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 Nashville blues and boogie woogie piano player Cecil Gant. Enjoy!
Cecil Gant - Hit That Jive Jack
"Greece isn't a democracy now, it's run through a troika - three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and can't do."
-- Nigel Farage
News and Opinion
Greece Approves Creditors' Reforms to Protest on the Streets
Greece's government emerged bloodied but alive following a key vote in parliament, which saw lawmakers overwhelmingly approve new creditor-demanded reforms, despite a clear rift among the governing left-wing Syriza party and thousands of people protesting outside.
The reforms to the judiciary and banking systems were the final hurdle the financially-battered country was obliged to clear before it can start talks with its international creditors on a third bailout worth around 85 billion euros ($93 billion). ...
Before the debate got underway, about 10,000 people demonstrated outside the parliament in Athens, protesting the latest measures to overhaul Greece's judicial and banking sectors. Minor violence marred the end of the protest when a few teenagers threw petrol bombs at riot police, but no injuries or arrests were reported.
Lawmakers eventually voted 230-63 in favor of the measures, following a whirlwind debate that ended at 4am local time. ...
Government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili conceded that there is a clear rift within Syriza, but would not say whether rebels would be expelled.
"From this point on, party procedures will be followed in order to deal with the problem," she said after the vote.
The number of disaffected Syriza lawmakers, who see the reforms as a betrayal of the anti-austerity platform that brought their party to power in January, shrunk slightly compared to last week's similar vote — from 38 to 36. But that is still roughly a quarter of all the party's representatives.
Shock Therapy: Greek govt votes ‘yes’ for 2nd round of reforms
Greece to fall deeper into recession this year
[From the Guardian's liveblog]
The Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research (IOBE) has abandoned its prediction from April that Greek GDP would rise by 1% this year, given the turmoil in the economy since capital controls were imposed.
IOBE now fears that the economy will shrink by between 2% and 2.5% in 2015, due to the damage caused to exports, tourism, business investment and consumer spending.
That would more than wipe out last year’s modest progress, when Greece grew by 0.7%.
Keiser Report: Bankers Lives Matter
Israeli Defense Ministry Announces 906 New Settlement Units
The Israeli Defense Ministry has set up a Thursday announcement for the approval of construction of another 906 settlement units throughout the occupied West Bank, including 296 units in Beit El, on the outskirts of the de facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah.
The Beit El expansion is said to be a planned “compensation” to the settlers for the Supreme Court ordering two buildings in the settlement demolished for being illegally built on privately owned Palestinian land. The other settlements will be in the area around metro Jerusalem. ...
This is a constant undercurrent in the far-right governments of Israel expanding settlements, as the settlers seize some Palestinian land, demand it be retroactively given to them, and then are given huge government projects as reparations.
Even after this, the demolitions are rarely ever carried out, and the same illegal buildings are often used as the pretext for several rounds of compensatory construction, even as the settlers move toward an eventual retroactive legalization of all of them.
Ukraine Announces 30 Km Eastern Demilitarized Zone
Providing further details on yesterday’s announcement of further weapon pullbacks by both government and rebel forces in Eastern Ukraine’s tenuous ceasefire, officials today announced the establishment of the 30 km demilitarized zone between the two factions in Luhansk Province. ...
The Ukrainian civil war has been in a state of ceasefire since February, though intermittent violations by both sides have continued to occur, and each side insists the other has been the exclusive instigator of such incidents. A 30 km buffer should keep the two sides farther apart than has previously been the case.
New round of base closings long overdue
The Army’s decision to implement long-planned cuts in its end strength has sparked consternation on Capitol Hill. Many members in states that stand to lose personnel are swearing that their local base needs to maintain its current levels or the defense of the nation will suffer.
The reality is not as dire as the opponents of reductions in base personnel would have us believe. Of the 30 installations that will receive significant reductions in on-base military personnel, only four will have reductions that equal 10 percent or more of their current numbers. Two bases will have substantial cuts: Fort Benning, Georgia, 29 percent; and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, 59 percent.
The Congressional reaction to proposed personnel reductions doesn’t bode well for what really needs to be done: close unnecessary bases altogether and free up resources for other, more urgent priorities. The Pentagon estimates that 25 percent of its domestic infrastructure is beyond what it needs. The Pentagon claims that getting rid of just 5 percent of its current facilities could save $2 billion per year. This may seem like small change compared to the Pentagon’s half trillion dollar-plus budget, but it could go a long way towards meeting other national needs. And streamlining the Pentagon needs to start somewhere.
NBC News Releases the Long-Awaited Trailer for its Summer Horror Film About ISIS
During a discussion yesterday in Aspen with even-more-sycophantic-than-usual CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, FBI Director James Comey somberly warned that ISIS now officially poses a bigger threat to the “U.S. homeland” than the one posed by former title-holder Al Qaeda – because, of course, the Latest Threat must always be the Greatest Threat. Comey also said that the previous bigger-than-Al-Qaeda contender, “The Khorasan Group,” has been “diminished” by “the work done by our great military” – because the War on Terror narrative requires that it must always be somehow simultaneously true that (1) the Terror Threat facing Americans is Greater Than Ever™ and (2) U.S. military actions against Terrorism are succeeding.
To commemorate this official FBI warning and to accompany the AP “news article” about Comey’s proclamation, NBC News posted a video which . . . . well, which you have just have to see to believe. Watch it here.
Why Wasn't Dylann Roof Charged With Terrorism?
The Department of Justice charged Dylann Roof, the white 21-year-old man who allegedly gunned down nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, with murder, attempted murder and use of a firearm, all in the commission of a hate crime. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the charges on Wednesday afternoon.
But the DOJ did not charge Roof with domestic terrorism, or include terrorism in the indictment.
Some media outlets, lawyers, public figures and activists have called for Roof to be charged not just with a hate crime, an illegal act “motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias,” but with the separate label of domestic terrorism. Critics contend that the label of terrorism is too often only applied to Islamic extremists, and not white supremacists or anti-government anarchists. Many were outraged after FBI Director James Comey balked at the term during a June 20 press conference, telling reporters he didn’t see the murders “as a political act,” a requirement he designated as necessary for terrorism.
Roof’s crime certainly seems to fit the federal description of domestic terrorism, which the FBI defines as “activities … [that] involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law … appear intended to (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
Remember: Roof allegedly told a few friends that he intended the murder of the parishioners, attendees of historically black Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, to “start a race war,” while his online “manifesto,” verified by the FBI, confirmed his motivations to intimidate and assassinate. He took as inspiration, among other things, George Zimmerman’s 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, the Confederate flag, the KKK and skinheads.
The Assassination of Sandra Bland and the Struggle Against State Repression
During the struggle in South Africa black activists who were captured by the state had a strange habit of jumping to their deaths from the windows of jails and court houses whenever the authorities would turn their backs. In the U.S. the method of suicide black prisoners appear to choose is death by hanging, that is when they are unable to pull a gun from an officer and shoot themselves in the chest while handcuffed behind their backs.
In Waller County, Texas, Sandra Bland, a young black woman from Illinois, an activist with black lives matter, who was, according to friends and family, excited about her new job in Texas is stopped for a minor traffic, beaten, jailed and found dead two days later in her cell. Her death labeled a suicide by the Waller County Sheriff Glen Smith.
Because Sandra Bland was an activist who advised others about their rights and the proper way to handle a police encounter, no one is accepting the official explanation that she took her own life. And even if any evidence emerges that after being isolated for three days and subjected to the kind of treatment that Texas racists have been known to melt out to uppity black folks and she may have taken her own life in a moment of acute depression, those state officials are still guilty of murder because she should have never been in that cell. ...
The murder of Sandra Bland has to be contextualized politically as part of the intensifying war being waged on black communities and peoples’ across the country.
And because the state is waging war against us and will be targeting our organizations, as an activist, organizer and popular educator, Sandra’s murder must be seen a political murder and receive sustained focus as such.
#SayHerName: Protests Demand Justice for Sandra Bland & Black Teen Found Dead in Jail 1 Day Later
Cameras aren't stopping police misconduct. Exhibit A: Sandra Bland
Until this summer, we haven’t much seen or heard police abusing black women’s bodies with the visual clarity of video. We have witnessed the worst of police abuse on video a lot with black men, from Rodney King back in 1991 to Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Walter Scott and Eric Harris just in the past year. But until last month, we have mostly only seen agents of the state abusing black women recreated in fiction, on shows like Orange is the New Black.
Hearing Sandra Bland verbally abused by Texas state trooper Brian Encinia on 10 July for answering honestly when the officer asks her, “Are you OK?” is a new experience, his voice rising in cartoonish rage when this black woman (quite rightfully fearful of his threatened abuse) will not submit to him. Also new are the horrors of hearing him threaten Bland that “I am going to light you up!” with a taser, and the cringe-inducing terror of hearing the black woman’s piercing screams offscreen that “you’re about to break my wrist! Can you stop?!” ...
Depressingly, though, bringing this long-standing treatment into stark visibility might not be enough outrage to end the terror.There was great hope by social scientists that police body cams could de-escalate officer encounters and mitigate the level of violence. But with their increasing use, alongside citizens taking videos of arrests, police killings have not slowed in this past year of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Nor, as some of the most recent videos suggest, are cops prone to act with much more humanity, whether they’re unwittingly on camera or knowingly so. I know the “well, if she’d just been more obedient!” crowd will justify Encinia’s abusive treatment of her, disregarding that the chain of events leading to her death could have been stopped by him.
UN Remains Barred from Visiting US Prisons Amid Abuse Charges
When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison. ...
But the United Nations has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being steeped in a culture of violence.
Back in 1998, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan prisons to probe sexual misconduct against women prisoners.
Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates, Michigan Governor John Engler barred Coomaraswamy on the eve of her proposed visit.
The late Senator Jesse Helms, former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blocked a proposed prison visit by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in New York, who was planning to observe living conditions in some of the U.S. prisons.
Obama’s visit has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, and the Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Seong-Phil Hong, have jointly called on the U.S. government to facilitate their requests for an official visit to U.S. prisons to advance criminal justice reform.
New York state fast food workers celebrate $15 minimum wage victory
After more than a year of organized action, fast food workers in New York are about to get what they have been demanding: a $15 minimum wage.
The Fast Food Wage Board appointed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that they are recommending a new $15 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers employed by chains with 30 or more stores nationwide.
Those working in New York City will see their wages increase to $15 an hour by December 2018, whereas those working in the rest of the state will see their wages increase at a slower pace and will reach $15 by July 2021. ...
“This is a historical moment. We did it,” Jorel Ware, a McDonald’s worker, said at the rally celebrating the wage board’s recommendations. Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with both “I can’t breathe” and “Fight for $15”, he said fewer people would live in poverty thanks to the wage increase.
“It’s wonderful. I get to live on my own again. I am telling you it’s a wonderful thing. When I started the fight, I just wanted something better for myself,” he said. “The Fight for $15 has showed me what’s possible when people stick and work together.”
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news from the Bayonne Standard Oil Strike: John Stovanchik killed as police open fire on strikers throwing stones.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Aiming to Lift 'Starvation Wage,' Progressive Lawmakers Push for $15 Nationwide
Sanders and Congressional Progressive Caucus introduce new legislation before crowd of striking federal workers
"We are here today to send a very loud and a very clear message to the United States Congress, the President of the United States, and corporate America," Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders bellowed before a crowd of striking low-wage workers in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. "In the richest country on the face of the earth, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty."
And it was with that message and those federal contract workers in mind that Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), along with his progressive counterparts in the U.S House, on Tuesday introduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
"In the year 2015, a job has got to lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it," Sanders said at a rally of striking federal contract workers near the Russell Senate Building in the nation's capital. "The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It has got to be increased to a living wage."
The Pay Workers a Living Wage Act would phase in a $15 minimum wage nationwide by 2020 over 5 steps, increasing to $9 in 2016, $10.50 in 2017, $12.00 in 2018, $13.50 in 2019, and $15 in '20. After that, the minimum wage would be indexed to the median hourly wage.
Move over Bob Dylan: you don't use anywhere near as many words as rappers
He may be the most revered wordsmith in the classic rock pantheon, but Bob Dylan doesn’t have the widest vocabulary in pop. Far from it, in fact.A study by musixmatch has looked at the numbers of words used in song by 93 of the best-selling artists of all time, as listed by Wikipedia, and discovered that Dylan comes only fifth.
The study looked at the 100 densest songs – by total number of words – in each of the artists’ catalogues, and discovered that the artist with the greatest vocabulary is Eminem, with a vocabulary size of 8,818 words. On average, he uses a word he has never previously used every 11 words. He’s followed by Jay Z (6,899), Tupac Shakur (6,569) and Kanye West (5,069). Dylan lags behind in fifth (4,883).
The best-selling act of all time, the Beatles, are only 76th in the list, with a vocabulary of 1,872 words. The Who, whose Pete Townshend is famed for his songwriting and his rock operas, come in 86th, with 1,794 words, behind Shania Twain and New Kids on the Block.
Lobbyists Fundraising for Clinton, Bush, Rubio and Kasich Are Coworkers
Just how incestuous is the small world of big money politics? The leading Democratic candidate and at least three major Republican candidates are all relying on members of the same lobbying firm to help them raise presidential campaign cash: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. ...
Last week, the Clinton, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio campaigns filed reports with the Federal Election Commission to list their lobbyist bundlers, revealing that all three have relied on Akin Gump for campaign cash. In Clinton’s case, her campaign not only used Akin Gump lobbyists as bundlers, but the Clinton campaign treasurer, Jose H. Villarreal, works for Akin Gump’s lobbying division, though he is not registered as a lobbyist. In addition, former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., who is now employed by Akin Gump, has been tapped to raise money for the presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, who kicked off his candidacy on Tuesday.
For Clinton, Akin Gump lobbyists Donald Pongrace, Scott Parven, Allison Binney, Brian Pomper and Arshi Siddiqui are listed as bundlers. Together, Akin Gump’s pro-Clinton team brought in $129,850 in the first six months of this year.
On the Republican side, Akin Gump’s Geoff Verhoff bundled $21,000 for Rubio and Tom Loeffler raised $31,500 for Bush.
The arrangement means that in practical terms, if an establishment candidate makes it to the White House, there’s a good chance he or she will have won with money raised by Akin Gump.
Bernie and Baltimore: “The People” in American Politics
We have all seen how the conservative media patronizes Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. He is a diversion, a cute sideshow, and the newscasters insist that he will not get the Democratic nomination. Someone more mainstream, more sensible—someone like Hillary Clinton—will be the nominee. But, we have to ask, how is it that a candidate can be diversionary and alternative because his platform and politics are about the needs of American people?
The answer is that Bernie isn’t out there talking the deceitful politics of greed that we are used to. Bernie Sanders talks about those politics, in order to expose and challenge them, but he is talking a different politics than we have heard on a national scale in a long time. Because of the Sanders campaign—because it is happening at all—Americans have to recognize that what has been for many years disguised as politics is simply the squabbling of financiers and corporations with politicians on their side who win campaigns based on how enticingly they can package the agenda of capital. Sanders, by doing something different, puts the lie to that mode of politics as definitive. ...
Something else has been happening in America that makes us think differently about politics. Black people in cities American cities have mobilized against police brutality. They have confronted police brutality en masse. ... Like the Sanders campaign, and probably better, the mobilisations of black people in American cities have changed how Americans have to look at politics. Politics is not, for example, the prim show of denouncing racism or feeling sad about racism. Politics is contesting racism. As our recent history of the 1960s shows, if official structures offer no avenue for contestation—if racism pervades those structures so deeply that to seek the aid of the police or the local government is useless—then politics must happen on the paved avenues. And that is politics: politics by the people.
The Evening Greens
It Could Be Months Before We Know Why a Chinese-Owned Pipeline Burst in Alberta
The Nexen pipeline that spurted 5 million liters of thick, black bitumen emulsion into the northern Alberta wilderness could have been leaking for two weeks before it was discovered.
During a media tour of the "hot zone" Wednesday, the company told reporters it hadn't yet figured out the exact cause of one of the worst pipeline spills in Canadian history, but that they knew the leak happened between June 29 and July 15. It could take months for the investigation to wrap up.
Nexen, which is a subsidiary of China's state-owned Cnooc, has apologized for the spill, which leaked out of a break in a pipeline that was less than a year old. It said a crew of about 130 people is working 24 hours a day to contain the equivalent of 31,500 barrels of oil, water, and sand emulsion, but the global energy company is waiting for the bitumen to solidify before it can be removed.
By Wednesday morning, Nexen had erected a bright orange fence around the site, and placed a fake bald eagle behind it to deter wildlife, which is a method suggested by the US Environmental Protection Agency. As reporters toured the site, wildlife cannons also went off and the smell of tar hung in the air.
A dead duck was found before Nexen installed the wildlife deterrents. The company said no other animals had died as a result of the spill.
Cries of Betrayal, Calls to Organize as Obama Approves Arctic Drilling
President Barack Obama on Wednesday afternoon gave the final go-ahead for Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea near Alaska, flouting fierce public opposition to the extraction over the severe danger it poses to the ocean ecosystem, climate, and coastal communities.
"The president has made a big mistake allowing Shell back into the Arctic," declared Center for Biological Diversity Alaska director Rebecca Noblin in a press statement released Wednesday. "The risks of a devastating oil spill in this harsh environment are just too great, particularly for a company with such poor performance record. This is a reckless move by a country that is still struggling to reduce its impact on global warming."
The permits granted Wednesday mean that the oil giant can commence with drilling exploratory wells as soon as its vessels and equipment reach the sea. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement announced it has included some conditions, limiting Shell to "drilling only the top sections of wells and prohibit Shell from drilling into oil-bearing zones."
But campaigners say that the restrictions are weak, and the fact that Shell will now be permitted to drill in the Arctic constitutes a deep betrayal of Obama's own pledge to make tackling climate change one of his top three priorities during his second term.
"With this decision, President Obama has given Shell an open invitation to turn the Chukchi Sea into an energy sacrifice zone, threatening both the resilience of the American Arctic Ocean and his climate legacy," Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Marissa Knodel declared Wednesday. "Shell will pollute the environment, threaten endangered species, impair the subsistence practices and livelihoods of coastal communities, and take us further down the path of climate disruption."
Washington state’s terrifying new climate threat: “Urban wildfires”
Wildfire season isn’t what it used to be.
In Washington state, a combination of ongoing drought and rapid development made 2014 particularly nightmarish, and this year’s unusually hot conditions are fueling another season of dangerous blazes — more than 300 so far, including one, 3,000-plus acre wildfire that destroyed homes and businesses in central Washington.
Washington firefighters are bracing themselves for an onslaught of oxymoronic-sounding “urban wildfires,” NPR reports – basically, brush fires that bump right into cities, threatening entire communities. Officials there say it’s a “growing threat,” one more commonly associated with cities like San Diego — although increasingly, they point out, the weather in Washington state seems to resemble that of southern California.
It’s well understood that Washington, along with the rest of the Pacific Northwest, is hurtling into a future where wildfires occur more frequently and burn more intensely, and where homes are at an increased risk of damage. Rising temperatures resulting from man-made global warming, along with an earlier snowmelt — not to mention the general problem of water scarcity — are the kind of thing that have experts looking at the fires happening now and talking about “a new normal.”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Watchdog for Afghan Reconstruction Thinks Redactions Are for [REDACTED]
Sandra Bland 'Previously Attempted Suicide,' Jail Documents Littered With Discrepancies Say
The U.S. Aids and Abets War Crimes in the Philippines
Now the Senate's Trying to Torpedo Net Neutrality
“If you don’t want to get shot, just do what I tell you”: American cops are on a dangerous power trip
The Ghost of Thatcherism Stalks the Greeks
Sirens of the Potomac: Think Tanks and Torture
Hat tip dharmasyd:
The Eurasian Big Bang
Wow, Bernie in the Appalachians!
Barack Obama's history of dealing poorly with protesters is troubling & undermining my support
Not a man in a dress
A Little Night Music
Cecil Gant - Boozie Boogie
Cecil Gant - Little Baby You're Running Wild
Cecil Gant - I ain't gonna cry no more
Cecil Gant - We're Gonna Rock
Cecil Gant - Cecil's Boogie
Cecil Gant - Another Day, Another Dollar
Cecil Gant - I Wonder
Cecil Gant - Loose As A Goose
Cecil Gant - I'm A Good Man But A Poor Man
Cecil Gant - Nashville Jumps
Cecil Gant - Rock Little Baby
Cecil Gant - In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down
Cecil Gant - Screwy Boogie
Cecil Gant - I Gotta Gal
Cecil Gant - Midnight On Central Avenue
Cecil Gant - What´s the Matter?
Pvt. Cecil Gant - Cecil's Mop Mop
Cecil Gant - Thats The Stuff You Gotta Watch
Cecil Gant - Sloppy Joe's