Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta blues fiddler, guitarist and songwriter Henry "Son" Sims. Enjoy!

“Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word, to which we owe the fact that what we simply live through, experience, take in, no more enters our consciousness during digestion (one could call it spiritual ingestion) than does the thousand-fold process which takes place with our physical consumption of food, our so-called ingestion. To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while; not to be bothered by the noise and battle which our underworld of serviceable organs work with and against each other;a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries, for ruling, predicting, predetermining (our organism runs along oligarchic lines, you see) - that, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette: from which can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness.”

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

News and Opinion

The Crazy Imbalance of Russia-gate

Today, we have The New York Times and The Washington Post repeatedly publishing front-page articles about allegations that some Russians with “links” to the Kremlin bought $100,000 in Facebook ads to promote some issues deemed hurtful to Hillary Clinton’s campaign although some of the ads ran after the election. ... But why stop there? If the concern is that American political campaigns are being influenced by foreign governments whose interests may diverge from what’s best for America, why not look at countries that have caused the United States far more harm recently than Russia?

After all, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Wahabbi leaders have been pulling the U.S. government into their sectarian wars with the Shiites, including conflicts in Yemen and Syria that have contributed to anti-Americanism in the region, to the growth of Al Qaeda, and to a disruptive flow of refugees into Europe. And, let’s not forget the 8,000-pound gorilla in the room: Israel. Does anyone think that whatever Russia may or may not have done in trying to influence U.S. politics compares even in the slightest to what Israel does all the time?

Which government used its pressure and that of its American agents (i.e., the neocons) to push the United States into the disastrous war in Iraq? It wasn’t Russia, which was among the countries urging the U.S. not to invade; it was Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, the plans for “regime change” in Iraq and Syria can be traced back to the work of key American neoconservatives employed by Netanyahu’s political campaign in 1996. At that time, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and other leading neocons unveiled a seminal document entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which proposed casting aside negotiations with Arabs in favor of simply replacing the region’s anti-Israeli governments. ...

Israel’s influence over U.S. politicians is so blatant that presidential contenders queue up every year to grovel before the Israel Lobby’s conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In 2016, Donald Trump showed up and announced that he was not there to “pander” and then pandered his pants off. And, whenever Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to show off his power, he is invited to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress at which Republicans and Democrats compete to see how many times and how quickly they can leap to their feet in standing ovations. (Netanyahu holds the record for the number of times a foreign leader has addressed joint sessions with three such appearances, tied with Winston Churchill.)

Yet, Israeli influence is so engrained in the U.S. political process that even the mention of the existence of an “Israel Lobby” brings accusations of anti-Semitism. “Israel Lobby” is a forbidden phrase in Washington. ... So, if the concern is the purity of the American democratic process and the need to protect it from outside manipulation, let’s have at it. Why not a full-scale review of who is doing what and how? Does anyone think that Israel’s influence over U.S. politics is limited to a few hundred Facebook accounts and $100,000 in ads?

US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships

For decades, the American people have been repeatedly told by their government and corporate-run media that acts of war ordered by their president have been largely motivated by the need to counter acts of aggression or oppression by "evil dictators." We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. We had to bomb Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was an evil dictator, bent on unleashing a "bloodbath" on his own people. Today, of course, we are told that we should support insurgents in Syria because Bashar al-Assad is an evil dictator, and we must repeatedly rattle our sabers at North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin because they, too, are evil dictators.

This is part of the larger, usually unquestioned mainstream corporate media narrative that the US leads the "Western democracies" in a global struggle to combat terrorism and totalitarianism and promote democracy.

I set out to answer a simple question: Is it true? Does the US government actually oppose dictatorships and champion democracy around the world, as we are repeatedly told?

The truth is not easy to find, but federal sources do provide an answer: No. According to Freedom House's rating system of political rights around the world, there were 49 nations in the world, as of 2015, that can be fairly categorized as "dictatorships." As of fiscal year 2015, the last year for which we have publicly available data, the federal government of the United States had been providing military assistance to 36 of them, courtesy of your tax dollars. The United States currently supports over 73 percent of the world's dictatorships!

North Korea: We will shoot down U.S. bombers not in our airspace

North Korea’s foreign minister warned Monday that Pyongyang had every right to shoot down U.S. bombers even if they don’t infringe North Korean airspace. The warning comes just two days after the Pentagon said it had flown B-1B Lancer bombers into international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017

Addressing the media outside his hotel in New York, Ri Yong Ho said that President Donald Trump “declared war on our country” last weekend when he warned that the North Korean leadership “won’t be around much longer.”

In recent years, U.S. presidents have avoided formally declaring war on countries they seek to invade. But North Korea’s foreign minister seems to believe that’s exactly what President Trump did through a late-night Saturday tweet, and as a member of the UN Pyongyang has every right to protect itself.

“The fact that this comes from someone who currently holds the seat of the U.S. president, this is clearly a declaration of war,” Ri said, speaking through a translator.

Dozens of Civilians Killed When U.S. Bombed a School And a Market in Syria

U.S. Military aircraft bombed a school and a crowded marketplace in attacks that killed dozens of civilians in Syria this March, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. The report, titled “All Feasible Precautions?: Civilian Casualties in Anti-ISIS Coalition Airstrikes in Syria,” investigated two airstrikes conducted in and around the northern Syrian city of Tabqa. Investigators who visited the sites and interviewed locals and survivors found that the strikes had caused huge numbers of civilian deaths. The documentation adds to a drumbeat of criticism about a U.S. air campaign in Syria that has already been accused of inflicting massive civilian casualties in support of ground operations against Islamic State by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The attacks documented in the report include a March 20 airstrike that targeted a school housing displaced people in the suburban town of Mansourah, outside of Tabqa, as well as another strike that hit a packed marketplace in Tabqa City two days later. Investigators from Human Rights Watch visited the sites of both attacks this July and collected the names of at least 84 civilians who had died in the bombings, including 30 children. While witnesses who spoke to investigators acknowledged that ISIS members, along with their families, had been around the areas of the bombings, they also said many civilians were nearby who had no connection to the group.

In the case of the March 22 marketplace bombing, huge numbers of people who had been lining up to buy bread at a local bakery were killed by an airstrike in an attack that may have been targeting a few ISIS members sitting in a nearby internet cafe. While the U.S.-led coalition has acknowledged carrying out the March 20 attack against the school, which it claimed had targeted a suspected weapons storage facility, it has said that it is still assessing the circumstances surrounding the marketplace bombing.

Ole Solvang, a deputy emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, was one of the investigators who visited the bombing sites after the towns returned to the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces this summer. Solvang said the bombings against civilian targets raise serious questions about U.S. commitment to investigating incidents in which its troops allegedly killed innocent civilians. The military has yet to announce that it will launch a full investigation into either strike and has provided limited information to investigators. “We haven’t received a lot of detail from the military about these cases,” Solvang said, “but we think it is very important that they launch a full investigation into what happened as it appears that large numbers of civilians have been killed.”

U.S.-led airstrikes kill 2,617 civilians in Syria

A total of 2,617 civilians have been killed in the U.S.-led anti-terror operations in Syria since late 2014, a monitor group reported Saturday.

The death toll includes 615 children and 443 women, said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Defying Baghdad, Iraqi Kurds vote in independence referendum

In Iraqi Kurdistan, Voting on Independence and Bracing for Violence

Across Iraqi Kurdistan, a scene is starting to become familiar: young and old alike fill the public squares and parks clad in Kurdish dress, furiously waving Kurdish flags in a rallying cry for independence. ... While Iraqi Kurds currently enjoy a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq — technically governed by Iraq’s central government in Baghdad but controlled by Kurdish security forces and political parties — many have longed for an independent state after decades of oppression, suffering, and political marginalization. In the wake of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces defeating Islamic State fighters in key battles in northern Iraq, including Mosul earlier this year, many Kurds hope their chance has finally arrived to gain independence — which they are voting on in a controversial referendum on Monday.

But in some regions, there are signs that the upcoming referendum could spark a violent future. Late last Monday, a group of Kurdish gunmen rode through the contested city of Kirkuk on motorcycles after a rally, opening fire on the Iraqi Turkmen Front headquarters — one of the key points of opposition to the referendum in the city. Armed guards returned fire, killing one perpetrator and wounding two others.

“Right now, Arabs and Turkmen are worried for their lives,” said Ali Mehdi, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Turkmen Front. Mehdi, in an interview with photographer Sebastian Meyer, on assignment for The Intercept, said he fears the referendum will disrupt the delicate economic and security relationship between the Kurdish-controlled regions of Iraq and the central government in Baghdad. Kirkuk is a particularly disputed territory. It does not technically lie within the boundaries of the Kurdish-controlled region, but the Peshmerga have claimed the area since they successfully fought to secure its oil fields from the ISIS three years ago. Many Kurds hope to fold the resource-rich city into a future Kurdistan.

However, Kirkuk’s Turkmen — and a vast majority of the Sunni and Shia Arab population — fear that an independent Kurdistan could further fracture Iraq, especially if it includes mixed areas like Kirkuk. While the referendum is overwhelmingly supported in Kurdish-majority provinces, such as Erbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyah, mixed areas may soon find themselves facing internal conflict, the religious and ethnic diversity they once celebrated becoming their downfall.

Kurds stick with independence vote, 'never going back to Baghdad': Barzani

Iraq’s Kurds will go ahead with a referendum on independence on Monday because their partnership with Baghdad has failed, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani said on Sunday, shrugging off international opposition to the vote.

In response, the Iraqi government asked the autonomous Kurdish region to hand over control of its international border posts, its international airports and called on foreign countries to stop importing Kurdish crude oil. It asked “the neighboring countries and the countries of the world to deal exclusively with the federal government of Iraq in regards to entry posts and oil,” according to a statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office.

The United States and other Western powers have urged Kurdish authorities in the oil producing region to cancel the vote, arguing that it distracts from the fight against Islamic State. Turkey and Iran have also kept up the pressure to stop the vote, with presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Rouhani speaking by phone and expressing concern that it will “bring chaos in the region”, according to Erdogan’s office.

Barzani, at a news conference at his headquarters near Erbil, dismissed the worries of Iraq’s neighbors, committing to respect laws on international boundaries and not seek to redraw the region’s borders. “We will never go back to the failed partnership” with Baghdad, he said, adding Iraq had become a “theocratic, sectarian state” and not the democratic one that was supposed to be built after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The vote, expected to result in a comfortable “yes” to independence, is not binding and is meant to give the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) a mandate to negotiate secession with Baghdad and the neighboring countries.

Kurdish Blogger: We want no part in corrupt Iraq!

Spain’s attorney general refuses to rule out arrest of Catalan president

Spain’s attorney general has refused to rule out the possibility of arresting the Catalan president, as the region’s pro-sovereignty government prepares to defy Madrid by holding an independence referendum on Sunday.

José Manuel Maza said that Carles Puigdemont could face action for disobedience, breaching public duties and misuse of public funds for proceeding with the poll after Spain’s constitutional court suspended the hastily passed legislation underpinning the vote.

Maza said the regional president could be arrested for misuse of public funds as the crime carries a jail sentence. On Monday, he told Onda Cero radio that although such a move had not been judged “timely” as yet, adding: “It’s a decision that’s always available.”

Speaking days after Spanish police arrested 14 Catalan officials, seized almost 10m ballot papers and chartered ferries to accommodate the thousands of extra police officers who are being sent to Catalonia to stop the referendum, Maza rejected suggestions that the government was being heavy-handed. ...

Puigdemont, however, has accused the Spanish government of acting “beyond the limits of a respectable democracy” in its effort to stop the vote. He has promised to declare independence within 48 hours of a victory for the yes campaign.

As Catalan independence vote nears, Europe supports keeping Spain intact

A week before a highly contentious Catalonia independence referendum, the Catalan president continued to defy warnings from Spain’s national government to call off the Oct. 1 “self rule” vote.

“It will proceed because we had foreseen a contingency plan to guarantee it, but moreover it will proceed because it has the support of the immense majority of the population,” Carles Puigdemont said in an official televised statement from Catalonia’s capital city, Barcelona.

The remarks fanned the flames of the latest separatist campaign in an embattled European Union, a bloc of 28 member states with their own respective histories and often-fragile national identities. Brussels said it would not interfere with the Catalan referendum. But while most European leaders have avoided speaking out against the referendum directly, many wish to avoid a successful precedent for a breakaway region welcomed into the bloc, given the number of similar regions across Europe that might soon try to do the same. Most share the opinion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose representatives told Reuters that Berlin has “great interest in the maintenance of stability in Spain.”

E.U. officials have sought to make clear the uncertain future that would befall any newly independent region. “If there were to be a ‘yes’ vote in favor of Catalan independence, then we will respect that opinion,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in a YouTube broadcast earlier this month. “But Catalonia will not be able to be an E.U. member state on the day after such a vote.”

That warning has been enough to discourage similar separatist campaigns in recent years, such as the Scottish referendum in September 2014, when 55.3 percent of voters ultimately opted to remain in Britain, which had not yet voted to leave the E.U.

Spain's Economy is Growing, but Leaving Most Spaniards Behind

German election: Merkel vows to win back right-wing voters

Mrs Merkel is set for a fourth term in office, despite heavy losses for her party in Sunday's election. She now faces months of coalition talks to try to form a stable government. ...

Mrs Merkel's conservative alliance - between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) - recorded its worst result in almost 70 years. Mrs Merkel's conservative alliance has the largest number of seats and will form the next government - as the left-leaning parties together do not come remotely close to a parliamentary majority.

As working with AfD MPs would be unthinkable, and the second-placed Social Democrats (SPD) has apparently ruled itself out, the most likely scenario is a "Jamaica" coalition, so-called because of the colours of Jamaica's flag and the traditional colours of the German political parties. Such a coalition - which has never been tried at the federal level - includes the black CDU/CSU, the yellow, business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) - who are returning to parliament after a four-year hiatus with 80 seats - and the Greens (67 seats).

AfD leader quits party caucus hours after German election breakthrough

Germany’s rightwing nationalist party Alternative für Deutschland, in celebratory mode after coming third in elections, was delivered a bombshell by its co-leader when she announced she would not sit with the party in the Bundestag. Frauke Petry walked out of a press conference on Monday morning at which the party leadership marvelled at its success, having secured nearly 13% of the vote and 94 seats in the federal parliament.

The departure of one of the AfD’s most prominent figures illustrates the splits in the party despite its attempts to show a united front during the election campaign. Petry, who was on the moderate wing of the party, saw her role as that of uniting the AfD. But she has earned scorn from emboldened rightwing nationalists who have increasingly sidelined their opponents.

In April, she attempted to lead the party towards what she called a more realistic and pragmatic approach, so that, she said, it would have a chance to enter coalition governments. But her co-leader, Jörg Meuthen, and the party’s leading election candidates, Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel, rejected her stance, arguing the party’s goal should be to act as a strong opposition in the Bundestag to the politics of Angela Merkel, the chancellor.

Shortly after the packed press conference opened in Berlin, Petry said “after a long period of contemplation” she would not join the party in the Bundestag and would instead serve as an independent MP for her constituency in Saxony, where she narrowly beat the Christian Democrats. She stood up and walked out with a smile, leaving her party colleagues looking stunned and prompting gasps from the press corps. Meuthen accused Petry of “dropping a bomb”, adding: “That was not discussed with us in advance. We knew nothing about it”.

Chelsea Manning Denied Entry to Canada, With Government Citing Treason Law

U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been denied entry to Canada.

In a letter Manning posted to Twitter, the Canadian government told her she is barred from entering the country. The letter states that Manning is “inadmissible on grounds of serious criminality for having been convicted of an offense outside Canada.” ...

Further down in the letter, it says that “if committed in Canada this offense would equate to an indictable offense, namely Treason described under section 46(2)(B) of the Criminal Code of Canada, punishable under section 47(2)(C) of the Criminal Code of Canada, for which a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment may be imposed.” ...

The Canadian Embassy could not be reached for comment.

Creative Forgetfulness with Eric Foner

Target raises minimum wage to $11 an hour in fight to retain and recruit staff

Target is raising its minimum hourly wage for its workers to $11 starting next month and then to $15 by the end of 2020 in a move it says will help it better recruit and retain top-quality staff and provide a better shopping experience for its customers.

The initiative, announced Monday, is part of Target’s strategy to reinvent its business, which includes remodeling stores, expanding online and opening up smaller urban locations.

Target quietly raised entry-level hourly wages to $10 last year from $9 from the previous year, following initiatives by Walmart and others to hike wages in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

But Target’s hike to $15 per hour far exceeds not only the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour but the hourly base pay at Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, and plenty of its other retail peers whose minimum hourly pay now hovers around $10. ...

Target shares fell 2% early Monday morning as investors worried about how much the wage hike would hurt the bottom line. Target reiterated its third-quarter and full-year profit guidance but said that it would update investors early next year about how higher wages will affect long-term profits.

Republicans are throwing billions at Senators to repeal Obamacare

Republican senators are racing to pass a health care bill before the end of the week and are turning to a tried and true method to get wavering senators to vote yes: money. Lots of it.

A new draft of the bill — dubbed Graham-Cassidy — circulated Sunday night with an added $14.5 billion, much of it for Texas, Kentucky, Arizona, Maine, and Alaska. All of those states also have Republican senators who have said they are voting no or have not yet committed to voting yes.

The bill’s authors claim that the new draft will actually provide more federal dollars in additional Medicaid funding and other more general funding to these states than Obamacare does, with Arizona getting a 14 percent bump, Texas getting 49 percent, Alaska getting 3 percent, Maine getting 43 percent, and Kentucky getting 4 percent. These estimates have not been independently verified and even the first draft of the bill has yet to be analyzed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The new draft also provides an extra incentive to Alaska in a rather blatant attempt to woo Sen. Lisa Murkowski. In addition to the state’s 3 percent increase, the bill also carves out a 25 percent increase in Medicaid federal matching funds as well. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have already said they intend to vote “no,” meaning one more “no” will sink the bill in the Senate.

Take the Knee: Athletes Unite in Historic Protest Against Racism & Police Brutality, Defying Trump

Colin Kaepernick has won: he wanted a conversation and Trump started it

All Colin Kaepernick ever wanted was for his country to have a conversation about race.

This, he warned, would not be easy. Such talks are awkward and often end in a flurry of spittle, pointed fingers and bruised feelings. But from the moment the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback first spoke about his decision to kneel or sit during the national anthem, he said was willing to give up his career to make the nation talk.

In one speech on Friday night, Donald Trump gave Kaepernick exactly what he wanted. With a fiery blast at protesting NFL players that seemingly came from nowhere, the president bonded black and white football players with wealthy white owners in a way nobody could have imagined. By saying any player who didn’t stand for the anthem was a “son of a bitch” and should be fired by his team’s owner, Trump crossed a line from which no one could look away.

Come Sunday afternoon, players who wanted nothing of a racial dialogue stood before giant flags, linking arms in protest. Owners who once wished their kneeling players would just stop offending fans fired off statements in their support. Networks who have avoided showing the raised fists of dissent had no choice but show the rows of players standing strong against Trump’s rage. ...

On Sunday afternoon, as the president headed back to Washington from his New Jersey golf club, a reporter asked: “Are you inflaming racial tensions, sir?” “This has nothing to do with race,” Trump said, talking, of course, about race. “I never said anything about race. This has nothing to do with race or anything else. This has to do with respect for our country and respect for our flag.” ...

Earlier this year, the sociologist and civil rights activist Harry Edwards, who has worked with the 49ers, told the NFL Network Kaepernick had achieved something that Barack Obama and all the nation’s activists and prominent black voices had not. He had ignited a discussion that had been missing for generations. ... Everyone who sat in front of football on Sunday was forced to have Colin Kaepernick’s great national conversation. That might be the biggest victory of the career he has given up.

Dolphins safety Michael Thomas started breaking up when talking about Trump calling him "a son of a b!tch." pic.twitter.com/Z4wroPcvzW

— Omar Kelly (@OmarKelly) September 24, 2017

Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Free Speech Week” lasted about 20 minutes

Milo Yiannopolous and the conservative “Berkeley Patriot” newspaper had noisy plans for a four-day “Free Speech Week” on the campus of UC Berkeley chock full of speakers like Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter. It ended with a whimper and what a school official is calling “the most expensive photo op in the university’s history.”

The event was advertised as a far-right extravaganza with daily themes like “Feminism Awareness Day” and “Islamic Peace and Tolerance Day,” and had at times named Blackwater founder Erik Prince and anti-Islam activist Pam Geller as featured speakers. It fell apart last week as other listed speakers said they had never been invited, and the university said the Patriot hadn’t submitted necessary paperwork to secure the venues.

But that didn’t stop conservative provocateur Yiannopoulos, Geller, and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich from making a 20-minute appearance on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Sunday. That appearance, on the historic birthplace of the American Free Speech Movement, ended up costing the university an estimated $800,000 to provide crowd control and security. ...

University spokesperson Dan Mogulof said last week that extensive security precautions were needed after Yiannopoulos’ last visit to the campus in February, when he drew crowds of counterprotesters, including about 150 black-clad antifa.

What’s left is Yiannopolous’ and the Berkeley Patriot’s claim that UC Berkeley wanted the four-day event to fail, even though the chancellor said the university made extensive plans to accommodate it. “The University was prepared to do whatever was necessary to support the First Amendment rights of the student organization,” Mogulof said.

Michigan Governor Unleashes “Citizens United on Steroids”

Less than six hours after its passage by the Republican-controlled state legislature, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law this week a measure that, effective immediately, allows candidates to raise unlimited sums of money for super PACs, which can then promptly spend that money supporting those candidates — or attacking their rivals.

It also allows consultants to simultaneously work for a campaign and a super PAC at the same time, making a joke of the supposed independence of the two groups.

It’s a brazen move for Snyder, who is term-limited out of office in 2018, to so fully embrace the post-Citizens United world dominated by big-money super PACs. Watchdogs warn that the law — which they have described as “Citizens United on steroids”— effectively creates an end-run around the state’s limits on campaign contributions and further obliterates the already-thin line that is supposed to maintain super PAC independence from candidates. That opens the door for the state’s wealthy donors to wield even more influence over the political system.

The move is of a piece with a long-running Republican strategy, rarely matched effectively by Democrats, to tilt the political playing field in a partisan direction. On top of sophisticated gerrymandering, right-to-work laws have smashed the electoral power of unions in states where they’ve been enacted, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which have tilted right as organized labor has been suppressed. Add to that voter suppression laws targeting minorities, college students, and anybody else suspected of voting Democratic, and Republicans are able to create a field in which majority support of an agenda is not necessarily required.

Anthony Weiner given 21 months in prison for sexting teenage girl

Anthony Weiner was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison, in a sexting scandal that some blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The former New York congressman and mayoral candidate, who is the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had faced up to 27 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one charge of transferring obscene material to a minor. He must report to prison by 6 November to begin serving his sentence for exchanging explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl.

Pleading with the judge to be spared from prison, the 53-year-old former congressman tearfully said he was “a very sick man for a very long time”. “I am profoundly sorry,” he said, reading from a page in front of him. “The crime I committed was my rock bottom … I live a different and better life today.”

As his sentence was announced, Weiner dropped his head into his hand and wept, then stared straight ahead. After the hearing ended and judge Denise Cote left the bench, he sat in his seat for several minutes, continuing to cry. Weiner was also fined $10,000. After his sentence is served, he must undergo internet monitoring and must have no contact with his victim. He must also enroll in a sex-offender treatment program. Before announcing the sentence, Cote said Weiner had shown “no evidence of deviant interest in teenagers or minors”. She also said he was finally receiving effective treatment for what she said had been described as “sexual hyperactivity”.

Tens of Thousands Flee for Safety as Guajataca Dam Fails in Puerto Rico

A dam failure in Puerto Rico has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing the rushing waters that are threatening downstream communities in the wake of torrential rains unleashed by Hurricane Maria.

Fears had grown overnight and evacuations had begun, but footage showed the dam, located in northwest city of Guajataca, failing and a spillway being overrun with rushing waters.

On Friday night, the National Weather Service warned the failure of the dam might be "imminent" and could lead to "life-threatening" flash floods for the estimated 70,000 people living in the immediate area. "This is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION," the NWS wrote. "All the areas around the Guajataca River must evacuate NOW. Your lives are in DANGER."

Speaking to Reuters by phone on Saturday, Christina Villalba, an official for the island’s emergency management agency, said there was little doubt the dam was about to break.

"It could be tonight, it could be tomorrow, it could be in the next few days," Villalba said, "but it's very likely it will be soon."

Calls for More Relief Intensify as Puerto Rico Descends Into Humanitarian Crisis

As U.S. President Donald Trump spent his weekend demeaning professional football players for peacefully protesting racial injustice, Puerto Rico continued its descent into a full-blown humanitarian crisis following a direct hit from Hurricane Maria, which last week made landfall as a Category 4 storm, devastating the island and U.S. commonwealth.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital city, described current conditions in an interview with The Washington Post: "There is horror in the streets. There is no electricity anywhere in Puerto Rico."

"People tell us often, 'I don't have my medication, I don't have my insulin, I don't have my blood pressure medication, I don't have food, I don't have drinking water,'" she continued. "The aid is pouring in, but what people need to realize is...we're an island—everything we need comes from outside."

At least 10 Puerto Ricans have died so far because of the storm, but with dwindling resources, that number is expected to rise.

"A damaged dam is in danger of bursting. Most buildings are damaged or destroyed. Millions are without power, and the communication network is crippled," CNN reported on Monday, after speaking with the island's Governor Ricardo Rosselló, who warned that "we need to prevent a humanitarian crisis occurring in America."

Also of Interest

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

The View From the End of the American Empire

Bernie Sanders To Democrats: This Is What a Radical Foreign Policy Looks Like

Poet Aja Monet: ‘White Folks Have to Face Who Trump Is’

Chevron Rejects Push From Muslim Shareholders to Divest from Myanmar, Site of Ethnic Cleansing

Afraid of their waning power once Isis is defeated, the Kurds are calling for independence from Iraq

Chris Hedges: The Abuses of History

Robots have already taken over our work, but they’re made of flesh and bone

Houston after Harvey: city faces huge hurdle to recovery

NFL Owners and Executives Who Protested Donald Trump Are the Biggest Hypocrites Yet

A Little Night Music

Son Sims Four - Rosalie

Henry Sims - Farrell Blues

Son Sims Four - Pearly May Blues

Muddy Waters + Son Sims - Burr Clover Blues

Henry Sims - Tell Me Man

Son Sims Four - Joe Turner Blues

Charley Patton + Henry Sims - Come Back Corrina

Charley Patton + Henry Sims - Elder Greene Blues

Charley Patton + Henry Sims - Going To Move To Alabama