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This evening's music features the Doo Wop group, The Cadillacs. Enjoy!

“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”

-- George W. Bush

News and Opinion

Donald Trump’s North Korea Rhetoric During the State of the Union Is an Ominous Carbon Copy of Bush’s Words About Iraq 15 Years Ago

... To begin with, Trump claimed, the United States simply cannot accept a North Korea with weapons that could “threaten our homeland.” Moreover, the danger from Kim Jong Un is not just to America: His regime constitutes “a menace that threatens our world.” Similarly, Bush had ruled out living with an Iraq armed with unconventional weapons that could be used against America. “Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein,” said Bush, “is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” And this was not just for our sake: A nation such as Iraq, he had proclaimed, was “the gravest danger facing America and the world.” ...

“We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime,” Trump said, “to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America.” He then went on to describe the quite real and hideous actions of the Kim Jong-un’s government in loving, emotional detail – in particular what we’ve learned from the testimony of a refugee who was present, Ji Seong-ho.

Bush made exactly the same case: According to Bush, the undeniable fact that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to Iraqis unquestionably meant he was a threat to the U.S. And how did we know about the suffering of Iraqis? “Iraqi refugees,” Bush said, “tell us how forced confessions are obtained, by torturing children while their parents are made to watch,” while Iraq’s torture chambers utilize “electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.” ...

We know what happened next with Bush and Iraq: a gigantic, catastrophic war based on what turned out to be the shoddiest of lies.

In Warmongering First State of the Union, Trump Doubles Down on Gitmo & Escalates Nuclear War Threat

U.S. general says North Korea not demonstrated all components of ICBM

North Korea’s nuclear program has made strides in recent months but the country has not yet demonstrated all the components of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), including a survivable re-entry vehicle, the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Tuesday.

Air Force General Paul Selva’s remarks confirmed an assessment by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in December that North Korea’s ICBM did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. ... “It is possible he has them, so we have to place the bet that he might have them, but he hasn’t demonstrated them,” Selva, the second highest-ranking U.S. military official, added. ...

Selva added he was confident that if required the United States would be able to destroy “most” of North Korea’s nuclear missile infrastructure. He declined to say what percentage of North Korean missiles the United States would be able to hit.

Trump's SOTU Calls for More Spending on Nuclear Weapons and Galvanizes Extremism

Trump signs order keeping Guantanamo Bay prison open

President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order announcing his intent to keep the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay open, the White House announced Tuesday.

Trump made it clear during his 2016 campaign for president that he wanted to keep Guantanamo open and “load it up with some bad dudes.” But the White House announcement, just before the president’s first State of the Union address, marked a formal reversal of President Barack Obama’s eight-year effort to close the detention center.

The order says the U.S. maintains the option to detain additional enemy combatants at the detention center in Cuba, when necessary. It requires the defense secretary to recommend criteria for determining the fate of individuals captured by the United States in armed conflict, including sending them to Guantanamo Bay.

Turkish warplanes reportedly hit targets in Iraq

According to Anadolu news agency, Turkish jets hit eight targets in northern Iraq, destroying shelters, hideouts and arsenals, belonging to militants, who were allegedly preparing to attack border posts. The airstrikes, that have yet to be commented on by Baghdad, have reportedly been carried out in Iraqi Zap, Avasin, Basyan, and Hakurk regions.

It hasn’t been immediately clear to which group the militants, who were targeted, belonged, however, the strikes took place amid the Afrin operation launched on January 20 in Syria. The area is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces-affiliated and US-backed YPG militias, which Ankara considers to be linked with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an armed conflict in Turkey seeking autonomy and equal rights for the Kurds in the country.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that Ankara “will be clearing our borders of terrorists up to the territory of Iraq.” The statement has been later echoed by the country’s foreign minister, who stated that Turkey is not going to limit its military operation to the Syrian Afrin region, and is ready to fight in Iraq.

U.S. lawmakers blast Trump decision to hold off on Russia sanctions

Members of the U.S. Congress, who passed new sanctions on Russia nearly unanimously last summer, criticized President Donald Trump on Tuesday for not imposing them, accusing him of being soft on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The Trump administration said on Monday it would not announce sanctions for now under the new law, intended to punish Moscow for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russia denies interfering in the campaign.

Democrats blasted the decision, accusing Trump of failing to do everything possible to deter any future foreign election interference. Trump, who wanted warmer ties with Moscow, opposed the legislation as it worked its way through Congress and signed it reluctantly in August.

Twenty Senate Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday saying the failure to impose sanctions was “unacceptable.”

Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there was “real concern” about possible Russian meddling in 2018 U.S. congressional and state elections, adding: “The president of the United States is not taking action to defend this nation.”

Mass Surveillance and the Memory Hole

Though it received disturbingly little attention – perhaps a symptom of desensitization to news that we are constantly being surveilled – it was recently revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) destroyed data about some of its surveillance activity that it was under court order to preserve. The NSA was ordered to save the data in 2007 because of pending lawsuits over the questionable legality of Bush ordered warrantless wiretaps of American digital and telecommunications. The data was evidence, and the NSA destroyed evidence.

It seems that the NSA not only destroyed evidence but serially mislead the courts by claiming that it was complying with court orders while it simultaneously was not in compliance: the NSA was not preserving internet communications that were intercepted for several years between 2001 and 2007. Though as late as 2014, the NSA was assuring the court that it was “preserving magnetic/digital tapes of the Internet content intercepted under the [Presidential Surveillance Program] since the inception of the program,” the NSA has now confessed that assurance “may have been only partially accurate.”

The NSA claims that the destruction of data happened unintentionally during a general cleaning undertaken to “free-up space.” It is remarkable that the NSA has managed to save virtually every communication that every one has made in case it could be used against him but was not competent enough to avoid accidentally deleting data that could be used against them. ...

Like the NSA, the CIA would need to employ the Orwellian memory hole to keep their secrets. In 2016, the CIA “mistakenly” destroyed its copy of the Senate report on detention and torture, and then, in an “inadvertent” error, deleted the hard disk backup. The report is full of files on the CIA’s use of torture techniques, including waterboarding. Like the NSA, the CIA was simultaneously assuring the court that it was compliantly preserving the document, and, like the NSA, the CIA claimed the deletion was “inadvertent.” ...

Evidence of illegal mass surveillance and of torture seem to go down the Washington memory hole like planes over the Bermuda Triangle.

U.K. Court Finds Government’s Surveillance Powers Unlawful

The U.K. government's mass surveillance powers were deemed unlawful on Tuesday in a court ruling that could force changes to the country’s spy laws.

Three judges at London’s Court of Appeal found that a sweeping data retention law, which allowed authorities to access people’s phone and email records, was not subject to adequate safeguards. The court ruled that access to the private data “should be restricted to the objective of fighting serious crime.” The court also said that such data should not be turned over to authorities until after a “prior review by a court or an independent administrative body.”

The case was originally brought by the Labour Member of Parliament Tom Watson following the introduction of the 2014 Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act. That law expired in 2016 and has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act, which expanded the government’s surveillance authority further, retroactively legalizing controversial spy tactics exposed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Human rights group Liberty, which represented Watson in the case, said Tuesday’s ruling meant parts of the Investigatory Powers Act – dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics – would now need to be reformed. ...

The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act forced telecommunications companies to store records on their customers’ emails and phone calls for 12 months. The Investigatory Powers Act broadened the data retention system by allowing the government to compel phone and internet companies to store not just email and phone records, but also logs showing the websites customers visited and the apps they used. Law enforcement agencies can then access this information without a court order or warrant for a broad range of reasons, not necessarily related to suspected criminal activity. They can obtain the data, for instance, if they judge it to be for the “purpose of protecting public health,” “in the interests of the economic well-being” of the U.K., or “for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department.”

'This is over': Puigdemont's Catalan independence doubts caught on camera

The ousted Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has admitted privately that his attempt to secure regional independence is over and claims he has been sacrificed by his own side, according to messages sent to a colleague and captured by TV cameras. On Wednesday, a Spanish TV show published messages that Puigdemont had sent to his former health minister Toni Comín while the latter was at an event in Leuven, Belgium, the previous evening.

Sent using the Signal messaging app and written in Catalan, the texts were caught by a TV camera behind Comín and aired by Telecinco’s Ana Rosa programme. They mention “the last days of republican Catalonia” and suggest the deposed leader is preparing to abandon his attempt to return to office. “I guess you’ve realised that this is over,” reads one. “Our people have sacrificed us. Or at least me.” It goes on to refer to the pro-independence Catalan MP Joan Tardà, who suggested at the weekend that Puigdemont could step aside to allow another candidate to become president: “You will be ministers (I hope and wish) but I’ve already been sacrificed just like Tardà said.”

Another says “The [Spanish government’s] plan has won,” before expressing the hope that the victory will lead to the release of the four Catalan leaders in prison.

The texts were sent around the same time that Puigdemont issued a defiant message on social media, calling for unity and saying he intended to return to the presidency after last December’s election, in which pro-independence parties held on to their majority in the regional parliament. ... He confirmed on Wednesday morning that he had sent the messages, but insisted he was still the best candidate to represent the Catalan people. “I am a journalist and I have always understood that there are limits, such as privacy, which should never be violated,” he wrote on Twitter. “I am human and I, too, have moments of doubt. I am also the president and I will not fold or back away out of respect for the gratitude I feel towards – and the commitment I have – to the citizens and the nation. Onwards!”

CDC head tasked with regulating tobacco just resigned for buying tobacco stocks

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stepped down after allegations that she’d bought stock in tobacco companies since taking her post last summer. The CDC is tasked with leading the U.S.’s anti-smoking efforts, as part of its broader mission.

About a month into her tenure as the director of the CDC, Brenda Fitzgerald bought between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of stocks in the tobacco giant Japan Tobacco, a report in Politico revealed on Tuesday. The company sells four brands of cigarettes in the U.S. through a subsidiary. ...

A day after Fitzgerald bought the Japan Tobacco stock, on Aug. 8, she toured the CDC’s tobacco lab, the site of government research into the harms of smoking. Fitzgerald also bought stock in drug companies Merck & Co., Bayer, and health insurance company Humana at the time.

A month later, she signed an ethics agreement and agreed to divest from tobacco company Philip Morris International.

In a Major Free Speech Victory, a Federal Court Strikes Down a Law that Punishes Supporters of Israel Boycott

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a Kansas law designed to punish people who boycott Israel is an unconstitutional denial of free speech. The ruling is a significant victory for free speech rights because the global campaign to criminalize, or otherwise legally outlaw, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has been spreading rapidly in numerous political and academic centers in the U.S. This judicial decision definitively declares those efforts — when they manifest in the U.S. — to be a direct infringement of basic First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The invalidated law, enacted last year by the Kansas legislature, requires all state contractors — as a prerequisite to receiving any paid work from the state — “to certify that they are not engaged in a boycott of Israel.” The month before the law was implemented, Esther Koontz, a Mennonite who works as a curriculum teacher for the Kansas public school system, decided that she would boycott goods made in Israel, motivated in part by a film she had seen detailing the abuse of Palestinians by the occupying Israeli government, and in part by a resolution enacted by the national Mennonite Church. The resolution acknowledged “the cry for justice of Palestinians, especially those living under oppressive military occupation for fifty years”; vowed to “oppose military occupation and seek a just peace in Israel and Palestine”; and urged “individuals and congregations to avoid the purchase of products associated with acts of violence or policies of military occupation, including items produced in [Israeli] settlements.”

A month after this law became effective, Koontz, having just completed a training program to teach new courses, was offered a position at a new Kansas school. But, as the court recounts, “the program director asked Ms. Koontz to sign a certification confirming that she was not participating in a boycott of Israel, as the Kansas Law requires.” Koontz ultimately replied that she was unable and unwilling to sign such an oath because she is, in fact, participating in a boycott of Israel. As a result, she was told that no contract could be signed with her.

In response to being denied this job due to her political views, Koontz retained the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the commissioner of education, asking a federal court to enjoin enforcement of the law on the grounds that denying Koontz a job due to her boycotting of Israel violates her First Amendment rights. The court on Thursday agreed and preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the law.

Trump caught on hot mic promising to release classified memo he may not have read

Republicans no longer need to wonder if President Donald Trump will back their plans to declassify a memo, written by their own party, alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI. After the State of the Union on Tuesday night, Trump said he “100 percent” would. ...

While making the rounds and shaking hands with lawmakers Tuesday night, the president came across Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan, who asked that Trump put the four-page memo out publicly.

“Mr. President, let’s release the memo,” Duncan said on a live C-SPAN camera feed from the House floor.

“Don’t worry, 100 percent,” Trump responded with a wave of his hand. “Can you imagine?”

CLIP: As President Trump exits the House Chamber, @RepJeffDuncan asks him to #ReleaseTheMemo. #SOTU #SOTU2018 pic.twitter.com/O1hHYFdPxM

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 31, 2018

FBI says it has “grave concerns” about classified Nunes memo

The FBI issued a rare public statement Wednesday, saying it was given just a day to review the mysterious classified memo before the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release it, and that it had “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.

“With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” according to the statement. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omission of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

The secret four-page memo, prepared by Republican committee chair Devin Nunes and alleging surveillance abuses in the Russia probe, has stirred widespread controversy over the past week, adding to the recent concerted Republican effort to discredit the FBI.

Chuck Schumer BRAGS About Caving To Trump & Funding Wall

Oh my, how awful! The climate change that the empire's knuckle-dragging leadership denies is happening may impair the the empire's ability to kill people.

Climate change threatens half of US bases worldwide, Pentagon report finds

Nearly half of US military sites are threatened by wild weather linked to climate change, according to a new Pentagon study whose findings run contrary to White House views on global warming.

Drought, wind and flooding that occurs due to reasons other than storms topped the list of natural disasters that endanger 1,700 military sites worldwide, from large bases to outposts, said the US Department of Defense (DoD).

“Changes in climate can potentially shape the environment in which we operate and the missions we are required to do,” said the DoD in a report accompanying the survey. “If extreme weather makes our critical facilities unusable or necessitates costly or manpower-intensive workarounds, that is an unacceptable impact.”

The findings put the military at odds with Donald Trump, who has repeatedly cast doubt on mainstream scientific findings about climate change, including this week during an interview on British television.

Trump’s “Backward-Looking” Speech Ignores Climate Change, While Pushing for “Beautiful, Clean Coal”

Trump SOTU Didn't Mention Climate Crisis Once. Sadly, Neither Did Democratic Response

Despite the fact that President Donald Trump used his first State of the Union address Tuesday night to celebrate "beautiful, clean coal" and further his war on the environment, the Democratic Party's official rebuttal to Trump's speech—delivered by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.)—didn't once mention the climate crisis or how Trump's policies threaten to dangerously accelerate its already horrific consequences.

Indeed, the word "climate" did not appear at all in Kennedy's speech; the only reference to Trump's assault on the environment came in one brief line buried within a discussion of the president's pro-corporate agenda and alleged Russian interference in U.S. elections.

Kennedy "didn't bring up global warming, sea-level rise, or the surge in global greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten to become worse as the Republican White House ramps up fossil fuel production to unprecedented levels," notes the Huffington Post's Alexander Kaufman.

These are glaring omissions, particularly given the abundance of signs all around us that the climate crisis is worsening at a terrifying rate.

Global use of mosquito nets for fishing 'endangering humans and wildlife'

Anti-malarial mosquito nets are being used to catch fish around the world, according to the first global survey, risking harm to people and fish stocks. More research is urgently needed to assess these impacts, say the scientists, but they also caution that the draconian bans on mosquito net fishing seen in some countries may cause more harm than good, particularly where people rely on the fish caught to survive.

More than 3 billion people around the world are at risk of malaria. Bed nets to repel the mosquitoes that transmit the deadly disease have played a huge role in cutting the toll it takes. The number of at-risk people able to sleep under nets rose from 2% to 49% in the decade to 2013, with malaria incidence falling by almost 40% over a similar period. ...

“If those nets aren’t being used for the purpose they are distributed for, then they are not reducing malaria.” said Nick Hill, also at ZSL (Zoological Society of London). The fine mesh size of the nets could also mean young fish are being caught, which could damage stocks. But Hill also warned that crackdowns, as seen in Mozambique where mosquito net fishing can now be punished with three years in prison, may not be the best response.

In a region in Mozambique where he works, Hill said women whose mosquito fishing nets were confiscated and burned then left their children at the police station, demanding that officers feed them instead. “If you put a young mum in prison for three years who is trying to look after young children, it could potentially have a hugely negative effect,” he said, adding that the root cause of lack of food needed to be addressed in such situations.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Hate of the Union

The Reality Winner Prosecution Relies on Secrecy and Fearmongering

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Fails Another Senate Test

Trump’s speech was bad. The Democrats' response to it was worse

Former Ambassador Reflects on Current Events

Bernie Sanders' Response to Trump State of the Union

A Little Night Music

The Cadillacs - All I Need

Speedo And The Cadillacs - It's Love

Speedo And The Cadillacs - Speedo Is Back

The Cadillacs - Great Googly Moo

Speedo And The Cadillacs - Sugar Sugar/About That Girl Named Lou

Speedo And The Cadillacs - Party For Two

The Cadillacs - Groovy Groovy Love

The Cadillacs - Zoom

The Cadillacs - Peek-A-Boo

The Cadillacs - Zoom Boom Zing

The Cadillacs - Copy Cat

The Cadillacs - Baby's Coming Home To Me