The Evening Blues - 3-27-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Bessie Smith

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith. Enjoy!

Bessie Smith - Back Water Blues

“We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.”

-- Bertolt Brecht


News and Opinion

Trump’s War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised

From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump’s “war on terror” has entailed the seemingly indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people in the name of killing terrorists. In other words, Trump has escalated the 16-year-old core premise of America’s foreign policy — that it has the right to bomb any country in the world where people it regards as terrorists are found — and in doing so, has fulfilled the warped campaign pledges he repeatedly expressed.

The most recent atrocity was the killing of as many as 200 Iraqi civilians from U.S. airstrikes this week in Mosul. That was preceded a few days earlier by the killing of dozens of Syrian civilians in Raqqa province when the U.S. targeted a school where people had taken refuge, which itself was preceded a week earlier by the U.S. destruction of a mosque near Aleppo that also killed dozens. And one of Trump’s first military actions was what can only be described as a massacre carried out by Navy SEALs, in which 30 Yemenis were killed; among the children killed was an 8-year-old American girl (whose 16-year-old American brother was killed by a drone under Obama).

In sum: Although precise numbers are difficult to obtain, there seems little question that the number of civilians being killed by the U.S. in Iraq and Syria — already quite high under Obama — has increased precipitously during the first two months of the Trump administration. Data compiled by the site Airwars tells the story: The number of civilians killed in Syria and Iraq began increasing in October under Obama but has now skyrocketed in March under Trump. ...

This escalation of bombing and civilian deaths, combined with the deployment by Trump of 500 ground troops into Syria beyond the troops Obama already deployed there, has received remarkably little media attention. This is in part due to the standard indifference in U.S. discourse to U.S. killing of civilians compared to the language used when its enemies kill people (compare the very muted and euphemistic tones used to report on Trump’s escalations in Iraq and Syria to the frequent invocation of genocide and war crimes to denounce Russian killing of Syrian civilians). And part of this lack of media attention is due to the Democrats’ ongoing hunt for Russian infiltration of Washington, which leaves little room for other matters.

Trump delivering on campaign promise

This is an interesting article contrasting the success with which George W. Bush manipulated, suppressed and occasionally bombed the press, with the relative failure of Donald Trump's current strategery of relentlessly insulting the press.

Trump Insults the Media, but Bush Bullied and Defanged It to Sell the Iraq War

Every time former President George W. Bush pops up somewhere these days, media pundits gush about how good he looks now, compared to Donald Trump. Recently, for instance, he described himself – and was dutifully portrayed as — a great supporter of the free press. ... But in reality, Bush was anything but a friend of the press during his presidency. Maybe he didn’t demonize it as much as Trump does — but he actively manipulated it and bullied it far worse and far more effectively than Trump has, much of it in the service of selling his marquee policy: the war in Iraq. ...

By far the biggest and most tragic example of Bush making of mockery of the free press was the cascade of lies he and Dick Cheney told – and got away with – in the run-up to war in Iraq. ... Among major print outlets, only Knight Ridder Newspapers, which today is part of McClatchy, aggressively challenged the case for war. “There wasn’t any reporting in the rest of the press corps, there was stenography,” John Walcott, who worked with Knight Ridder at the time, would later say. “The administration would make an assertion, people would make an assertion, people would write it down as if it were true, and put it in the newspaper or on television.”

Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan would himself later write that the war was sold with a “political propaganda campaign.” McClellan said the push to war was “all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” which is something the administration used the news media to do. “Through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers,” he wrote of the press’s role in the debacle. “Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it.” ...

So far, Trump’s approach to the media has been to endlessly insult them — calling them everything from “fake news” to the enemies of the American people. ... But the name-calling and other petty tactics have hardly cowed the American press. Unlike during the Bush years, the media has not been intimidated by the president’s outbursts. Instead — with a few exceptions, such as when the administration deploys anonymous sources to make terrorism-related claims — it has been emboldened. By being so adversarial to the press, Trump has made them more adversarial.

More Than 1,000 Civilians Reportedly Killed by U.S.-Led Airstrikes as Trump Expands War on Terror

US military investigating if airstrikes caused nearly 300 civilian deaths last week

The US military is investigating whether it was responsible for the deaths of nearly 300 Syrian and Iraqi civilians in three different sets of airstrikes this month.

Civilian casualties have been alleged in all three instances, but each situation is different and complex, a US defense official said. So far, there is no indication of a breakdown in US military procedures governing airstrikes, the official stressed, and the US is not contemplating a pause in military operations. ...

The most extensive case involves western Mosul. The US military is trying to determine if sometime between March 17 and March 23, bombs dropped in a neighborhood by US warplanes resulted in the deaths of more than 200 civilians. The incidents military officials are looking into are based largely on local reports and social media accounts of the strikes.

'Catastrophic' civilian causalities force Iraqi forces to pause offensive against Isis

Iraqi forces have been forced to pause the offensive on the Isis stronghold of Mosul by the “catastrophic” rate of civilian casualties reported in the city. The US-led coalition is investigating allegations its air strikes killed more than 130 men, women and children as they sheltered in their homes in the western district of al-Jadida.

Iraqi government forces suspended their six-month advance on Saturday amid growing international pressure over the incident and numerous other allegations of civilian deaths. ... A spokesperson for the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve said an investigation had been opened to determine the “validity” of claims over its strikes and insisted they corresponded with international law.

The US’ official civilian death toll from the air campaign against Isis in Syria and Iraq stands at 220, although monitors say the real total is far higher. Not-for-profit group Airwars warned this week of “record” deaths as bombing reached unprecedented intensity. It said the number of reported civilian casualties in coalition strikes has hit 1,000, with allegations accelerating under Donald Trump to suggest “possible key changes in the US rules of engagement that are placing civilians at greater risk”.

Syria said threatening to fire Scud missiles at Israel

The Syrian leadership has sent messages to Israel warning that any further strikes by the IDF on targets within Syria’s borders would be met with Scud rockets fired deep into the Jewish state, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar reported Saturday. The Assad regime conveyed the message to Israel via Russian mediators, the report said.

According to the report, Syria warned that Israeli strikes on Syrian military targets would be met with the firing of Scud missiles capable of carrying half a ton of explosives at IDF bases, while an attack on civilian targets would see Syria launching a counter strike on the Haifa port and the petrochemical plants in the area. The report warned that Syria has over 800 Scud missiles and that Syria would not issue any warnings before the missile strikes because Israel does not warn before it hits.

On Wednesday, Israeli jets were reported to have carried out airstrikes near the Syrian capital of Damascus, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue hitting weapons convoys and rebuffed claims Russia had ordered the strikes halted.

Taliban retakes Afghan town that American and British troops fought hard to capture

The Taliban has captured an important town in southern Afghanistan that was a bloody graveyard for British and American troops, in a symbolic and strategic blow to the Afghan government and its international partners.

Afghan government forces on Thursday withdrew from Sangin, a town in the volatile province of Helmand, ceding territory to the fundamentalist group amid conflicting claims over the scale and circumstances of the militants’ advance.

Local officials confirmed that the district police and governor’s headquarters were now held by the Taliban, claiming this was due to a tactical evacuation as U.S. forces sought to carry out an airstrike on the militants’ positions.

The news came as the top U.S. general in Europe told a senate committee hearing that he feared Russia may be helping fund the Taliban. “I’ve seen the influence of Russia of late – increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban,” said General Curtis Scaparrotti said Thursday.

Do you hear bin Laden's laughter, too?

General wants surge of 5000 troops to break stalemate in Afghanistan

The US and Europe need to send 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan to break a stalemate between Afghan forces and Islamic terrorists, the top US general in Kabul says.

“We cannot afford to walk away from Afghanistan,” Gen. John Nicholson told The Sunday Times of London. “This is where the war against terrorism started on 9/11. Failure here would embolden terrorists globally.”

Right now, 8,400 US troops and 5,000 troops from other NATO countries are deployed to Afghanistan.

America Digs Its Own Afghan Grave

Fifteen years and counting. America’s longest war keeps getting longer. The very duration of the expedition, with an end no more in sight now than it had been at any of several points one could have chosen over the last several years, ought to indicate the need for a fundamental redirection of policy. And yet there continue to be calls, including from influential members of Congress, to sustain and even enlarge the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. ...

Something approaching peace and stability will come to Afghanistan the only way it ever has come to Afghanistan in the past: through deals reached among the different factions, power centers, and ethnic groups within Afghanistan. External military intervention does not negate or obviate that process, and instead becomes the object of Afghan resistance to outside interference. It is not for nothing that the place is called the graveyard of empires.

The shape of any deals reached among Afghan factions matters relatively little to the United States. One need make no apologies for borrowing from old speeches in describing the current conflict in Afghanistan as a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. Unlike the circumstances in which that phrase was first used, there is no hostile and threatening power poised to exploit passivity on our part.

The U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 was, at that time, a just response to an attack on the U.S. homeland by a group that was enjoying the hospitality of the Afghan Taliban, which constituted the de facto regime ruling most of Afghanistan. One of the fundamental mistakes in how Americans have viewed Afghanistan ever since — in addition to the mistake of treating as an investment the sunk costs, including 2,400 American dead — is to think that the circumstances of 2001 still prevail. They don’t.

The Afghan Taliban never have been interested in international terrorism. Their focus always has been on the social and political structure of Afghanistan. The past alliance with al-Qa’ida was one of convenience, in which the payoff for the Taliban was assistance in prosecuting their civil war against Afghan opponents. ... 9/11 itself was the work of Arabs, not Afghans. And with the gloves having been taken off after 9/11, the Taliban know, as everyone else does, that if anything at all like the 2001 al-Qa’ida presence were to begin being re-established in Afghanistan, the United States would promptly bomb the heck out of it.

Humanitarian crisis In Yemen is worst in the world – Oxfam report

"Mad Dog" is hot to get his war on:

Trump administration weighs deeper involvement in Yemen war

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has asked the White House to lift Obama-era restrictions on U.S. military support for Persian Gulf states engaged in a protracted civil war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to senior Trump administration officials.

In a memo this month to national security adviser H.R. ­McMaster, Mattis said that “limited support” for Yemen operations being conducted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — including a planned Emirati offensive to retake a key Red Sea port — would help combat a “common threat.”

Approval of the request would mark a significant policy shift. U.S. military activity in Yemen until now has been confined mainly to counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda’s affiliate there, with limited indirect backing for gulf state efforts in a two-year-old war that has yielded significant civilian casualties.

It would also be a clear signal of the administration’s intention to move more aggressively against Iran. The Trump White House, in far stronger terms than its predecessor, has echoed Saudi and Emirati charges that Iran is training, arming and directing the Shiite Houthis in a proxy war to increase its regional clout against the Gulf’s Sunni monarchies.

Facial recognition database used by FBI is out of control, House committee hears

Approximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI’s network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver’s licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people.

These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week’s House oversight committee hearing, where politicians and privacy campaigners criticized the FBI and called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology at a time when it is creeping into law enforcement and business.

“No federal law controls this technology, no court decision limits it. This technology is not under control,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the center on privacy and technology at Georgetown Law.

The FBI first launched its advanced biometric database, Next Generation Identification, in 2010, augmenting the old fingerprint database with further capabilities including facial recognition. The bureau did not inform the public about its newfound capabilities nor did it publish a privacy impact assessment, required by law, for five years. Unlike with the collection of fingerprints and DNA, which is done following an arrest, photos of innocent civilians are being collected proactively. The FBI made arrangements with 18 different states to gain access to their databases of driver’s license photos.

Trump reportedly gave Merkel a fake $374 billion invoice for NATO defense

In a bizarre stunt, President Trump reportedly handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel an invoice for more than $374 billion to cover military defense costs when they met in Washington last week. U.K. newspaper the Sunday Times reports the bill was meant to illustrate the amount, in Trump’s own estimation, that Germany has failed to spend on defense under a NATO agreement. ...

According to the Sunday Times, Trump’s fake invoice dated all the way back to 2002, when, according to Trump, Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schröder said he’d spend more on defense. Trump’s aides reportedly calculated how much German defense spending fell below 2 percent over the past 12 years, then tacked on interest.

Protesters target Connecticut's uber wealthy with 'tax bills' in bid to end loophole

Just emerging from their blanket of winter snow, the lush and leafy lanes of Greenwich, Connecticut, are usually quiet on a Saturday morning. Behind high walls and long drives sit the manicured mansions of some of the world’s richest people. After a long week making more millions, the last thing the residents want is “the help” disturbing their beauty sleep. This weekend, though, was different.

On Saturday morning, a coachload of local workers, bullhorns in hand, took to Greenwich’s windy lanes for a protest organized by union-backed local community groups and billed as the “Lifestyles of the Rich & Shameless” bus tour. ... [A] couple of dozen protesters, gently shepherded by local police, left giant “tax bills” totaling close to $3bn for some of the world’s richest hedge fund managers. The protesters, and many others in Connecticut, are hoping they can force the state to reclaim such tax from its richest residents as it wrestles with massive debts and prepares to sack thousands of local workers.

Connecticut has a $1.8bn budget deficit. It is in the middle of cutting the 2,500 state jobs that were earmarked as “cost savings” last year. Governor Dannel Malloy recently unveiled a new budget that seeks $1.5bn in concessions from local workers, including pension cuts. Lindsay Farrell, state director of Working Families in Connecticut, a nonprofit that organized the weekend protest, said the new deal could cost another 4,200 jobs.

Medicare for All? Sen. Bernie Sanders Poised to Push for Single Payer after GOP Plan Falls Apart

Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for healthcare legislation failure


Donald Trump sought on Sunday to spread blame for the failure of his first attempt at passing major legislation, the replacement of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

As internecine squabbling continued in the Republican party, the president’s targets included conservatives in Congress, Democrats and, possibly, the House speaker, Paul Ryan.

Debate also continued about whether Trump or members of his administration had orchestrated an unusual attack on Ryan on Saturday, despite professions of unity from both the White House and the House speaker’s camp. Trump and Ryan spoke by phone for an hour on Saturday.

In the morning, the president used Twitter to tell the public to watch a show on Fox News at 9pm, Judge Jeanine. The former judge, prosecutor, district attorney and Republican political candidate from New York Jeanine Ferris Pirro then opened her show by saying: “Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the House … He failed to deliver the votes.”

Obamacare Is A Corporatist Policy Wearing A Progressive Hat; Push For Something Better

My social media news feeds are full of McResistance edgelords celebrating the failure of the GOP’s attempted hatchet job on the corporatist smut novel known as the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, also known as the bill that killed the single-payer healthcare debate in America. Inside the corporate liberal echo chamber, Obamacare’s temporary safety is being painted as a great victory for the little people over Darth Trump, despite the fact that the Trump camp and its supporters overwhelmingly opposed Paul Ryan’s failed Republican bill, and despite the fact the only winners in Obamacare are the predatory health insurance companies who should have been put out of business seven years ago.

There is no valid reason for America’s progressives not to be pushing with extreme aggression for universal healthcare right now. H.R.676 - Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act is all locked and loaded and ready to fire. ... H.R. 676 already has 72 Democratic congressional co-sponsors as of this writing, and there is a growing amount of support for it in progressive circles. Flaws can be found in it by anyone who’s looking for them, but it is infinitely better than the system America has now, and it’s infinitely better than anything the Republicans are likely to come up with as well. This is yours for the taking, America.

In one simple, linear movement, progressives will be able to both push for something their government has no right to deny them in the first place, and to throw out every politician who dares try to stand in their way. Already we see than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who infamously told the public that the complex, lengthy and cryptic Obamacare needed to be passed in order to find out what’s in it, is refusing to cosponsor the bill despite having claimed to support single-payer health insurance as recently as January of this year. So it’s already working to make all the cancer cells stand out against the background, showing us who’s for the American people and who serves the American oligarchs.

"Thunderous Applause" Welcomes Sanders' Call for Medicare-for-All

A cheering crowd gave a rousing endorsement to Sen. Bernie Sanders' plan to introduce Medicare-for-All, or single-payer, legislation to Congress in the coming weeks, announced this weekend at a Vermont town hall meeting. ...

Sanders reiterated his plan on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, telling anchor Dana Bash: "Ideally, where we should be going is to join the rest of the industrialized the world and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right. And that's why I'm going to introduce a Medicare-for-All, single-payer program."

Sanders also spoke of shorter-term goals in his interview on CNN: "Let us do, among other things, a public option. Let us give people in every state in this country a public option from which they can choose. Let's talk about lowering the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Let's deal with the greed of the pharmaceutical industry." ...

But corporate crime watchdog and single-payer advocate Russell Mokhiber warned against embracing the public option as a stand-in or even a stepping stone for Medicare for All.

In a piece published Sunday, Mokhiber quoted pediatrician and PNHP member Margaret Flowers, who co-directs the group Health Over Profit for Everyone. She said:

Introducing a public option will divide and confuse supporters of Medicare-for-All. Senators who should co-sponsor Medicare-for-All will be divided. Sanders seems to be urging a public option to please the Democratic Party, but Sanders cannot serve two masters—Wall Street's Chuck Schumer and the people. Sanders must decide whom he is working for.

While it might seem politically pragmatic to support a public option, it is not realistically pragmatic because a public option will not work. Senator Sanders knows that and he knows that the smallest step toward solving the healthcare crisis is National Improved Medicare for All. This would fundamentally change our health system that currently treats health as a commodity so that people only have access to what they can afford to a system that treats health as a public necessity so that people have access to what they need. Medicare-for-All achieves the savings needed to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone.

"We look to Senator Sanders to act on what he promised during his presidential campaign, a national improved Medicare-for-All now, not tomorrow," Flowers said. "Tomorrow never comes. It is not up to him to decide if single-payer can pass in Congress. That task is for the people to decide."

[See also: Single-Payer Bernie Morphs Into Public Option Dean - js]

ICE is raiding sanctuary cities as revenge, reports say

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in retaliation against at least one sanctuary city that declined to cooperate with federal immigration laws, a federal judge determined. New reports indicate it might be more widespread than just his city.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin said in an immigration hearing Monday that the ICE carried out city-wide raids in Austin, TX that netted more than 50 people at the end of January to retaliate against the local sheriff’s department, which instituted a policy to limit cooperation with federal immigration law.

CNN, citing a senior US immigration official, reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were also instructed to focus their efforts on sanctuary cities in general.



the horse race



Devin Nunes Vanished the Night Before He Made Trump Surveillance Claims

Hours before the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee announced his shocking claims about surveillance of the Trump transition team on Wednesday morning, he practically disappeared.

Rep. Devin Nunes was traveling with a senior committee staffer in an Uber on Tuesday evening when he received a communication on his phone, three committee officials and a former national security official with ties to the committee told The Daily Beast. After the message, Nunes left the car abruptly, leaving his own staffer in the dark about his whereabouts. By the next morning, Nunes hastily announced a press conference. His own aides, up to the most senior level, did not know what their boss planned to say next. Nunes’ choice to keep senior staff out of the loop was highly unusual. ...

“The intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes told reporters Wednesday morning. Nunes reviewed “dozens of reports” produced by the U.S. intelligence community that showed this, he added. ...

Where Nunes went and who his source was for this information—which he said was still incomplete—is now a mystery with serious repercussions for the independence of his investigation into Russian interference with U.S. elections. “This information was legally brought to me by sources who thought that we should know it,” Nunes added. ... Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have suggested that Nunes’ source was the White House, looking to distract from FBI Director James Comey’s revelation Monday that the bureau is investigating whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. ... The White House denied any knowledge of Nunes’ source.

Lawmaker's 'peculiar midnight run' endangers Trump-Russia inquiry

The House intelligence committee investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged links with Moscow looks in danger of unravelling as a result of the unexplained behaviour of its chairman, Devin Nunes, a former Trump adviser. Such behaviour reportedly includes an unexplained disappearance from an Uber ride with a staffer on Tuesday night, described by his Democratic counterpart as a “peculiar midnight run”.

The investigation subsequently appeared to stall, with Nunes calling off a critical hearing scheduled for Tuesday 28 March, at a time when his Democratic counterpart on the committee, Adam Schiff, said he had seen more than circumstantial evidence of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia. ... Schiff said he had persuaded Nunes to put in a joint request to Comey to share that evidence with the rest of the committee but said he did not know how the FBI director would respond.

Nunes, who served on Donald Trump’s transition team, subsequently put off the second hearing, which would have heard from former intelligence chiefs and a former deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump. Nunes said he wanted to postpone the hearing to give the committee more time to confer with Comey and the National Security Agency director, Michael Rogers. Schiff, however, claimed the hearing had been cancelled to to “choke off public information” and avoid any more embarrassment to the White House.



the evening greens


Trump presidency 'opens door' to planet-hacking geoengineer experiments

Harvard engineers who launched the world’s biggest solar geoengineering research program may get a dangerous boost from Donald Trump, environmental organizations are warning. Under the Trump administration, enthusiasm appears to be growing for the controversial technology of solar geo-engineering, which aims to spray sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s radiation back to space and decrease the temperature of Earth. ...

While geoengineering received little favour under Obama, high-level officials within the Trump administration have been long-time advocates for planetary-scale manipulation of Earth systems. David Schnare, an architect of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition, has lobbied the US government and testified to Senate in favour of federal support for geoengineering. He has called for a multi-phase plan to fund research and conduct real-world testing within 18 months, deploy massive stratospheric spraying three years after, and continue spraying for a century, a duration geoengineers believe would be necessary to dial back the planet’s temperature.

Geoengineers argue that such methods would be an inexpensive way to reduce global warming, but scientists have warned it could have catastrophic consequences for the Earth’s weather systems. Scientific modelling has shown that stratospheric spraying could drastically curtail rainfall throughout Asia, Africa and South America, causing severe droughts and threatening food supply for billions of people.

“Clearly parts of the Trump administration are very willing to open the door to reckless schemes like David Keith’s, and may well have quietly given the nod to open-air experiments,” said Silvia Riberio, with technology watchdog ETC Group. “Worryingly, geoengineering may emerge as this administration’s preferred approach to global warming. In their view, building a big beautiful wall of sulphate in the sky could be a perfect excuse to allow uncontrolled fossil fuel extraction. We need to be focussing on radical emissions cuts, not dangerous and unjust technofixes.”

Bill McKibben: Trump May Have Approved Keystone XL, But People Will Stop This Pipeline Again

Trump to sign executive order undoing Obama's clean power plan

Donald Trump will on Tuesday sign an executive order to unravel Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Sunday, claiming the move would be “pro-growth and pro-environment”. ...

The clean power plan, which aims to cut emissions of CO2 and other substances and was implemented in 2015, has been on hold since last year while a federal appeals court considered a challenge by Republican-led states and more than 100 companies. Pruitt sued to halt the order while in Oklahoma.

Top US coal boss Robert Murray: Trump 'can't bring mining jobs back'

America’s biggest coal boss is hopeful that his industry will soon be freed of “fraudulent” green legislation that has hampered his industry, but warned Donald Trump to “temper” expectations about a boom in mining jobs.

Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy, the largest privately held coalminer in the US, is confident Trump will follow through with campaign plans to reinvigorate the coal industry and will start by scrapping Barack Obama’s clean power plan (CPP), Obama’s signature climate change plan. ...

Trump pledged to bring back coal jobs during his presidential bid and repeated those promises last week. “As we speak, we are preparing new executive actions to save our coal industry and to save our wonderful coalminers from continuing to be put out of work. The miners are coming back,” Trump told a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. ...

Coalmining employed 98,505 people in 2015, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, down from 127,745 in 2008, the year Obama was elected president, and about 250,000 in the 1970s. Trump has consistently pledged to restore mining jobs, but many of those jobs were lost to technology rather than regulation and to competition from natural gas and renewables, which makes it unlikely that he can do much to significantly grow the number of jobs in the industry, said Murray.

“I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words,” said Murray. “He can’t bring them back.”


Also of Interest

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

Forget national politics: the real potential for the left is on the local level

The western idea of private property is flawed. Indigenous peoples have it right

The Democrats Will Get Us All Nuked Before They’ll Admit They Robbed Us Of President Sanders

Chris Hedges: The Feuding Kleptocrats

Frank Rich, the Trump Voter, and Liberal Eliminationist Rhetoric

The Disappearance of Bipartisanship on the Intelligence Committees

Florida Governor Rick Scott Is Punishing a Prosecutor for Opposing the Death Penalty

Sunshine state shuns solar as overcast New York basks in clean energy boom

Blessed Are The Peacemakers


A Little Night Music

Bessie Smith - The Gin House Blues

Bessie Smith - Poor Man's Blues

Bessie Smith - Gulf Coast Blues

Bessie Smith – Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl

Bessie Smith - The Yellow Dog Blues

Bessie Smith - Aggravatin' Papa

Bessie Smith - Gimme a Pigfoot & a Bottle Of Beer

Bessie Smith - I'm Wild About That Thing

The Unmistakeable Bessie Smith



Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

OLinda's picture

General wants surge of 5000 troops to break stalemate in Afghanistan

The US and Europe need to send 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan to break a stalemate between Afghan forces and Islamic terrorists, the top US general in Kabul says.

Wish I could remember who it was that I heard recently point out that when we ask for more troops, it means we're losing.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

it seems pretty obvious to me that if we couldn't "win" with 100,000 troops in afghanistan, that bringing our troop levels up to 13,000 isn't going to be the magic number, either. it's funny that it isn't obvious to the military.

up
0 users have voted.

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack

And 14 years since Dubya stood on the carrier in front of the "Mission Accomplished" sign. And yet so many millions of Americans are still fooled by the propaganda.

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

joe shikspack's picture

@Timmethy2.0

i'm afraid that this could go on indefinitely, given that our military profiteers continue bringing home big money from this war.

up
0 users have voted.

@joe shikspack

was long ago abandoned. Now we're just there and the media and politicians act as if all is as it should be.

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

OLinda's picture

From the "Also of Interest" section - The Feuding Kleptocrats

IMHO, this evening's Must Read. Hedges is even more Hedgesy than usual. I wish I could say I don't believe every word.

Here is a bit, but he covers more subjects:

The kleptocrats—and, now, those they con—have no interest in the flowery words of inclusivity, multiculturalism and democracy that a bankrupt liberal class used with great effectiveness for three decades to swindle the public on behalf of corporations. That rhetoric is a spent force. Barack Obama tried it when he crisscrossed the country during the presidential campaign telling a betrayed public that Hillary Clinton would finish the job started by his administration.

Political language has been replaced by the obscenities of reality television, professional wrestling and the daytime shows in which couples find out if they cheated on each other. This is the language used by Trump, who views reality and himself through the degraded lens of television and the sickness of celebrity culture. He, like much of the public, lives in the fantasy world of electronic hallucinations.

The battle over health care was all about the most effective way to hand money to corporations. Do we stick with Obamacare, already a gift to the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical industries, or do we turn to a sham bill of pretend care that gives even more tax cuts to the rich? This is what passes for nuanced political debate now. …

...

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@OLinda

We have watched for far too long as our government has little by little stripped us of so many things that we used to have or be able to do.
Remember the time when we got to write off the interest that we paid on car loans, credit cards and other financial things until Reagan decided that we shouldn't be allowed to do that?
With each new congress and presidency we were stripped of more and more things.
Then Biden decided that it was too easy for people to declare bankruptcy because of their mounting debts that were usually because of some unforeseen events. Only people like the Trumps could declare it and write off millions in debt or restructuring their businesses.
And now that people are tired of being held down in their slowly boiling pot of water, they passed the clause in the NDAA which states that the military can rendition people and hold them indefinitely without charges or have access to a lawyer

The kleptocrats have used the courts to strip us of due process and habeas corpus. They have constructed the largest prison system in the world. They have militarized police and authorized them to kill unarmed citizens, especially poor people of color, with impunity. They have overturned the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which once prohibited the military from acting as a domestic police force, by passing Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1021 gives the kleptocrats the power to carry out extraordinary rendition on the streets of American cities and hold citizens indefinitely in military detention centers without due process—in essence disappearing them as in any totalitarian state. The kleptocrats have handed the executive branch of government the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. And they have stacked the courts with corporate loyalists who treat corporations as people and people as noisome impediments to corporate profit.

This omnipresent surveillance state and militarization of the forces of internal security are designed to thwart popular revolt. These tools are the moats the kleptocrats have built to protect themselves from the threatening hoards. Full surveillance, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, is not a means to discover or prevent crimes, but a device to have “on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” The most innocuous information will be twisted and used by the kleptocrats to condemn anyone considered a threat.

The dumbasses who say that they have nothing to hide so if illegally spying on us keeps us safe then they have no problem with it. They don't realize that they can plant any evidence that they want for whatever reason.
If we don't do something about this soon, it's going to be too late and 1984 won't be fiction any longer.

up
0 users have voted.

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

MarilynW's picture

@snoopydawg
and safe from whom? We need safety from those who are striping away our privacy.

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

equities.PNG

up
0 users have voted.
OLinda's picture

@gjohnsit

I don't know, but I tipped you anyway. Wink

up
0 users have voted.

@OLinda
It's total corporate equities, which have nearly tripled in just 8 years.

up
0 users have voted.
OLinda's picture

@gjohnsit

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

i can't really read the graph, but a tripling of the "value" of equities in 8 years when there is no tangible improvement of the fundamentals of the economy seems a bit odd.

up
0 users have voted.
MarilynW's picture

How effective was it really? In spite of it millions of people marched against the invasion of Iraq. Some of the BS fell apart immediately like Powell's presentation to the UN - he was a laughing stock right after it was over. Bush and Cheney could pour it on, but let's not forget many of us dismissed it.

GWB went ahead with the invasion "Shock & Awe" and it was protested from the start. Bush called the 10 million people who protested around the world "a few interest groups." But historically his propaganda and the press help in spreading it should also mention that a large group of people were not buying it. I was reading only McClatchy in those days.

It's not as if the the public lapping up the propaganda in the press gave Bush & Cheney permission to invade Iraq. Bush & Cheney did not ask for permission, they went ahead in spite of all opposition to their plans.

With Trump, it's a different story. The press is reporting on his murdering civilians in the Middle East but it's not getting top billing. I don't see much protest against his murders. Americans are busy trying to survive his attacks within their own country. Maybe that's part of the plan. Keep the citizens distracted while the Secretary of State travels around in secret without a press pool and foreign policy and murders are plotted behind closed doors.

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

@MarilynW

it's true that many people were not buying bush's propaganda, but sadly we were not a large enough segment of the population to force change by the normal means of us politics. further, we were shouted down by the mainstream media.

greenwald's article is worth reviewing for a reminder of the hardball techniques that bush/cheney employed. there is also a longish article over at consortium news that i haven't worked my way through that may shed some light on the means by which the war was sold, How US Flooded the World with Psyops.

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@MarilynW
New York Times to sit on the story about how the Bush administration and the NSA and phone companies were illegally spying on us until after the election.
If they had released the story before would Bush have won a second term?

up
0 users have voted.

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

MarilynW's picture

@snoopydawg
- by the cowardice.

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

snoopydawg's picture

@MarilynW
New York Times to sit on the story about how the Bush administration and the NSA and phone companies were illegally spying on us until after the election.
If they had released the story before would Bush have won a second term?
Would Ohio be close enough for them to steal it?

up
0 users have voted.

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

MarilynW's picture

Just skimming your headlines, it's a treasure which I will read later. Frank Rich, "private property." Saunders on medicare for all, very interesting indeed.

Marilyn

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

@MarilynW

it's a pleasure working through what is going on in the world with all of you guys.

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@MarilynW and the comments to it contain a link to a further gem:

https://extranewsfeed.com/a-hillbilly-replies-439ecff138c8

If I can hug the neck of a black person who stabbed another mother’s child in the heart and tell them that they deserve to be treated humanely… then I can do the same damn thing to a poor white redneck who voted for Donald Trump. And guess what? Advocating for the dignity and humanity of prisoners doesn’t make me a murderer. Advocating for the dignity and humanity of the white working class doesn’t make me a racist.

Everybody in the boat. No exceptions. Nobody left behind.

up
0 users have voted.
MarilynW's picture

@lotlizard

up
0 users have voted.

To thine own self be true.

OLinda's picture

These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week’s House oversight committee hearing,

Does anyone think they will do anything about it though? The database of all of our emails and phone calls is still there with more scooped up every second. Congress is aware of it, and nothing was done. A few words here and there. Excuse me, strong words. The spying was found to be illegal, but nothing happened.

up
0 users have voted.
OLinda's picture

@OLinda

I like Edward Snowden's header picture on his Twitter page.

It shows USA Today, the WSJ, Washington Post and one other saying the bulk collection/spying is illegal.

Wa Post says it's "improper." Ha. They just couldn't get themselves to say the i word. In smaller type under the headline it says "Judges say program violates Patriot Act." Yeah, that would be improper alright. Weasels.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

Does anyone think they will do anything about it though?

even if they do something about it, does anybody think that the relevant agencies will obey the law?

remember the church committee?

up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@joe shikspack as well. The one on assassinations, whose final report concluded that the murder of JFK was indeed, in all probability, the result of a co-ordinated effort involving more than one person.

up
0 users have voted.

link

A new term was introduced to the English language: Identity Politics. Its aim is for voters to think of themselves as separatist minorities – women, LGBTQ, Blacks and Hispanics. The Democrats thought they could beat Trump by organizing Women for Wall Street (and a New Cold War), LGBTQ for Wall Street (and a New Cold War), and Blacks and Hispanics for Wall Street (and a New Cold War). Each identity cohort was headed by a billionaire or hedge fund donor.

The identity that is conspicuously excluded is the working class. Identity politics strips away thinking of one’s interest in terms of having to work for a living. It excludes voter protests against having their monthly paycheck stripped to pay more for health insurance, housing and mortgage charges or education, or better working conditions or consumer protection – not to speak of protecting debtors.

Identity politics used to be about three major categories: workers and unionization, anti-war protests and civil rights marches against racist Jim Crow laws. These were the three objectives of the many nationwide demonstrations. That ended when these movements got co-opted into the Democratic Party. Their reappearance in Bernie Sanders’ campaign in fact threatens to tear the Democratic coalition apart. As soon as the primaries were over (duly stacked against Sanders), his followers were made to feel unwelcome. Hillary sought Republican support by denouncing Sanders as being as radical as Putin’s Republican leadership.

up
0 users have voted.
Azazello's picture

@gjohnsit
Notice he quotes Trotsky at the end ?
I read a recent interview with Hudson where he says he was a Trotskyite in his youth. I'd love to sit down and talk Russian history with him.

up
0 users have voted.

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

Unabashed Liberal's picture

will be back by to post a CNN interview with Bernie--it's from Friday evening, and he talks about what Dems will do about the ACA, now that DT claims that he's moving on. The topic came up at one of Al's threads, over the weekend. He also talked to Dana Bash about it (Sunday). I may post the excerpt from that, too--it was very similar.

Later.

Mollie


"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures--they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive."--Gilda Radner

"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."--Will Rogers

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

i watched a clip from that interview today which was pretty disappointing. it looks like bernie is selling out to the democrats (who are owned in part by the insurance corps) and going for howard dean's "public option" as an "intermediate step."

apparently bernie would like to take this opportunity when we have the public's full attention and broad sympathy for the idea that medicare for all could be a great solution and present the public with yet another democratic plan that doesn't work for everybody.

up
0 users have voted.
Unabashed Liberal's picture

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack

which is more than I can say for some of the various writers and organizations who take Bernie's words, and greatly twist or exaggerate them. I could be wrong, but I think that this is one reason that so many in the Dem Party Base--of which I was one until 2004--are/have been easily manipulated, continuing to vote for corporatist Dems even when they fail to deliver on their promises, year after year.

I know that many folks think it's a waste of time to watch, or listen to the Sunday Political Shows; but, we continue to listen to them on replay on C-Span Radio, because so many politicians show up, and we would rather hear what they think directly from them--not through the a partisan, or even an opposing, media filter.

Anyhoo, here you go.

Sen. Bernie Sanders & Anderson Cooper on GOP Health Care Plan Collapses, Ryan & Trump Pull Bill.

Here's a very short excerpt from the interview--here's the link to the entire transcript.

COOPER: Joining us now is former Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Senator Sanders, thanks for being with us. . . .

COOPER: What actually do you think happens now? I know clearly that is what you would like to see happen but the president is just talking about letting Obamacare fail. CBO says it's not imploding -- it's not on a death spiral like many Republicans are saying it is. What do you actually see happening? There [sic] many Democrats just say, look, things do need to be amended or changed in Obamacare.

SANDERS: Right. Look, again, I believe in a Medicare for all single- payer program but it ain't going to happen right now. We don't have the support in the Congress for that. So while we continue that long- term struggle right now, we need to improve the Affordable Care Act. That means a public option available in every state in this country which gives people a wide variety of options but makes sure that there is competition in every community in this country.

In my view, it means lowering the age of Medicare from 60 -- from 65 down to 55, allowing more Americans to participate in that program. It means passing Medicare, negotiating ability with the pharmaceutical industry and reimportation, allowing us to buy less expensive drugs around the world, which will not only lower the cost of medicine in this country, lower the cost of health care. Those are some short-term remedies that I think we need to go forward on.

It seems to me that he is saying that folks should advocate/agitate for MFA, but, pragmatically, we'll be lucky to have the improvements that he's mentioned above.

The only thing that I am not onboard with is the notion of 'state-based' public options plans. Having said that, I don't mean that I'd be against states (on their own volition) attempting to formulate, and pass a public option; but, I would prefer that a public option plan proposed by the US Congress be 'federally' administered, etc.

Well, at least we're all having the discussion.

Pleasantry

Hey, Everyone have a nice evening!

Bye

[Edit: Deleted redundant sentence.]

Mollie


"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures--they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive."--Gilda Radner

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Unabashed Liberal's picture

@joe shikspack

a few minutes ago. My bad! I didn't realize that you had posted several pieces on the topic, so my comment was redudant, to say the least. I'll be more careful about posting before I've had time to sit down, and read the news roundup.

Dash 1

Excellent CounterPunch piece--agree with Mokhiber about the risk of promoting a state-based public option, over MFA.

Mollie


"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures--they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive."--Gilda Radner

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

snoopydawg's picture

while the number of people who were killed by the United States barely gets a right up, let alone mentioned on the news. Over One Thousand Innocent Civilians including women and children and barely any mention of them.
I have no words to describe my feelings about this.
The comments on any article discussing the London attack are what you would expect from a brainwashed citizenry.

Let's drop enough bombs on them until they are all dead and can't threaten us anymore

I am constantly dumbfounded by the number of people who think that Isis and other terrorist organizations just want to kill us because of their extremist religious views.
It doesn't seem that any of them have heard or understand the word blowback.

And Mad dog Mattis can't be all that bad. I saw a diary on DK about he seems to be the only sane person Trump has appointed. Surely whoever wrote that article about him must be mistaken.

up
0 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i guess some lives are a lot more important than others out there in teeveeland.

"mad dog" may appear to be relatively saner than the rest of the trump administration, but that's not much of a standard to be held against.

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

Has anyone looked up when you were outside and saw between 5-15 planes crisscrossing the skies and leaving long vapor trails?
I have been watching them for over 5 years and and Saturday I counted 12 planes that were spraying something from them.
Do a google search for chemtrails and see what they look like. Click images.
Ever notice that a sunny morning will turn cloudy by the afternoon and the clouds aren't the normal looking clouds?
Of course anyone who believes in this are considered conspiracy theorists and dismissed as nuts.
Thousands of people can't all be nuts can they?
They start off looking like this.
IMG_0987.JPG
As time goes on the skies look like this
IMG_0986.JPG
This plane has 4 engines, so what's happening with the end of the plane's wing?
IMG_0118.PNG
As Ripleys used to say, believe it or not.

up
0 users have voted.

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

enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg
the proper altitudes they will generate contrails, streams of visible condensate caused by the pressure disruption.

up
0 users have voted.

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

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

I've been watching them for years, started looking them up when I got internet access... amazes me that more people didn't notice the difference, (edit: between these and the far less visible and rapidly dissipating ones I'd seen all of my life prior) never mind the way especially some of the newer ones spread (edit: across the sky, and the difference in the sky itself) - right from the start, but I was either in a small town or two-storey suburbia a long way from any tall buildings in a comparatively unpolluted city, so obviously a lot easier for me to notice.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

enhydra lutris's picture

up
0 users have voted.

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

Cassiodorus's picture

up
0 users have voted.

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Thanks for the EB Joe, for me it is usually next day morning hella good blues. MHGB Smile From the booklet inside CD set of Bessie Smith Complete Recordings, Volume I:

"People whose job it is to turn a performer's name into a household word are -- by the very nature of their task -- given to exaggeration. They tend to wrap their clients in superlatives that have long been rendered meaningless by overuse, and, more often than not, the puffery is just that. There are of course always exceptions, and Bessie Smith is a case in point.

Naming her "Queen of the Blues" was obviously a promotional ploy, but later when the promotional buildup escalated and she became "Empress", no one objected. Both appellations happen to have been eminently fitting, and even true royalty concurred.

"The Prince of Wales was showing us around," singer-dancer Mae Barnes once told me, recalling and early thirties visit to Windsor Castle, "and we came to a huge portrait of Queen Mary. 'What a regal woman', I said. He nodded and said "Yes, I believe there are only two truly regal women in this world, my mother and Bessie Smith."

I wonder what her voice would sound like on modern recording equipment, and the songs she might be singing today. Thanks.

Peace & Love

up
0 users have voted.