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This evening's music features Texas blues singer Big Walter Price. Enjoy!

“The destiny of the land, the nation, the South, the State, the County, was already whirling into the plunge of its precipice, not that the State and the South knew it, because the first seconds of fall always seem like soar.”

-- William Faulkner

News and Opinion

Survivor of White Supremacist Attack in Charlottesville: There's No Question, This was Terrorism

The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights in Charlottesville

Each time horrific political violence is perpetrated that is deemed to be terrorism, a search is immediately conducted for culprits to blame other than those who actually perpetrated the violence or endorsed the group responsible for it. It’s usually only a matter of hours before the attack is exploited to declare one’s own political views vindicated, and to depict one’s political adversaries as responsible for, if not complicit in, the violence. Often accompanying this search for villains is a list of core civil liberties that we’re told ought to be curtailed in the name of preventing similar acts of violence in the future. ...

These tactics are most familiar when a Muslim perpetrates violence within a western city, aimed at westerners. Before anything is known about the attacker other than his religious identity, the violence is instantly declared to be terrorism. Then the search is quickly launched to find anyone who can be said to be responsible for the violence by virtue of having “encouraged” or “enabled” Islamic extremism, often by doing nothing more than having defended the legal rights of the group that is being blamed for the attack. ...

This same warped mentality - blaming civil liberties advocates for the bad acts of their clients – was on full display yesterday in the wake of the heinous car attack in Charlottesville, Virginia by a white nationalist on a group of anti-fascist protesters. ... Some of the attempts to assign culpability for this violence on others besides the perpetrator were reasonable and rational. In particular, a legitimate causal connection can be drawn between this violence and the two-year flirtation by Donald Trump and several of his closest advisers with the rhetoric and even the activism of white nationalism, as even many of the white supremacists themselves recognized. ...

Last week, the ACLU sparked controversy when it announced that it was defending the free speech rights of alt-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority refused to allow ads for his book to be displayed on public transit. Lost in the debate was that other groups the ACLU was defending along with Yiannopoulos were also censored under the same rule: Carafem, which helps women access birth control and medication abortion; the animal rights group PETA; and the ACLU itself. For representing Yiannopoulos, the civil liberties group was widely accused of defending and enabling fascism. ... Many attacked the ACLU’s decision to represent Yiannopoulos and these Charlottesville protests as though they were allies of the marchers, while others literally accused them of enabling fascism or even blamed them for the violence. ...

For many of those attacking the ACLU here, it is a staple of their worldview that the U.S. is a racist and fascist country and that those who control the government are right-wing authoritarians. There is substantial validity to that view. Why, then, would people who believe that simultaneously want to vest in these same fascism-supporting authorities the power to ban and outlaw ideas they dislike? Why would you possibly think that the List of Prohibited Ideas will end up including the views you hate rather than the views you support?

Trump's failure to condemn Virginia neo-Nazis is shocking but not surprising

Speaking at his golf club in New Jersey on Saturday after a man rammed a car into protesters, Trump said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.” The president added defensively: “It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”

No mention of racism. No mention of white supremacists. No mention of the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, the repetition of “on many sides”, a characteristic Trump verbal tic used for emphasis. It served merely to emphasise his tin ear and imply moral equivalence between neo-Nazi demonstrators and those who took to the streets to oppose them. There were echoes of some white South African politicians who still occasionally float the notion that colonialism wasn’t all bad.

The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi publication, expressed delight: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate … on both sides! So he implied the antifa [anti-fascists] are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.”

Republicans, losing patience with Trump in recent weeks, also berated his failure of leadership. Senator Cory Gardner, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union: “I think the president needs to step up today and … call it for what it is. It’s evil, it’s white nationalism, it’s bigotry and it’s unacceptable. And if he doesn’t do that, we can continue to answer the question of why. But I believe he has a chance to do that today.” ...

Under growing pressure on Sunday, an unnamed White House spokesperson issued a fresh statement, insisting that the president “condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred, and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups”. But Trump himself remained unusually silent, in person and on Twitter. And Gabriel Sherman, a journalist at Vanity Fair magazine, tweeted: “When I asked senior WH official why Trump didn’t condemn Cville Nazis, he said: ‘What about the leftist mob. Just as violent if not more so.’”

John Oliver - White Supremacist Rally

In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored

A chill of remembrance has come over me during this August month. It feels as if the 2017 summer breeze is being scattered by the winds of war blowing from across our world towards Britain, just like they were in 1939.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia eviscerates Yemen with the same ferocity as Mussolini did to Ethiopia when I was child in 1935. The hypocrisy of Britain’s government and elite class ensures that innocent blood still flows in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Theresa May’s government insists that peace can only be achieved through the proliferation of weapons of war in conflict zones. Venezuela teeters towards anarchy and foreign intervention while in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte – protected by his alliance with Britain and the US – murders the vulnerable for the crime of trying to escape their poverty through drug addiction.

Because I am old, now 94, I recognise these omens of doom. Chilling signs are everywhere, perhaps the biggest being that the US allows itself to be led by Donald Trump, a man deficient in honour, wisdom and just simple human kindness. It is as foolish for Americans to believe that their generals will save them from Trump as it was for liberal Germans to believe the military would protect the nation from Hitler’s excesses. ...

This August resembles too much that of 1939; the last summer of peace until 1945. Then aged 16 and still wet behind the ears, I’d go to pictures with my mates and we’d laugh at the newsreels of Hitler and other fascist monsters that lived beyond what we thought was our reach. Little did we know in that August 1939, life without peace, without carnage, without air raids, without the blitz, could be measured in days. I did not hear the thundering approach of war, but as an old man I hear it now for my grandchildren’s generation. I hope I am wrong. But I am petrified for them.

Holy crap, Ted Cruz is right about something!

Ted Cruz calls Charlottesville attack “domestic terror”

A 20-year-old Ohio man named James Alex Fields, Jr., was charged with second-degree murder after allegedly ramming his car into a group of peaceful anti-Nazi protesters on Saturday, killing one person and injuring 19 others. At least one prominent Republican — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — thinks that murder charge should be upgraded to a terrorism charge. ...

President Trump briefly addressed the attack during a bill-signing ceremony at his golf club in New Jersey (where he is currently on vacation), but declined to condemn the white supremacists, saying only that there is “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” Trump also sent his “condolences” to the family of the woman who was killed, his “best regards” to those who were injured, and described the attack as “So sad!”

The moral equivalency in Trump’s response drew bipartisan scorn from politicians condemning the white supremacist movement. Sen. Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general, even went so far Saturday night as to demand that the perpetrator be prosecuted for domestic terrorism by the Department of Justice.

“The Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists are repulsive and evil, and all of us have a moral obligation to speak out against the lies, bigotry, anti-semitism, and hatred that they propagate,” Cruz said in a statement. “Having watched the horrifying video of the car deliberately crashing into a crowd of protesters, I urge the Department of Justice to immediately investigate and prosecute this grotesque act of domestic terrorism.”

Trump returns to Washington as criticism grows over Charlottesville response

Donald Trump arrived back in Washington on Monday amid a storm of criticism – some from prominent figures in his own party – over his decision not to directly condemn the white supremacy groups that targeted Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend.

The US president ignored shouted media questions about the violence as he returned to the White House from his working vacation in New Jersey for what is expected to be a one-day visit before a trip to Trump Tower in New York tonight.

“Do you condemn the actions of neo-Nazis? Do you condemn the actions of white supremacists?” Trump was asked.

The president was expected to meet with the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the new FBI director, Chris Wray, as well as other advisers, about the racism-fueled clashes on the streets of the city on Saturday.

But a new fault line emerged between the president and his attorney general, with Sessions telling ABC the “evil attack” in Charlottesville “does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute”.

GoDaddy throws white supremacist site Daily Stormer off its servers

White supremacist website The Daily Stormer is being cut loose by the company that hosts its domain, GoDaddy.com, for violating terms of service. The site posted a defamatory article on Sunday about Heather Heyer, the woman killed when a car drove into a crowd of counterprotesters at an alt-right rally in Virginia on Saturday.

GoDaddy tweeted late Sunday night that the Daily Stormer would have 24 hours to find someplace new to host its domain.

The far right has declared cultural war – we have to stop them now

Nobody, seeing the militias parading with assault rifles and Kevlar this weekend, wants the US to descend into conflict. But the low-level political violence and severe cultural dislocations of the US today contain obvious parallels with the years before the American civil war. As the historian Allan Nevins observed, by the late 1850s white America had become “two peoples”, whose radically different cultural identities could no longer be contained in one polity.

Then, the “two peoples” were shaped by rival economic models: industry and the free market versus sharecropping and slavery. But the concepts the Confederates took into battle with them have survived: states’ rights versus the federal government; white supremacy; the concept of an ethnically defined nation with a destiny nominated by God. And they have not survived by accident. ...

So with Confederate flags mixed with swastikas on the streets of Charlottesville, it is not just the US but progressive people across the world who have to ask a tough question: what are we prepared to do to defeat the racist right? They have declared cultural war on us. “This entire community is a very far-left community,” Jason Kessler, the organiser of the Unite the Right march, told the media, adding that Charlottesville’s residents had “absorbed these cultural Marxist principles advocated in college towns across the country, about blaming white people for everything.” ...

And it is not just a few thousand sad teenagers in pressed polo shirts we are dealing with. All post-election studies showed Trump’s electoral coalition was energised by giving millions of people permission to express their racism and violent misogyny. By electing Trump, his supporters declared cultural war on liberal, progressive US and told those insisting “Black Lives Matter” that they did not. Trump’s radio silence over the killing of Heather Heyer, allegedly by white supremacist James Alex Fields, is no accident. There are those with links to the far-right on his own team, including Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. His entire movement relies on energising racism, not suppressing it.

James Fields, accused driver in Charlottesville attack, appears in court

In a packed Virginia courthouse, a few hundred meters from the statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee that led hundreds of neo-Nazis, armed militiamen and “alt-right” protesters to this small campus city over the weekend, James Alex Fields Jr made his first appearance in public since being charged with murder.

The 20-year-old is accused of mowing down a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing 32 year-old Heather Heyer, a local paralegal, and injuring 19 others after 48 hours of violence in Charlottesville that has again exposed America’s fractured race relations to the world. ...

The public defender’s office could not represent Fields, the court heard, as attorneys working in the office had relatives wounded in the attack. Fields was assigned a local attorney, Charles Webber, by the court and told he would remain in custody until a bond hearing later in the month.

Chomsky Bombshell: US Rejected N. Korean Peace Offer

North Korea’s missile program can thank Russia and Ukraine tech, report says

North Korea owes its surprisingly successful string of recent missile launches to powerful engines acquired from either Russia or Ukraine, according an expert analysis released Monday. The isolated regime reversed a string of failed missile tests after turning to a powerful liquid-propellent engine in 2016 that was “clearly” based on the Soviet RD-250 model and modified to fit North Korean rockets, according to the report by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, that was published on the think tank’s website.

A review of the engine’s design specifications reveals that “the RD-250 is the only match,” Elleman wrote. While the exact source of the powerful engines remains uncertain, they could have have been purchased on the black market and smuggled into North Korea by train, likely within the past two years, Elleman concluded in the report. Hundreds of RD-250 engines, each measuring less than two meters tall and one meter wide, are stored in Russia and Ukraine and “a few dozen” could have been sold to international arms smugglers “by a small number of disgruntled employees or underpaid guards,” Elleman continued.

North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say

North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies. ...

Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.

Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.

CIA chief Mike Pompeo says conflict with North Korea not 'imminent' - but risk is much higher now

Senior US national security officials said on Sunday that a military confrontation with North Korea was not imminent, but they cautioned the possibility of war was greater than it was a decade ago.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump's national security adviser, tried to provide assurances that a conflict is avoidable, while also supporting the president's tough talk. They said the United States and its allies no longer can afford to stand by as North Korea pushes ahead with the development of a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

"We're not closer to war than a week ago but we are closer to war than we were a decade ago," McMaster said, adding that the Trump administration is prepared to deal militarily with North Korea if necessary.

But he stressed that the US is pursuing "a very determined diplomatic effort" led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that's coupled with new financial sanctions to dissuade North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from further provocations.

Trump's threat of Venezuela military action could bolster Maduro

U.S. President Donald Trump's talk of possible military action in Venezuela could be a political lifeline for the country's unpopular leader, who has long used the threat of U.S. aggression to justify policies that have shredded the economy.

President Nicolas Maduro has continued the free-spending socialist "revolution" started by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, almost 20 years ago. Key to the populist rhetoric used by both is a constant drumbeat of warnings that the U.S. "empire" is planning an invasion to steal Venezuela's oil.

That threat was laughed off by the opposition and until Friday night, when Trump said a military option was not out of the question for dealing with the Venezuelan government's crackdown on the opposition and deepening social crisis. ...

"Maduro could not have asked for a greater gift from Trump," said David Smilde, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights think tank. "He provided substance for Maduro's heretofore implausible conspiracy theories." ...

"It has threatened to deflate the emerging regional consensus regarding Venezuela," Smilde said. "Today the countries that on Tuesday signed on to a strong statement criticizing Maduro's authoritarian direction are spending their time criticizing Trump's statements."

Donald Trump is promoting democracy with military threats.

Trump refuses to take call from Venezuela’s Maduro

President Trump rebuffed the offer of a phone call from the president of Venezuela late Friday night, after Mr. Trump warned that he is considering military options to address civil and political unrest in the South American country.

“President Trump will gladly speak with the leader of Venezuela as soon as democracy is restored in that country,” the White House said.

Donald Trump thinks maybe we should stop talking about promoting democracy.

Hey, guess what? Donald Trump has a good foreign policy idea

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is revising the State Department mission statement to focus on promoting “the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally.” Washington pundits are aghast that “democracy promotion” is no longer trumpeted as a top U.S. foreign policy goal. Elliott Abrams, George W. Bush’s “democracy czar,” complained, “We used to want a just and democratic world, and now apparently we don’t ... the message being sent will be a great comfort to every dictator in the world.” ...

The U.S. has periodically pledged to spread democracy ever since President Woodrow Wilson announced in 1913: “I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!” Democracy is so important that the U.S. government refuses to stand idly by when foreign voters go astray. Since 1946, the U.S. has intervened — usually covertly — in more than 80 foreign elections to assist its preferred candidate or party. ...

Democracy promotion gives U.S. policymakers a license to meddle almost anywhere on Earth. The National Endowment for Democracy, created in 1983, has been caught interfering in elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Haiti and many other nations. The State Department has a long list of similar pratfalls, including pouring vast amounts of money in vain efforts to beget democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

Rather than delivering political salvation, U.S. interventions abroad more often produce “no-fault carnage” (no one in Washington is ever held liable). At a minimum, we should get our own constitutional house in order before seeking to rescue benighted foreigners. Ironically, many of the same people who equate Trump with Hitler still insist that the U.S. government should continue its political missionary work during his reign.

Bernie Sanders comes out unequivocally for single payer a public option. He probably didn't write the incrementalism-challenging headline, but it is indeed an excellent question.

Most Americans want universal healthcare. What are we waiting for?

What can we do to better serve the American people?

In the short-term, with conservative Republicans controlling the White House, and both the Senate and the House of Representatives, we should fight to pass legislation which enables people in every state to select a public option, similar to Medicare, at affordable rates. This will provide competition among expensive private insurance plans and a choice in those areas where insurance companies have fled.

Further, we need to lower the Medicare eligibility to age 55. This would be a major relief for millions of older workers who, today, are unable to afford the skyrocketing premiums they are paying.

Lastly, we must take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower the cost of prescription drugs. There is no rational reason why pharmacists, distributors and individuals should not be able to safely import the same exact prescription drugs they use and sell today at far lower prices from Canada and other countries.

But even if these short-term fixes were made, it would still not be enough. The time is long overdue for a major overhaul of our health care system, one which creates universal, high quality and cost-effective healthcare for all. ...

A half a century ago, the United States took a major step forward when President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating Medicare. Guaranteeing comprehensive health benefits to those over 65 has proven to be enormously successful and popular, and as a result, older Americans are living longer, healthier and happier lives. Now is the time to improve upon and expand Medicare, and make it available to every American – regardless of age.

Tribal Liaison in Minnesota Pipeline Review Is Sidelined After Oil Company Complains to Governor

A controversial proposal for a tar sands oil pipeline has led indigenous leaders in Minnesota to threaten an uprising similar to the one near Standing Rock last fall. That conflict began with what tribes described as the federal government’s failure to properly consult with nearby tribal communities prior to permitting the Dakota Access Pipeline project. In July, Danielle Oxendine Molliver, the tribal liaison brought on by Minnesota’s Department of Commerce to consult with indigenous leaders about Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 pipeline, resigned in protest of what she called a flawed environmental review process that lacked transparency, professionalism, and fairness.

In a resignation letter submitted on July 24, Oxendine Molliver stated, “There are a multitude of reasons why I have come to this decision. The single most important one is the failure of the state of Minnesota to fulfill its obligations of good faith and fair dealing with the tribes in connection with the Line 3 project.” She added, “I feel as though my resignation is the only option to maintain my integrity, commitment, and standing with the tribal communities as both a liaison and indigenous woman.” ...

Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline reaches from the center of Canada’s tar sands region in Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin, with most of its 364-mile U.S. portion passing through Minnesota. Line 3 has ruptured multiple times since it was built in the 1960s, resulting in a 1.7-million-gallon spill in 1991 and a 252,000-gallon disaster in 2002, among other accidents. Today, it is corroded and cracked. Given its degraded state, by 2008 the pipeline’s capacity had been reduced. As a penalty for another million-gallon spill in 2010 on a different corroded Enbridge pipeline, the company signed a consent decree with the federal government agreeing to replace Line 3 by December 2017 or undertake additional efforts to prevent ecological harm. The decree happened to serve Enbridge’s interests, providing a new argument in the company’s efforts to pressure Minnesota’s government to approve a proposal to replace Line 3 and greatly increase its capacity. ... Meanwhile, the old line would remain in the ground, its combustible material removed and its ends sealed shut. ...

Five bands of Ojibwe have filed as intervenors in opposition to the Line 3 replacement plan. Affected tribes have expressed concern about leaving the decaying line, which passes through the Fond du Lac and Leech Lake reservations, in the ground. Although the proposed new route does not cross reservation boundaries, it cuts through wild ricing lakes, hunting grounds, and other sacred areas to which indigenous people also have legal rights. And given that tribal members are disproportionately low-income, impacts on their well-being require careful consideration in the environmental review process. ...

Opponents of Enbridge Line 3 publicly launched two camps on Wednesday, one on the White Earth reservation and another near the Fond du Lac reservation.

Pesticides could wipe out bumblebee populations, study shows

A controversial pesticide can potentially wipe out common bumblebee populations by preventing the formation of new colonies, research has shown. The neonicotinoid chemical thiamethoxam dramatically reduces egg-laying by queen bumblebees, say scientists.

Predictions based on a mathematical model suggest this could result in the total collapse of local populations of the wild bees.

Lead researcher Professor Nigel Raine, from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said: “Bumblebee queens that were exposed to the neonicotinoid were 26% less likely to lay eggs to start a colony. “A reduction this big in the ability of queens to start new colonies significantly increases the chances that wild populations could go extinct.”

Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet

Scientists have uncovered the largest volcanic region on Earth – two kilometres below the surface of the vast ice sheet that covers west Antarctica. The project, by Edinburgh University researchers, has revealed almost 100 volcanoes – with the highest as tall as the Eiger, which stands at almost 4,000 metres in Switzerland. Geologists say this huge region is likely to dwarf that of east Africa’s volcanic ridge, currently rated the densest concentration of volcanoes in the world.

And the activity of this range could have worrying consequences, they have warned. “If one of these volcanoes were to erupt it could further destabilise west Antarctica’s ice sheets,” said glacier expert Robert Bingham, one of the paper’s authors. “Anything that causes the melting of ice – which an eruption certainly would – is likely to speed up the flow of ice into the sea.

“The big question is: how active are these volcanoes? That is something we need to determine as quickly as possible.”

Also of Interest

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

The Voices of Syria Have Always Been Ignored by the West

Trump’s Shallow Thinking on ‘Terrorism’

The Battle for Venezuela and Its Oil

Poison once flowed in America's waters. With Trump, it might again

Exxon Mobil Is Still Pumping Toxins into Black Community in Texas 17 Years After Civil Rights Complaint

Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville

The far right has learned to mobilise and radicalise. Charlottesville’s a wake-up call

Steve Bannon Said He Learned to Fear Muslims When He Visited Pakistan. Except He Was Probably in Hong Kong.

Big Money Runs Illinois. Can Small Donor-Backed Daniel Biss Change That?

“The Changing of the Guard:” The Prescient 1980 Book That Foretold the Democrat Love Affair With Neoliberalism

A Little Night Music

Big Walter Price - Pack Fair and Square

Big Walter Price - San Antonio

Big Walter Price - I Don't know

Big Walter Price - Nothing But The Blues

Big Walter Price and His ThunderBirds - Calling Margie

Big Walter & his Thunderbirds - Six Weeks Of Misery

Big Walter Price - Get To Gettin

Big Walter And The Thunderbirds - Jungle Express (Watusi Freeze)

Big Walter - Shirley Jean