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.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features possibly the greatest blues harmonica player ever Little Walter Jacobs. Enjoy!
Little Walter Jacobs - Little Walter's Jump
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
News and Opinion
Critics Refute NSA Defense of 'Terrorist Thwarting' Spy Program
As the Obama administration and the National Security Administration continue to defend their massive spy and data collection program by asserting that the information has been essential in preventing "dozens of terrorist attacks," new analysis reveals that these assertions are false, amounting to little more than "wide-ranging fishing expeditions with little to show for them."
Top intelligence officials, including NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, speaking before Congress Wednesday said that the NSA secret spy program has helped thwart over 50 "potential terrorist events," including 10 within the United States.
A new examination of all incidents of "homegrown jihadist and non-jihadist terrorism" in the US since 9/11 by the nonprofit think-tank the New America Foundation along with Syracuse's Maxwell School found that "NSA surveillance yielded little of major value to prevent numerous attacks in the United States."
Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004
Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004.
Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.
"Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now." ...
After going public with his allegations in 2005, Tice later admitted that he had been a key source in a bombshell New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretapping of international communications in the U.S. The article forced Bush to admit that the practice was indeed used on a small number of Americans, but Tice maintained that the NSA practice was likely being used the gather records for millions of Americans. The NSA denied Tice's allegations.
Hat tip
Lisa Lockwood:
Steve Wozniak: 'I felt about Edward Snowden the way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg'
The Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has backed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and admitted he feels "a little bit guilty" that new technologies had introduced new ways for governments to monitor people. ...
Wozniak said: "All these things about the constitution, that made us so good as people – they are kind of nothing.
"They are all dissolved with the Patriot Act. There are all these laws that just say 'we can secretly call anything terrorism and do anything we want, without the rights of courts to get in and say you are doing wrong things'. There's not even a free open court any more. Read the constitution. I don't know how this stuff happened. It's so clear what the constitution says."
He said he had been brought up to believe that "communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons, they disappeared them – these kinds of things were part of Russia. We are getting more and more like that."
The latest revelations about the NSA, show that judges have approved orders allowing it to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant, according to top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies.
Obama administration freaking out and losing it over whistleblowers:
Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.
Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.
President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct. ...
“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy. ...
Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.
“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”
USIS Under Investigation Over Edward Snowden Background Check
The government contractor that performed a background investigation of the man who says he disclosed two National Security Agency surveillance programs is under investigation, a government watchdog said Thursday.
Patrick McFarland, the inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management, said during a Senate hearing that the contractor USIS is being investigated and that the company performed a background investigation of Edward Snowden.
McFarland also told lawmakers that there may have been problems with the way the background check of Snowden was done, but McFarland and one of his assistants declined to say after the hearing what triggered the decision to investigate USIS and whether it involved the company's check of Snowden. ...
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said she and her staff have been told that the inquiry is a criminal investigation related "to USIS' systemic failure to adequately conduct investigations under its contract" with the Office of Personnel Management.
FBI’s Use of Drones for U.S. Surveillance Raises Fears over Privacy, Widening Corporate-Gov’t Ties
Skype Developed Program to Abet Gov’t Spying
New details have emerged on ties between U.S. intelligence and the nation’s largest technology firms. The New York Times reports the online communications giant Skype created a secret program to explore ways of providing the government with easy access to customers’ information. Dubbed "Project Chess," the program was established to navigate the legal and technical obstacles to enabling government monitoring of Skype calls and chats.
Brazil erupts in protest: more than a million on the streets
The streets of central Rio de Janeiro and dozens of other cities echoed with percussion grenades and swirled with teargas last night as ranks of riot police scattered the biggest demonstrations Brazil has seen for more than two decades. ...
A vast crowd – estimated by the authorities at 300,000 and more than a million by participants – filled Rio's streets, one of a wave of huge nationwide marches against corruption, police brutality, poor public services and excess spending on the World Cup.
Simultaneous demonstrations were reported in at least 80 cities, with a total turnout that may have been close to 2 million. An estimated 110,000 marched in São Paulo, 80,000 in Manaus, 50,000 in Recife, and 20,000 in Belo Horizonte and Salvador.
Clashes were reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in Campinas north of São Paulo and in the north-eastern city of Salvador.
Thirty-five people were injured in the capital Brasilia, where 30,000 people took to the streets. In São Paulo, one man died when a frustrated car driver rammed into the crowd. Elsewhere countless people, including many journalists, were hit by rubber bullets.
The vast majority of those involved were peaceful. Many wore Guy Fawkes masks, emulating the global Occupy campaign. Others donned red noses – a symbol of a common complaint that people are fed up being treated as clowns.
Million-strong anti-govt protests sweep Brazil, 1 killed
Bracing for Mass Rally Brazil Deploys Spy Planes, Thousands of Police
The fierce police crackdown witnessed in response to the largely peaceful demonstrations has spurred international attention and support to the nationwide protest.
In a gesture to curb the growing wave of anger, government officials in at least five major Brazilian cities announced Wednesday evening the reduction in public transportation fares—an issue which provided the initial spark for the resistance movement.
Following the news, there is little sign that the protests will ease up.
A statement issued by the protest group Free Fare Movement said the struggle "neither begins nor ends today." They credit the government's submission to the "blocked streets, barricades, and civil unrest" and vow to continue to fight until they achieve "a public transport without any charge, where decisions are taken by the users and not by politicians and businessmen."
Though initiated by unrest over the fare increase, the protests have spiraled into a larger demonstration against political corruption and the prioritization of tourism and international events such as the upcoming World Cup and Olympic games over basic civic commodities.
Mainstream media accused of belittling Brazilian protests
Brazilians marching against corruption and the cost of the 2014 World Cup are also angry at the media, including the influential Globo network, accused of belittling their movement.
In Sao Paulo, the country’s business and media capital, Globo TV crews have been jeered while covering protest rallies and on Tuesday demonstrators set the satellite van of another station ablaze. ...
“Globo always manipulates facts and tries to put the demonstrators in a bad light, focusing on the vandalism of a few hooligans,” said Leitane Luranque, one of thousands demonstrators at Monday’s rally in Sao Paulo.
“And they consistently underestimate the number of demonstrators.”
It is a complaint frequently heard among protesters.
Globo, part of a group that includes radio networks, newspapers and pay-TV operations, is routinely vilified on Brazilian social networks as well as in “Get out, Globo” graffiti scrawled by the demonstrators.
Reporters and protesters say Globo crews often do not wear logos identifying their network so as to avoid being assaulted.
Greek leftists quit coalition government after public media shutdown
Greece’s moderate Democratic Left party will withdraw from the coalition government, one of the party’s ministers confirmed on Friday after a week-long crisis sparked by the shock closure of the country’s state broadcaster.
Nurses, Environmentalists Lead Keystone XL Protest in San Francisco
Tennessee Official Says Complaining About Water Quality Could Be Considered 'Act of Terrorism'
A representative for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation told a group of concerned citizens that complaining about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” The Tennessean reports.
Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, made the claim during a meeting with residents of Maury County, Tennessee. Organized by State Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, the gathering sought to address complaints by residents that area water was making their children sick. In audio obtained by The Tennessean, Smith can be heard equating water quality complaints, an act of citizenry, with DHS-defined acts of terrorism:
We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously … But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.
Is NYC's Climate Plan Enough to Win the Race Against Rising Seas?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to protect New York City from future superstorm Sandys and other climate-related threats is the most ambitious and scientifically accurate plan of its kind in the world. But as global warming intensifies and sea levels rise, even this strategy may not be enough to flood-proof the city for very long, experts say.
The climate adaptation plan, unveiled last week, would funnel $19.5 billion into more than 250 initiatives to reduce the city's vulnerability to coastal flooding and storm surge. It comes eight months after Sandy engulfed 1,000 miles of the Atlantic coastline—delivering a 14-foot storm surge to New York and crippling the nation's financial capital. The storm showed just how unprepared New York and other coastal cities are to handle flooding from weather disasters. ...
Sea level rise in New York City has averaged 1.2 inches per decade since 1900, nearly twice the observed global rate. The NPCC estimates that in less than four decades the city's harbor could be 2.6 feet higher than it is today. ...
Scientists are concerned that even the worst-case projections envisioned in Bloomberg's plan could be too conservative. That's because the model's projections stop in the 2050s, even though they will be used to develop construction guidelines for buildings that could stand in New York's floodplain for centuries.
5,000 Missing in India Floods: Scientists Say Global Warming is to Blame
As floods and landslides slam the Indian state of Uttarakhand, where 5,000 are missing and 600 are confirmed dead, scientists warn that India is seeing the effects of a global warming crisis that will only worsen as greenhouse gases rise.
Heavy monsoon rains set off dangerous flash floods that tore through over 100 towns, ripping up infrastructure, bursting dams, shattering bridges, and destroying homes. ...
Studies point to climate change as the culprit behind increasingly deadly floods in India.
India's monsoon season in the late summer and early fall typically brings in 80% of the country's rain. Yet, a study in the Geophysical Research Letters found that greenhouse gases are causing India's rainy season to become increasingly variable and unpredictable, with periods of flood followed by sudden bursts of rain, unleashing deadly flashfloods.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
"Capitalism will last indefinitely."
From COINTELPRO to Prism: Why the Government Spies on Communities of Color
Business in the Front, Party in the Back: Driving Down Memory Lane in a '68 Chevy El Camino SS
Kenyan judge rules that strip-searching transgender woman to determine her gender undignified
A Little Night Music
Little Walter - My Babe
Hound Dog Taylor & Little Walter - Wild About you baby
Little Walter - Juke
Little Walter - Boom, Boom Out Goes the Lights
Little Walter - Key To The Highway
Little Walter - Fast Boogie
Little Walter - Blues With A Feeling
Little Walter - Too Late
Little Walter - Roller coaster
Little Walter - Last Night
Little Walter - Crazy Mixed Up World
Little Walter - Dead Presidents
Little Walter - Blue Light
Little Walter - Can't Hold Out Much Longer
Little Walter - I Hate To See You Go
Little Walter - Temperature
Little Walter - Rocker
Blue Midnight: The Film Biography of Little Walter
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!
|