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 Johnny Otis. Enjoy!
Johnny Otis - Hand Jive
“When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.”
-- Barack Obama
News and Opinion
WikiLeaks threatens to name NSA-targeted country despite warnings it may lead to deaths
Despite warnings that doing so “could lead to increased violence” and potentially deaths, anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks says it plans to publish the name of a country targeted by a massive United States surveillance operation.
On Monday this week, journalists at The Intercept published a report based off of leaked US National Security Agency documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden which suggested that the NSA has been collecting in bulk the contents of all phone conversations made or received in two countries abroad.
Only one of those nations, however — the Bahamas — was named by The Intercept. The other, journalists Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras wrote this week, was withheld as a result of “credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence.”
WikiLeaks has since accused The Intercept and its parent company First Look Media of censorship and says they will publish the identity of the country if the name remains redacted in the original article. The Intercept’s Greenwald fired back over Twitter, though, and said his outlet chose to publish more details than the Washington Post, where journalists previously reported on a related call collection program but chose to redact more thoroughly.
“We condemn Firstlook for following the Washington Post into censoring the mass interception of an entire nation,” WikiLeaks tweeted on Monday.
“It is not the place of Firstlook or the Washington Post to deny the rights of an entire people to know they are being mass recorded,” WikiLeaks added. “It is not the place of Firstlook or WaPo to decide how a people will [choose] to act against mass breaches of their rights by the United States.”
The Bahamas Wants to Know Why the NSA is Recording Its Phone Calls
Government officials in the Bahamas want their U.S. counterparts to explain why the National Security Agency has been intercepting and recording every cell phone call taking place on the island nation.
Responding to a report published by The Intercept on Monday, which revealed that the NSA has been targeting the Bahamas’ entire mobile network and storing the audio of every phone call traversing the network for up to 30 days, Bahamian officials told the Nassau Guardian that they had contacted the U.S. and vowed to release a statement regarding the revelations.
In a front-page story published Tuesday, Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell told the Guardian that his government had reached out to the U.S. for an explanation. Mitchell said the cabinet was set to meet to discuss the matter and planned to issue a statement on the surveillance. The Bahamian minister of national security told the paper he intended to launch an inquiry into the NSA’s surveillance but did not provide a comment.
Restrictions placed on NSA's data store after intense talks over surveillance bill
Last-minute negotiations over the details of a congressional surveillance bill have resulted in restrictions around the National Security Agency’s massive repository of analysed call data.
Intense closed-door talks between lawmakers and Obama administration and intelligence officials that wrapped up Tuesday afternoon have finalised the language of the USA Freedom Act. The bill is expected to receive a vote on the House floor on Thursday.
The latest twist for the bill is an expanded provision that would require the government to “promptly” purge phone records that do not contain “foreign intelligence information,” effectively pruning irrelevant records from the NSA’s trees of analyzed phone data.
But several other changes to the bill, which civil libertarians already considered watered down after a series of legislative compromises, have cost it critical support from privacy groups ahead of Thursday’s vote.
Under the new provision, the government would have to “adopt minimisation procedures that require the prompt destruction of all call detail records” turned over by the telecoms firms “that the government determines are not foreign intelligence information.” ...
But the language does not define key terms, such as how long a record can be withheld before its “prompt” destruction. Nor does it specify how the government will “determine” a call record is unrelated to foreign intelligence information if, as can occur with the corporate store today, NSA’s automated programs sift through the data.
I think that I am going to award China two points for the locution, "mincing rascal."
China calls US 'mincing rascal' over hacking charges
Washington is playing the victim of cyber-espionage when in fact it is the world's top intelligence power, a Chinese state-run newspaper has said in a sharply worded editorial after US authorities levelled criminal hacking charges at China's army.
"Regarding the issue of network security, the US is such a mincing rascal that we must stop developing any illusions about it," wrote the Global Times, which is close to the ruling Communist party. ...
The Global Times, which often takes a nationalistic stance, said Washington's "pretentious accusation against Chinese army officers is ridiculous" given that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had engaged in widespread cyber-spying through its Prism programme.
"Interpol should have ordered the arrest of designers and implementers of the Prism programme but they did not," the paper wrote. "Therefore the US is acting so shameless by posting photos of the five Chinese army officers."
Facing Senate Uproar, Obama Admin to Release Memo Justifying Drone Killings of Americans Overseas
Report: secret drone memo to be disclosed by Obama administration
On the eve of a critical Senate vote and under court order, the Obama administration signaled it will publicly reveal a secret memo describing its legal justification for using drones to kill US citizens suspected of terrorism overseas.
Two administration officials told the Associated Press that the Justice Department has decided not to appeal a court of appeals ruling requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The decision to release the documents comes as the Senate is to vote Thursday on advancing President Barack Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the first US circuit court of appeals in Boston. Senator Rand Paul had vowed to fight Barron's confirmation, and some Democratic senators were calling for the memo's public release before a final vote. ...
Until now, the administration has fought in court to keep the writings from public view. But administration officials said that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr decided this week not appeal an 21 April ruling requiring disclosure by the second US circuit court of appeals in New York and that Attorney General Eric Holder concurred with his opinion.
The release could take some time, since the redactions are subject to court approval.
I wonder when it will be considered ok by the powers-that-be for the american people to be let in on the details of the bay of pigs fiasco that was performed in their names.
CIA wins secrecy for Bay of Pigs history
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled, 2-1, that the CIA can withhold the volume about the 1961 [Bay of Pigs] operation against Cuba in its entirety under a Freedom of Information Act exemption that protects government agencies' interest in receiving candid advice.
The National Security Archive, which collects government records on foreign policy and security issues, requested the history known as "Volume V" in 2005.
"The FOIA requester points out that there was no final CIA history that arose out of or corresponded to Volume V. That is true, but we do not see the relevance of the point. There may be no final agency document because a draft died on the vine. But the draft is still a draft and thus still predecisional and deliberative,"Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote, joined by Senior Judge Stephen Williams.
"The writer does not know at the time of writing whether the draft will evolve into a final document. But the writer needs to know at the time of writing that the privilege will apply and that the draft will remain confidential, in order for the writer to feel free to provide candid analysis," added Kavanaugh, who worked in the White House counsel's office under President George W. Bush.
Judge Judith Rogers dissented, arguing that the CIA had not demonstrated how the release of the historical volume would disrupt the agency's decision-making process. She also questioned the justification for withholding the history wholesale when FOIA requires that agencies release non-exempt portions of documents, including in most cases facts contained in a recommendation or proposal.
The Guantánamo "Suicides" Revisited: Did CIA Hide Deaths of Tortured Prisoners at Secret Site?
Ukraine Oligarch’s Bid to Stop Separatists Fails
After last week’s New York Times reported “rout” of pro-autonomy protesters in eastern Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol didn’t pan out, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov decided to take another shot at it this week.
Akhmetov sees his business interests at risk in the event of Mariupol’s secession, and continues to rail against the “economic ruin” the protesters would bring, urging his hundreds of thousands of employees to attend counter-rallies.
Yet despite continued media reports of Akhmetov’s counter-secession moving being a fait accompli, the rallies have been sparsely attended, to say the least, and don’t seem to have seriously stalled the protest movement anywhere.
Ukraine and International Law: The Double Standard at the New York Times Editorial Page
[F]rom September 2001 to March 2003, a period in which the Bush administration repeatedly threatened to invade Iraq, the New York Times never mentioned the words “UN Charter” or “international law” in any of its seventy editorials on Iraq. Keep in mind that Iraq is several thousand miles from the United States and had nothing to do with 9/11, that the Bush administration killed and maimed over a million Iraqis while it destroyed Iraq, and that President Obama took almost as long to “withdraw” from Iraq as it took for the U.S. to fight World War II, all at a total cost of least $3 trillion. This was all greatly assisted by the editorialists, op-ed columnists, foreign-desk editors, and foreign correspondents of the New York Times.
Today, the Times’ editorial page is shaking its fist at Russia about the “invasion” of Crimea, during which no civilians in Crimea were killed and nothing destroyed. Soon afterwards, a large majority in Crimea voted to be incorporated into Russia. These events were triggered by the U.S.-supported overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, which instantly rendered the government of Ukraine unelected and illegitimate, a fact that the editorial page has ignored.
In my view, the question of the legal status of Russia’s annexation of Crimea should be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the judicial arm of the United Nations with jurisdiction over UN member states – for an authoritative opinion. The mandate in any such case should include a factual assessment and legal opinion of the interventionist involvement of the United States in the U.S.-supported overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine.
And given its current enthusiasm for international law, one should expect the Times’ editorial page to soon call for a referral to the ICJ concerning the legality of the Obama administration’s extrajudicial killing of individuals overseas with missiles fired remotely by aerial drones.
This expectation comes from the seemingly principled invocation of international law by the editorial page as applied to Russia. For example, in a March 11 editorial called “Penalties for Mr. Putin,” the Times asserted: “The occupation of Crimea is illegal under international law, and it is time for Europe to join the United States in threatening the sort of costly sanctions that will leave Mr. Putin no doubt that they will not tolerate violations of Ukrainian territorial integrity.”
Russia, China seal $400bn gas contract
As Putin looks east, China and Russia sign huge gas supply deal
China and Russia signed a $400-billion gas supply deal on Wednesday, securing the world's top energy user a major source of cleaner fuel and opening up a new market for Moscow as it risks losing European customers over the Ukraine crisis.
The long-awaited agreement is a political triumph for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is courting partners in Asia as those in Europe and the United States seek to isolate him over Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
Commercially, much depends on the price and other terms of the contract, which has been more than a decade in the making. China had the upper hand as negotiations entered their final phase, aware of Putin's face-off with the West.
"This is the biggest contract in the history of the gas sector of the former USSR," said Putin, after the agreement was signed in Shanghai between state-controlled entities Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC). ...
Beyond supplying China with gas via a pipeline, the deal opens up an opportunity for Gazprom to become a bigger player in the booming Asian LNG market, a sector it has so far not been involved in on a major scale.
Hat tip to dharmafarmer:
Russia, China sign deal to bypass U.S. dollar
In a symbolic blow to U.S. global financial hegemony, Russia and China took a small step toward undercutting the domination of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency on Tuesday when Russia’s second biggest financial institution, VTB, signed a deal with the Bank of China to bypass the dollar and pay each other in domestic currencies. ...
Demand for the dollar, which has long served as a safe and reliable reserve currency in international transactions, has allowed the U.S. to borrow almost unlimited cash and spend well beyond its means, which some economists say has afforded the United States an outsize influence on world affairs.
But the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a bloc of the world’s five major emerging economies — have long sought to diminish their dependence on the dollar as a means of reshaping the world financial and geopolitical order. In the absence of a viable alternative, however, replacing it has proved difficult.
For its part, “China sees the dominance of the dollar in international trade transactions as a remnant of American global dominance, which they hope to overthrow in the years ahead,” said Michael Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College. “This is a small step in that direction, to reduce the primacy of the dollar in international trade.” ...
“Breaking the dominance of the U.S. dollar in international trade between the BRICS is something that the group has been talking about for some time,” said Chris Weafer, a founding partner of Macro-Advisory, a consultancy in Moscow. “The Ukraine crisis and the threats voiced by the U.S. administration may well provide the catalyst for that to start happening.”
State Dept: US Not Supporting General’s Libya Takeover
Given Libyan General Khalifa Hifter’s decades of US (and CIA in particular) ties, the State Department has apparently decided it can’t stay completely mum on his military takeover of parliament.
State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki says that “we do not condone or support” anything Gen. Hifter is doing, including his attack on Libya’s parliament, nor did they play any role in “assisting” the operation. She punctuated that point by insisting “we have not had contact with him recently.”
Fed Pulls Back Quantitative Easing
US senators say more needs to be done after Credit Suisse indictment
The two top US senators who led the investigation into Credit Suisse’s decades-long tax evasion schemes expressed concerns on Tuesday about the Justice Department’s criminal indictment of the bank.
Senators Carl Levin and John McCain welcomed the $2.6bn fine of the bank announced Monday but said more needed to be done. Levin and McCain led the permanent subcommittee on investigations team that uncovered much of the wrongdoing at the bank. ...
McCain said he was “gratified” by the Justice Department’s decision to require Credit Suisse to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing. ... “Over the next few days, I look forward to reviewing this guilty plea closely to see whether it appropriately holds officers, directors and key executives individually accountable and whether the plea will be sufficient to help deter similar misconduct in the future,” he said.
A number of junior executives at the bank have been prosecuted over the massive tax scam but so far no senior executives have been held accountable. At a press conference on Tuesday, chief executive Brady Dougan, who has been with the bank for 25 years, said he had never considered resigning over the scandal. "Going forward I am very committed to Credit Suisse," he said. ...
On Monday, attorney general Eric Holder said the scheme had involved “hundreds of Credit Suisse employees, including at the manager level” and said more prosecutions were to come. ... The criminal indictment was, however, carefully constructed in order to protect the bank from severe financial consequences outside of the fine. Nor did it call for the resignation of senior executives.
Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality
Virtually every liberal I know wants to raise taxes on the rich to pay for programs to benefit the poor. They see these taxes as necessary to reduce income inequality.
Me? I’d rather send Robin Hood to Wall Street to aim his straight and true arrows at the Black Hearts of the conniving CEOs that President Obama refuses to investigate for their crimes. Robin Hood and his Merry Band would cart them off to the dungeons where they belong.
I think that real punishment would do one heck of a lot more to reduce income inequality than taxes will ever do. Put a thousand of Wall Street’s “finest” behind bars.
Put such fear into our Bankster Class that before they try to push some new fancy derivative deal on a pension fund, they’ll imagine what it would be like waking up in a cell with a tattooed roomie named Bubba.
Trying to punish them with taxes is a fool’s errand. They’ll just raise their compensation package and buy tax exemptions from Congress. ...
Every time a progressive proposes a tax hike on the rich to pay for welfare, the Koch brothers giggle in gleeful delight. It is the surest way to prevent any policies that would help the poor. Tying tax hikes to sensible policy plays right into the greedy hands of the Conservatives and Regressives.
Did you ever hear a One-Percenter ask for a tax hike to bail out Wall Street? Come on, they are not that stupid.
Behind the Koch Brothers: New Book Spills the Secrets of Nation's Most Powerful & Private Dynasty
Low Wages, Always: Barack and Michelle Obama Bestow More Wet Kisses on Wal-Mart
Earlier this month President Obama visited a Bay Area Wal-Mart to praise the world's largest and most anti-union retailer for its supposed environmental responsibility. The fact is that Wal-Mart's maintenance of diesel-fueled supply chains between its stores and wherever on the planet wages are lowest and environmental restrictions are totally absent make it a major ongoing contributor to runaway climate change. The president's appearance therefore, was simply a hypocritical exercise in greenwashing for Wal-Mart. ...
[I]n 2007 with her husband on the way to the White House, Michelle Obama felt compelled to resign from the board of TreeHouse Foods, a major Wal-Mart vendor. “I won't shop there,” said presidential candidate Barack Obama when questioned about Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO labor forum.
Of course labor audiences in 2007 and 2008 were where Obama pledged to renegotiate NAFTA, and immediately raise the minimum wage as soon as he took office. The president never mentioned raising the minimum wage again till about 2012 when Republicans were safely in control of the House of Representatives, and instead of renegotiating NAFTA, President Obama is engaged in secret negotiations to extend it across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Evidently the Obama that promises is a different guy, and far less powerful, than the Obama that acts. ...
The fiction that elected Democrats represent poor and working people and stand for safeguarding the environment is just that – a fiction. There is a new neoliberal paradigm that allows Democrats to mumble a few words about raising the minimum wage when the other party controls Congress, that claims the moment they took office was the day the oceans stopped rising. If these were curable bugs in the political system, votes and advocacy would wake enough people up to change them. But what if they're not bugs in the system at all. What if these are its core and immutable features? What then? Isn't it time to step outside their two-party, capitalist box, to dream and begin to build something else?
The Evening Greens
Tar Sands Blockaders Shut Down Enbridge Work Site
Climate defenders in Canada have stopped work on a section of Enbridge's controversial 'Line 9' pipeline in Burlington, Ontario Tuesday morning, as part of a rising tide of resistance against the proliferation of tar sands oil—dubbed "the dirtiest fuel in the world."
The group—which is comprised of environmentalists, local residents, and members of First Nations—arrived at the road leading to the site at 7:00 AM and began turning away Enbridge Oil employees. The protesters say that Enbridge is undergoing construction to prepare the pipe to carry tar sands bitumen across Ontario eastward through Quebec into the United States through Vermont and on to the Maine coast for export.
The work being done on the site is called an "integrity dig," where a section of pipe is unearthed to fix a crack, dent or corrosion. According to Burlington resident Brian Sutherland, Line 9 has nearly 13,000 such structural weaknesses along its length, “and yet Enbridge is only doing a few hundred integrity digs."
"Enbridge has been denying the problems with the pipe for years, and they still refuse to do the hydrostatic testing requested by the province," said Sutherland. "Are we really supposed to trust Enbridge when they tell us that this time they’ll do it right?”
In addition to drawing attention to the clear safety hazards of the pipeline, the Line 9 blockaders hope to highlight what they say is the true issue at hand: the expanded access to Alberta's tar sands oil fields.
Fukushima Daiichi begins pumping groundwater into Pacific
The operator of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has started pumping groundwater into the Pacific ocean in an attempt to manage the large volume of contaminated water at the site.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it had released 560 tonnes of groundwater pumped from 12 wells located upstream from the damaged reactors. The water had been temporarily stored in a tank so it could undergo safety checks before being released, the firm added.
The buildup of toxic water is the most urgent problem facing workers at the plant, almost two years after the environment ministry said 300 tonnes of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima Daiichi was seeping into the ocean every day.
The groundwater, which flows in from hills behind the plant, mixes with contaminated water used to cool melted fuel before ending up in the sea. Officials concede that decommissioning the reactors will be impossible until the water issue has been resolved.
Good news: Warming waters extend swim season. Bad news: They’re full of monster jellyfish
Hey, it turns out climate change isn’t all bad news! I mean, sure, the good news isn’t exactly universal, but if you’re, say, British, love subtropical jellyfish, and are afraid of saltwater — or on the flip side, if you’re a subtropical jellyfish who’s always dreamed of visiting the ancestral homeland of Welsh crooner Tom Jones — then you, sir, madame, or genderless gelatinous blob of mesoglea, have hit the climate change jackpot!
The Mirror reports that divers off the coast of Cornwall, U.K., have been inundated with enormous, Mediterranean barrel jellyfish. The beasties are not an uncommon visitor to the waters off of England’s southern coasts, and they are harmless to humans. Nonetheless, the numbers and the sheer size of these jellies is an eye opener.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Better than Redistributing Income
The Libyan ‘Coincidence’
Standing Up, One Year Later: President Obama’s Broken Foreign Policy Promises
Equal Rights to Profit from Impoverishing People and Causing a Great Extinction Event
Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii
A Little Night Music
Johnny Otis - Rock Me Baby
Johnny Otis - Harlem Nocturne
Johnny Otis & Marci Lee - Telephone Baby
Johnny Otis - Barrelhouse Blues
Johnny Otis w/Shuggie Otis & Roy Buchanan - Sweet Home Chicago, Bye Bye Baby
Johnny Otis & Marci Lee - Castin' My Spell
Johnny Otis, Shuggie Otis, Delmar Evans - Country Girl
Johnny Otis - Signifying Monkey
Johnny Otis - Crazy Country Hop
Johnny Otis - Mambo Boogie
Johnny Otis & The Jayos - Tough Enough
Johnny Otis - The Midnite Creeper
Junior Ryder & the Peacocks w/Johnny Otis - Sad Story
Johnny Otis - Head Hunter
Joe Swift, Johnny Otis - Alligator Meat
The Johnny Otis Show - Willie Did The Cha Cha
Johnny Otis w/Marie Adams & Three Tons of Joy - Ma (He's Making Eyes At Me)
Johnny Otis - Court Room Blues
Johnny Otis - The Night Is Young
Johnny Otis - HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!
Johnny Otis Orch. w/ Jimmy Ryder - The Little Red Hen
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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