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“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

-- Plato

News and Opinion

The Democrats Out-Right the Right on North Korean Summit

If more proof was needed to persuade anyone that the Democrats are indeed a war party, it was provided when Senator Chuck Schumer and other Democrat leaders in the Senate engaged in a cynical stunt to stake out a position to the right of John Bolton on the summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

The Democrats asserted that the planned summit could only be judged successful if the North Koreans agreed to dismantle and remove all their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, end all production and enrichment of uranium, dismantle its nuclear weapons infrastructure, and suspend ballistic missile tests. Those demands would constitute an unconditional surrender on the part of the North Korean leadership and will not happen, and the Democrats know it.

But as problematic as those demands are, here is the real problem that again demonstrates the bi-partisan commitment to war that has been at the center of U.S. imperial policies: If these are the outcomes that must be achieved for the meeting to be judged a success, not only does it raise the bar beyond the level any serious person believes possible, it gives the Trump administration the ideological cover to move toward war. The inevitable failure to force the North Koreans to surrender essentially forecloses all other options other than military conflict.

This is a reckless and cynical game that provides more proof that neither party has the maturity and foresight to lead.

Why Do US Media Only Worry About One Authoritarian’s Nukes?

The world waits with bated breath as a “mad king” descends on Singapore, his finger itching to press the launch button and totally destroy his adversaries. Few disagree that a “radical and absolutist” dictator who can “use the power of the state to suppress the opposition while shielding itself from all potential sanction or limitation” should not have access to a possibly world-ending arsenal of nuclear weapons. “Surrounded by a clique of sycophants who are willing to justify any course he might take,” there is little stopping this impulsive ruler from making a sudden, cataclysmic decision that could forever alter the course of human history. Indeed, “a party organized around a single extreme personality seems like a brittle proposition.” With this “cult of personality” in place, his people will be dragged unwittingly and hopelessly into the nuclear abyss along with him.

It turns out that the only person standing between this man and the destruction he portends may be North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In the weeks leading to the historic summit between US President Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Kim, corporate media have lamented many ways the former is converting the presidency into an authoritarian institution. Quoted above, Time (6/7/18), the New York Times (6/3/18), The Week (6/5/18) and The Atlantic (6/7/18) all referred to Trump as a king-in-waiting when he declared a unilateral power to pardon himself. Esquire (6/4/18), unwilling to publish the word “president” without an asterisk, sees the whole Trump apparatus edging dangerously toward dictatorship, a point on which the Daily Beast (6/1/18) concurred after Trump called for the firing of TBS’s Samantha Bee. The Times (6/7/18) similarly warned of a dictatoresque cult forming around him, while the Washington Post (6/8/18) worried that Trump’s narcissism is isolating the United States from any potential allies.

With an arsenal of over 6,000 nuclear warheads at its disposal, one might expect this concern over the United States’ authoritarian trajectory to be reflected in analysis of events as they unfolded in Singapore. But when corporate media’s focus turns outward, it seems the only radical, isolated and cultish dictator we need to worry about is Kim. ...

A healthy concern about Trump’s authoritarianism is certainly warranted (FAIR.org, 2/3/17), but by construing his domestic politics as the work of an unprincipled, unpredictable and increasingly dangerous tyrant, corporate media have illuminated the fact that there is only one remaining idea that makes a qualitative difference between the president’s nuclear arsenal and North Korea’s: American exceptionalism.

Gasp! Rachel Maddow reveals shocking fact that North Korea has a border with Russia

Regular MSNBC viewers will be familiar with Rachel Maddow and her affinity for Russiagate speculation; but the conspiracy-happy host has finally gone off the deep end with her coverage of the Singapore nuclear summit this week. On Tuesday’s episode of her show, Maddow launched an 18-minute long attempt to prove that the person who benefited most from US President Donald Trump’s nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was actually Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Before she got down to the business of explaining how Putin secretly controlled Trump during the Singapore summit, however, Maddow had some very important news to impart to her viewers:

So after dramatically revealing to her audience that North Korea has a border with Russia -- gasp -- Maddow tonight went on an extended dot-connecting monologue where she darkly intimates that maybe somehow the real beneficiary of the Trump/Kim summit was... PUTIN. Beyond parody pic.twitter.com/a9bEwWn6l1

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 13, 2018

You’ve been warned https://t.co/LuTrKXvrQi

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 13, 2018

In case it hadn’t sunk in, Maddow reiterated that both China and Russia “are literally neighbors” with North Korea. The report, heavy on innuendo, then continued for another 15 minutes, with the host ranting and raving about Trump’s legitimizing of North Korea by appearing to give the country “equal stature” with the United States. ... Finally, after 17 minutes of screeching and facial contortions, Maddow announced her theory —which could come as a shock to no one – that the real reason Trump took the meeting with Kim and agreed to halt military exercises with South Korea was obviously…Putin wanted him to.

After G7 summit, Merkel calls for European rearmament

Following the collapse of the G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, the German government has intensified its campaign for trade war and military rearmament. Only a few hours after US President Donald Trump announced via Twitter his refusal to agree to the G7 communique, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) was a guest on the Anne Will talk show on Sunday evening. She described Trump's decision as “sobering and depressing,” and appealed openly for a more independent German-European militarist great power policy.

“We, as Europeans, have to take our fate more into our hands,” Merkel said. We can “no longer hope as we did somewhat carelessly for decades that the US is already taking care of it.” For Germany and Europe, this means “that we must promote our principles and values in Europe, potentially in alliance with Canada or Japan.” Behind the German government and European Union's propaganda phrases about “principles” and “values” are concrete economic and geostrategic interests. Merkel left no doubt that Berlin and Brussels will respond to the US' aggressive measures with essentially the same nationalist and militarist offensive as Trump. The German-European response to Trump's paradigm of “America first” is “Germany and Europe first.”

The Transatlantic partnership could no longer be relied upon, stated Merkel. Instead, the question has to be posed, “Where must we be able to intervene alone?”, and this would “of course mean new tasks for Europe.” The “first loyalty” always belongs “to one's own country,” but “the second, including in issues of foreign policy, should belong to the European Union.” ...

Merkel now advocates a Europe under German-French leadership to be established independently of the US, Russia, and China as a military power bloc. She also supports “the intervention force proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.” It is now necessary, Merkel said, “to develop a common strategic culture,” and “build our own capacities so we are able to implement our own approach—political solution, development aid, plus military action.” Time is pressing, but there have already been “remarkable successes,” Merkel said. They “only needed a year to initiate cooperation in defence policy with a defence union.”

The essential issue is, Merkel declared, “will the European Union be able to advocate a joint foreign policy? Or will one always have one discussion with the United States, one with China, and perhaps another with a third country?” If Europe fails to become a “strong pole bound by loyalty,” it will be “crushed in a world where there are very strong poles: China, Russia, and America,” stated Merkel.

Click the link and read the whole thing, it's excellent:

Chaos in the Imperial Big House

Donald Trump, the arch racist usurper of the Republican Party, is tearing the ruling class consensus to shreds, inflicting bigger shocks to the imperial system by accident, impulse and ignorance than any conceivable “progressive” elected U.S. president could achieve on purpose. In the space of a few weeks, Trump has 1) threatened to disrupt corporate global supply chains through his in-out stance on NAFTA; 2) forced Washington’s European junior imperial partners to reconsider their subservience to U.S. foreign policy and their vulnerability to U.S.-controlled financial institutions in the wake of Trump’s rejection of the Iran deal and his tirades at the G7 summit in Canada; and 3) discarded 70 years of Uncle Sam’s “Comply or Die” dictum towards North Korea, thus consigning the whole “axis of evil” designation to the dustbin. ... The net effect of Trump’s crazed foreign policy has been to raise urgent questions, among foreign elites and general populations alike, of U.S. fitness for global hegemony. Trump’s behavior could deliver a coup de grace to an already severely frayed global capitalist consensus on U.S. world leadership, significantly weakening the potency of U.S. imperialism -- even as Trump aligns more closely with the Israeli apartheid state and the Gulf monarchies and conspires to force regime change in Venezuela.

Domestically, the Trump experience has plunged corporate ideology and war rationales into disarray, even as his administration (with Democratic help) has delivered the biggest corporate tax windfalls and military budgets ever. ... If the leader of North Korea -- the original “pariah” state demonized and placed beyond the pale of U.S.-decreed legitimacy -- is now just another negotiating partner, and U.S. troop withdrawal from the South is a principled goal, then the “axis of evil” era is over and the rationale for U.S. troops and bases virtually everywhere in the world collapses -- as is well understood by U.S. imperial strategists, who are in deep distress. So are the Democrats. Since Trump won the GOP nomination, they have become overt partisans of the War Party. ... Trump campaigned in 2016 for normal relations with Russia, an end to the U.S. regime change offensive, and opposition to so-called “free” trade, thus uniting most of the ruling class against him. It turned out that Trump’s wholly unexpected appeal for peaceful relations with Russia did not deter huge majorities of Republicans from voting for him in the primaries and the general election. The political conclusion was inescapable: If white Republicans were not wedded to the permanent war agenda -- or cared more about maintaining white supremacy at home than funding endless hostilities abroad -- then where was the mass constituency for the bipartisan War Party? If Trump’s “deplorables” weren’t wedded to the War Party, then who was?

Trump’s surprise election threw the bulk of the elite, the corporate media, the military-industrial complex, and the spooks of the intelligence agencies, into panic, as they confronted a crisis of legitimacy for the Warfare State. Now firmly aligned with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, their response was to pre-empt Trump’s threatened rapprochement with Russia with a massive anti-Putin campaign. The elites realized they had to recreate -- on the fly, with no factual basis -- a war fervor that no longer existed among the masses of people, through Russiagate. In the chaotic process, they have further delegitimized virtually every U.S. institution, all the while putting the onus for the damage on the Vladimir Putin.

Yemen - The Starvation Siege Has Begun

Last night the Saudi coalition launched its attack on the city of Hodeidah in Yemen. Hodeidah is the only Yemeni harbor on the Red Sea coast that can take large vessels. It is ruled by the Houthi who in 2014 took over the capital Sanaa and disposed of the Saudi installed Hadi government. 90% of the food for the 18 million people living in Houthi controlled areas comes through Hodeidah. ...

The attack from the south includes 3,000 to 5,000 troops under the command of Tariq Saleh, a cousin of the recently killed former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh. They have been equipped with trucks and new weapons by the UAE. More forces are on their way from Aden and Taiz. They are supported by Emirati artillery, tanks and Saudi aerial bombing. The Saudi coalition forces are commanded by former officers from Australia, the U.S. and UK who have been hired by the UAE. ...

The Saudi media are not even shy about the intent. Liberating Hodeidah is a must for cutting the Houthi lifeline headlined the Arab News. Asharq Al-Awsat opined that the operations is necessary to "tighten the siege" until the Houthi "surrender to all conditions and resolutions", "hand over their arms" and "leave Sanaa". The Yemeni lawyer Haykal Bafana points out that the Saudis used the same strategy in 1934 during a border conflict with the Imamate of Yemen. Back then the Saudis occupied Hodeidah and starved the population of Sanaa, the seat of the Imamate, until Yemen gave up. ...

This obvious Saudi strategy is the reason why the United Nations warned of the possible starving of up to 18 million people who depend on food transfers through Hodeidah. ...

Britain and the U.S., the Saudis and the Emirates are on the verge of committing a war crime that will exceed the war on Iraq by any measure.

'Excessive use of force': UN blames Israel for Gaza violence

Amid Scathing Accusations of War Crimes, UN Votes 120-8 to Condemn 'Indiscriminate' Israeli Violence Against Palestinians

Just hours after a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report accused Israel of showing "blatant disregard for Palestinian lives" and commiting war crimes in its massacre of over 100 nonviolent demonstrators in Gaza over the past several weeks, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution that condemns Israel's "excessive, disproportionate, and indiscriminate" use of live fire against peaceful Palestinians. "We cannot remain silent in the face of the most violent crimes and human rights violations being systematically perpetrated against our people," Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the U.N., said in a speech following Wednesday's vote.  

The resolution denouncing Israel's murderous behavior—which was approved by a 120-8 vote, with 45 abstentions—also requests proposals from the U.N. Secretary General "ways and means for ensuring the safety, protection, and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under Israeli occupation."

In a last-ditch effort to thwart the U.N. resolution, the United States tried to ram through an amendment blaming Hamas for initiating violence in the Gaza Strip. The amendment ultimately failed—probably because, as media analyst Adam Johnson points out, "100 percent of those killed [during the recent anti-occupation protests] were killed by Israel."

Predictably, the U.S. voted against the final measure.

Can US Government 'Secretly Plot to Assassinate' Americans Without Due Process? Judge Says No, Allowing Case Against 'Kill List' to Proceed

In a major victory for all who believe the U.S. government should not have the power to sentence people to death in secret, a federal judge on Wednesday greenlighted a lawsuit brought by an American freelance journalist who claims he was placed on a classified "kill list" by the Obama administration and targeted by five separate drone strikes. "Due process is not merely an old and dusty procedural obligation," U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer said in her ruling allowing the case to proceed. "Instead, it is a living, breathing concept that protects U.S. persons from overreaching government action."

The "kill list" lawsuit was initially filed last year by the human rights group Reprieve on behalf of American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem, who says he was erroneously deemed a "militant" by the Obama administration while reporting from Syria. Celebrating the judge's ruling on Thursday as a leap over the "first hurdle," Reprieve's Clive Stafford Smith wrote on Twitter: "Can Donald Trump secretly plot to assassinate American journalists? Judge Collyer says no."

“For too long, the U.S. Government has sentenced people to death in secret, including American citizens, denying them their constitutionally-guaranteed right to walk through the courthouse doors and defend themselves.” - Reprieve’s @jennifermgibson https://t.co/incOTPae4a

— Reprieve (@Reprieve) June 14, 2018

While Kareem maintains that he was placed on the secretive kill list by the Obama White House, his suit initially named President Donald Trump as the lead defendant in the case, arguing that Trump has kept him on the list. In her ruling on Wednesday, however, Collyer dismissed Trump as the lead defendant for "technical reasons." The case will instead proceed against a number of government agencies, including the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Trauma at the Texas-Mexico Border: Families Separated, Children Detained & Residents Fighting Back

Children's Detention Center Tour Reveals Trump Mural That Would Look 'In Place In a Banana Republic'

Children who are taken to the former Walmart which now serves as a detention center for young immigrants in Brownsville, Texas, are greeted by a mural of the man responsible for their incarceration—President Donald Trump.

MSNBC journalist Jacob Soboroff was given a tour of the facility, now known as Casa Padre. He shared images of the mural, which includes the quotation, "Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war."

Starting to get some handout photos from our tour with @HHSGov.

Here’s the Trump mural I mentioned to @chrislhayes inside the shelter for incarcerated child migrants.

Also their beds and the towels they shower with. pic.twitter.com/EPEQ1VGAAF

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 14, 2018

Other presidential murals are painted on walls throughout the facility, and children are taught U.S. history for several hours per day—while the government bars them from joining U.S. society. In a report on "All In with Chris Hayes," Soboroff compared the facility to a prison, where about 1,400 boys between the ages of 10 and 17 are kept indoors for 22 hours per day. "I have been inside a federal prison and county jails," he said. "This place is called a shelter but these kids are incarcerated."

'What Do You Call a Country That Institutionalizes Child Abuse?'

As the heart-wrenching story of a Honduran mother having her baby daughter ripped from her arms by federal authorities as she was breastfeeding provided yet another example of the immense cruelty of President Donald Trump's family separation policy, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Wednesday led a sit-in outside the offices of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) demanding that asylum-seekers be released from government detention and reunited with their loved ones immediately.

"Every hour that goes by is another hour of trauma for these moms, dads, little boys, girls, and babies," Jayapal—who was joined in the act of civil disobedience by a group of House Democrats and immigrant rights activists—wrote on Twitter.

"What do you call a country that institutionalizes child abuse?" added Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) from the steps of the CBP building in the nation's capital. "Tragically, today, we call it the United States of America."

DoJ report faults Comey on Clinton email inquiry but finds no political bias

Former FBI director James Comey did not follow protocol in his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the justice department’s independent watchdog has said in a new report. A highly anticipated review by the DoJ’s inspector general, which was released on Thursday, condemned Comey and a handful of individual FBI personnel. But the report found no evidence to support Donald Trump’s claim that the agency was motivated by political bias against him as it investigates potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

The 500-page report largely focuses on the conduct of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, which is historically non-partisan, during the 2016 presidential election.

The report also includes previously unreported text messages between two FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who privately criticized Trump and previously worked on the bureau’s Russia investigation. ... “The conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation,” the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said in the report. He nonetheless concluded: “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.”

Horowitz had a similar assessment for Comey, whose particular actions leading up to the election have been the subject of intense debate due in large part to his reopening of the federal investigation into Clinton’s emails just 11 days before Americans went to the polls. “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part,” Horowitz wrote, “we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.”

The report calls Comey “insubordinate” and says his actions were “extraordinary”.

U.S., Japan decline to sign G7 agreement to reduce plastic waste in oceans

The United States and Japan declined to sign onto an agreement between the other G7 countries to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world’s oceans and cut down on the usage of single-use plastics, such as straws, bottles and cups.

Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the European Union endorsed a G7 ocean plastics charter, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at the leaders’ summit in the waterfront town of La Malbaie, Que. The pact calls for signatory countries to reduce the use of plastics and, where alternatives are not available, find ways to include more recycled materials in the plastics they do use. ...

The U.S. decision to refrain from signing onto the plastics charter did not come as a surprise, given its refusal to join the Paris climate agreement. Japan’s reasons were not as clear; a query to the Japanese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately answered Sunday.

Environmental advocacy groups say the plastics charter does not go far enough on the policy and enforcement fronts. “This plastics charter is another non-binding, voluntary agreement that fails to secure the action needed to get to the root cause of the plastic pollution crisis,” said Farrah Khan, Greenpeace Canada plastics campaigner.

'Utterly Terrifying': Study Affirms Feedback Loop Fears as Surging Antarctica Ice Loss Tripled in Last Five Years

Scientists are expressing alarm over "utterly terrifying" new findings from NASA and the European Space Agency that Antarctica has lost about 3 trillion tons of ice since 1992, and in the past five years—as the atmospheric and ocean temperatures have continued to climb amid ongoing reliance on fossil fuels—ice losses have tripled. ...

Published in the journal Nature, "This is the most robust study of the ice mass balance of Antarctica to date," said NASA's Erik Ivins, who co-led the research team. The report offers insight into the future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which the authors note "is an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise." "The outlook for the future is looking different to what it was," explained Shepherd. "There has been a sharp increase, with almost half the loss coming in the last five years alone."

Up until 2012, "we could not detect any acceleration," but after that, based on surveys by satellites, they saw a threefold increase in the rate of ice melt. "That's a big jump, and it did catch us all by surprise," Shepherd said. "A threefold increase now puts Antarctica in the frame as one of the largest contributors to sea-level rise. The last time we looked at the polar ice sheets, Greenland was the dominant contributor. That's no longer the case."

Today’s news on Antarctica — ice loss there has accelerated 300% over the past 25 years — is utterly terrifying.

“As we observe the system for longer, we see more and more changes of the type we feared could happen as the climate warms” —@helenafrickerhttps://t.co/PhhPxJUNe8

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) June 13, 2018

About decade ago, as New Scientist noted, "the official view was that there would be no net ice loss from Antarctica over the next century." Even so, Dr. James Hansen, "the father of modern climate change awareness," warned at the time, "The primary issue is whether global warming will reach a level such that ice sheets begin to disintegrate in a rapid, non-linear fashion on West Antarctica, Greenland or both."

"Once well under way, such a collapse might be impossible to stop, because there are multiple positive feedbacks," Hansen wrote for New Scientist in 2007. "In that event, a sea level rise of several meters at least would be expected." Fears of so-called feedback loops have long been a critical part of the scientific community's warnings about what runaway climate change could mean.

Also of Interest

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

First Thoughts On The Kim Trump Photo-Op Summit

North Korea Issue is Not De-Nuclearization But De-Colonization

The Destruction of Latin America’s Left And Lessons for Everyone

Letter From Nicaragua: A Catastrophic Well-Orchestrated Event Is Occurring

Bay Area Muslim Leader Has Her Award Rescinded by Interfaith Group After Pro-Israel Activists Objected

NEW POLL: 71% of Millennials Want to End Two-Party Duopoly

“Medicare for All” Is a Popular Idea, but Nevada Primary Shows It Won’t Necessarily Win Elections

'We burned the forest': the indigenous Chileans fighting loggers with arson

Of course US birth rates are falling – this is a harsh place to have a family

New York Times reporter broke the biggest rule in journalism

Jogger who trashed homeless man's things charged with robbery in new dispute

A Little Night Music

J B Lenoir - Play A Little While

J B Lenoir - Deep in Debt Blues

J B Lenoir - Give Me One More Shot

J B Lenoir - Daddy Talk To Your Son

J B Lenoir - I'll die trying

J.B. Lenoir - I Feel So Good

J. B. Lenore - Mama Your Daughter Is Going To Miss Me

J. B. Lenoir with Freddy Below - The Whale Has Swallowed Me

J.B. Lenoir - Down in Mississippi