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"I wouldn't mind paying taxes - if I knew they were going to a friendly country."

-- Dick Gregory

News and Opinion

Dick Gregory, pioneering US comedian and activist, dies aged 84

Dick Gregory, the black comedian who broke down racial barriers in the 1960s and used humour to spread messages of social justice, has died. He was 84.

He provoked us to think and to change. And he made us laugh, too. Rest, our dear elder, #DickGregory. pic.twitter.com/LxSgYMhI8K

— The King Center (@TheKingCenter) August 20, 2017

Gregory was one of the first black comedians to find mainstream success with white audiences in the early 1960s. He rose from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis to become a celebrated satirist who deftly commented upon racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement. “Where else in the world but America,” he joked, “could I have lived in the worst neighborhoods, attended the worst schools, rode in the back of the bus, and get paid $5,000 a week just for talking about it?”

Gregory’s sharp commentary soon led him into civil rights activism, where his ability to woo audiences through humor helped bring national attention to fledgling efforts at integration and social equality for blacks. ...

He remained active on the comedy scene until recently, when he fell ill and cancelled a show in San Jose, California, followed by a 15 August appearance in Atlanta. On social media, he wrote that he felt energized by the messages from his well-wishers, and said he was looking to get back on stage because he had a lot to say about the racial tension brought on by the gathering of hate groups in Virginia. “We have so much work still to be done, the ugly reality on the news this weekend proves just that,” he wrote.

Covering Up the Massacre of Mosul

Iraqi Kurdish military intelligence reports have estimated that the nine-month-long U.S.-Iraqi siege and bombardment of Mosul to oust Islamic State forces killed 40,000 civilians. This is the most realistic estimate so far of the civilian death toll in Mosul. But even this is likely to be an underestimate of the true number of civilians killed. No serious, objective study has been conducted to count the dead in Mosul, and studies in other war zones have invariably found numbers of dead that exceeded previous estimates by as much as 20 to one, as a United Nations-backed Truth Commission did in Guatemala after the end of its civil war. In Iraq, epidemiological studies in 2004 and 2006 revealed a post-invasion death toll that was about 12 times higher than previous estimates.

The bombardment of Mosul included tens of thousands of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S. and “coalition” warplanes, thousands of 220-pound HiMARS rockets fired by U.S. Marines from their “Rocket City” base at Quayara, and tens or hundreds of thousands of 155-mm and 122-mm howitzer shells fired by U.S., French and Iraqi artillery. This nine-month bombardment left much of Mosul in ruins (as seen here), so the scale of slaughter among the civilian population should not be a surprise to anybody. But the revelation of the Kurdish intelligence reports by former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in an interview with Patrick Cockburn of the U.K.’s Independent newspaper makes it clear that allied intelligence agencies were well aware of the scale of civilian casualties throughout this brutal campaign.

The Kurdish intelligence reports raise serious questions about the U.S. military’s own statements regarding civilian deaths in its bombing of Iraq and Syria since 2014. As recently as April 30, 2017, the U.S. military publicly estimated the total number of civilian deaths caused by all of the 79,992 bombs and missiles it had dropped on Iraq and Syria since 2014 only as “at least 352.” On June 2, it only slightly revised its absurd estimate to “at least 484.” The “discrepancy” – multiply by almost 100 – in the civilian death toll between the Kurdish military intelligence reports and the U.S. military’s public statements can hardly be a question of interpretation or good-faith disagreement among allies. The numbers confirm that, as independent analysts have suspected, the U.S. military has conducted a deliberate campaign to publicly underestimate the number of civilians it has killed in its bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.

The only rational purpose for such an extensive propaganda campaign by U.S. military authorities is to minimize the public reaction inside the United States and Europe to the killing of tens of thousands of civilians so that U.S. and allied forces can keep bombing and killing without political hindrance or accountability. ... How will we, the American people, in whose name all these wars are being fought, hold both ourselves and our political and military leaders accountable for this mass destruction of mostly innocent human life? And how will we hold our military leaders and corporate media accountable for the insidious propaganda campaign that permits rivers of human blood to keep flowing unreported and unchecked through the shadows of our vaunted but illusory “information society”?

The Goal of ‘Not Losing’ in Afghanistan

Taking a break from his defense of the “very fine people” who marched with Nazis in Charlottesville, President Trump will reportedly meet with his national security team today (Friday, August 18) at Camp David to discuss a far deadlier but ironically less controversial issue: the war in Afghanistan. That war, the longest in our history, has cost the United States more than 2,350 killed, 20,000 injured, and a trillion dollars. Yet unlike Charlottesville, it arouses little passion. It gained impeccably bipartisan credentials through successive Republican and Democratic administrations. Although a huge majority of Americans today oppose the war, they lack sufficient conviction to prevent Congress from continuing to appropriate tens of billions of dollars each year to fund it.

Trump is in a bind. As Taliban forces continue to rack up military and political gains across their country, no serious expert can possibly believe that continued U.S. intervention will deliver “victory.” Sixteen years of experience show that almost every U.S. tactic has not only failed, but backfired. Far from winning hearts and minds, nighttime Special Forces raids and bombing runs have turned countless villagers against the Afghan government and its foreign backers. Far from bolstering Kabul’s resources, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. aid created an epidemic of corruption that decimated the government’s credibility and put money and weapons in the hands of the Taliban.

Far from defeating Islamist tyranny, the United States has empowered viciously cruel warlords. Far from promoting law and order, U.S. anti-drug campaigns turned poppy-growing peasants into allies and funders of the Taliban. And far from closing off Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, Washington’s surly relations with Islamabad have amplified dangerous anti-American sentiments in that nuclear-armed, Islamic state. ...

Donald Trump, who had no trouble advising President Obama to quit the war, has reportedly ruled out a withdrawal from Afghanistan and complained to his military advisers that they aren’t giving him a strategy to win.

Trump to outline new Afghanistan strategy, clearing path for troop deployments

President Trump will outline a new Afghanistan strategy Monday that will clear the path to deploy several thousand more U.S. troops to help local forces in the conflict that has stretched on for nearly 16 years.

In a prime-time speech, Trump is also expected demand more assistance from NATO allies and the Afghanistan government itself.

Trump will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET from Fort Myer, Va., a military base just a few miles from the White House. In front of a group of soldiers, Trump will "provide an update on the path forward for America's engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia," the White House said in a statement.

The prime time address comes three days after Trump convened a high-level national security meeting at Camp David, capping a drawn-out review about how to address an issue that has frustrated Trump, just as it predecessor George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“The president has made a decision,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters during a Sunday flight en route to Jordan.

US-South Korea military drills could lead to uncontrollable phase of nuclear war - Pyongyang

North Korea warns Australia that supporting Trump is a 'suicidal act'

North Korea has warned Australia it has committed a “suicidal act” by committing its troops to help the US in any conflict over Pyongyang’s nuclear program and by joining military exercises with US and South Korean forces. The official KCNA news agency noted that the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had recently vowed his country’s military would fight alongside the US if the latter was attacked by North Korea.

The prime minister told 3AW last week that Australia and the US were joined at the hip on defence matters, and “if there is an attack on the US, the Anzus treaty would be invoked” and Australia would come to the aid of the United States.

In response to the warning from North Korea, Turnbull hit back on Monday night, issuing a short statement saying: “North Korea has shown it has no regard for the welfare of its own population, no regard for the security and good relations with its neighbours and no regard for international law.”

Email Shows UAE’s Ambassador Worried About ‘Targeting of Civilian Sites’ in Yemen War

In the Fall of 2015, the United Arab Emirates’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, sent a concerned email to a group of high-level officials in his government. The war in Yemen, he said, was becoming a public-relations nightmare. The Obama administration, he told leadership back home, remained reluctantly supportive, but the ongoing Saudi-led campaign was harming the U.S.’s reputation and thus putting his own country, an active and eager participant in the war, in a delicate position. ...

Publicly, Otaiba has not conceded the level of human suffering the Saudi/UAE war is causing the people of Yemen. During an event at the Center for American Progress — a top Democratic Party-aligned think tank that takes UAE funds —  in the fall of 2016, Otaiba struck a very different tone, acting as if the country does not care about political fallout in the West over the conflict. ...

Otaiba in 2016 pledged $700,000 to the Center for American Progress, according to a Dec. 17, 2015 email exchange he had with Brian Katulis, who is a senior CAP analyst for the region.

Otaiba used his memo to clarify that he’s not “proposing a modification of strategy,” but that the UAE and Saudi engage in a diplomatic offensive to repair their image, including by meeting with media, academics, and NGOs. His very last suggestion was for the UAE to “at least temporarily, urge caution when selecting military targets (this applies to saudi air force, where apparently most of the errant strikes are occurring).”

Trump Elevates US Cyber Command to a Formal Military Command

The move to elevate Cyber Command to a full Unified Combatant Command and split it off from the National Security Agency or NSA shows that cyber intelligence collection and information war are rapidly diverging fields. The future leadership of both entities is now in question. The move would mean that the head of Cyber Command would answer directly to the Defense Secretary and the National Security Agency would get its own head.

The split will give the commander of Cyber Command central authority over resource allocation, training, operational planning and mission execution. The commander will answer to the Defense Secretary directly, not the head of Strategic Command. “The decision means that Cyber Command will play an even more strategic role in synchronizing cyber forces and training, conducting and coordinating military cyberforce operations and advocating for and prioritizing cyber investments within the department,” said Kenneth Rapuano, assistant defense secretary for Homeland Defense and Global Security. ...

The elevation of Cyber Command represents a big step forward for the military’s cyber ability, but it has yet to be catch up to the NSA in terms of collecting signals intelligence or creating network accesses, according to Bill Leigher, who as a rear admiral helped stand up Navy Fleet Cyber Command. Leigher, who now directs government cyber solutions for Raytheon, applauds the split because the NSA, which collects foreign intelligence, and Cyber Command, a warfighting outfit, have fundamentally different missions.

Trump's DOJ Demands Personal Info On 1.3M Visitors to "DisruptJ20" Inauguration Protest Website

Abbas: I Met Trump's Envoys 20 Times and Still Don't Understand Their Peace Plan

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told a delegation from the left-wing [Israeli] Meretz party that he does not understand the conduct of the Trump administration when it comes to the Israel-Palestinian issue. Abbas noted that in meetings with envoys representing U.S. President Donald Trump in recent weeks, he heard that they support a two-state solution to the conflict and a settlement construction freeze. However, the Palestinian president said they are refusing to say so publicly and to present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with such a position as an American demand.

"I have met with Trump envoys about 20 times since the beginning of his term as president of the United States," Abbas said according to notes taken by some of the meeting's participants. "Every time they repeatedly stressed to me how much they believe and are committed to a two-state solution and a halt to construction in the settlements. I have pleaded with them to say the same thing to Netanyahu, but they refrained. They said they would consider it but then they didn't get back to me."

Trump attacks Boston counter-protesters as 'anti-police agitators'

Donald Trump described anti-fascist and anti-racist demonstrators who converged on Boston as “anti-police agitators” on Saturday, in a tweet that seemed destined to revive the still simmering controversy over his remarks equating the far right and anti-Nazis in Charlottesville last weekend.

“Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston,” Trump tweeted. “Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.” But he later seemed to back the right to demonstrate, posting: “Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!”

He added: “I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!” An estimated 40,000 leftwing counter-protesters – including various Black Lives Matter groups and activist group Violence in Boston – marched through the city to historic Boston Common, dwarfing a small group of conservatives holding a “free speech rally”.

The White House is Now Run Entirely by Hucksters, Democrats, and Generals

There is no one left in the White House who has any idea what they’re doing. At least nobody conservative. President Donald Trump never tires of reminding audiences that he is not a politician, and he proves it on an hourly basis. He is by turns a nationalist, a populist, and a demagogue — but rarely acts as a traditional conservative.

As the previous occupant of the White House once said, a president’s “success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics.” With the far-right White House strategist Steve Bannon gone, the team left behind appears to be ill-equipped to maneuver the political challenges needed to turn the administration’s ambitious policy goals into successes. The chasm between Trump’s approach and that of his nominal allies in the Republican-controlled Congress is about to be sharpened in relief — and the resumes of his remaining staffers are ill-suited to overcome the gulf.

Trump’s new chief of staff, John Kelly, is a retired general. His national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is an active-duty general and the bane of Breitbart, the far-right website Bannon used to run. Trump’s top remaining advisers are Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, a married couple who happen to be Trump’s son-in-law and daughter. ... Hope Hicks, perhaps the most talented figure left in the White House, was working as a spokesperson for the Trump Organization before she was drafted into the service of the Trump campaign, and then the White House. She is now the acting communications director.

Gary Cohn, the senior economic adviser, was president of Goldman Sachs — and a Democrat before going to work for Trump. Dina Powell, another senior adviser and New York liberal, also came from Goldman Sachs. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of Exxon Mobil and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also came from the banking world. Kellyanne Conway is not a political novice, but has long been a fringe figure in Republican politics. That is Trump’s team.

Hawks soaring after Bannon's departure

Stephen Bannon may have been a political adviser to President Donald Trump, but his firing Friday could have an impact on U.S. foreign policy from Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Bannon's exit clears an obstacle for backers of an active U.S. foreign policy in line with recent presidencies — and is a resounding win for Bannon’s internal rival, national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Bannon was a regular participant in national security debates, often as an opponent of military action and a harsh critic of international bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. He has also been a withering critic of diplomatic, military and intelligence professionals—“globalists” he says have repeatedly shown bad judgment, particularly when it comes to U.S. military interventions abroad. That put him at loggerheads with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as McMaster.

“If you look at the balance of power of isolationists versus internationalists in the White House now, it seems safe to say that the pendulum has swung towards the internationalists,” said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Though Bannon has not described himself as an “isolationist,” he has proudly adopted Trump’s “America First” motto, which he says argues for spending less blood and treasure overseas for anything less than America’s most vital interests.

In the immediate term, foreign policy insiders agreed, Bannon’s departure also could increase the chances of a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan—a plan championed by McMaster but strongly opposed by Bannon, who managed to draw out debate on the issue with direct appeals to Trump. More generally, it will remove an internal brake on U.S. military action abroad. Bannon has argued greater U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria and was among the few White House officials to oppose President Donald Trump’s early-April missile strike in Syria.

Don't pin your hopes on military generals saving the world from Trump

Chaos continues to reign at the White House, with Steve Bannon its latest casualty. Despite the best efforts of the new chief of staff, John Kelly – a retired United States Marine Corps general – to impose order, the real source of the chaos is the president himself. That’s bad enough for domestic politics, but given the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and on the Korean peninsula, there’s a wholly reasonable fear that our thin-skinned, egomaniac commander-in-chief just might tweet us into a major shooting war.

In the face of these fears, there has arisen around the White House and among the “wise men” of Washington the comforting idea that responsible grownups are firmly at the helm of America’s national security. Many experienced hands in Washington now believe the Pentagon brass won’t let the president do anything stupid, nor would they follow a suicidal order to launch attacks. After all, they’ve already ignored Trump’s ridiculous “trans-ban”, right? There’s actually talk among establishment insiders about an unofficial “Committee to Save America” made up of the generals, Trump’s New York cabal and a few Republican senators.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Civilian control of the military is one of the defining innovations and bedrock values of American democracy. Ours was the first country since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to reject juntas by charismatic generals. ... Defiance of an elected president, no matter how venal that president, or how justified that defiance, would certainly spark a constitutional crisis. What could Congress do? Or the courts? ... Would the Pentagon’s refusal to obey the president’s orders constitute a rebellion? Or a military junta? What if some commanders decided to obey the president and ignore orders from the Pentagon chain of command? Would they move against the Pentagon to put down the “rebellion”? Might we devolve into just another banana republic? ... So before you start hoping the generals will deliver us from that guy in the White House, be careful what you wish for.

Arizona's 'concentration camp': why was Tent City kept open for 24 years?

‘Hitler! Hitler!” the prisoners chanted to the TV cameras in protest. It was 4 February 2009. More than 200 Latino men in black-and-white striped uniforms, shackled to each other, were being marched towards an outdoor unit especially for “illegal alien” prisoners in Arizona’s infamous jail, Tent City. The chants were directed at the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who a few months before had called this outdoor jail close to downtown Phoenix – his own tough-on-crime creation – a “concentration camp” in a speech to political supporters at his local Italian-American club.

When asked about the comment by the Guardian in July, Arpaio brushed it off as a joke. “But even if it was a concentration camp, what difference does it make? I still survived. I still kept getting re-elected,” he said. The jail survived too. For more than 20 years, Tent City stood within a larger jail compound in an industrial area 10 minutes south of downtown Phoenix. At its peak in the late 1990s, it comprised 82 Korean war-era military tents and housed 1,700 inmates. After 2009, it could hold up to 200 undocumented immigrants.

Despite multiple lawsuits from mistreated former prisoners, mounting public outrage and intense criticism from groups such as Amnesty International, which derided the facility as inhumane, overcrowded and dangerous, the outdoor prison remained open. Even the justice department accused Arpaio of racially profiling Latinos on his patrols and denying prisoners basic human rights in his jails. But now, like Arpaio’s own legacy, Tent City’s tenure is about to come to an end, leaving many local city residents, civil rights groups and former inmates asking: how did it survive for so long?

Michael Manning, a litigation attorney and one of Arpaio’s most ardent critics, says at times Tent City was overcrowded, making it a “horrendously dangerous environment”.

“He got away with it because people could excuse the embedded racism in his message,” Manning adds. “Because he fashioned it always as: ‘I’m going to protect you from people who are out there breaking the law and threatening your lives and property.’”

The US government destroyed the Ku Klux Klan once. It could do so again

In 1870 and 1871, Congress passed three Enforcement Acts that safeguarded the rights of African Americans to vote, hold office, serve on juries and receive equal protection under the law. These acts, also known as the “Ku Klux Klan Acts,” targeted the Klan for acting murderously to prevent African Americans from exercising their rights as citizens.

Today 146 years later, we could use the Enforcement Acts once more.

President Ulysses S Grant pushed the legislation through Congress and called on the Army to help federal officials “arrest and break up bands of disguised night marauders”. Grant’s attorney general, Amos Akerman, a 49-year-old graduate of Dartmouth College and an outspoken champion of black suffrage, relished the opportunity to fight white terrorists in southern states. In a biography of Grant published in 2001, Jean Edward Smith quoted historian William S. McFeely who observed that “no attorney general before or since ‘has been more vigorous in the prosecution of cases designed to protect the lives and rights of black Americans’”. ...

Akerman knew that destroying the Klan would require “extraordinary means”. To his mind, there was only one side in this fight, not “many”. There was no equivalence to be drawn between the Klan and the African Americans who had been attacked and murdered. Grant did not view the Confederates as heroes. He did not embolden them or stoke their resentment about the Confederacy’s defeat. Instead, after the Enforcement Acts were passed, he sent federal troops to the South and stated categorically that “insurgents were in rebellion against the authority of the United States”.

By 1872, the Klan had been defeated. The weight of the federal government broke the back of the organization and reduced racial violence throughout the South. Frederick Douglass declared that without Grant’s actions, black Americans likely would have been trapped in a condition similar to slavery. The violence did not end altogether, but the Klan was no longer a formidable player in American politics. Nor would it be until 50 years later, when the second Klan rose in the 1920s. ...

In Ken Burns’ 1990 documentary, The Civil War, historian Barbara Fields explained, “The Civil War is not over until we today have done our part in fighting it.” The tragic events in Charlottesville have shown us just how urgent and necessary it is for us to continue the fight. There is still much to fight for. The Civil War, Fields observed, “is still to be fought and regrettably it can still be lost”. The president has shown that we can expect nothing from him in terms of moral leadership. We have yet to see if other branches of government will take strong action to condemn white supremacy and carry on the fight.

Wells Fargo Reshuffles Board With Scandal-Ridden Insiders

Wells Fargo, the current poster child for corporate crime recidivism, announced that three of its board members would step down at the end of the year, in a nod to the company’s many incidents of customer abuse. But, in an example of what passes for accountability in the modern age, they did not claw back any compensation from those board members. Instead, the departing board members were allowed to take an early retirement. And the replacements are either already on Wells Fargo’s payroll, or come from close corporate partners.

Stephen Sanger, who only took over as chair of the board of directors after the resignation of CEO and chair John Stumpf last year, will step down Jan. 1, along with two colleagues, Cynthia Milligan and Susan Swenson. The trio are among the bank’s longest-serving board members; Milligan joined in 1992, Swenson in 1998, and Sanger in 2003. And all three served during Wells Fargo’s decade-plus practice of instituting fake accounts to goose sales growth, not to mention recent revelations of nickel-and-diming mortgage borrowers, auto loan customers, small business owners, and investors. ...

Yet Wells decided to replace Sanger by promoting someone from inside the company. Former Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke will take the chair position. Duke has served on the Wells Fargo board since 2015. During that time, the board was made aware of the fake accounts scandal, before it was revealed to the public.

This is part of a pattern with Wells Fargo. When Stumpf stepped down last October, Tim Sloan, then president and chief operating officer, took the top slot. Sloan was groomed for years to replace Stumpf, and four months before the transition, he vowed not to change the bank’s high-pressure sales culture, which led to the fake accounts scandal.

EPA Welcomed Industry Feedback Before Reversing Pesticide Ban, Ignoring Health Concerns

Before the Environmental Protection Agency issued its March 29 decision to reverse a proposed ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos, the agency considered information from industry groups that wanted to keep it on the market, according to internal agency documents. But the heavily redacted documents may be most notable for what they do not include.

The Intercept obtained internal emails, reports, and memos via a Freedom of Information Act request for materials used to brief EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on chlorpyrifos.

Although the documents reflect several direct communications between the EPA, big agricultural groups, and, in one instance, Donald Trump, they included no evidence that the agency met with environmental or public health groups or weighed concerns about the pesticide’s damaging effects. There was also no substantive discussion of the many studies detailing health effects. The story that emerges from the documents is a simple one of agricultural industry lobbying and, after its success, celebration.

Before the presidential election, the EPA had proposed banning chlorpyrifos based in part on evidence that the chemical causes lasting harm to children’s brains, including attention problems, memory loss, tremors, and autism. In reports issued in 2014 and 2015, the agency acknowledged research showing that children exposed to chlorpyrifos were more likely to have certain developmental problems. In November the EPA issued a report recommending a ban. A 90-day waiting period pushed the finalization of the ban into March, after Trump’s inauguration.

Trump's day of doom for national monuments approaches

Dave Willis, a grizzled woodsman and backcountry outfitter, has spent decades laboring to protect the mountains of south-western Oregon, one of the most beautiful, biodiverse regions in the country. Through grassroots activism, Willis and his conservationist allies have won the support of two US presidents. In 2000, Bill Clinton created the roughly 52,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou national monument, proclaiming it an “ecological wonderland”. Located just outside of Ashland, it was the first such monument established solely for its extraordinary species diversity. It’s a place that harbors rare lilies and endemic trout, Pacific fishers and goshawks, black bears and a stunning array of butterflies.

During his final week in office, meanwhile, Barack Obama added about 48,000 acres to the Cascade-Siskiyou monument, nearly doubling it in size. Now, the Trump administration is threatening to undo it all. In April, the White House announced its intent to review 27 different national monument designations, as the Interior Department looks for commercial opportunities for the oil, mining and timber industries on American public lands. And the Cascade-Siskiyou preserve is on the list. ...

With the monument review due to the president on Thursday, conservationists like Willis are on edge. Ryan Zinke, the swaggering Montana native who is the secretary of the interior and is leading the effort, has already unveiled some of his recommendations. They include shrinking the Bears Ears national monument in Utah, a 1.3 million-acre monument created by Obama to protect Native American antiquities. Zinke said six monuments should be left alone, which leaves 20 including the Cascade-Siskiyou at risk of being reduced in size, eliminated or opened to industrial uses.

In late July, Zinke, visited Cascade-Siskiyou; he met with monument opponents and supporters. He hasn’t yet publicly signaled the direction he is leaning in. But since his arrival in Washington, Zinke has been remaking the interior department by filling senior positions with representatives from extractive industries and rightwing advocacy groups.

Also of Interest

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

Truth and Lives vs. Career and Fame

Bernie Would’ve Won… And He Wouldn’t Have Been Much Better

How Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump have restarted the war on drugs

Steve Bannon Is Gone, But His Bigotry Stays in the White House

Historic Settlement Reached on Behalf of CIA Torture Victims

UAE ambassador says 'whole of Saudi Arabia is cuckoo' in leaked email

The U.S. Spy Hub in the Heart of Australia

Russia-gate’s Evidentiary Void

Photos: Pennsylvania Residents in Path of Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline Brace for Fight Over Construction

Don’t Believe the Alarmist Propaganda About North Korea

North Korea's bold wave of propaganda art - in pictures

A Little Night Music

The Ronettes - Baby, I Love You

The Ronettes - Chapel of Love

The Ronettes - Walking In The Rain

The Ronettes - "What'd I Say"

The Ronettes - Do I Love You

The Ronettes - When I Saw You

The Ronettes - I Wonder

The Ronettes - You Baby

Ronettes - So Young

Ronettes - Best Part of Breakin Up

The Ronettes - Is This What I Get For Loving You

The Ronettes - Here I Sit

The Ronettes - Shout