The Evening Blues - 5-31-17



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Tiny Powell

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features gospel and r&b singer Tiny Powell. Enjoy!

Tiny Powell - Take Me With You

"So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice."

-- Arundhati Roy


News and Opinion

The U.S. Has Ramped Up Airstrikes Against ISIS in Raqqa, and Syrian Civilians Are Paying the Price

On April 24, a group of Syrian women bundled themselves and their children into a car and attempted to flee the small town of Tabqa, outside of Raqqa. In recent months the sleepy principality had become the site of raging battles between Islamic State militants and U.S.-backed proxy forces, waging a campaign to drive ISIS from the country. Packed into the fleeing car were 11 people, including eight members of the al-Aish family: three women between the ages of 23 and 40, and five children, the youngest one just 6 months old.

The al-Aish family’s flight from a warzone was similar to millions of other desperate journeys made by Syrian civilians over the past six years. But they would not make it to safety. As they fled Tabqa, their car was hit by an airstrike, reportedly carried out by the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. All 11 people were killed in the strike, in what local reports described as a “massacre.”

“A U.S.-led coalition warplane targeted heavy machine guns at civilians trying to flee the city of Al-Tabaqa, which is witnessing heavy clashes between gunmen,” reported the local anti-ISIS activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. The air raid led to “the death of a whole family.” Following the attack, photos of the young children from the al-Aish family circulated widely on social media and local news sites, including pictures of 3-year-old Abdul Salam and 6-month-old Ali.

The strike that killed the al-Aish family was just one of an estimated 9,029 strikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria since 2014. The independent monitoring group Airwars estimates that coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq over the past several years have killed between 3,681 and 5,849 civilians, compounding the suffering of people who have already endured years of civil war. In recent months, local media have reported a steady stream of airstrikes that have hit civilian targets, including several particularly egregious strikes on packed schools and mosques. ...

In contrast to Iraq, where the coalition is providing air support for local forces fighting to retake the city of Mosul, there has been little public attention paid to the air campaign in Syria. “We have been killing a lot of civilians in and around Raqqa for quite some time now, yet these incidents are rarely admitted by the coalition and there is almost no interest from international media,” Woods says. “We have to question where the empathy is for the local population.”

As the U.S. Ramps Up Airstrikes on ISIS, Are Syrian Civilians Paying the Price?

Pilger:

Libya’s Link to Manchester’s Tragedy

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this: The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy. Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review.”

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years. The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organization, which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida.” The “smoking gun” is that when Prime Minister Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on May 22? These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the May 22 attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology. The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer. ...

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show,” so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on May 22. The spin is back, not surprisingly: Salman Abedi acted alone; he was a petty criminal, no more than that; the extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not. Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed.” As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation.

Worth a full read:

The Government has known since 2003 that the failed ‘war on terror’ could cause an attack like the one in Manchester

Jeremy Corbyn is correct in saying that there is a strong connection between the terrorist threat in Britain and the wars Britain has fought abroad, notably in Iraq and Libya. The fact that these wars motivate and strengthen terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda and Isis has long been obvious to British intelligence officers, though strenuously denied by governments.

The real views of British intelligence agencies on the likely impact of Britain taking part in wars in the Middle East are revealed in a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessment dated 10 February 2003, just before the start of the invasion of Iraq led by American and British forces. It is marked “top secret”, but was declassified for use by the Chilcot Inquiry and, though it was referred to by several publications, attracted little attention at the time.

It says, “the threat from al-Qaeda will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. They will target Coalition forces and other Western interests ina the Middle East. Attacks against Western interests elsewhere are also likely, especially in the US and UK, for maximum impact. The worldwide threat from other Islamist groups and individuals will increase significantly.” An earlier JIC assessment dated 10 October 2002, also declassified by Chilcot, says: “Al-Qaeda and associated groups will continue to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests and that threat will be heightened by military action against Iraq.” ...

Corbyn says that “we must be brave enough to admit ‘the war on terror’ is simply not working”, adding that “we need a smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism.” Again, this is demonstrably true as vast resources have been poured into waging the ‘war on terror’ since 9/11, but Isis, al-Qaeda and similar Salafi jihadi movements are far stronger now than they were then. They have powerful militry forces fighting in at least seven wars – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, North East Nigeria – as well as in insurgencies, large and small, such as in Sinai and north-west Pakistan. Individuals and cells carry out terrorist attacks everywhere from Orlando to Baghdad and Berlin to Mogadishu.

Seldom has a war been so comprehensively and visibly lost as ‘the war on terror’ and it is doing a favour to Isis and al-Qaeda not to recognise this and try for something better.

Amnesty International: Did $1 Billion Worth of Lost U.S. Weapons End Up in the Hands of ISIS?

Alleged Russia-Taliban Arms Link Disputed

A tiny article from Reuters in late May quoted the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency as telling a Senate hearing, “I have not seen real physical evidence of weapons or money being transferred.” Marine Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart was addressing widespread claims by top Pentagon officials of Russian arms flowing to the Taliban in Afghanistan. By conceding the reports have no real substance, Stewart quietly called the bluff of military hardliners who are invoking the Russian menace to justify prolonging and escalating the longest and second-most-costly war in U.S. history. Stories of Russian military shipments to Afghanistan began last December, with a typical headline from the Washington Post: “Russia begins supplying weapons to Afghanistan, sides with Taliban.”

Down in the body of the story, however, it emerged that Moscow had agreed to ship 10,000 assault rifles not to the Taliban but to the Afghan government’s police force in Kabul. A Russian Foreign Ministry official said, “Russia has been consistently pursuing the policy of providing comprehensive assistance to Afghanistan in the establishment of a peaceful, independent, stable and self-sufficient state, free from terrorism and drugs.” ...

Starting in March, coincident with urgent requests by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan for thousands more troops to stem the Taliban’s military advances, senior Pentagon officers began blaming Russia for setbacks on the battlefield. ...

Perhaps the biggest arms supplier of all to the Taliban is the U.S. taxpayer. The Taliban rake off hundreds of millions of dollars from extortion of U.S.-funded projects in the country. They also fill their armories with U.S.-made weapons. A Taliban commander told Bloomberg News that when he needs more weapons and fuel, he simply buys or steals them from his foe. “It’s simple and cheaper,” he said. As journalist and book author Douglas Wissing observed recently, “U.S-enabled corruption lost the Afghan War. . . Corruption funds the enemy, with hundreds of millions of dollars skimmed from U.S. logistics and aid money."

"Panamanian strongman" (I always liked the way that the popular appellation made the CIA's man in Panama sound like a professional wrestler) Manuel Noriega died in jail, having been silenced to keep Bush-the-Elder out of jail. The Guardian has a thumbnail sketch of his career.

Manuel Noriega: feared dictator was the man who knew too much

[An] October [1989] coup attempt marked a turning point in Washington’s attitude to a man whose rise to power it had assisted, who became a valued CIA cold war asset and go-between in Central America’s dirty wars, but who turned into a monster US spy bosses could no longer control. Noriega had outlived his usefulness. Now he was an embarrassment. So Bush made him America’s most wanted. ... Bush had plenty of personal reasons for wanting Noriega out of the way. As CIA director and two-term vice-president to Ronald Reagan prior to 1988, Bush was implicated, by association, in often illegal, covert interventions in the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. During this period, Noriega, who rose to head the Panamanian security forces, became a highly paid informant and CIA “asset”.

Noriega helped the US to combat Cuban, and thus Soviet, influence in the region. He acted as an intermediary with US-backed contra rebels fighting Daniel Ortega’s leftwing Sandinista government and with the Salvadoran government and rebels. Death squads, random killings and torture characterised these murderous conflicts. Noriega was also closely associated with the Colombian Medellin drug cartel of Pablo Escobar. Funds from drug trafficking were used to buy arms, pay fighters and suborn government officials. Noriega later claimed it was his refusal to help Lt Col Oliver North provide arms for the contra rebels in Nicaragua that triggered the US decision to drop him. ...

Noriega’s knowledge of US operations in Central America was detailed and highly compromising. He was said to have met Bush in person on more than one occasion. ... Two years after his overthrow, Noriega was put on trial in Miami. ... The court refused to allow Noriega’s defence to present any evidence relating to his work for the CIA, his payments from the US government, his knowledge of US subversion in Central America, his contacts with senior figures such as Bush, and their knowledge of his activities as Panama’s dictator. His lawyers protested, but in vain. In many respects, the Miami proceedings resembled an east European show trial, with the outcome never in doubt.

Bush got his man, Noriega was silenced, nefarious US behaviour in Central America was effectively concealed, and the concept of justified, forcible regime change was fatefully reinforced.

How the 1989 War on Manuel Noriega’s Panama Super-Charged US Militarism

Manuel Noriega is dead at 83. He seems like a sad footnote to the last disastrous quarter century, but the December 1989 US invasion of Panama really was a permission slip for Washington—led by both Republicans and Democrats—to waste whatever potential benefits the end of the Cold War might have brought. Remember the “peace dividend”? The Berlin Wall had just fallen on November 9, and George H.W. Bush, the “realist,” was quick to use Panama to leverage the collapse of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, declaring the end of “sovereignty” and the right of the United States to invade other countries in the name of “democracy” and “human rights.”

“Today we are…living in historic times,” Bush’s ambassador to the OAS, Luigi Einaudi, lectured, two days after the invasion, “a time when a great principle is spreading across the world like wildfire. That principle, as we all know, is the revolutionary idea that people, not governments, are sovereign.” From Panama, it was a fast slide into Iraq, both wars I and II. ...

According to James Mann in his history of Bush’s war cabinet, Operation Just Cause helped to “overcome resistance within the Pentagon itself to the use of force,” thus serving as a warm-up act to the first Gulf War, illustrating how “realism” and “idealism” aren’t opposing values in US diplomacy, but rather feed off each other, creating a self-propelling cycle of justification for militarism. It brought together the so-called neocons, like Dick Cheney, and the supposed “realists,” like Colin Powell. As GHWB’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, Powell was hot for getting Noriega. In discussions leading up to the invasion, he advocated forcefully for military action. Powell, despite coming to be associated with the need to have an “exit strategy” for military actions, let the capture of Noriega go to his head. It was he who pushed for a more exalted name to brand the war with, one that undermined the very idea of those “limits” he was theoretically trying to establish. Following Pentagon practice, the operational plan to capture Noriega was to go by the meaningless name of “Blue Spoon.” That, Powell wrote in My American Journey, was “hardly a rousing call to arms.… [So] we kicked around a number of ideas and finally settled on…Just Cause. Along with the inspirational ring, I liked something else about it. Even our severest critics would have to utter ‘Just Cause’ while denouncing us.”

Painful Silence: State Dept stumped over why US criticizes Iran on democracy, but not Saudis

The Supreme Court made it easier for cops to use excessive force

Police officers can barge into a house without a warrant or without announcing themselves and shoot someone if they fear for their life when they pull the trigger. That’s what the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, when all eight justices agreed to strike down the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals “provocation doctrine” — the only court rule in the country that sought to hold cops accountable for their actions leading up to excessive use of force. (Neil Gorsuch wasn’t confirmed at the time of oral arguments.)

The case, Mendez v. L.A. County, involved a couple — Angel Mendez and his pregnant girlfriend Jennifer Garcia — who lived in a shack in a friend’s backyard. After receiving a tip that a fugitive parolee was seen in the vicinity of the home, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies entered the shack, where the couple was napping at the time, without a warrant or identifying themselves as police. When Mendez woke up and allegedly reached for a BB gun he kept by his bed, the deputies opened fire. The couple survived, but Mendez needed his right leg amputated to the knee.

In a lawsuit the couple (who had since married) pursued against Los Angeles County, they claim the sheriff’s deputies violated their Fourth Amendment rights for three reasons: The police entered without a warrant, didn’t knock or announce themselves, and used excessive force. A federal judge in California ruled in favor of the Mendezes on all three counts and awarded them $4 million. After Los Angeles County appealed, the 9th Circuit upheld the decision, and the case went to the Supreme Court.

In its unanimous decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court justices ruled the provocation doctrine doesn’t fall under the Fourth Amendment, even if the officer unreasonably provoked the encounter — like entering without a warrant. The doctrine, according to the justices, also undermined an earlier Supreme Court ruling, Graham v. Connor, which held that cases involving excessive force should be treated on a case-by-case basis and with “objective reasonableness.”

Cleveland police officer who shot Tamir Rice fired, but not for shooting

The city of Cleveland has fired one police officer and suspended a second involved in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Police chief Calvin Williams said Loehmann, who shot Rice, has been fired. Frank Garmback, who was driving the cruiser that skidded to a stop near the boy, has been suspended for 10 days.

Loehmann was fired for inaccurate details on his job application, not for the Rice shooting. Garmback was suspended for violating a tactical rule involving his approach to the gazebo where the boy was shot.

Ice agents are out of control. And they are only getting worse

With arrests of non-violent undocumented immigrants exploding across the country, it’s almost as if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents are having an internal contest to see who can participate in the most cruel and inhumane arrest possible. The agency, emboldened by Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, is out of control - and Congress is doing little to stop them. Last week, Ice agents ate breakfast at a Michigan restaurant, complimented the chef on their meal, and then proceeded to arrest three members of the restaurants kitchen staff, according to the owner.

Depraved stories like this are now almost too prevalent to comprehensively count: Ice has arrested undocumented immigrants showing up for scheduled green card appointments at a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office. They’ve arrested a father after dropping his daughter off at school. An Ice detainee was even removed forcefully against her will from a hospital where she was receiving treatment for a brain tumor. ...

Early in his presidency, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer said the president wanted to “take the shackles off” Ice agents so they could conduct more arrests, eerily echoing the CIA’s comments post-9/11 that they would “take the gloves off” in response to the terrorist attack. The CIA followed that statement with a years-long, worldwide torture program that violated domestic and international law, for which they still have not been held accountable, and it’s increasingly clear Ice is following a similar path.

While some Democrats have introduced bills to curtail some of Ice’s most egregious transgressions, Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, have shown little if any interest in reining in Ice. The agency is so harmful to civil rights, there’s a good argument it should be disbanded altogether, but unfortunately it seems they are only becoming more emboldened with each passing week.



the horse race



Flynn to provide documents for Russia investigation after initially refusing

After initially refusing, former national security adviser Michael Flynn will provide documents to the Senate intelligence committee as part of its investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and its links to Donald Trump’s election campaign, a person close to Flynn told the Associated Press.

Flynn will turn over documents related to two of his businesses as well as some personal documents the committee requested earlier this month, a person close to Flynn said. Flynn plans to produce documents by next week, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Flynn’s private interactions with the committee.

Flynn had previously invoked his fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination in declining an earlier request from the committee. Flynn’s attorneys had argued the initial request was too broad and would have required Flynn to turn over information that could have been used against him.

On Wednesday morning Trump urged lawmakers to hear testimony from a former foreign policy adviser as part of their Russia probes, saying Carter Page would counter previous testimony by former FBI and intelligence officials.

Wall Street Funds Hold Hundreds of Millions in Sanctioned Russian Bank Subject to Kushner Probe

The 2017 Memorial Day weekend will inevitably go down in history as the three-day span when remembrances of our military veterans took a media backseat to President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and everything Russian.

One of the key areas under multiple probes is a meeting Kushner held in December with Sergey Gorkov, the Chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank which has been under U.S. sanctions since July 2014 for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. What this meeting was about has yet to be officially determined.

Reuters reported on Saturday that “FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.”

Financial dealings with a Russian bank that remains under U.S. sanctions can result in serious penalties – or not. Wall Street On Parade conducted research into filings made at the Securities and Exchange Commission for fixed income securities issued by Vnesheconombank and found that some of the biggest names in Wall Street banking and mutual funds in the U.S. hold, cumulatively, hundreds of millions of dollars in notes and bonds issued by the Russian bank.

Fidelity Advisor’s Emerging Markets Income Fund shows it held more than $62 million in VEB fixed income securities as of December 31, 2016. Various Deutsche Bank mutual funds that operate in the U.S. own tens of millions of dollars of VEB debt securities. JPMorgan’s Emerging Markets Debt Fund shows that as of November 30, 2016, it held $20.5 million in VEB debt securities, although, curiously, it has the position assigned to its Ireland holdings. Other big mutual fund names showing VEB assets are PIMCO, Putnam, and Vanguard.

Poll: Mass Media Has Duped Democrats Into Believing Russia Hacked Voting Machines

A recent YouGov poll shows that most Democrats believe it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected. These poll results have been out for more than a week, so naturally one could expect a Google search to turn up a bunch of articles by the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets hastening to correct this widespread misinformation.

Right?

Of course not. There are precisely zero establishment outlets correcting this completely evidence-free belief that has become so widespread, despite the fact that corporate media outlets have been directly responsible for its promulgation by their repeated use of the phrase “election hacking” in their headlines and reports in the months following the November election.


This proves intent. These corporate media outlets fell all over themselves last week in a mad scramble to make sure that everyone in America felt dirty and ashamed if they took any interest in the Seth Rich case, but they have expended exactly zero energy correcting an outrageous, xenophobia-inducing fact-free conspiracy theory that they themselves helped promulgate, and which is far more widespread than interest in the Seth Rich case has ever been. This proves beyond a doubt that the false belief that Russia literally hacked America’s voting system has been intentionally inflicted upon the public by the mass media propaganda machine.



the evening greens


Trump to deliver verdict on Paris climate deal as world fears US pullout


Donald Trump’s Twitter pledge to make a decision on whether to remain in the Paris climate agreement this week promises resolution to months of fevered lobbying over US involvement in the global accord.

But while America’s traditional allies and environmental groups continue to urge Trump to stay within the Paris deal – in which nearly 200 nations have pledged to limit global temperatures to a 2C increase on the pre-industrial era – the actions of the US president, most recently at the G7 meeting in Sicily, have begun to provoke murmurs that perhaps the world would be better without American involvement. ...

“The whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory,” said German chancellor Angela Merkel. “Here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one.” ...

The momentum is reportedly with the Leave faction, with a group of 22 Republican senators – minus the notable voices of Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who want the US to remain – urging Trump to make a “clean break” from Paris. On Tuesday, Trump again met with Pruitt, one of the most vociferous opponents of the deal.

The Merkley-Sanders Climate Bill Isn’t a Launchpad, It’s Quicksand

With the Trump administration poised to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, a climate bill cosponsored by U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders and known as the “100 by ’50 Act” is sure to be back in the news. In April, Sanders called the bill, S.987, an important step in the fight against greenhouse warming. The leading climate advocacy group 350.org sees it as a Washington record-breaker, “the most ambitious piece of climate legislation Congress has ever seen.”

Well, maybe it does actually clear that decidedly low bar. But it is also far too little, too late to prevent climate catastrophe. Worse, it would enshrine in federal legislation the false notion that by taking baby steps over a period of decades, our country and the world can avoid runaway greenhouse warming. ... None of [the bill's] provisions take into account the growing pile of evidence for why fossil-fuel burning must be driven down to zero throughout society on an emergency schedule through explicit regulation of production—of what is produced and how, as we did the wartime 1940s—and not just through guidelines, taxes, and incentives, none of which can guarantee reductions. Nor do they address the broader ecological destruction that must be reversed if climate chaos is to be avoided.

S.987 would do no more than America’s soon-to-be-defunct commitments under the Paris deal—a treaty that would have allowed catastrophic warming of more than three degrees Celsius even if America had stayed in. Both Paris and S.987 fly in the face of strong evidence that to maintain safe atmospheric carbon concentrations, emissions must be cut to near zero by 2030. Ironically, 2030 happens to be the year in which Merkley and Sanders would still be allowing 50% of new vehicles and electrical generation to be fossil fueled. ...

If we the people are willing to struggle long and hard to keep the Earth livable, we had better fight for a radical transformation that actually has a chance of hitting that goal. Otherwise, by the time any fight for half-measures succeeds in the halls of Congress, it will have already failed in the real world. By then, the buzzer will have sounded; there will be no time for a follow-up shot.

Private Mercenary Firm TigerSwan Compares Anti-DAPL Water Protectors to "Jihadist Insurgency"


Also of Interest

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

Establishment Loyalists Spent Yesterday Circulating Blatant Lies About Glenn Greenwald

Intercepted Podcast: There’s Something About Jared

The U.S. Has Released 417 Alleged Terrorists Since 9/11. The Latest Owned an Islamic Bookstore.


A Little Night Music

Tiny Powell - My Time After Awhile

Tiny Powell - On The Blue Side

Tiny Powell - Going Home

Tiny Powell - Done Made It Over

Tiny Powell - Bossy Woman

Tiny Powell - Get Your Hat

The Five Blind Boys w/Tiny Powell - He's My Rock


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joe shikspack's picture

i'll be scarce tonight until later. i'll try to catch up asap.

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MarilynW's picture

@joe shikspack
Thanks for the news and blues.

I'm bored with Trump, but still enjoy watching him squirm in the real world.

Our Province, British Columbia made the NYTimes, because our Green Party formed a coalition with the left NDP party. (Actually not left enough for me.) But the loser Liberal Christie Clark (actually right wing, pro-environmental destruction) is still the leader until she agrees to step down. The coalition has plans to dismantle some of her destructive projects so she is hanging on until forced to concede. It will be a very slim majority for the Green/NDP but it's a start.

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To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

@MarilynW

glad to hear about the progress!

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The belief among democrats that the Russians hacked voting machines when all is said and done, may be mild compared to other stuff they believe about the Russians. The paranoia is reaching mass hysteria levels. I see more and more unhinged comments from tweets to diaries on TOP. And this is not confined to the US but also to the EU nations.

Although I am beginning to think that there may end up being too many leaks and various accusations to follow. Which may lead normal people to turn off anything dealing with Russia. Except for hardcore democrats, Russia is an abstract villain having nothing to do with their daily lives.

Just look at how Hillary Clinton seems to get tied up in knots with new explanations on Russian meddling...

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/still-sore-hillary-blames-dnc-scotus-...

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joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

i dread the possibility of hillary becoming president and getting her war on with russia.

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MarilynW's picture

@joe shikspack
while lacking the ability to think straight, has some charisma.

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To thine own self be true.

joe shikspack's picture

@MarilynW

she has a repellent anti-charisma that drives people away everytime she speaks.

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snoopydawg's picture

the EBs sure seem to be getting bluer every day. There are so many horrible things happening here at home and abroad, and I feel absolutely helpless to do anything about it.
The intentional killing of innocent civilians whose only crime was to live in a country that has resources our corporations want.
As for Hillary saying this

Clinton took the opportunity to blame numerous players for her Nov. 8 election defeat, and also to justify her use of the term “vast right-wing conspiracy” all the way back in 1998. The “conspiracy” against her, she suggested, is still alive.

Just because no one has been able to hold you and Bill accountable for your actions, doesn't mean that your hands are clean.
Just face the fact that if you hadn't done the things you did, you wouldn't have been under investigation for 30 years. And that includes using the private email server. You knew that went against regulations, if not the law.
Just face the fact that you lost to Donald F'cking Trump! Again, You lost to Donald F'cking Trump!
Pull your pussy hat down over your face and just go away.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

perhaps if she goes on about the russians long enough she'll forget all about david brock and his fake russians.

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit
i hope that corbyn and his labour people can get the younger voters to turn out.

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snoopydawg's picture

Clinton also raised the theory that "1,000 Russian agents" were working every day to make sure that distorted "content" was appearing before internet users. Clinton did not cite her source for the claim.

This coming from the campaign that hired people to go to websites and tell people that they were wrong. A million dollars was spent on people to do that, and she doesn't see the irony of saying that it was Russia who did that?
"I take responsibility for everything that I did, but I lost because of Russia." I don't see how that is taking responsibility, Hillary. Smile

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

there's a difference between taking responsibility and taking the blame.

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