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 soul and blues guitarist and singer Cash McCall. Enjoy!
Cash McCall - The Blues Just Won't Let Me Be
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
-- William Shakespeare
News and Opinion
Court Accepts DOJ’s ‘State Secrets’ Claim to Protect Shadowy Neocons: a New Low
A truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here.
At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging “economic and psychological warfare” against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN “analyst”) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.
This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark.
In May 2013, UANI launched a “name and shame” campaign designed to publicly identify — and malign — any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the “name and shame” campaign destroyed his reputation. ...
When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the “state secrets privilege,” it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times’s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that “the group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so-called state secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.” He quoted the ACLU’s Ben Wizner as saying: “I have never seen anything like this.” Reuters’s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ’s involvement a “mystery” and said “the government’s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.”
Your tax dollars at work protecting the national security:
DEA agents had ‘sex parties’ with prostitutes hired by drug cartels
Drug Enforcement Administration agents allegedly had “sex parties” with prostitutes hired by local drug cartels overseas over a period of several years, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s watchdog.
The report does not specify the country where the parties occurred, but a law enforcement official familiar with the matter identified it as Colombia.
Seven of the 10 DEA agents alleged to have participated in the gatherings — most of which took place at “quarters” leased by the U.S. government — admitted to having attended the parties, the report found. They received suspensions of between two to 10 days.
Former police officers in Colombia also alleged that three DEA supervisory special agents were provided money, expensive gifts and weapons from drug cartel members.
“Although some of the DEA agents participating in these parties denied it, the information in the case file suggested they should have known the prostitutes in attendance were paid with cartel funds,” according to the 131-page report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Don saw this on a tweet in his feed, and we had both missed it when it happened. Hat tip Don midwest:
NSA Whistleblower - Jesselyn Radack + Thomas Drake | London Real
Researchers defeat Snowden’s preferred operating system, hack air-gapped devices
Some researchers have focused on showing that Tails, the operating system used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the people to whom he sent the files detailing mass surveillance programs, isn’t as secure as it claims.
As Forbes says in its recent report on the researchers’ work:
‘Tails isn’t keeping you safe from our agent,’ [Corey Kallenberg] added. ‘We have exploits that can get past any BIOS protection that’s there so that’s not a problem either.’
He claimed that even other Tails protections, such as the memory wiper and offline mode, would not save it from the malware he and [Xeno Kovah] created. ‘We can just write the secrets you scrape to non-volatile storage and just wait until we have access to the internet to exfiltrate that data to the attacker.
‘If an attacker has remote software access to your system, Tails can’t keep you safe if someone really sophisticated is coming after you.’
...
Wired reports that researchers have found a way to steal information from an air-gapped device using its heat management system.
Venezuela Wrongly Accused of Weapons of Mass Destruction
The alarmist language used to justify US sanctions against Venezuela suggest Barack Obama is trying to channel his inner Ronald Reagan.
The US Commerce Department imposed military end-use sanctions on Venezuela in November 2014, followed by the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act in December, and in March an executive order imposed sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials, including freezing their assets in the United States. ...
Douglas Farah testified before the US Senate hearings on Venezuela. This right-wing consultant on Latin America claimed ". . . the Maduro administration (of) Venezuela has actively pursued an official military doctrine that embraces the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States."
Farah's farcical proof of WMDs in Venezuela is a footnote in an obscure book that he himself acknowledges is "not directly related to Venezuela."
Article 129 of the Venezuelan Constitution prohibits "the manufacture and use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." In contrast, Obama's national nuclear weapons strategyincludes the US threat to use nuclear weapons first, even against nonnuclear nations.
A day trip today makes for a short diary tonight. Here's a consolation prize. B)
I'll post some of today's photo's as I get to processing them.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report accusing Haywood and Moyer of starting of the Colorado strike solely for the purpose of enriching the Western Federation of Miners.
Tune in at 2pm!
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The Evening Greens
Scientists Discover Huge ‘Bathtub Ring’ Of Oil On Sea Floor From BP Spill
Scientists have discovered yet another unforeseen effect of BP’s historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: a 1,235-square-mile “bathub ring” of oil on the deep ocean’s floor.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on Monday showed that approximately 10 million gallons of oil settled and coagulated on the floor of the Gulf near the Deepwater Horizon rig, which spilled a total of 172 million gallons of oil into the ocean in April 2010. That oil left a footprint on the ocean floor about two times the size of the city of Houston, Texas, and approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island, the study said.
Study author David Valentine told the Associated Press that tests to determine the oil’s chemical signature were not performed because the oil has degraded in the four and a half years since the spill occurred, but also said it’s obvious where the oil is from, since it settled directly around the site of the damaged rig. BP disputes the claim, telling Fuel Fix that the researchers need to chemically identify the source of the oil before they can credibly blame the company.
Millions of dollars wasted in Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup: audit
TOKYO -- Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
A Board of Audit report describes various expensive machines and untested measures that ended in failure. It also says the cleanup work has been dominated by one group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants despite repeated calls for more transparency and greater access for international bidders.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi said all of the equipment contributed to stabilizing the plant, even though some operated only briefly.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Regulatory Capture, Captured on Video
George Carlin Website Relaunches With Unreleased, Rare Recordings
Hat tip joedemocrat:
Why The TPP is a Game Changer
Hat tip divineorder:
The Price That You Pay For Rocking The Boat
Coming soon...to a television near you
A Little Night Music
Cash McCall - That Lucky Old Sun
Cash McCall - S.O.S.
Cash McCall - When You Wake Up
Cash McCall - You Ain't Too Cool
Cash McCall - More power to you
Cash McCall - Let's Get A Thing Going On
Cash McCall - Let's Try It Over
Cash McCall - You Mean Everything To Me
Cash McCall - It's Wonderful (To Be In Love)
Cash McCall - I'm In Danger
Cash McCall - I Can't Quit You Baby
Cash McCall - Blues 99
Cash McCall - Girlfriend, Woman and Wife
Cash McCall - Don't Change on Me
Cash McCall - Hoochie Coochie Man
Cash McCall - Bring It On Home
Cash McCall - Catch Me Before I Go
Cash McCall - Stoop Down
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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