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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features pioneering Memphis r&b singer Rosco Gordon. Enjoy!
Rosco Gordon - Let's Get High
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
-- Abraham Lincoln
News and Opinion
Obama's "purist" problem rears its ugly head again:
Political Staff Overruled "Purists" at State Department Who Tallied Slavery Problems
A devastating new Reuters story chronicles how political concerns watered down the State Department’s annual report on human trafficking around the world. The story quotes anonymous diplomats as saying that human rights experts shouldn’t be “purists” when it comes to the forced labor policies in foreign countries that amount to modern-day slavery.
The report from Reuters, based on over a dozen sources, alleges that senior personnel at the State Department, up to and including John Kerry’s chief of staff Jonathan Finer, boosted the grades for 14 countries, over the recommendations of experts at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, known in Washington as J/TIP. The upgrades included China, India, Mexico, Cuba and Malaysia. ...
Malaysia’s ascendance to Tier 2 allowed them to remain in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, after a federal statute barred Tier 3 countries from receiving “fast-track” approval for any trade agreements with the United States. ...
Calling those concerned about the forced labor of human beings “purists” fits with a long and troubling history of U.S. governments ignoring human rights concerns in partner countries, particularly to advance trade deals. A study by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office earlier this year found labor-related human rights abuses in 17 of the 20 countries with whom the U.S. has trade agreements.
Syria approaching de facto partition amid Assad military setbacks
The growing anarchy and stalemate in Syria has brought the country closer to de facto partition, as the overstretched and exhausted army of the president, Bashar al-Assad, retreats in the face of a war of attrition that has sapped its manpower.
The regime’s military has sought to retain a footprint in far-flung areas of the country, from Deir Ezzor in Syria’s eastern desert to Aleppo in the north and Deraa in the south, attempting to consolidate its hold over state institutions and protect its officer corps by retreating in the face of overwhelming offensives and subjecting lost territory to relentless and indiscriminate aerial campaigns.
But, facing a manpower shortage as tens of thousands of young men desert, the military has had to rely largely on local militias as enforcers for the regime. It is ceding territory to rebel fighters and the terror group Islamic State in favour of regrouping in its strongholds to the west, slowly paving the way for partition.
Syria foreign minister in Tehran for talks with Iran, Russia
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for talks with Iranian and Russian officials expected to focus on efforts to end the four-year-old war in his country.
Moallem will meet Mikhail Bogdanov, President Vladimir Putin's special envoy to the Middle East, on Tuesday evening before holding talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday, Iranian media reported.
Iran and Russia have stood by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, providing military and financial support, during the civil war, whereas the United States and some of its Gulf Arab allies have said Assad must leave office. ...
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi Foreign Ministrer Adel al-Jubeir and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meeting in Qatar on Monday, "acknowledged the need for a political solution to the conflict and the important role to be played by opposition groups in reaching that solution", a senior State Department official said.
In an article published in four Arab newspapers on Monday, Zarif suggested the formation of a regional dialogue committee to tackle the multiple crises in the Middle East.
The Man al=Who Knew Too Much, from 9/11 to Mass Surveillance - Thomas Drake
Cybersecurity bill could 'sweep away' internet users' privacy, agency warns
Homeland Security admits Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act raises concerns while corporations and data brokers lobby for bill as it returns to Senate
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week.
The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government.
Minnesota senator Al Franken queried the DHS in July; deputy secretary of the department Alejandro Mayorkas responded today that some provisions of the bill “could sweep away important privacy protections” and that the proposed legislation “raises privacy and civil liberties concerns”.
Much of the attention on Cisa has been directed at companies such as Google, Facebook and Comcast, which have large hoards of internet user behavior. But arguably more important are data brokers. Among the groups lobbying for the passage of Cisa are Experian, which tracks consumer trends using information from loyalty cards and other sources and licenses the information to help target advertising; Oracle, whose Data Cloud product works similarly; and Hitrust, which aggregates healthcare information.
After 27 Years, Reporter Who Exposed ECHELON Finds Vindication in Snowden Archive
Ever since legendary British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell told the world in a 1988 magazine article about ECHELON — a massive, automated surveillance dragnet that indiscriminately intercepted phone and Internet data from communications satellites — Western intelligence officials have refused to acknowledge that it existed.
Despite sporadic continuing press reports, people who complained about the program — which, as Campbell disclosed, automatically searched text-based communications using a dictionary of keywords to flag suspicious content — were routinely dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
The only real conspiracy, it turns out, was a conspiracy of silence among the governments that benefited from the program.
As Campbell writes today, in a first-person article in The Intercept, the archive of top-secret documents provided to journalists by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contains a stunning 2005 document that not only confirms ECHELON’s existence as “a system targeting communications satellites”– it shows how the program was kept an official secret for so long.
Cop Filmed Handcuffing 8-Year-Old With Mental Disorder Slapped With Lawsuit
Legal advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against a Kentucky sheriff's deputy who handcuffed two children with mental disorders in an elementary school in 2014, alleging that the students suffered trauma after being punished for behavior that they could not control.
Video of one of the incidents shows Kevin Sumner, a deputy with the Kenton County Sheriff's Office, pulling an 8-year-old boy's arms behind his back and placing handcuffs on his biceps. The third-grader — identified in the lawsuit by the initials S.R. — cries out in pain. ... After attempting to discipline the student, school officials reportedly called Sumner to restrain him.
Various legal advocacy groups, including the Children's Law Center and the ACLU, filed the lawsuit against Sumner on behalf of the boy and another child who was restrained. The plaintiffs are seeking a change in policies by the Kenton County Sheriff's Office, and additional training for police officers who work with special needs children. ...
"These disciplinary practices… feed into the 'school-to-prison pipeline,' where children are funneled out of public schools and into the criminal justice system," the ACLU said in a statement. "Many of these children have disabilities, yet instead of receiving necessary educational and counseling services, they are often punished and pushed out."
Samuel DuBose held up bottle of fragrance not alcohol, coroner says
A bottle held up by a motorist during a traffic stop before he was fatally shot by a University of Cincinnati police officer apparently contained a fragrance, not alcohol, a coroner said on Monday.
The Hamilton County coroner, Dr Lakshmi Sammarco, said in a statement that lab analysis found compounds consistent with those commonly found in air fresheners or perfumes.
UC police had said after the 19 July shooting of Samuel DuBose, 43, that he produced a bottle of alcohol during the traffic stop. A police body camera video released last week showed the bottle he picked up from his car floor appeared to be labeled as gin. Officer Ray Tensing had asked about the bottle while questioning DuBose after stopping him for not having a front license plate.
'He Probably Has AIDS' -- Cops Yell Anti-Gay Slurs as they Brutally Beat Innocent Gay Man
Staten Island, NY — Louis Falcone was lying in bed on the night of June 19, when four NYPD cops showed up to his front door, pulled him outside and began beating him.
The incident was over an alleged noise complaint. According to Falcone, his brother showed up at 4:30 in the morning “obnoxiously drunk,” and the pair got into a heated argument. ...
However, the argument quickly ended, his brother left, and Falcone was attempting to go back to sleep when the four public servants showed up to dole out a beat down. ...
A neighbor from across the street captured the incident on video.
In the video, you can see an officer go into the house and Falcone is dragged out into the yard. All four officers then proceed to pile on top of him and begin their attack. At one point, an officer can be seen stomping Falcone.
Falcone, who had just undergone surgery on his foot and was wearing a boot, was beaten to the point of hospitalization. Falcone says he was left with a broken nose, two black eyes, cuts to his face and body, and needed more foot surgery.
Keiser Report: Summer Solutions: Prof. Steve Keen
Puerto Rico defaults on debt repayment in first for a US commonwealth
Puerto Rico missed its first debt repayment on Monday, the first time the troubled US commonwealth has failed to pay its bills. ... While the default was expected, it is likely to worsen the financial situation for the island as it struggles with debts estimated at $72bn. ...
Late last month Víctor Suárez, chief of staff for governor Alejandro García Padilla, warned that the government did not have the money for the $58m of principal and interest due on Public Finance Corporation bonds.
The debts are a fraction of the $5bn in principal and interest that Puerto Rico is due to pay over the next 12 months, according to an analysis of the commonwealth’s debts compiled by Bloomberg.
In June, García Padilla told the New York Times that Puerto Rico was in a “death spiral” and could not pay its debts. “The debt is not payable,” García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”
One UK Banker Gets Sizable Jail Term. But Will Others Follow?
"A message needs to be sent to the world of banking," said UK Judge Jeremy Cooke on Monday as he handed down a 14-year sentence to former Citibank and UBS trader Tom Hayes, convicted in a London court on eight counts of conspiring to manipulate a global benchmark interest rate known as LIBOR.
While many of the world's leading banks have paid heavy financial penalties for tampering with the key benchmark, 35-year-old Hayes is the first individual to face a jury trial for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is used by the world's biggest banks for trillions of dollars of global borrowing and lending. ...
Hayes claimed he was taking part in an "industry-wide" practice, the Guardian reports. "He described the broking market he worked in as the wild west, a place with no rules and where relationships relied on lavish entertainment. He said it was this high-pressure environment which took its toll on him, prompting him to threaten brokers and pick fights with colleagues to move interest rates to aid his trading."
The UK jury's unanimous verdict, followed about an hour later by Cooke's 14-year prison sentence, is said to be "one of the harshest penalties meted out against a banker since the financial crisis."
Libor Trader Sentenced to 14 Years for Market Manipulation. So What About His Bosses?
On the one hand, it’s gratifying to see someone, finally, prosecuted for a highly profitable financial fraud, as opposed to “rogue traders” like Jerome Kerviel who get the book thrown at them for the crime of losing boatloads of money. On the other, it’s clear that the bosses of the trader in question, Tom Hayes, recently of UBS and Citi, had to have known what he was up to, at least if they were doing the job that supposedly goes along with their lofty pay levels.
The short version of the story: at least as the prosecution successfully told the story, Hayes was the central actor in yen-related Libor bid-rigging from 2006 to 2010, working in concert with traders and salesmen at other banks. The scale of his production makes this claim credible: $260 million in revenues for UBS over three years, which led banks like Lehman and Goldman to try to bid him away. The very fact that Hayes brought in such high levels of revenues (which I assume were gross trading profits; raw churn would not make him an Object of Poaching), presumably with some consistency, in a market with high transparency and thin spreads should be a huge red flag to management that the profits couldn’t possibly all be legit. ...
In fact Citi, a bank that a colleague describes as “run by monkeys” nevertheless figured out that Hayes was up to no good less than a year after hiring him out of UBS. That demonstrates that that attentive management could have told that Hayes was up to no good. ...
Part of why Hayes got 14 years looks to have been both a terrible fact set and some really bad legal judgment calls. For instance, he initially cooperated with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office and gave them 82 hours of interviews in which he admitted to trying to rig Libor fixing submissions by other banks. The reason? The US Department of Justice had filed an indictment in its own criminal case. Hayes was trying to circumvent extradition to the US because the US sentencing guidelines were tougher.
While the US has admittedly been far more willing to throw the book at foreign rather than domestic perps (witness its €8.9 billion against Paribas for money laundering), it’s hard to see the US having imposed anything like a 14 year sentence against Hayes. ... And let’s face it: even a British trader getting a real sanction might force the DoJ and other prosectors to do more than engage in their usual wet noodle lashings of future US bank perps.
Naomi Klein on Visiting the Vatican & the Radical Economic Message Behind Papal Climate Encyclical
Don’t look now, but the TPP just hit a major snag
What once looked like a foregone conclusion now appears stalled by major policy disagreements. What's next?
Since the passage of fast-track authority, the biggest obstacle to more corporate-written international trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not been unions or environmentalists or public health advocates. It’s been the calendar. And jostling by TPP member countries over domestic priorities may have just created such a calendar problem that we will not see a deal completed by the end of the Obama presidency.
Ministerial meetings in Maui last week were supposed to end in an agreement between the 12 nations negotiating TPP. But those talks broke up on Friday without a breakthrough. Officials played down the differences, claiming that anywhere from 90 to 98 percent of the details have been finalized. But the outstanding issues involve the basic building blocks of a trade agreement — specifically, what industries get tariff elimination and unfettered market access, and which remain protected. ...
If TPP talks don’t restart until November, the timeline slides into elections in the U.S., exactly what President Obama had been trying to avoid. Under fast-track rules, the government must publish the complete text of any trade agreement 60 days before signing. So even completion of TPP in November — and there’s no guarantee of that — would mean that signing wouldn’t take place until next January. And after that, there are reporting requirements that must take place before the White House can introduce the bill in Congress, which could mean another delay of at least 90 days. At that point, Congress has 90 session days to act on the implementing legislation.
So you’re talking about a series of TPP votes in Congress right in the middle of both the presidential race and Congressional primaries, a distasteful scenario for members who don’t want to draw an angry challenger because of their trade vote. ...
This is what happens when world leaders try to make deals they know their populations will detest. Apparently the last threads of democracy remaining are strong enough that, sooner or later, these same leaders must stand before their people and defend gutting regulations, selling out their sovereignty and benefiting multinational corporations instead of the public. It’s apparently hard to find a good time to do that.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news from Chicago Day Book: is the appearance of a vaguely threatening sign on a south side neighborhood fence an attempt to discredit IWW?
Tune in at 2pm!
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239 Years Ago, Adam Smith Predicted Fury of Seattle Business at CEO Who Pays Workers Well
Dan Price, the CEO of a small Seattle credit card processing company called Gravity Payments, announced several months ago that over the next three years he’ll gradually raise the minimum salary there to $70,000.
How did his counterparts at other businesses react? Let’s get a prediction from Adam Smith, who wrote this 239 years ago in the most famous book about economics ever published, The Wealth of Nations:
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals.
Was Adam Smith right? As a recent New York Times story demonstrates, he called it precisely:
Brian Canlis, a co-owner of his family-named restaurant, is [a client of Gravity Payments]. He said he was fond of Mr. Price, but was more discomfited by his actions. …
The pay raise at Gravity, Mr. Canlis told Mr. Price, “makes it harder for the rest of us.”
Mr. Price winced. “It pains me to hear Brian Canlis say that,” he said later. “The last thing I would ever want to do is make a client feel uncomfortable.” …
Leah Brajcich, who oversees sales at Gravity, fielded complaints from several customers who accused her boss of communist or socialist sympathies that would drive up their own employees’ wages …
As for other business leaders in Mr. Price’s social circle, they were split on whether he was a brilliant strategist or simply nuts.
Bernie Sanders, Open Borders and a Serious Route to Global Equality
Some progressives expressed dismay last week to discover that Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, doesn't favor a policy of open immigration. ... It is hard to justify people in the United States living so much better and longer lives than people in places like Bangladesh or Burundi, just like it's hard to justify the children of the rich and privileged in the United States living so much better and longer lives than their poorer counterparts, but there is not a plausible story where this inequality will be addressed by mass immigration. There are, however, more serious ways to think about addressing global inequality.
One of the main reasons that workers in the United States get much higher wages than workers in the developing world is that they have more capital to work with. They also are much better educated on average. The same policy can help to address both gaps. Specifically, we can make our "intellectual property" freely available to the rest of the world at the cost of transferring it, which will generally be close to zero.
We can accomplish this by exempting the developing world from intellectual property (IP) claims in the form of patent and copyright protection. ... There would no longer be any issues with drugs costing tens of thousands of dollars a year. Nearly all of them would sell for just a few dollars per prescription. The same would apply to chemicals used in agriculture, also to newly designed crops that use land or water more efficiently. The operating systems and software on computers and cell phones would also be available at no cost, as would be various programs applications in research and business. ...
The education aspect of this story would also benefit from ending IP claims in the developing world. If schools and training facilities in the developing world all could gain access to books, computer software, online lectures and other educational material at zero cost, it would substantially reduce the cost of education. In short, a substantial portion of the benefits of the wealth can be transferred to the developing world simply by changing IP rules. ...
Fortunately Senator Sanders has already been thinking along these lines. Back in 2011 he proposed two bills that would replace patent monopolies with more modern mechanisms for financing drug research. His specific proposals may not be the best financing method, but they are at least a serious effort to move away from the anachronistic patent system.
Elizabeth Warren Challenges Hillary Clinton To Stop The Revolving Door - David Dayen Discusses
'Out of touch' team Miliband couldn't find minimum wage earner for event
Ed Miliband’s team was so out of touch that it struggled to find a single person earning the minimum wage to appear at a campaign event as the party geared up for the general election, a former senior adviser has revealed.
In an article for the website Labour List, Arnie Graf – a US community organiser who was a mentor to Barack Obamaand advised Labour between 2011 and 2013 – says he was enlisted to help find a minimum wage worker to speak to the former Labour leader at an event that the media had been invited to in autumn 2013.
“The point of the conversation was to show how difficult it was for a minimum wage worker to get on in life,” Graf writes. “There was only one problem. No one had been able to locate a minimum wage worker for Ed to talk with.
“I felt this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. How could it be that the Labour party, supposedly the party of working people, was not in relationship with a single minimum wage worker? It was stunning!”
The Evening Greens
In Victory for Animals and Their Defenders, Judge Strikes Down Idaho 'Ag-Gag' Law
Banning the filming of factory farm operations is an unconstitutional violation of both free speech and equal protection clauses, says federal judge
In a victory for animal rights advocates—and the animals on factory farms they seek to protect—a federal judge on Monday ruled Idaho's controversial "ag-gag" law unconstitutional in a decision that said criminalizing the undercover documentation of livestock abuse violates both free speech and the equal protection clause.
"The effect of the statute will be to suppress speech by undercover investigators and whistleblowers concerning topics of great public importance: the safety of the public food supply, the safety of agricultural workers, the treatment and health of farm animals, and the impact of business activities on the environment," U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill stated in his 28-page ruling.
Under the law, people filming agricultural operations without permission in Idaho face up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. By comparison, a jail sentence for an animal cruelty conviction is capped at six months and a maximum fine of $5,000.
However, as Winmill's ruling continued, the legal arguments in favor of banning undercover investigations—long a tactic of animal rights groups with no other way to prove or expose such abuse—did not stand up to scrutiny. "Audio and visual evidence is a uniquely persuasive means of conveying a message," he wrote, "and it can vindicate an undercover investigator or whistleblower who is otherwise disbelieved or ignored. Prohibiting undercover investigators or whistleblowers from recording an agricultural facility's operations inevitably suppresses a key type of speech because it limits the information that might later be published or broadcast."
In the end, the judge concluded, "the facts show the state's purpose in enacting the statute was to protect industrial animal agriculture by silencing its critics."
Naomi Klein: Obama Is Beginning to Sound Like a Climate Leader, When Will He Act Like One?
Global Glaciers Melting up to Three Times Rate of 20th Century
New study finds glaciers disappearing at 'historically unprecedented' pace worldwide
The 21st century has already seen a record-smashing decline in the world's glaciers, which are melting at up to three times the rate of the 20th century and will continue to disappear even without further climate change, an alarming new study concludes.
Entitled Historically Unprecedented Global Glacier Decline in the Early 21st Century, the research was published Monday in the Journal of Glaciology and adds to the growing body of evidence that human-made climate change is heating the planet to unseen levels.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service, based at the University of Zurich, compared trends in the first ten years of the 21st century (2001 to 2010) with "all available earlier data from in-situ, air-borne, and satellite-borne observations as well as to reconstructions from pictorial and written sources," according to a report summary.
"The observed glaciers currently lose between half a meter and one meter of its ice thickness every year—this is two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century," explained Michael Zemp, lead author of the study and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, in a press statement about the report.
Cecil Outcry Prompts Major Airlines to Ban Shipment of Hunting 'Trophies'
Three major US airlines have announced they will ban big game trophies as freight after international outrage erupted over the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe.
Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines confirmed on Monday they would no longer transport bodies or parts of what hunters call "the big five" — lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceros and buffalo.
As recently as May, Delta had said that it would continue to allow such shipments — as long as they were legal. At the time, some international carriers prohibited such cargo.
But in the face of mounting pressure from campaign groups, and a petition signed by nearly 400,000 people on change.org to ban such shipments, it seems the airline has had a change of heart.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
New Greek Bailout Increases the Possibility of Grexit
Greece Succumbs to Imperialist Banksterism
Koch Political Machine Focuses on “Freedom” to Pollute and Pay Less Taxes
Israel wrecked my home. Now it wants my land.
US Politicians’ Racist Anti-Iranian Remarks Don’t Make Headlines
W. E. B. Du Bois to Malcolm X: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb
Why America's Inequality Problem Is About a Lot More Than Money
The Wettest Rainforest in the United States Has Gone Up in Flames
You don't have the standing to invent a 'race problem' for Bernie
Five advocacy organizations join together to assist transgender students nationally
A Little Night Music
Roscoe Gordon - Bop It !
Rosco Gordon - Just a Little Bit
Roscoe Gordon - Surely I love you
Rosco Gordon - No More Doggin
Rosco Gordon - Booted
Rosco Gordon - T-Model Boogie
Rosco Gordon - Sally Jo
Wayne Bennett + Rosco Gordon - Hello Baby
Rosco Gordon - Bop With Me Baby
Rosco Gordon - A Girl To Love
Rosco Gordon - You Got My Bait
Rosco Gordon - New Orleans Wimmen
Rosco Gordon - The Chicken
Rosco Gordon - Cheese and Crackers
Rosco Gordon - Sit Right Here
Roscoe Gordon & The Red Tops - Chicken In The Rough
Rosco Gordon - A little bit of magic
Rosco Gordon - Rosco´s Boogie