and your Google account. But Comey doesn’t want to call his proposed privacy invasion a backdoor. He doesn’t understand how it would work. And he expects everyone who has been horrified by the NSA’s mass surveillance to just sit back, weaken their personal security and trust that the government will never abuse it.
Comey is currently on a media blitz, decrying Apple and Google’s long overdue decision that enables encryption by default on updated iPhone and Android devices. Apple and Google have made it so that everyone’s phone is encrypted by the passcode each user sets up, so that when someone steals your phone (or the cops seize it), no one will be able to open the contents besides you. Not even Apple or Google will have the key – or, in other words, a backdoor to access information you’ve encrypted.
We know there’s no real need to worry about Apple and Android’s move: law enforcement has a half-dozen other ways to get at all the data out of your phone if it needs to solve actual crimes. This is just a basic security protection that, if implemented by Facebook, Gmail, text messaging apps and others, could go a long way to solving America’s cybersecurity problem. And it would leave everyone living in countries with authoritarian governments like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China or Russia from having to worry about being spied on.
But Jim Comey, like the NSA, sees encryption for the masses as the enemy – not the type of tool that keeps your medical and bank records safe. He was on 60 Minutes this week calling Apple and Google’s decision a threat to national security, and, on Thursday, he gave his first major speech as FBI director, which focused entirely on the dangers of people controlling their own security.
Police in Washington, DC Are Using the Secretive 'Stingray' Cell Phone Tracking Tool
Back in 2003, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in Washington, DC was awarded a $260,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to purchase surveillance technology called Stingray — a contraption the size of a suitcase that simulates a cell phone tower and intercepts mobile phone calls and text messages.
But the grant fell a little short, because the MPD couldn't come up with the extra several thousands dollars it needed to train officers how to use and maintain Stingray — so the device sat unused in an "Electronic Surveillance Unit equipment vault" at the department for more than five years. .. In 2008, the DC police decided to dust off and upgrade its Stingray tracking device after the department secured another federal grant. But officials appeared to no longer see it as a way to combat terrorism, fears of which had decreased significantly since 2003. Instead, they sought to use it for routine investigations involving drug trafficking and common criminals.
As Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, told VICE News:
An inherent attribute of how this technology functions is that it sweeps in information about large numbers of innocent bystanders even when police are trying to track the location of a particular suspect. If the MPD is driving around DC with Stingray devices, it is likely capturing information about the locations and movements of members of Congress, cabinet members, federal law enforcement agents, and Homeland Security personnel, consular staff, and foreign dignitaries, and all of the other people who congregate in the District…. If cell phone calls of congressional staff, White House aides, or even members of Congress are being disconnected, dropped, or blocked by MPD Stingrays, that's a particularly sensitive and troublesome problem.
Wessler said the Fourth Amendment rights of tens of thousands of DC residents are likely violated whenever DC police uses Stingray, which sends out a more powerful signal than a cell tower and forces all mobile devices to report back serial numbers and locations.
New Zealand Cops Raided Home of Reporter Working on Snowden Documents
Agents from New Zealand’s national police force ransacked the home of a prominent independent journalist earlier this month who was collaborating with The Intercept on stories from the NSA archive furnished by Edward Snowden. The stated purpose of the 10-hour police raid was to identify the source for allegations that the reporter, Nicky Hager, recently published in a book that caused a major political firestorm and led to the resignation of a top government minister.
But in seizing all the paper files and electronic devices in Hager’s home, the authorities may have also taken source material concerning other unrelated stories that Hager was pursuing. Recognizing the severity of the threat posed to press freedoms from this raid, the Freedom of the Press Foundation today announced a global campaign to raise funds for Hager’s legal defense.
In August, one month before New Zealand’s national election, Hager published Dirty Politics, which showed that key figures in Prime Minister John Key’s National Party were feeding derogatory information about their opponents to a virulent right-wing blogger named Cameron Slater. Hager published evidence in the form of incriminating emails, provided by a hacker, demonstrating coordination between National Party officials and Slater. The ensuing scandal forced the resignation of a top Key ally, Justice Minister Judith Collins, and implicated numerous other National Party officials and supporters. Despite the scandal, the National Party won a resounding victory in the election, sending Key to a third term as prime minister.
On October 2—less than two weeks after the election—detectives from a regional “major crime team” came to Hager’s Wellington home armed with a search warrant authorizing them to seize anything that might lead them to the identity of his source for Dirty Politics.
Although he is being represented by pro bono counsel, Hager has already incurred legal expenses reaching into the thousands of dollars, and New Zealand’s “loser pays” provision could subject him to a very large monetary judgment if he loses. The Freedom of the Press Foundation campaign to raise money for Hager is intended to help him fight for the return of his property, challenge the legality of the raid, and defend himself against any potential future threats stemming from his work as a journalist. ... Those wishing to do so can contribute to Hager’s defense fund here.
In Historic Police Brutality Case, Family of Homeless Denver Pastor Killed in Custody Awarded $4.6M
Hong Kong police dismantle protest sites in dawn raids
Hong Kong police have cleared out one of the city’s main pro-democracy protest sites with no resistance, marking a new government strategy of dismantling the barricades with quiet, stepwise operations rather than shows of force.
Protesters in the working-class neighbourhood of Mong Kok said hundreds of officers, some carrying riot shields, began clearing the zone at 7am on Friday morning without notice. Within half an hour police had removed the metal barricades, bamboo poles and heavy recycling bins protesters had used to block off a four-way intersection. About 30 people lay on the ground during the operation, refusing to move.
The demonstrations, which have continued for almost three weeks, seemed to have reached a tactical impasse. Friday’s operation marks the third time police have cleared away barricades at dawn when demonstrators were asleep, only to have hundreds return later in the day to reclaim roads and rebuild their makeshift fortifications.
Police left the main protest zone, Admiralty, untouched.
Recent attempts to clear the demonstrations by force have largely backfired – reports of police beating and pepper-spraying people on Tuesday and Wednesday night reinvigorated the movement and the number of demonstrators swelled.
Walmart Workers Arrested at NYC and DC Protests for a $15 Minimum Wage
A total of 42 Walmart workers and allies were arrested today in New York and Washington, DC at two protests directed at the company, which employees say is "robbing them of a fair wage."
The workers were some of the employees at 1,695 Walmart stores across the US who have signed a petition addressed to their employers demanding that they raise their wage to $15 an hour and commit to providing consistent, full-time work. They have promised massive nationwide protests on Black Friday should the company ignore the demands.
Members of OUR Walmart, a group of company employees, took the petition directly to Walmart's owners — the Walton family — on Thursday afternoon, rallying in front of the Walton Family Foundation in Washington, DC, and by the New York City apartment of heiress Alice Walton.
'Assassination' of Public Health Systems Driving Ebola Crisis, Experts Warn
Neoliberal economic policies that defund health infrastructure responsible for current crisis in West Africa and across the globe, say analysts
As the official West African death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history nears 5,000, global concerns about the highly infectious disease continue to mount. Analysts and medical providers, from Liberia to the United States, say that in order to address the crisis, the international community must tackle the real culprit: western-driven economic policies defunding public health systems around the world, particularly in the countries hit hardest by the outbreak.
"The neoliberal economic model assassinated public infrastructure," said Emira Woods, a Liberia native and social impact director at ThoughtWorks, a technology firm committed to social and economic justice, in an interview with Common Dreams. "A crisis of the proportion we've seen since the beginning of the Ebola catastrophe shows this model has failed."
Since the 1980s, western financial institutions have given loans to third world governments on the condition those states impose austere domestic reforms and roll back public services. This approach is encapsulated in the 1981 World Bank report Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, which presses for "structural adjustments," including rapid privatization, shrinking of public services and subsidies, and a shift towards export dependency as a solution to "slow economic growth." ...
Explain Macalester College Professor William Moseley and colleagues in a paper for the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, "What you had was a shift of public expenditures from health care, school, and essential services to a model of economic development driven by the World bank and International Monetary Fund, which said that public service provision was not passage to development, and services should be privatized," said Woods. "There was this notion that poor people can pay, and services are better provided by the private sector."
While years of war played a role in weakening public systems, it is the "war against people, driven by international financial institutions" that is largely responsible for decimating the public health care system, eroding wages and conditions for health care workers, and fueling the crisis sweeping West Africa today, says Woods.
Leaked TPP Chapter Exposes Sweet Deals for Big Pharma and US Bully Tactics
WikiLeaks on Thursday released a second updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Rights chapter, charging that it will hinder affordable access to medicines globally, increase online surveillance, and impinge on civil liberties while benefiting Big Pharma and other corporate interests.
"Our first impression in reading the document is the extent to which the United States has sought hundreds of changes in intellectual property norms, some small and subtle, others blunt and aggressive, nearly of all of which favor big corporate right holders, and undermine the public’s freedom to use knowledge," declared James Love of Knowledge Ecology International. ...
The trade pact has been mostly negotiated in secret, with only select government officials and corporations able to see the text. To that end, WikiLeaks has released several draft chapters. A previous draft of the IP chapter was leaked in November 2013.
"Since that point, some controversial and damaging areas have had little change; issues surrounding digital rights have moved little," according to a WikiLeaks press statement Thursday. "However, there are significant industry-favoring additions within the areas of pharmaceuticals and patents. These additions are likely to affect access to important medicines such as cancer drugs and will also weaken the requirements needed to patent genes in plants, which will impact small farmers and boost the dominance of large agricultural corporations like Monsanto."
Michael Hudson:
Why Are Stock Markets So Volatile?
The Evening Greens
Pacific Climate Warriors Blockade Australian Coal Port
Declaring themselves "Pacific Climate Warriors," representatives from a dozen Pacific Island nations—sitting atop traditional outrigger canoes, kayaks, and other small boats—staged a full-day blockade of the Newcastle Coal Port in Australia on Friday as they sent a message to the government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the world that they will not sit idly by as the activities of the fossil fuel industry and its backers continue to threaten the existence of their low-lying homes.
Scores of boats and hundreds of protesters participated in the blockade, paddling beyond buoys marking the shipping lanes and placing themselves between the port terminal and the coal tankers moving in and out of the harbor. Police on jetskis reportedly intervened by creating waves, stripping the boaters of their paddles, and then tugging boats back towards shore. ...
Though Australia environmentalists have staged similar protests in the past at the Newcastle Coal Port—the largest such facility in the world—this is the first time they've been joined by Pacific Islanders in such a way. The island nations represented in Friday's flotilla include: Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands, Samoa, Fiji, The Marshall Islands, Tonga, Tokelau, Niue, Kiribati, Vanuatu, The Federated States of Micronesia and Tuvalu.
"The coal which leaves this port has a direct impact on our culture and our islands," said the Warriors in a joint statement. "It is clear to us that this is the kind of action which we must take in order to survive. Climate change is an issue which affects everyone and coal companies may expect further actions like this in future."
Naomi Klein wins establishment literature award for book about revolution
Author and activist Naomi Klein was awarded Canada's top annual prize for non-fiction writing this week, the Hilary Weston Prize presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada, for her recently published book, 'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.' ...
Klein admitted being quite surprised by the award—saying from the podium that "this wasn't supposed to happen." Directly after receiving the award, the author explained the nature of her surprise to Brian Bethune at MacLean's by saying, “The book is a really radical thesis and this is an establishment prize.” Hilary Weston is a former liutenant governor of Ontario and is married to Galen Weston, who runs a food and retail empire in the country. The family is recognized as the second-wealthiest in Canada.
”I suppose I have [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper to thank for the book’s success," Klein told Bethune. "Every day, he tells Canadians they have to choose between economic prosperity and environmental and climatic protection, and Canadians know that’s not true. They know they don’t have to make that choice. But we do have to talk about change; we need this conversation.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hybrid Electric Laser Tanks Might Help Save the Earth, While Blowing It Up
What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Seven Worst-Case Scenarios in the Battle with the Islamic State
NCIS: Olongapo City
A Little Night Music
Little Sonny - Back Down Yonder
Little Sonny - Sonny's Bag
Little Sonny - Goin' Down Slow
Little Sonny - You're Spreading Yourself A Little Too Thin
Little Sonny - My Woman Is Good To Me
Little Sonny - Wade in the Water
Little Sonny - Memphis B-K
Little Sonny - Eli's Pork Chop
Little Sonny - Stretchin Out
Little Sonny - You Can Be Replaced
Little Sonny - I gotta find my baby
Little Sonny - Love Shock
Little Sonny - We Got A Groove
Little Sonny - I Love You Baby Until The Day I Die
Little Sonny - Twice as hard
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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