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 jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus. Enjoy!
Charles Mingus - Moanin'
"The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is."
-- Dick Cheney
News and Opinion
In Guatemala, Protests Threaten to Unseat President, a U.S.-Backed General Implicated in Mass Murder
Speaking of murderous US-backed regimes...
Kurds Fighting the Islamic State Enraged at Turkey Over Brutal Killing of Female Fighter
As photos of the naked and bloodied corpse of a female Kurdish militant recently trended on Twitter, women's rights groups in Turkey reeled at an act of sexualized torture committed by Turkish police, who also allegedly leaked the images.
The pro-Kurdish group Save Kobane identified the body as Kevser Elturk, known by her nom de guerre Ekin Van. Elturk was a commander in the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), an organization that has fought an armed campaign for a independent Kurdish state since 1984 in the area where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet, and which has recently been instrumental in repelling advances in the region by Islamic State (IS) militants. Turkey, NATO, and the United States have classified the PKK a terrorist organization.
Elturk was killed in clashes with Turkish security forces near the town of Varto in eastern Mus Province on August 10. The images of her remains and a description provided by those who later prepared her body for burial indicate that she was stripped of her uniform, dragged by the neck with a rope through town, and abandoned in the town square. ...
Elturk died in one of many firefights that have occurred since a two-year peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK collapsed in late July. The development followed an IS attack on Kurdish activists in Suruc who had met to plan the reconstruction of Kobane, a Kurdish border town that has become a symbol of resistance in the fight against IS. The bombing killed 33 people and injured over 100 others.
The PKK blamed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for abetting the attack, and hostilities between the PKK and the Turkish state quickly renewed with force.
US Says Evidence Suggests the Islamic State Used Mustard Gas on Kurds in Iraq
A US military official offered preliminary confirmation that Islamic State (IS) militants used mustard gas during a battle with Kurdish forces earlier this month in Iraq, a development that comes amid reports that the group may have again used chemical weapons last week in Syria.
Marine Corps Brigadier General Kevin Killea, chief of staff of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition fighting IS, said the results of field tests showed traces of sulfur mustard gas in mortars used by IS in an attack on Kurdish Peshmerga forces on August 11.
The attack occurred in Makhmour, a city in northern Iraq about 40 miles west of Kirkuk. Kurdish forces reportedly saved shell fragments so that the US could test for chemical weapons. German officials training the Kurds reported that at least 60 fighters had difficulty breathing after the attack. Killea said further tests would be done to confirm the preliminary findings.
US urges Turkey to play full part in air campaign against ISIS
Islamic State Blows Up Ancient Temple in Palmyra
Reports say that militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS) have blown up a 2000-year old temple in ancient Palmyra, just days after beheading the Syrian city's retired antiquities chief, an official said.
News that the jihadists detonated explosives in the UNESCO-listed site's Baal Shamin temple emerged on Sunday, causing significant damage to its interior and collapsing some of its columns, Syrian Antiquities and Museums Department head Maamoun Abdulkarim told a number of media outlets, including the state-run SANA news agency.
Syrian archaeologist Cheikmous Ali, founder of the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA), told VICE News that the temple, which was originally dedicated to the sun god of pre-Islamic Palmyra, had been partly destroyed by IS "savages."
South Korea to Halt Propaganda Broadcasts in Deal With North
According to new reports this afternoon, several days of marathon talks between South Korea and North Korea have finally borne fruit, with the two nations agreeing to a compromise which will hopefully end the latest round of tensions between them.
Under the deal, South Korea will remove all the propaganda loudspeakers from the border, which it has been using for the last two weeks to brag about how great their president is and how incompetent North Korea’s Kim is by contrast. North Korea will apologize for a land mine placed along the border, which wounded two South Korean soldiers earlier this month.
Judge Rejects Obama Administration’s ‘Fear-Mongering,’ Orders Release of Immigrants
A federal judge rejected “fear-mongering” over “illegal immigration” by President Barack Obama’s administration and ordered the government to implement changes to ensure detained mothers and children are released within the next two months.
On August 6, the Justice Department requested the United States District Court of the Central District of California reconsider an order issued in July. The order found the government violated provisions of a legal agreement known as the “Flores agreement,” in force since 1997. The agreement is supposed to protect the rights of immigrant children, and the government has run afoul of the agreement by keeping migrant children, both accompanied and unaccompanied by guardians, in detention centers.
The government maintained the “proposed remedies could heighten the risk of another surge in illegal migration across our Southwest border by Central American families, including by incentivizing adults to bring children with them on their dangerous journey as a means to avoid detention and gain access to the interior of the United States.”
Judge Dolly M. Gee saw through attorneys’ baseless argument that the court’s order would impair the government’s ability to detain and expedite removal of undocumented immigrants as Congress intended.
The statement about risking “another surge in illegal migration” is “speculative at best, and, at worse, fear-mongering,” the judge declared. She noted the government has provided no “credible reason” why it cannot deal with cases of illegal migration and simultaneously comply with the Flores agreement by not holding children for “prolonged periods in secure, unlicensed facilities.”
Merkel's Deliberate Deception: Washington Gave Answer Long Ago in NSA Case
For months, the German government sought to create the impression it was still waiting for an answer from the US on whether it could share NSA target lists for spying with a parliamentary investigation. The response came months ago.
James Melville, the embassy's second-in-command, hand delivered the mail from the White House to Angela Merkel's Chancellery May 10, 2015 at 9 p.m. The letter that Melville handed over to Merkel's staff contained the long-awaited answer to how the German federal government could proceed with highly classified lists of NSA spying targets. The so-called "selector" lists had become notorious in Germany and the subject of considerable grief for Merkel because her foreign intelligence agency, the BND, may have helped the NSA to spy on German firms as a result of them. The selector lists, which were fed into the BND's monitoring systems on behalf of the NSA, are reported to have included both German and European targets that were spied on by the Americans. ...
Several sources familiar with the contents of the letter claim that in it, Obama's people express their great respect for the parliamentary oversight of intelligence services and also accept that the committee will learn more about the NSA target list. At the same time, the letter also includes the decisive requirement: that the German government had to make sure no information contained in the target lists went public.
The demand created a dilemma for the government. It meant, on the one Hand, that Merkel's Chancellery could no longer hide behind the Americans as an excuse to withhold the information from parliament. On the other hand, the Chancellery didn't want to take the risk of sharing the lists with members of the Bundestag because doing so, they worried, would create the risk that someone might then leak them to the media.
Merkel and her people instead deliberately kept German citizens and members of parliament in the dark about the Americans' position.
Forget license plate readers on police cars, how about on garbage trucks?
San Jose, California, America’s 10th largest city, isn’t just content to put license plate readers on police cars anymore—rather, it now wants to deputize garbage trucks to be an additional tool in its ongoing surveillance.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the mayor and one city councilman put forward a new proposal Wednesday that would allow sanitation vehicles to use the scanning devices and feed the data automatically to city police.
"We can cover every street at least once a week and possibly deter thieves from coming into our city," Councilman Johnny Khamis told the paper.
If passed, the city would likely become the first in the country to expand the law enforcement tool to another public entity besides parking enforcement.
Facebook Accused of Censoring Hundreds of Prisoners by Purging Profile Pages Without Cause
Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing
Adobe’s Flash, hated the world over for slowing down computers, containing more holes in security than swiss cheese and stubbornly being the video carrier of choice until recently, is dying.
Video players are migrating to other systems, even if Microsoft’s Silverlight isn’t much better. HTML5-based video and animations are becoming mainstream, and uploaders and other more advanced web-based features can now be replaced with code that doesn’t rely on Flash.
And it’s happening for a good reason. As other components of a web browser and operating system have become more secure, Flash is one of the biggest sources of security vulnerabilities. Hackers love it. ...
Google took the first step by announcing that come September its Chrome browser will not run Flash adverts by default, meaning that the user has to click to enable the advert. Something virtually no one is likely to do. Firefox also blocked Flash over security concerns. ...
It marks the beginning of the end for Flash (Occupy Flash will be happy). More advertising platforms are likely to follow. When Chrome and its 51% of global browsers, according to data from Statcounter, start to “intelligently pause” Flash ads in September advertisers will be forced to switch wholesale.
"Opening the Box": After Being Jailed in Iran, Sarah Shourd Examines Solitary Confinement in U.S.
We're Better at Tracking the Deaths of Bees Than People Who Die in Police Custody
Every year, a certain number of bees die. And every year, a certain number of people die while in police custody. We have a solid figure for one of these death tolls.
At present, it’s not the human body count.
As with deaths in custody, the issue of honeybee deaths is not new. Colony collapse disorder — the generic term for mass exodus of adult worker bees from a given colony — is nearly vernacular, and wonks routinely debate the scale of the problem and its long-term consequences. ...
In May, the White House Pollinator Health Task Force called for more frequent surveys to quantify and map colony losses. But when it comes to bees, there’s a robust baseline from years of granular data collection.
Police reform also has its own White House task force. The May 2015 final report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing emphasized just how inadequate our data is to answer how many deaths occur within the criminal justice system, much less to discern regional trends or policy implications. ...
To date, all attempts by the federal government to count how many people die each year while interacting with law enforcement have relied on voluntary reporting. Whether a person dies during a pursuit or while in handcuffs, whether the death is accidental or intentional, the details find their way to nationwide databases only if a particular police or sheriff office decides to submit them up the reporting chain.
This is woefully inadequate, and the White House task force called for the federal government to move beyond voluntary reporting as the centerpiece of its data collection strategy. The statisticians charged with tracking nationwide law enforcement trends agree that we need to take a page from the bee-counters.
Autopsy indicates officer shot unarmed teen William Chapman from distance
An unarmed black 18-year-old was fatally shot in the face by a police officer from several feet away during their confrontation outside a supermarket in Virginia earlier this year, the findings of his autopsy indicate.
The typical signs of a close- or body-contact shooting were not found around the bullet wounds William Chapman sustained in the head and chest when he was killed by Officer Stephen Rankin in the parking lot of a Walmart in Portsmouth on 22 April. Chapman was the second unarmed man to be shot dead by Rankin. ...
Rankin and Chapman engaged in a physical struggle after Rankin tried to arrest the 18-year-old on suspicion of shoplifting from the Walmart, according to police. Witnesses said Chapman broke free and then stepped back towards the officer aggressively before being shot twice. A decision on whether Rankin will be prosecuted is expected to be made by authorities in the coming days.
An attorney for Chapman’s family, who said he was preparing a civil lawsuit against Rankin even before state prosecutors make their decision, said the physical evidence suggested Chapman had not been near enough to Rankin to pose a threat.
Black Monday: Biggest slide in Chinese stocks since 2007, Brent oil below $44
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news from David Bruce in Chihuahua: "How Villa Deals with Those Take Bread Out of Mouths of Poor"
Tune in at 2pm!
|
This is a really interesting economic analysis by Ian Welsh, worth reading in full:
As the Dow Jones Drops
Down about 1,000as of this writing. (Since mostly recovered.) ...
But this started in China, which is important.
We are now in a situation analogous to the late 19th and early 20th century. America is the global hegemon (as Britain was then), and China is the world’s most important economy (America was then.) China is the global manufacturer. It buys the most resources, which is what most of the world sells, since most countries have given up manufacturing most goods for themselves. It prints the most money, dwarfing America and Europe. Its rich people are driving up real-estate prices all over the globe. ...
So what and how China does now matters most, economically. The contagion started in China, spread to emerging economies, money fled to the US and a few other safe havens, China’s economy continued to stall, it’s stock market fell despite radical attempts to keep it inflated, and that has now come home to New York. ...
The elites learned from 2008 that the important thing to do in a financial crisis is to just print enough money and relax enough accounting rule–extend and pretend. That will be the play again this time if this contagion turns truly serious. ... Printing money is a viable strategy only as long as the elites control the regulatory apparatus (including prosecutors, finance departments/treasures, and central banks), legislators, and executives. The reason people are screaming so loudly about Corbyn is not because he can’t win in England, it’s because if he did, and he’s serious about his policies, he will inevitably have to confront them. And an English PM with a majority he controls is pretty much a dictator.
A lot is at stake here. Our elites are losing control over the electoral apparatus and the common narrative. ... The decision was made in 2008 and 2009 to not allow an actual recovery and to protect the rich at all costs. There was a cost, it has been paid for the last six years, and this is yet and simply another one of those costs. China, as an exporting power, cannot carry the world economy when the people to whom it exports insist on various levels of austerity (be clear, the US is in austerity too, just not as bad an austerity as Europe).
Dismaland: Banksy opens 'bemusement park' in England
Some Clinton emails classified from Day 1
Dozens of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails would automatically have entered the world with “classified” status, according to a report.
At least 30 email threads since 2009 immediately deserve that designation based on the context in which they were written, according to Reuters.
Reuters' review of Clinton's public State emails would undermine her presidential campaign's claims that she never sent or received messages that had already gotten classified status.
The report found that the email chains in question included “foreign government information,” or any information provided by overseas officials in confidence to their American equivalents.
Such communications are “presumed” classified, it said, as both a national security precaution and a safeguard of the diplomatic process and its integrity.
Reuters said Friday it had uncovered at least 17 emails sent by Clinton during her tenure at State that would possibly qualify for classification given they contain “foreign government information.”
Reports Say Biden Decision Imminent
Fueling speculation, Biden privately met with Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday
The political rumor mill is abuzz with news that Vice President Joe Biden may soon join the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, after reports suggested such a decision is imminent.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Wall Street Journal reportedSunday that the vice president is currently "weighing multiple political, financial and family considerations," and that "conversations about the possibility were a prominent feature of an August stay in South Carolina and his home in Delaware last week."
Also spurring speculation was a private meeting on Saturday between Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a favorite of the party's left flank. Warren has yet to endorse any of the current Democratic contenders for the presidential bid and the reaction to their meeting indicated that Biden could be hoping to capitalize on some of her ideas and popularity among progressives.
However, as author and Nation columnist Greg Mitchell pointed out, such theories ignore the fact that many of Warren's supporters are already flocking to Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders Attracts 10,000 in South Carolina Campaign Swing
Sen. Bernie Sanders brought his progressive populism to deeply Republican South Carolina and found enthusiastic crowds totaling 10,000 during a two-day campaign swing as he made a pitch to connect with the black voters that provide most of the Democratic support in the early primary state.
It was the Vermont senator's first visit to the state since announcing his candidacy in late April, in a challenge to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders had canceled a planned appearance in Charleston in June in the wake of the massacre at the city's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that left nine dead.
In each of his South Carolina stops, Sanders linked his progressive agenda to issues and challenges important to the black community. He called for restoring sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court overturned and pledged to fight 'institutional racism,' with a particular focus on the criminal justice system. ...
Between campaign events, Sanders met with groups of black leaders, including ministers and business owners, and visited with Black Lives Matter activists after his rallies.
The Evening Greens
Hurricane Katrina proved that if black lives matter, so must climate justice
Those of us from low-income communities of color are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. US cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color are also home to a disproportionate share of the environmental burdens that are fueling the climate crisis and shortening our lives. One has only to recall the gut-wrenching images of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath to confirm this.
At a time when police abuse is more visible than ever thanks to technology, and our communities continue to get hit time and time again by climate catastrophe, we can’t afford to choose between a Black Lives Matter protest and a climate justice forum, because our survival depends on both of them. ...
Over the years, as we were fighting for housing, jobs and better schools, decisions were being made to site some of the most toxic industries in communities with a large proportion of people of color: power plants, waste transfer stations, landfills, refineries and incinerators. As a result, communities of color have become cancer clusters and have the highest rates of asthma. In response, we in the environmental justice movement have said there is not anything more fundamental than the right to breathe – and that includes the right to clean air.
The environmental justice and Black Lives Matter movements are complementary. Black lives matter in the Gulf, where most of the fatalities resulting from Hurricane Katrina were black people, and which was home to the largest marine oil spill in history five years later. Black lives matter in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where hundreds of black families waited for weeks for electricity, heat and in some cases, running water, to be turned back on after Superstorm Sandy. Black lives matter in Richmond, California, home to the largest oil refinery on the West Coast. Black lives matter in Detroit, home to the largest solid waste incinerator in the US. The list goes on of cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color and are also home to a disproportionate share of this nation’s environmental burdens.
Western wildfires send noxious smoke to states hundreds of miles from flames
A smoky haze filled Nevada’s Humboldt Valley on Friday, hundreds of miles away from dozens of wildfires raging across the western United States. ...
Gina McGuire, a meteorologist for the Great Basin Geographic Area Coordination Center said the smoke has its origin in fires blazing across surrounding states.
“There are over 64 active large fires north and west of us – some of which are over 100,000 acres,” McGuire said.
The fires are concentrated in four states: California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Air quality in these four drought-ravaged states from smoke has degraded, in addition to the range of other, more devastating effects. ...
“It’s all about wind and atmospheric stability,” McGuire continues. “Wind direction and speed determines how far and in which direction the smoke will travel. In this case, west to north-west winds brought smoke from all those fires to surrounding states.” ...
Friday’s Air Quality Index in much of Nevada fell in the “moderate” to “very unhealthy” range, from 51 to 200. The Environmental Protection Agency considers AQI values of 151 to 200 to be serious enough to trigger health effects in everyone. In Colorado, state officials declared a health advisory warning residents to stay indoors, limit physical activity, or even relocate for those who are particularly vulnerable to respiratory symptoms.
“Sixty-four large fires – that’s quite a lot for such a small area of the country,” McGuire said. “Because we have so many, that’s a lot of smoke to put in the atmosphere.”
Trash-mapping expedition sheds light on 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch'
Scientists and volunteers who have spent the last month gathering data on how much plastic garbage is floating in the Pacific Ocean returned to San Francisco on Sunday and said most of the trash they found is in medium to large-sized pieces, as opposed to tiny ones.
Volunteer crews on 30 boats have been measuring the size and mapping the location of tons of plastic waste floating between the west coast and Hawaii that according to some estimates covers an area twice the size of Texas. ...
A 171ft mother ship carrying fishing nets, buckets, buoys and bottles, among other items, and two sailing boats with volunteers who helped collect the garbage samples arrived at San Francisco’s Piers 30-32. The boats went on a 30-day voyage as part of the “Mega Expedition”, a major step in an effort to clean up what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The expedition was sponsored by the Ocean Cleanup, an organisation founded by Slat, a 21-year-old innovator from the Netherlands. ...
Slat said he became passionate about cleaning the oceans of plastic while diving in the Mediterranean sea five years ago.
“I was diving in Greece and realised that there were more plastic bags than fish,” he said, “and I wondered: why can’t we clean this up?”
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Major Figures in Democratic and Republican Money Groups Go Into Business Together
The Devil Is In the Details: How Patients’ Mental Health Data Is At Risk
Banks Get Credit for Helping the Poor — By Financing Their Evictions?
The Magician’s Apprentice
How Much Longer Can Saudi Arabia's Economy Hold Out Against Cheap Oil?
Stock Selloff: Panic Time or a Blip on the Radar?
Washington fires: Help For Our Critters
This is not normal
The pain and confusion misgendering causes
A Little Night Music
Charles Mingus - Better Git It In Your Soul
Charles Mingus - Devil Blues
Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Charles Mingus - Boogie Stop Shuffle
Charles Mingus - Oh Lord Don't Let them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me
Charles Mingus - Flowers For A Lady
Charles Mingus Sextet featuring Eric Dolphy Take The A Train
Mingus Big Band - Fables of Faubus
Charles Mingus - Haitian Fight Song
Charles Mingus - Wednesday night prayer meeting
Charles Mingus - Work Song
Charles Mingus - Shortnin' Bread
Charles Mingus - Hog Callin Blues