Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 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 country, country blues and folk legend Merle Travis. Enjoy!
Merle Travis - Lost John
Country music has its roots in Appalachian folk, blues, Anglo-Celtic, and old-timey forms, the nexus between blues and country will be evident when you listen to Merle's intricate fingerpicking guitar work and song structure which is very similar to the Piedmont blues style.
"There is no death. Only a change of worlds.”
Chief Seattle, Suquamish Chief
News and Opinion
ISIL suffers heavy losses in Syria's Kobane
At least 50 fighters killed in the past 24 hours in fighting and US-led air strikes, rights group says.
At least 50 fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) have been killed in the past 24 hours in Syria's Kobane, the biggest loss endured by the group since it launched its assault on the strategic border city on September 16.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that the deaths were the result of either clashes, suicide bombings or US-led air strikes.
The rights group also said 11 Kurdish fighters were killed in the same period in Kobane, along with one Syrian rebel fighter backing the Kurdish forces.
ISIL had hoped to quickly seize the small border town and secure its grip on a large stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border, but Kurdish Syrian fighters, backed by US-led air strikes and an influx of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, have held back the group. For now, the town remains roughly evenly divided between ISIL and Kurdish control.
Thirty U.S.-led strikes hit Islamic State in Syria's Raqqa: monitoring group
(Reuters) - A U.S.-led coalition carried out at least 30 air strikes in Syria against Islamic State militants in the northern province of Raqqa on Saturday, a monitoring group said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strikes hit Islamic State positions in the northern outskirts of Raqqa city, a major stronghold of the hardline Islamist militants.
The areas hit by the strikes included the 17th Division, a Syrian army base that Islamic State seized in July, the Observatory said.
The U.S.-led coalition began bombing Islamic State in Syria in September. Syria's nearly four-year-old civil war has continued unabated throughout the country.
Iraqi army 'had 50,000 ghost troops' on payroll
An investigation into corruption in the Iraqi army has revealed that there were 50,000 false names on its payroll.
Known in the military as "ghost soldiers", they either did not exist or no longer reported for duty, however their salaries were still paid.
A statement from the PM's office said the payments have been stopped.
Correspondents say rampant corruption in the Iraqi army is seen as one of the reasons why it has struggled to contain Islamic State militants.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, quoted by AFP news agency, said the investigation began when the latest salary payments were made.
Fresh call for demonstrations in Egypt
Activists to hold protests in 11 campuses a day after court dropped charges against Mubarak in controversial verdict.
Egyptian youth groups have called for fresh demonstrations in universities across Egypt amid anger over the dropping of charges against deposed President Hosni Mubarak of killing hundreds of people.
The Road to the Revolution Front, an alliance of liberal and leftist activists, said on its Facebook page on Saturday that protests were to be staged in at least 11 universities.
Near-daily protests have rocked Egyptian campuses since last year's military-led removal of Mubarak's successor Mohamed Morsi, but participants in these rallies have largely been supporters of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.
Sunday's protests could be the first to bring together the two camps of liberals and Islamists who have been at odds since before Morsi's election in 2012.
Barbed Wire and Tear Gas in Cairo as Protesters Rise After Mubarak Acquittal
Police and military units used water cannons, barricades and tear gas to prevent protesters trying to march on Tahrir Square
Egyptians enraged by Saturday's court decision to drop murder charges against Hosni Mubarak took to the streets of Cairo on Saturday where they were met by tanks, barbed wire fences, tear gas and army units ready to repel any effort to gain access to Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the 2011 revolution that led to the former president's overthrow.
As The Independent's Jon Stone reports:
News that the ousted president had murder and corruption charges against him dismissed by a judge brought demonstrators out onto the streets of Cairo at the start of the weekend.
On Saturday some 2,000 young people protested the verdict near Cairo's Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the nation’s 2011 uprising. The square itself was closed off by soldiers and police.
"The people want to bring down the regime!" protesters shouted, echoing one of the most prominent slogans of the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising.
Protesters were further incensed after Mr Mubarak gave a television interview after the verdict in which he said he “did nothing wrong” during the 2011 clashes that left at least 200 protesters dead.
Mother of German MH17 crash victim sues Ukraine in EU court
The mother of a victim killed in the Malaysian plane crash in eastern Ukraine has started legal proceedings to sue the Ukrainian authorities in the European Court of Human Rights, demanding about $1 million for pain and suffering.
The mother of “Olga L.”, a German citizen, submitted her case against Ukraine to the European Court of Human Rights last week. She is demanding €800,000 (roughly $1 million) for negligent homicide, reports the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
The woman insists that Ukrainian authorities should have shut the country’s airspace to civilian flights due to the heavy fighting between Kiev troops and militias in the country’s east.
She argues the Kiev government failed to do this because they didn’t want to lose out on overflight fees. According to Bild, around the time of the disaster about 700 flights were crossing Ukrainian territory daily, accruing several millions of euros in revenue a month.
Read more on this story.
Kabul police chief quits amid rising militant violence
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
General Zahir Zahir gave no reason for his resignation, his spokesman said.
Three South Africans and an Afghan were killed in a Taliban attack on a guesthouse used by aid workers on Saturday - the third such attack in the past 10 days.
President Ashraf Ghani is due to make a televised address later on Sunday.
President Ghani, who came to power in September, has vowed to bring peace to the country after decades of conflict.
Hong Kong protesters clash with police as they approach government headquarters
Hundreds of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters have clashed with police in a fresh escalation of tensions, as officers fired pepper spray at angry students trying to surround the government headquarters.
In chaotic scenes, protesters wearing helmets and wielding umbrellas attempted to breach the police cordon guarding the office of chief executive Leung Chun-ying during a rally at the main Admiralty protest site.
"I want true democracy," protesters yelled at police who used loudspeakers to order them to disperse.
"Surround the headquarters. Paralyse the government."
The protests are happening next to the city's central business district and some of the world's most expensive real estate.
Ecopop referendum: Swiss 'reject immigration curbs'
Voters in Switzerland have decisively rejected a proposal to cut net immigration to no more than 0.2% of the population, partial results suggest.
Submitted by: NCTim
Data from a majority of the country's 26 cantons show about 74% voting no in Sunday's referendum.
Supporters of the measure argued that it would have reduced pressure on the country's resources. Opponents said it would have been bad for the economy.
Around a quarter of Switzerland's eight million people are foreigners.
The measure would have required the government to reduce immigration from about 80,000 to 16,000 people a year.
Ferguson protesters follow path of 1960s activists
The response to the police shooting of a young black man in Ferguson, Mo., is beginning to follow the path of civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s, including long marches, campus teach-ins, and nonviolent civil disobedience.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Back in the 1960s, civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists regularly used several tactics to make their point: Long marches sometimes stretching over days, campus teach-ins, sit-ins and other nonviolent civil disobedience activities. Sometimes things turned violent – caused either by agitators among the protesters, police officers over-reacting, or some combination of the two.
Five days after a grand jury essentially exonerated white police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown, the same pattern is emerging in Ferguson, Mo., and around the United States.
On Saturday, the NAACP and other civil rights groups began a 120-mile march from Ferguson to the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City, which is expected to take a week. “We will demand new leadership of the Ferguson Police Department, and wholesale changes to police and criminal justice processes and procedures to end racial profiling and police brutality,” the NAACP declared on its website.
View video here.
US top court debates if online death threats are free speech
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court will consider a groundbreaking case Monday about whether death threats posted on Facebook are liable to prosecution or whether threatening comments are protected by constitutional rights to free speech.
It will be the first time the top court's nine justice -- who are not known to have Facebook accounts of their own -- will consider the limits of First Amendment protections on free speech on social media.
The case involves Anthony Elonis, a rap music enthusiast who posted angry lyrics on his Facebook page aimed at his wife after she left him, taking their two children.
"There's one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I'm not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts. Hurry up and die, bitch," Elonis posted after the messy break-up ending seven years of marriage.
A 2016 ballot without Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush? You heard it here
Charlie Cook, one of the most respected political experts in the country, believes Hillary Clinton has only a 25-30 percent chance of running for president, and in any case he thinks she is either “rusty” or “she has lost her fastball.” He bases that on her disastrous book tour, in which she said some very inappropriate things and also did not sell many books.
The author of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter for almost 30 years also disappointed a local audience when he did not give Jeb Bush much of a chance of gaining the Republican nomination.
“Bush has two issues working against him to win the Republican primary for the 2016 presidential election,” Cook said. “One is immigration reform, which he favors; and two, is his advocacy of education reform.”
Neither of those causes would sit well with Republican primary voters, Cook said.
He expects the next Republican nominee to be either a tea party Senator or a governor from the Midwest. He wouldn’t predict beyond that.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature the Telluride Strike of 1903-04: President Moyer of Western Federation of Miners Claims Victory as Settlement Reached.
Tune in at 2pm!
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SILENCED: The War on Whistleblowers - trailer
A new documentary now in production from Academy Award nominated director James Spione. Telling the truth becomes a dangerous act when four federal whistleblowers reveal the darkest corners of America's war on terror.
Beneath the headlines, out of sight of most Americans, a critical war is being fought between those who would reveal the starkest truths about the United States' national security policies, and a federal government ever more committed to shrouding its activities in secrecy. What is actually at stake, say the whistleblowers themselves, is nothing less than our bedrock Constitutional protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Featuring CIA torture whistleblower JOHN KIRIAKOU, National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping whistleblower THOMAS DRAKE, U.S. Justice Department torture whistleblower JESSELYN RADACK, and State Department Iraq whistleblower PETER VAN BUREN.
Ohio Republicans push law to keep all details of executions secret
~HB 663 would bar courts from access to essential information
~State has experienced four botched executions in eight years
~Texas set to execute ‘floridly psychotic’ inmate
Republican lawmakers in Ohio are rushing through the most extreme secrecy bill yet attempted by a death penalty state, which would withhold information on every aspect of the execution process from the public, media and even the courts.
Legislators are trying to force through the bill, HB 663, in time for the state’s next scheduled execution, on 11 February. Were the bill on the books by then, nothing about the planned judicial killing of convicted child murderer Ronald Phillips – from the source of the drugs used to kill him and the distribution companies that transport the chemicals, to the identities of the medical experts involved in the death chamber – would be open to public scrutiny of any sort.
Unlike other death penalty states that have shrouded procedures in secrecy, the Ohio bill seeks to bar even the courts from access to essential information. Attorneys representing death-row inmates, for instance, would no longer be able to request disclosure under court protection of the identity and qualifications of medical experts who advised the state on their techniques.
“This bill is trying to do an end run around the courts. When things aren’t going well, the state is making its actions secret because they don’t want people to see them screwing up,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Ohio.
German-made ‘miracle’ machine turns water into gasoline
There is as yet no method to mimic Jesus Christ and turn water into wine, but German chemical engineers have proved they can perform miracles of alchemy. They are now finalizing the assembly of a rig that changes water into gasoline.
The German company says it has developed an engineering installation capable of synthesizing petroleum-based fuels from water and carbon dioxide. The ‘power-to-liquid’ rig converts gases extracted from water into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
“I would call it a miracle because it completely changes the way we are producing fuels for cars, planes and also the chemical industry,” Nils Aldag, Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Sunfire GmbH told RT’s Ruptly video agency.
The Dresden-based company expects the technology to have a big impact on the future fuel market.
‘Green Friday’ brings big marijuana sales to Colorado for the first time ever
Marijuana dispensaries in the state of Colorado are taking advantage of the first holiday shopping season since recreational weed became legal there by offering customers “Green Friday” specials this week.
Never mind the “Black Friday” discounts that traditionally keep retailers across the United States open for extended hours after Thanksgiving as shoppers show up in droves to reap big discounts. Stores in Colorado, where recreational weed became legal for adults for the first time ever this past January, have been advertising a “green” alternative this year in which shoppers can take advantage of deals they’re unlikely to find at Walmarts, shopping malls and other major retailers on Black Friday.
"There's no question that there are going to be people here excited," Ryan Fox, the owner of Denver, Colorado’s Grass Station, told NBC News. "It's a great opportunity for us to have a big weekend."
The Grass Station, along with other dispensaries across the Rocky Mountain State, are offering customers doorbuster deals on par with the discounts you’d expect to find at big box stores where eager shoppers have spent days camping out in front of. Instead of letting customers purchase televisions and computers at a fraction of the regular price, however, Colorado shops like Fox’s are offering impressive deals on pot. At the Grass Station, for example, early birds were receiving 80 percent off their marijuana purchases early Friday. Another, Evergreen Apothecary, told NBC they were offering 15 percent off for anyone who mentions “Green Friday” once inside the dispensary’s doors.
"It's regular old retail," Ryan Pratt, a manager at Boulder, CO’s Helping Hands Herbals, told USA Today. "It's just that this happened to all be illegal a year ago."
The gaming journalist who tells on her internet trolls – to their mothers
When Alanah Pearce discovered her online abusers weren’t middle-aged men but young boys, she went straight to the source to tackle the issue
Submitted by: NCTim
Those who wonder if women gaming journalists are still subject to sexist name-calling and threats of physical and sexual violence need only talk to 21-year old media and communications student Alanah Pearce.
When she’s not studying, Pearce is a video games journalist, reviewing for Australian radio stations (4ZZZ, Triple J) and television. She also has her own YouTube channel, which she believes may have been the prompt for a recent flurry of online abuse.
“A while ago, I realised that a lot of the people who send disgusting or overly sexual comments to me over the internet aren’t adult males,” said Pearce from her company’s Brisbane base.
The journalist had assumed her abusers were middle-aged men. “It turns out that mostly they’re young boys and the problem is they don’t know any better, so responding to them rationally didn’t resolve the situation. And it got to the point where their comments were starting to make me feel really uncomfortable.”
Microsoft will unveil Windows 10 Consumer Preview in January 2015
In a recent report, The Verge has revealed that the detailed consumer feature preview of Windows 10 operating system will be unveiled by Microsoft at a press event which will likely be held in late January 2015.
About the projected proceedings at the reported press event in January, The Verge - citing details shared by unidentified sources - has said in the report that several Windows 10 features will be discussed by Microsoft, including its new touch interface called Continuum.
In addition, Microsoft will also apparently share details with regard to its plans for Windows-based smartphones and tablets, and probably dashboard updates for its Xbox One gaming console.
The unveiling of Windows 10 consumer features by Microsoft is believed to be a significant disclosure by Microsoft, which earlier introduced its new Windows 10 operating system at a somewhat low-key event in San Francisco.
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor - Agathena
The human dilemma: we find solutions to our climate problems through
geo-engineering and those solutions create more problems. It reads like horrific science fiction, except they are testing these projects in reality. Who will be sacrificed that is the question.
Geo-engineering: Climate fixes 'could harm billions'
These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide.
Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial "trees" to absorb CO2.
This is BIG when you consider how many millions of people use chemical shampoos which end up in our rivers and oceans. Here's a solution.
The 'No Shampoo Experiment,' six months later
My switch to washing hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar was supposed to last only a month, but now I can't stop.
It has been six months since I stopped using shampoo. It all started as a short experiment when my editor asked if I’d try the ‘no poo’ method just for the month of January. I agreed reluctantly, and together with Margaret Badore, dived headfirst into the world of extremely alternative hair care. Our experiment resulted in this post: “The No Shampoo Experiment.” While Margaret went cold turkey for a month, I continued to ‘wash’ my hair with baking soda and condition with apple cider vinegar.
TEN WAYS TO HELP WILDLIFE
How To Help Animals, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, And Amphibians: Our Top 10 Ideas For Taking Action To Aid Wildlife In Your Own Backyard
Sure, it can get a little discouraging, hearing about all the ways in which humans are harming wildlife. And, sometimes we can feel like part of the problem, rather than the solution. However, each of us can play a role in helping wildlife. Below are our Top 10 ideas—almost everyone can do one or more of them—to help make the world a friendlier place for wild creatures.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Climate change: what they're putting off saying
In Memoriam: Vern Radul (Edger)
In Memoriam: Edger
Hellraisers Journal: President Wilson Appoints Colorado Coal Commission, Makes Statement
Joining Hands and Coming Together to Ensure a Brighter Future for a Community Member
The hole in my soul is the least of it
A Little Night Music
Merle Travis - Smoke Smoke Smoke
Merle Travis - John Henry
Chet Atkins, Merle Travis - Is Anything Better Than This
Doc Watson & Merle Travis meet for the first time - a special moment in American music history
Merle Travis and Chet Atkins - I'll See You In My Dreams
Merle Travis - Sixteen Tons (original version) from 1947
Merle Travis - Nine Pound Hammer 1951
Merle Travis - Cannonball Rag
Merle Travis - Dark as a Dungeon
Merle Travis - Guitar Rag
Merle Travis - I Am A Pilgrim
Chet Atkins, Merle Travis - Down South Blues
Merle Travis - Midnight Special
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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