The Evening Blues - 3-5-18



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Clyde McPhatter

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features doo wop and r&b singer Clyde McPhatter. Enjoy!

Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters - Money Honey

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."

-- Groucho Marx


News and Opinion

Secret Surveillance and the Legacy of Torture Have Paralyzed the USS Cole Bombing Trial at Guantánamo

Last month, a judge at Guantánamo Bay suspended indefinitely the trial of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, paralyzing one of the most high-profile cases to go before the island prison’s military commissions system. The February 16 decision ended a monthslong standoff with defense lawyers who claimed that they could not do their work for fear of government surveillance.

Nashiri’s story now spans four consecutive presidencies. The 53-year-old Saudi citizen faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, in which 17 U.S. sailors died. The audacious strike against the billion-dollar destroyer was the last of Al Qaeda’s escalating actions against U.S. targets before the September 11 attacks. More than 17 years later, the bombing and its alleged mastermind barely register in public memory.

The pretrial proceedings in Nashiri’s case have plodded onward in obscurity, with the trial finally set to begin this year, but the abrupt cessation has once again raised questions about the legitimacy of the military commissions. An outsized legal drama on the face of it, the collapse of the Nashiri trial offers a headfirst dive into the murky world of justice at Guantánamo, governed more by public apathy and secrecy than the rule of law.

Nashiri’s entire civilian defense team resigned last October, citing an irresolvable ethical conflict: They did not believe that they could meet with their client and work on the case without being spied on by U.S. government agencies. Because of the byzantine rules governing classified materials at Guantánamo, the lawyers still can’t explain exactly why they believe this to be the case to the public or to their client.

The lawyers who resigned included Nashiri’s death penalty lawyer (“learned counsel” in legal parlance), Richard Kammen, a veteran capital defense attorney who has led the team since 2008, and two other civilian lawyers, Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears, who joined in recent years. ... “The government is trying to hide what happened,” Kammen told The Intercept. “They do no want the public to know what is happening down there. I don’t think the commissions have much legitimacy, but if the truth of these circumstances were to become known, what little is left of that legitimacy would evaporate.”

British Data Company Admits Meddling In U.S. Elections w/Lee Camp

China is about to pimp its military with a big budget increase

China announced Monday it will boost its military spending by 8.1 percent this year to counter “profound changes” to the international geopolitical landscape.

The budget increase, which comes days after Vladimir Putin boasted about Russia’s upgraded nuclear arsenal, brings China’s annual defense spending to 1.11 trillion yuan ($175 billion). ...

The details of the budget were announced during the opening of the National People’s Congress, where Premier Li Keqiang delivered a work report during the opening ceremony.

Li said the country’s national security environment was “undergoing profound changes” and to reflect this Beijing would modernize military technology and equipment and build strong border, coastal and air defenses.

Why Putin’s Latest Weapons Claims Should Scare Us

Be afraid. Be very afraid of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest boast to his Federal Assembly that Russian scientists have come up with “a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons” aimed at the United States. Don’t be afraid that he has any intention of using them. Don’t even be afraid that most of the weapons he demonstrated through animated simulations are operational.

Be afraid, rather, that armchair Cold Warriors in the United States will shamelessly exploit Putin’s speech to justify billions—no, trillions—of dollars in needless spending on a pointless nuclear arms race.

Achieving their agenda was made easier by media coverage of the speech, which reported that Putin “threatened the West” (New York Times) and “represented an escalated level of martial rhetoric even by his pugnacious standards” (Washington Post). Putin in fact explicitly and repeatedly emphasized that his claimed new weapons are not offensive, but rather designed to maintain Russia’s nuclear deterrent in the face of growing U.S. anti-missile systems. ...

America’s neo-Cold Warriors instantly seized on Putin’s speech to whip up anti-Russia frenzy and call for even more military spending. President Obama’s former ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, insisted that President Trump was derelict for not responding forcefully to “Putin’s speech today threatening to attack America in new ways with nuclear weapons.” The lack of push back, he said, was “Amazing. Disappointing. And scary.”

Even more extreme, Rob Dannenberg, former chief of the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division, concluded that “Putin may have stolen a march on us as we have underinvested in strategic weapons for at least the past decade.” “We need to recognize Putin is the arch enemy of the West,” Dannenberg stated. “We need to recognize there is no negotiating with him. . . Russia’s behavior will not change until the regime is changed. That should be our focus and strategy.” If anything should keep us up at night worrying about the fate of the world, it’s nuts like Dannenberg, calling for regime change in Russia—not Putin’s cartoon videos about how Russia plans to maintain a stable nuclear deterrent with the United States.

Kim Jong Un Meets With South Korean Officials For First Time Ever

Kim Jong Un met with officials from South Korea on Monday, the first meeting between the North Korean despot and representatives from Seoul in the seven years of Kim’s leadership. South Korea made the surprise announcement after its 10-member delegation arrived in Pyongyang for two days of talks aimed at ending the feud between the North and the U.S. that threatens the stability of the entire region.

The high-level South Korean delegation — including intelligence chief Suh Hoon and national security adviser Chung Eui Yong — was greeted by Kim ahead of a dinner hosted by the leader.

It is unclear whether Kim will discuss the possibility of talks with the U.S., but a spokesperson for the delegation confirmed that Seoul’s insistence that North Korea denuclearize would be delivered at some point during the trip.

Lindsey Graham: War with North Korea would be 'worth it' in the long run

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this week that a war with North Korea would be “worth it” in the long term.

Graham made the comments in an interview with CNN.

"All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security," the senator told CNN.

Graham’s remark comes amid reports that the U.S. is prepared for the possibility of a military strike against North Korea.

Trump says North Korea 'called up,' seeking talks with the United States

President Donald Trump said Saturday that North Korea has recently sought talks with the United States and that he "won't rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un," the North Korean leader.

"Now we're talking. They, by the way, called up a couple of days ago, they said 'we would like to talk,'" Trump said. "And I said, 'so would we, but you have to denuke.'"

That would mark the first such outreach from North Korea, which backed out of a potential meeting with Vice President Mike Pence at the Winter Olympics in South Korea last month. North Korea has vowed it will not give up its nuclear weapons, but the United States insists that any negotiations to lower tensions would have the goal of denuclearization.

It was not clear whether Trump was describing a direct conversation or messages sent through diplomatic channels. Trump has previously said he thinks he could have a good relationship with Kim, were they ever to try to resolve tensions directly. A U.S. official said earlier this year that Trump and Kim had never spoken.

Is the US Ramping Up Its Military Presence in Syria and Planning to Attack Iran?

Worth a full read:

Israel Plans a New War in Syria -- but Not for the Reasons It Claims

Israel is beating the drums of war again, this time over Syria. On February 10 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out the most aggressive Israeli use of force in Syria thus far. After having bombed a drone base in retaliation for an alleged incursion by an Iranian drone, Israel retaliated for the shooting down of one of its fighter planes by hitting the main Syrian command-and-control bunker and five Iranian communications facilities.

Israel has been laying the political groundwork for a military escalation in Syria since mid-2017. That's when Israeli officials began to repeat two interlinked political themes: that Iran must be prevented from establishing permanent bases and implanting its proxy forces in the Syrian Golan Heights, and that Iran is secretly building factories in Syria and Lebanon to provide Hezbollah with missiles capable of precise targeting.

But the evidence suggests that the reasons publicly avowed by Israeli officials are not the real motive behind the escalation of Israel's air attacks and ground combat presence in Syria.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer has vowed that Israel would not permit Iran or Hezbollah to establish permanent bases anywhere in Syria, but no convincing evidence of any such permanent base has come to light -- only an aerial photo of a site that was admitted to be a Syrian army facility with several vehicle storage sheds. However, the Syrian army is definitely planning such bases in Golan. In January, Syrian army forces backed by Hezbollah troops captured a key military post at Beit Jinn near both the Lebanese and Syrian borders in the Northern Golan.

A portion of Golan is currently occupied by Israel, which took it from Syria in 1967. It was annexed by Israel in 1981 and populated with Israeli settlers roughly equal in numbers to its original Syrian population. Israel has expressed the fear that Syria's recent moves could threaten Israel's occupation in Golan. IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot declared in January that Israel "can't ignore the fact that Hezbollah, the Shiite militias and Iran perceive themselves on the winning side in Syria, together with Bashar Assad, and share his desire to return to the Golan Heights." ...

Israeli ambitions are not limited to the Syrian Golan. The IDF is determined to penetrate more deeply into Syria in order to limit Iranian and Hezbollah freedom of action there. The long-term military aim, as IDF Chief Eizenkot declared in his January speech, is to "push the Iranians back to Iran." More concretely, Israeli officials are committed to preventing Iran from establishing a land corridor connecting Tehran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean through Iraq and Syria.

Merkel Gets 4 More Years and a Government Too

After more than five months of political doubt and deadlock, Europe’s most powerful woman is set to return for a record-equalling fourth term as Germany’s leader, after the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) voted in favor of another “grand coalition” government with her conservative Christian Democratic Union.

The deal was approved after the SPD put the matter to a postal ballot of its 460,000 members. Two thirds voted in favor of renewing the deal, with one third against, SPD treasurer Dietmar Nietan announced Sunday.

Germany has been without a government since federal elections on Sept. 24, the longest the country has been leaderless in its post-war history. Merkel has struggled to cobble together a coalition to govern the country, since September when voters abandoned the two major traditional parties in record numbers for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany. The shock turn-out made the anti-immigration party, founded only five years ago, the third largest political force in the country's federal parliament. ...

If Merkel sees out the entirety of her term, the 63-year old will have been in charge for 16 years, equalling Helmut Kohl, who led from 1982-98, as Germany’s longest-serving chancellor.

"Berlusconi's time has come but the country's future could be worse" - Italy's protest vote

Anti-immigrant populists just cleaned up in Italy’s election

Populist and far-right parties dominated Italy’s national election Sunday, in an anti-establishment surge that leaves the country’s politics deadlocked and its center-left in disarray. With more than 75 percent of the vote counted Monday, none of the three main coalitions look able to secure the majority required to govern outright, raising the prospect of weeks of tense negotiations to form a government.

The Eurosceptic, anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the right-wing nationalist Northern League were celebrating Monday, landing more than half of the national vote between them. The largest political bloc to emerge is the center-right grouping, led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy). Surprisingly, the strongest party within the bloc is now the Northern League, a nativist, nationalist party that tallied around 18 percent of the vote – a swing that increases their seats in the lower house from 22 to 123. By contrast, Forza Italia, which had been seen as the senior partner, received about 14 percent of the vote.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Northern League, claimed Monday that his party had the right to lead the new government. The Northern League took the hardest anti-immigration line during the campaign; its “Italians First” message resonated with an electorate anxious over illegal migration flows that have seen 600,000 people cross the Mediterranean in the past four years, many in smugglers’ boats from Libya.

The populist Five Star Movement, founded by comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo in 2009, emerged as the strongest single party, on track to win 32 percent. It is defiantly anti-establishment, with policies drawn from left and right: tough on immigration, critical of the European Union, friendly toward Russia, but also in favor of universal basic income and environmental protections.

Turkey refuses to release Greek border guards in spy row

Turkey has refused to release two Greek border guards arrested on suspicion of espionage, in a move that risks inflaming already strained ties between the two Nato members. Lawyers had demanded that the two men – a lieutenant and sergeant – be freed on Monday, arguing they had accidentally strayed across the heavily defended frontier while on patrol. Greece’s army command says the pair got lost in bad weather.

The guards, who have since been photographed in fatigues and with their heads covered, insist they were tracing footsteps in the snow that they thought belonged to illegal immigrants when they unwittingly entered Turkey last Thursday. But a court convening in the town of Edirne, where the two are being held in a high-security prison, said the soldiers had given contradictory testimonies. Turkey’s state-run television reported that an in-depth investigation had been requested before officials determine what charges should be brought against the pair. ...

Greece’s foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, said: “Turkey ought to apply the provisions of international law and not turn a routine procedure into a major legal and political problem.” There are fears the soldiers were detained in a tit-for-tat move by Turkish authorities eager to secure the extradition of eight Turkish military personnel who fled to Greece after an attempted coup against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government in July 2016. None of the eight have been returned to Turkey as Greek courts have ruled they would not receive a fair trial there.

The arrests come against a backdrop of rising Greek-Turkish tensions. Last month a Turkish patrol boat rammed a Greek coastguard vessel near a disputed islet in the Aegean Sea, causing extensive damage. Recently Turkey dispatched warships to stop oil and gas exploration off Cyprus.

Bank Earnings Are Soaring, but Congress Wants to Gut Post-Crisis Safeguards

Dick Bove, a high-profile banking analyst, was feeling contrite. For years, Bove, a regular on CNBC, has been arguing for the rollback of regulations imposed after the 2008 financial collapse. “But lately I’ve been trying to figure how regulation has hurt the banking industry,” Bove confessed in an interview last spring. “And I’m having a lot of trouble coming up with an answer.”

This week, the Senate considers the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act [otherwise referred to as "the Crapo bill" - an apt name if ever there was one - js], a bill that represents the greatest threat to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law since its passage in 2010. The bill would relieve all but the country’s largest dozen banks of increased scrutiny and ease mortgage rules imposed after the financial crisis. It would undermine fair lending rules designed to counteract race discrimination and weaken the Volcker rule, which limits a bank’s ability to make speculative trades with federally insured deposits.

“When you take a close look,” Bove says now, “it’s really hard to argue that regulation harmed the banking industry.” Bank earnings have gone up every year since 2010, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and soared more recently. “In 2014, and again in 2015 and 2016, bank earnings hit all-time records,” Bove said. “Loan volume, which was obviously lousy at the beginning of this period, picked up substantially in 2014, 2015, and 2016.” ...

“I don’t think that if you’re really thinking about the vast majority of Americans, you decide that your very first bipartisan bill is one that deregulates some of the biggest banks in the country,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, which pushes for tighter regulation of financial institutions. “But let’s take a step back and ask why there’s a bill at all. They’re saying, ‘We need ‘regulatory relief.’ How could you need regulatory relief if lending profits and every other metric you can look are at or approaching historic highs?”

“People Have Just Had Enough”: West Virginia Teachers Continue Historic Strike into Eighth Day

As West Virginia Rages, 'Tipping Point' in Oklahoma Has Teachers Planning Walkout of Their Own

What is happening in West Virginia may not necessarily stay in West Virginia. As thousands of teachers in the state occupied the state house on the eighth day of a walkout that has closed every public school in West Virginia, momentum is gathering among teachers in Oklahoma for a potential strike to protest their low pay and high healthcare costs.

A Change.org petition has gathered more than 25,000 signatures of teachers and supporters who object to the state's low teacher salaries—the lowest average pay for educators in the nation, at $42,460—with hundreds of signatures being added on Monday.

"Oklahoma needs new teachers, Oklahoma needs to retain current teachers," reads the petition. "Teachers in Oklahoma need a raise of $10,000 per year to be competetive regionally. Our neighbor states are paying much more and luring away our best talent."

Talk of a potential strike grew last month after a proposal called Step Up Oklahoma was defeated in the state House of Representatives. The plan would have raised taxes on the oil and gas industry as well as cigarettes, fuel, and wind energy, in order to give the state's teachers a $5,000 raise. ...

Teachers are planning to walk out of their classrooms as early as April 2.

From Coal Miners to Teachers: West Virginia Continues to Lead Radical Labor Struggle in the U.S.

‘Tipping point’: Americans organizing more than ever after Florida shooting

Americans outraged by their country’s mass shooting epidemic appear to be organizing at an unprecedented rate, following the 14 February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed. The gun policy reform group Everytown for Gun Safety said a 25% leap in members in the two weeks after the Parkland shooting meant the group had overtaken the National Rifle Association in size – although the gun lobby’s claim of 5 million members has not been independently verified and is widely seen as inflated.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has opened 16 chapters since the Parkland shootings, the group said. Sandy Hook Promise, an advocacy group founded after the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 young children and six adults were killed, has seen a wave of new signatories to its namesake vow.

At least 20 corporations have changed their gun sales policies, by activists’ count, including most recently LL Bean, which announced on Friday that it would no longer sell guns or ammunition to anyone under the age of 21.

“I think the Parkland shooting was the straw that broke the camel’s back for most Americans to get off the sidelines,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety. “I think the regurgitation by politicians of ‘thoughts and prayers’, once again without any action, was just too much for most Americans to bear. And I think that’s why we’re seeing this movement.”

30 states want to take guns away from people with “troubling” behavior

With lawmakers seeking measures to prevent future mass shootings in the wake of the Parkland massacre, a bipartisan coalition from 30 states are rolling out “red flag” legislation that makes it harder for domestic abusers or anyone exhibiting troubling or violent behavior to keep or purchase guns.

According to the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, in 42 percent of mass shootings from January 2009 to December 2016, the shooter exhibited warning signs, like acts, attempted acts or threats of violence towards oneself, violations of protective orders or ongoing substance abuse. Former domestic abuse, for example, was a common denominator of the church shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas; the shooter in Las Vegas; and the 19-year-old student who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school in Parkland, Florida, two weeks ago.

The 30 states would join another five — California, Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon, and Washington — that already have red flag laws, which allow concerned family members or law enforcement to act on the warning signs and get a type of temporary restraining order. (Connecticut was the first, in 1999, Indiana was second in 2005, and the other three passed their laws in the last four years.) ...

The states aiming to pass the legislation are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Baltimore Wants to Hold Some Cops Personally Accountable for Misconduct

[T]he Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police freaked all the way out when the police association learned that the city had no intention of protecting nine officers found by a jury to have acted with “actual malice.” The police officers had gone on trial for a series of corrupt arrests in which evidence was planted, false reports filed, people beaten, and ultimately innocent men and women sent to jail and prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

With the guilty verdict in, the city is expecting dozens of lawsuits to be filed because of the actions of the cops on Baltimore’s notorious Gun Trace Task Force. As a result, city leaders are panicking. Baltimore simply does not want to pay out for these lawsuits. City officials claim it’s a longstanding policy to put cops on the hook for damages doled out in cases when police acted with malice, but the policy has never been used quite like this: Necessity is finally forcing Baltimore to hold actual officers financially accountable for their worst actions. ...

Placing accountability with individual officers, though, is not without its complications. In Baltimore, Solicitor Andre Davis has gone so far as to say that the city won’t cover any of the costs or damages stemming from the corrupt actions of the cops in the Gun Trace Task Force. But if the city won’t cover the bulk of the costs of these lawsuits, many victims could have their justice delayed while individual officers stonewall and fight paying out these families. ...

Will a policy of holding police officers directly responsible for their conduct completely eliminate police brutality and corruption? Of course not. But it’s a culture-changing, life-shifting moment for your paycheck or pension to suddenly be docked by 25 to 50 percent because you caused great harm to someone. Right now, the worst cops have very little motivation to think twice before they make horrible decisions. Direct accountability might give them pause.



the evening greens


Monsanto says its pesticides are safe. Now, a court wants to see the proof

On Monday, a federal court hearing in San Francisco will turn a public spotlight on to the science surrounding the safety of one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, a weedkilling chemical called glyphosate that has been linked to cancer and is commonly found in our food and water, even in our own bodily fluids. Given the broad health and environmental implications tied to the use of this pesticide, we would be well served to pay attention.

As the active ingredient in Monsanto’s branded Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, glyphosate represents billions of dollars in annual revenues for Monsanto and other companies, and is prominently used by farmers as an aid in food production. It’s also favored by cities for keeping public parks and playgrounds weed free, and by homeowners who want a tidy lawn. But the chemical was deemed a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s cancer experts in 2015 in a finding that has since triggered waves of liability lawsuits against Monsanto. ...

This week’s events will mark the first time that the body of research, some that has been gathering dust in stuffy scientific journals or confidential corporate files, will be analyzed under oath for all to see. It is no idle exercise. Real lives are at stake in this and broader debates about pesticide risks to our health. One in every two men and one in every three women are now expected to develop cancer in their lifetimes and childhood cancers are on the rise. ...

Monsanto has tried to persuade US judge Vince Chhabria to throw out the litigation, and sought to keep secret the many internal documents it has been forced to turn over in discovery. But Chhabria has ordered that the hearing be video-recorded and shared publicly over the internet. And he has granted permission for plaintiffs to explore in open court such things as the ghostwriting of science as well as a controversial 1983 study that EPA scientists at the time said showed evidence of glyphosate’s cancer-causing potential. ...

To bolster its defense, the company and chemical industry allies have been working to discredit cancer scientists and others who have been warning of danger. That effort was highlighted when members of the House committee on science, space and technology held a hearing in Washington on 6 February to air Monsanto’s complaints about the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, and to threaten to strip funding from the scientific body. The committee effort – effectively turning a war on cancer into a war on cancer science – was applauded by the chemical industry.

Latin American countries sign legally binding pact to protect land defenders

Officials from 24 Latin American and Caribbean states have signed a legally binding environmental rights pact containing measures to protect land defenders, almost two years to the day since environmental leader Berta Cáceres was killed in her home in Honduras.

Last year almost 200 nature protectors were killed across the world, 60% of them in Latin America. The new treaty obliges states to “guarantee a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organisations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters”.

It compels strong measures to protect national environmental defenders from threats or attack – and investigate and punish these whenever they occur. And it codifies the rights of environmental defenders “to life, personal integrity, freedom of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, and free movement.”

The 2016 killing of Cáceres, a winner of the Goldman environmental prize, focused attention on the killings of environmental and land rights activists in the region. Her death was one of 14 such deaths recorded in Honduras that year in a collaboration between the Guardian and NGO Global Witness, making the country one of the deadliest in the world for environmental activists. In a sign of progress, though, the number of killings fell in 2017 and two days before the new pact was agreed, Honduran authorities arrested a former military intelligence officer for masterminding Cáceres’s killing. ...

The treaty, which was stewarded by Chile, Costa Rica and Panama, also guarantees the right to a healthy environment and impels states to establish transparency bodies to monitor, report and oversee compliance with the new rules.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network?

Rare victory for Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people


A Little Night Music

Clyde McPhatter - Little Bitty Pretty One

Clyde McPhatter - Such A Night

Clyde McPhatter - Love You Til The Cows Come Home

Clyde McPhatter & Ruth Brown - I Gotta Have You

Clyde McPhatter - Deep Sea Ball

Clyde McPhatter - Everyone's Laughing/Hot Ziggity

Clyde McPhatter - Tomorrow Is A Comin'

Clyde McPhatter - Deep In The Heart Of Harlem

Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters - Lucille

Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters - What Ya' Gonna Do

Clyde McPhatter - Take A Step

Clyde McPhatter - Try Try Baby

Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters - Bip Bam

Clyde McPhatter - A Shot of Rhythm and Blues


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Azazello's picture

The revolution, unlike the Academy Awards, will not be televised.
Yesterday the Academy Award ceremony received 10 hours of TV coverage, from 11 a.m. to 10 at night with an hour off for news. Did Amy and Juan watch the whole thing ? Did they have an Oscar party ? Did they stand up and cheer when Bana was trotted out on the stage ?
Unbelievable.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

well, i guess history is an aggregation of a tremendous number of trivialities. Smile

amy does seem to like movies, though. i guess somebody has to keep their finger on the racing pulse of our culture.

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack
For many, many years Democracy Now! was sort of a lifeline for me. That one hour every day, on the radio, sane, not corporate, news. The "war and peace report."
Oh well, we all get old. Start losin' it a little, here and there.
Amy Goodman deserves all props for what she what she has accomplished with Democracy Now!. She's a saint and an icon.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

snoopydawg's picture

@Azazello

and has decided to become a warmonger? The funding for her show gives us a good hint. Very sad, indeed. I religiously watched her podcasts for two decades. The good news is she's getting paid less than Rachel. If someone is going to sell their integrity, I like them to be paid as little as possible.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

Azazello's picture

@snoopydawg
And I read them too.
It's sad.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello thanks but she is stinking rich now, feels no pain. "That's the system."

I'll say again; now I know why the French revolutionaries kept going, Hundred thousand citizens live on the streets in Los Angeles, and Amy and Juan spend all day at the Oscars. wtf?

No wonder the UN had to come and witness California for the world, our media is a joke. Thanks Hollywood. Amy is laughing all the way to the bank. Lewis Hill is rolling in his grave. Fuck that shit.

Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

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Several things got my attention tonight. Thanks as usual for the evening blues. Love that what the West Virginia teachers started is not going away. As a former teacher, know how difficult and thankless it seems at times. What bothers me about the reporting is giving the teacher salary and their needed raise of $10,000. To the uninformed that is a lot of money but in reality it is not so hope their grievances do not get lost in the discussion.

Sitting here in the edge of the world in lovely hot and humid Costa Rica, glad to hear about hope for the land protectors. Glad to see Costa Rica as one of the leaders. As we kayak around see many areas that need protection.

On a lighter note having a great time here. Two nights ago experiences a 4.5 earthquake as eating dinner. Shook us and the table but did not spill the red wine.

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

@jakkalbessie

hope all is going well down there in costa rica for you and do. i'll take it as a sign that the fates are looking out for you that no wine was spilled in the earthquake. Smile

What bothers me about the reporting is giving the teacher salary and their needed raise of $10,000. To the uninformed that is a lot of money but in reality it is not so hope their grievances do not get lost in the discussion.

yeah, the news industry generally does not do a good job of dealing with labor issues and they are exceptionally poor at dealing with the topic of living wages, regional cost of living and the cost (as well as credit cost) of obtaining credentials that allow one to perform certain kinds of labor.

even jimmy dore when he took a stab at explaining this issue really did not do it justice - and made math errors that would get a note sent home from the math teacher if a 5th grader made them.

to his credit, though, even with the math errors he did attempt to explain that west virginia was offering a raise, but at the same time had decided to pass health insurance costs on to the teachers that were in excess of the "raise."

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Thanks, Joe for drawing it out. In the good column: Teachers striking, judge opening poison records to the public, the split Koreas talking again, gun safety, dirty cop accounting and the latin countries treaty to support the right to a healthy environment. In the bad column: US military, US Congress, US Intelligence, Israel, Bankers, Monsanto. All the usual suspects. Love the Groucho quote! Cheers.

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

heh, more than usual in the good column tonight! well there's some progress. Smile

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snoopydawg's picture

Are you surprised? First we told them that they had to give up their missles before we talk to them and now France has told them the same thing.

Yeah, let's elect more democrats to stop them from doing what they're doing. Good thing that Doug Jones beat ray Moore, isn't it? He has voted against the democrats on every bill he has come up with. Tim Kaine, Her's VP is the one who came up with the bill. But the democrats need those blue dawg democrats because they give them the majority.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i suppose war with iran has to be the longest telegraphed move of the neocon empire. if only they could find a catalyst.

oh yeah. more democrats will help a lot. 'cuz all them demmycrats are peaceniks.

anybody need a bridge?

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snoopydawg's picture

The lawyer for the police said that cops now won't know if they will be covered if they screw up on their jobs. This is an easy way to not get charged. Don't plant evidence on people, don't shoot them if they aren't threatening them and just be a human being while doing their job.

Sheesh, that's not brain surgery.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

I am listening to Jimmy Dore with Lee Camp which is much more interesting.

Jane Mayer does good work and has a very long article in the New Yorker out today. There will be a lot of discussion about it and one of the new items is that Trump did not pick Romney as Scty of State because Putin told him not to, or something like that.

I try to stay from Trump crap but for some reason I read Jane's piece.

Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.

The big thing I learned that Steel is a long term spy and does some good work like exposing the fraud in the international soccer federation. He has contacts in Russia, spend decades as a professional spy including time in Russia. He was worried about how close Trump was to Russia. Mostly business but the sex stuff, supposed videos of sex with prostitutes he was concerned that Trump could be blackmailed and warned the US. On his own, he sent reports to the FBI but they didn't want to get involved because of a presidential election. But, no new news about Russia influence the election.

To check it out I went over to Marcy Wheeler, aka, emptywheel. She has a good analysis of the article and the couple of new point, but for the most part things like time lines are still confused. She has two more articles up about what is going on in the Muller investigation that makes it 3 posts today.

Marcy is top notch. Here is her report on the Jane Mayer article

15 MONTHS AND 15,000 WORDS LATER, BOOSTERS STILL OBSCURE THE TIMELINE ON THE STEELE DOSSIER

I stopped following her on twitter because she has too many tweets. Also, I seldom read her because she is too technical to keep up with. She was the main reason that I went back to Net Roots conferences. She was always on a couple of panels. I probably will never go back to another one. The conference is too close to the establishment democratic party but they do provide space for new movements to be heard. The teachers a few years ago were the most radical of the talks. And the last time I went it was also to meet Max Blumenthal.

In summary, these are two good articles but you would't miss anything if you did not read them.

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joe shikspack's picture

@DonMidwest

in my mind, the jury is still out on steele. if i understand the timeline of his employment, he went to the fbi with "information" while he was being employed by hillary clinton to dig up dirt on trump. i suppose that it's true that he might have come across something that made him genuinely concerned that hasn't been released to the public yet, but, it seems more likely that his reporting concerns to the fbi were just an extra service performed for clinton. alternately, it could also have been an act of "stirring the pot," to see if he could get the fbi to place its considerable assets to work investigating trump, too, in hopes that something more damaging than what he had been able to make up would emerge.

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@joe shikspack with decades of experience and he was upset about what they found out about Trump

The Steel "memo" was not a finalized intelligence product, but a rough version that needed more work. He talked to the FBI a couple of times and it sounds like he gave more background on the sources.

In short, what is in the memo will probably stand up to criticism

before I read Jane Mayer I had only wandered around and could not tell if Steel was just someone who threw stuff at to the wall to see what stuck

Jane did write an interesting story that kept my interest

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enhydra lutris's picture

@DonMidwest
*was*, the dossier was admittedly unvetted and unverified. He, in effect, said "I've got wads of money to pay for dirt on Trump" and then ran with whatever he was told.

Also, fraud in the international soccer federation was an open secret for years. It took no super sleuthing to find it, but it eventually came to a head, too much, too often and too open, so something was finally done.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

joe shikspack's picture

@The Aspie Corner

i wish them well. i hope that they kick some corrupt democrat ass. and if they aren't able to, i hope that they /pee wee herman/ scream real loud /pee wee herman/.

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Anja Geitz's picture

Jesus fucking Christ. The staggering belligerence of the U.S. As they plan to lay waste to country after country is unfuckingbelievable.

WTF would've been their war booster strategy if Hillary was elected and they didn't have the metal pens of The Trump Election and Russia-gate agit prop to herd us all in?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

joe shikspack's picture

@Anja Geitz

WTF would've been their war booster strategy if Hillary was elected

oh my, it would have been the people's mandate. they knew that she was a bloodthirsty killer when they elected her, right? besides, the repubs are owned by the same people, they wouldn't have tried to stop her from blowing up the planet.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@joe shikspack

I'm still not clear how the U.S. Would've framed it to a wider audience? The U.S. Is attacking (Iran, Russia, North Korea) because....?

Or are you saying the U.S. would've dispensed with any kind of narrative to explain why we are attacking other sovereign nations and relied on a media blackout?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

joe shikspack's picture

@Anja Geitz

i'm sure that it would have been framed as an "humanitarian intervention," or whatever similar euphemism becomes popular in an alternate future.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@joe shikspack

I'm sure they would've been real creative. Pity all that brain power is being used to kill thousands of women and children instead of leaving some kind of life affirming legacy. And how perverse is it that people who want those things in this political environment can now identify as a cynical idealist.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Azazello's picture

@Anja Geitz
the head of state of the targeted country is a brutal dictator who kills his own people.
R2P, right ?

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

here is one that looks interesting

no concrete plans yet, but might go there

don't know who will be there this year, but the program from last year looks very good

they are put on by worldbeyondwar.org

the last conference was in DC so that might have made it easier to get there. Here is the link for the 2017 conference

No War 2017: War and the Environment

the conference this year will be Sept 21 and 22 in Toronto

Designing a world beyond war: Legalize peace

Admission has a sliding scale and they recommend $56 for each person you register. This is not one of those high end conferences.

Anyone else has a conference that they are going to this year or summer?

****

Here is another conference which I have never attended. Glenn Greenwald spoke a couple of times and said it was a great conference. The details are not out yet but some reasonably big names are signed up.

Socialism2018

It is another one of those low admission fee conferences with $80 early bird and $100 later. (This is about 1/3 of the NetRoots Nation conference)

When I looked at it a couple of times there seemed to be some sessions on Marxism. I have never been able to read that literature. I attended a Zizek conference a couple of years ago and had breakfast with 3 Marxists - UK, FR and Philippines. Had not done that since middle 1970's in Berkeley.

For some reason, the things I read these days have more ties to Marxism than I have seen in the last 40 years.

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joe shikspack's picture

@DonMidwest

For some reason, the things I read these days have more ties to Marxism than I have seen in the last 40 years.

perhaps it's that marx is looking more like a prophet than ever?

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My Dad loved "Lucille".
Earlier this week I had a song in my head, wondering who sang it.
"Lover Please".
Thanks for the news round up
but cyber hugs for helping me figure out who sang "Lover Please."
Bush 41 stated 20% of our population would survive nuclear war, so that would be considered a win.
Was there ever a good time to be alive anywhere?

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

always happy to help. Smile

Was there ever a good time to be alive anywhere?

well, there have been times when the music has been spectacular.

on the other hand, the milkman of human kindness has always had a distribution problem.

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@on the cusp thanks, I don't know if it's what you were remembering but I had fun finding it.

Lover Please - Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge

Edited to add Clyde's version, no disrespect intended. His is twice as fast, do the twist.

cheers

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They will run into Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has developed into a seasoned and lethal army during the war with ISIS and Al Queda in Syria. The invasion would of course suck us in. And this will be a major shitstorm that may go beyond the region.

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mimi's picture

is my most favorite military expert and honest guy I like and love to listen to. While I hate Sen Lindsey Graham like the most slimy snake that ever tried to seduce people who wanted to have sex. Yack. And this man was in the US Air Force before? Is it for a reason he became Senator in 2003? So slimy I wouldn't touch him with with the tweezers. I should behave better and not let my feeling let me spit. Sorry, Graham cracker, you are tasteless. Spice is missing and you are just crumbling into nothingness.

Like many here said they had listened to Amy Goodman for years, I used to do that and always respected her work. So, I can't just turn-coat and be critical, especially when I can't keep up with watching her show, as well as I can't keep up just reading and listening aside from absorbing. I haven't watched MSNBC since years, since Keith Olberman lost it and Rachel Maddow started to foam at her mouth and wasn't able to stop talking on time. And I never understood how Larry King ended up on RT. That never fit into my prejudices about Larry King or originally RT and it seemed strange to me. But today it seems to be just reasonable. It's all too much and too confusing for the average housewife. Now I have to live with Lee Camp and Jimmy Dore. What a love/hate mess, heh?

Isn't it sad that Snoopydawg now says quite honestly that we have to compare the prices that were needed to pay some MSNBC folks to sell out? The cheaper they gave themselves away, the more value they had? Wow. Makes me so sad. What's going on over there?

I start to respect people who are too dumb to play chess. I can't even play checkers and hate super dimensional chess like the plague. And darn it, survival is a legitimate effort to engage in for all humans. So stop playing these board games. Board members are not figures you should move with.

Just play basketball. You get all sweaty and zig-zagging and drippling and if you hit the basket it's a slam dunk. Yippee.

Thanks again for the excellent collection of links. I think I am months behind trying to read them in a manner that some of the facts may eventually stick to my memory. Ahh, I hear my former boss saying sometimes 'less is more'. But with all that is going on, I don't believe that anymore, either.

Yours truly C99p mumin puppet mimi.

PS
I start feeling like a big mouth granny of the in the Muminfamilie (The Moomin Family) The Mumin family was a West German television series, produced by Augsburger Puppenkiste (the Ausburg Puppet Theater) and released from 1959 to 1960.
I found the box with the Mumin family puppets in the house I grew up in. That's a cute family and all of them are all cute trolls with a touch of madness.
1960mum1.jpg

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