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This evening's music features odds and ends that I ran across while putting together other features. Enjoy!

"What does censorship reveal? It reveals fear."

-- Julian Assange

News and Opinion

How Shoddy Reporting and Anti-Russian Propaganda Coerced Ecuador to Silence Julian Assange

Julian Assange has been barred from communicating with the outside world for more than three weeks. On March 27, the government of Ecuador blocked Assange’s internet access and barred him from receiving visitors other than his lawyers. ... As a result of Ecuador’s recent actions, Assange – long a prolific commentator on political debates around the world – has been silenced for more than three weeks, by a country which originally granted him political asylum and of which he is now a citizen. While Ecuador was willing to defy western dictates to hand over Assange under the presidency of Rafael Correa – who was fiercely protective of Ecuadorian sovereignty even if it meant disobeying western powers – his successor, Lenín Moreno, has proven himself far more subservient, and that mentality – along with Moreno’s increasingly bitter feud with Correa – are major factors in the Ecuadorian government’s newly hostile treatment of Assange.

Yet many of the recent media claims made about Assange that have caused this standoff – which have centered on the alleged role of Russia in the internal Spanish conflict over Catalan independence – range from highly dubious to demonstrably false. The campaign to depict Catalan unrest as a plot fueled by the Kremlin, Assange and even Edward Snowden have largely come from fraudulent assertions in the Spanish daily El Pais and highly dubious data claims from the so-called “Hamilton 68 dashboard.” The consequences of these false and misleading claims – this actual Fake News – have been mutli-faceted and severe, not just for Assange but for diplomatic relations among multiple countries. ...

Ordinarily, western commentators would be lining up to denounce a country like Ecuador for blocking the communications and internet access of one of its own citizens. But because the person silenced here is Assange, whom they hate, their heartfelt devotion to the sacred principles of free speech and a free press vanish. ...

Evidence has now emerged that the cutting off of Assange’s communications with the outside world is the by-product of serious diplomatic pressure being applied to the new Ecuadorian president, pressure that may very well lead, perhaps imminently, to Assange being expelled from the embassy altogether. The pressure is coming from the Spanish government in Madrid and its NATO allies, furious that Assange has expressed opposition to some of the repressive measures used to try to crush activists in support of Catalan independence.

On Contact: The Destruction of an Independent Press with Mark Crispin Miller

An excellent response to the flaming bag of crap that the Intercept dumped onto the internet's doorstep yesterday.

What Are “Assad Apologists”? Are They Like Those “Saddam Apologists” Of 2002?

Isn’t it fascinating how western journalists are suddenly rallying to attack the dangerous awful and horrifying epidemic of “Assad apologists” just as the western empire ramps up its longstanding regime change agenda against the Syrian government? Kinda sorta exactly the same way they began spontaneously warning the world about “Saddam apologists” around the time of the Iraq invasion? The increasingly pro-establishment Intercept has published an article titled “Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn’t Gas Syrians,” condemning unnamed opponents of western interventionism in Syria for not being sufficiently condemnatory of Bashar al-Assad in their antiwar discourse.

Last week The Times published an article titled “Apologists for Assad working in British universities,” frantically informing the public that “top academics” are circulating information that runs counter to the official Syria narrative, followed this week by a Huffington Post article attacking those same academics in the same way. Yesterday, the BBC ran an article titled “Syria war: the online activists pushing conspiracy theories,” warning its readers about “pro-Syrian government” internet posts. ...

Even more annoying than the honest regime change proponents are people like Mehdi Hasan, author of the aforementioned Intercept piece, who claim to oppose US regime change but find themselves tone policing the antiwar left instead. The world is full of problems, the greatest arguably being a third world war and potential nuclear confrontation between Russia and America ensuing from US interventionism in Syria, but men like Hasan choose to focus their creative energy on making sure the antiwar left mitigates its speech sufficiently and prefaces every antiwar argument with “Assad is a bloodthirsty evil dictator, but”. Like that’s what the world desperately needs right now: for the antiwar left to be even more mitigated in its speech than it already is.

We’ve been here before. Here’s an article from 2001 titled “Saddam Hussein’s American Apologist”. Here’s one from 2002 titled “Saddam’s apologists”. Here’s another from 2003 titled “After Saddam’s Capture: Will His Apologists Now Recant?” Here’s yet another from 2003 titled “Armchair generals, or Saddam’s leftwing allies”. Here’s one from 2005 titled “Parliament’s damning report about Saddam apologist George Galloway.” This was an extremely common smear against opponents of the Iraq invasion, who were of course later proven to have been 100 percent correct in every way.

Iraq is as relevant as relevant gets to this debate, and anyone who claims otherwise is only doing so because they know Iraq is devastating to their Syria arguments. They’re pulling the same damn tricks in the same damn way, in some cases with the same damn people. These “We must stop the Assad apologists!” op-eds are coming out with increasing frequency and urgency because they are losing control of the Syria narrative and they are running out of tricks.

Containers with chlorine from Germany, smoke bombs from UK's Salisbury found in E. Ghouta – Moscow

Containers with chlorine from Germany and smoke grenades produced in Salisbury, UK were found in the liberated territories of Syria's Eastern Ghouta, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has stated.

“In the liberated areas of Eastern Ghouta, Syrian government troops have found containers with chlorine – the most horrible kind of chemical weapons – from Germany, and also smoke grenades produced – please pay attention [to this] – in the city of Salisbury, the UK,” Zakharova told a news conference in Moscow on Thursday. ...

Prior to the alleged chemical incident in Douma, which was used by the US, the UK and France as a pretext for striking Syria last Saturday, Russia had repeatedly warned about possible provocations by the militants, according to the spokesperson. Moscow had also sent data to the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on chemical-weapons production facilities in the liberated areas of Eastern Ghouta.

Pentagon acknowledges US contractor presence in Syria for first time

The US military is using more than 5,500 contractors in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, the Pentagon revealed in a quarterly report this week that acknowledges the use of contractors in the Syrian war zone for the first time.

The latest figures from US Central Command indicate that 5,508 US and foreign contractors are working alongside US troops in the two combat zones. That’s an increase of 581, or 12%, over January’s numbers, which did not include Syria. About half of the contractors are US citizens, while the rest are local or third-country hires.

The disclosure comes as President Donald Trump has signaled his desire to pull US troops out of Syria “very soon” after the end of the counter-IS mission.

The Trump administration wants to send a U.S. citizen to Saudi Arabia to be prosecuted

The U.S. government is trying to transfer a U.S. citizen captured in Syria and detained in Iraq to Saudi Arabia in a case that challenges America’s post-9/11 war powers and the right suspected terrorists have to due process. In September 2017, an unnamed U.S. citizen referred to only as “John Doe” surrendered to Syrian militia and was subsequently turned over to the U.S. military. He was identified as an “enemy combatant,” accused of being an Islamic State fighter, and sent to a military prison in Iraq.

For the past seven months, Doe has been detained at a secret prison site in Iraq without charge while the Justice Department struggles to figure out what to do with him. The government doesn’t want to release him, but reportedly hasn’t been able to gather enough admissible evidence of his alleged fighting for the Islamic State to try him in criminal court, according to the New York Times. ...

The ACLU argues that for the U.S. to label someone as an “enemy combatant” and therefore have the right to detain them, the government has to prove that that the individual fights for a group against which the U.S. is in conflict. Despite the billions of dollars and thousands of airstrikes, whether the U.S. is in an official and lawful conflict with the Islamic State is actually a murky question. The Trump administration, like the Obama administration, has used the 2001 and 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify its full-fledged war on the Islamic State in countries ranging from Syria to Iraq to Libya. But the AUMF doesn’t actually mention ISIS, because it hadn’t been formed yet.

“The fact that the government has no authority to detain ISIS members also means that its incorrect allegations against our client are irrelevant,”ACLU attorney Jonathan Hafetz wrote in a blog post. “Before this case, no court had considered the legitimacy of the government’s claims that it is authorized to use force against ISIS. However, rather than wait for a ruling, the government prefers to wash its hands of the matter by illegally and forcibly rendering him to another country.”

Corbyn: Does Strike on Syria Justify Bombing Saudi Arabia over Yemen?

Israeli forces kill two at Gaza frontier during fourth week of protests

Israeli troops stationed on the frontier with Gaza have shot dead two Palestinians and wounded more than 40 people during the fourth week of Friday protests, all of which have been met with lethal force.

Thousands of residents from the coastal strip demonstrated near the metal perimeter fence, some burning tyres and throwing rocks. Several young Palestinian men attempted to fly home-made kites with small cans of petrol attached to their tails into Israeli territory. Israeli forces stations on sandbanks behind the frontier fired teargas and live ammunition, shouting over loudspeakers in Arabic, warning people not to move close to the fence.

Earlier in the day, Israel had airdropped leaflets into the area, telling residents that Gaza’s rulers, Hamas, which supports the movement, “is taking advantage of you in order to carry out terror attacks”. It added: “Stay away from the terror instigators and violent riot orchestrators.” Rights groups have condemned Israel’s use of live ammunition while the Israeli military has warned that people approaching the perimeter could potentially be shot.

In close to a month of rallies, small groups of protesters have attempted to cut, set fire to or break the fence. Many have been shot in the act. Others, however, have been struck with bullets deeper into Gaza, far from the perimeter. Fridays, the first day of the weekend in Gaza, have garnered the highest turnouts of people in what organisers say will be a six-week movement, ending in mid-May when Palestinians commemorate their displacement around the time of Israel’s founding in 1948. Marches have called for a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel and to end an air, land and sea blockade.

Natalie Portman pulls out of Israel award due to 'distressing recent events' there

Natalie Portman has pulled out of a major award ceremony due to take place in Israel, citing her “distress” at recent events in the country. Portman, who was born in Jerusalem and holds dual Israeli and US citizenship, was named in November as the recipient of the 2018 Genesis award, a yearly prize for “outstanding achievement by individuals who have attained excellence and international renown in their chosen professional fields [who] embody the character of the Jewish people”.

However, Portman informed the Genesis Prize Foundation she would not travel to Israel for the ceremony, which has been cancelled. Portman’s representative said: “[R]ecent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony”. No specific events were mentioned, but the recent military response to Palestinian demonstrations on the Gaza-Israel border has provoked worldwide condemnation.

The move drew swift condemnation from Israel’s governing Likud party. Knesset member Oren Hazan demanded authorities revoke her citizenship while the culture minister, Miri Regev, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, claimed she had “fallen like ripe fruit into the hands of BDS supporters.”

Dilma Rousseff: Lula’s Imprisonment Is Part of a Coup Corroding Brazil’s Democratic Institutions

Wells Fargo to pay $1bn in largest fine levied against a bank under Trump

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1bn to settle claims tied to its auto insurance, mortgage and other financial products in what is the largest fine levied against a major bank so far in the Trump administration.

The penalty is part of a settlement between the bank and two regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, that derives from a series of consumer-practice crises at the bank.

The fine had been widely anticipated and comes after Donald Trump warned that they planned to hold Wells Fargo to account.

Last year, Trump warned on Twitter: “Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating!” ...

The $1bn fine comes on top of the $4.25bn the bank has set aside for liabilities related to the fake accounts scandal and the mortgage-backed securities issues it had before the financial crisis.

World Bank recommends fewer regulations protecting workers

The World Bank is proposing lower minimum wages and greater hiring and firing powers for employers as part of a wide-ranging deregulation of labour markets deemed necessary to prepare countries for the changing nature of work.

A working draft of the bank’s flagship World Development Report – which will urge policy action from governments when it comes out in the autumn – says less “burdensome” regulations are needed so that firms can hire workers at lower cost. The controversial recommendations, which are aimed mainly at developing countries, have alarmed groups representing labour, which say they have so far been frozen out of the Bank’s consultation process.

Peter Bakvis, Washington representative for the International Trade Union Confederation, said the proposals were harmful, retrograde and out of synch with the shared-prosperity agenda put forward by the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim.

He added that the WDR’s vision of the future world of work would see firms relieved of the burden of contributing to social security, have the flexibility to pay wages as low as they wanted, and to fire at will. Unions would have a diminished role in new arrangements for “expanding workers’ voices”.

The paper “almost completely ignores workers’ rights, asymmetric power in the labour market and phenomena such as declining labour share in national income,” Bakvis said.

Andrew Cuomo rips teacher unions as selfish 'industry' more interested in members' rights than student needs

A passionate Gov. Cuomo upped his war with the teacher unions on Thursday, charging that they represent themselves — not the students. During an appearance before the Daily News Editorial Board, Cuomo said the only way change will come to a broken education system is if the public is better informed. ...

Cuomo referred to the teacher unions and the entrenched education establishment as an “industry” that is more interested in protecting the rights of its members than improving the system for the kids it is supposed to be serving. “Somewhere along the way, I believe we flipped the purpose of this,” Cuomo said. “This was never a teacher employment program and this was never an industry to hire superintendents and teachers. ...

Critics charge the governor is scapegoating teachers and ignoring what they argue is the real issue facing schools — funding inequity between poor and rich districts.

Arizona teachers are so pissed about their pay, they organized their state’s first walkout

Arizona teachers are following in the footsteps of several other states this year: They’ve organized the first statewide walkout ever. Like other teachers across the U.S. in states like West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, Arizona educators want higher salaries and better education funding. Seventy-eight percent of the 57,000 teachers who voted over the course of this week voted to walkout of their classrooms on April 26. It's a big deal in right-to-work states, like Arizona, where unions cannot collectively bargain with school districts and employees do not have to join a union.

“We had anticipated support. But I don't know if anybody could have quite anticipated such an overwhelming majority there, but that's what we have and it's incredible,” said Noah Karvelis, a music teacher at Tres Rios Elementary School in Tolleson, Arizona, and organizer with the grassroots group Arizona Educators United.

The teachers will also hold “walk-ins” at their schools before class Monday through Wednesday to speak with parents and students about why they will be walking out Thursday. Over 100,000 people statewide attended walk-ins held last Wednesday, according to Karvelis.

Arizona Educators United wants to see a 20 percent salary increase for all teaching and other certified staff for the 2018-2019 school year, a return of school funding to 2008 levels, no new tax cuts until Arizona per-pupil spending reaches the national average, and yearly raises until Arizona teacher salaries reach the national average. In a break from how other states’ teachers have organized their walkouts, Arizona’s movement is mainly teacher, rather than union, led.

The Supreme Court Gives Police a Green Light to ‘Shoot First and Think Later’

The Supreme Court just ruled that a police officer could not be sued for gunning down Amy Hughes. This has vast implications for law enforcement accountability. The details of the case are as damning as the decision. Hughes was not suspected of a crime. She was simply standing still, holding a kitchen knife at her side. The officer gave no warning that he was going to shoot her if she did not comply with his commands. Moments later, the officer shot her four times. “Shoot first and think later,” according to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is what the officer did.

As Sotomayor argued in dissent, the court’s decision in Kisela v. Hughes means that such “palpably unreason­able conduct will go unpunished.” According to seven of the nine Justices, Hughes’ Fourth Amendment right to not be shot four times in this situation is less protected than the officer’s interest in escaping accountability for his brazen abuse of authority. According to Justice Sotomayor, “If this account of [the officer’s] conduct sounds unreasonable, that is because it was. And yet, the Court ... insulates that conduct from liability under the doctrine of qualified immunity.” ...

As Professor William Baude explains, “[t]he doctrine of qualified immunity prevents government agents from being held personally liable for constitutional violations unless the violation was of ‘clearly established’ law.” If any reasonable judge might have deemed the action permissible, the law is not “clearly established.” Essentially, if you want to sue a police officer who you think violated your constitutional rights, you first have to convince the court that what happened to you was so outrageous that no reasonable person could have thought it was okay.

This makes excessive force cases a steep uphill battle. Such cases turn on the Fourth Amendment — a constitutional right that is notorious for its murky and context-specific contours. So proving a Fourth Amendment violation is hard enough on its own. When you have to prove a “clearly established” violation, the task becomes all but impossible because the Supreme Court keeps raising the bar. This further disempowers those injured or killed by police, and their surviving families.

Democrats officially accuse Trump campaign, Russia and Wikileaks of election meddling

Democrats may be gearing up for the 2018 midterms, but they're not over 2016 either. In fact, they’re going to court over it and officially accusing the Trump campaign of engaging in a “conspiracy” with the Russian government and WikiLeaks. On Friday, the Democratic National Committee filed a civil lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court demanding millions of dollars for the cyberattack it suffered during the campaign that led to thousands of internal emails being published on WikiLeaks. ...

The DNC also accuses the Trump campaign of being a “willing and active partner” in Russia’s efforts to undermine the democratic process. The complaint cites information already in the public domain, such as the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016 between senior campaign staffers and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who allegedly promised dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The complaint does not accuse Trump himself of engaging in the conspiracy. Instead it focuses on senior campaign aides, including campaign manager Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and even Trump, Jr. ...

It’s not clear how effective the lawsuit will be or if a judge will allow it to move forward. Nations are immune from most U.S. lawsuits, but the DNC argues that Russia is not entitled to such immunity because it committed a form of “economic espionage” and stole “trade secrets.”

Andrew Cuomo’s Order on Voting Rights Shows the Strength of a Challenge From the Left

Seven years into is tenure as governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo finally took executive action on Wednesday to restore voting rights to former felons on parole. His executive order returns the vote to around 40,000 disenfranchised people, a disproportionate number of whom are black or Latino. The move is nothing radical — 18 other states and Washington, D.C. allow parolees to vote — but voting rights efforts in New York’s state legislature have been consistently blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Cuomo’s order is the right one and is being rightfully lauded. The question, however, is one of timing. The governor has always had the power to take this sort of executive action and the push for parolee voting rights is nothing new. In 2016, for example, a bill to restore the vote for parolees made some initial progress in the State Assembly with the support of numerous community groups and criminal justice advocates, but, as the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy think tank, noted at the time, “Cuomo has not mentioned rights restoration as a legislative priority for 2016.” So why now?

Anyone with an eye for realpolitik could see a cynical motivation driving Cuomo’s executive action: a response to the growing popularity of his opponent in the upcoming Democratic gubernatorial race, Cynthia Nixon. Nixon, who is opposing Cuomo from the left, has prioritized criminal justice reform. From this view, Cuomo’s action signals the potential power of left-wing campaigns against the Democratic establishment — efforts that antagonize and threaten the comfort of centrist incumbents, rather than appealing to their purported goodwill — to move the political field in a progressive direction.

“It is unconscionable to deny voting rights to New Yorkers who have re-entered society,” Cuomo tweeted, announcing his executive order. Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham Law professor, activist, and former Cuomo opponent in the 2014 gubernatorial primary, responded on Twitter, “Wasn’t it unconscionable in 2012?” As appears to be happening with Nixon, Teachout’s formidable and surprising challenge from the left had pushed Cuomo’s agenda, at the time, with regard to public labor unions, environmental protections, and minimum wage.

Other responses to Cuomo’s announcement were more direct in their assessment. Humorist Jason O’Gilbert satirized the governor: “‘I am absolutely not worried about Cynthia Nixon,’ Governor Cuomo announced in a Black Lives Matter hoodie as he legalized drinking in public parks.”

Trump administration takes major step toward Alaska refuge drilling

The Trump administration is taking its first administrative step toward allowing oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a notice Thursday that it is starting the “scoping” process for an environmental review to examine the impact of leasing drilling rights to companies in ANWR’s 1.6 million-acre coastal plain.

The BLM will take public comments for 60 days and hold four meetings in Alaska to inform the public how it will conduct the environmental review, it said in the notice, which is set to be published Friday in the Federal Register. The notice comes just four months after Congress voted to allow drilling in the federally owned ANWR for the first time.

Democrats had for decades successfully blocked efforts to open ANWR to rigs, but the GOP pushed the measure through as part of its Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That law requires the BLM to hold at least two drilling rights lease sales in the next 10 years.

Joseph Balash, Interior’s assistant secretary for land and mineral management, said last month that the first lease sale could be as soon as next year, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Justin Trudeau Vows to Bail Out Profitable Oil Company, Kinder Morgan

'Win for Science and Democracy' as Court Rules California Can List Glyphosate as Probable Carcinogen

In a development heralded as "a win for science and democracy" and for "all Californians," an appeals court on Thursday backed the state's listing of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, as a probable carcinogen.

"This is a huge win for all Californians—and a huge loss for Monsanto—as it upholds our right to protect ourselves and our environment from unnecessary and unwanted exposure to the dangerous chemical, glyphosate," said Adam Keats, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety (CFS).

Following the the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) 2015 listing of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced that, in adherence with its Proposition 65, it planned on listing glyphosate as a chemical known to the state to cause cancer, citing the IARC research. That listing would require warning labels on packages.

Monsanto promptly sued the state over the move, and CFS intervened in the case to defend the listing and accused the agribusiness giant of "trying to keep the public in the dark about potential hazards from their products." Other labor rights and environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also intervened to support the listing.

Earth Day 2018: Ending Plastic Pollution in the Oceans, Land & Our Bodies

Also of Interest

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

War Fever

Public Radio’s McCarthyite Smear of Black Activists Shows Danger of Russia Panic

Yanis Varoufakis: Marx predicted our present crisis – and points the way out

An Italian Court Decision Could Keep Rescue Boats From Saving Refugees in the Mediterranean

‘No Company Is So Important Its Existence Justifies Setting Up a Police State’

Trump Fundraiser Offered Russian Gas Company Plan to Get Sanctions Lifted for $26 Million

NYT: Don’t Be Progressive, Be a ‘Liberal’

A Little Night Music

Johnny Chef - Can't Stop Moving

'Baby' Earl & the Trini-dads - Back Slop

Billy Barnes - Road of love

Roger Washington - You're too much

Louis Howard & the Red Hearts - I've Got The Feeling

Richard Berry - Have Love Will Travel

Don Gardner - My Baby Likes To Boogaloo

Lester Tipton - This Won't Change

Irene And The Scotts - I'm Stuck On My Baby

Johnny Darrow - Love Is A Nightmare

Ellis 'Slow' Walsh - New Orleans Is My Home

Otis Lee - Hard Row To Hoe

Pastels - Let's Go To The Rock & Roll Ball

Charlie Feathers - Jungle Fever

Orchids - Fine Sweet Woman

Lulu Reed & Freddy King - You Can't Hide

Lulu Reed - Ain't No Cotton Pickin' Chicken

J.C. Davis - The Chicken Scratch

Tony Harris - Chicken, Baby, Chicken

Dominoes - Chicken Blues

Andre Williams - The Greasy Chicken

Billy Bland - Chicken Hop

Ray Coleman - Rock Chicken Rock

Eddie Cochran - Chicken Shot Blues