This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist J.B. Hutto. Enjoy!

^{J.B. Hutto - Got My Mojo Workin'}

“It seems that ‘we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had ‘territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.”

-- Ambrose Bierce

News and Opinion

Civilian deaths claimed in 71 US-led airstrikes on Isis

The US-led coalition’s bombing of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has been described as the “most precise ever”, faces allegations that civilians have been killed in 71 separate air raids.

A spokesman for US central command (Centcom) disclosed the claims to the Guardian. Many of the claims have been dismissed, but he said 10 incidents were the subject of fuller, formal investigations. Five investigations have been concluded, although only one has been published.

To date, the coalition acknowledges civilian deaths in a single strike: in November 2014 a US strike on Syria killed two children, a Centcom investigation published in May found. Centcom said it will only publish investigations where a “preponderance of evidence” suggests civilians have died.

Monitoring groups questioned how thorough the investigations were. ...

The independent monitoring group Airwars last month reported that public information suggested at least 459 civilians have died. Other monitoring groups, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also record significant civilian deaths in coalition airstrikes.

This article asks a great question, but the obvious answer is that the migrant crisis is so bad because the west led by America keeps destabilizing governments, creating chaos and bombing countries back to the stone age. The article proposes an answer that, in light of the glaringly obvious answer, is trivially true.

Syrian refugee crisis: why has it become so bad?

The Syrian war has been going on for four years, but only in 2015 has Europe woken up to the flow of Syrian refugees.

So why now?

It is hard to find definitive reasons, but conversations with Syrians across the migration trail and a survey of recently available data suggest a mixture of the following.

Firstly, the war is not getting any better. That has the dual effect of prompting more Syrians to leave their country and causing Syrians in exile in Turkey to give up hope of returning home.

Secondly, Turkey is not a country for people to stay in for the long term. It has been more receptive than most, taking in about 2 million Syrian refugees. But Syrians do not have the right to work there legally, so it is not a place to settle. Additionally, the recent electoral setbacks for the AKP, the party perceived as being most in favour of helping Syrian refugees, has made many Syrians nervous about Turkey’s political future.

Thirdly, UN bodies working with millions of refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon are complaining that they are running out of money, making camp conditions harsher than in the past and life more untenable for Syrians who live on their own but still depend on UN subsidies.

The UNHCR reports that its appeals for cash are underfunded. The graphic below shows what rich countries have given to UNHCR to deal with the problem – leaving a gap of almost 40% between what it needs and what has been donated.

Syrian boy (13) tells police in #Hungary: "Just stop the war. We won't want to come to Europe" https://t.co/yOJ77y3FxO via @CVerenkotte #fb

— Mirjam Fischer (@imillenari) September 2, 2015

Abusing Dead Syrian Children

Images are a powerful tool in the hands of propagandists. ... So it is with the tragic photograph making the mainstream media rounds yesterday of a lone Syrian child drowned on a Turkish shore. ...

Proponents of the four-year US policy of Syrian destabilization and regime change are lining up to make their case that the current refuge crisis – now swamping Europe with Syrians desperate for something approaching a normal life – is one hundred percent the fault of both Syrian president Assad and the western non-interventionists who objected to plans in 2013 for the US and UK to begin bombing Syria.

Writing in the International Business Times, the appropriately named James Bloodworth asserted that:

The escalating refugee crisis is rightly blamed on the cruel indifference shown to the plight of the world’s most vulnerable people by certain European governments, including our own. But let us remember how many of those who are today mawkishly lamenting the sight of dead children were whooping and hollering in 2013 when parliament voted to appease the brutal dictator from whom some of these unfortunate souls are fleeing.

Of course this is a grotesque lie meant to abuse this little dead boy one final time to make a case for a US/UK attack on the country his family,in desperation,
left behind.

But the boy’s family did not leave in 2010. Or 2009. Or 2008. Not even 2011 or 2012. They did not flee Bashar Assad’s Syria. They fled a Syria on the verge of being overrun by the US-backed radical jihadists who have turned Syria into another Libya.

These Syrians did not flee Assad’s domestic policy as much as they fled US and UK foreign policy.

East-West divide: Clashes in Budapest, E.Europe rejects migrant sharing quotas

Turkish Parliament Renews Mandate for Invading Iraq, Syria

Turkey’s parliament today voted to extend by one year the mandate that allows their military to conduct operations across the border into neighboring Syria and Iraq, a move which was hotly opposed by the pro-Kurdish opposition.

The bill not only allows continued airstrikes against targets in those countries, but would allow outright ground invasions at the government’s discretion, though they maintain they have no specific intention to invade either country unless a “clear threat to national security” emerges.

Russia Says Syria's Assad Is Ready to Share Power with Opposition

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is ready to hold snap parliamentary elections and could share power with a "healthy" opposition.

Russia, along with Iran, has been Assad's principle international ally in the war that has raged in Syria for four-and-a-half years and has claimed a quarter of a million lives.

Moscow has made clear it does not want to see Assad toppled and has seized on gains made by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to urge his foreign foes, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, to work with Damascus to combat the common enemy.

Putin also said the West had itself to blame for the migrant crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Middle East via the Mediterranean Sea and land routes across the Balkans, with many dying trying to reach the European Union.

Russia criticizes the West, especially the United States, for leading to the overthrow of Moscow-allied leaders in Iraq and Libya, where radical and extremist groups are now roaming.

"Naturally, first and foremost this is the policy of our American partners. Europe follows this policy blindly under the so-called allies' obligations, and then takes the brunt of it itself," Putin said.

US May Sanction Russia, China After Hastily Blaming Them for Hacks

In mid-July, the Obama Administration publicly announced that they weren’t going to “publicly blame” China for the OPM hack, despite saying, publicly, that they believe China did it.

This was because there was no good evidence for China having done it. ...

Shortly thereafter, a hack against the Pentagon’s unclassified email system happened, and the entire process was repeated again, only this time it was Russia who wasn’t formally blamed, who no evidence existed to really prove was behind it, and who the US was still mad at.

Fast forward another month, and we are at the present, with US officials now talking up the possibility of announcing sanctions against both Russia and China over these “cyber-attacks,” which again, they have not offered any public evidence were committed by either nation.

US justice department cracks down on mobile phone surveillance

New rules require federal law enforcement officials to get search warrant before using ‘Stingray’ tracking technology, tricking phones to believe it’s a cell tower

American federal law enforcement officials will be required to get a search warrant before using secretive and intrusive mobile phone-tracking technology under a new US justice department policy.

The policy, the first of its kind in the US, comes amid concerns from privacy groups and even judges that cell-site simulator technology, which is now widely used by local police departments, is infringing on privacy rights and is being used without proper accountability.

“The policy is really designed to address our practices, and to really try to promote transparency and consistency and accountability – all while being mindful of the public’s privacy interest,” deputy attorney general Sally Yates told reporters in announcing the policy change on Thursday.

The technology – also known as a Stingray, a suitcase-sized device – can sweep up basic mobile phone data from a neighbourhood by tricking phones in the area to believe that it’s a cell tower, allowing it to identify unique subscriber numbers. The data is then transmitted to the police, helping them determine the location of a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message.

Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr wants bail eased so he can fly to Toronto to visit family

Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is asking a Canadian court to ease his bail conditions to allow him to fly to Toronto to visit his family, The Canadian Press has learned.

Among other things, Khadr also wants to be rid of his electronic monitoring bracelet, arguing it's embarrassing and intrusive, and his curfew eased.

"My release and reintegration into the community have been going great," Khadr says in a supporting affidavit.

"I have not gotten into any trouble of any kind with the authorities."

An Alberta judge granted Khadr bail May 7 pending his appeal in the U.S. against his 2010 conviction for war crimes — including the murder of an American special forces soldier — by a widely discredited military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

He transferred to Canada in 2012 and remained incarcerated until winning bail and tasting freedom for the first time since his capture as a 15-year-old in Afghanistan in July 2002.

However, bail came with stringent conditions — including that he live with his lawyer Dennis Edney in Edmonton and not leave Alberta — except to stay at Edney's vacation home in B.C.

He was also required to communicate with his family — some of whom expressed pro-al-Qaida views in the past — only in English and under the Edneys' supervision.

A Watershed Moment for Guatemala: Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Celebrates Jailing of Ex-President

Guatemala's president spends night in jail after resignation

Otto Pérez Molina has spent the night in prison after resigning as the country’s president, and is facing criminal charges in relation to a major corruption scam, prompting scenes of jubilation in the poverty-stricken Central American country, just days before a general election.

Congress voted unanimously to accepted his resignation on Thursday afternoon, by which time Pérez Molina was already sitting before a judge, while prosecutors presented evidence to support charges of unlawful association, bribery and customs fraud.

Dressed in a dark suit, Pérez Molina listened impassively as the court heard phone recordings that allegedly implicate him in a corruption ring that prosecutors claim raised $3.7m in bribes in a single year. Half of that sum is alleged to have gone to Pérez Molina and his former vice-president Roxana Baldetti.

Judge Miguel Angel Galvez adjourned the proceedings on Thursday evening and ordered Pérez Molina to be detained until the hearing restarts on Friday, citing a flight risk.

Before leaving the court accompanied by several police officers, Pérez Molina complained about the decision to reporters in the room, insisting that he had attended the hearing voluntarily and has never had any intention of skipping the country or hiding from justice.

Allan Nairn: U.S. Backers of Guatemalan Death Squads Should Be Jailed Alongside Ex-President

Police officer indicted for first-degree murder in death of unarmed teenager

A police officer was in custody on Thursday evening after being indicted with first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Virginia earlier this year.

The grand jury in the city of Portsmouth charged officer Stephen Rankin with murder and the illegal use of a firearm for fatally shooting William Chapman, according to court filings. Portsmouth’s police chief later said Rankin had also been fired from his job.

“After a methodical deliberation of a thorough investigation by the Virginia state police, the commonwealth’s attorney determined that William Chapman was murdered by a police officer,” said Jon Michael Babineau, an attorney for Chapman’s family. “Today, the citizens of Portsmouth agreed.” ...

Rankin shot Chapman in the head and chest outside a Walmart superstore on the morning of 22 April. The pair had engaged in a physical struggle after Rankin tried to arrest the 18-year-old on suspicion of shoplifting, according to police. Authorities have declined to say whether Chapman was found to have stolen anything.

Witnesses said Chapman broke free and then stepped back towards the officer aggressively before being shot twice. The 18-year-old was the second unarmed man shot dead by Rankin in Portsmouth. An autopsy indicated Chapman was not shot at close range.

Oh looky, the racist rethugs are playing with fire again:

Republicans step up attack campaign – and the target is Black Lives Matter

With increasing frequency over the last week, Republican candidates have sallied attacks on Black Lives Matter, the movement born of protests against police killings of African Americans. The Republican candidates have been testing new messages with various subtle edges – and abilities to cut.

Republicans have stopped short, so far, of tying Black Lives Matter by name to the killing of multiple law enforcement officers across the country last month. But at least two Republicans, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, have cited the group as evidence of a new anti-police “culture” – created by President Barack Obama, they say – that has endangered the lives of law enforcement officers.

Other Republican candidates have faulted Black Lives Matter as selfish in its focus on African Americans, as inflammatory in its rhetoric or as failing to focus on black-on-black violence. Drowning them out and goading them on have been Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative barkers, who have not hesitated to draw an explicit link between the movement and the killing of police officers, despite a lack of any supporting evidence.

Keiser Report: ‘Frack now, pay later’

New Research Documents Growth of Extreme Poverty

A new book by two of our nation’s foremost poverty researchers, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, reveals the desperate circumstances that hundreds of thousands of children and their parents increasingly face: living with virtually no cash income in an economy that requires it to meet nearly every human need.

In $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, Edin and Shaefer trace this disturbing trend to [Democrat Bill Clinton's] 1996 welfare law, which has gradually but inexorably gutted the cash assistance safety net for families with children. Attention to this often neglected side of our nation’s extreme economic inequality is especially timely as policymakers from both parties consider reauthorizing the 1996 welfare law. As the book vividly shows, we are long overdue to take a different path — one that upholds our nation’s values, including our responsibility to protect and empower the most vulnerable by eliminating extreme poverty. ...

When policymakers supposedly shifted to a work-based safety net in 1996, they didn’t ensure that there would be enough decent jobs for everyone who wants one. While President Clinton’s proposed welfare overhaul in 1992 guaranteed a public-sector job for anyone who couldn’t find one, the 1996 law had no such guarantee. Both the labor market since 2000 and the experience of the successful but short-lived TANF subsidized jobs program in the Great Recession have made clear that many more people want jobs than can find them, in good times and bad.

Chicago Hunger Strikers Enter Day 19 Challenging Rahm Emanuel’s Push to Privatize Public Schools

School reform divides Chicago as protesters vow to continue hunger strike

Chicago protesters have angrily vowed to continue a hunger strike over school reform plans, reacting to the city’s announcement that it would reopen a South Side high school on its own terms.

The city’s public school department (CPS) on Thursday announced that formerly closed Dyett high school would reopen as an “open enrollment, arts-focused neighborhood high school and community innovation lab”.

Protesters hijacked a public hearing after mayor Rahm Emanuel refused to answer questions about the future of Dyett on Wednesday, prompting the mayor to leave the stage in front of several hundred people. A hunger striker also took the stage, one of a dozen who began her strike 18 days ago to protest the city’s plans for the school.

The high school was closed a year ago due to dwindling enrollment and poor performance by the students of its small classes, but Bronzville residents have taken it up as a symbol of over-privatization and a lack of access to good schools for poorer Chicagoans.

'I just don't know' – Joe Biden still undecided on presidential run

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, said on Thursday he is still trying to determine whether he has the emotional energy to mount a White House bid in 2016 but cannot say yet whether he will.

In his first extensive public comments about a possible run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden said, “I can’t look you straight in the eye now and say I know I can do it.”

Biden, 72, has been huddling with advisers for weeks to determine whether he will challenge Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who has seen her favourability ratings plummet over her use of a private email server while working as the nation’s top diplomat.

“The most relevant factor in my decision is whether my family and I have the emotional energy to run,” Biden, who lost his son Beau to cancer earlier this year, said in response to a question.

Edward Snowden says Hillary Clinton 'ridiculous' to think emails were secure

Edward Snowden has branded as “completely ridiculous” the idea that Hillary Clinton’s personal email server was secure while she was secretary of state. ...

On Thursday, Snowden was asked what he would say to Clinton now that she is being investigated for sending emails containing classified information while using a private server.

“This is a problem,” Snowden said, “because anyone who has the clearances that the secretary of state has, or the director of any top-level agency has, knows how classified information should be handled.”

He added: “If an ordinary worker at the State Department or the CIA … were sending details about the security of embassies, which is alleged to be in her email, meetings with private government officials, foreign government officials and the statements that were made to them in confidence over unclassified email systems, they would not only lose their jobs and lose their clearance, they would very likely face prosecution for it.” ...

[Snowden commented] on Clinton’s choice of email server, Platte River Networks.

“When the unclassified systems of the United States government, which has a full-time information security staff, regularly gets hacked, the idea that someone keeping a private server in the renovated bathroom of a server farm in Colorado is more secure is completely ridiculous,” he said.

'Our Votes Matter': Rights Marchers in North Carolina Call for End to Voter Suppression

Over one month into their multi-state trek, civil rights leaders and activists on Thursday are descending on the North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh to call attention to what they say is a flagrant "crime against democracy," the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

Following in the footsteps of civil rights leaders and activists a generation ago, the NAACP on August 1 launched its 860-mile Journey for Justice, from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C. with the message that, "Our lives, our votes, our jobs, and our schools matter." ...

"It has been 2 years, 26 months, and 790 days since the [Shelby County v. Holder] decision to dismantle the VRA by five members of the U.S. Supreme Court," declared NC NAACP State Conference president Rev. Dr. William J. Barber in a statement ahead of Thursday's rally. "Since then, government legislatures, especially in the south have engaged in all out assault against voting rights because Congress has not acted to fix the Voting Rights Act. As a result, North Carolina has seen the worst attack on voting rights since the days of the first Jim Crow in the 1800s."

"This non-action is a crime against democracy," Barber added.

Deep Contradictions in Obama's Arctic Policies

Ecuadorians In Court to Seize Chevron's Canadian Assets

Canada's Supreme Court is set to weigh in on one of the most bitterly contested environmental lawsuits in history Friday, deciding whether Ecuadorian villagers can go after Canadian assets of the US-based oil major Chevron.

The villagers are trying to collect on a nearly $10 billion judgement by Ecuador's courts against Chevron, claiming they suffer from lingering health problems from toxic oil residues left behind by a decades-old venture in the Amazon basin. They've asked the justices to allow them to pursue the estimated $15 billion that Chevron has in Canadian assets. But Chevron argues the judgement against it was based on fraud — and that in any event, its assets in Canada are owned by its Canadian subsidiary and aren't subject to the ruling. ...

"Up to this point, there have been many decisions in favor of Ecuadorians, but it's been years, and they're still living in the midst of this contamination," said Paul Paz y Mino, a spokesman for the watchdog group Amazon Watch, which supports the villagers' claims. "A court decision is one thing, but Chevron having to pay for cleanup and health costs is a measure of true justice for the people who have been affected." ...

The case dates back to the 1960s, when the former American oil major Texaco began to drill in the Amazon River basin of eastern Ecuador. Texaco handed over its concession to Ecuador's state oil company in 1992, but residents of the surrounding communities say Texaco left behind a toxic residue of tainted soil and water they blame for hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of cancer.

The first lawsuit was filed in the United States in 1993. In 2011, Ecuador's high court found Chevron — which bought Texaco in 2001 — liable for the contamination and ordered it to pay $9.5 billion.

Humankind Has Halved the Number of Trees on the Planet

Trees 'store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services'

The good news: there are over 3 trillion trees covering the Earth—that's far higher than the 4 billion estimated just two years ago, a team of international researchers has found.

But here's the bad news: there were far more trees—46 percent more—before human civilization got hold, with an estimated 15 billion trees being lost each year, with just 5 billion replanted.

"Trees are among the most prominent and critical organisms on Earth, yet we are only recently beginning to comprehend their global extent and distribution," said Thomas Crowther, a Yale Climate & Energy Institute post-doctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and lead author of the study, in a press statement.

Also of interest:

Inside the Abandoned Paris High School Currently Housing 250 Migrants

AIPAC’s Plan B?

Assange Case Timeline