The Evening Blues - 5-23-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: King Oliver

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans jazz composer, cornet player and bandleader King Oliver. Enjoy!

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - Speakeasy Blues

“American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.”

-- H.L. Mencken


News and Opinion

An excellent article worth a full read. Here's a taste:

US Journalism’s New ‘Golden Age’?

The mainstream U.S. media is congratulating itself on its courageous defiance of President Trump and its hard-hitting condemnations of Russia, but the press seems to have forgotten that its proper role within the U.S. democratic structure is not to slant stories one way or another but to provide objective information for the American people. By that standard – of respecting that the people are the nation’s true sovereigns – the mainstream media is failing again. Indeed, the chasm between what America’s elites are thinking these days and what many working-class Americans are feeling is underscored by the high-fiving that’s going on inside the elite mainstream news media, which is celebrating its Trump- and Russia-bashing as the “new golden age of American journalism.” ...

In a Sunday column entitled “How Trump inspired a golden age,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that Trump “took on the institution of a free press – and it fought back. Trump came to office after intimidating publishers, barring journalists from covering him and threatening to rewrite press laws, and he has sought to discredit the ‘fake news’ media at every chance. Instead, he wound up inspiring a new golden age in American journalism. “Trump provoked the extraordinary work of reporters on the intelligence, justice and national security beats, who blew wide open the Russia election scandal, the contacts between Russia and top Trump officials, and interference by Trump in the FBI investigation. Last week’s appointment of a special prosecutor – a crucial check on a president who lacks self-restraint – is a direct result of their work.”

But has this journalism been professional or has it been a hatchet job? ... You might have thought that professional journalists would have demanded proof about the predicate for this burgeoning “scandal” – whether the Russians really did “hack” into emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and then slip the information to WikiLeaks to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. You have surely heard and read endlessly that this conclusion about Russia’s skulduggery was the “consensus view of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” and thus only some crazy conspiracy theorist would doubt its accuracy even if no specific evidence was evinced to support the accusation. But that repeated assertion is not true. There was no National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that would compile the views of the 17 intelligence agencies. ...

Yes, I realize that many good people want to see Trump removed from office because of his destructive policies and his buffoonish behavior – and many are eager to use the new bête noire, Russia, as the excuse to do it. But that still does not make it right for the U.S. news media to abandon its professional responsibilities in favor of a political agenda.

Judge won't move libel suit against BuzzFeed over Trump dossier

A federal judge has turned down BuzzFeed's request to move a libel suit over its publication of a dossier containing unverified allegations against President Donald Trump. BuzzFeed and its editor-in-chief Ben Smith asked that the case be relocated to New York City, but Miami-based U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro issued a ruling Monday refusing to give up the case filed by Russian tech executive and entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.

BuzzFeed took the controversial step of publishing the 35-page dossier in January, after press reports said it was mentioned in reports U.S. intelligence agencies circulated to top officials in the Obama administration and the incoming Trump team. Smith acknowledged that his reporters could not verify the accuracy of the facts in the dossier, but he said the public should be able to see it since it had circulated widely in Washington and was affecting policy discussions.

However, Gubarev — owner of a Dallas-based web hosting firm called Webzilla — sued in February over the inclusion of a reference to Gubarev and his companies using "botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership." (The report actually called him "GUBAROV.")

BuzzFeed apologized to Gubarev around the time the suit was filed. The news outlet also redacted the references to Gubarev from the version of the report currently accessible on its site. However, the Russian venture capitalist pressed on with his suit, targeting BuzzFeed and Smith over what Gubarev's attorneys caustically branded "one of the most reckless and irresponsible moments in modern 'journalism.'"

Unidentified officials make unverified claims...

Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials. Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president. ... Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official, according to the officials. It is unclear if a similar memo was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to document Trump’s conversation with Coats. ...

The new revelations add to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him May 9. According to notes kept by Comey, Trump first asked for his loyalty at a dinner in January and then, at a meeting the next month, asked him to drop the probe into Flynn. Trump disputes those accounts.

Michael Flynn may have lied to officials about his Russia ties, congressman says

The former national security adviser Michael Flynn appears to have lied about his foreign ties to Barack Obama-era investigators who were weighing whether to renew his security clearances, according to a letter published by Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House oversight committee. The accusation of a stark new violation of law by the man Donald Trump allegedly called “a good guy” comes on the heels of allegations that he had failed to disclose ties to foreign governments as he joined the Trump administration.

Cummings’ letter was released hours after Flynn, through his lawyers, defied a separate congressional committee, refusing to comply with a Senate intelligence committee subpoena for documents relating to his foreign activities. Flynn is a person of interest in multiple investigations of alleged Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election, including a special counsel investigation. Flynn is accused of doing paid work for entities with ties to the Russian and Turkish governments and then not disclosing that work even as he continued to work on the Trump campaign and then to serve, briefly, as Trump’s national security adviser. ...

In a letter to the Senate intelligence committee dated Monday, the Associated Press reported, Flynn’s attorneys justified their decision not to cooperate with the subpoena by citing an “escalating public frenzy against him” and saying the justice department’s recent appointment of a special counsel had created a legally dangerous environment for him to cooperate with the panel’s investigation.

Medea Benjamin: Congress Should Halt Trump's $110B Arms Deal over Saudi Atrocities in Yemen & Region

White House Blames Exhaustion for Donald Trump’s “Islamic Terrorism” Dog Whistle in Saudi Arabia

Judging by Trump’s own ad-libbed departure from the speech he delivered yesterday in Saudi Arabia, the president is thinking about Islam with his typical combination of deep cynicism and utter cluelessness. In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Trump stood before leaders from 55 countries and three continents. He called on them to join the United States in “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism, and the Islamists, and Islamic terror of all kinds.”

Each one of those terms — Islamic extremism, Islamists, and Islamic terror — has a precise meaning. By lumping them together, Trump put America’s fears and inconsistent rhetoric on display at a moment when much of the Muslim world was seeking clarity and parsing his every word. ... As delivered, Trump’s speech differed from the script circulated by the White House. That version of the speech was going to condemn “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.” Not “Islamic terror of all kinds.” The difference between “Islamist terror” and “Islamic terror” might sound small, but its significance is hard to overstate. ...

A senior White House official told CNN that the change in wording was due to Trump being “just an exhausted guy.” But it is difficult to believe that Trump would not be attentive to words that he chanted like a mantra during the campaign and used to stir up the Republican Party’s base. To them, the Saudi trip was a litmus test of whether Trump would live up to his campaign promise to frame his Middle Eastern policy as a clash of Christian and Muslim civilizations.

Palestinian Hunger Strikers in Israeli Jails Protest Trump's Visit to Israel

Democracy Watchdog Turns Up Heat on White House to Answer for 'Illegal' Syria Strike

A watchdog group on Monday stepped up its efforts to get the Trump administration to answer for its military strike on Syria in April. The Protect Democracy Project filed a motion asking a judge to order several federal agencies to give expedited answers to the group's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, filed earlier this month, that sought justification for the strike.

The group sent FOIAs to the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice, requesting any documents that laid out President Donald Trump's legal basis for ordering the April 6 bombing of a Syrian government airfield. So far, only two of four Justice Department bureaus—the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) and the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)—have honored those requests, the group said.

"Protect Democracy requested that the agencies process those FOIA requests on an expedited basis because the records sought could inform the public on an urgent federal government activity that is a matter of widespread media interest," the group's motion, filed Monday night, reads. "The president had indicated in a letter to Congress that he might escalate the conflict, and the legal basis for the strikes was of significant interest to the American public and Congress."

The motion comes just days after the Trump administration ordered another strike on Syrian government-allied forces, "all without ever having disclosed the president's legal justification for initiating this conflict," the group said. "In light of this continued military action, Protect Democracy's motion for a preliminary injunction seeks to compel all defendants to process its FOIA requests on an expedited basis, and produce all requested records (or acknowledge if there are no such records) without further delay."

"Relief is necessary to avoid the irreparable harm that would occur if the military conflict escalates further while, at the same time, the American people and their elected representatives are denied the information they need to participate in democratic debate," the motion continued.

The violence of Erdogan’s bodyguards in Washington DC is Turkey's new normal

On 17 May, a slice of Erdogan’s Turkey found its way to Washington DC. That day, a group of Kurdish Americans gathered outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence to protest against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There, they were beaten, threatened and attacked by the Turkish leader’s bodyguards. A total of 11 people were injured. Instead of the attackers, two protesters were arrested.

This is what the world saw that day, and this is the story that videos of the incident tell. But, according to Turkish pro-government media, which includes all mainstream newspapers and TV channels in Turkey, the world got the story wrong. In their version, terrorist sympathizers and Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) supporters had started to create trouble. Erdogan’s bodyguards decided to intervene, they say, because US police were not able to adequately handle that situation.

In Turkey, when police or Erdogan supporters beat or attack protesters, whenever dissidents or activists are exposed to state violence, or whenever they arrest someone just for raising their voice in opposition, we see and hear the same story. ... Erdogan’s party, the AKP, has built a strong narrative to make sure that things will never change. Since 2002, they have taken every step to make their ideology and themselves synonymous with the state. Because of this, all opposition against them can be presented as an attack on the Turkish state.

Criticizing the government or any AKP politician is viewed by them as a crime against the state itself. Demanding change is understood as demanding the destruction of the state. This became crystal clear around the Gezi Park protests. And since then, they’ve only become more aggressive and brutal. ... What happened in Washington DC was business as usual in Erdogan’s Turkey. It was a glimpse into a place where being critical of the government renders you subhuman, deserving of everything that comes your way: kicks, choking and death threats. What the world saw was just a small scene from Turkey’s new normal.

Turkey summons US ambassador to protest 'aggressive' handling of Turkish bodyguards

Turkey has summoned the US ambassador to protest 'aggressive' action against Turkish bodyguards in Washington, DC. ... The Turkish Foreign Ministry now says the US ambassador has been given a "written and verbal protest" over the US's handling of the situation. The country is calling for a "a full investigation of this diplomatic incident". ...

"The violence and injuries were the result of this unpermitted, provocative demonstration," the Turkish embassy said in a statement. "We hope that, in the future, appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that similar provocative actions causing harm and violence do not occur."

No bailout funds for Greece as eurozone finance chiefs fail to agree deal

Eurozone finance ministers have failed to agree a debt relief plan for Greece, raising the prospect of a summer crisis for the single currency bloc if Athens misses a loan repayment. A meeting of the eurozone’s 19 finance ministers broke up late on Monday night, amid a row with the International Monetary Fund about Greece’s debt burden. The standoff came just hours after France and Germany pledged to deepen co-operation in the single currency and seize Brexit opportunities for their banking industries. ...

It appeared the way was clear earlier in May when the Greek government agreed to extra pension cuts and tax increases demanded by creditors. However, a dispute between creditors has become a major stumbling block. Northern European countries do not want to sign off cheques for Greece unless the IMF agrees to be part of the third bailout. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands think the IMF will add rigour to the programme and fear the EU institutions will be too soft on Athens.

But the IMF has so far refused to get involved in Greece’s third bailout because officials think the country’s debts cannot be managed in the long-run. The Washington-based fund has repeatedly said it is looking for “a credible strategy to restore debt sustainability”.

Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance

It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before. Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with fewer and fewer resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some who never had faith in the first place are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities. ...

Since 2008 scores of “self-managing social centers” have mushroomed across Greece, financed by private donations and the proceeds from regularly scheduled concerts, exhibitions and on-site bars, most of which are open to the public. There are now around 250 nationwide. Some activists have focused on food and medicine handouts as poverty has deepened and public services have collapsed.

In recent months, anarchists and leftist groups have trained special energy on housing refugees who flooded into Greece in 2015 and who have been bottled up in the country since the European Union and Balkan nations tightened their borders. Some 3,000 of these refugees now live in 15 abandoned buildings that have been taken over by anarchists in the capital. ...

The police have recently raided some buildings illegally occupied by anarchists, called squats, in Athens, in the northern city of Thessaloniki and on the island of Lesbos, a gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past two years. But the authorities have stopped short of a blanket crackdown, which would be difficult for the leftist Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to condone.

The anarchists say their squats are a humane alternative to the state-run camps now filled with more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Human rights groups have broadly condemned the camps as squalid and unsafe.

Sweeping restrictions on Texas abortions focus on regulating the fetus

On Saturday, the Texas House of Representatives passed expansive legislation outlawing dilation and evacuation, a common method for performing second-trimester abortions. The bill also requires that the fetal remains of abortions be buried or cremated, and bans the sale or donation of fetal tissue.

The bill’s emphasis on the fetus is a marked change from previous anti-abortion legislation. In past sessions, lawmakers opposed to abortion offered legislation that they said were aimed at protecting the health of women seeking abortions. Abortion rights groups dubbed these bills “TRAP laws” — short for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers — and argued that their regulations were much more onerous than medically necessary and designed to force clinics to shut down.

Still, despite a new-found focus on the fetus, many of the bill’s proposed provisions could still trigger legal battles. Though several states have also sought to ban dilation and evacuation abortions, also known as D&E, multiple court rulings have found that such bans are likely unconstitutional. Because dilation and evacuates are generally the safest way to perform a second-trimester abortion, abortion rights groups argue that banning them essentially amounts to banning all abortion past the first trimester.

And in January, a federal judge blocked a Texas rule requiring health care facilities to give fetal remains funeral rites, finding that the rule did not increase public health and was “100 percent political.”

North Carolina gerrymandered districts suppressed black votes, Supreme Court rules

The Supreme Court struck down two gerrymandered districts in North Carolina, ruling they were created to group voters based on race rather than political affiliation, limiting the electoral power of black voters in the state.

The high court rejected state lawmakers’ claim that the districts, near urban areas of Raleigh and Charlotte, were drawn to create partisan advantage, rather than to group high concentrations of voters based on race. Grouping voters based on political affiliation is legal.

The case could have far-reaching effects on gerrymandering cases across the country. ...

Reverend William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP — who is leaving that post shortly to revive Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign — said that the ruling shows that the state “engaged in systemic racism and cheated to win elections,” according to the Associated Press.  

As Last Confederate Statue Is Removed in New Orleans, Will School Names & Street Signs Follow?

Mississippi lawmaker calls for lynchings after removal of Confederate symbols

A Republican state lawmaker in Mississippi, the last remaining state in the US to carry the Confederate battle emblem within its official flag, has posted an incendiary threat on social media calling for those removing Confederate monuments from public display to be lynched.

Karl Oliver, a funeral director from Winona Mississippi who represents the 46th district of the state, made his explosive remarks on Facebook. He began by lambasting the recent events in New Orleans, in neighboring Louisiana, which saw the last of its Confederate monuments – a statue of the south’s civil war commander Gen Robert E Lee – taken away on Friday in a move by local officials to end the visible celebration of white supremacy.

Oliver called the action in New Orleans “heinous and horrific”, and likened it to Nazi-era book burning. He went on to make his threat against anyone wanting to “destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY”, saying: “They should be LYNCHED!” The post has since been removed. ...

Oliver’s district includes Money, Mississippi, the small town where Emmett Till, aged 14, was brutally murdered after talking to a white woman in a grocery store.

Ethics office rejects White House attempt to halt inquiry into lobbyists

Donald Trump’s administration says the government ethics office lacks the authority to force the president to reveal how many waivers he’s granted to ex-lobbyists in his new administration. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is asking that the office of government ethics (OGE) director, Walter Shaub, halt his inquiry into lobbyists-turned-Trump administration employees. Mulvaney wrote in a letter last week to Shaub: “This data call appears to raise legal questions regarding the scope of OGE’s authorities.”

Shaub fired back Monday that OGE’s request was well within bounds. The ethics director says he expects to see the waiver information within 10 days. The back-and-forth follows a request Shaub made in April that agency heads share with his office waivers that the Trump administration has issued to its ethics policies concerning lobbyists.

In 2009, the Republican senator Chuck Grassley asked the government ethics office to use its authority to force Barack Obama to reveal how many waivers he had granted to ex-lobbyists in his new administration. Eight years and a political flip later, Republicans in Donald Trump’s administration say OGE lacks that authority, and they have asserted that there is no need for them to publicly disclose any ethics waivers. ...

Obama granted waivers to 66 White House and administration employees, according to what the OGE posted on its website. ... Waivers continue under the Trump administration, but the extent of them is unknown because his executive actions on ethics do not include provisions for public disclosure or information-sharing with OGE.

Jeff Sessions Wants to Put More People in Prison. His Home State of Alabama Is Doing the Opposite.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions penned a memo to federal prosecutors in early May asking them to stop seeking lenient sentences for drug offenders and instead seek “the most serious, readily provable” charges. It marked a reversal from modest reforms made under the Obama administration, and a signal that the Department of Justice will be ramping up policies that contribute to mass incarceration.

But back home in Alabama, which elected Sessions to the U.S. Senate four times, the Republican-led state government has done the opposite — embarking on criminal justice reforms that have lowered the state’s prison population. ... Bennett Wright is the executive director of the Alabama Sentencing Commission, which has been in charge of looking at reforms and advising the state on how to proceed. He explained the impacts of Alabama’s reforms to The Intercept.

“The Alabama Department of Corrections has custody of approximately 4,000 inmates less than it did October 1, 2013,” he said of the impact of reforms that began that year. “So the actual custodial population is down about 4,000 which represents a drop of almost 15 percent.”

Simultaneously, Wright said, there has been no increase in crime.



the evening greens


With New Leadership on the Way, Public Health Experts Demand WHO Take on Factory Farms

As the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to select its new director general, public health, food, and science experts are urging the new leader to take action on the issue of factory farms and global threats they pose.

In an op-ed published Sunday at the New York Times, Scott Weathers, Sophie Hermanns, and Mark Bittman reference comments last year by the outgoing director general, Margaret Chan. She referred to "three slow-motion disasters: a changing climate, the failure of more and more mainstay antimicrobials, and the rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases as the leading killers worldwide." If left unchecked, they "will eventually reach a tipping point where the harm done is irreversible," she said. 

"Factory farming," which has driven an increase in meat production and consumption, "connects the dots" between the three disasters, write Weathers, a graduate student in public health at Harvard, Hermanns, a graduate student at Cambridge and visiting fellow at Harvard, and Bittman, who is on the faculty of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia.

The trio cites the links between chronic diseases and meat-heavy diets, the increased human exposure to antibiotics—thereby contributing to scourge of antimicrobial resistance—as a result of their rampant use in industrial farming, and the climate impacts from factory farms as a result of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Enviros Brace for Trump Budget That Prioritizes Polluters Over People

Offering more evidence that President Donald Trump's budget is a multi-faceted blow to everyone but the one percent, the proposal to be unveiled Tuesday would reportedly slash funding for clean-ups at so-called Superfund sites—the vast majority of which are found in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

According to documents (pdf) obtained and released late last week by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, Trump's budget would reduce funding for those toxic clean-ups by nearly a third, while spending for an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program to restore such sites would be cut by about 36 percent.

What's more, the Guardian pointed out Monday, "the EPA's environmental justice office, which champions the rights of communities burdened by pollution, would be closed down and the civil rights program would experience an 18 percent funding decrease."

These reductions would undermine pledges made by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, whom the New York Times noted "has vowed to prioritize the agency's cleanup of hazardous waste sites." Pruitt said just this month that he wanted Superfund clean-ups to be "restored to their rightful place at the center of the agency's core mission."

And the cuts would hit hardest in low-income and minority communities. Catherine Lhamon, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, told the Guardian in response to Trump's proposal: "If this budget is implemented, it will be at best a backward step and at worst extremely harmful to communities of color nationwide."

Dakota Access pipeline and a feeder line leaked more than 100 gallons in March

The Dakota Access pipeline and a feeder line leaked more than 100 gallons of oil in North Dakota in separate incidents in March as crews prepared the disputed $3.8bn pipeline for operation.

Two barrels, or 84 gallons (320 liters), spilled due to a leaky flange at a pipeline terminal in Watford City on 3 March, according to the state’s health department. A flange is the section connecting two sections of pipeline. Oil flow was immediately cut off and the spill was contained on-site. Contaminated snow and soil were removed. No people, wildlife or waterways were affected, according to the department’s environmental health database. ...

A leak of half a barrel, or 20 gallons (75 liters), occurred 5 March in rural Mercer County, data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration show. Contaminated soil was removed, and no waterways were affected. There were no reported injuries to people or wildlife. The administration is part of the Department of Transportation. The online report says an above-ground valve failed due to a manufacturing defect, causing the leak. Upstream and downstream valves were closed to isolate the leak. Later, all other such valves in the Dakota Access system were inspected and found to be OK. ...

The pipeline leaked 84 gallons of oil in South Dakota on 4 April. That spill at a rural pump station also was quickly cleaned up and didn’t threaten any waterways. The state’s department of environment and natural resources posted a report in its online database but didn’t otherwise notify the public. Its policy is to not issue news releases on spills unless there is a threat to public health or water.


Also of Interest

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

At CNN, Imagining an Absurd Iranian/ISIS Alliance

Trump Lets Saudis Off on 9/11 Evidence

Trump’s Justice Department Goes Easy on Citigroup Unit for Criminal Money Laundering

The Dying Fossil Fuel Industry

Pro-Democracy Activists Arrested at Pennsylvania Capitol Demanding Reforms


A Little Night Music

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band & Louis Armstrong - Just Gone

King Oliver - Someday Sweetheart

King Oliver & His Orchestra - Call Of The Freaks

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - New Orleans Shout

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - Mandy Lee Blues

King Oliver - Too Late

King Oliver and His Dixie Syncopators - Jackass Blues

King Oliver & His Orchestra - The Trumpet's Prayer

King Oliver's Jazz Band - Jazzin Baby's Blues

King Oliver & His Orchestra - Everybody Does It In Hawaii


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Arrow's picture

Always when 5PM or so rolls around.

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I want a Pony!

joe shikspack's picture

@Arrow @Arrow

5:00 is a great time of day. Smile

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dervish's picture

Prince Tamim of Qatar said that "There is no wisdom in making an enemy out of Iran, and our relationship with Trump is troubled".

No links in English yet, but it was from An Nahar.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

thanatokephaloides's picture

@dervish

Prince Tamim of Qatar said that "There is no wisdom in making an enemy out of Iran, and our relationship with Trump is troubled".

Your Grace, everyone's relationship with Donald J. Trump is troubled! That man is "troubled" incarnate!

Sad

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

lotlizard's picture

@dervish  
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/26/qatar-migrants-how...

'Qataris' in work: 71,076
'Non-Qataris' in work: 1,199,107

That means immigrants make up an astounding 94% of Qatar's workforce, and 70% of its total population.

Immigrants who have hardly any rights and who, not infrequently, are reportedly treated almost like slaves.

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dervish's picture

@lotlizard of the population, and the 94% of the work-force sounds about right.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

joe shikspack's picture

@dervish

perhaps he should have a nice sit-down with the saudis and discuss it over a cup of tea. the saudis could use a bit of persuasion on those points.

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OzoneTom's picture

@dervish
US News is reporting that statements were from "alleged hack":
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-05-24/hack-fake-story-ex...

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dervish's picture

@OzoneTom Good catch. The father, Sheikh Hamad, was always pretty reasonable, whereas Prince Tamim was enamored with the right, the Americans, and with flexing power. A statement like that would reveal a real change of heart, which I suppose was too good to be true.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

thanatokephaloides's picture

Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance

This, my friends, is anarchosocialism, right before our very eyes!

And "they" said it was impossible! Well, now we know better!

Thank you, joe, for including this in this evening's EB!

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

joe shikspack's picture

@thanatokephaloides

i am always happy to see good news about anarchists, even if it is written by new york times reporters without a clue.

it looks like the anarchists are setting a good example by repurposing public infrastructure to do what government ought to be doing, but is too busy to do, what with all their kowtowing, bowing and grovelling before their bankster masters.

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enhydra lutris's picture

see Gubarev maintaining his suit and the court supporting him. Buzzfeed was totally irresponsible in publishing what they did, or totally gutless and tacky in trying to get out of the repercussions for doing so. After all, all that they have to do is show that it was true, or that they honestly believed it to be. If they can't, then they really shouldn't have published it. If you are ging to be a propagandist, you have to stand by your work.

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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 --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

it looks like buzzfeed is compounding their irresponsibility by playing a bunch of irritating, nuisance lawyer tricks, trying to change venues to inconvenience the plaintiff.

i hope that the court sticks it to buzzfeed for their actions.

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enhydra lutris's picture

Specifically, the link below let's one send a nastygram to ones rep demanding a cessation in funding the US's war efforts in Syria. It is a canned byt editable nastygram, so why not.

Tell Members of Congress: No More Tax Dollars for War in Syria:
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=12831

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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 --

dervish's picture

@enhydra lutris They essentially bypass Congressional oversight. Will send though.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

lotlizard's picture

@dervish  
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG

The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.

As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
Analysis - Donald Trump in Israel: He Came! He Spoke! He Conquered! - His determined discipline in the Middle East stood in stark contrast to his recklessness back home - Chemi Shalev May 24, 2017 10:05 AM

You’ve got to hand it to him: In the short space of three days, Trump carried out a semi-revolution. He placed himself and the United States at the head of the anti-Iranian Sunni coalition, cashing in on hundreds of billions of Saudi dollars in return. He positioned himself as Mr. Tough on Terror, a strength made timelier by the terrible terror attack against Manchester teens during his visit. And he won over an edgy and apprehensive Israeli public, consigning Barack Obama in the eyes of many Israelis to the rogues’ gallery of US Presidents and placing himself in serious contention, for now at least, for the title of friendliest President ever.

What a guy! I am going to vote for Trump now !!! /s
Diablo

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lotlizard's picture

@mimi @mimi  
What have we got to lose?

After all, the Honest Brokers™ have been trying for half a century, with less than no result.

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dervish's picture

@mimi The Pope asked Melania what she's been feeding Trump.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Steven D's picture

claim of a Golden Age of Journalism is excellent, but then Parry is a journalist while Milbank is only a hack pundit masquerading as one.

As for this story: "Trump’s Justice Department Goes Easy on Citigroup Unit for Criminal Money Laundering" this is merely the continuation of the policy at the DOJ during the Obama years, which did the same thing with respect to the money laundering of billions of drug cartel cash by an HSBC subsidiary.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-pro...

If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

enhydra lutris's picture

@Steven D
He knew that Holder believed in "too big to jail" and would let the miscreants slide.

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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 --

joe shikspack's picture

@Steven D

parry has been doing great work lately, being a rare voice of reason in the media.

i can't imagine that trump would be any more likely to crack down on wall street banksters than obama was. obama owed wall street deeply for arranging his election to the presidency, but trump owes wall street for the financing that has allowed him to have wealth and notoriety.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Steven D
from the same article, there are gems like this one

Robert L. Roach, Counsel to the Senate investigation, outlined during the hearing the services that Citibank had provided to Raul Salinas, brother to then President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas, as follows:

“The private bank…established a shell company for Mr. Salinas with layers of disguised ownership. It permitted a third party using an alias to deposit funds into the accounts, and it moved the funds out of Mexico through a Citibank concentration account that aided in the obfuscation of the audit trail. Cititrust in the Cayman Islands activated a Cayman Island shell corporation called a PIC, or private investment corporation, called Trocca, Ltd., to serve as the owner of record for the Salinas private bank accounts…

There are many more people who got great deals with laundering money through Citibank. And those pin heads won't modify my mortgage? I guess it's possible that if I was trying to launder money from my home then I might have better luck?

It sure seems that every day we are learning more about how corrupt our government is and how they let the big crooks get away with crimes that if we little people try to do, we end up in prison for decades if not life.
How many people are in prison for smoking marijuana while it's been legalized in some states?
John Edward's two Americas is still in effect.

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

@snoopydawg because you said "John Edward's two America's" I went directly here: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America
There is so much remembering in that article, so many familiar names, still hard for me to read. I guess Berniecrats know the history, I hope so. Clinton's '08 primary failure comment "remember Kennedy" fell out of my lint trap. Right there on the floor with Seth Rich dot com and Russia and everthing. wow Hot fun in the summertime, aluminum lining for milliners.

... Imagining his presidency is easy because, as even his enemies would concede, he meant what he said. So it is likely that he would have negotiated a settlement to the Vietnam War soon after his inauguration, saving the lives of the two million Vietnamese and twenty thousand American servicemen killed during the Nixon administration. Because he would not have bombed Cambodia, America would have escaped the trauma of Kent State and Jackson State, and Cambodia would probably have escaped the murderous Pol Pot regime. The Watergate would be just another apartment building, and America would have avoided the disillusionment and cynicism following that scandal. Had Kennedy won the presidency, young and minority Americans would have had a champion in the White House. The riots and protests marking Nixon’s first year would have been blunted, and Kennedy might have convinced Americans that real “immorality” meant poverty, racial discrimination, and an unnecessary war. Had Kennedy beaten Nixon in 1968, both parties might not have embraced—or at least not so readily—the sound bites, focus groups, stage- managed appearances, screened questions, bogus spontaneity, and other corrosive hallmarks of Nixon’s successful campaign. And had Kennedy won, then the guiding principle of Nixon’s campaign as spelled out in his secret 1968 manual—“The central point of scheduling is that the campaign is symbolic, i.e. it is not what the candidate actually does as much as what it appears he does [that matters]”—might have been discredited rather than emulated.
...

Clinton = Nixon now? lol

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snoopydawg's picture

@Steven D
to commit acts of terror, but before they can charge them for it, they have to give them money for supplies and then teach them how to build their bombs and then charge them under the Trading With the Enemy Act.
Don't forget Bill Clinton's other friend Marc Rich who he pardoned at the last minute.

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with Iran and ISIS linked. Ok, I know we pay way more attention to the details here and understand the difference between Sunni and Shia in a basic manner, but to see them stretching that far to link those two groups? With a dumbed down nation I guess that's really not that surprising but I'm always somewhat awed by their audacity. They dumbed us down themselves I guess, so they know how to pander to it.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

dervish's picture

@lizzyh7 they don't want an informed public.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

joe shikspack's picture

@lizzyh7

in the age of trump, the media is pandering to those whose only thought about muslims is that they are bad.

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ggersh's picture

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

wow, that's quite something!

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MarilynW's picture

in front of Trump's Mar a Lago. 4' x 4' - I'm hoping it sucks his golf course into it. Wonder who he will blame for this, who will be fired?

http://time.com/4788455/trump-mar-a-lago-sinkhole/

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To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

@MarilynW

given the recent watergate theme, i would guess that trump will blame the plumbers. Smile

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Azazello's picture

first segment from yesterday's Democracy Now! I hope everyone watches it. Medea's been all over the place of late. I just got a copy of her book, guess I'll give it a read. Here she is with Thom Hartmann on RT:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92_54j5ISq0 width:500 height:300]

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

i had so many videos last night that i saved it for tonight instead. i'm really glad to see medea getting coverage for her commentary about saudi arabia and the war in yemen.

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Azazello's picture

@joe shikspack

In addition, always anxious to direct the anger of Saudi citizens outward, Saudi rulers continued to encourage their own young men to wage jihad overseas. In the 1980s, the plight of oppressed Muslims from Palestine and Lebanon to Bosnia and Chechnya was broadcast on state television and taught in mosques as a way of whipping up feverish support for fighting abroad. A survey of Saudi men who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya, or to train in Al Qaeda camps found that most were motivated by the desire to help their suffering Muslim brothers and sisters.
Saudi officials, religious groups, charities, and private individuals became prolific sponsors of international terrorist groups as disparate as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. In 2008, a U.S. Treasury official testified in a congressional hearing that Saudi Arabia was the location from which more money was going to Sunni terror groups than any other place in the world.
A Wikileaks-revealed 2009 cable quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying: “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide … More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups.” Three other Arab countries listed as sources of militant money were Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, all neighbors of Saudi Arabia and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

the saudi rulers' need to pacify their citizens and divert the young away from challenging their regime has certainly exported an awful lot of trouble around the world.

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snoopydawg's picture

The CIA-funded Washington Post has something very important to tell you about the Seth Rich case. WaPo, which is owned by the planet’s third-wealthiest plutocrat and lucky recipient of $600 million from the US Central Intelligence Agency, would like you to be aware that if for some reason it should be revealed that Russia didn’t hack the emails of DNC staffers and provide them to WikiLeaks, this doesn’t nullify the Trump-Russia collusion story. You know, just in case something should happen in the near future to make you think such a thing.

I figured that this was going to happen when I read a diary on DK about this.
BTW, did ya'll know that we are considered nut jobs if we even think that he was the DNC leaker? Or if we aren't buying into Russia interfered with the election?
I have seen no evidence from those 17 intelligence agencies that proves that that happened. Just a bunch of anonymous statements from people who aren't authorized to say anything about this.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/washington-post-already-claiming-russ...

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@snoopydawg

have become a vital source of Information for the US public. A veritable font of wisdom are they. Much like Madame Blavatsky's Spirit Guides, they can provide us with messages originating from a Higher Plane, one that lies beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. How indeed would we ever know The Truth, if not for the Insider Knowledge that Anonymous Officials, from time to time, are able to bestow upon us? These Sources are Intelligence Personified; their words are Intelligence Revealed. Many thanks are due to the gifted Mediums working tirelessly at the WaPo and the NYT, who can transmit such esoteric Knowledge to the rest of us.

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native