Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Little Eva. Enjoy!

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

News and Opinion

Independent Swiss Lab Says 'BZ Toxin' Used In Skripal Poisoning; US/UK-Produced, Not Russian

Somebody has some explaining to do... or did the Syrian airstrikes just 'distract' the citizenry from the reality surrounding the Skripal poisoning.

Remember how we were told my the politicians (not the scientists) that a deadly Novichok nerve agent - produced by Russia - was used in the attempted assassination of the Skripals? ... Ever wonder why, given how utterly deadly we were told this chemical was, the Skripals wondered around for a few hours after being 'infected' and then days later, survived with no chronic damage?

Well those doubts may well have just been answered as according to the independent Swiss state Spiez lab, the substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, which was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

RT reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW), that Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ.

The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. ...

On a side note, the Swiss lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.

[See also Gareth Porter's piece: An Alternative Explanation to the Skripal Mystery - js]

The Beeb: American propaganda with a posh accent.

BBC Reporter Discourages Syria Questions Due To “Information War” With Russia

A BBC interview is making the rounds today among opponents of western interventionism in Syria. The subject of the interview, Admiral Alan West, voiced some much needed skepticism about the establishment narrative around the alleged gas attack in Douma. Everybody’s talking about it because West is an empire loyalist that nobody in their right mind would accuse of being an “Assad apologist” or “useful idiot of the Kremlin”, as anyone else who doesn’t swallow the official story hook, line and sinker is uniformly labeled.

West made some sensible comments about the White Helmets and the fact that Jaysh al-Islam had far more incentive to stage such an attack than Assad had to perpetrate it. Even more helpful was his personal account of having been aggressively pressured to make false reports about the success of the British bombing campaign in Bosnia, suggesting that those pressures can lead to bad intelligence and erroneous military responses. ...

So that’s a very significant addition to the dialogue. For me, though, the most interesting comments made in that interview came not from West, but from the BBC reporter who was interviewing him. In the latter half of the interview, BBC’s Annita McVeigh asked the following questions after West’s comment about Bosnia:

“We know that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, or accused a western state on Friday, of perhaps fabricating evidence in Douma or somehow being involved in what happened in Douma. Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and your profile? Isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?”

... You know you’re in trouble when the military man tries to do the journalist’s job by asking questions and holding power to account… and the journalist tries to stop him.

Unlimited Worldwide War: ACLU Warns Senate Against Giving Trump Blank Check to Declare War

UK PM’s husband’s Capital Group is largest shareholder in BAE, shares soar since Syrian airstrikes

Philip May, husband of the UK prime minister, works for a company that is the largest shareholder in arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, whose share price has soared since the recent airstrikes in Syria.

The company, Capital Group, is also the second-largest shareholder in Lockheed Martin – a US military arms firm that supplies weapons systems, aircraft and logistical support. Its shares have also rocketed since the missile strikes last week.

The fact has not gone unnoticed by some on Twitter, who agree that BAE Systems has done very well out of the UK-US-France allied airstrikes on Syria, which were sanctioned by Theresa May. It has been reported that the UK’s contribution to military strikes was to fire eight ‘Storm-Shadow’ missiles at an alleged chemical weapons facility, each of which cost £790,000 ($1.13 million) – totaling £6.32 million ($9 million). The missiles were manufactured by BAE Systems. ...

Theresa May’s husband has worked as a relationship manager for the research investment company Capital Group since 2005. The Tory-BAE links go even deeper, however. The former chancellor of the exchequer and present editor-in-chief at the Evening Standard, George Osborne’s other employer Black Rock is the fifth-largest shareholder in BAE Systems.

America’s #1 Weapons Salesman: Trump Promotes U.S. Arms Manufacturers & Weakens Export Rules

Chemical weapons inspectors' security team fired on in Douma

A UN security team doing reconnaissance at the site of an attack in the Syrian town of Douma has come under gunfire, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said, further delaying the arrival of chemical weapons inspectors. The OPCW director general, Ahmet Uzumcu , told a meeting at the organisation’s headquarters in The Hague on Wednesday that the security team had been forced to withdraw. Uzumcu said that when a reconnaissance team arrived at one site, a large crowd gathered and the team withdrew. At a second site “the team came under small-arms fire and an explosive was detonated. The reconnaissance team returned to Damascus.”

The delay in the inspectors’ arrival, 10 days after the attack, will raise fresh concerns over the relevance of the OPCW investigation and possible evidence-tampering.

The source of the gunfire is unclear. The Syrian government said on Sunday it had “purified” Douma and the broader area of eastern Ghouta, which had been under siege for years and subjected to a number of chemical attacks, of “terrorists”. Under the terms of a surrender deal negotiated after the chemical attack, Douma was to be emptied of heavy and medium weaponry, but those who stayed behind were allowed to keep light arms.

The OPCW does not usually comment on operational matters, such as details of when it would be able to visit a site, for security reasons. The Syrian White Helmets has pinpointed the locations where the victims of the attack are buried for the inspectors, the rescue organisation’s head, Raed Saleh, said. The OPCW team will seek evidence from soil samples, interviews with witnesses, blood, urine or tissue samples from victims and weapon parts. More than a week after the attack, however, hard evidence might be difficult to trace.

Syria: Chemical weapons experts delayed after gunfire in Douma

Iran’s president vows to arm the country against “invading powers”

Iran’s president struck a defiant tone at a military parade Wednesday, vowing that his country would make or buy whatever weapons it deemed necessary to deter “invading powers” that were encroaching in the region, in an apparent reference to the recent Western strikes on Syria. Speaking before a parade crowd in Tehran for Iran’s National Army Day, President Hassan Rouhani said his country didn’t need the world’s consent to arm itself against its enemies.

“We are not living in a normal region, and we see invading powers have built bases around us. Disregarding the principles of international law, they intervene in regional affairs and invade other countries without U.N. permission,” he said.

“We tell the world that we will produce or acquire any weapons we need, and will not wait for their approval ... We tell our neighbouring countries that our weapons are not against you; it’s for deterrence.”

U.S. Nuclear Submarine That Attacked Syria 'Not Welcome' Back to Naples, Italy

The U.S. nuclear submarine that took part in a series of missile strikes conducted by U.S., French and U.K. warships and warplanes against suspected Syrian chemical weapons sites is not welcome near the waters of one of Italy's largest seaports, according to the city's mayor.

Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris wrote last week to Rear Admiral Arturo Faraone, head of the city's port authority, complaining that the official had given permission to allow Virginia-class submarine USS John Warner to pass through the Gulf of Naples on March 20, following a two-week exercise by Western military alliance NATO. Magistris argued that he had designated the city a "denuclearized zone" in a 2015 act that sought to "prohibit docking and parking of any vessel that is nuclear-powered or contains nuclear weapons" and declared Naples a "city of peace," according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

"Our administration is not against anyone but it is in favor of policies of peace, disarmament and international cooperation," de Magistris told Italian news service Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata on Monday. "It is in favor of diplomacy so that international institutions like the U.S. are the lead players in moments of crisis.

"The fact that it is the same submarine (involved in the Syria attack) further reinforces the rightness of the order with which we said ships of nuclear propulsion or carrying nuclear weapons are not welcome in the port of Naples and, therefore, they are not allowed to travel through or stay," he added.

Bombshell: Professor Stuns MSNBC Panel On Syria

CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly had a top-secret meeting with Kim Jong Un

CIA Director Mike Pompeo travelled to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un earlier this month in a top-secret visit that was reportedly intended to lay the ground for President Donald Trump to meet with Kim later this year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Trump appeared to accidentally confirm the Post's report — which had not yet been released — in comments to the press Tuesday, responding “Yes” when asked if he’d spoken with Kim.

Trump later amended the statement, saying, “Well, let’s leave it a little bit short of that.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then clarified his statement significantly, saying, “The president said the administration has had talks at the highest levels and added they were not with him directly.”

Bernie Sanders’s Latest Criticism of Israel Signals an Actual Debate Coming in 2020

Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has been increasingly vocal on the need to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, laid out a vision for United States policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Monday that is far more sympathetic to the rights of Palestinians than the pro-Israel orthodoxy that dominates both major parties.

Sanders, speaking at the national conference of the Middle East advocacy group J Street in Washington, D.C., called on the U.S. to adopt a more balanced policy toward Israel-Palestine. He condemned recent Israeli attacks on nonviolent protesters, called for an alleviation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and even threw in some harsh words for Arab autocrats who express concern for Palestinians but don’t put their money where their mouth is.

Sanders may be veering away from the establishment line, but he’s still far from being the ally many Palestinians look for in U.S. policymakers. He opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign, or BDS, a Palestinian-led movement that aims to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, including the expansion of settlements. Sanders has also consistently voted in favor of U.S. military aid to Israel. The U.S. gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel every year, and generally shields the country from accountability at the United Nations. But in a political system where mainstream politicians in both major parties usually shy away from any vocal criticism of Israeli human rights abuses, the fact that a leading presidential contender and member of the Senate Democratic leadership is willing to do so is noteworthy — and a sign that debate in the U.S. is shifting. ...

Presidential candidates typically toe a careful pro-Israel line, refusing to criticize Israeli human rights abuses and instead heaping blame on Palestinian leadership. Typically, U.S. politicians who criticize Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians are marginalized; Sanders, on the other hand, is now chair of outreach for the Senate Democrats, and is willing to adopt these positions even outside the context of a presidential race. He is organizing his own colleagues in the Senate to sign onto a letter urging the Trump administration to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and his popularity from 2016 is virtually unchanged. This may partly be a result of the fact that the Democratic Party’s constituent base is evolving as well. A recent survey from the Pew Research Center showed that Democrats are almost as likely to be sympathetic to Palestinians as they are to Israelis.

‘How in the world are taxpayers paying for Alfa Romeos and Bentleys?’ Senator pushes Army leaders on Afghan contracts

Senior Army leaders were questioned Thursday over $50 million in questionable costs billed to taxpayers — including seven luxury cars and roughly $400,000 salaries for significant others to serve as assistants — as part of a federal contract meant to train Afghan security forces.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., shot questions at Army Secretary Mark Esper about the misuse of funds. “Please tell me that a senator 20 years from now is not going to be sitting here and going, ‘How in the world are taxpayers paying for Alfa Romeos and Bentleys?’” McCaskill said.

From 2010 to 2013, Army Contracting Command awarded four contracts, [...] Legacy Afghanistan, Legacy Kabul, Legacy South, and Legacy East — became known as the Legacy Afghanistan R&D program. An audit by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, however, revealed that one of the subcontractors for Legacy East, New Century Consulting Limited, billed over $50 million in questionable costs to the Army. ...

The audit found taxpayers wound up paying for seven luxury cars, including Porsches, Alfa Romeos, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, and a Land Rover. Additionally, the significant others of the CEO and CFO were kept on the payroll as “executive assistants,” according to McCaskill’s office. In 2012, the average salary of these assistants reached roughly $420,000 each, despite the fact that they worked from home and never traveled to customer locations, with no documentation to prove they performed any work, McCaskill’s office said.

The Restaurant Industry Ran a Private Poll on the Minimum Wage. It Did Not Go Well for Them.

One of the nation’s most powerful anti-minimum wage lobbying groups tapped a longtime Republican pollster to survey the public about a range of issues impacting the industry. A significant chunk of the survey focused on attitudes toward the minimum wage — and many members of the powerful lobby group aren’t going to like the results.

The poll — which was presented on a slide deck obtained by The Intercept and Documented — found that seven in 10 Americans want to see the minimum wage raised even if it means that they’d have to pay more for meals. It also found that the industry’s various talking points against raising the wage are mostly falling flat with the general public.

Conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz’s firm LuntzGlobal on behalf of the other NRA — the National Restaurant Association — the poll found that 71 percent of people surveyed support raising the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour. ...

The leaked NRA poll is the first instance of a known national poll commissioned by the industry itself that shows how widely popular raising the minimum wage is and how small the opposition is, even though other published national surveys have shown a similar level of public support.

Colorado teachers join national wave of protests and walkouts

Some 500 Colorado educators converged on the capitol building in Denver Monday demanding increased school funding and higher wages. ... All classes in the Denver-area Englewood school district were cancelled as more than 150 teachers from the district walked out of class to attend the annual Colorado Education Association’s lobby day.

The wave of teacher walkouts has mostly occurred in states with Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures, including West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky. Colorado, however, has a Democratic governor and the Democrats control the lower legislative house, the Assembly. The conditions facing teachers and students, however, are no better than in Republican-controlled states, demonstrating that the assault on public education and the wages and conditions of educators is a bipartisan policy.

Teachers massed outside the doors to the capitol building Monday afternoon. They attended a Finance Committee hearing on SB 200, a bill that would cut public employee retirement benefits to shore up PERA, the state retirement plan. ... A primary concern of teachers is wages. Colorado teachers earn about $7,000 less than the national average of $58,064 a year, according to a survey by the Colorado School Finance Project. An analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that as a percentage of state median income, Colorado high school teachers are paid less than teachers in any other state.

The low pay, combined with other factors, accounts for Colorado’s teacher shortage, which mirrors a national trend. According to the Denver Post, as many as 3,000 new teachers are needed to fill empty slots in classrooms.

Unions shut down Oklahoma teachers strike

Tens of thousands of Oklahoma teachers returned to their classrooms Monday morning after their two-week walkout was shut down by the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) and the Oklahoma City-American Federation of Teachers (AFT). While hundreds of teachers made individual decisions to use sick days and personal days to show up at the state capitol Monday, the mass of teachers have been demobilized by the OEA and AFT.

The teachers, who waged a courageous fight for improved wages and increased school funding for their students were not defeated; they were betrayed. A poll on the Facebook page, “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout-The Time is Now!” showed that 88.3 percent of teachers wanted to continue the strike, but the majority said they could not afford to lose more pay. Teachers in the state capital of Oklahoma City voted 2-1 to continue the strike, according to a poll by the AFT.

After years of collusion between the unions and successive Democratic and Republican state governments, which cut school spending by nearly 30 percent over the last decade, teachers, using social media, launched the walkout on April 2. The unions opposed the strike at first and then tried to regain control of the movement to smother it and shut it down.

Announcing that the OEA was ending support for the strike last Thursday, OEA President Alicia Priest made the lying claim that teachers had won 95 percent of their demands. In fact, teachers, who are near the bottom in the US in wages, demanded a $10,000 pay increase but got an average of only $6,100. They demanded $200 million in additional school funding but the state government agreed to less than $50 million, largely paid for through regressive taxes on fuel, cigarettes and gaming.

Teachers demanded $5,000 raises for school aides, school bus drivers and other support staff, many who live at or below poverty. Instead, they got $1,250. Finally, teachers demanded $7,500 in pay raises for other public employees, many of whom joined the strike, but they received only derisory raises of $750 to $2,000.

Lat Friday, the day after Priest told teachers to go back to work, thousands defiantly returned to the capitol to continue their protests, carrying signs like “OEA doesn’t speak for me” “OEA didn’t start this they cannot end it.” Hundreds canceled their union memberships.

An excellent article, here's a teaser:

Bruce Schneier: American elections are too easy to hack. We must take action now

Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to convince the loser. To the extent that an election system is not transparently and auditably accurate, it fails in that second purpose. Our election systems are failing, and we need to fix them.

Today, we conduct our elections on computers. Our registration lists are in computer databases. We vote on computerized voting machines. And our tabulation and reporting is done on computers. We do this for a lot of good reasons, but a side effect is that elections now have all the insecurities inherent in computers. The only way to reliably protect elections from both malice and accident is to use something that is not hackable or unreliable at scale; the best way to do that is to back up as much of the system as possible with paper.

Recently, there have been two graphic demonstrations of how bad our computerized voting system is. In 2007, the states of California and Ohio conducted audits of their electronic voting machines. Expert review teams found exploitable vulnerabilities in almost every component they examined. The researchers were able to undetectably alter vote tallies, erase audit logs, and load malware on to the systems. Some of their attacks could be implemented by a single individual with no greater access than a normal poll worker; others could be done remotely.

Last year, the Defcon hackers’ conference sponsored a Voting Village. Organizers collected 25 pieces of voting equipment, including voting machines and electronic poll books. By the end of the weekend, conference attendees had found ways to compromise every piece of test equipment: to load malicious software, compromise vote tallies and audit logs, or cause equipment to fail. It’s important to understand that these were not well-funded nation-state attackers. These were not even academics who had been studying the problem for weeks. These were bored hackers, with no experience with voting machines, playing around between parties one weekend.

Scott Pruitt’s EPA will wreck air quality, American Lung Association finds

The American Lung Association is taking the EPA and Congress to task for sidelining science and imperiling public health in the process. The group's annual “State of the Air” report tends to be optimistic. Long a backer of the Clean Air Act, the group’s report last year praised regulators for allowing both economic growth alongside an improvement in air quality. But this year, things are a little different.

For one thing, the 2018 report, published Wednesday, singles out EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for his role in sidelining scientific research at the agency he helms, as well as specific members of Congress that have proposed legislation that would weaken the Clean Air Act.

For another, it’s projecting a grim outlook. For 19 years, the annual report has charted the slow and steady improvement of air quality, a trend due in large part to the Clean Air Act. While air quality nonetheless improved by most standards in the U.S. this year, the report gets political in a way past reports haven’t. It calls attention to the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the landmark coal power plant regulation, and the Trump administration’s retrogressive policies on climate change. ...

The report contains a number of other notable revelations — among them the fate of emissions regulations, the link between climate change and air quality, and how the administration is using, and not using, science to guide policy decisions. Between the rollback of the Clean Power Plan, the easing of tailpipe emissions standards, and the lax regulation of the oil and gas industry, a number of regulations designed to protect air quality are politically under threat.

Americans waste 150,000 tons of food each day – equal to a pound per person

Americans waste about a pound of food per person each day, with people who have healthier diets rich in fruit and vegetables the most wasteful, research has found. About 150,000 tons of food is tossed out in US households each day, equivalent to about a third of the daily calories that each American consumes. Fruit and vegetables were the most likely to be thrown out, followed by dairy and then meat.

This waste has an environmental toll, with the volume of discarded food equivalent to the yearly use of 30m acres of land, 780m pounds of pesticide and 4.2tn gallons of irrigated water. Rotting food also clogs up landfills and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Researchers at the US Department of Agriculture analysed eight years of food data, up to 2014, to see where food is wasted and also what members of the public say they do at mealtimes. The research has been published in Plos One.

The study found that the healthiest Americans are the most wasteful, because of their high consumption of fruits and vegetables, which are frequently thrown out. Fruit and vegetables require less land to grow than than other foods, such as meat, but require a large amount of water and pesticides.

Great Barrier Reef: 30% of coral died in 'catastrophic' 2016 heatwave

Scientists have chronicled the “mass mortality” of corals on the Great Barrier Reef, in a new report that says 30% of the reef’s corals died in a catastrophic nine-month marine heatwave. The study, published in Nature and led by Prof Terry Hughes, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, examined the link between the level of heat exposure, subsequent coral bleaching and ultimately coral death.

The extent and severity of the coral die-off recorded in the Great Barrier Reef surprised even the researchers. Hughes told Guardian Australia the 2016 marine heatwave had been far more harmful than historical bleaching events, where an estimated 5% to 10% of corals died.

“When corals bleach from a heatwave, they can either survive and regain their colour slowly as the temperature drops, or they can die,” Hughes said. “Averaged across the whole Great Barrier Reef, we lost 30% of the corals in the nine-month period between March and November 2016.”

The scientists set out to map the impact of the 2016 marine heatwave on coral along the 2,300km length of the Great Barrier Reef. They established a close link between the coral die-off and areas where heat exposure was most extreme. The northern third of the reef was the most severely affected. The study found that 29% of the 3,863 reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef lost two-thirds or more of their corals.

Also of Interest

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

Blowing up Lack of ‘Evidence’ in Syria Chemical Attack

Attorney-Client Privilege May Be the First Casualty of the Michael Cohen Investigation

In 30 Years, Only 17 Women Won Sexual Harassment Claims Before Wall Street’s Oversight Body

Michigan town’s feud over military gear gets ugly

A Little Night Music

Little Eva - Loco-motion

Little Eva - Will You Love Me Tomorrow

Little Eva - Let's Start The Party Again

Little Eva - He Is The Boy

Little Eva - Mama Said

Little Eva - Keep Your Hands Off My Baby

Little Eva - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Little Eva - Stand By Me

Little Eva - Just One Word Ain’t Enough

Little Eva - I Want You To Be My Boy

Little Eva - Take A Step In My Direction

The Cookies - Chains

The Cookies - Don't Say Nothin' Bad (about my baby)