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This evening's music features singer and guitarist Bo Diddley. Enjoy!

"Donald Trump is ‘dangerous’ only by overlooking how dangerous the American political leadership has been for the last one and one-half centuries. So the question becomes: dangerous to whom? Without the most murderous military in the world, public institutions like the IMF dedicated to economic subjugation and predatory corporations that wield the ‘free-choices’ of mandated consumption, how dangerous would any politicians really be? And with them, how not-dangerous have liberal Democrats actually been?"

-- Rob Urie

News and Opinion

Glenn Greenwald posts an excellent, well-substantiated argument that the Clintons are corrupt. It's worth a full read.

Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?

As the numerous and obvious ethical conflicts surrounding the Clinton Foundation receive more media scrutiny, the tactic of Clinton-loyal journalists is to highlight the charitable work done by the foundation, and then insinuate — or even outright state — that anyone raising these questions is opposed to its charity. James Carville announced that those who criticize the foundation are “going to hell.” Other Clinton loyalists insinuated that Clinton Foundation critics are indifferent to the lives of HIV-positive babies or are anti-gay bigots.

That the Clinton Foundation has done some good work is beyond dispute. But that fact has exactly nothing to do with the profound ethical problems and corruption threats raised by the way its funds have been raised. ...

The claim that this is all just about trying to help people in need should not even pass a laugh test, let alone rational scrutiny. To see how true that is, just look at who some of the biggest donors are. Although it did not give while she was secretary of state, the Saudi regime by itself has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with donations coming as late as 2014, as she prepared her presidential run. A group called “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” co-founded “by a Saudi Prince,” gave an additional amount between $1 million and $5 million. The Clinton Foundation says that between $1 million and $5 million was also donated by “the State of Qatar,” the United Arab Emirates, and the government of Brunei. “The State of Kuwait” has donated between $5 million and $10 million.

Theoretically, one could say that these regimes — among the most repressive and regressive in the world — are donating because they deeply believe in the charitable work of the Clinton Foundation and want to help those in need. ...

It doesn’t exactly take a jaded disposition to doubt that these donations from some of the world’s most repressive regimes are motivated by a desire to aid the Clinton Foundation’s charitable work. To the contrary, it just requires basic rationality. That’s particularly true given that these regimes “have donated vastly more money to the Clinton Foundation than they have to most other large private charities involved in the kinds of global work championed by the Clinton family.” For some mystifying reason, they seem particularly motivated to transfer millions to the Clinton Foundation but not the other charities around the world doing similar work. Why might that be? What could ever explain it? ...

The reality is that there is ample evidence uncovered by journalists suggesting that regimes donating money to the Clinton Foundation received special access to and even highly favorable treatment from the Clinton State Department.

Emails Show Clinton Foundation Donor Reached Out To Hillary Clinton Before Arms Export Boost

Emails just released by the State Department appear to show Clinton Foundation officials brokering a meeting between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a top military leader of Bahrain — a Middle Eastern country that is a major foundation donor. Soon after the correspondence about a meeting, Clinton’s State Department significantly increased arms export authorizations to the country’s autocratic government, even as that nation moved to crush pro-democracy protests.

In a statement quoted by the Wall Street Journal, a Clinton spokesperson, Josh Schwerin, said of the newly released correspondence: “The fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as secretary of state because of donations to the Clinton Foundation.” ...

A 2015 International Business Times investigative series examined how, in that role, Clinton ran an agency that is responsible for regulating U.S. arms exports, and how those State Department exports approvals substantially increased to governments that donated to the Clinton Foundation. Federal law explicitly designates the secretary of state as “responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of sales” of arms, and early in her term, the State Department called one arms deal a “top priority” for Clinton.

The email exchange about Bahrain shows the Clinton Foundation’s top executive Doug Band in 2009 asking Clinton’s State Department aide Huma Abedin to set up a meeting between Clinton and Crown Prince Salman, who had recently been named the deputy supreme commander of Bahrain’s armed forces. Band referred to Salman as a “good friend of ours.” ...

Salman has directed $32 million to a Clinton Foundation program, and the Kingdom of Bahrain has donated up to $100,000 more. As Bahrain money flowed into the Clinton Foundation, State Department documents showed that between 2010 and 2012 the Clinton-led State Department approved $630 million worth of direct commercial arms sales to Salman’s military forces in Bahrain. That was a 187 percent increase from the period 2006 to 2008, and the increase came as Bahrain was violently suppressing uprisings.

Oh my goodness. Click the link and read this, it's delicious. Teaser:

Crisis and Opportunity

The political establishment in the U.S. is rapidly moving toward a crisis of legitimacy as capitalist democracy is exposed as a system of insider dealing where war, manufactured social misery and environmental catastrophe are ever-more-implausibly posed as solutions to their own facts. With growing evidence, as if any more were needed, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton spent her time at as Secretary of State filling the coffers of the Clinton family slush fund, the Clinton Foundation, with the tainted money of special pleaders, despots and global misery mongers as she went about launching wars-of-choice against some fair bit of the planet.

While the intersection of commerce and governance— capitalist imperialism, has long been the operating model of America’s leadership class, the pretense of inclusion in the affairs of state through nominal political participation provided a cleansing veil for a citizenry toiling to produce corporate profits in exchange for the modest give-back of living indoors and eating regular meals. More damning than corruption, about which Americans have rarely taken issue as long as they perceived it in their own interest, is clear delineation of class difference, the ‘inside’ from ‘outside’ which the trade in public-private funds of Clinton Foundation donors rendered evident. ...

For much of the last century the illusion of social progress sold through the New Deal, the Great Society and more recently through capitalist enterprise ‘freed’ from the bind of social accountability, if not exactly from the need for regular and robust public support, served to hold at bay the perpetual tomorrow of lives lived for the theorized greater good of accumulated self-interest. The Clinton’s special gift to the people— citizens, workers; the human condition as conceived through a filter of manufactured wants to serve the interests of an intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt ‘leadership’ class, lies in the social truths revealed by their actions.

Being three or more decades in the making, the current political season was never about the candidates except inasmuch as they embody the grotesquely disfigured and depraved condition of the body politic. The ‘consumer choice’ politics of Democrat versus Republican, Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump, poses the greater-evilism of an ossified political class against the facts of its own creation now in dire need of resolution— wars to end wars, environmental crisis to end environmental crises, economic predation to end economic predation and manufactured social misery to end social misery. Hillary Clinton’s roster of donors is the neoliberal innovation on Richard Nixon’s enemies list— government as a shakedown racket where friend or foe and policies promoted or buried, are determined by ‘donation’ status rather than personal animus. ...

The liberals and progressives in the managerial class who support the status quo and are acting as enforcers to elect Hillary Clinton are but one recession away from being tossed overboard by those they serve within the existing economic order. The premise that the ruling class will always need dedicated servants grants coherent logic and aggregated self-interest that history has disproven time and again. A crude metaphor would be the unintended consequences of capitalist production now aggregating to environmental crisis. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both such conspicuously corrupt tools of an intellectually and spiritually bankrupt social order that granting tactical brilliance to their ascendance, or even pragmatism given the point in history and available choices, seems wildly generous. For those looking for a political moment, one is on the way.

U.S. Military Now Says ISIS Leader Was Held in Notorious Abu Ghraib Prison

In February 2004, U.S. troops brought a man named Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and assigned him serial number US9IZ-157911CI. The prison was about to become international news, but the prisoner would remain largely unknown for the next decade. ...

Today, detainee US9IZ-157911CI is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. His presence at Abu Ghraib, a fact not previously made public, provides yet another possible key to the enigmatic leader’s biography and may shed new light on the role U.S. detention facilities played in the rise of the Islamic State.

Experts have long known that Baghdadi spent time in U.S. custody during the occupation of Iraq. Previous reports suggested he was at Camp Bucca, a sprawling detention facility in southern Iraq. But the U.S. Army confirmed to The Intercept that Baghdadi spent most of his time in U.S. custody at the notorious Abu Ghraib. ...

It turns out that Baghdadi was held at Abu Ghraib, just a stone’s throw from where he was captured in Fallujah, for eight of the 10 months that he was in detention. He was only transferred to Camp Bucca, some 400 miles south of Baghdad, on October 13 — less than two months before his release on December 9. ...

In the occupation’s first few years, U.S. facilities like Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca developed a reputation as “jihadi universities” where hard-line extremists indoctrinated and recruited less radical inmates. ... In late April 2004, while Baghdadi was held at the facility, CBS News published photos that showed U.S. soldiers smiling next to piles of naked prisoners and a hooded detainee standing on a narrow box with electrical wires attached to his outstretched hands. An independent panel appointed by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the abuse “acts of brutality and purposeless sadism.”

Regime Change in Libya Mirrors Iraq: Both Efforts Led to Failed States & Destabilized Region

John Kerry's puppet strings are showing again.

In ‘Peace Initiative,’ Kerry Demands Yemen’s Houthis Surrender and Disarm

Visiting the city of Jeddah, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a deal with Saudi Arabia on a new “peace initiative” related to the ongoing Saudi invasion of Yemen. As with all previous such initiatives, Kerry’s statement laying out the plan demanded that the Shi’ite Houthis, who the Saudis are fighting, must immediately surrender all territory and unilaterally disarm before being allowed to participate in any talks.

Though US officials occasionally issue statements urging “all sides” to stop killing civilians, they continue to support the Saudis more or less unconditionally. In the course of Kerry’s comments, he quickly shifted focus away from Yemen and angrily condemning Iran as a “threat to the United States,” comments which always play well to a Saudi audience.

Saudi-Led Bombing Kills 11 Civilians in Yemen, While Kerry Ignores US Complicity

Another Saudi-led coalition airstrike in northern Yemen killed 11 civilians on Friday—only one day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Saudi Arabia, purportedly to urge Saudi King Salman to seek a "political solution" to the Saudi-led coalition's bombing campaign in Yemen.

And despite Kerry's words about seeking peace in Yemen, the U.S. continues to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons that have been used to kill civilians in that country. ...

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein on Thursday called for an international investigation into human rights abuses in the war-torn country. "Civilians in Yemen have suffered unbearably over the years from the effects of a number of simultaneous and overlapping armed conflicts," the commissioner said. "And they continue to suffer, absent any form of accountability and justice, while those responsible for the violations and abuses against them enjoy impunity."

The Death Toll in Yemen Is So High the Red Cross Has Started Donating Morgues to Hospitals

Almost a year and a half into Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Yemen, the humanitarian toll has become so extensive that the International Committee of the Red Cross has taken the unusual step of donating entire morgue units to Yemeni hospitals.

“The hospitals were not able to cope,” said Rima Kamal, a Yemen-based spokesperson for the Red Cross. “You could have more than 20 dead people brought into one hospital on one single day. The morgue capacity at a regular hospital is not equipped to handle this influx of dead bodies.”

“At times several dead bodies had to be stored on one shelf to avoid further decomposition,” Kamal continued. “The situation was not sustainable.”

Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in March 2015, after Houthi rebels took control of the capital and forced Yemen’s Saudi-backed leader, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, into exile. The United Nations has since attributed the majority of the war’s 6,500 deaths to the Saudi coalition, which the U.S. and U.K. have resupplied with tens of billions of dollars of weapons.

The Red Cross has donated body bags and refrigerated storage machines to three hospitals – two in the capital of Sana’a, and one in Dhamar, in southwestern Yemen. “More are in the pipeline,” said Kamal.

Aid workers also train hospital staff in the forensics of identifying bodies.

“It is not that common for the ICRC to donate morgues,” said Kamal. “The fact that we now do is telling of the size of the human tragedy in Yemen.”

Part 1: Vijay Prashad: Turkey's Offensive Against ISIS & Press Crackdown is Really Just War on Kurds

Syrian life expectancy drops six years as war rages

The Arab Spring uprisings that spread across the Middle East in 2011 eventually led to regime changes, civil society crackdowns, and several bloody conflicts. More than five years later, new data shows life expectancy in several countries, from Libya to Syria, has also taken a hit.

Syrians can now expect to live about six years less than they would have if the civil war there had never started. Since Libya devolved into conflict after Muammar Gaddafi's 2011 ousting, men in the country have lost nine years off their lives and women lost six years. Life expectancy also dropped by a quarter of a year in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen.

These figures are according to new study on the state of health in the Middle East out of the University of Washington that analyzed 23 years of data extending to 2013.

Turkish Troops Attack US-Backed Kurdish Fighters in North Syria

A day after invading northern Syria, Turkish troops continued to launch more strikes against the US-backed Kurdish YPG forces in the area around Manbij. Though the invasion started with chasing ISIS out of the town of Jarabulus, Turkish officials have made clear the operation is mostly about the Kurds.

Turkey’s state media described the shelling of YPG targets as “warning shots.” Kurdish officials complained yesterday that the strikes were “blatant aggression.” Turkish officials don’t appear to be contesting that fact, and have reiterated they’re keeping the Kurds from expanding, deploying more tanks into the country.

Officials also issued an ultimatum against the Kurds, giving them one week to scale back their presence near the Turkish border or else. Turkey has maintained the troops will remain in Syria until the concern about the expansion of Kurdish territory has been resolved.

Turkey 'planned Syria operation for over 2 years'

Turkey had been planning a Syria ground operation for over two years before launching an offensive this week, but it was stalled by the military and various international disputes, an official said Thursday.

Turkish tanks and hundreds of opposition fighters thrust inside Syrian territory on Wednesday to retake the town of Jarabulus from Islamic State (IS) jihadists and keep Kurdish militia at bay. ...

Some "influential" senior personnel within the military linked to the coup held up the operation by coming up with "excuses", the official said, pointing to Brigadier General Semih Terzi, a prominent alleged plotter who was shot dead on the night of putsch.

And the crisis in relations with Russia sparked by Ankara's shooting down one of Moscow's warplanes in November 2015, had also been a factor.

The risk of a further confrontation with Moscow put an end to all Turkish air operations over Syria that would have been essential for any ground operation.

Germany may pull planes from Turkish base

Hungary's PM plans 'more massive' fence to keep out migrants

Hungary will build a new, “more massive” fence on its southern borders to defend against a possible surge in the number of migrants, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said.

Orbán, who previously described migrants as “poison”, said on state radio that there might soon be a “greater need for security” and the fortified barrier would be able to stop “several hundreds of thousands of people” at the same time, if needed.

He said such a surge could take place if, for example, Turkey allowed the millions of refugees living there to leave for western Europe.

“Then, if we can’t do it nicely, we have to hold them back by force,” Orbán said. “And we will do it, too.”

Brazil Impeachment Trial for Dilma Rousseff Begins

Colombia's peace deal with the FARC could still fall apart

While many celebrated the promise to end the war that began when the FARC formed in 1954, the peace accord still has some serious obstacles to overcome before there really is no turning back.

The biggest hurdle is obtaining public support in a referendum in which "Yes" votes must amount to at least 13 percent of registered voters — approximately 4.5 million people. This requirement, which translates into a required 26 percent turnout, was kept deliberately very low to almost guarantee validity. ...

President Juan Manuel Santos' original promise to put any peace accord to the vote was initially seen as a maneuver to garner public support for the peace process. Now his announcement on Wednesday night that the referendum will be held unexpectedly soon, on October 2, hints a little at panic. ...

Polls are fluctuating between predictions of which side will win the referendum.

The No charge is led by Santos' former boss, Alvaro Uribe. As president of Colombia, Uribe led a brutal military campaign against the FARC between 2002 and 2010, funded by massive US aid. Santos was his defense minister at the time.

Now Uribe says the deal is too lenient on the FARC, because it appears to pave the way for the rebels to escape jail time for wartime abuses if they submit to a special tribunal. The accords says a guilty verdict will lead to "restricted liberty" but it leaves it up to the tribunals to define what that will mean.

Juan Nicolás Téllez, a student who was wearing a Yes t-shirt at a Bogota public screening of the announcement, said he fears the vote could end up going the way of the Brexit referendum, in which British voters shocked the world by deciding to leave the European Union — despite polls to the contrary.

"I'm scared about the referendum," Téllez said, among the crowd that waved Colombian flags and sang the national anthem. "There are parts of society that are against the peace deal, not just Uribe, but obviously including Uribe who spreads lies and hate and fear."

Striking Bolivian miners beat a deputy minister to death

Striking Bolivian miners have beaten to death a deputy government minister who had gone to negotiate with them, according to both local media and the government. ...

Deputy interior minister Illanes had gone to talk to small-scale miners who were blocking roads in the town of Panduro, about 100 miles (160 km) from the capital La Paz, on Thursday morning. The miners demand concessions from the government of president Evo Morales, with whom they had previously been allied. ...

The protesting miners — who usually work for themselves within the umbrella of a so-called "cooperative" — set up blockades to push their demands for more concessions from the government. By the time Llanes got to the protest they were also demanding justice for the death of two protesters killed in clashes with police earlier this week.

Bolivian miners have a long tradition of radical activism, leading revolutions and bringing down dictators. Until earlier this year they had supported the government of left-wing President Evo Morales, who is the son of a miner. A reform passed this summer changed the structure of the so-called "cooperatives," which sparked the protests. Miners also demand other economic concessions from the government, the BBC Spanish service said.

Arrest Warrant Issued For District Attorney Involved In DEA's California Wiretap Warrant Mill

Former Riverside District Attorney Paul Zellerbach is in trouble, as Brad Heath and Brett Kelman report for The Desert Sun.

A judge issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for former Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach after he failed to appear at a court hearing to answer questions about an eavesdropping operation so vast it once accounted for nearly a fifth of all U.S. wiretaps. ...

It's not uncommon for Zellerbach to go missing when people need him. When Zellerbach ran the DA's office, he was rarely there. The DEA found his office to be just as accommodating, with or without him, though. Although the DEA was supposed to run its wiretap warrant requests through federal judges and have them signed by the district attorney himself, it often found it easier to obtain a signature from whoever happened to be at the office and run them by Riverside County judge Helios Hernandez, who approved five times as many wiretap applications as any other judge in the US.

The wiretap applications' reach frequently exceeded their jurisdictional grasp, traveling far outside of Riverside County, California, to be deployed against suspects as far away as North Carolina.

Baltimore's newly revealed surveillance program raises legal questions

The Baltimore police department entered into a trial agreement with Persistent Surveillance in January and the company has filmed the city for 300 hours and provided the police department with over 100 investigative reports. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which broke the story earlier this week, McNutt developed the program for the Pentagon in 2006 and in 2007 it was used in Iraq.

Legal experts, struggling to catch up with a program that police just admitted exists, are questioning how these tactics will hold up in court.

“It’s highly intrusive surveillance,” said Natalie Finegar, the deputy district public defender, whose office expressed outrage over the program, which was revealed two weeks after the Department of Justice issued a scathing report claiming that the department regularly violated the rights of citizens.

Baltimore’s police commissioner, Kevin Davis, said in a statement that the technology was a reasonable response to the city’s extreme violence. “At a time when 84% of our homicides occur in outdoor public spaces, it seems logical to explore opportunities to capture the brazen killers who don’t think twice about gunning down their victims on our streets,” he said. And police spokesman TJ Smith said the technology has been central in several arrests.

Finegar said arrests that relied on the surveillance could be subject to legal challenge. ...

Shahid Buttar, a constitutional lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the law hasn’t even yet “evolved to reach these circumstances”.

“The court is only now grappling with these kinds of mass surveillance technologies, and the supreme court at least has never ruled on a case like this,” said Buttar. “It’s not the case that this is legal. It is the case that no court has had the chance to clearly declare it illegal yet.”

BAE Systems Sells Internet Surveillance Gear to United Arab Emirates

A Danish subsidiary of British defense contractor BAE Systems is selling an internet surveillance package to the government of the United Arab Emirates, a country known for spying on, imprisoning, and torturing dissidents and activists, according to documents obtained by Lasse Skou Andersen of the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.

The documents from the Danish Business Authority reveal an ongoing contract between the defense conglomerate, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence A/S, and the Middle Eastern oil federation dating back to at least December 2014.

The contract describes an internet surveillance product capable of deep packet inspection — “IP monitoring and data analysis” for “serious crime” and “national security” investigations. That could include capabilities like mapping a target’s social networks and extracting personal information and communications from devices including voice recordings, video, messages, and attachments. ...

The Danish Business Authority told Andersen it found no issue approving the export license to the Ministry of the Interior of the United Arab Emirates after consulting with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, despite regulations put in place by the European Commission in October 2014 to control exports of spyware and internet surveillance equipment out of concern for human rights. The ministry told Andersen in an email it made a thorough assessment of all relevant concerns and saw no reason to deny the application.

France's highest court suspends burkini ban in test case

France’s highest administrative court has suspended a ban on the burkini in a Riviera coastal town after a challenge by rights groups.

The ruling from the state council suspends a single decree against full-body swimsuits issued by the mayor in the southern resort of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice. But it is likely to set a precedent for other towns that have banned the swimwear on their beaches.

The state council ruled that the mayor did not have the right to issue a burkini ban – stating that local authorities could only restrict individual liberties if there was a “proven risk” to public order. It believed that proven risk had not been demonstrated.

The bans – made in the form of short-term mayoral decrees – began to be issued in a series of beach spots following the Bastille Day attack in Nice and the murder of a priest in Normandy.

They do not explicitly use the word burkini but ban “beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation”, citing reasons such as the need to protect public order, hygiene or French laws on secularism.

It's election time! French politicians using #Burkini to score votes

Feds can’t prosecute medical marijuana users who follow state law, court rules

Though medical marijuana is now legal in 25 states and Washington, DC, the drug still remains strictly banned under federal law, a contradiction that has long made even the most compliant patients, growers, and dispensary owners nervous about getting busted by the feds. But at least some of them can relax — for now.

That's because a federal court in San Francisco ruled this week that the Department of Justice can't spend money to prosecute people who obey their state's medical marijuana laws.

The decision, handed down on Tuesday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, solidifies the legal standing of a rule that was attached to a 1,603-page federal spending bill passed by Congress in 2014 and later extended through September 2016. As noted by the court, the budget caveat — commonly known as a rider — expressly forbids federal authorities from spending taxpayer money on prosecuting medical marijuana cases against individuals who have "fully complied" with state laws. ...

Charles Sanford Smith, a New York attorney who handles medical marijuana cases, said the ruling could effectively halt federal prosecutions while the DOJ figures out whether it's even allowed to spend money trying to prove that pot defendants have run afoul of state laws.

'Godfather of extreme nationalism' Clinton blames Putin for rising popularity of right-wing leaders

It looks like the Clinton spin machine is attempting to insulate Hillary from criticism by painting her critics and their lines of criticism as being from the lunatic fringe/conspiracy theorist segment of the population. Hillary has opened a new line of attack on the "alt-right" and her surrogates in the media wurlitzer are churning out campaign talking-point derived pieces like this one: Conspiracy central: the activists painting Clinton as a sick, terrorist-friendly killer.

Why Hillary Clinton is talking about the fringe 'Alt Right' movement

Hillary Clinton just introduced America to a new villain in the 2016 election cycle. It's not the Koch brothers, or Russia, or the "vast right-wing conspiracy," the term she coined in back in 1998. In fact, it's a fringe right-wing conspiracy, an online movement known as the "Alt-right."

"The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the 'Alt-right,'" Clinton said at a Thursday rally in Reno, Nevada. "A fringe element has just taken over the Republican Party." ...

The "Alt right," as it's come to be called, has been diagnosed as a new strain of hardcore anti-liberal politics that Donald Trump has cultivated, and relied on, throughout his presidential run. Now that Clinton has decided to use the term, it's likely to get more mainstream coverage. ...

Practically speaking, it's a subculture of online tough guys and keyboard warriors that arose out of message boards and social media. They read, and contribute to, outlets like Breitbart News and InfoWars. ...

Exactly why Clinton wanted to introduce this term into the mainstream is unclear: it certainly fits into her strategy of painting Trump as vulgar threat ("Dangerous Donald") that rational people, Republican or Democrat, need to see crushed.

But lecturing audiences on a relatively obscure internet subculture is an odd way to connect with most Americans, particularly the older disgruntled whites that Clinton wants to peel off Trump.

Hillary Clinton Shows Dangerous Tendency to Go to War No Matter the Consequences

Shawn Lucas Cause of Death Still Unknown as Clinton’s Campaign Lawyer Tries to Move DNC Lawsuit into the Weeds

According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Washington, D.C., it has still not determined a cause of death for Shawn Lucas, the 38-year old process server who delivered the class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and its then Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to the DNC headquarters on July 1. One month later, the girlfriend of Lucas came home to find him dead on the bathroom floor.

It has now been more than three weeks since Lucas died with no cause of death announced. We asked the Chief Medical Examiner’s office if the delay was a result of toxicology tests being conducted. We were told it can make no comment beyond the fact that the cause of death is “pending.” ...

Lucas is now a focal point in the legal proceeding with Marc Elias and his legal team from Perkins Coie asking to have the case dismissed on the basis that Lucas didn’t properly serve the lawsuit. Perkins Coie is not saying that the DNC never got the lawsuit. Instead, it is filing copious legal papers that quibble in a Federal Court funded by the U.S. taxpayer over whether the woman who accepted the lawsuit was authorized to receive it on behalf of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

One might think a law firm as huge as Perkins Coie might use such a line of argument if Shawn Lucas had handed the lawsuit to a clerk from the mail room or a sanitation worker in the building or maybe a deli delivery guy. Perkins Coie concedes that Shawn Lucas handed the lawsuit to Rebecca Herries who, at the time, was the Special Assistant to the then CEO of the DNC, Amy Dacey. ...

According to a recent court filing made by the attorneys for Sanders’ supporters, “Plaintiffs asked Defendants to produce Ms. Herries at the August 23, 2016 hearing, but they refused to do that. They also refused to produce any of the security guards who witnessed the service of process event and otherwise interfaced with Plaintiffs’ process server.”

Is Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution over before it even began?

[Much of this article covers material that has already been amply covered, so we'll skip that part. - js]

There are also questions over what Our Revolution will actually do. On Wednesday Sanders spoke for 40 minutes. He spent 30 minutes heralding the success of his presidential campaign. Beyond listing the candidates and issues on which he said Our Revolution would focus, operational details were scarce.

There was talk of organising people to campaign for candidates and protest against issues such as Citizens United, the supreme court decision that unfettered political donations, and a single-payer healthcare system.

Sanders also said: “Real change never ever takes place from the top on down. It happens when people come together and demand fundamental change in this country.”

This did not quite chime with the idea of a nationwide organizing project that, it seems, will aim to issue top-down missives to activists.

One more thing could hamper Our Revolution: it seems Sanders isn’t going to be a part of it. Listening to his speech on Wednesday, it seemed as if he planned a distinctly hands-off role.

“As I understand it,” he said, “Our Revolution will endorse 100 candidates.”

Later he mentioned a ballot initiative in Colorado in support of single-payer healthcare.

“As I understand it,” he said, “Our Revolution will be supporting that ballot item.”

This!!! It's worth clicking and reading, it's concise and to the point.

The Revolution Is Not in Bernie’s Hands

Sanders surely knows that a revolution of the kind he deems necessary isn’t likely to unfold through independent-expenditure TV ads on behalf of down-ballot candidates. In fact, that’s why most of the young organizing staff at Our Revolution quit when they saw Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver sliding in as president of the organization, vowing to solicit funds from wealthy contributors. “We’re organizers who believed in Bernie’s call for a political revolution,” former organizing director Claire Sandberg told NBC News. “So we weren’t interested in working for an organization that’s going to raise money from billionaires to spend it all on TV.”

The truth is that what boosted the Sanders campaign from irrelevance to prominence did come from the bottom up—not just from $27 donations, but from millions of moments of personal expression, using tools as old as leaflets and as new as Facebook. A cultural and political transformation brought Sanders, and more precisely his message, to the forefront. And the people who did it don’t need to be told how to continue the mission.

We’re in an era of leaderless political engagement at the street level, where exercising power and expressing outrage frequently mirror one another. People are demanding change not just through the ballot, but through pooling their voices for collective action.

These movements didn’t need a charismatic figurehead leading the way—only behind-the-scenes organizers planting seeds, encouraging citizens to emerge and get involved. Years before the Wisconsin uprising and Occupy Wall Street galvanized progressives, activists were trying to stoke the fire, questioning how the economy was leaving so many behind from the opening moments of the collapse. Groups like National People’s Action held rallies and street actions for three years to set the stage for Occupy, in the same way that Occupy set the stage for Sanders. ...

[Activists] are not bound by the realities of counting votes on Capitol Hill or maximizing donations. They see their goal as envisioning the world they want, and making those in power uncomfortable until they get it. The vehicle for that will not be “Our Revolution” delivered in 30-second ad bites, but a sustained movement, 24 hours a day.

Sanders Launch of 'Our Revolution' a Step Forward and a Step Backwards

Challenged Over Racist Remarks, Maine Governor Leaves Unhinged Voicemail

Maine's Donald Trump-supporting, race-baiting, Republican Governor Paul LePage has gotten into hot water—again—after leaving a state lawmaker an expletive-laced and threatening voicemail on Thursday.

In the phone message, LePage—who was elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014—demands that Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine "prove" that he's a racist, calls him a "son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker," and says: "I am after you."

Gattine has denied that he called the governor racist after his latest diatribe on the racial background of drug dealers in the state. LePage on Wednesday said that "90 percent of drug dealers coming into Maine are black or Hispanic."

The governor apologized on Friday for his remarks, while also challenging Gattine to a debate next Wednesday and vowing not to resign—despite calls for him to do so.

American pika vanishing from western US as 'habitat lost to climate change'

Populations of a rabbit-like animal known as the American pika are vanishing in many mountainous areas of the west as climate change alters its habitat, according to findings released by the US Geological Survey.

The range for the mountain-dwelling herbivore is shrinking in southern Utah, north-eastern California and in the Great Basin that covers most of Nevada and parts of Utah, Oregon, Idaho and California, the federal agency concluded after studying the mammal from 2012-2015.

This study’s conclusion marks a more authoritative statement about the role of global warming on the animal compared to research released in 2003 that found climate change was at least partly contributing to the animal’s decline.

“The longer we go along, the evidence continues to suggest that climate is the single strongest factor,” said Erik Beever, a research ecologist with the USGS and lead author.

The pika’s habitat on mountain slopes, known as talus, are becoming hotter and drier in the summer and harsher in the winter with less snowpack to serve as an insulator, Beever said.

The study bolsters the long-running efforts of wildlife advocacy groups to have the animal added to the endangered species list amid concerns about global warming.

Native Americans encouraged as judge delays North Dakota pipeline ruling

Native American activists have said they are still hopeful they can halt the construction of a controversial oil pipeline that will run from North Dakota to Illinois, after a federal judge said he needed more time to decide whether indigenous rights were violated when the project was approved. ...

“Whatever the final outcome in court, I believe we have already established an important principle – that is, tribes will be heard on important matters that affect our vital interests,” said Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault, who has previously said the project would “knowingly poison water”.

The attempt to force a temporary halt to the project came amid vociferous protests on the prairies of North Dakota and outside the court in Washington DC, where tribal members were joined by famous faces, including actors Susan Sarandon and Shailene Woodley, to decry the 1,000-mile-long pipeline.

Signs at the protest read “We are protectors not protesters” and “Obey your laws”. A petition launched by a number of young native Americans to stop the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and protect water that is a “crucial part of our lives” has more than 94,000 signatures, including those of actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo.

After months of simmering tensions, protesters, many on horseback, have confronted massed ranks of police in North Dakota in the past week, resulting in dozens of arrests and a shutdown of the pipeline work site. Several thousand people from more than 50 other tribes have joined forces with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe at a protest camp at the construction site.

[Related photoessay: Faces of the North Dakota pipeline protest: 'Sacred land is who we are' - js]

Hawaii's Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to be expanded to more than twice the size of Texas

Barack Obama's proclamation will quadruple the size of a protected area originally designated by his predecessor, George Bush, in 2006. The expanded Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument will cover around 582,578 sq miles (1.5m sq km), more than twice the size of Texas.

The designation bans commercial fishing and any new mining, as is the case within the existing area. Recreational fishing will be allowed with a permit, as will scientific research and the removal of fish and other resources for native Hawaiian cultural practices.

Some fishing groups have said they are concerned about the affect of the expansion on their industry. Sean Martin, the president of the Hawaii Longline Association, said he was disappointed by the decision of Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, to support the move, claiming it was based on political, not scientific reasons. ...

The White House said the expansion would help protect more than 7,000 species and improve the resilience of an ecosystem dealing with ocean acidification and warming. A fact sheet previewing the announcement states that the expanded area is considered a sacred place for native Hawaiians.

Also of Interest

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

Democratic Pundits Downplay Serious Ethical Issues Raised by the Clinton Foundation

'Biggest Gerrymandering Case in Generation' Moves Forward

Jeff Wood’s Stay of Execution Casts More Doubt on the Texas Death Machine

Turkey’s foray into Syria to take on Isis is a gamble in a very dangerous game

Pentagon Has No Idea Where Hundreds of Thousands of Guns Went in Iraq and Afghanistan

How Neocons Helped Create Trump

Word Games: What the NSA Means by “Targeted” Surveillance Under Section 702

The Newspaper Ad Collapse: Bad News for Readers

The head of Germany’s largest bank says negative rates are ‘fatal’

New Study Warns Biofuels May Be Worse for Climate Than Gas

Vintage posters of America's national parks – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Bo Diddley - I Am A Man

Bo Diddley - Cops and Robbers

Bo Diddley - You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover

Bo Diddley - Road Runner

Bo Diddley - Let Me Pass

Bo Diddley - Blues,Blues

Bo Diddley - Cadillac

Bo Diddley - Back home

Bo Diddley - 500% More Man

Ronnie Wood & Bo Diddley - Tokyo