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This evening's music features Atlanta jump blues singer Billy Wright. Enjoy!

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

-- Arthur Conan Doyle

News and Opinion

Comey rips media for 'dead wrong' Russia stories

Former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly warned Thursday that news reports based on leaks of classified information pertaining to the Russia investigation have been consistently wrong. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Community, Comey said stories about Russia that are based on classified leaks have been a persistent problem for the FBI because news organizations have often received bad information. “There have been many, many stories based on — well, lots of stuff, but about Russia that are dead wrong,” Comey said.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked the former FBI director about a bombshell New York Times report from Feb. 14 titled “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”

“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials,” the Times wrote.

Cotton asked Comey if that story was “almost entirely wrong,” and Comey said that it was. ...

“The challenge — and I’m not picking on reporters — about writing stories about classified information, is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on, and those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it,” Comey said. “We don’t call the press and say, ‘Hey, you got that thing wrong.’ ”

VIDEO: Former FBI director James Comey says, "Lordy, I hope there are tapes," of his Oval Office talks with Trump. https://t.co/Qj5tQ2N1mr pic.twitter.com/1ezjVd1X0p

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 8, 2017

Comey accuses Trump administration of 'lies'

Fired FBI Director James Comey on Thursday accused the Trump administration of defaming him and telling "lies" in impassioned testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The White House's shifting rationale for his dismissal "confused" the former director, he said, adding that it was the administration's subsequent statements that the FBI was in "disarray" that moved him to speak.

"The administration chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly run," Comey told a rapt hearing room.

"Those were lies, plain and simple."

President Trump last month shocked Washington with his abrupt dismissal of Comey, who was then investigating any coordination between the Trump team and Russia during the campaign.

Marcy Wheeler: James Comey Planned His Dramatic Testimony Release to Undercut GOP Smear Campaign

Trump lawyer criticizes Comey for leaking memo to press

Marc Kasowitz, the president’s outside attorney, said that Trump “never told” Comey that he needed his loyalty “in form or substance.” He added that Trump "never, in form or substance, directed or suggested" that Comey should stop investigating anyone, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The lawyer also accused Comey of “unilaterally and surreptitiously” leaking memos recounting his "privileged conversations" with Trump. “He also testified that immediately after he was terminated, he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to ‘prompt the appointment of a special counsel,’” Kasowitz said.

Why should one believe James Comey over Trump?

Intelligence officials’ outrageous contempt of Congress

Again and again today [6/7/17 -js] at the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers refused to answer direct questions as to whether they had been asked by the president to interfere with the investigation into possible collusion with Russia. In response to Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Angus King (I-Maine), they said they did not feel “pressured” and/or “directed” but declined to say whether they were asked. FBI acting director McCabe also refused to say if he had conversations with former FBI director James B. Comey about his conversations with the president. And then Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein refused to explain how and why Attorney General Jeff Sessions un-recused himself and whether he understood his memo would be used to fire Comey.

None of these witnesses invoked executive privilege or national security. They just didn’t want to answer. King finally blew up, scolding Rogers that what he “feels” isn’t relevant. He demanded to know why Rogers and Coats were not answering. He demanded a “legal justification” for not answering, and the witnesses did not supply any. Coats strongly hinted he would share information, just not in public, and that he would cooperate with the special prosecutor.
This is nothing short of outrageous. Congress has an independent obligation to conduct oversight. Witnesses cannot simply decide they don’t want to share. If they could, there would be no oversight. While they were not under subpoena, their behavior was contemptuous and frankly unprecedented. The committee has the option to subpoena witnesses, demand answers and then hold them in contempt if they decline to answer. (Is that what the witnesses are hoping for, so they will be seen as having no choice?) It is hard to see any reason why Congress should not do so. A source not authorized to speak on the record but familiar with his thinking told me, “Senator Heinrich will seek to get answers one way or another.” It should be noted that no closed-door sessions are scheduled.

Top Spies Stonewall Congress About Their Talks With Trump on James Comey and Russia

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that he would not invoke executive privilege to keep the public from hearing the truth from James Comey about his reported attempts to sideline the FBI’s investigation into his Russia ties. On Wednesday, it became clear why he might not have to. Four of America’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials stonewalled the issue of Trump’s reported interference with the investigation, despite a series of probing and sometimes heated questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee. ...

Nearly lost in the build-up to Comey’s testimony was the ostensible purpose of Wednesday’s hearing — a discussion of the government’s ability to conduct surveillance under Section 702, a little-understood spying authority that is supposed to be directed at foreign targets but often simultaneously sweeps up the content of U.S. communications. The government’s Section 702 authorities will expire at the end of this year; a bill sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., would make them permanent. In his confirmation hearing, Coats said that he would put together an estimate of how many Americans have their communications swept up by Section 702. On Wednesday, Coats said that “technical details” would prevent him from doing so. “You went back on a pledge!” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a critic of the surveillance state’s excesses, thundered in response.

Syria warns U.S. coalition over 'escalation', tells it to stop strikes

Syria's foreign ministry on Wednesday warned a U.S.-led military coalition of the "dangers of escalation" and demanded that it stop carrying out air strikes against pro-Damascus forces, state television reported.

It called the coalition illegitimate and said its actions only served to strengthen Islamic State. It did not elaborate or issue a specific threat.

U.S. downs pro-Syrian drone that fired at coalition forces

The United States shot down a pro-Syrian government drone that fired toward U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria on Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman said, in a major escalation of tensions between Washington and troops supporting Damascus.

The armed drone "hit dirt" and there were no injuries or damage done to the coalition patrol in southern Syria. But U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, told reporters the drone meant to attack them and dismissed the possibility it had fired a warning shot.

Dillon said the United States had earlier carried out a strike against pick-up trucks with weapons that had moved against U.S.-backed fighters near the southern town of At Tanf. It was the third such strike in as many weeks by the Pentagon. ...

A military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad threatened on Wednesday to hit U.S. positions in Syria, warning its "self-restraint" over U.S. air strikes would end if Washington crossed "red lines".

Saudi Arabia Gives Qatar 24 Hour Ultimatum As Analysts Warn Of "Military Confrontation"

Shortly after imposing a naval blockade in the immediate  aftermath of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, one which left the small Gulf nation not only politically isolated and with severed ties to its neighbors but potentially locked out of maritime trade and crippling its oil and LNG exports, on Tuesday SkyNews Arabia reported that Saudi Arabia has given Qatar a 24 hours ultimatum, starting tonight, to fulfill 10 conditions that have been conveyed to Kuwait, which is currently involved in the role of a mediator between Saudi and Qatar. ...

While there was little additional information on the Ultimatum and more importantly what happens should Qatar not comply, Al Jazeera reported that Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, left Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after holding mediation talks with the Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz to try to defuse an escalating crisis between Arab countries and Qatar. No details were given on the talks.

In addition to Saudi Arabia's aggressive approach, Egypt's Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an "antagonist approach" towards Cairo and said "all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed". Qatar denied the allegations, with a Foreign Ministry statement describing them as "baseless" on Monday.

I am not familiar with this media outlet, it was linked by antiwar.com (which I generally view favorably) and is the only place I've seen what purports to be the list of demands which accompany the Saudi ultimatum to Qatar. Take with a grain of salt:

Saudi Arabia’s 24 Hour Ultimatum-10 Demands for Qatar

Since most media reports do not have details yet of the ultimatum, we are publishing the alleged 10 demands

1) Cutting ties with Iran immediately.

2) Officially apologizing for all GCC governments for the insults, fake news they've tolerated from broadcast network Aljazeera.

3) Expelling all Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders and members from Qatar.

4) Stop interfering in Egypt's affairs immediately.

5) Stop sponsoring or funding any terror groups in any way, shape or form.

6) Freezing Hamas leaders bank accounts and prohibiting any financial transactions with/by them in that regard.

7) Vowing not to have any future policies or political roles that contradict the GCC unified polices.

8) Shutting down Aljazeera TV network immediately and abiding by the pact agreed upon by Doha in 2012 during late King Abdullah rule.

9) Expelling all the personalities, figures who have known aggressive stances against GCC countries from Qatar.

10) In case Qatar fully agreed to all above, an urgent meeting of GCC leaders to be held in Jeddah, KSA tomorrow to ink the irrevocable deal.

Kuwait steps up efforts to end Qatar blockade

Kuwait has stepped up its efforts to mediate an end to the economic and diplomatic blockade of Qatar as other Gulf States set out more detailed demands for how Qatar should end its alleged funding and harbouring of terrorism.

Kuwait’s Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah flew to Qatar on Wednesday night and was met at the airport by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The Qatari foreign ministry said in a statement that the two held talks on how to “restore the normal relations” of the Gulf.

The US president, Donald Trump, also rang the Qatari emir suggesting he come to the US to discuss a resolution to the worst diplomatic crisis to hit the Gulf in 30 years. In his second intervention in the row in as many days, Trump urged action against terrorism, a White House statement said.

Turkish parliament approves bill to deploy troops in Qatar

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved a draft bill allowing its troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar, an apparent move to support the Gulf Arab country when it faces diplomatic and trade isolation from some of the biggest Middle Eastern powers. ...

The bill, drafted before the rift, passed with 240 votes in favor, largely with support from the ruling AK Party and nationalist opposition MHP.

Democrats love that sweet, sweet AIPAC money:

Bucking Bernie Sanders, Democrats Move Forward On Iran Sanctions After Terror Attack in Tehran

In the wake of an alleged ISIS terrorist attack on the Iranian parliament, the U.S. Senate is marking the tragedy with twin resolutions: one to express condolences, the second to move forward on a bill to hit the country with new sanctions. By a vote of 92-7, the Senate opened debate on the sanctions resolution Wednesday. But the resolution expressing condolences is still being worked on, one senator said.

“On a day when Iran has been attacked by ISIS, by terrorism, now is not the time to go forward with legislation calling for sanctions against Iran,” Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said on the floor before the Senate did just that. “Let us be aware and cognizant that earlier today the people of Iran suffered a horrific terror attack in their capital, Tehran.”

The vote also came in the face of warnings from former Secretary of State John Kerry that a new sanctions bill could imperil the nuclear deal. ...

Sixty votes are needed to achieve cloture and close debate; only seven senators opposed the cloture vote: Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand, Dick Durbin, Carper, Jeff Merkley, and Tom Udall as well as Republican Rand Paul and Sanders.

Iran says Trump reaction to Isis killings in Tehran was repugnant

Iran has denounced Donald Trump’s reaction to Wednesday’s deadly attacks in Tehran as “repugnant”, after the US president warned that the nation was reaping what it sows. The death toll in the attacks on Tehran’s parliament complex and the shrine of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – the first to be claimed by Islamic State in Iran - rose to 17 on Thursday.

Trump said the US would “grieve and pray” for the victims, but added: “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”

That was condemned by the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who tweeted: “Repugnant WH (White House) statement … as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients.” ...

Iranian security officials counter that it is their regional rival Saudi Arabia – a close US ally – that is responsible for funding and spreading the extremism that underpins Isis. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards accused Riyadh and Washington of being “involved” in Wednesday’s attacks, drawing a link to Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia.

“For these two actions to happen … after this meeting means that the US and Saudi regimes had ordered their stooges to do this,” said Mohammad Hossein Nejat, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards intelligence branch, according to the Fars news agency.

Fmr. Iranian Diplomat: ISIS Attack on Tehran 'Managed by Saudi Arabia'

Consequences of attacks in Tehran will be felt around the world

In targeting the Iranian parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the terrorists who went on a lethal rampage in Tehran on Wednesday chose the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution. ... For Iranians, the attack on Khomeini’s tomb is the equivalent of somebody trying to blow up the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. If the Isis claim of responsibility proves truthful, this will be the first time the group has successfully struck in the heart of Iran, although it has reportedly tried several times in the recent past.

Isis is at war, ideologically and militarily, with Iranian forces and allies in Syria and Iraq. In a video released in March, it vowed to “conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before”. The jihadis claim that Iran’s clerical leaders, and their royal Persian predecessors, have persecuted Sunnis for centuries. ...

Wednesday’s atrocities will be set against the backdrop of the anticipated collapse of Isis’s self-declared caliphate, as Iranian-backed Iraqi and Syrian army forces, plus US and British-backed Kurdish militias, close in on its Mosul and Raqqa strongholds. In response to this pressure, Isis has called on its followers to take the fight to its enemies wherever they live. Recent terror attacks in Manchester, Kabul, Baghdad, Marawi in the southern Philippines and London may fit this emerging pattern of displaced activity by Isis followers.

Conservative Iranian leaders and commentators will certainly follow the IRGC’s lead and discern the hand of Saudi Arabia – and, by association, that of the US president, Donald Trump – in Wednesday’s attacks. Well-documented covert efforts by George W Bush’s administration in the 2000s to destabilise Iran by funding militant internal opposition groups are not forgotten in Tehran. Nor is unofficial, on-off American support for the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or People’s Mujahadin of Iran, a group formerly backed by Saddam Hussein that was responsible for numerous armed attacks inside Iran.

Iraqi Kurds to hold independence referendum in September

Top government officials and political parties in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region have agreed to hold a referendum on independence on 25 September. The date was set at a meeting in Irbil chaired by President Massoud Barzani. A statement said voting would take place in the three provinces that make up the region, and "areas of Kurdistan outside the region's administration".

There was no immediate comment from Iraq's central government, but it has urged Kurds not to hold a referendum. Moves towards outright independence have historically been opposed by the governments of neighbouring Iran, Turkey and Syria, as well as by the US. ...

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have played a major role in the US-backed campaign against [IS], which seized large parts of northern Iraq in 2014. But while driving IS militants out of the country, the Peshmerga have taken control of disputed territory claimed by both Kurds and the central government. It includes the city of Kirkuk and the towns of Makhmour, Khanaqin and Sinjar - locations where President Barzani's senior assistant Hemin Hawrami declared voting would take place in September.

North Korea launches missile salvo at area where US aircraft carrier fleet had sailed

North Korea has fired a volley of what appeared to be land-to-ship missiles, hours after a senior US official said the regime’s recent advances in missile technology were causing “great concern” in Washington. South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said several missiles – which are not thought to be ballistic – were launched from the North Korean eastern coastal town of Wonsan on Thursday morning.

They flew an estimated 200km and were intended to demonstrate the North’s ability to target a large enemy warship, the South Korean military said. The salvo was aimed at an area in the Sea of Japan recently visited by two US aircraft carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan. The vessels left the area earlier this week after conducting joint manoeuvres with South Korean and Japanese forces.

“North Korea likely wanted to show off its ability to precisely target a large warship, in relation to the joint military drills involving US aircraft carriers,” Roh Jae-cheon, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff spokesman, told reporters. “By testing different types of missiles, North Korea also appears to be aiming to secure the upper hand in relations with South Korea and the United States.”

Defense Officials to Lawmakers: Let Us Close Bases

Closing unneeded bases and relocating troops is the best way to make the most of limited military construction funding, a panel of top Pentagon installation officials told lawmakers Tuesday. "We are asking for base realignment and closure funding once again this year, and that's important to us," said Peter Potochney, the Defense Department's acting assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment. "In the end, it allows us to validate the installations that remain so they can compete for the funding we expect in the future." ...

The Pentagon's 2018 budget request, sent to Capitol Hill last month, includes $11.9 billion for military construction and family housing, and a request to restart a Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, Commission process to shut down unneeded bases and facilities.

About 20 percent of the Pentagon's facilities could be closed without negative impact, John Roth, the acting budget chief, told reporters May 22. Doing so would instead allow the department to spend construction money on upkeep of facilities that are actually needed, he said. BRAC is a politically toxic subject, as individual lawmakers' districts stand to win and lose in the process with an increase or decrease of cash to local economies.

Kansas abandons massive tax cuts that provided model for Trump's plan

Kansas has rejected the years-long tax-cutting experiment that brought its governor, Sam Brownback, to international attention and provided a model for the Trump administration’s troubled tax plans. In a warning shot to the Trump administration, even Brownback’s fellow Republicans voted to override his veto of a bill to reverse many of the tax cuts he championed as a way to spur entrepreneurs and the economy, but which have left the state with a $1bn hole in its budget.

Starting in 2012, Brownback’s plan has been to “march to zero” – cutting taxes wherever possible in the belief that the money Kansans saved would flow into the wider economy and drive growth. The governor was advised by Arthur Laffer, the economist who inspired Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic theory. So radical was his plan that critics called Kansas “Brownbackistan”.

State Democrats and local critics were delighted that Brownback’s plan had finally hit the rocks after earlier attempts to overrule the governor’s veto had failed. Senator Tom Holland, of Baldwin City, cheered the end of “Sam’s march-to-zero madness”. Judith Deedy, a mother of three from Johnson County who has campaigned against the cuts she blames for an escalating crisis in the state’s school system, said she was “delighted” by the news. “It just didn’t work. This was a terrible experiment that has left our state unable to do what it is supposed to do,” she said.

Brownback’s defeat means the state will end a tax cut for limited liability companies (LLCs) and so-called pass-through businesses – which meant independent business owners and farmers would pay no state tax on the bulk, if not all, of their income. That tax plan is similar to the pillar of Trump’s tax proposal. After it was brought in, the number of LLCs in Kansas leapt from 190,000 to over 300,000 and tax revenues plummeted, but the rate of jobs growth in Kansas has lagged that of its neighbors.

West Virginia’s Senate President Laid Off From Day Job After Supporting Bill Opposed By His Company

In late April, West Virginia’s governor signed into law a bill that will that will improve broadband competition in the state. The law authorizes a pilot project for towns to band together to create their own networks, as well as make it easier for families and businesses to create cooperatives to offer broadband service.

Frontier Communications, which provides broadband service to much of the state, opposed the bill, arguing that the state should focus on providing broadband to areas that don’t have it rather than fostering competition where service really exists. The lobbying effort failed miserably; the bill passed overwhelmingly through the House (97 to 2) and Senate (31 t0 1).

While the war over the law appears to be over, Frontier Communications is still waging its political battle. The company managed to find a way to punish one lawmaker for supporting the legislation: by laying him off.

In West Virginia, legislators work part-time and hold other jobs to make a living. Republican Senate President Mitch Carmichael was an executive at Frontier Communications for six years until, weeks after he ushered through the broadband bill, Frontier laid him off.

Oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found shake foundations of the human story

Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.

Archaeologists unearthed the bones of at least five people at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100km west of Marrakesh, in excavations that lasted years. They knew the remains were old, but were stunned when dating tests revealed that a tooth and stone tools found with the bones were about 300,000 years old.

“My reaction was a big ‘wow’,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a senior scientist on the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “I was expecting them to be old, but not that old.” Hublin said the extreme age of the bones makes them the oldest known specimens of modern humans and poses a major challenge to the idea that the earliest members of our species evolved in a “Garden of Eden” in East Africa one hundred thousand years later.

“This gives us a completely different picture of the evolution of our species. It goes much further back in time, but also the very process of evolution is different to what we thought,” Hublin told the Guardian. “It looks like our species was already present probably all over Africa by 300,000 years ago. If there was a Garden of Eden, it might have been the size of the continent.”

The Mayors of Pittsburgh and Paris: We Have Our Own Climate Deal

Last week, President Donald Trump tried to pit our two cities against each other when he announced, in pulling out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” As the mayors of Pittsburgh and Paris, we’re here to say that we’re more united than ever.

Though separated by an ocean and a language, we share a desire to do what is best for our citizens and our planet. That means putting aside parochial politics and embracing the global challenge of fighting climate change. In doing so, we can create a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous world for Parisians, Pittsburghers and everyone else on the planet. ...

The experience of Pittsburgh in the three decades since the collapse of the steel industry reveals how a commitment to science, research and green technology can transform our cities. As late as the 1940s, the air hung heavy with pollution from steel mills. Streetlights were needed 24 hours a day to see through the smog. Today, 13,000 Pittsburghers are employed in the renewable energy industry. The city’s Phipps Conservatory is recognized as one of the world’s greenest buildings, generating all of its own energy and treating and reusing all water captured on site. Investments in smart infrastructure, bike sharing programs, new mass transit options and building efficiency means Pittsburgh is on track to meet our goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2023. While the majority of electricity in the state of Pennsylvania is still generated from fossil fuels, Pittsburgh will be 100 percent powered by renewable energy by 2035.

In Paris — another city famous for its bridges — we are inspired by the resolve of Pittsburgh to deliver on the ambition of the Paris Agreement by building an ever more sustainable and thriving city. In the City of Lights, we’re taking big steps to boost our economy, encourage social mobility and improve the health of our citizens. In recent years, we reclaimed the right bank of the River Seine — an iconic part of the city that was previously dominated by polluting vehicles — for pedestrian use.

In the absence of executive leadership in the United States, an unprecedented alliance is emerging among cities like ours to push progress forward. We are both members of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, which represents more than 7,400 cities around the world committed to local climate action. Pittsburgh is one of nearly 250 cities in the United States, representing 56 million Americans, whose mayors have committed to honor and uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate

Yesterday, the mayors of Pittsburgh and Paris co-authored a New York Times editorial rejecting Trump’s efforts to pin the two cities against each other on climate change.

Additionally, 12 states (California, New York, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia) plus Puerto Rico created the US Climate Alliance, committed to upholding the Paris accord. These states represent 97 million Americans – 30% of the national population.

More than 1,000 U.S. governors, mayors, investors, universities, and companies joined the “We Are Still In” campaign, pledging to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. And California Governor Jerry Brown has effectively become America’s unofficial climate change ambassador.

In Utah, federal land opponent reverses stance on drilling near Zion national park

When Utah governor Gary Herbert changed his mind last week and decided oil and gas companies should not be allowed to drill near Zion national park, it seemed like a remarkable change of tone.

The Republican has been a staunch advocate for rolling back public land protections and had earlier endorsed the idea of drilling near the 229 sq mile park. In February, he signed a resolution urging Donald Trump to rescind national monument status for the 1.3m acres known as Bears Ears in south-eastern Utah. Doing so would allow expansion of current leases for oil and gas development and grazing.

Republican politicians from Utah, including congressmen Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz, have led the conservative push to transfer national land to the states and sell off millions of acres to private interests. Last week, however, Herbert declared: “In keeping with our current economic track, I support the tourism and recreation economies and not leasing the parcels that have helped define Washington County and the state of Utah.”

But recreation advocates were quick to caution that the move does not signal a larger victory for them in the war over public lands, whose main battlefields are Utah and the south-west. Herbert had “lots of political cover” in changing his mind, said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Local governments, as well as the county, as well as local businesses, were all already on record saying this was the wrong place for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to put these lands up for lease. “It was a pretty low bar for the governor to cross, for the governor to say, ‘Not here’,” Bloch continued. “While we’re pleased that the governor spoke up, this was the lowest bar to cross. This is a one-off.”

Trump's pitch for making the Mexico border wall 'beautiful': add solar panels

The president proposed a radical way to fund his proposed Mexican border wall this week: covering it in solar panels.

The same Donald Trump who has spent years criticizing renewable energy as uneconomical and who has pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement has now floated the idea of adding solar panels to his proposed barrier along the the US–Mexico border. The president believes the panels would transform the wall, which Trump envisions would be 40 to 50ft high, into “beautiful structures”, according to congressional insiders who spoke to Axios about a meeting Trump had with Republican leaders. ...

“Putting solar panels on the wall would amount to mere decoration with no substantive contribution to its basic obnoxious function – a barrier separating one group of people from another,” said Langdon Winner, political theorist, philosopher of technology and author of Do Artifacts Have Politics? “I’m wondering what the solar electricity would be used for? Electrocuting people who try to climb the wall?”

Meanwhile so few Americans live within 40 miles of the Mexico border that the government would require a multibillion-dollar interstate power line to deliver the electricity where it was needed. According to an analysis in the Financial Times, the cost of building such infrastructure renders the project a “non-starter”.

Also of Interest

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

The Qatar spat exposes Britain’s game of thrones in the Gulf

ISIS Attacks in Tehran Expose US-Saudi Lies About Iran

How Britain aided Israel’s 1967 war

NYT’s New Syria-Sarin Report Challenged

It's not just the 1%. The upper middle class is oppressing everyone else, too

Slow Crash

Clintonworld Reuniting To Boost One Of Their Own In A Democratic Primary

Final UK Election Polls: YouGov Still the Outlier, Predicts Tories Get Only 302 Seats

Trump Has Given Us the Opportunity to Save the Planet, Now We Must Seize It

A Little Night Music

Billy Wright - After Awhile

Billy Wright - Man's Brand Boogie

Billy Wright - I Remember

Billy Wright - Billy's Boogie Blues

Billy Wright - Four Cold, Cold Walls

Billy Wright - Beg-A-Dog

Billy Wright - Turn Your Lamps Down Low (Baby Please Don't Go)

Billy Wright - Don't You Want A Man Like Me

Billy Wright - Live The Life