This evening's music features delta blues guitarist and singer, sometimes travelling partner of Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines.

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

-- Bertolt Brecht

News and Opinion

It is awful what the US government is doing in its cooperation with the Saudis in Yemen. This article documents some of it. There's far too much to abstract, but here's a taste:

Yemen’s Hidden War: How the Saudi-Led Coalition Is Killing Civilians

From visiting some 20 sites of airstrikes and interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, survivors and relatives of those killed in eight of these strikes in southern Yemen, this reporter discovered evidence of a pattern of Saudi-coalition airstrikes that show indiscriminate bombing of civilians and rescuers, adding further weight to claims made by human rights organizations that some Saudi-led strikes may amount to war crimes and raising vital questions over the U.S. and Britain’s role in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. ...

“The Obama administration needs urgently to explain what the U.S.’s exact role in Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing campaign is,” said Cori Crider, strategic director at the international legal group Reprieve. “It very much looks like there is a case to answer here — not just for the Saudis, but for any Western agencies who are standing behind them. International law shuns the intentional targeting of civilians in war — and in the United States it is a serious federal crime.” ...

Along with the Saudi coalition’s bombing campaign, American warships have also helped to enforce a naval blockade that the Saudis say is necessary to prevent weapon shipments to the Houthis, whom they claim are supported by Iran. According to the U.N., this collective punishment has left the country “on the brink of famine,” with desperate shortages of food, medical supplies and fuel — vital not only for transportation but for pumping increasingly scarce water from the depths of the country’s depleted water tables. Four out of five Yemenis are now in need of humanitarian assistance. ...

America’s continued support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen comes as Saudi-U.S. relations have been strained by President Obama’s pursuit of a nuclear deal with the Kingdom’s regional nemesis, Iran. Adam Baron, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, suggests that the U.S. has been more eager to conciliate Saudi Arabia than usual, “because they want them and the other Gulf States to at least not actively oppose the Iran deal.”

Despite Global Ban, Saudi-Led Forces Kill Dozens in Yemen Using U.S.-Made Cluster Bombs

Iranians are erasing 'Death to America' graffiti across Tehran

Reopening the U.S. embassy in Tehran is still a long, long way away from happening, but that doesn't mean Iranians aren't rethinking their relationship with Uncle Sam. Iranian state media said this weekend that a number of people painted over "Death to America" graffiti on the wall of the former U.S. embassy, the Jerusalem Post reported. Similar anti-American slogans have been wiped from other streets in Tehran. ...

As we await a vote in Congress on the Iran nuclear deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif remains convinced that opening the U.S. embassy isn't a healthy next step, calling Washington's "illogical attitude" toward Iran a situation that needs to be resolved first.

"Death To America 2015" graffiti erased from walls of former U.S. Embassy in Tehran #Iran pic.twitter.com/Kv4eAplOWs

— Golnaz Esfandiari (@GEsfandiari) August 30, 2015

Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS

Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast. ...

However, Petraeus’s play, if executed, could be enormously controversial. The American war on terror began with an al Qaeda attack on 9/11, of course. The idea that the U.S. would, 14 years later, work with elements of al Qaeda’s Syrian branch was an irony too tough to stomach for most U.S. officials interviewed by The Daily Beast. They found Petraeus’s notion politically toxic, near-impossible to execute, and strategically risky.

It would also face enormous legal and security obstacles. In 2012, the Obama administration designated al Nusra a foreign terrorist organization. And last year, the president ordered airstrikes on al Nusra positions housing members of the Khorasan Group, an al Qaeda cadre that was trying to recruit jihadists with Western passports to smuggle bombs onto civilian airliners. ...

“This is an acknowledgment that U.S. stated goal to degrade and destroy ISIS is not working. If it were, we would not be talking to these not quite foreign terrorist groups,” Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast. “Strategically, it is desperate.”

West Point law professor who called for attacks on 'Islamic holy sites' resigns

A law professor who published an inflammatory article urging attacks on law professors and “Islamic holy sites” and who has been dogged by accusations of misrepresenting his academic and military credentials has resigned from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Guardian has confirmed.

Although West Point hired William C Bradford on 1 August, a spokesman said the prestigious undergraduate institution where the US army educates its future officers parted ways with the controversial academic on Sunday, the day after the Guardian published an article highlighting Bradford’s proposals to treat US scholars as “enemy combatants”. ...

Bradford recently published an academic article titled, in translation, “The Treason of the Professors”. The lengthy paper, which has been repudiated by its journal editor as a “mistake”, accused a “clique of about 40” law professors of active collaboration with “Islamist” organizations and recommended targeting them as enemy combatants.

Supplementing military action, Bradford recommended that Congress investigate links between the professors and “Islamism” under “a renewed version of the House Un-American Activities Committee”, which was one of the vehicles for the discredited “Red Scare” hunts for Communists in the 1950s.

“Treason prosecutions shore up national unity, deter disloyalty, and reflect the seriousness with which the nation regards betrayal in war,” Bradford wrote.

Wingnuts fighting wingnuts in Israel while Netanyahu is ratted out by his former housekeeper ...

Israeli Coalition Govt Faces Collapse Over Italian Restaurant

UTJ Blasts Netanyahu, Threatens to Depart Coalition

With a narrow 61-seat majority in the 120 seat Israeli Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is pretty much constantly on the brink of collapse, and every perceived slight to any party, or even to a couple of MPs, could quickly escalate into a vote of no confidence and a push for fresh elections.

The latest possible reason, however, comes as a surprise, as Netanyahu’s dinner at an Italian restaurant during his state visit to Italy, where he dined with Italian PM Matteo Renzi, has fueled a serious divide between the PM and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners.

The Florentine restaurant, Enoteca Pinchiorri, serves some non-kosher entrees, and that’s not sitting well with United Torah Judaism (UTJ), which accused Netanyahu of “openly mocking” the religious parties in Israel by eating at such a restaurant, though Netanyahu maintains he didn’t eat anything non-kosher while he was there. ...

Roughly half of Israeli Jews don’t keep kosher, and normally it is not treated as a huge issue. Now, however, religious parties are getting quotes from a former Netanyahu housekeeper claiming the PM mixes meat and milk all the time. Odd as it may seem, this might be the straw that breaks the (non-kosher) camel’s back.

The Most Expensive Nuclear Bomb Ever Made

Engineers at the United States' nuclear weapons lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have spent the past few years designing and testing the B61-12, a high-tech addition to our nation's atomic arsenal. Unlike the free-fall gravity bombs it will replace, the B61-12 is a guided nuclear bomb. ... Using "Dial-a-yield" technology, the bomb's explosive force can be adjusted before launch from a high of 50,000 tons of TNT equivalent to a low of 300 tons—that's 98 percent smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 70 years ago. ...

In 2010, the Obama administration announced that it would not make any nuclear weapons with new capabilities. The White House and Pentagon insist that the B61-12 won't violate that pledge. ...

Once full production commences in 2020, the program will cost more than $11 billion for about 400 to 480 bombs—more than double the original estimate, making it the most expensive nuclear bomb ever built.

Border Crisis Escalates in South America as Over 1,000 Colombians Are Deported

Thousands of Colombians living in Venezuela have been deported or have fled in the past week, as political crisis grows between the two governments.

Many Colombians settled in the border region of Venezuela more than a decade ago, pushed out of their home country by guerrilla and drug violence. Now, Venezuelan authorities argue that this population has turned to smuggling, threatening the country's economy by purchasing heavily subsidized products there, and making a profit by selling them for higher prices across the border in Colombia. ...

So-called "anti-smuggling" military operations have been launched in the porous northern border between the two countries in the in the past year, but deportations are a new measure after the government in Caracas said three soldiers were shot and wounded on August 19. Telesur, the state-run media outlet, blamed Colombian paramilitary groups for the attack.

Julian Assange: documents show 'fancy dress' escape plan

Ecuadorian officials reportedly considered smuggling Julian Assange out of their embassy in London by disguising him in fancy dress, in one of a number of potential plots to evade police stationed outside.

It was also suggested the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, could hop across the Kensington rooftops to a helipad, or become lost in the crowds in Harrods, according to documents seen by Ecuadorian news site Focus Ecuador and Buzzfeed UK.

Another option for getting Assange out was to appoint him Ecuador’s representative to the UN and hustle him out in an official car under the protection of diplomatic immunity.

A WikiLeaks representative declined to comment on the articles, while representatives for Assange and the Ecuadorian government have been approached for comment and the Guardian awaits a response.

Totalitarianism on the rise in Canada:

Canadian Cops Want to Search Your Mail

With a federal election in its home stretch, Canada's chiefs of police have issued a wish list of investigative powers they are hoping that the country's next prime minister can deliver — everything from allowing them to search Canadians' mail, to pulling back the curtain on anonymity online.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) adopted eight resolutions, calling for specific new powers to help them fight child pornography, cybercrime, drug dealing, and arms trafficking.

They say that a lack of cooperation from cell phone providers is limiting their power to catch drug dealers, and that forbidding cops from opening Canadians' mail means that the postal service is delivering "guns, grenades, a rocket launcher, stun guns, dangerous chemicals, and drugs such as cocaine, heroin and marihuana." ...

But one of the most controversial requests that the cop bosses are making involves how they go about identifying anonymous users online. ...

The resolution calls for "the creation of a reasonable law designed to specifically provide law enforcement the ability to obtain, in real-time or near real-time, basic subscriber information (BSI) from telecommunications providers."

Pope Francis tells priests to pardon women who have abortions

Pope Francis has opened the door for women who have had abortions – an act considered a grave sin by the Catholic church – to be absolved if they express contrition and seek forgiveness from their priest.

“The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented,” the pontiff wrote in an extraordinary letter that was released by the Vatican on Tuesday.

“I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal,” he added.

The unprecedented order by Francis, which temporarily allows all priests to grant forgiveness to women who have elected to have an abortion and profoundly regret the procedure, is part of the church’s jubilee year of mercy, which begins on 8 December and runs until 20 November 2016.

Days of Revolt: The Revolutionary, Caged

Black Lives Matter network disavows political ties after DNC backs movement

Members of the Black Lives Matter movement have disavowed all political parties after the Democratic establishment adopted a resolution in support of the movement, which has interrupted the party’s frontrunners at several campaign events in recent months.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) unanimously adopted a resolution in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday afternoon during a summer meeting in Minneapolis.

The resolution, which was first reported by Buzzfeed, said: “The DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming ‘Black lives matter’ and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.”

“We do not now, nor have we ever, endorsed or affiliated with the Democratic Party, or with any party,” the Black Lives Matter network said in a response posted to its Facebook page on Sunday. “The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control or contain black people’s efforts to liberate ourselves. True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party.”

This is a really excellent article worth reading in full. Kevin Gosztola has outdone himself. Here's a taste:

As With Civil Rights Movement, Democrats Seek to Co-Opt Black Lives Matter Ahead of Election

The Democratic National Committee passed a resolution at its summer meeting on August 28, which endorsed “Black lives matter.” The resolution was an effort by Democrats to co-opt the energy coming from the movement for black lives and steer it into the 2016 Election.

There are distinct parallels between the Democratic Party’s reaction to Black Lives Matter and how the party responded to the civil rights movement and black revolutionary groups of the late 1960s. ...

As Lance Selfa comprehensively outlines in his book, “Democrats: A Critical History,” the Democratic Party has relied on electoral politics before to contain black movements.

President John F. Kennedy favored the pursuit of voting rights through legal strategies rather than direct action. His administration chose to handle most civil rights matters through an office in the Justice Department. ...

Robert L. Allen, a radical commentator, argued, “From the liberal point of view, some concessions must be made if future disruptions such as the 1967 riot are to be avoided,” and, “Black people were supposed to get the impression that progress was being made, that they were finally being let in the front door … The intention is to create an impression of real movement while actual movement is too limited to be significant.”

The present-day Democratic Party has employed a similar strategy. Obama’s task force review of policing and meetings with activists have been attempts to pacify the movement and convince organizers the government will be responsive to them. At the same time, there has been dragnet surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists by federal agencies, which Democrats have not opposed. ...

Undoubtedly, what the Democrats would like to do is offer leaders, especially well-known activists such as Cullors, Garza, and Tometi, positions where they can advance their struggle within electoral campaigns. Thus far, the activists have nothing but scorn for the party’s endorsement. ...

Remarkably, none of the Democratic National Committee’s endorsed policy solutions include more accountability for the police who are committing the extrajudicial killings. The DNC would like us all to apparently show solidarity with the movement right up until there are demands made for justice.

Moving Targets

The US Department of Justice, prominent international policing experts and most major police departments across the US agree: police officers should not fire their guns into moving cars. The shots are widely viewed as ineffective for stopping oncoming vehicles, and the risks to innocent parties are seen as overwhelming.

But a Guardian investigation has found US police have carried out at least 30 fatal shootings into moving vehicles they claimed were being used as weapons so far in 2015. More than a quarter of those killed were black men, a group that according to the US Census Bureau makes up just 6% of the driving-age American population.

In all cases, officers said the vehicle posed a threat either to their own lives, to those of police colleagues, or to bystanders. In almost all incidents, however, their decisions to shoot appeared to run counter to federal guidance instructing officers to open fire only if a driver presents a separate deadly threat, such as a gun. None of those killed were accused of pointing firearms at police, and in only three cases did police appear to be aware of a gun being inside the vehicle. In several of the 2015 shootings, officers shot people in moving vehicles from the side or back.

The Next Not-So-Cold War: As Climate Change Heats Arctic, Nations Scramble for Control and Resources

Bear Grylls: 'I hope' President Obama won't have to drink his own pee

News broke earlier today that President Barack Obama will appear on an Alaska-based episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. And it only took the Internet a few hours to turn the whole thing into a joke about drinking pee.

“If there's one thing we all know about Bear Grylls' techniques, it's that they mostly involve drinking his own urine,” reads a new petition on the White House website. “And so: We ask that Obama do the right thing and drink his own urine during a taping of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. For science. The people demand it.”

During his appearance on Running Wild, Obama will investigate the effects of climate change while on a "trek through the wilderness" of Alaska with Grylls, according to a press release from NBC.

Sorry Mr Obama, but presidents shouldn’t behave like reality TV stars

An award-winning golf aficionado and micro-brewer is to appear on reality television as part of a pre-retirement publicity tour. A trip to Alaska, accompanied by Bear Grylls, wouldn’t be the stuff of international news in normal circumstances, but this particular star also happens to be the leader of the free world.

The Nobel peace prize winner responsible for the launch of the largest number of cruise missiles in the award’s history, Barack Obama, will go where Kate Winslet and Zac Efron have gone before, and venture into the wild for entertainment TV. ... The most dismal aspect of this stunt isn’t the lowering of the status of the presidency – as Barack chews raw blubber or spoons Grylls for warmth – but the Putinesque hard-man showmanship. From Australian PM Tony Abbott’s chewing on a raw onion and lycra-clad cycling sessions, to David Cameron’s wild swimming, Vladimir Putin’s continuing mid-life crisis seems to have sparked a trend in global leadership. The submarines, the topless horse riding and the lifting of weights have been lapped up by many of Putin’s countrymen, and it’s this machismo that Obama seems to be trying to channel as he heads to Alaska. ...

Accompanied by a charismatic survival expert named after a woodland camping stove, Obama’s high publicity stunt with Grylls draws attention to the important plight of the environment, but it will be too easily dismissed by the doubters as a cheap gimmick. Worse still, those already concerned about climate change would have preferred eight years of quiet achievement to a final, desperate and insubstantial finale.

Keiser Report: Stop What’s That Sound? Falling Markets!

Another 125 Clinton emails on a range of US and foreign issues now deemed classified

Hillary Clinton sent or received at least an additional 125 emails through her private computer server while she served as secretary of state that were later determined to contain classified material, according to new records released late Monday by the State Department. ...

In at least one email, Clinton acknowledged her decision to send sensitive information by email. In a Jan. 30, 2010 email to then USAID Administrator Raj Shah and copied to Mills, Clinton wrote “Pls don't forward my last email” in the subject line. ...

Clinton has agreed to testify about her email arrangements on Oct. 22 before the House committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed.

Bernie Sanders Applied for 'Conscientious Objector' Status During Vietnam, Campaign Confirms

Bernie Sanders applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, his campaign confirmed to ABC News.

"As a college student in the 1960s he was a pacifist," Michael Briggs, campaign spokesman added in an email. "[He] isn't now." ...

According to a profile from the Vermont Senator's hometown newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, his conscientious objector status application was eventually rejected, but by then Sanders was too old to be drafted.

As a congressman and later senator, Sanders has rarely voted to authorize the use of force.

In 1991, he stood in opposition to the first Gulf War, voting against military involvement in the country even after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. "I think we could've gotten Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in a way that did not require a war," he told ABC's Martha Raddatz Sunday on "This Week," arguing that with the world in agreement, other options were available, including sanctions.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Sanders did vote in favor of a military response in Afghanistan. But Sanders said the use of force, in his opinion, is not only permissible in response to an attack.

"I believe that the United States should have the strongest military in the world. We should be working with other countries in coalition. And when people threaten the United States or threaten our allies, or commit genocide, the United States, with other countries, should be prepared to act militarily," he continued.

Is Obama Greenwashing His Climate Record in Alaska?

'Monster' wildfire season grips west coast residents with fears of future devastation

In Oregon as a whole, there are 11 large fires burning on 435,799 acres. In Washington there are 14 burning on 900,000 acres. This season – which is still in full swing – has seen 1,422,880 acres burned in the two states, or 2,223 square miles, an area just a little smaller than the state of Delaware.

More than 11,000 firefighters are still in the field. Firefighting resources in the American west are completely committed, and both states have called out their national guardsmen to help contain the blazes. Firefighters have come from as far away as Australia and New Zealand to pitch in, and three firefighters died while in duty.

In the busy Canyon Creek Incident Command Center at the John Day fairgrounds, Morgan Warthen of the Northwest Interagency Command told me that while there might be year-on-year fluctuations, “when we look at the big picture, we’re looking at longer fire seasons and more acreage burned”.

That’s reflected in the way that the nation’s scarce firefighting resources are deployed. At the beginning of August, the US Department of Agriculture published a report showing that the amount the US Forest Service spends on fighting wildfires has expanded from 16% of its budget in 1995 to just over 50% this year. ...

It’s difficult to directly attribute the current wildfires to climate change. But scientists tell us that we can expect more of them in the west as climate change takes hold.

Reduced mountain snowpacks (Oregon’s was 16% of the long-term average this year) leads to less runoff over a shorter period. The land dries out more quickly, and stays dry longer. Wildfires start earlier, burn longer, and finish later.

New 'Divest for Paris' Challenge Amplifies Global Pressure Before COP21

Channeling the momentum of an ever-growing movement, climate leaders launched the "Divest for Paris" challenge on Tuesday, calling on institutions, individuals, and governments to align their investments with their values by divesting from fossil fuels ahead of this fall's COP21 climate summit in Paris.

"If you say you want action in Paris, then you have a responsibility to divest from fossil fuels," said May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, which is co-hosting Tuesday's Paris Divestment Conference along with the European Green Party. The conference is timed to coincide with the second day of the latest round of climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany this week, where officials are working to streamline the negotiating text world leaders are expected to finalize in Paris in December.

"By shifting resources from the dirty energy of the past to the 100 percent renewable energy of the future, institutions can model the type of action we need from countries at COP21," Boeve said. "With our climate in crisis, divestment is a moral necessity." ...

Tuesday's conference and the "Divest for Paris" challenge are meant to amplify that pressure while offering a practical road map for those entities that do wish to cut ties with dirty energy sources.

Thanks to Industrial Pollution, 90 Percent of Seabirds Have Plastic in Guts

Up to 90 percent of seabirds are likely to have plastic in their guts, and the risk of ingestion is growing—a result of ever-increasing industrial pollution in the world's oceans, according to a new study published Monday.

Seabirds are particularly vulnerable to plastic ingestion due to their habits of eating floating particles that they mistake for fish eggs, state the authors—a trio of Australian scientists who studied 186 species around the world. The report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, analyzed previous data on seabirds' plastic consumption and used computer models to update those figures, extrapolating that "the ingestion rate would reach 90% of individuals if these studies were conducted today." ...

"The highest area of expected impact occurs at the Southern Ocean boundary in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, which contrasts with previous work identifying this area as having low anthropogenic pressures and concentrations of marine debris," the report states.

As Hardesty explains, that's because those areas have the greatest diversity of seabird species. Meanwhile, other recent scientific reports have also blamed industrial byproduct for the massive amounts of waste that enter the world's oceans every year. The UK alone produces 80 tons of microplastic just from cosmetics, while the Netherlands-based group Ocean Cleanup reported that the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" may be the most polluted marine area in the world.

Also of interest:

From the department of Dream On and Revealed Preferences:

Why the Koch Brothers Will Pour All Their Money Into Making Bernie Sanders President

Civil Rights Group Backed by Telecom Industry Seeks to Block Net Neutrality, Instantly Contradicts Itself

Hillary Clinton emails: 'lazy' Republicans, impeaching justices ... and gefilte fish

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015 finalists – in pictures

Whale hunting in Alaska: Point Hope, the village caught between tradition and climate change

Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders Campaign: a Case of Historical Amnesia?

Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts — Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy