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 the blues harmonica of Blind Mississippi Morris. Enjoy!
Blind Mississippi Morris
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
Chief Seattle, Duwamish (1780-1866)
News and Opinion
Israeli jets bomb Syria, says Damascus
Syrian state TV claims Israel has bombed two installations, one near Damascus and one near the Lebanese border
Syria accused Israeli jets of bombing two installations inside the country on Sunday, one near the capital, Damascus, and the second in a town near the Lebanese border.
The report by Syrian state television described the attack as “an aggression”. It said the air raids occurred near Damascus’s international airport and in the town of Dimas.
The state news agency Sana said: “The Israeli enemy attacked Syria by targeting two safe areas in Damascus province, namely the Dimas area and the area of Damascus international airport.” It said no casualties were reported.
There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials.
Speculation in the immediate aftermath suggested that the target of the strikes might have been advanced Russian-made S300 surface-to-air missiles.
Uruguay accepts six Guantanamo prisoners for resettlement
(Reuters) - Six men held for more than a decade at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were flown to Uruguay for resettlement on Sunday, the latest step in a slow-moving push by the Obama administration to close the facility.
The release of four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian, who arrived in South America aboard a U.S. military transport plane, represented the largest single group to leave the internationally condemned U.S. detention camp since 2009, U.S. officials said.
President Barack Obama took office nearly six years ago promising to shut the prison, citing its damage to America's image around the world. But he has been unable to do so, partly because of obstacles posed by the U.S. Congress.
The transfer to Uruguay had been delayed for months. A move initially planned earlier this year was apparently held up by the Defense Department.
Nusra threat to kill more Lebanese soldiers
Al-Qaeda affiliate's warning comes day after it announced execution of policeman, stirring protests by supporters.
Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda-affiliate that is among the armed Sunni groups engaged in Syria's conflict, has threatened to kill two more Lebanese soldiers unless the wives of some of its commanders are released from detention.
The threat comes a day after the group killed a young Lebanese police officer it was holding captive.
In a statement to local media on Sunday, Nohad Machnouk, Lebanese interior minister, said publicising the arrests of the female detainees was a mistake.
He said their arrests "will draw the attention of international organisations and religious figures to us, especially since we do have proof that the detainees were planning an operation.
Pinpointing military and humanitarian aid from nations in the international struggle against the armed group.
"Their contact with terrorists is not something that a case can be built on".
Lebanon is experiencing a spillover of the nearly four years of violence that has gripped neighbouring Syria.
Q&A: 'I saw beheaded children in Gaza'
Doctor Mads Gilbert, banned by Israel from returning to Gaza, spoke to Al Jazeera about the plight of residents there.
When called to return to Gaza to help out in al-Shifa hospital, doctor Mads Gilbert was denied access with valid papers.
Gilbert told Al Jazeera that he was turned away at the Erez border crossing after Israeli authorities deemed him a "security risk". After asking for an explanation, Gilbert was threatened with arrest.
Al Jazeera spoke with Gilbert about these events and what is happening beyond the checkpoint.
Read rest of the interview here.
'Don’t get Russia wrong': NATO intel warns against misjudging Moscow on Ukraine
Submitted by: dharmasyd
Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to be split up, NATO intelligence officials say, warning their colleagues against wrongly assessing Moscow’s policy on the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
That’s according to a report in German magazine Der Spiegel written by intelligence officers from several NATO countries. They argue that Moscow is not interested in escalating the situation in Ukraine, and is not going to repeat the scenario of what happened in Crimea.
The officers believe that the Kremlin is merely interested in seeing the reorganization of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics into functioning administrative units within a federalized Ukraine, if those regions can reach an agreement with Kiev.
NATO has severed practically all cooperation with Russia in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis, as it is accusing Moscow of sending troops and military equipment to self-defense forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Though NATO did not provide any substantial proof of such accusations, it launched a massive military build-up of troops in the Baltic States and other Eastern European NATO member countries.
New York mayor Bill de Blasio refuses to endorse Eric Garner grand jury decision
~ Mayor says he ‘respects the process’ of grand jury
~ NYPD to conduct its own inquiry into death of Eric Garner
~ Opinion: Dear white people – your discomfort is progress
~Young poet gives new voice to last words of Eric Garner
New York mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday refused to endorse a grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer over the choking death of a man in the city last summer. De Blasio also doubled down on controversial comments he made about the risks faced by children of colour, such as his son Dante, when they encounter police officers.
Appearing on ABC, de Blasio three times refused to respond to the question of whether he respected the decision by a grand jury not to bring charges against Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Staten Island resident Eric Garner in a chokehold during an arrest attempt. The decision led to large-scale protests in the city and across the country, which on Sunday continued into a fifth day. On Saturday night, violence broke out at one such demonstration, in California.
After de Blasio had deflected the question, saying “as an executive in public service” he respected “the judicial process, but …” host George Stephanopoulos interrupted to ask: “So you respect the grand jury’s decision?”
De Blasio replied, with emphasis on the last word: “I respect the process.” He went on to talk about initiating a “systemic” retraining of police officers in New York, in order to “fix the relationship between the police and the community”.
NYC braced for more protests over police violence after West Coast clashes
(Reuters) - A fifth day of nationwide protests against police violence was set to begin on Sunday after overnight clashes in two West Coast cities as New York's police commissioner said an internal investigation into a chokehold death could last four months.
After a relatively calm night in New York City, 13 people were arrested overnight in angry demonstrations in Seattle, where crowds threw rocks and attacked police, and in the California university town of Berkeley, where windows were smashed, stores looted and tear gas fired at protesters.
Protests were planned on Sunday in dozens of cities across the country, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and Minneapolis.
Nightly demonstrations, which were mostly peaceful until the unrest on the West Coast, have followed a New York grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer who put an unarmed black man in a banned chokehold that killed him.
Rubber bullets, tear gas in Berkeley as police disperse #EricGarner, #Ferguson rally
Protests against police brutality have turned violent in Berkeley, California, as officers are resorting to rubber bullets, flash bang grenades and tear gas in a tense standoff with demonstrators demanding justice.
The scene in this liberal college town remains chaotic Saturday night as reports of injured protesters at the hands of the police begin emerged. The protesters took to the streets to express their anger over a series of high-profile incidences involving the death of black Americans at the hands of white police officers - all of whom were cleared of any wrongdoing by the courts.
According to police, some of the protesters took to more violent methods of expression.
Police use tear gas on Berkeley protesters
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Police in Berkeley used tear gas late Saturday night to break up an evening-long protest over recent incidents in which unarmed African American men were killed by police.
The episode was the culmination of a noisy, rowdy night of action through Berkeley. After more than five hours of marching and confrontations, about 400 protesters squared off against hundreds of police from Berkeley and other jurisdictions at the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Durant Street just south of the UC Berkeley campus.
After warning the crowd of protesters, officers fired tear gas, sending people fleeing in panic and pain.
Police arrested five adults and a juvenile on unspecified allegations, said Officer Jennifer Coats, a Berkeley police spokeswoman. Coats said protesters vandalized police vehicles and threw various objects at officers, including bricks, pipes, rocks and bottles. Some threw back smoke grenades that had been lobbed by officers, she said. One officer suffered a dislocated shoulder after being hit by a sandbag, she said.
LA Cops Shoot Man Holding Pocketknife at Site of Eric Garner and Michael Brown Protests
Los Angeles police fatally shot a man in Hollywood Friday night at the same spot where hundreds of people protested the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner just one day earlier.
The cops fired multiple shots at the man, knocking him over in a tourist-filled intersection outside a shopping complex, witnesses said. Video footage from the scene shows the cops pointing their guns at the man for minutes after he had fallen, then approaching to take his pulse and shooing bystanders from the area.
US hands over senior Taliban commander to Pakistan
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The transfer of Latif Mehsud, a close confidante of the former head of the Pakistani Taliban, underlines the improving relations between the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan has long demanded that Afghanistan hand over militants operating in its territory, and the issue was a source of sharp tension between Pakistan and former Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The U.S. did not name the prisoners but two Pakistani intelligence officials say Mehsud was among them. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The U.S. said in a statement Sunday that the transfer happened Saturday.
"Yesterday, acting on behalf of the United States Government, we transferred custody of three Pakistanis held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan to Pakistan. This followed consultations between the United States and Pakistan and after receiving appropriate assurances. We cannot comment on the identities of the detainees," the U.S. military said.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature On Dec 8th of 1914, newspapers across the country report the testimony of Professor Brewster who stated that the militia was made up of brutes as he defended the actions of Mother Jones on behalf of the striking miners.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Feinstein fights to release torture report before GOP takeover
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON — With one week left in the Senate majority, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein faces a final showdown with the White House over public release of a landmark investigation of torture during the George W. Bush administration.
Feinstein, who remains chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the waning days of the 113th Congress, said she expects the Obama administration to sign off on the report this week, “subject to change.”
The stakes are high for Feinstein, because Republicans who will take over the Senate next year have soured on the investigation and would probably shelve the report.
“There’s no question they have taken a long time and they have been difficult,” Feinstein said of her talks with the Obama administration about what portions of the report can be made public. “If we can’t declassify it, we can’t put it out. We think it’s valuable, that it will stand the test of time.”
Obama urges persistence to combat racism
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Sunday that it will take time -- and persistence -- to fight the racism deeply rooted in United States as he continued to urge calm in the wake of protests across the nation following two grand jury verdicts in New York and Ferguson, Mo.
“This is something that’s deeply rooted in our society, that’s deeply rooted in our history,” Obama said in an interview on the cable network BET.
Obama sat down with BET Networks for his first extended remarks about a pair of grand jury verdicts that cleared white police officers in the death of black men for a special show, “BET News Presents: A Conversation with President Barack Obama.” BET’s “106 & PARK” will air a portion of the interview on Monday at 5 p.m. The full interview will air at 6 p.m.
Obama said there has been significant process in brief excerpts released by the network.
Racial Divide: The Tragedy of America's First Black President
Police killings of black youth in Ferguson and Cleveland have outraged many in the US. The tragic events show how deep the societal divide remains between blacks and whites. Many have given up hope that President Obama can change anything.
Submitted by: NCTim
On the evening after the city burned, a man in a black leather jacket and white clerical collar is standing on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. He shakes his head and looks as though he is fighting back tears. Once again, young black men and women are standing across from older, slightly pudgy white policemen in front of the local station. They look like armies, like they are at war.
"It won't ever stop," says the man, a black pastor named Alvin Herring. He has been accompanying the protests since the beginning of August, ever since white police officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed, 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown. "A deep, festering wound has opened up in the heart of American culture and society," Herring says.
The systematic racism that these young people are confronted with each day has made them deeply angry, Henning continues. "It is impossible for them to feel loved, or even respected. They no longer believe they are needed or that their lives are worth anything."
At exactly this moment, eight police officers rush over to a black man and pull him out of a group, accusing him of throwing an empty plastic bottle. They jump on top of him, press his cheek to the asphalt and handcuff him with zip ties before dragging him into the station.
'Distressing': New Racial Profiling Rules Won't Apply to Airports, Borders
'Focusing on an entire class of people instead of on actual conduct is unfair and harms our national security,' says ACLU's Laura Murphy
Soon to be released federal guidelines on racial profiling will allow Department of Homeland Security officials to continue engaging in the pratice at airports and border checks, news agencies are reporting.
The new policy will revise guidance issued by 2003 by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Eric Holder said the new guidance "will institute rigorous new standards—and robust safeguards—to help end racial profiling, once and for all," but the new reporting indicates that the practice will not be fully stopped.
The New York Times reports:
"The new rules expand the definition of racial profiling to include religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. Under the rules, law enforcement officials cannot consider any of those factors, along with race, during criminal investigations, or during routine immigration cases away from the border. Agencies whose officers make traffic stops, such as the United States Park Police, may not use them as a reason to pull someone over. The rules will apply to local police assigned to federal task forces, but not local police agencies.
The rules also eliminate the broad exemption for taking into account those factors in cases involving national security, but F.B.I. agents will still be allowed to map neighborhoods and use that data to recruit informants from specific ethnic groups."
UK Mass Surveillance Regime Does Not Breach Human Rights Law, Tribunal Rules
A secret legal regime that governs mass surveillance by the UK intelligence agencies does not breach human rights, a tribunal ruled today.
The decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which oversees the intelligence agencies, is part of a legal challenge brought by Amnesty International, Privacy International, Liberty and other groups.
The organisations claim, on the basis of revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, that their communications may have been monitored and that information obtained by the US National Security Agency (NSA) may have been shared with British intelligence services.
Before examining whether or not the groups’ communications had actually been intercepted, the tribunal looked at whether the legal regime governing the government’s surveillance practices were compliant with the Human Rights Act.
The Price of Hope: Traffickers Profit as Asylum Seekers Head for Europe
More than 150,000 refugees have landed this year on the Italian coastline, most of them hoping to continue north. As the EU struggles to find an answer, human traffickers are raking in billions.
Submitted by: NCTim
Behind the La Grotta bar, Italy comes to an end. But a narrow road continues onward across the border into France, hugging a cliff above the sea. It is a bottleneck for illegal immigrants and traffickers.
Hidden behind agave bushes, three young men from Mali are crouching on the steep slope, staring at the border. Just a few meters away, a group of Syrian refugees are camped out in front of La Grotta, like pilgrims searching for a hostel: men carrying backpacks, women wearing headscarves and a little boy.
Ahmad, as he asked to be called, is the gray-bearded spokesman of the illegal immigrants. Formerly a software developer in Damascus, he left his wife and children behind. Ahmad pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, the official certification of his arrival in Italy -- as refugee number 13,962.
But this number is a reflection of statistics kept in merely one place -- the police headquarters in Crotone, located in southern Italy's Calabria region. All in all, more than 150,000 migrants and refugees have landed on Italy's shores nationwide since January and almost half of them -- more than 60,000 men, women and children -- were never registered in the European Union's Eurodac database. They have long since disappeared, heading north toward the rest of Europe.
There was an unwritten rule after the tragic shipwreck off the island of Lampedusa on Oct. 3, 2013, in which 366 people drowned: Rome sends naval ships and coast guard vessels into the Mediterranean as part of the "Mare Nostrum" rescue operation, but it lets most of the migrants continue northward without further ado, so that they will not apply for political asylum in Italy as the country of their arrival, as required under the Dublin II agreement.
Typhoon Hagupit sweeps across Philippines
Typhoon Hagupit is sweeping across the Philippines, toppling trees and power lines and threatening areas with heavy rain, flooding and mudslides.
About a million people have fled their homes for shelter. The storm has killed at least three people, officials say.
In Tacloban, where thousands were killed by typhoon Haiyan last year, roofs have been blown away and streets are flooded.
But Hagupit does not appear to have been as severe as many had feared.
Hagupit, known locally as Ruby, weakened on Sunday as it continued to move slowly across the Philippines.
It was packing maximum sustained winds of 140km/h (90mph) and gusts of 170km/h (105 mph) at 17:00 local time (0900 GMT), government forecaster Pagasa (PDF) said.
View the video here.
Sony investigator says cyber attack 'unparalleled' crime
(Reuters) - Forensics experts hired by Sony Corp to investigate the massive cyber attack at its Hollywood studio said the breach was unprecedented, well-planned and carried out by an "organized group," according to an email obtained by Reuters on Saturday.
Kevin Mandia, the top executive at FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics unit, made the comments in an email to Michael Lynton, chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE).
They are among the first comments about the investigation to be made public, yet they do not discuss what people most want to know: The extent of the damage to the studio's network or who was behind the campaign, the most destructive cyber attack reported to date against a company on U.S. soil.
The destructive attack knocked much of Sony's network off line with malware that wipes drives of PCs, making them unable to operate. It is expensive to repair them because each drive needs to be manually replaced or re-imaged.
Bigger than Apophis: Dangerous 300+ meter asteroid to cross Earth orbit every 3 years
Scientists have calculated that 2014 UR116 asteroid will fly in dangerous proximity to Earth every three years. If it collides with the planet the energy of the explosion could be a thousand times greater than the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Vladimir Lipunov, a leading scientist on the team which discovered the asteroid this October, says the scientists now know its orbit and its period which is 3 years, but they cannot say precisely when the asteroid will approach the Earth.
“We should track it constantly. Because if we have a single mistake, there will be a catastrophe. The consequences can be very serious,” he said in the documentary “Asteroids attack” posted on Roscosmos website.
The new asteroid, called 2014 UR116 is about 370 meters in diameter. Its size exceeds the famous Apophis which the Earth can meet in the next decade. The exact trajectory of 2014 UR116 is yet to be determined, but theoretically it may collide with the Earth, Mars or Venus. Its trajectory can fluctuate because of the gravitational pull of these planets
Documents reveals that Albert Einstein was a regular guy as a person, who loves to go out with his friends and Gf
Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has put research and personal documents of Albert Einstein’s online. The most influential physicist of the of the 20th century have left around 80,000 documents which includes his personal and research documents from his early days. His personal document comprises of letters he send to his wife, mistress and children. Albert Einstein’s research & personal documents are one click away to reveal on internet
All these documents were handed over to Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on Friday any one with internet can access to this digital document’s.
This online documents covers writings from his youth to 1923. This archive digitalized by the university contain 7,000 pages demonstrating 2,900 exclusive document. this documents are uploaded as part of Einstein Papers Project.
The documents are organized chronologically and divided into 13 volumes. The documents displays that he could become a professor which was his dream job, due to his poor performance and grades as a student. It also reveals that in his student life he was categorized as “average”. Because of his high level of concentration, his motivation and not letting his morale down made him the scientist we know today.
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor - Agathena
Giant Galapagos tortoise makes 'miraculous' recovery, from 15 individuals to over 1000!
Huge victory thanks to conservation efforts
The Española giant Galapagos tortoise, which can weight 250 kg (550 lbs) and live a century, was really in bad shape in the 1960s. The island of Española, which is part of the Galapagos (see map below), only had 15 individual - 12 females and 3 males - remaining at the species' lowest point, thanks in part to the introduction of feral goats introduced in the ecosystem over a hundred years ago. The goats out-competed the tortoises for the cacti that they prefer eating. But thanks to a 5-decade conservation effort, the species now seems to have made a 'miraculous' and, most importantly, stable recovery.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hellraisers Journal: Welborn Claims "Press Agent" From Outside State Prepared Operators' Pamphlets.
Meaningless Human Life in Neoliberal America
Not Long to Wait Till Released CO2 Turns Up Temperature
A Little Night Music
Blind Mississippi Morris - Secondhand Store
Blind Mississippi Morris - Junkyard Dog
Blind Mississippi Morris - Lover's Moon
Blind Mississippi Morris - When a Woman Gets in Trouble
Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb - Mysterious Woman
Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb - Ole Black Neena
Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb - Cherry Picker
Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb - Sunday Morning
Blind Mississippi Morris & Brad Webb - Juke
Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb - Working Mule
Chris Thomas King & Blind Mississippi Morris - Soon this Morning Blues
Blind Mississippi Morris - Hwy 61
Blind Mississippi Morris - Beale St. Tonight
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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