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 r&b and blues singer Ruth Brown. Enjoy!
Ruth Brown - Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean
“Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
News and Opinion
NYT's Sanger caught lying to sabotage Iran nuclear talks.
Former IAEA Director: NYT Article a Malicious Attempt to Undermine Iran Negotiations
Robert Kelley says that David Sanger in The New York Times claimed Iran had backed off a commitment to ship uranium out of the country, something that was later refuted by the U.S. State Department
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: ... On Sunday the New York Times released a story essentially saying that Iran had rejected a key demand of the negotiations taking place between the P5+1 countries and Iran over their nuclear program. I must add, as I always do, there's still no evidence that Iran wants to create a nuclear weapon. That's something that doesn't get said very often, these days.
Here are some of the headlines that followed the New York Times story. NBC: With Nuclear Talks Running Out of Time, Iran Rejects Key Demand. USA Today: Iran Nuke Talks Hit Major Stumbling Block.
This all began with the article by David Sanger in the New York Times: Iran Backs Away from Key Detail in Nuclear Deal.
On Monday morning, the New York Times published another article with an excerpt of an email from an anonymous State Department official, which said contrary to the report in the New York Times, the issue of how Iran's stockpile would be disposed of had not yet been decided in the negotiating room, even tentatively. Then on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the State Department's deputy spokesperson said:
STATE DEPARTMENT DEPUTY SPOKESPERSON: Obviously stockpile and what happens to it, and how Iran gets rid of it is a key part of this possible agreement we're trying to get to. But the notion that we had some agreement that in the last 24 hours Iran has backed away from just is factually inaccurate. There's never been agreement on that. We've been talking with them about a couple different ways they could do it. And we'll see if we can get to agreement in the next 24 hours or so.
If this is what an anti-war presidency looks like to you, you're detached from reality
Nothing sums up the warped foreign policy fantasy world in which Republicans live more than when House Speaker John Boehner recently called Obama an “anti-war president” under which America “is sitting on the sidelines” in the increasingly chaotic Middle East.
If Obama is an anti-war president, he’s the worst anti-war president in history. In the last six years, the Obama administration has bombed seven countries in the Middle East alone and armed countless more with tens of billions in dollars in weapons. But that’s apparently not enough for Republicans. As the Isis war continues to expand and Yemen descends into civil war, everyone is still demanding more: If only we bombed the region a little bit harder, then they’ll submit.
In between publishing a new rash of overt sociopathic “Bomb Iran” op-eds, Republicans and neocons are circulating a new talking point: Obama doesn’t have a “coherent” or “unifying” strategy in the Middle East. But you can’t have a one-size-fits-all strategy in an entire region that is almost incomprehensibly complex – which is why no one, including the Republicans criticizing Obama, actually has an answer for what that strategy should be. It’s clear that this new talking point is little more than thinly veiled code for we’re not killing enough Muslims or invading enough countries.
Those clamoring for more war are detached from reality: the US is already escalating – not pulling back – its involvement across the Middle East.
McCain Suggests Israel "Go Rogue," Blow Up Iran Negotiations By Starting War
This past week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ratcheted up this sabotage to a new level. During a floor speech he gave on March 24th, the senator suggested that Israel “go rogue” and that if they don't they may not survive the next 22 months of the Obama presidency:
McCain is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Republican presidential candidate. His call for a foreign state to openly obstruct U.S. policy and in the process initiate a catastrophic regional war is perhaps unprecedented for someone of his senior position.
Iran nuclear talks reportedly close to statement on partial agreement
Unclear whether statement would qualify as political framework, the goal that ministers from seven states set themselves to reach by Tuesday at midnight
Foreign ministers in Lausanne are reported to be close to a joint statement on a partial agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme that would leave some difficult areas to be negotiated in the coming months.
According to the Associated Press, a vague declaration would be accompanied by texts outlining what has been agreed and what has not. It is unclear whether those documents would qualify as a political framework, the goal that the ministers from seven states set themselves to reach by the Tuesday midnight deadline.
Nevertheless, any publicly declared points of agreement on important issues such as Iran’s future capacity to enrich uranium and the lifting of sanctions, would represent substantial progress at the high-stakes 18-month negotiations. Diplomats have hitherto been loth to publish details on the grounds that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
If such a framework is announced, negotiators would then have until the end of June to produce a detailed agreement complete with technical annexes.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who left the talks on Monday afternoon to fly to Moscow, announced on Tuesday morning he was returning to Lausanne, where he said “the chances are great, but you can never be 100% confident”. He said a deal could probably be done “as long as none of the participants in the negotiations tries to raise the stakes to get something extra instead of maintaining a balance of interests”.
"A Matter of War & Peace": Iran, Powers Near Preliminary Deal in face of Congress-Israel Opposition
Iran Claims a US Drone Killed Two Revolutionary Guard Members Fighting the Islamic State in Iraq
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has claimed that two of its advisers involved in a campaign to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit from the Islamic State were killed by an American drone strike — an allegation the US rejected out of hand.
The Tikrit campaign has featured heavy involvement from Iranian personnel and advisers alongside Iranian-backed Shia militias and Iraqi security forces. After initially shying away from involvement, the US began bombing Islamic State (IS) targets Wednesday night as the campaign appeared to stall. ...
"Coalition forces initiated airstrikes near Tikrit on March 25, two days after the alleged incident occurred and no airstrikes were conducted in or near Tikrit on March 23," the Centcom statement said.
"We have no information to corroborate claims that coalition airstrikes killed two IGRC members," the statement added, using an acronym for the Revolutionary Guard.
Centcom also confirmed that US reconnaissance operations around Tikrit began March 21, two days before the alleged incident. It's unclear whether armed drones were involved in those operations.
Saudi Strikes Fail to Slow Houthis’ Offensive on Aden
Yemen’s Shi’ite Houthis are continuing their advance against the key southern city of Aden today, with reports coming out of the region of fierce fighting in several districts of the former South Yemen capital city. ...
Five days of Saudi airstrikes have killed scores of civilians, including 45 today in an attack on a refugee camp. So far, however, they don’t seem to have even slowed the Houthis, their stated targets.
Bush, The Iraq War, and Torture: From Assessment to Accountability
At the Hofstra Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman says one million died over the last decade in a country that the Bush administration said they were going to save
Conservatives Triumph Over Ruling Left In French Local Elections
France's opposition right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party and its centrist allies scored a major victory in Sunday's local departmental elections, which are seen as a litmus test for French public opinion ahead of the 2017 presidential elections.
The wins came at the expense of France's ruling Socialist Party (PS), which lost 25 departments to the right in Sunday's vote, with only one department swinging the other way. Overall, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP gained control of 66 departments — sub-regional divisions that are governed by elected councilors, who oversee local services including roads, education, social services and tourism.
President Francois Hollande's PS won in only 34 departments — almost half of the departments it previously controlled. This is the party's fourth electoral defeat in 12 months, following the loss of its Senate majority in September 2014, and defeats in municipal and European elections. ...
Despite failing to win any departments in the second round, Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front (FN) party has come out of the election stronger than ever after important gains in the first round. ...
According to Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), many left-wing voters who sided with Hollande in the second round of the 2012 elections now feel deceived by his increasingly center-left policies.
Facebook 'tracks all visitors, breaching EU law'
People without Facebook accounts, logged out users, and EU users who have explicitly opted out of tracking are all being tracked, report says
Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site even if the user does not have an account or has explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed.
The report, from researchers at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT (ICRI) and the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography department (Cosic) at the University of Leuven, and the media, information and telecommunication department (Smit) at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, was commissioned after an original draft report revealed Facebook’s privacy policy breaches European law.
The researchers now claim that Facebook tracks computers of users without their consent, whether they are logged in to Facebook or not, and even if they are not registered users of the site or explicitly opt out in Europe. Facebook tracks users in order to target advertising. ...
Facebook places tracking cookies on users’ computers if they visit any page on the facebook.com domain, including fan pages or other pages that do not require a Facebook account to visit.
When a user visits a third-party site that carries one of Facebook’s social plug-ins, it detects and sends the tracking cookies back to Facebook - even if the user does not interact with the Like button, Facebook Login or other extension of the social media site.
American Pharmacists Association votes against supply of lethal injection drugs
A leading association for US pharmacists has told its members they should not provide drugs for use in lethal injections — a move that could make carrying out executions even harder for death penalty states.
The declaration approved by American Pharmacists Association delegates at a meeting in San Diego says the practice of providing lethal-injection drugs is contrary to the role of pharmacists as healthcare providers.
The association lacks legal authority to bar its members from selling execution drugs but its policies set pharmacists’ ethical standards.
Pharmacists now join doctors and anaesthesiologists in having national associations with ethics codes that call on members not to participate in executions.
“Now there is unanimity among all health professions in the United States who represent anybody who might be asked to be involved in this process,” said association member Bill Fassett, who voted for the policy
Intercept Reporter Files Suit Against Ferguson Police
An Intercept reporter is suing the St. Louis County Police Department after he was shot with rubber bullets and arrested while reporting on protests in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last August.
The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux is joined in the civil rights suit, filed today in federal court in the Eastern District of Missouri, by three German journalists who were also arrested. They allege that the police department, St. Louis County, and 20 unidentified officers violated their First Amendment rights of freedom of press and freedom of speech, used excessive force against them, and arrested them without probable cause.
Devereaux wrote about the arrest, and the men he met in the jail, as part of his Ferguson coverage for The Intercept last summer.
"Straights Only"? Indiana Faces Boycotts, Protests over Anti-LGBT "Religious Freedom" Law
Indiana's New Religious Freedom Law May Have Unintended Consequences — Including Legal Weed Smoking
Indiana lawmakers are hastening to draft and pass language this week that will "clarify" the state's newly passed religious freedom law after enormous public outcry. But some pundits point out that the gaping holes left by the law will result in a slew of unintended consequences that might not be that easy to fix.
On Friday, the same day Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Church of Cannabis sought and received approval from Indiana's secretary of state to operate as a church. Under the new law, members of the church may be able to smoke marijuana as part of its religious belief system, according to Indiana lawyer and political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, who first called attention to the marijuana church's move last week. ...
"It got me thinking, a lot of religions use marijuana in rituals — the Rastafarians, the Zion Coptic Church of Ethiopia — so then I did some research online and under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] in the state of Indiana. It pretty much says that before the government can infringe on your religious liberty, it has to offer up a good argument," Shabazz said. "So now, when you arrest someone for pot possession, he can claim he's a Rastafarian and those are his religious beliefs.
"It's not a comment on RFRA, it's just pointing out that you can't say you only get religious freedom for your sake or your population, when other people can take advantage of this too," Shabazz said. "It opens up a lot of questions and issues I don't think my friends at the State House fully understand."
Indiana Is A Great Place To Be A Bigot
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature from the International Socialist Review, a discussion of the Manifesto on Industrial Unionism written by Frank Bohn of the Socialist Labor Party, and a reply from A. M. Simons, editor of the ISR which magazine, for the most part, represents the views of the "left-wing" of the Socialist Party of America.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Seattle City Council Unanimously Declares Opposition to Fast Track, TPP
The Seattle City Council resoundingly approved a resolution Monday evening cementing its opposition to so-called Fast Track authority that's needed to speed passage of corporate-friendly, rights-trampling trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The resolution (pdf), which passed the nine-member council unanimously, expresses concern with the "closed-door manner" in which that 12-nation pact is being brokered, as well as its potential to "undermine local governmental authority to create reasonable rules and regulations, including those related to environmental safeguards, future climate policy, and food safety standards."
"Few things counterpose the interests of multinational corporations to the interests of workers, the environment, and democracy as sharply as trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership," said councilmember Kshama Sawant, a co-sponsor of the measure. "I am excited to support environmental activists, labor unions and social justice organizations that have brought to light what big business always intended to be a secret trade treaty."
Trans-Pacific Partnership Proves Rules Are Rigged in Favor of the 1 Percent
“China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region … We should write those rules,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union address. To sell Congress on giving him authority to “fast track” consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment treaty with 12 nations that has been under negotiation for five years, the president argues it is vital that “we” write the rules. The real question, of course, is what does he mean by “we”?
Our global trade and tax policies have been and still are controlled by corporate and financial interests. They, not workers or consumers, write the rules. ... The TPP is a classic expression of the way the rules are fixed to benefit the few and not the many. It has been negotiated in secret, but 500 corporations and banks sit on advisory committees with access to various chapters. The lead negotiator, Michael Froman, was a protege of former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and followed him from Treasury to Citibank, the bank whose excesses helped blow up the economy before it had to be bailed out. Although corporations are wired in, the American people are locked out of the TPP negotiations. ...
Last week, the draft chapter concerning the “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” mechanism was leaked to Wikileaks and the New York Times. Essentially, the chapter allows a company to sue for taxpayer damages if a government (federal, state or local) passes laws or take actions that the company alleges will impinge on future expected profits. The “tribunal” is a panel of lawyers, drawn from a small group of accredited international lawyers who serve both as judges and advocates. If successful the companies can collect millions in damages from governments. The provisions are so shocking that the TPP mandates that the chapter not be declassified until four years after the TPP goes into force or fails to pass.
The administration says we shouldn’t worry about this, because the United States has never lost a case and that the dispute mechanism is basically designed to be used on countries with weak or corrupted legal systems. Butas Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has noted, Philip Morris has already sued Uruguay because of its new anti-smoking regulations that have been lauded globally. A French company sued Egypt for raising the minimum wage; a Swedish company sued Germany for phasing out nuclear power. ...
So remember, when the president argues that it is vital that “we” write the rules, “we” means not the American people, but corporate and financial interests.
Barney Frank drops a bombshell: How a shocking anecdote explains the financial crisis
Barney Frank has a new autobiography out. ... On page 295 of “Frank,” a title that the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee holds true to throughout the book. The TARP legislation included specific instructions to use a section of the funds to prevent foreclosures. Without that language, TARP would not have passed; Democratic lawmakers who helped defeat TARP on its first vote cited the foreclosure mitigation piece as key to their eventual reconsideration.
TARP was doled out in two tranches of $350 billion each. The Bush administration, still in charge during TARP’s passage in October 2008, used none of the first tranche on mortgage relief, nor did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson use any leverage over firms receiving the money to persuade them to lower mortgage balances and prevent foreclosures. Frank made his anger clear over this ignoring of Congress’ intentions at a hearing with Paulson that November. ... Frank kept pushing for action on foreclosures, which by the end of 2008 threatened one in 10 homes in America. With the first tranche of TARP funds running out by the end of the year, Frank writes, “Paulson agreed to include homeowner relief in his upcoming request for a second tranche of TARP funding. But there was one condition: He would only do it if the President-elect asked him to.”
Frank goes on to explain that Obama rejected the request, saying “we have only one president at a time.” Frank writes, “my frustrated response was that he had overstated the number of presidents currently on duty,” which equally angered both the outgoing and incoming officeholders.
Obama’s unwillingness to take responsibility before holding full authority doesn’t match other decisions made at that time. We know from David Axelrod’s book that the Obama transition did urge the Bush administration to provide TARP loans to GM and Chrysler to keep them in business. So it was OK to help auto companies prior to Inauguration Day, just not homeowners.
In the end, the Obama transition wrote a letter promising to get to the foreclosure relief later, if Congress would only pass the second tranche of TARP funds. Congress fulfilled its obligation, and the Administration didn’t. The promised foreclosure mitigation efforts failed to help, and in many cases abjectly hurt homeowners.
The Evening Greens
New Canadian Counterterrorism Law Threatens Environmental Groups
Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, who campaigns for environmental protection on behalf of indigenous First Nations in Canada, wasn’t surprised when, in 2012, she found out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been keeping tabs on her. The Toronto Star that year obtained documents showing that federal police had monitored private meetings held between her coalition and local environmental groups. ...
Across Canada, police surveillance and intervention have long been a reality for groups working to stop development of fossil fuel extraction, including pipeline construction and fracking. The sense that somebody’s watching is part of the price Thomas-Flurer, of the Saik’uz nation, has paid for coordinating the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of six First Nations in British Columbia that have banned the passage of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline through their territory. ...
The new law, called C-51, would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP broad powers to thwart what bill proponents see as an evolving terrorist threat. Lawyers and activists say the bill’s vague language would give Canada’s police forces wide discretion to decide who they target and how. ...
The Anti-Terrorism Act would create a new criminal offense that could land an offender up to five years in prison for promoting “terrorism offences in general,” a term that has befuddled Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, professors of law at the University of Toronto and University of Ottawa, respectively. “No person (including ourselves) can fairly say they know how this new crime will be interpreted and applied,” they wrote in a C-51 backgrounder.
Jeff Monaghan, a sociologist at Queen’s University, who has studied Canada’s counterterrorism apparatus has tracked the way Canada’s counterterrorism efforts have crept into the work of environmental activists since 9/11. Government threat assessment reports he collected via Access to Information requests show a shift between 2005 and 2010 toward focusing resources on “extremist” groups, including ones that organize around environmental issues and indigenous rights.
It Was Warmer in Antarctica Than in New York City Last Week — and That's Not Even the Bad News
If you lived in the many parts of the United States and Europe last week and were in need of a reprieve from persistent, frigid temperatures, you would have found relief in the most unlikely of places.
Part of Antarctica hit a record high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit last Tuesday, the hottest ever reported, according to the climate monitor OGIMET. ...
Antarctica's floating ice shelves have recently decreased by as much as 18 percent in some spots over the last 18 years, says a new study, published in the journal Science. As the oceans have warmed, they've spurred more of the frozen mass to become water, researcher Fernando Paolo told VICE News. ...
The findings indicate that sea levels are certain to continue rising, Doug Martinson, a professor with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, told VICE News.
"You could stop global warming tomorrow but that doesn't matter from this perspective because there's already so much heat stored in the ocean, it'll keep coming up and melting the ice," Martinson, who was not involved in Paolo's study, told VICE News.
US set to pledge emissions cuts of up to 28% ahead of global climate treaty
The US will pledge to cut carbon pollution by up to 28%, doubling the pace of current emissions cuts, under a global agreement on climate change to be finalised in Paris at the end of the year.
Among those countries that have come forward, the EU has agreed to cut its emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, while China has promised its emissions will peak by 2030.
Mexico, the first developing country to make a climate commitment, said it will cut emissions by at least 22% - and as much as 40% if certain conditions are met. Norway offered a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, from 1990 levels, and said it sought to be carbon neutral by 2050. ...
Birgit van Munster, of the Homo Sapiens Foundation, which has been analysing the pledges as they have come in, said: “If all humanity follows the example [of the first countries to submit pledges] we will be more than 700% over the likely emissions limit [needed] to limit global warming to less than 2C, and if this trend continues humanity will proceed to go beyond 5C, the end of human life on earth as we know it.”
Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, told the Guardian: “Meeting the end of March deadline is an opportunity for major countries to demonstrate both urgency and leadership in the battle against climate change. But thus far we haven’t seen enough of either. Millions of people around the world are waiting for a signal that their political leaders are taking climate change seriously.
Deepwater oil spill: BP steps up PR effort to insist all is well in the Gulf
Oil giant says area is making a rapid recovery but evidence mounts that wildlife is still struggling to rebound, five years after Deepwater Horizon spill
In the run-up to the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill this April, BP is ramping up its effort to convince consumers that life is returning to normal on the Gulf coast.
Over the last month, the company has released PR materials that highlight the Gulf’s resilience, as well as a report compiling scientific studies that suggest the area is making a rapid recovery.
But evidence is mounting that five years after millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, wildlife is still struggling to rebound. A new report, released on Monday by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), suggests that at least 20 species are still being affected by the spill. ...
The NWF report is the organization’s fifth survey highlighting scientific research into the environmental impact of the spill. This year, the NWF found that higher-than-normal rates of death for many species continued, and are likely linked to the disaster: dolphins along Louisiana’s coastline were found dead at four times historic rates last year, and research has shown the deaths of 12% of brown pelicans and 32% of a species of gull can be linked to the spill.
The NWF report also says the eggs of many animals – from trout in the Gulf to pelicans nesting as far away as Minnesota – have been found to contain oil and the dispersant used by BP in the wake of the spill.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben call on Paris to divest in Le Monde letter
Undercover federal agents in Silk Road case accused of fraud
GMO Seed Theft Equals National Security Threat, Argues Government
Why Many Populists Are Abandoning The Democratic Party
Manifestos
A Little Night Music
Ruth Brown - 5 10 15 Hours
Ruth Brown & B.B.King - Ain't Nobody's Business
Ruth Brown - I Don't Know
Ruth Brown - As Long As I'm Movin'
Ruth Brown - Teardrops From My Eyes
Ruth Brown - Oh What A Dream
Ruth Brown - I'll Wait For You
Ruth Brown - Daddy Daddy
Ruth Brown - Wild Wild Young Men
Ruth Brown - Please Don't Freeze
Ruth Brown - Love Contest
Ruth Brown - If I can't sell it, I'll sit on it
Bonnie Raitt, Ruth Brown, Charles Brown - Never Make Your Move to Soon
Ruth Brown + Bonnie Raitt - Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean
Ruth Brown - A Good Day For The Blues
B B King & Ruth Brown - You're the boss
Ruth Brown - Cabbage Head
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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