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"There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

-- Mark Twain

News and Opinion

Bush officials aren’t liable for post-9/11 abuse, Supreme Court says

Top officials in the Bush administration, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, will not be held personally liable for unlawful detention policies and practices implemented after the September 11 terror attacks, a Supreme Court ruling handed down Monday stated.

In the wake of the attacks, over 1,200 citizens and immigrants were detained as potential terrorism suspects in a broad legal sweep dubbed “Hold until cleared.”

Rounding up suspects without formal charges was justified by the nation’s state of emergency at the time, but in response, a group of non-white, mainly Muslim and Arab men who were detained in New York and New Jersey sued government officials, arguing they were targeted based on race and ethnicity and faced harsh abuse in detention. They were held anywhere from three to eight months without access to the outside, allegedly had their bones broken by the prison guards, and were subjected to “humiliating sexual comments” as well as religious insults. ...

In 2013, a district court approved Ahmer Iqbal Abbasi’s claims against the detention facility’s direct supervisors but denied claims against the “high-level officials.” Abbasi appealed this decision and in June 2015, the 2nd Circuit ruled in favor of reinstating the claims against Ashcroft and Mueller. In court, the defendants argued that Abbasi had not shown enough evidence that they were mistreated in detention and claimed that high-level officials qualified for immunity.

The Supreme Court dissented on Monday, denying the post 9-/11 detainees any relief, besides remanding one prisoner-abuse claim to the Court of Appeals for consideration. ... The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the government now eight out of eight times in counterterrorism cases.

The US, Russia, and Iran are edging closer to an all-out clash in Syria

This weekend, for the fourth time in a month, US-led coalition forces clashed with forces backing the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The incident — the downing of a Syrian army jet in northern Syria — is another lurch toward what could be a fight that draws powers like Iran as well as the US and Russia into a conflict spanning the region. ...

Moscow has provided air support to the Assad regime since 2015, and this month it launched attacks on US-backed fighters that were attacking Iranian-backed forces near al Tanf.

In a statement on Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defense called the shoot down of the Syrian jet "a cynical violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic" and said the US did not use the established communication line with Moscow beforehand. ...

The US said Monday that it was repositioning its aircraft over Syria to ensure safety in its operations against ISIS, but the Pentagon also said US pilots would defend themselves against the Russians if attacked. Events in Syria in the last 24 hours have been complicated by Iran firing medium-range surface-to-surface missiles from western Iran at ISIS targets in northeast Syria's Dier Ez-Zur province.

The Scramble for Syria: What happens after Raqqa falls?

US Risks Wider War by Downing Syrian Plane

The Pentagon’s announcement that the U.S. military had shot down a Syrian warplane inside Syrian territory merited only inside-the-paper treatment at The New York Times and The Washington Post on Monday, but it became the featured article on the Russian version of Google News citing a Moscow newspaper reporting a warning from Russia’s Federation Council that “the USA can receive a return blow in Syria.”

The article in Moskovsky Komsomolets and several similar accounts in other leading Russian print media recounted the warning issued by the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs in Russia’s upper house, Vladimir Jabarov, that the shoot-down of the Syrian SU-22 bomber on Sunday by the U.S.-led coalition can lead to “a major conflict.” The Senator noted that Syrian air space is protected both by a Syrian operated S-300 ground to air defense system and by Russian-operated state-of-the-art S-400 missiles. Jabarov called for diplomats of the interested parties to meet as soon as possible to discuss the incident. And he warned, in dark tones, that the plane’s destruction could lead to a return attack from the Syrian armed forces. The article also quotes the first deputy chairman of Russia’s Committee on Defense and Security in the upper chamber, Frants Klintsevich, describing the shoot-down as “a provocation directed against Russia.”

The Syrian government said its bomber was operating against Islamic State forces near Raqqa, though the U.S. coalition claimed Syrian forces and the plane had attacked rebels, called the Syrian Democratic Forces and operating under the guidance of U.S. Special Forces. It perhaps should go without saying that under international law the Syrian government has the right to operate inside Syrian airspace and that the U.S. military has no legal right to have personnel inside Syria (since they lack the Syrian government’s permission) let alone to attack the Syrian military or its allied forces. Another curious feature about this situation is that the U.S. mainstream media sees nothing illegal or unusual about the U.S. military operating inside another country uninvited and shooting down government aircraft.

That assumption that the U.S. military has the right to intervene in any conflict of its choosing was reflected in the decision by the Times and Post to minimize coverage of the shoot-down of the Syrian bomber and accept uncritically the Pentagon’s explanation that the shoot-down was in response to Syrian government attacks on U.S.-backed forces.

German jets to start leaving Incirlik base in Turkey for Jordan

Australia suspends air missions over Syria amid US-Russia tensions

Australia has suspended air combat missions over Syria after Russia threatened that it would treat any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river as a potential target. ...

“As a precautionary measure, Australian defence force strike operations into Syria have temporarily ceased,” the Australian Department of Defence said on Tuesday.

Australia has six fighter jets based in the United Arab Emirates that strike targets in Syria and Iraq.

A spokesman for the Department of Defence told the ABC that the situation would be monitored and sorties over Iraq would continue. “Australian defence force personnel are closely monitoring the air situation in Syria and a decision on the resumption of ADF air operations in Syria will be made in due course,” he said.

Israel ‘giving secret aid to Syrian rebels’, report says

Israel has allegedly provided Syrian rebels with substantial funding and aid in order to maintain a buffer zone in the Golan Heights border area between the country and its war-torn neighbour, it has emerged. The Israeli authorities have provided significant amounts of cash, food, fuel and medical supplies to Sunni rebels fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s government, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing "half a dozen rebels and three people familiar with Israel's thinking." ...

A special Israeli army unit was created to oversee the costly aid operation, the WSJ reported, which gives Fursan al-Joulan - Knights of the Golan - an estimated $5,000 (£3,900) a month. The group of around 400 fighters receives no direct support from Western rebel backers, and is not affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the official rebel umbrella organisation. Israel may be funding up to four other rebel groups which have Western backing. The groups use the cash to pay fighters and buy ammunition.

Attack on Muslims in London Was Terrorism, U.K. Prime Minister Says

"This morning, our country woke to news of another terrorist attack on the streets of our capital city,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday, hours after a middle-aged Englishman drove a rented van into a crowd of Muslim pedestrians outside a mosque in north London, wounding at least 10 people. The attack outside the Finsbury Park mosque, May added, was “the second this month, and every bit as sickening as those which have come before.”

The Metropolitan Police confirmed later in the day that a 47-year-old suspect “was arrested for attempted murder” and “the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism.” Officers on the scene first described it as “a terrorist incident” at 12:29 a.m. just eight minutes after they were alerted to the crime. ...

May’s clear statement that the assault on innocent civilians was terrorist in nature stood in stark contrast to the reticence officials in the United States have shown about using that term to describe violence perpetrated by far-right extremists against Muslims. It also clashed with President Donald Trump’s obsession with only one form of terrorism, attacks carried out by “radical Islamic” fundamentalists.

Perhaps because the U.K. has relatively recent experience with a conflict, in Northern Ireland, in which more than a thousand civilians were killed by terrorists who were either Protestant or Catholic, British authorities are more forthright about acknowledging that terrorism is a tactic and a crime that is not specific to a single faith or ethnic group.

Anti-nuclear bomb activists arrested at U.S. mission to U.N.

More than a dozen activists were arrested for disorderly conduct after they blocked the entrances to the United States mission to the United Nations on Monday to protest Washington's decision to boycott negotiations on a nuclear weapons ban treaty. ...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced in March that the United States, Britain and France were among almost 40 countries that decided not to join talks on a nuclear weapons ban treaty at the United Nations.

Keiser Report: #Carmageddon

Jeremy Corbyn Wants to Requisition Homes of the Rich for Fire Survivors — Like Churchill Did in WWII

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has a bold proposal to house the survivors of a devastating fire at London’s Grenfell Tower apartment complex in empty luxury homes.

YouGov polling found that Corbyn’s idea is popular among the British public, with 59 percent supporting it. Yet there has been a harsh backlash from the U.K.’s right-wing government and press, which equated his plan with a Marxist plot. “Suggesting requisitioning empty properties when empty student accommodation is available locally is completely in line with his Marxist belief that all private property should belong to the state,” Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said.

But Corbyn’s plan has historical roots not in Marxist literature or state-run economies, but in his country’s own past. During the Second World War, Great Britain faced one of the most powerful war machines in human history in a conflict with Nazi Germany. Its government responded by asking all of its citizens to contribute to the war effort in different ways.

For some, this included giving up their property. To help bear the brunt of the Nazi war machine, the British government requisitioned both industrial and residential properties to accommodate soldiers and evacuees, run makeshift schools and hospitals, and train the military, among other uses. As the U.K.’s National Archives website notes, “14.5 million acres of land, 25 million square feet of industrial and storage premises and 113,350 non-industrial premises were requisitioned during the Second World War. The War Office alone requisitioned 580,847 acres between 1939 and 1946.”

Republican Data-Mining Firm Exposed Personal Information for Virtually Every American Voter

A California-based security researcher says Republican-linked election databases were inadvertently exposed to the entire internet, sans password, potentially violating the privacy of almost every single registered voter in the United States.

The data trove was apparently made public by accident by one of the data-mining companies that compiled it. ... The leak was discovered by Chris Vickery, an analyst at the U.S. cybersecurity firm UpGuard, who last year discovered an enormous breach of Mexican voter data and in 2015 a 300GB leak of records of 191 million voters. This new incident is more extensive, according the analysis, written by UpGuard:

UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team can now confirm that unsecured databases containing the sensitive personal details of over 198 million American voters was left exposed to the internet. The data, which was stored in a publicly accessible cloud server owned by Republican data firm Deep Root Analytics, included 1.1 terabytes of entirely unsecured personal information compiled by DRA and at least two other contractors, TargetPoint Consulting, Inc. and Data Trust. In total, the personal information of nearly all of America’s 200 million registered voters was exposed, including their names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as voter ethnicities and religions as “modeled” by the firms’ data scientists.

What UpGuard appears to have discovered, sitting on an Amazon cloud storage drive with no password or username required for access by anyone on the internet, was terabytes of the data used to map the voter proclivities and demographics key to finding voters in those buckets.

$15 Dollar Minimum Wage and Free College Education - What's Going On In San Francisco?

Under the Democrats’ Bus

Democratic party leaders are up to their old tricks. They have lost at every level of government across the country because they fail to give voters reasons to support them. This seemingly inexplicable behavior is quite deliberate. Giving the people what they want endangers their relations with wealthy individuals, corporations and big banks. Because they can no longer fool all of the people all of the time they have returned to a more open and obvious move to the right.

They are already planning to throw black voters and political progressives under the bus. The people who have been relied upon to give them the margin of victory are cast aside in favor of people who either won’t vote for them at all or who will pull the party to the right. Of course that was also Hillary Clinton’s orientation so it isn’t very different from the outcome they wanted.

Democrats cry out that Trump voters aren’t all racists and will still vote for Democrats. So says senator Al Franken among others. He spoke of “Franken-Trump” voters. He recommends, “You have to go and talk to them. And you have to listen.” Bernie Sanders joins in and says that Trump voters aren’t “sexist, racist, homophobes” even though many of them fall into those categories by their own admission.

Words like these ought to set off alarm bells. While even Bernie Sanders talks about winning over people who are quite happy with their political choices, they say little or nothing about meeting the needs of Democrats who have left the party in frustration.
For years the leadership made the case for bringing so-called “Reagan Democrats” back into the fold. They not only don’t advocate for their base of supporters being rewarded but actively work against their interests. Black America’s rewards for putting Bill Clinton in the White House were the crime bill and the end of public assistance as a right. Black people got nothing for their Clinton love except higher poverty rates and prisons bursting at the seams.

Chris Hedges: We Can’t Fight Climate Change if We Keep Lying to Ourselves

We must embrace a despair that unflinchingly acknowledges the bleak future that will be created by climate change. We must see in any act of resistance, even if it appears futile, a moral victory. African-Americans understand, in a way perhaps only the oppressed can grasp, that our character and dignity will be measured by our ability to name and resist the malignant forces that seem to hold us in a death grip. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Our technology and science will not save us. The future of humanity is now in peril. At best, we can mitigate the crisis. We cannot avert it. We are fighting for our lives. If we do not rapidly build militant movements of sustained revolt, movements willing to break the law and attack the structures of the corporate state, we will join the 99.9 percent of species that have vanished since life first appeared on earth.

“In these circumstances refusing to accept that we face a very unpleasant future becomes perverse,” Clive Hamilton writes in “Requiem for a Species.” “Denial requires a willful misreading of the science, a romantic view of the ability of political institutions to respond, or faith in divine intervention.”

Tens of millions of human beings, especially in the global south, are being herded into the climate furnaces for immolation. And we in the north are soon to follow. The earth’s temperature has already risen by more than 1 degree Celsius since the late 19th century. And it is almost certain to rise a few more degrees—even if we stop all carbon emissions today. The last time the earth’s temperature rose 4 degrees, the polar ice caps disappeared and the seas were hundreds of feet above their current levels. ...

The inability to see what is in front of our eyes replicates the blindness of all past civilizations that celebrated their eternal glory at moments of precipitous decline. The difference is that life across the whole planet will go down this time. It is comforting to pretend this is not happening, to foster false hopes and fool ourselves with the myth of human progress, but these illusions only tranquilize us at a moment when we should be rising in collective fury against those who are orchestrating our doom.

Coastal Cities Unprepared for Major Floods As Sea Levels Rise

New 'disturbance map' shows damaging effects of forest loss in Brazilian Amazon

As Brazil’s government steps back from Amazon conservation, the urgent need for stronger protection has been made more apparent by a new data map that highlights the knock-on effect of the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon, regulate temperatures and sustain life.

Launched on Tuesday, the Silent Forest project assesses the extent and impact of forest degradation – a largely man-made phenomenon that is less well-known than land clearance, but is seen by scientists as potentially more of a problem for the climate and biodiversity.

Forest degradation is the thinning of tree density and the culling of biodiversity below an apparently protected canopy – usually as a result of logging, fire, drought and hunting. It is more difficult for satellites to monitor than deforestation (the total clearance of foliage) because the canopy – when viewed from above – appears uninterrupted, even when many of the plants underneath have been cut down or destroyed and the habitat of many species has disappeared. As a result, it is harder to tackle and has long been overlooked by policymakers, even though scientists warn it may have a bigger impact on biodiversity loss and carbon emissions.

To draw attention to the trends and the risks, the Silent Forest “disturbance map” highlights the black spots of forest degradation (particularly prominent near Santarem, Sinop and on the border of Pará and Maranhão states), as well as areas affected by roads, logging and forest fires, which tend to cluster together as a result of (often illegal) human activity. During the 2015-16 El Niño, fires affected 38,000 sq km of Brazilian Amazon – more than five times the area classified as deforested. On other land, loggers cut deep under the canopy to remove the most valuable timber and swaths were bisected or fragmented by roads. This creates a vicious circle because degraded land is drier and results in lower rainfall in surrounding areas, which increases the vulnerability to arson and accidental fire.

Also of Interest

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

Do People Matter Most Or Does Property?

Trump's Love Affair With the Saudis

How Fear of Russia Misleads Americans

An ethnic-cleansing campaign by the government threatens to empty South Sudan

Police hunt and kill black people like Philando Castile. There's no justice

Betraying Indian Country: How Grizzly Delisting Exposes Trump and Zinke’s Assault on Tribal Sovereignty and Treaty Rights

A Little Night Music

Howlin' Wolf - Chocolate Drop

Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years

Howlin' Wolf - My Country Sugar Mama

Howlin' Wolf - I Didn't Know

Howlin' Wolf - Gettin' Old And Grey

Howlin' Wolf - Going Back Home

Howlin' Wolf - You Can't Be Beat

Howlin' Wolf - 300 Lbs Of Joy