Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and guitarist Big Smokey Smothers. Enjoy!

"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war."

-- Charles de Montesquieu

News and Opinion

Bush And Obama Have Killed Far More People Than Putin

The President of the United States saying “You think our country’s so innocent?” to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News was one of the best things that’s ever happened. For years Republicans have been moronically bashing Obama for a completely made up “apology tour” wherein they pretend the President went around apologizing for America’s war crimes and heinous abuses, and meanwhile Democrats were rightly calling Bush a bloodthirsty monster while wrongly ignoring Obama’s bloodbaths all across the globe. And now the establishment Democrats are eagerly embracing the leftover evil neocons from the Bush administration as they form an alliance against Trump. The President’s statements (which included a condemnation of the Iraq invasion) were a big, fat dick slap on every single one of these horrible people, and they needed it. If Donald Trump has a stronger moral compass than you, you need to seriously rethink your life.

If you take every single war that Putin has overseen, either as President or as Prime Minister, and include his extrajudicial killings and assassinations of political rivals, you still get nowhere near the body count of the Bush and Obama administrations. ...

So, like, I dunno, maybe when someone suggests that America has no room to talk when it comes to the subject of killings, they're not doing something outrageous or unreasonable. This doesn't excuse the actions of Putin, but the rest of the world would be grateful if America could go ahead and drop the holier-than-thou schtick when it comes to violently ending people's lives. A lot more self awareness from the most powerful military force on the planet can only be a good thing.

White House's 'under-reported' terror list includes many well-known attacks

The White House has distributed a list of 78 terrorist attacks to support Donald Trump’s claim that the media is failing to properly report them.

But the list includes many atrocities that received blanket western media coverage including the Paris Bataclan attacks, the Nice truck killings and the San Bernardino shootings.

Many others including the Sydney siege and Germany’s Christmas market attack received wide international coverage.

The release comes after the US president told military leaders in Tampa, Florida, on Monday that there have been attacks all over Europe but “in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.” He added, “They have their reasons, and you understand that,” but did not expand.

Later the White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about specific attacks that had not been reported to which he replied: “We’ll provide a list later. There’s several instances … There’s a lot of instances that have occurred where I don’t think they’ve gotten the coverage it deserved.”

Kellyanne Conway's fictitious 'Bowling Green massacre' not a one-time slip of the tongue

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Donald Trump, described a fake “massacre” three times, it has emerged.

The controversy began last week when Conway, defending the president’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, told MSNBC that two Iraqis who came to the US and had been radicalised “were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre”. Fact-checkers quickly pointed out that no such massacre took place. ...

Conway, who was Trump’s campaign manager during the election, tweeted the next day that she had made an “honest mistake” and had meant to say “Bowling Green terrorists”, referring to two Iraqi citizens from Bowling Green, Kentucky, who had been convicted of trying to send weapons and money to al-Qaida.

But on Monday it emerged that this was not an isolated incident: she had used the word “massacre” twice before during interviews with reporters.

On 29 January, speaking to Cosmopolitan.com, she was even more specific about the non-existent event: “[T]wo Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined Isis, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers’ lives away.”

And on the same day, Conway was captured on video telling TMZ: “There were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined Isis, and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers.”

[See also: In Bowling Green 'Massacre,' FBI Agents Foiled an FBI Terror Plot - js]

San Francisco Police Department Kicks FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force To The Curb

In the wake of President Trump's travel ban, the San Francisco Police Department has offered up an unprecedented response: it's breaking up with the FBI.

On Wednesday, San Francisco officers took a bold stance against Trump’s new immigration laws. In response to Trump’s Muslim ban, they are cutting ties between the police department and an FBI task force.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has worked with the FBI on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) since 2007, with the purpose of investigating terrorism threats, collecting intel, and making arrests.

Generally speaking, federal partnerships are forever… especially in Forever Wars. Local law enforcement agencies have been working side-by-side with federal agencies since the Drug War began. The same goes for the War on Terror. Wars keep government agencies in good health, awash in perpetual funding and repurposed military gear. Local governments are seldom interested in ending these lucrative arrangements, whether or not the underlying activity is productive. ...

But the SFPD's rejection of the FBI's "assistance" in the War on Terror suggests a couple of things -- neither of them complimentary -- about the federal agency's usefulness in this "war."

The first is explained in the Think Progress article.

[T]he SFPD will no longer work with the JTTF on the grounds that the federal agency will likely increase efforts to surveil Muslims, following Trump’s recent executive order to prevent Muslims from entering the county.

The other part is implied. By telling the feds to beat it, the SFPD is suggesting the FBI isn't doing much to acutally make San Francisco safer.

Trump in the White House: What You See is What You Get

With each successive neoliberal president, we see a trajectory characterized by continuity and intensification of the neoliberal project. This is disastrously illustrated by Trump’s recent executive order closing the US borders to certain nationals from seven Muslim countries, which in turn was based on Obama’s Terrorist Prevention Travel Act of 2015.

Yemeni-American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed in an Obama-ordered drone strike in 2011. He was 16 years old. A week ago, his 8-year-old sister and 29 others perished in Trump’s first drone strike.

If you’re apprehensive about Trump’s finger on the nuclear trigger, remember that the trillion dollar arsenal is Obama’s legacy. Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s support for privatization may prove to be a warm-up act to Trump’s Betsy DeVos.

What we are seeing is Trump, not reversing Obama, but intensifying the neoliberal project. We should expect more aggressive privatizations, deeper tax cuts for corporations and investors, further militarized police, and greater deregulation for the financial sector. Multilateral “free trade” agreements will be scrapped, but they will be replaced by bilateral agreements. Notwithstanding campaign rhetoric about better deals with NATO and Russia, US imperial hegemony will remain the touchstone of foreign affairs.

Rand Paul: Do not let Elliott Abrams anywhere near the State Department

I hope against hope that the rumors are wrong and that President Donald Trump will not open the State Department door to the neocons. Crack the door to admit Elliott Abrams and the neocons will scurry in by the hundreds.

Neoconservative interventionists have had us at perpetual war for 25 years. While President Trump has repeatedly stated his belief that the Iraq War was a mistake, the neocons (all of them Never-Trumpers) continue to maintain that the Iraq and Libyan Wars were brilliant ideas. These are the same people who think we must blow up half the Middle East, then rebuild it and police it for decades. ...

But just as importantly, Congress has good reason not to trust him — he was convicted of lying to Congress in his previous job.

His conviction for deceiving Congress over secret arms deals, better known as the Iran-Contra scandal, show that his neocon agenda trumps his fidelity to the rule of law. The Constitution directs Congress to approve or disapprove of war. It would be a mistake to appoint anyone to the State Department who was previously convicted for defying Congressional authority. ...

Abrams also supervised, covered up and defended a policy of arming a Guatemalan government undeniably waging war against an indigenous native population. Thousands of the indigenous people of the Ixil region of Guatemala were exterminated. The Guatemalan President was eventually convicted of war crimes. Abrams was an unabashed supporter and organizer of sending arms into this tragic situation.

More than 900 children killed in Afghanistan in 2016

More than 900 children were killed in Afghanistan’s conflict last year, the United Nations said Monday, calling it the most violent year for children since it started keeping records.

The U.N. mission said the nearly 25 percent increase in child deaths from the previous year was largely caused by mines and munitions left over from decades of conflict. It documented a 66 percent increase in such deaths in 2016. ...

It said 3,498 people were killed in 2016, including 923 children, and that another 7,920 people were wounded. The overall casualty toll was slightly higher than the previous year.

Up to 13,000 secretly hanged in Syrian jail, says Amnesty

As many as 13,000 opponents of Bashar al-Assad were secretly hanged in one of Syria’s most infamous prisons in the first five years of the country’s civil war as part of an extermination policy ordered by the highest levels of the Syrian government, according to Amnesty International.

Many thousands more people held in Saydnaya prison died through torture and starvation, Amnesty said, and the bodies were dumped in two mass graves on the outskirts of Damascus between midnight and dawn most Tuesday mornings for at least five years.

The report, Human Slaughterhouse, details allegations of state-sanctioned abuse that are unprecedented in Syria’s civil war, a conflict that has consistently broken new ground in depravity, leaving at least 400,000 people dead and nearly half the country’s population displaced.

It suggests thousands more people could have been hanged in Saydnaya since the end of 2015, after which former guards and detainees who spoke to Amnesty no longer had access to verifiable information from inside the prison.

West Bank: Israeli settlement bill sparks outrage within the international community

Palestinians demand action against Israel over settlements law

Senior Palestinian officials have called for the international community to punish Israel over a contentious new law that seeks to retroactively legalise thousands of West Bank Jewish settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land.

The legislation passed by Israeli MPs late on Monday night comes after a surge in pro-settlement decisions in the weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in as US president.

The law seeks to give legal status even to outposts regarded as illegal by the Israeli courts, and was pushed by Israel’s far right over the initial objections of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vacillated over the issue.

Critics have said the law could drag Israel into a battle at the international criminal court, which is already conducting a preliminary examination of Jewish settlements.

“Nobody can legalise the theft of the Palestinian lands. Building settlements is a crime, building settlements is against all international laws,” the Palestinian tourism and antiquities minister, Rula Ma’ayah, said on Tuesday. “I think it is time now for the international community to act concretely to stop the Israelis from these crimes.”

Angela Merkel is losing a poll for the first time in years

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing the biggest challenge of her career after the Christian democrats (CDU) fell behind the Social Democrats (SPD) in a national poll for the first time in seven years. Though it’s only one poll, this shock result indicates Merkel may face tough competition if she wants to retain power in September’s elections. ...

The SPD has seen a 10-point gain in the space of two weeks, after the party announced it was nominating Martin Schulz as its candidate for chancellor in the upcoming elections. Schultz is an outsider in German politics, though he is a former European parliament president. The Schultz appointment appears to have energized the SPD and re-engage voters who had lost faith in the party. ...

In a country that craves consistency, Merkel says she will campaign on a platform of “dependability, stability, and order.” Despite recent issues, Merkel remains a popular figure in Germany, though her approval rating is waning.

Romania Demonstrations: "it's only natural for government to step down, it has gone too far!"

Romania's largest protests in decades show no signs of slowing

An estimated 500,000 protesters have taken to the streets across Romania over the past week, and the crowds show no sign of going home – despite a government U-turn on the corruption decree which originally sparked the demonstrations.

Monday was the seventh day of nationwide protests, following a weekend of rallies which saw the largest crowds so far. While the demonstrations began as a stand against the government decree, they have now expanded to demand wider political reform – with some calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu, a member of the Social Democrats (PSD). ...

Grindeanu has so far rejected calls for his government to stand down, saying that they have “a responsibility to the people who voted for us.” He also stated that he will not be resigning either.

Stephen Walt: From Israel to Iran to Mexico, Trump Has Already Blown It on Foreign Policy

US senators send message to Australia after Donald Trump's heated phone call

US senators have gone into damage control for the American-Australian alliance after President Donald Trump’s acrimonious phone call with Malcolm Turnbull.

Republican senators Lamar Alexander and Marco Rubio, along with Democrats Ben Cardin and Ed Markey, have introduced a bipartisan resolution “reaffirming a strong commitment to the United States-Australian alliance relationship”.

It describes the alliance as a “sacred vow of friendship and trust” and Australia as a faithful and reliable partner.

Alexander told the Senate on Monday night he did not know what happened during the infamous phone call between the leaders but he did know the people of the US did not have better friends than the people of Australia.

What Trump’s ‘Great Wall’ Misses

Instead of building a “Great Wall” on the Mexican border, President Trump might find it so much cheaper, so much easier, so much more humane, so much more popular — if the U.S. government would just stop overthrowing or destabilizing governments south of the border.

And the United States certainly has a moral obligation to do this because so many of the immigrants are escaping a situation in their homeland made hopeless by American intervention and policy. The particularly severe increase in Honduran migration to the U.S. in recent years is a direct result of the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president, Manuel Zelaya, after he did things like raising the minimum wage, giving subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education. The coup – like so many others in Latin America – was led by a graduate of Washington’s infamous School of the Americas. ...

In addition to Honduras, Washington overthrew progressive governments which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty in Guatemala and Nicaragua; while in El Salvador the U.S. played a major role in suppressing a movement striving to install such a government. And in Mexico, over the years the U.S. has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own people’s aspirations, as in Chiapas in 1994, and this has added to the influx of the oppressed to the United States, irony notwithstanding. ...

President Trump, if one can read him correctly – not always an easy task – insists that he’s opposed to the hallmark of American foreign policy: regime change. If he would keep his Yankee hands off political and social change in Mexico and Central America and donate as compensation a good part of the billions to be spent on his Great Wall to those societies, there could be a remarkable reduction in the never-ending line of desperate people clawing their way northward.

Refugees crossing into Canada from US on foot despite freezing temperatures

A growing number of asylum seekers are braving freezing cold temperatures to walk into Canada from the US, driven by fears of what Donald Trump’s presidency will mean for refugees, advocates say.

Last week, amid the chaos and uncertainty triggered by Trump’s travel ban, one agency dedicated to resettling refugees and immigrants opened an unprecedented 10 refugee claims in one day. Eight of the claimants had walked into Canada in order to avoid detection by border officials.

On Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said another 22 people had walked across the border and into Canada over the weekend; 19 of them on Saturday and three on Sunday.

“They’re not crossing at the actual point where there’s an immigration and customs offices,” said Rita Chahal of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council. “They’re walking through prairie fields with lots and lots of deep snow. In Europe we’re seeing people in boats; now just imagine a prairie flatland and snow for miles and miles.”

A 2004 pact between Canada and the US, known as the Safe Third Country Agreement, forces most migrants to apply for asylum in the first country in which they arrive. As a result, refugee advocates say they’ve seen a spike in asylum seekers from the US taking longer, riskier routes to cross the border into Canada and file claims inland, where the agreement does not apply.

Silicon Valley fights Trump on immigration -- but it still wants Trump's tax benefits

Late Sunday at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, a group of 97 companies — mostly in the technology sector — filed a “friend of the court” amicus brief strongly condemning the immigration policies of President Donald Trump, a measure that  the brief argues is “inflicting substantial harm on U.S. companies.” ...

But although tech companies have largely aligned against Trump in a more vocal way than the rest of corporate America, they have still taken high-profile meetings with his administration and stand to benefit greatly from some of his agenda.

Some analysts have suggested tech companies may be stopping short of all-out war with Trump because he promised a so-called tax holiday (also called repatriation) on the huge amount of cash they have stored overseas — and said he’d  deliver on it later in 2017.

On the campaign trail, Trump proposed letting companies with money overseas bring it back into the U.S. at a tax rate of 10 percent, instead of the 35 percent corporate rate. ... According to Moody’s Investors Service, at the end of 2016 more than one-third of the total $1.3 trillion in cash held overseas by all American companies — outside of the financial sector — was held by just five tech giants: Apple, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Oracle, and Google’s parent company Alphabet. Of these five, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet subsidiary Google signed their names to the amicus brief; Cisco and Oracle did not.

Iranian Student Blocked from Entering U.S.: Trump Remarks on Muslim Ban Remind Me of the Nazis

More Than 150 Former Federal Prosecutors Have Denounced Trump’s Muslim Ban

Donald Truump's executive order banning travel to the United States by the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and by refugees worldwide has been broadly rejected by the judiciary, with over a dozen federal court orders restricting or staying the travel ban.

Now, more than 150 former federal prosecutors have expressed their disapproval of Trump’s overreach as well. On Monday, former Assistant United States Attorney Ellyn Marcus Lindsay provided The Intercept with a letter signed by herself and 53 other former AUSAs in California, which referred to the executive order as “a thinly veiled attempt to exclude Muslims from certain countries based on their religion.” ...

Two similarly worded letters have been signed by former AUSAs in New York and Florida. The New York letter has 65 signatories and the Florida letter has 36. The three letters hold no legal force but they reflect a strong current of mainstream opinion within the legal profession that is in vocal opposition to Trump’s abortive travel ban.

Donald Trump’s Executive Order Will Let Private Equity Funds Drain Your 401(k)

Donald Trump's February 3 executive order enabling financial advisers to continue ripping off their clients could prove a lifeline for a surprising beneficiary: the private equity industry.

The Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule would have forced investment advisers in workplace retirement plans like 401(k)s to operate in their clients’ best interests, rather than recommending high-cost, high-risk products that offer the advisers kickbacks and perks. ...

The fiduciary rule, finalized last year, was to go into effect in April. But the new order directs the Labor Department to review the rule, which is expected to initiate the process of rescinding it.

As Gary Cohn, former Goldman Sachs president and director of the National Economic Council, put it, the fiduciary rule “is like putting only healthy food on the menu, because unhealthy food tastes good but you still shouldn’t eat it because you might die younger.”

Why Trump thinks individual workers must have the freedom to choose poison for their retirement funds is unclear. But one reason could be that his friends in private equity have long sought to add their particular form of junk food to that menu.

ECB sees seeds of next crisis in Trump deregulation plan

The European Central Bank rejected U.S. accusations of currency manipulation on Monday and warned that deregulating the banking industry, now being openly discussed in Washington, could sow the seeds of the next financial crisis.

Arguing that lax regulation had been a key cause of the global financial crisis a decade ago, ECB President Mario Draghi said the idea of easing bank rules was not just worrying but potentially dangerous, threatening the relative stability that has supported the slow but steady recovery.

Draghi's words are among the strongest reactions yet from Europe since U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a review of banking rules with the implicit aim of loosening them. That raises the prospect of the United States pulling out of some international cooperation efforts.

"The last thing we need at this point in time is the relaxation of regulation," Draghi told the European Parliament's committee on economic affairs in Brussels. "The idea of repeating the conditions that were in place before the crisis is something that is very worrisome."

Trump's Big Lie About 3 Million "Alien Voters" Cuts Far Deeper Than You Think

Donald Trump's relentless insistence that three million "aliens" voted for Hillary Clinton and cost him a popular majority in November's presidential election cuts far beyond what the corporate media is willing to report. When it comes to undermining democracy in the US, Trump is once again proving that the best defense is a total attack, even if it relies on "alternative facts."

Trump's Big Lie on voter fraud has been as widely scorned as his fantasies about the size of the turnout at his inauguration. Even the normally restrained New York Times has editorialized that "what once seemed like another harebrained claim by a president with little regard for the truth must now be recognized as a real threat to American democracy."

It seems to be dawning on The Times and others that by claiming so many non-citizens voted more than once, Trump re-loads America's Jim Crow lynch laws against Black people voting. Based on these assertions, we can expect more and more aggressive attacks by the administration against the rights of non-whites and non-millionaires to a fair and honest ballot.  

In Age of Trump, Scientists Show Signs of a Political Pulse

Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist, is among the elite of American scientists, with a tenured position at the University of California, Berkeley, and generous funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for his research on fruit flies.

But late last month, dismayed over the Trump administration’s apparent disdain for evidence on climate change and other issues, Dr. Eisen registered the Twitter handle @SenatorPhD and declared his intention to run in the 2018 election for a seat in the United States Senate from California. His campaign slogan: “Liberty, Equality, Reality.”

“I’m not sure I’m the best vehicle for this,” said Dr. Eisen, whose professional attire consists of shorts and T-shirts bearing mottos supporting open access to scientific literature, a cause he has championed. “But if we want to defend the role of science in policy making, scientists need to run for office.” ...

Few scientists have gone as far as Dr. Eisen, but other researchers are now undergoing a political awakening, contemplating what their role should be for at least the next few years.

A political action committee that seeks to get more scientists and engineers to run for elective office, 314 Action, has seen a surge of interest in its programs, with more than 2,000 people registering at its website. The group is planning a training program for scientist-candidates, whether they want to run for local or state offices or Congress.

Other scientists have organized demonstrations — including a march now set for Earth Day, April 22 — submitted letters or opinion articles to news organizations or joined efforts to preserve government data that they fear may otherwise disappear.

Russia and the U.S. Could Be Partners in Climate Change Inaction

As Donald Trump pushes the United States toward inaction on climate change, he is likely to find an ally in Russia.

Russia is the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Yet the plan it submitted under the Paris agreement to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is one of the weakest of any government and actually permits Russia to increase carbon pollution over time. The Paris agreement went into effect last November, but Russia is the only major emitter that has not ratified it. Instead, it has laid out a timetable that would delay ratification for almost three years. ...

A new alignment between Russia and a friendlier United States under Trump could slow climate action even more.  Trump denies global warming more nakedly than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pivoted from years of downplaying climate change to calling it a grave threat in 2015, but has done little to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Russia's sluggishness on climate could bolster the Trump team's plans to abandon climate action, and vice versa.

The Russian Federation has a history of denial and inaction on the issue. The country is a petro-state: It was the world's second-largest exporter of oil in 2015, after Saudi Arabia, and biggest exporter of natural gas. Russia's top politicians and its largest companies have long been reluctant to reduce fossil fuel extraction and use. Recently, some in the government and Russian business have begun taking steps to shift away from fossil fuel dependence. But that progress may slow now that the United States, the world's second-biggest emitter, is shifting its priorities toward increased fossil fuel production, experts on Russian climate policy said.

Trump Team Has Ties to Atlantic Coast Pipeline Now Being Pushed by White House

On January 25, President Donald Trump’s team listed the Atlantic Coast pipeline among the White House’s top priorities for infrastructure projects, an attempt to deliver on his campaign promise to invest in U.S infrastructure programs.

Of the 50 on the list, Atlantic Coast is surprisingly the only pipeline project named. Some had suspected Trump’s infrastructure promise would serve as a massive pipeline giveaway. So, why prioritize this one?

A possible answer: Several members of Trump’s transition team, landing team, and current White House operation have connections to companies behind the project or to firms lobbying for it. [See full article for details. - js]

The Atlantic Coast pipeline has been proposed by a partnership among Dominion Resources, Duke Energy, and Southern Gas Company.

The natural gas pipeline, currently under review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), has faced staunch opposition from environmental activists and residents along its 550-mile-long path stretching from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina. It will carry natural gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

Also of Interest

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

The full list of Trump's 'under-reported' terror attacks – and how they were reported

Trump’s Immigration Ban: Americans Can Listen In on Court Hearing Today

Can’t make the protest? Here are eight small acts of resistance

FBI posed as journalists to get evidence on Bundys. Now it could hurt their case

FBI axes FOIA requests by email, so dust off your fax machine

A Little Night Music

Smokey Smothers - Things ain't what they used to be

Smokey Smothers - The Case Is Closed

Smokey Smothers - I Can't Judge Nobody

Smokey Smothers - I Got My Eyes On You

Otis'Big Smokey'Smothers - Sad Sad Day & Do The Thing

Smokey Smothers - I'm Looking For You

Otis 'Big Smokey' Smothers - Blues All Day Long

Barrelhouse Chuck & Otis Big Smokey Smothers - Searching For My Baby

Smokey Smothers w/Freddie King - I've Been Drinking Muddy Water

Smokey Smothers - Blind and Dumb Man Blues

Smokey Smothers - I Ain't Gonna Be No Monkey Man No More

Smokey Smothers - Honey, I ain't teasin'