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“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

-- Lysander Spooner

News and Opinion

Israelis plumb new depths:

Israel Extracts “Confession” From Badly Wounded Cousin of Ahed Tamimi, Jailed Protest Icon

Early Monday morning, Israeli forces detained a teenage Palestinian boy who has been missing part of his skull since December, when he was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier during a protest against the occupation of his West Bank village. The boy, Mohammed Tamimi, 15, was one of 10 Palestinian residents of the village of Nabi Saleh arrested in a pre-dawn raid. Tamimi’s 17-year-old cousin, Ahed, has been in an Israeli military prison since December, when she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier outside her family home about an hour after Mohammed was shot. ...

The mystery as to why Israel would inflict such an obvious blow to its own image, by arresting a boy with severe head trauma, was resolved late Monday night in a Facebook post from Major General Yoav Mordechai, the senior Israeli official who oversees the military rule of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank. Maj. Gen. Mordechai revealed that during Mohammed’s interrogation by the military on Monday, without the presence of a parent or lawyer, the boy had “confessed” that “he was injured while he was riding his bicycle and fell off it.”

Mordechai, the head of Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), insisted that previously uncontested eyewitness reports in the Israeli, Palestinian and international media that Mohammed had fallen to the ground after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier were “fake news,” and accused the Tamimi family of “a culture of lies and incitement.” An Arabic-language version of the post included a screenshot of a report on the boy’s injury stamped with the words “fake news.”

“Israel arrested an injured, post-traumatic 15-year-old in the middle of the night and got him to lie out of fear of being sent to prison in his condition,” the Tamimi family said in a statement. To debunk the Israeli claim, the family also released Mohammed’s medical records, showing that he had undergone emergency surgery to remove a bullet from the left side of his head on the day he was shot in December. Images of the bullet, in a CAT scan of Mohammed’s brain before surgery, and after it was removed, were published by Israeli journalists.

And here is the CT scan of Mohammed Tamimi showing the bullet, & a photo of the bullet itself after the doctors took it out pic.twitter.com/wdytp9glq5

— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) February 27, 2018

U.S. State Dept. launches $40M Troll Farm

The State Department is launching a $40 million initiative to crack down on foreign propaganda and disinformation amid widespread concerns about future Russian efforts to interfere in elections.

The department announced Monday that it signed a deal with the Pentagon to transfer $40 million from the Defense Department’s coffers to bolster the Global Engagement Center, an office set up at State during the Obama years to expose and counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. The new influx of funds will bolster the center’s operations in the current fiscal year.

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight,” Steve Goldstein, the department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, said in a statement. “It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive.”

The new money will be used, in part, to supply grants to civil society groups, media providers, academic institutions, private companies and other organizations that are working on projects to counter disinformation.

Dems Ignore Trump’s Nuclear Recklessness With Russia, Because Of Course They Fucking Do

Democrats have been collaborating with Republicans to inflate the already staggering US military budget and exacerbate the new cold war, as well as expand Trump’s Orwellian spying powers and expand his unconstitutional war powers. Propaganda has been used to keep rank-and-file Democrats fixated on the more cosmetically awful aspects of this administration, as well as entirely fictional aspects like the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theories, while hiding its most horrific aspects from the spotlight. Fear Russia, fear Trump’s tweets, but pay no attention to the steadily mounting nuclear tensions behind the curtain.

The US-centralized empire is making an omnicidal gamble with its Russiagate vanity project as it attempts to maneuver Russia off the world stage to prevent the rise of any rival superpowers, already having killed Russians in Syria, expanded NATO, kept troops along Russia’s border, established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, forced Russian outlets to register as foreign agents, and allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine. Hot proxy conflicts and increasingly unclear lines could lead at any time to an inflammation in Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere which leads to a nuclear warhead being set off in the chaos and confusion, setting mutually assured destruction into motion and killing everything.

But sure, let’s talk about Trump’s fucking tweets instead.

The Democratic party does not resist Trump. Not in any meaningful way. If the most dangerous things about this administration are to be resisted, real resistance is going to have to come from ordinary human beings standing up and demanding change, and the Democratic party exists to prevent that from happening. The Democratic party exists to co-opt grassroots movements and divert their energy back towards the machine.

It is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is humanity versus the machine. Redraw the battle lines and fight the real war.

Col. Wilkerson: Trump's N. Korea Diplomacy 'Absurd'

Envoy's resignation leaves void at head of Trump's Korea diplomacy

Joseph Yun, the 30-year veteran of the US foreign service who retained quiet contacts with North Korea through the Trump administration’s turbulent first year, will retire this week – just as Washington and Pyongyang step up considerations for formal diplomatic talks. Yun will stand down as special representative for North Korean policy on Friday. He said his decision to retire was entirely his own but it comes at a surprising juncture, just as South Korea relayed that the North is open to direct discussions with the US.

His departure will leave the Trump administration without an envoy for engaging North Korea or an ambassador in South Korea. Yun, a former US ambassador to Malaysia, has been the state department’s point-man for its limited contact with the North Korean government through a back channel at the nation’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations in New York. The adversaries from the Korean war do not have formal relations and the so-called “New York channel” is the primary means for conveying messages.

“One of my accomplishments has been to open the New York channel soon after the Trump administration got in,” Yun told the Associated Press. “That allowed for direct talks and direct communication. Really, there is no problem with communicating. It’s problems of engagement that have been difficult.”

BBC Host Smashes Jeremy Corbyn Smear On Live TV

'There is no long-term vision': young Italians lose faith in politics

Federico is one of many young Italians eligible to go to the polls for the first time on Sunday to vote in national elections. Like many of his cohort, he is unimpressed by politics, but far from disengaged. “Of course, I will go to the voting booth,” said the 21-year-old engineering student at Roma Tre University. “But I will put a big cross through the ballot paper. None of the politicians are honest, all they do is use propaganda.” ... Accompanying him is Marco, a fellow engineering student who is unsure about whether to vote, but has nonetheless taken note of the candidates and finds them wanting.

Silvio Berlusconi has dominated Italian politics since the early 1990s, and came to power for the second time four years after the two students were born. Now, the 81-year-old billionaire’s coalition of rightwing parties is leading in the polls, as he attempts a comeback after years of scandal. “Berlusconi, he never goes away,” says Marco.

The two 21-year-olds are equally disenchanted with the youngest candidate in the running: Luigi Di Maio, the 31-year-old leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), which has morphed into Italy’s most popular party over the past nine years – mostly thanks to 25- to 40-year-olds inspired by its pledges to weed out corruption and bring down the old elite. “Look what’s happening to M5S now,” said Federico. “They said they would give part of their salaries towards helping small businesses, but [in some cases] it’s not true. They presented themselves as being different, but they’re the same as the rest.” ...

Surveys forecast that up to 40% of voters under 25 could abstain.

Italian Election: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

'Dystopia Intensifies' as Supreme Court Rules Immigrants Can Be Detained Indefinitely

In a decision that could be devastating for thousands who have been swept up by President Donald Trump's deportation dragnet and immensely profitable for the private prison industry, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that immigrants—including those with permanent legal status—do not have the right to bond hearings and can be detained indefinitely.

The 5-3 ruling tosses out a 2015 lower court decision that stated immigrant detainees are entitled to a bond hearing every six months. The Obama administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration continued the case.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ACLU—which represented the lead plaintiffs in the case—said the Supreme Court's decision "will impact the lives of thousands of people, including lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and survivors of torture."

"The government’s practice of locking up immigrants indefinitely, without even a hearing to determine if they pose a risk of flight or danger to the community, as they defend their right to remain in the U.S. is horrific," the group added. "As the Trump administration detains immigrants at record-breaking levels, tearing apart families and entire communities, we will not stop fighting for immigrants' constitutional rights."

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... so that we can lock them up in private detention centers indefinitely" https://t.co/DRUD6n4idX

— Jorge Rivas (@thisisjorge) February 27, 2018

Others expressed similar alarm at a ruling that effectively enshrines what was already the common practice of prolonged detention under Trump and his predecessors—which the three dissenting Supreme Court justices argued is a clear violation of the constitutional right to due process.

Janus v. AFSCME: Will Supreme Court Side with Koch Brothers in Their War Against Organized Labor?

Federal Reserve chairman tells Congress US economy 'remains strong'

The US economy “remains strong”, the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, told Congress on Tuesday as he signaled the central bank is on course to carry on gradually increasing interest rates in the coming months.

In his first congressional testimony since his appointment, Powell painted an upbeat picture of the country’s economic health and dismissed recent wobbles in the stock market.

“Some of the headwinds the US economy faced in previous years have turned into tailwinds,” said Powell. He told Congress his “personal outlook for the economy has strengthened since December”.

Powell managed to avoid controversy – one of the key aims of the Fed chair – ably deflecting politically charged questions about the US’s huge debts, the impact of Donald Trump’s recently announced $1.5tn tax cuts and income inequality. US stock markets barely moved during his testimony.

The Fed is expected to raise rates three times this year. “Further gradual increases in the federal funds rate will best promote attainment” of the Fed’s objectives of achieving full employment and controlling inflation, said Powell.

A Win-Win in Georgia: Delta Cuts Ties With NRA and Could Lose Its Stupid Tax Subsidy as a Result

February was supposed to be a good month for Delta Air Lines at Georgia’s state capitol. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal has been backing a tax bill that would give the company, which is headquartered in Georgia, a multimillion dollar subsidy for the purchase of jet fuel, a benefit it lost in 2015. Populists on the left and right were fighting to remove the giveaway from the tax package, House Bill 821, but Deal’s backing made it almost certain the company would once again be receiving a taxpayer cash.

All that changed over the weekend.

On Saturday, Delta joined a number of other corporations in cutting ties with the National Rifle Association, ending the NRA’s contract for discounted rates through Delta’s group travel program. ... Conservatives, enraged at Delta’s stance against the leading gun rights organization, rallied and demanded that the legislature kill the proposed tax break for jet fuel, which would primarily benefit Delta.

Oh yeah, giving guns to teachers to take to school is a great idea ...

Elementary kids find loaded gun teacher left in Pa. school bathroom

A teacher at a Pennsylvania Christian school accidently left her loaded pistol in a bathroom, where elementary school children found it, Pennsylvania State Police said Tuesday.

Beth Jean Dixon, 63, put her holstered pistol on a toilet tank when she used the unisex, one-toilet bathroom Aug. 25 at Cumberland Christian School, in Chambersburg, police said. They said she forgot about it and left.

Four children, ages 6 to 8, used the bathroom while the gun was on the toilet. One child told his parent, who told a teacher.

Dixon informed administrators what happened and immediately resigned from the school about 55 miles southwest of Harrisburg, police said.

Iowa grants gun permits to the blind

Iowa is granting permits to acquire or carry guns in public to people who are legally or completely blind. No one questions the legality of the permits. State law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability. ...

Private gun ownership — even hunting — by visually impaired Iowans is nothing new. But the practice of visually impaired residents legally carrying firearms in public became widely possible thanks to gun permit changes that took effect in Iowa in 2011.

"It seems a little strange, but the way the law reads we can't deny them (a permit) just based on that one thing," said Sgt. Jana Abens, a spokeswoman for the Polk County Sheriff's Department, referring to a visual disability.

Polk County officials say they've issued weapons permits to at least three people who can't legally drive and were unable to read the application forms or had difficulty doing so because of visual impairments. And sheriffs in three other counties — Jasper, Kossuth and Delaware — say they have granted permits to residents who they believe have severe visual impairments.

Chris Hedges. As usual, worth clicking the link for a full read:

Guns and Liberty

The proliferation of guns in American society is not only profitable for gun manufacturers, it fools the disempowered into fetishizing weapons as a guarantor of political agency. Guns buttress the myth of a rugged individualism that atomizes Americans, disdains organization and obliterates community, compounding powerlessness. Gun ownership in the United States, largely criminalized for poor people of color, is a potent tool of oppression. It does not protect us from tyranny. It is an instrument of tyranny.

“Second Amendment cultists truly believe that guns are political power,” writes Mark Ames, the author of “Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond.” “[They believe that] guns in fact are the only source of political power. That’s why, despite loving guns, and despite being so right-wing, they betray such a paranoid fear and hatred of armed agents of the government (minus Border Guards, they all tend to love our Border Guards). If you think guns, rather than concentrated wealth, equals political power, then you’d resent government power far more than you’d resent billionaires’ power or corporations’ hyper-concentrated wealth/power, because government will always have more and bigger guns. In fact you’d see pro-gun, anti-government billionaires like the Kochs as your natural political allies in your gun-centric notion of political struggle against the concentrated gun power of government.” ...

The gun culture permits a dispossessed public, sheared of economic and political power, to buy a firearm and revel in feelings of omnipotence. A gun reminds Americans that they are divine agents of purification, anointed by God and Western civilization to remake the world in their own image. Violence in America is not about the defense of liberty or radical change. It is an expression of domination, racism and hate. American vigilantes are the shock troops of capitalism. They butcher the weak on behalf of the strong. “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer,” the English novelist and essayist D.H. Lawrence wrote. “It has never yet melted.” ...

If the ruling elites feared an armed uprising, a draconian form of gun control would instantly be law. But the engine of gun ownership is not the fear of government. It is the fear by white people of the black and brown underclass, an underclass many whites are convinced will threaten them as society breaks down. Guns, largely in the hands of whites, have rarely been deployed against the state. In this, the United States is an exception. It has a heavily armed population and yet maintains political stability. The few armed rebellions—the 1786 and 1787 Shays’ Rebellion, the 1921 armed uprising by 10,000 coal miners at Blair Mountain in West Virginia—were swiftly and brutally put down by militias and armed vigilantes hired by capitalists. These uprisings were about specific grievances, not systemic change. Revolution is foreign to our intellectual tradition.

As jobs and manufacturing are shipped overseas, communities crumble, despair grips much of the country and chronic poverty plagues American families, the gun seems to be the last tangible relic of a free and mythic America. It offers the illusion of power, protection and freedom. This is why the powerless will not give it up.

'We got Bannoned': Trump aide Hope Hicks frustrates House panel on Russia

A member of the House intelligence committee said “We got Bannoned” on Tuesday, after a closed-door interview with Hope Hicks, a key aide to Donald Trump, as part of the panel’s Russia investigation.

Bloomberg reported that Denny Heck, a Washington Democrat, invoked Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager and White House strategist, who refused to answer some questions in front of the panel.

The House is now considering whether to hold Bannon in contempt.

A Republican, Chris Stewart of Utah, said Hicks would not answer questions about events and conversations since Trump took office.

Arctic temperatures are so high they’re shocking scientists

“Crazy,” “weird,” and “wacky.” That’s how scientists are describing the temperature in the Arctic.

Over the weekend, the world’s northernmost weather station, located just 440 miles from the North Pole, warmed to 43 degrees Fahrenheit during what’s normally the coldest time of the year. That’s about 60 degrees above average for February. The rising temperatures, caused by a “warm air intrusion,” have left scientists in shock. Sea ice in the region is also at its lowest level on record.

The 9th day in a row (and larger than ever): temperatures more than 15°C warmer than the average over eastern Greenland and the central Arctic (where there still is polar night). I seriously consider revising the @PolarPortal colour scale. pic.twitter.com/klaEAfvzuQ

— Martin Stendel (@MartinStendel) February 27, 2018

The Arctic winter lasts from October to March and leaves much of the region in almost permanent darkness. During that time, the average temperature hovers around minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. But so far in 2018, the Cape Morris Jesup meteorological site, at the northern tip of Greenland, has seen a record-breaking 61 hours of temperatures above freezing.

'Truly Wicked': Trump EPA Dissolves Program That Studies Effects of Chemical Exposure on Children

Finally America's children will be allowed to choke on the freedom of a lighter regulatory burden https://t.co/w0w5qPO2g6

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) February 27, 2018

As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the leadership of Scott Pruitt moves to make it easier for big industry to dump dangerous chemicals into the nation's air and water, the agency announced late Monday that it is dissolving a program that funds studies on the effects of pollution and chemical exposure on America's children.

Called the National Center for Environmental Research (NCER), the program previously provided millions of dollars in grants per year to researchers studying the effects of chemicals on children's health. The EPA's move, first reported by The Hill, will eliminate the NCER in the process of consolidating three EPA offices.

Critics responded to the move with outrage, denouncing it as "truly wicked" and further proof of the Trump administration's willingness to sacrifice the health of the public in the service of its corporate-friendly deregulatory agenda.

Also of Interest

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

Unlearning War

Daniel Ellsberg on dismantling the doomsday machine

DCCC Internal Polling Presented to Members of Congress Panned Single Payer Health Care

The Story Behind the California Democratic Party Convention’s Floor Fracas

Saturn’s moon could harbor alien microbial life

A Little Night Music

The Raelettes (Mable John lead vocal) - Bad Water

Mable John - Stay Out Of The Kitchen

Mable John - Your Good Thing (is about to end)

Mable John - Running Out

Mable John - It's Catching

Mable John - No Love

Mable John - Wait You Dog

Mable John - Don't Get Caught

Mable John - Problems

Mable John - No Love

Mable John - Sweet Devil

Mable John - Same Time Same Place

Mable John - Looking For A Man

Mable John - Shouldn't I Love Him

Mable John - Look At Me

Mable John - Interview with Jools Holland