Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta bluesman Mississippi John Hurt. Enjoy!

"The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship."

-- Marcel Achard

News and Opinion

Worth reading in full. The Democrats want to know if we have seen the other guys. Why yes, as a matter of fact, I see that the very worst of them are right there in bed with the Democrats. I can't even begin to describe the nasty things that are taking place.

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

One of the most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current President.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”

It is, in fact, the ultimate union of mainstream Democratic foreign policy officials and the world’s most militant, and militaristic, neocons. The group is led by two long-time Washington foreign policy hands, one from the establishment Democratic wing and the other a key figure among leading GOP neocons. ... When it comes to this new group, the alliance of Democrats with the most extreme neocon elements is visible beyond the group’s staff leadership. Its Board of Advisers is composed of both leading Democratic foreign policy experts, along with the nation’s most extremist neocons.

Thus, alongside Jake Sullivan (Joe Biden’s national security advisers and Clinton campaign adviser), Mike Morrell (Obama’s acting CIA Director) and Mike McFaul (Obama’s Ambassador to Russia) sits leading neocons such as Mike Chertoff (Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary), Mike Rogers (the far-right, supremely hawkish former Congressman who now hosts a right-wing radio show); and Bill Kristol himself. ...

In sum – just as was true of the first Cold War, when neocons made their home among the Cold Warriors of the Democratic Party – on the key foreign policy controversies, there is now little to no daylight between leading Democratic Party foreign policy gurus and the Bush-era neocons who had wallowed in disgrace following the debacle of Iraq and the broader abuses of the War on Terror. That’s why they are able so comfortably to unify this way in support of common foreign policy objectives and beliefs.

Neocons Enlist in Anti-Trump #Resistance

In these summer dog days of the Trump presidency, good news is hard to come by, but in late June it was reported that the successor institution to William Kristol’s Project for a New American Century, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), was shutting its doors for good. FPI was founded in 2009 to give the displaced neocons who had worked for President George W. Bush a platform from which to endlessly criticize the new Democratic administration and push for a continuation of Bush’s disastrous neocon foreign policy. (Some other neocons sheltered in place mostly inside the State Department and the Pentagon.) ...

But does the demise of FPI mean the neoconservatives would be, at long last, going away for a while — perhaps to take stock in the immense damage they have caused the country and the word? The answer would seem to be: not on your life. ... In April, the New York Times announced that longtime climate change denier Bret Stephens was joining the paper as an op-ed columnist. Stephens, who came to the Times from the Wall Street Journal, has been aptly described by The Nation’s Eric Alterman as a “deliberate purveyor of propaganda and misinformation.” Stephens’s past columns include such classics as “I Am Not Sorry the CIA Waterboarded.” ...

Neocons are also in demand at what had long been one of the more responsible foreign policy think tanks in Washington. The German Marshall Fund just announced the launch of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which, according to its mission statement, “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions.” ... The Alliance will be run by none other than former FPI executive director Jamie Fly and a former foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, Laura Rosenberger. The Alliance’s board of advisers is a veritable who’s who of neocon royalty including the ubiquitous Bill Kristol, along with David Kramer, Michael Morell and Kori Schake. ...

The neocon revival has been facilitated by #Resistance-friendly media like MSNBC, which frequently features David Frum and Willian Kristol, two early and outspoken members of the NeverTrump movement. ... The willingness of the pro-Hillary #Resistance to make common cause with the neocon NeverTrumpers is troubling and may explain why there has been so precious little “resistance” on their part to Trump’s plans to expand the wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. (Indeed, Trump’s April 6 missile strike on Syria won praise from Hillary Clinton, who only lamented that Trump had not done more militarily in Syria.) But perhaps all this isn’t so surprising, after all, the legions of embittered Clinton supporters never really objected all that strenuously (if at all) to their candidate’s record of support for endless war.

Two years after Iran nuclear deal, a mixed picture

War with Iran is back on the table – thanks to Trump

On the two-year anniversary of the historic Iran nuclear deal, Washington is abuzz with renewed calls for confrontation with Tehran. President Donald Trump should roll back Iranian influence through pressure and sanctions, the argument goes. Some even suggest pressure can lead to regime change, failing to see the contradiction in warning about Iran’s rising influence while predicting Tehran’s downfall if only a few more sanctions are imposed.

This near-mythological potency of sanctions is rooted in Washington’s narrative on why the nuclear deal came to fruition in the first place: sanctions and pressure brought the Iranians to their knees, forcing them to negotiate their way out of their nuclear rabbit hole. Indeed, sanctions were so effective that had Barack Obama not shifted to diplomacy and eased the pressure on Iran, the clerical regime would likely have fallen by now, critics of the nuclear accord claim. ... Undoubtedly, sanctions inflicted tremendous pain on Iran. In one calendar year, GDP per capita declined by nearly 8%; inflation increased by over 10%; and Iran’s crude oil export revenues fell by about 40%. The Iranian currency plummeted as sanctions effectively locked Iran out of the international financial system. But much to Obama’s chagrin, Iran was hurt, but it wouldn’t break. ... In the end, the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program became a race between Obama’s sanctions and Iran’s centrifuges.

Neither side was ready to give an inch, let alone capitulate. But by January 2013, the situation had changed. The White House began to realize that Iran’s nuclear clock was outpacing the sanctions clock: Iran advanced its nuclear program faster than sanctions could cripple the Iranian economy. ... Obama realized that if nothing changed, Iran would get a nuclear weapons option before sanctions could bring Tehran to its knees. As the nuclear deal turns two, Trump’s failure to reject the illusion that a pressure-only policy makes America safer risks putting the US and Iran back on a path towards a war neither side can truly win.

Outrage Mounts as Saudi Arabia Plans Imminent Executions for 14 Accused Pro-Democracy Protesters

UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to U.S. intelligence officials

The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation. The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done. The false reports said that the emir, among other things, had called Iran an “Islamic power” and praised Hamas.

The hacks and posting took place on May 24, shortly after President Trump completed a lengthy counterterrorism meeting with Persian Gulf leaders in neighboring Saudi Arabia and declared them unified.

Citing the emir’s reported comments, the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt immediately banned all Qatari media. They then broke relations with Qatar and declared a trade and diplomatic boycott, sending the region into a political and diplomatic tailspin that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned could undermine U.S. counterterrorism efforts against the Islamic State.

Netanyahu: Israel Opposes Cease-fire Deal Reached by U.S. and Russia in Southern Syria

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday that Israel opposes the cease-fire agreement in southern Syria that the United States and Russia reached because it perpetuates the Iranian presence in the country.

The prime minister noted that in his meeting with Macron, he made it clear to the French president that Israel was totally opposed to the cease-fire plan.

A senior Israeli official who asked not to be named due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter said Israel is aware of Iranian intensions to substantially expand its presence in Syria. Iran is not only interested in sending advisers to Syria, the official said, but also in dispatching extensive military forces including the establishment of an airbase for Iranian aircraft and a naval base.

US Building Third Airport in Rojava, Northern Syria

An informed source from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a military alliance backed by the US-led Coalition against Islamic State (IS), revealed that the US has begun to establish a third airport in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

"American experts and technicians have begun work on the establishment of a new military airport between the towns of Tel Tamra and Tel Baidar (40 km west of Hasaka) to be the third airport after Kobani and Rumailan airports," the source told BasNews on condition of anonymity.

The source added "the Tal Tamar military airport, which will be used for military and logistical purposes, will include a military base similar to the airports of Kobani and Rumailan.”

What a great guy Obama was - a man with a slow hand; a war criminal that takes his time!

It Took Obama More Than Two Years to Kill This Many Civilians. It Took Trump Less Than Six Months.

A new investigation shows that President Donald Trump's bombing campaign against ISIS (the Islamic State) over several months has already led to nearly as many civilian deaths as those overseen by the Obama White House over several years.

According to an Airwars investigation conducted for The Daily Beast, at least 2,300 civilians were killed by coalition strikes from 2015 until the end of Obama's term earlier this year. But as of July 13, roughly six months into Trump's presidency, over 2,200 civilians have likely died from coalition strikes.

That translates to roughly 80 civilian casualties each month in Iraq and Syria during the Obama White House; during Trump's short tenure in the White House, it's been roughly 360 per month.

Congress Trying to Sneak Through Major Giveaway to Defense Contractors

Congressis on the brink of a major giveaway to defense contractors, tucking language into a must-pass piece of legislation that would broadly expand their ability to gouge the federal government on sole-source contracts.

The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, is practically the only bill Congress passes on time every year. The last 50 NDAA’s, which authorize funds and set policy for the Department of Defense, have reached the president’s desk without a holdup. Education, healthcare, and jobs can wait, but supporting the troops — actually, supporting the defense contractors who make the weapons — must never face a delay. The bill even goes through a regular process, with dozens of amendments and bipartisan votes. It’s like nothing else in Washington.

This year’s version of the NDAA, which authorizes $696 billion in military spending, includes a nice gift for contractors, particularly those that have monopolized a particular part the Pentagon needs. Buried in the NDAA, which is scheduled to pass the House Friday, is an increase in the amount of products which can be sold to the military without providing cost information — data about the price of manufacturing and labor. Without this information, monopoly contractors could enjoy a huge markup on their sales to the government without anyone knowing about it.

Section 803 of the House NDAA raises the threshold for cost information in “noncompetitive” contracts — meaning contracts that are sole-source, with no other supplier for the government — from $500,000 to $2.5 million. The Senate version, in Section 813, raises that threshold to $1 million. If both pass as written, the gift to contractors will be assured; the only question would be how big.

From Pence to Price: How Big Tobacco Gained Massive Influence Under Trump, Plans to Expand in Africa

Big tobacco bullies the global south. Trade deals are their biggest weapon

Cigarette packets often carry the warning to “protect children: don’t make them breathe your smoke”. In 2014, the Kenyan government attempted to do just that – banning the sale of single cigarettes, banning smoking in vehicles with a child and keeping the tobacco industry out of initiatives aimed at children and young people. But as the Guardian reported last week, British American Tobacco, in an effort to keep Kenyans breathing their smoke, fought the regulations on the grounds that they “constitute an unjustifiable barrier to international trade”.

In fact, big tobacco has a long history of using trade and investment rules to force their products on markets in the global south and attack laws and threaten lawmakers that attempt to control tobacco use. Back in the 1980s, as cigarette consumption fell off in North America and western Europe, US trade officials worked aggressively to grant American companies access to markets in Asia, demanding not only the right to sell their products, but also the right to advertise, sponsor sports events and run free promotions. Smoking rates surged.

In the 1990s, World Trade Organisation agreements led to a liberalisation of the international tobacco trade, with countries reducing import tariffs on tobacco products. The impact, according to a joint study of the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, was a 5% increase in global cigarette consumption and accompanying mortality rates.

Nurses, Protesters Tell Corrupt Democrats Single-Payer Healthcare Can't Wait

Financial Advisers Want to Rip Off Small Investors. Trump Wants to Help Them Do It.

One of the most most important investor protections in decades took effect on June 9. The new rule, issued by the Department of Labor, sets in motion a seemingly commonsense requirement that those who advise on retirement investments must put their clients’ interests ahead of their own. Yet it marks a revolution in retirement security, the result of an epic seven-year battle between consumer advocates and the financial industry that sunk millions of dollars into white shoe lobbying firms, industry-sponsored studies, congressional campaign contributions, and major lawsuits in an effort to block the rule. ...

The rule, finalized in April 2016, was scheduled to take effect a year later in order to give firms time to comply. It only survived till now thanks to a veto by President Obama of legislation that would have permanently blocked its implementation; Rep. Paul Ryan, who led the charge in Congress, had tarred the rule as “Obamacare for financial planning.” Since the rule was already final when President Trump took office, it was invulnerable to his day one directive freezing all pending rule making. Nevertheless, within two weeks Trump signed a memo directing the DOL to review the rule and potentially rescind it. In March, before Trump’s labor secretary had even been confirmed, the Department of Labor issued a proposed rule delaying implementation for 60 days — bringing us to June 9 of this year.

In April, Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined consumer groups and the AFL-CIO to unveil a “Retirement Ripoff Counter,” a digital projection tallying the costs to retirement savers of delaying implementation of the rule — which they calculated at $46 million a day. And in late May, Alexander Acosta, Trump’s newly minted labor secretary, announced in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that the administration had exhausted every “principled legal basis” for further delaying the rule. And so it was that key portions of the fiduciary rule finally went into effect last month.

Whether the rule will survive the Trump administration’s deregulatory campaign is an open question.

Trump's tax proposal would push US below Greece on inequality index

Donald Trump’s tax reform plans would, if enacted, increase the gap between rich and poor Americans and see the US slip below Greece on a new global index of inequality.

According to the Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) index, developed by researchers at Oxfam and Development Finance International, the US already distinguishes itself among wealthy countries by doing “very badly” at addressing inequality.

But it would fall a further six places from its ranking of 23rd overall if Trump’s tax reform effort is successful, with the US’s specific rating on tax policies plummeting 33 places from 26th to 59th – just below Peru, Chile and Sri Lanka.

“When you already have countries like Portugal and Slovenia ranking higher than the United States on the overall index, we think that’s a concern considering the wealth of the US,” Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice-president for policy and campaigns, told the Guardian.

If the White House passes its budget, which would slash social service spending and could leave millions of Americans without health insurance, the US would fall behind Greece, which is crippled by a debt crisis; Spain, which for 10 months in 2016 did not have a government; and Argentina, which has been plagued by high inflation, according to the report.

Trump’s Team Overseeing Wall Street Brings In More Goldman Sachs Alumni, Docs Reveal

After using Goldman Sachs as a punching bag for his campaign, sharply criticizing his political opponents for ties to the investment bank, Donald Trump has taken unprecedented steps to appoint former Goldman Sachs attorneys and executives to the upper echelons of government.

It goes far beyond what’s been reported. Not only is Jay Clayton Trump’s chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, after serving as the attorney who advised the bank during the bailouts of 2008, but new disclosures show that the team Clayton brought with him to oversee the financial market regulator are also former Goldman Sachs attorneys. ...

Trump’s inner circle consists almost entirely of former Goldman Sachs executives, including his chief political adviser Steve Bannon, his national security adviser Dina Powell, and his top economic advisor Gary Cohn. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years. Last month, Trump nominated Eric Ueland, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, to serve as as the Under Secretary of State, one of the most senior posts in the State Department.

In the Grand Canyon, uranium mining threatens a tribe's survival

Ed Tilousi knelt down next to the crystal-clear turquoise creek. The only sounds were the gurgling of the current and the sawing of cicadas in a pecan nut tree as the hot sun made the red rock canyon walls towering above him glow. ... Tilousi is vice-chairman of the Havasupai Native Americans, a tiny community and the only one that lives within the depths of the Grand Canyon.

The sole water source in their remote home of Supai Village is the pristine creek. It comes from seeps and springs gravitating out of a vast aquifer, or natural underground reservoir, in the Arizona bedrock on the southern edge of the canyon. The Havasupai water their beans, corn, melon, peach trees, horses and mules squeezed on to the strip of land they inhabit between the sandstone rock faces. Tourists from all over the world snap up the limited number of visitor permits made available annually by the Havasupai and hike down a nine-mile trail in order to bathe in the fabled waters.

What they don’t realize is that way above, on that plateau of bedrock within the Grand Canyon watershed, sitting on top of the same aquifer, is a uranium mine preparing to go into production. The mining company plans to drill down 1,475ft to extract high-grade uranium ore, then truck it 250 miles by road to their processing mill in Utah. The Canadian company, Energy Fuels Inc, pledges to operate safely, but the Havasupai and others say that’s impossible to promise, especially as too little is known about subterranean water flow.

They argue that any contamination of the groundwater from the mining operations will end up in Havasu Creek, destroying an ancient way of life if they leave the canyon, sickening them if they stay. Significant pollution would also ruin the integrity of the waterfalls and could ultimately threaten the health of the 40 million people downriver who quench their thirst from the mighty Colorado River.

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals

Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis. The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator. Back at home, done huffing stairs, I could get on with other options: change my lightbulbs, buy local veggies, purchase eco-appliances, put a solar panel on my roof. And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child.

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breath. But we could hardly be worse-served. While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71 percent. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

The freedom of these corporations to pollute – and the fixation on a feeble lifestyle response – is no accident. It is the result of an ideological war, waged over the last forty years, against the possibility of collective action. Devastatingly successful, it is not too late to reverse it. The political project of neoliberalism, brought to ascendence by Thatcher and Reagan, has pursued two principal objectives. The first has been to dismantle any barriers to the exercise of unaccountable private power. The second had been to erect them to the exercise of any democratic public will.

Its trademark policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals: these have liberated corporations to accumulate enormous profits and treat the atmosphere like a sewage dump, and hamstrung our ability, through the instrument of the state, to plan for our collective welfare. Anything resembling a collective check on corporate power has become a target of the elite: lobbying and corporate donations, hollowing out democracies, have obstructed green policies and kept fossil fuel subsidies flowing; and the rights of associations like unions, the most effective means for workers to wield power together, have been undercut whenever possible.

At the very moment when climate change demands an unprecedented collective public response, neoliberal ideology stands in the way. Which is why, if we want to bring down emissions fast, we will need to overcome all of its free-market mantras: take railways and utilities and energy grids back into public control; regulate corporations to phase out fossil fuels; and raise taxes to pay for massive investment in climate-ready infrastructure and renewable energy - so that solar panels can go on everyone’s rooftop, not just on those who can afford it.

Extended Interview with Actor James Cromwell Before His Jail Sentence: "Capitalism is a Cancer"

Also of Interest

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

Fuck your apocalypse

Just Six Days After Trump Jr.’s Meeting, Guccifer 2.0 Emailed Me — But There Was One Key Difference

Russia-gate Report Ignored Iraq-WMD Lessons

Moral Corrosion of Drone Warfare

House NDAA Amendments Would Limit US Participation in Yemen War

The Saudi Agents Next Door: Americans Who Cashed in on Campaign to Stop 9/11 Trial

Maryland Democrat Running for Governor Wants Investors to Fund Child Care

Venezuelans flee as crisis deepens

Time for the “International Left” to Take a Stand on Venezuela

Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump

'More valuable than gold': Yellowstone businesses prepare to fight mining

A Little Night Music

Mississippi John Hurt - Spike driver blues

Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie

Mississippi John Hurt - Lovin' Spoonful

Mississippi John Hurt - Lonesome Blues

Mississippi John Hurt - Spanish Fandango

Mississippi John Hurt - My Creole Belle

Mississippi John Hurt - Candy Man Blues

Mississippi John Hurt - Sliding Delta

Mississippi John Hurt - Louis Collins

Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues