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This evening's music features blues piano player and songwriter Eddie Boyd. Enjoy!

“Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?”

-- Terry Pratchett

News and Opinion

Congress opts to keep supporting brutal war in Yemen, but activists say “tide is turning”

In a closer-than-expected result, lawmakers voted 55-44 against curbing U.S. military activity in Yemen, narrowly defeating the bipartisan legislation put forward by Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. But human rights advocates were heartened by what they believe is a growing opposition to America’s unconditional support for Saudi Arabia’s controversial campaign in Yemen. “Today should have been the day that the Senate moved to end U.S. involvement in this catastrophe.” said Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s policy lead for Yemen. “But it is clear from today’s debate that the tide is turning,”

Paul was likely referring to the timing of the vote, which, despite urgent requests from the White House and the Pentagon, took place just as Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman visited with President Donald Trump at the White House. Trump praised the young leader as a “very great friend” to America; hours later the Senate debated the bill.

Congressional leaders sought to use the Crown Prince’s much-touted visit to press the White House and its powerful Middle East ally to end the brutal war in Yemen, along with the U.S. military’s involvement in it. They did so while facing opposition from the executive branch and the military. Ahead of the visit, Secretary of Defense James Mattis penned a personal letter to U.S. senators, urging them to halt the vote, and warning that such an effort risked straining relations and compromising American interests in the region. ...

Still, advocates see a silver lining in Tuesday’s vote. Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen during the Obama administration, said the bill was “a reflection of growing anxiety over the humanitarian situation in Yemen and a sense that Saudi Arabia hasn't exercised its caution as it should under the laws of armed conflict.”

Roll Call on Yemen

Click the link to go to the Senate site for the vote summary on last night's vote (failed) to end U.S. military aggression on Yemen.

'Samantha Em-Powers Genocide in Yemen': Students Protest US Role in Saudi War

The New CIA Director Nominee and the Massacre at My Lai

We know what the U.S. Army soldiers did 50 years ago. In what is now called the My Lai massacre, U.S. soldiers executed 182 women including 17 pregnant women and raped many of them before they were killed. They murdered 173 children, 68 of whom were five years old or younger and they executed 89 middle aged persons and 60 persons over the age of 60, some of whom were burned alive, tortured, gang-raped, scalped and had their tongues cut out during the rampage of the U.S. Army soldiers. And we now know that Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee for CIA director was the CIA senior officer in charge of a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002 in which prisoners were tortured – waterboarded (one person 82 times), kept in dog cages for weeks at a time, put into coffin boxes with things they were afraid of. To cover up her crimes, she ordered the destruction of the videotapes of the torture that happened in her prison. ...

After several years of investigation, out of 26 men initially charged, platoon leader Lieutenant William Calley was the only person court-martialed and found guilty – of killing 22 villagers, and given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest at Fort Bragg, NC and never spent one day in jail. President Nixon ultimately pardoned Calley. Forty years later, in 2007, CIA whistleblower Jon Kiriakou revealed to the world that the CIA was waterboarding prisoners in secret and not-so-secret prisons in many parts of the world. Kiriakou was imprisoned for almost two years for revealing that the CIA was torturing persons but none of those – including CIA director nominee Gina Haspel – who made torture a policy of the CIA or actually committed the acts of torture, including waterboarding, were ever charged with a crime. ...

The sad history of our country is that murders and executions (remember the extrajudicial drone assassinations ordered by Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump) are acts that continue to be the policy of our country. These acts are known throughout the world, but seldom spoken about in the United States. That President Trump would nominate a known torturer to be the director of the CIA is horrific. Her confirmation by the U.S. Congress would be a tragedy.

American Public Troubled by ‘Deep State’

“Public Troubled by Deep State” is the headline that the Monmouth University Polling Institute tags to its recent poll.  Acknowledging that polling about the term “Deep State” is problematic because “few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term ‘Deep State,’” the pollsters at Monmouth defined the term as follows for their interviewees: “The term Deep State refers to the possible existence of a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy.” Then they asked whether such a group exists.

Monmouth reports the results as follows: “Nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not).” These opinions do not follow a partisan divide. ...

The report also asked about government surveillance of the citizenry and here again there is widespread concern: Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%) who say this activity is widespread and another 29% who say such monitoring happens but is not widespread. Just 14% say this monitoring does not happen at all. There are no substantial partisan differences in these results. ...

We can add to the concern about a manipulative unelected apparatus at work in the government the widespread distrust of the press summarized in this recent Gallup/Knight poll:

“*Today, 66% of Americans say most news media do not do a good job of separating fact from opinion. In 1984, 42% held this view.

“*Less than half of Americans, 44%, say they can think of a news source that reports the news objectively.

Turkey Threatens to Attack Syrian Town Held by US Troops

Turkey renewed threats Monday to attack a town in northeastern Syria where a small contingent of U.S. troops is based, raising the stunning possibility of a clash between NATO allies.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his forces and allied Free Syrian Army militias would press on with attacks against Manbij and several other northeastern Syrian towns held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces "until we completely abolish this [terrorist] corridor." Erdogan spoke after his troops captured the border town of Afrin, which had been held by the Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG), which is the dominant force in the SDF.

"Many of the terrorists had turned tail and run away already," he said in a speech. "In Afrin's center, it is no longer the rags of the terror organization that are waving but rather the symbols of peace and security."

Monitoring groups charged that hundreds of civilians were killed and tens of thousands of refugees fled in the taking of Afrin in what Turkey is calling Operation Olive Branch. "Civilian casualties, not getting humanitarian assistance, a growing humanitarian crisis -- it's got to be stopped, it's got to be averted," said Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman.

Sarkozy faces second day of questioning in Libya probe

US-South Korea Spring War Games to Be Scaled Back This Year

Having delayed the start of the operations because of the Winter Olympics, military officials from the US and South Korea. The annual spring war games in South Korea will be held beginning April 1. Perhaps more interestingly, they will be smaller in scope and much shorter in duration than recent years, reflective of diplomatic progress on the peninsula, and an upcoming summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. ...

This timing decision was likely to have been made because of upcoming Trump-Kim talks, which are not dated yet, but are planned to happen “by May.” Holding such talks amid US war games would be very difficult, so likely the summit itself will be shortly thereafter, in May.

Hmmm. It takes the experts at the UN OPCW agency three weeks to do testing on materials and come to a conclusion as to what sort of chemical agents were involved. Kinda makes one wonder how it is that the Brits were able to come to a conclusion so quickly after the incident.

Tests of substance in UK attack on ex-Russian spy to take 3 weeks

“Upon the request of the British government, the OPCW has deployed some experts to the UK and they will collect some samples,” Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told a news briefing at the United Nations. ...

Uzumcu added that results of the analysis will take “three weeks ahead at least.”

@aaronjmate
UK police announce they have found Vladimir Putin's wallet at the scene of the spy poisoning crime. He must've dropped it. Plus Assad's wallet and the wallets of the entire Iranian Supreme Council. @MaxBlumenthal @LeeCamp @jimmy_dore @caitoz @JulianAssange

— Garland Nixon (@GarlandNixon) March 13, 2018

Palestinian Ahed Tamimi accepts prison term plea deal

A 17-year-old Palestinian girl who was filmed slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers outside her home has accepted a plea deal under which she will serve eight months in prison, her lawyer has said. Under the deal, offered by the military prosecution on Wednesday, Ahed Tamimi is expected to plead guilty to four charges, including assault, incitement and two counts of obstructing soldiers.

Tamimi’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said the sentence would include four months already served and a fine of 5,000 shekels (£1,017). The deal was made during a closed-door hearing but must still be approved by the military court, she added. Tamimi, who was arrested in the middle of the night and since denied bail, potentially faced years in prison for 12 charges including assaulting security forces and throwing stones.

A high-profile trial with images showing Tamimi smiling while in shackles has thrown the teenager into the centre of a debate regarding Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Tamimi’s supporters hailed her as an icon of Palestinian resistance; rights groups said she posed no apparent threat and argue her case epitomises the brutality borne from half a decade of Israeli army rule.

Israel just warned Iran it won’t tolerate another nuclear power in the region

Top Israeli officials put their regional enemies – specifically Iran – on notice Wednesday, warning it wouldn’t hesitate to repeat an airstrike that destroyed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.

The implied threat came after Israel admitted for the first time that it had bombed a suspected nuclear reactor at the Al-Kubar complex near Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, releasing previously classified footage and intelligence on the Sept. 6, 2007 raid.

The Israeli military said the night-time strike by eight fighter jets on the facility, which was months away from being completed and was being built with North Korean help, had eliminated “an emerging existential threat to Israel and the entire region.” Israel had long been suspected of carrying out the strike, but had never admitted it until Wednesday, after Israeli military censors lifted restrictions over the operation.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the strike should serve as a lesson to Israel’s regional enemies. ... His colleague, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, made the warning to Iran explicit. “The courageous decision of the Israeli government almost 11 years ago to destroy the nuclear reactor in Syria and the successful operation following it sends a clear message: Israel will never allow nuclear weapons to countries like Iran who threaten its existence,” he tweeted.

Police can’t keep their story straight about the unarmed black man they shot and killed in Sacramento

The Sacramento Police Department keeps changing its story about an unarmed black man two of its officers shot and killed in his own backyard on Sunday night.

First, the officers thought he had a gun. Then, the department said he had a “toolbar.” A day later on Monday night, police issued a final clarification: The suspect was carrying a cell phone.

The man, whom the Sacramento Bee identified as 22-year-old Stephon Clark, was fatally shot on his own property by police on Sunday night. Officers were responding to reports of a man breaking car windows near his house and said they initially believed the suspect was armed. In a statement released after the fatal shooting, however, police said the suspect had a “toolbar” that he’d allegedly been using to break into cars — not a gun.

It wasn’t until a full day later that police clarified the suspect had nothing on him that could have been perceived as a weapon. He was carrying a cell phone.

Officers said they spotted Clark from a helicopter, which they were using to look for the person who’d been reported to be breaking car windows. From the chopper, they say they saw a suspect break a car window and run into a yard that turned out to be Clark’s family home, according to police statements. Two officers pursued him there on foot. They ordered Clark to stop and show his hands. When instead Clark turned around and fled instead, they pursued him. Officers then confronted him in the back yard, and “fearing for their safety,” according to the police statement, they fired multiple shots, which killed Clark.

What the Dan Lipinski-Marie Newman Democratic Primary in Illinois Means

A race that was considered a bellwether of the Democratic Party’s future, the contest between U.S. Rep. Daniel Lipinski and Marie Newman for the Democratic nomination to represent Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, went, fittingly, late into the night without a clear winner. Finally, with 96 percent of the precincts counted by early Wednesday, The Associated Press called the race for Lipinski, who had a lead of about 1,600 votes out of the roughly 90,000 that were cast. ...

The race also answered a different question, one that is perhaps more relevant to the future of the party: Can the progressive Democrats mount a powerful enough challenge to entrenched, well-funded incumbents that they can threaten the status quo?

The answer to that question, clearly, is yes. Lipinski held on, but he got the kind of political scare that no incumbent wants. Newman, taking the stage at her election night party at Marz Taproom in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, declined to concede the race, but said that whatever happens, voters had shocked Lipinski into more progressive positions. “No matter what happens tomorrow, we have moved him on immigration, we have moved him on healthcare. I scared the crap out of him on $12 vs. $15” — a reference to their debate over the minimum wage. She continued, “There’s many things we can move him on more, so let’s be clear. The fight is not over. It’s not done.”

Liz Cheney’s GOP Primary Challenger Rips Into Her for Defending Torture

The news that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would oppose CIA nominee Gina Haspel for her complicity in Bush-era torture perhaps hit a little too close to home for Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. The congressional representative, who is the daughter of former vice president and torture architect Dick Cheney, took to Twitter and accused Paul of “defending and sympathizing with terrorists.” ... After Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, too, evinced some skepticism about Haspel’s nomination, Cheney gave him a Twitter lecture as well. “The Enhanced Interrogation Program saved lives, prevented attacks, & produced intel that led to Osama bin Laden,” Cheney wrote in response to McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “No one should slander the brave men & women who carried out this crucial program.”

Cheney’s salvo at Paul drew fire from the lone declared challenger in the GOP primary for Cheney’s at-large Wyoming congressional district. Rod Miller tore into Cheney in a phone interview with The Intercept. He objected both to the incivility of accusing a senator of sympathizing with terrorists, and her advocacy for torture. “Whether or not you agree or disagree with Rand Paul, he’s a sitting United States senator and he represents the people of his state, and he should be accorded respect and civility due his position in the Senate,” Miller said. “And for Cheney to tee off on him and to accuse him of language like that — in my mind, it’s another step towards what I consider destructive polarization of our political lives today.” ...

The people of Wyoming, Miller continued, don’t believe the government should be able to torture people.

“We’re a really red state. We’re crusty, old conservative cowboys and miners, and we’re rough and tough and opinionated, but we are not torturers,” he said. “To have our at-large congresswoman, our only member of the U.S. House of Representatives defend torture indicates to me that she doesn’t know the people of Wyoming as well as I do. Because we’re not the state of torture. Patriots? Yes. Support the military? Yes. But torturers? No.”

Russia is already meddling in U.S. midterm elections, senators warn

Senators at the Capitol Hill hearing on election security Wednesday had a unified message for the Homeland Security chief: The Russian threat to our 2018 elections is already happening, and we need urgent action.

The Senate Intelligence Committee grilled DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and former DHS heads about the lack of election security in the 2016 election, and the ongoing threat to the 2018 midterms. Senators urged the department to be more transparent about election vulnerabilities and enact tougher security measures to deter interference. ...

At Wednesday’s hearing, senators pointed out state election system vulnerabilities. Fourteen states used at least some machines without an auditable paper trail in 2016, and five states used only machines without paper trails. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen agreed with the need for paper ballots, or alternative auditable systems. She stressed that election security reforms are voluntary for states, but assured the committee that DHS is working with all states that ask for help. The Department is also working to get three officials from each state, 150 total, federal security clearances so that they can be well briefed on relevant national security threats. So far just 20 officials have received clearances.

Cambridge Analytica: Far from the only one

Cambridge Analytica CEO caught on tape saying company’s Facebook scam helped elect Trump

Top executives at Cambridge Analytica touted their role in getting Donald Trump elected to America's highest office, according to the latest undercover video released by Channel 4 News.

"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy," Cambridge Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix said in the video, adding that he’d met Trump “many times.” He pointed to his firm's use of “unattributable and untraceable” information warfare as a key differentiator, which allowed them to influence campaigns while avoiding greater government scrutiny.

Despite Nix’s boasts, Cambridge Analytica's portion of the Trump campaign spend was comparatively limited. The Trump campaign paid the company $5.9 million during the campaign out of the roughly $325 million it spent. The pro-Trump super PAC Make America Number One also paid Cambridge Analytica more than $1.2 million out of $19.6 million spent.

Cambridge Analytica was offered politicians' hacked emails, witnesses say

The data analytics firm that worked on the Donald Trump election campaign was offered material from Israeli hackers who had accessed the private emails of two politicians who are now heads of state, witnesses have told the Guardian. Multiple sources have described how senior directors of Cambridge Analytica – including its chief executive, Alexander Nix – gave staff instructions to handle material provided by computer hackers in election campaigns in Nigeria and St Kitts and Nevis.

They claim there were two episodes in 2015 that alarmed members of staff and led them to refuse to handle the data, which they assumed would have been obtained illegally. ...

Hired by a Nigerian billionaire to support the re-election of Goodluck Jonathan, Cambridge Analytica was paid an estimated £2m to orchestrate a ferocious campaign against his rival, the opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari. Jonathan lost out to Buhari in the presidential race. There is no suggestion Jonathan knew of the covert operation.

Staff working on the campaign say in early 2015 they met Israeli cybersecurity contractors in Cambridge Analytica’s offices in Mayfair, London. Employees say they were told the meeting was arranged by Brittany Kaiser, a senior director at the firm. The Guardian and Observer have been told the Israelis brought a laptop from their office in Tel Aviv and handed employees a USB stick containing what they believed were hacked personal emails. Sources said Nix, who was suspended on Tuesday, and other senior directors told staff to search for incriminating material that could be used to damage opposition candidates, including Buhari. ...

One member of the campaign team told the Guardian and Observer that the material they believed had been hacked included Buhari’s medical records. “I’m 99% sure of that. Or if they didn’t have his medical records they at least had emails that referred to what was going on.”

Zuckerberg said set to speak on data scandal

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to speak sometime in the next day with a "focus on rebuilding trust." ...

The person gave no further details on timing or where Zuckerberg will speak. But the person said the CEO's plan was "always to speak publicly" about Facebook's latest privacy scandal, which involves Trump campaign consultants who allegedly stole data on tens of millions of Facebook users in order to influence elections. ... Twitter users have been asking, using the "WhereIsZuck" hashtag.

“Environmental Extremism” or Necessary Response to Climate Emergency? Pipeline Shutdown Trials Pit Activists Against the Oil Industry

An activist in Montana was sentenced on Tuesday in a case that has become both a touchstone for industry-friendly legislators pushing to increase penalties for pipeline protest and a measure of the U.S. legal system’s ability to recognize the emergency presented by climate change. On October 11, 2016, while the Dakota Access pipeline protests were in full force, climate activists approached above-ground valve sites on five tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state. After calling the pipeline companies to give warning, they turned the valve wheels in a coordinated attempt to stop the flow of tar sands oil.

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing tested a Montana court’s willingness to apply the severe penalties already available for use against pipeline protesters. For halting the flow of oil through Enbridge’s Express pipeline for several hours, Leonard Higgins, a 66-year-old retired information technology manager for the state of Oregon, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for charges of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief. Higgins was sentenced to three years’ probation and $3,755 in restitution to the pipeline company. ...

Enbridge had initially claimed more than $200,000 in losses, a figure later reduced to $25,630, including $16,000 worth of replacement chains to secure valves along the pipeline against future tampering. “The courts and the juries are not hammering individuals in the way these corporations would like to see, so they attempt to use the restitution process to grossly inflate their damage numbers with hope that threatening the citizen with $200,000 might chill others from committing similar acts,” said Lauren Regan, Higgins’s attorney.

Although the sentence is lenient in light of the possible penalties Higgins faced, it does not represent a full win for the activists. Higgins’s legal team had hoped Judge Daniel Boucher would allow them to argue that, given the severity of the climate threat, he had no choice but to act — a strategy known as a necessity defense. But Boucher said that since Higgins appeared to fear harm to his children and grandchildren, rather than an imminent threat to his own life, the defense could not apply. In his denial, Boucher wrote, “The energy policy of the United States is not on trial, nor will this court allow Higgins to attempt to put it on trial.”

Since a goal of the valve action was to set legal precedent for future climate protesters, Higgins’s legal team plans to appeal the denial, demanding a retrial. The move would not open the door to a more severe sentence. Judges assigned to valve turner cases in North Dakota and Washington also rejected the necessity defense, and the activists’ legal teams are also appealing.

Alarm Sounds After EU Regulators Greenlight Bayer-Monsanto #MergerFromHell

After weeks of speculation, chemical giant Bayer and biotech behemoth Monsanto have cleared a significant regulatory hurdle in their bid to consolidate into one company through a multibillion-dollar deal that critics are calling the "merger from Hell."

Ahead of its April deadline, on Wednesday the European Commission—the European Union's executive arm—approved Bayer's proposed takeover of U.S.-based Monsanto, claiming that concessions made by the companies alleviated competition concerns that critics have raised with regulators in both Europe and the United States. Although the Commission's decision is a major win for the companies, U.S. regulators have not yet weighed in. Still, Wednesday's announcement alarmed activists that have spent months protesting the deal.

"This merger will create the world's biggest and most powerful agribusiness corporation, which will try to force its genetically modified seeds and toxic pesticides into our food and countryside," warned Adrian Bebb, a food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. "The Commission decision also allows them, together with BASF, to become data giants in agriculture—the 'Facebooks of farming'—with all the pitfalls that entails," Bebb added. "The coming together of these two is a marriage made in hell—bad for farmers, bad for consumers, and bad for our countryside." BASF—a German company, like Bayer — has agreed to buy assets from Bayer, which has been key to winning over regulators. ...

"The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated, giving a handful of massive firms a strangle hold on food production," noted Bart Staes, a food safety spokesman for The Greens–European Free Alliance." Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse."

“The Battle for Paradise”: Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism & the Fight for Puerto Rico’s Future

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Legacy of Blood — the 55-Year U.S. War Against Iraqis

The Untold Story of My Lai: How and Why the Official Investigation Covered Up General Westmoreland’s Responsibility

On The 50th Anniversary Of MLK’s Death, Remember That The FBI Are Pure Scum

Why the lost kingdom of Patagonia is a live issue for Chile's Mapuche people

'Energetically Corrupt' Mulvaney Gave Green Light to Delete Data on Trump's Tip-Stealing Rule

Climate Tutorials' Pit Planet Wreckers Against Major Cities in Historic Court Hearing

A Little Night Music

Eddie Boyd - Playmate Shuffle

Eddie Boyd - Where you Belong

Eddie Boyd - I'm Commin' Home

Eddie Boyd - I'm Goin' Downtown

Eddie Boyd - It's Miserable To Be Alone

Eddie Boyd - Early Grave

Eddie Boyd - The Blues Is Here To Stay

Eddie Boyd - Hello Mr Highway Man

Eddie Boyd - Blue Coat Man

Eddie Boyd and the Chess Men - Nothing But Trouble

Eddie Boyd - I Had to Let Her Go