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News and Opinion

John Bolton to threaten sanctions in virulent attack on ICC

John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, will threaten the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions when he makes an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington. According to drafts of his speech, Bolton will push for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He is also expected to announce on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton will say, according to a draft of his speech seen by Reuters. “The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” the draft text continues. It says the Trump administration “will fight back” if the ICC formally proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US military and intelligence staff during the war in Afghanistan.

Bolton is expected to propose that the Trump administration bans ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the US, impose sanctions on any funds they have in the States and prosecute them in the American court system. “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us,” Bolton’s draft text says. He will also suggest that the US negotiates more binding, bilateral agreements to prohibit countries from surrendering Americans to the court in The Hague.

Trump attack on ICC is the unacceptable face of US exceptionalism

The title of John Bolton’s speech in Washington – “Protecting American constitutionalism and sovereignty from international threats” – sounded innocuous enough, if a little pompous. But its text represents the Trump administration’s most devastating and unrestrained attack to date on the global rules-based order and its legal flagship, the international criminal court.

Put bluntly, it is an all-out bid by Donald Trump to end the ICC, the world’s foremost criminal tribunal, and with it, the very concept of international justice. Bolton is the man wielding the knife. And there is a strong possibility they will succeed.

Trump’s third choice as national security adviser is a fitting assassin. With fellow hawks Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, Bolton led the charge for George W Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Undeterred by past mistakes, and unwilling to learn from them, Bolton is now intent on bringing down the Iranian regime. He is unlikely to let considerations of legality get in the way this time either.

The refusal of major powers to allow a level playing field has weakened the ICC and it has been criticised for focusing investigations on countries with less wealth and influence, mainly in Africa. That emphasis has changed under Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor since 2012. It is her move to open a formal investigation of possible crimes in Afghanistan since 2001 by US military and civilian personnel, as well as the Taliban, that has so alarmed Washington. ...

Bolton’s démarche fits a pattern of unilateralist actions that has seen the US withdraw from the UN’s human rights council, discard both the multilateral pact on Iran’s nuclear activities and the Paris climate accord, raise new trade and tariff barriers and threaten to pull out of Nato and the WTO. Trump says he is fighting for US sovereignty. But to the rest of the world, it looks like the unacceptable face of American exceptionalism.

'Cruel and vicious': Palestinian officials condemn Trump's closure of DC office

Palestinian leaders have condemned a decision by Donald Trump to shutter their diplomatic mission to Washington as part of a “cruel and spiteful” campaign they say represents collective punishment against Palestinians. The move follows a year of US action that includes cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Palestinians and recognising Jerusalem, a city that is territorially contested, as Israel’s capital.

Senior Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi said the US government was “extremely cruel and spiteful to persist in deliberately bashing the Palestinian people by denying them of their rights, giving away their lands and rightful capital of Jerusalem”. “This form of crude and vicious blackmail … once again seeks to punish the Palestinian people as a whole who are already victims of the ruthless Israeli military occupation,” she added.

Trump has said his decisions – which have ended half a century of bipartisan US policy towards the conflict – had been to pressure the Palestinians to make a peace deal. However, no US peace plans have yet to be put forward even as Trump has promised an “ultimate deal”, a proposal the administration says is being led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior aide.

Obama Says Trump "Symptom Of Larger Problem"

Trump Minus Narrative Equals Bushbama

In a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama called out the “politics of fear” which are used by his successor and criticized an insufficient denunciation of “Nazi sympathizers” by the current administration. “How hard can that be?” asked the former president. “Saying Nazis are bad?”

Also in the news, getting far less attention than the sparkly spectacle of Fauxgressive Jesus wagging his finger at Orange Hitler for being too nice to Nazis, is a report from the Washington Post (open it in a private browser to get around the paywall) that the Trump administration has done a complete 180 degree reversal of its prior position on Syria. According to the State Department’s James Jeffrey and Joel Rayburn, the Trump administration has now abandoned its previous goal of pulling out of Syria as soon as possible. The conditions for ending the US military’s illegal occupation of a sovereign nation now reportedly include “the exit of all Iranian military and proxy forces from Syria, and establishment of a stable, nonthreatening government acceptable to all Syrians and the international community,” which is another way of saying that the occupation will continue indefinitely and regime change is back on the table.

Trump agrees to an indefinite military effort and new diplomatic push in Syria, U.S. officials say https://t.co/THIKxiroD2 by @karendeyoung1

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) September 7, 2018

Twenty paragraphs into the report, we get to something even more disturbing. While the Trump administration has been issuing warnings that there will be harsh consequences for using chemical weapons, apparently now no attacks of any kind by the Syrian government on the terrorist militias occupying the province of Idlib will be permitted by the United States at all. No attacking the terrorists, period. So we’ve got Trump administration officials saying that the extremist factions which were armed and supported by the US and its allies during the Obama administration are completely off limits, and that the military occupation of Syria will continue until Syria’s Middle Eastern allies leave the country and the Syrian government begins acting as America commands.

So, maybe, the reason Trump doesn’t spend all day tweeting “Nazis are bad” is because if he did, the establishment propagandists would lose the narrative that not saying “Nazis are bad” is the worst thing that this president is doing? Maybe if Trump started talking about how bad Nazis are whenever he’s in front of a camera, people might stop calling him Orange Hitler and start noticing that he’s actually Orange Obama?

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has issued another letter to Trump that he probably won't read, much to his detriment.

Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria

We are concerned that you may not have been adequately briefed on the upsurge of hostilities in northwestern Syria, where Syrian armed forces with Russian support have launched a full-out campaign to take back the al-Nusra/al-Qaeda/ISIS-infested province of Idlib. The Syrians will almost certainly succeed, as they did in late 2016 in Aleppo. As in Aleppo, it will mean unspeakable carnage, unless someone finally tells the insurgents theirs is a lost cause.

That someone is you. The Israelis, Saudis, and others who want unrest to endure are egging on the insurgents, assuring them that you, Mr. President, will use US forces to protect the insurgents in Idlib, and perhaps also rain hell down on Damascus. We believe that your senior advisers are encouraging the insurgents to think in those terms, and that your most senior aides are taking credit for your recent policy shift from troop withdrawal from Syria to indefinite war.

Russian missile-armed naval and air units are now deployed in unprecedented numbers to engage those tempted to interfere with Syrian and Russian forces trying to clean out the terrorists from Idlib. We assume you have been briefed on that — at least to some extent. More important, we know that your advisers tend to be dangerously dismissive of Russian capabilities and intentions. We do not want you to be surprised when the Russians start firing their missiles. The prospect of direct Russian-U.S. hostilities in Syria is at an all-time high. We are not sure you realize that.

The situation is even more volatile because Kremlin leaders are not sure who is calling the shots in Washington. ... The best way to assure Mr. Putin that you are in control of U.S. policy toward Syria would be for you to seek an early opportunity to speak out publicly, spelling out your intentions. If you wish wider war, John Bolton has put you on the right path.

Feds said alleged Russian spy Maria Butina used sex for influence. Now, they’re walking that back.

Remember all those salacious details about the alleged Russian spy Maria Butina offering up sex in exchange for political influence? The feds who made those claims in July have now quietly admitted they might have just misread her text messages.

In a filing disclosed around midnight on Friday, the government quietly backed off the most salacious detail in its case against the 29-year-old gun enthusiast from Siberia, saying that part might simply have been “mistaken.”

Butina’s lawyer fired back with both barrels, arguing the very public accusation had unfairly smeared Butina, and that the subsequent admission of error “reeks of desperation.”

“The government’s walkback of their false allegations is welcome, but the damage has been done to Maria’s reputation,” Butin’s attorney Robert Driscoll wrote in an email to VICE News. “Unfortunately, this is far from the only example of the government jumping to conclusions in this case. Criminal charges are not the place for guessing, supposition, and innuendo.”

'Stunning But Not Surprising': Trump Administration Slammed for Secret Meetings About Venezuela Coup

Critics across the globe are expressing alarm over the "stunning but not surprising" revelation reported by the New York Times on Saturday that, according to 11 American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander, "the Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro."

Some called out the Trump administration for the United States' record on human rights. American activist and political analyst Ajamu Baraka tweeted, "There are few nations that can lecture other nations on human rights [and] democracy but the one nation that can never lecture anyone is the Unite[d] States of America."

"Not that it makes a difference for the gangsters making policy in the U.S.," Baraka added, "but threatening military actions against other states is a violation of U.N. Charter." ...

Although "American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled," the Times noted that "the Trump administration's willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically" because the United States has a "long history of covert intervention across Latin America," and "many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups, and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Chile."

Are New York’s Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?

LinkNYC kiosks have become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide “the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world” as “a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough.” Anyone can use the kiosks’ Android tablets to search for directions and services; they are also equipped with charging stations, 911 buttons, and phones for free domestic calls. But even as the kiosks have provided important services to connect New Yorkers, they may also represent a troubling expansion of the city’s surveillance network, potentially connecting every borough to a new level of invasive monitoring. Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened sight lines for viewing above crowds. ...

Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations. ... In May of this year, Charles Meyers, an undergraduate at New York City College of Technology, came across folders in LinkNYC’s public library on GitHub, a platform for managing files and software, that appear to raise further questions about location tracking and the platform’s protection of its users’ data. Meyers made copies of the codebases in question — “LinkNYC Mobile Observation” and “RxLocation” — and shared both folders with The Intercept.

According to Meyers, the “LinkNYC Mobile Observation” code collects the user’s longitude and latitude, as well as the user’s browser type, operating system, device type, device identifiers, and full URL clickstreams (including date and time) and aggregates this information into a database. In Meyers’s view, this code — along with the functions of the “RxLocation” codebase — suggests that the company is interested in tracking the locations of Wi-Fi users in real time. If such code were run on a mobile app or kiosk, he said, the company would be able to make advertisements available in real time based on where and who someone was, and that this would constitute a potential violation of the company’s privacy policy. The Intercept asked four technologists, including a computer forensics investigator and an expert on Wi-Fi location tracking, to independently review the code. Each confirmed that the code could execute commands as Meyers had described, but they emphasized that it was not possible to determine the purpose of the code and whether it was actually running on any kiosks or devices based on the information given. They concluded that it was unlikely that the code was currently in use, as its unfinished security features pointed to the fact that it appeared to be in progress, possibly for a mobile product. “We don’t know why it exists, but the fact that it exists is creepy,” explained Surya Mattu, a research scientist and artist. “There’s no way properly to interrogate this further as a third party.”

Sweden’s anti-immigrant party just took its biggest ever share of the vote

Sweden's far-right populists won their biggest ever share of the vote in Sunday's general elections, underlining how immigration has reshaped politics even in one of Europe’s most tolerant democracies. Although the Sweden Democrats largely set the agenda during the campaign, the far-right party made more modest gains than once feared, coming in third behind the two mainstream parties who are now scrambling to form the next government.

But while the populists may consider their 17.6 percent disappointing, after earlier polls had predicted they would finish in at least second place, analysts say the nationalist surge represents an alarming change in Sweden’s political landscape. The populist party still won their largest ever share of the vote – up from 12.9 percent in 2014 – and successfully shifted both mainstream parties closer to their position on key issues of immigration, integration and identity.

“The mainstream has certainly moved closer to their positions,” Matthew Goodwin, visiting senior fellow in the Europe programme at the Chatham House think tank told VICE News. “You can say this party has perhaps underperformed but number one, it’s had a clear impact on the policy debate, and number two, Sweden is not exactly a failing state. If populists can get 17-18 percent in Sweden then they can pretty much get it anywhere.”

Dallas cop charged with manslaughter for shooting unarmed black man in his own apartment

An off-duty Dallas police officer who fatally shot her unarmed black neighbor in his own apartment was arrested Sunday and charged with manslaughter.

Amber Guyger, 30, said she came home from a long shift and mistakenly entered Botham Shem Jean’s apartment Thursday night believing it was her own, and shot him. Jean, a 26-year-old black man and a native of the Caribbean island St. Lucia, later died at the hospital.

The fact that days elapsed before Guyger was taken into custody on Sunday inflamed accusations that police departments extend preferential treatment when one of their own kills someone. The incident has also been held up as another example where black people are harassed, arrested, or even killed while going about their daily lives. ...

When Guyger, who has been with the department for nearly five years, came home to her apartment complex in downtown Dallas at around 10 p.m. Thursday after a “full shift,” she was still in her full uniform, according to the Dallas Police Department. Officials haven’t said much beyond her claim that she entered Jean’s apartment thinking it was her own. “It’s not clear what the interaction was between her and the victim,” Dallas police said. “Then at some point she fired her weapon striking the victim.”

Ex-Senate Aide: Kavanaugh Should Be Impeached for Lying Under Oath About Stolen Democratic Memos

Pence acknowledges tie-breaker may be needed to confirm Kavanaugh

Vice-President Mike Pence acknowledged on Sunday that he may be required to cast a tie-breaking vote to secure the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a supreme court justice, in what would be a first in US history.

Fiery confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh before the Senate judiciary committee concluded this week with accusations from the left that Kavanaugh perjured himself and accusations from the right that Democrats improperly released classified information.

Susan Collins of Maine, who as a pro-choice Republican is seen as a possible defector in the confirmation effort, said on Friday she had not yet made up her mind....

Republicans hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate. Under rules changes announced by majority leader Mitch McConnell in 2017, supreme court nominees can be advanced on a simple majority vote. A two-thirds majority was previously required. That means Pence’s constitutionally allotted power to break Senate ties might be used in an unprecedented and potent way, to install Kavanaugh in the seat vacated by retiring justice Anthony M Kennedy, thereby tilting the court to the right.

Pence has cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate at a record-setting pace. He has intervened to confirm education secretary Betsy DeVos, to confirm ambassador Sam Brownback and to allow states to block funding for Planned Parenthood.

Abortion activists are sending Susan Collins a grim reason not to vote for Kavanaugh

Susan Collins’ office has been deluged with a grim reminder of the days before Roe v. Wade, thanks to abortion rights advocates. Activists have mailed the office of the Maine Republican senator — whose vote is crucial to confirming Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — about 3,000 coat hangers, the Associated Press reported Sunday, as grisly callbacks to what some women resorted to in the days of “back-alley abortions” when the procedure was illegal. Collins supports abortion access and has pledged to oppose any candidates who don’t support Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. ...

Kavanaugh’s four days of confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up last week, and he largely managed to avoid making any declarations about how he’ll view on abortion rights. There were, however, a few hiccups: Not only did Kavanaugh provoke outrage when he appeared to refer to some forms of birth control as “abortion-inducing drugs,” but a 2003 email published by the New York Times mid-hearing indicate that Kavanaugh doesn’t believe Roe should be called “settled law of the land.”

That assertion apparently contradicts a meeting Kavanaugh held with Collins last month, where Collins said the Supreme Court nominee told her that he does consider Roe to be “settled law.”

Still, Supreme Court justices are free to overturn “settled law,” and abortion rights advocates fear that Kavanaugh will help a conservative-leaning Supreme Court do just that. If the coat hanger barrage fails and Collins votes for Kavanaugh, activists have another plan up their sleeve. A fundraiser on Crowdpac has now raised more than $878,000 — and if Collins votes for Kavanaugh, that money will be donated to Collin’s 2020 re-election opponent.

Oh looky, Obama wants to be popular with the base again, and it's safe for him to do it because he has no power to make his positions a reality. Welcome to the Neoliberal Rat Bastard Club, Barry.

Chided for Working Against It as President, Obama's Backing of Medicare for All Called 'Thrilling' Shift

While progressives pointed out that it would have been worthy of more applause if the offer of support had come back when he had the actual power to do something about it, Medicare for All proponents applauded the huge paradigm shift denoted by the newest high-profile endorsement of the popular proposal: former President Barack Obama.

Speaking at the University of Illinois in his first explicit rebuke of President Donald Trump and what was seen as his first major campaign speech for Democrats in 2018, Obama said that progressives "aren't just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they're running on good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free."

The speech, noted journalist David Sirota, was a clear sign that in the two and a half years since Hillary Clinton predicted that single payer healthcare would "never, ever" happen, Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) and other universal healthcare advocates' efforts to push the Democrats to embrace the proposal have been a success.

Yes, it's welcome development to hear former President Obama describe Medicare For All as "good new idea." But it's terribly frustrating that he sees it as "new" when his admin worked against it as President.

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) September 7, 2018

As Shane Ryan noted at Paste Magazine, Obama's vocal support Medicare for All comes after the majority of Americans have already expressed approval for the proposal. Two weeks ago, a Reuters poll found that 70 percent of all Americans now favor such a program, including nearly 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans.

"Look, sarcasm aside, this is fine—Medicare for all is a terrific policy, and maybe Obama's support will whip the last of the recalcitrant congressional Democrats into shape," wrote Ryan. "It would have been nice if he could lead from the front on an important issue, for once, but hey, that's life at the top of the Democratic party."

EPA Exodus: Nearly 1,600 Workers Have Left Since Trump Took Office, Analysis Shows

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has seen an exodus of nearly 1,600 former federal employees, including some who say they "did not want to any longer be any part of this administration's nonsense" and believed they "could do better work" elsewhere, according to a new report from the Washington Post. ...

At least 260 scientists, 185 "environmental protection specialists," and 106 engineers are among those who have left the EPA during the Trump era, according to the Post's review of data released under the Freedom of Information Act, and "those who have resigned or retired include some of the agency's most experienced veterans, as well as young environmental experts who traditionally would have replaced them—stirring fears about brain drain at the EPA."

"Hundreds of employees accepted buyouts last summer, and records show that nearly a quarter of the agency's remaining 13,758 employees are now eligible to retire," the newspaper reports. "As the departures continue, some EPA workers have voiced worries that the administration's refusal to fill vacancies with younger employees has effectively blocked the pipeline of new talent."

During the president's first 18 months in office, the EPA has hired fewer than 400 new employees. With limited hiring and a flood of departures, the agency's workforce has declined by 8 percent—or, as the Post noted, "to levels not seen since the Reagan administration, which has always been the administration's vision for the agency.

Rise for Climate: Tens of Thousands March in San Francisco Calling for Fossil-Free World

An interesting article worth a full read:

Is Nationalization an Answer to Climate Change?

With Theresa May’s Conservative government looking increasingly weak, it’s possible that the opposition Labour Party in the U.K. — under the leadership of socialist Jeremy Corbyn — could take power in the coming years, or even months. Among the party’s top-line demands is nationalizing or renationalizing several basic services. ... In particular, Labour hopes to renationalize private rail companies; “transition to a publicly owned, decentralised energy system”; create a regional network of publicly owned water companies; and reverse the privatization of the Royal Mail — the now profit-driven British equivalent of the U.S. Postal Service — as soon as possible. ... “We’ve gone through, now, 40 years in which economic policymaking and politics generally have been dominated by neoliberalism and neoliberal ideology, and that has argued that the private sector — the market — can always provide the optimum solution to any problem we face,” Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, Corbyn’s second-in-command, told The Intercept. “We’ve had that experiment now for 40 years, and it’s failed dramatically,” he said, noting how privatization has tended to lead to poorer services and higher costs for consumers. ...

What’s unique about Labour’s nationalization plans with regard to energy is that they would make Britain the first country to nationalize its power sector with the express intention of weaning it off fossil fuels and with an eye toward decarbonizing the economy. ...

Labour’s climate plans would represent a stark break from the market-based approaches that have been emphasized at the European Union-level and in the states through periodic interest in carbon taxes in the U.S. As I began to ask what he makes of the free market approach to climate change — the idea that simply setting the right price on carbon and pollution will cure the problem — McDonnell cut me off: “Well that hasn’t worked, has it.” He’s right. The European Union Emissions Trading System — of which Britain has been a part — has only recently shown signs of recovery after the price collapsed soon after the system was set up. Prices have rallied this past year, now sitting around 20 euros per metric ton of carbon. That’s still far below the level that economists Lord Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz suggest, in their World Bank report, is the bare minimum necessary to stay in line with the targets laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement, which they found would require prices of at least $40-$80 per metric ton of carbon dioxide by 2020, and between $50-$100 per by 2030. ...

Labour’s climate plans extend well beyond nationalization, too. The party hopes to factor climate and the environment into just about every level of Britain’s economic decision-making, including climate concerns in forecasts created by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, which reports to the Treasury — a rough amalgam of the U.S.’s Office of Management and Budget. He also hopes to bolster the OBR’s resources for modeling environmental impacts. They plan to ban fracking should they take office, and fund a just transition for workers in carbon-intensive industries to move into other well-paid, unionized work, with the party throwing its support behind the One Million Climate Jobs campaign being pushed for by several trade unions. Labour frontbencher Clive Lewis has stated that as much as 60 percent of the U.K.’s energy could come from low-carbon sources by 2030, through investing massively in renewables and adopting a “mission-oriented industrial strategy,” by putting in place “the right institutional framework and support — and then let business figure out how to get there. We’ll initiate and direct a wave of innovation across a range of industries.”

McDonnell and his team have also proposed the creation of a National Investment Bank to finance new and low-carbon infrastructure. The bank would feature regional arms that help make grassroots economic planning a reality, plans Labour has already started to foment in opposition through a series of regional conferences and local town halls.

Hurricane Florence upgraded to category four as it nears US east coast

Florence rapidly strengthened into a potentially catastrophic category four hurricane on Monday as it closed in on North and South Carolina, carrying winds and water that could wreak havoc over a wide stretch of the eastern US this week. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) director Ken Graham warned that Florence was forecast to slow down significantly once it reaches shore, lingering over the Carolinas. Predictions for heavy rainfall stretched into West Virginia. “When you stall a system like this and it moves real slow, some of that rainfall can extend well away from the center,” Graham said. “It’s not just the coast.” ...

Hurricane specialist Eric Blake said a warm ocean is the fuel that powers hurricanes, and Florence will be moving over waters where temperatures are peaking near 85F (30C). With little wind shear to pull the storm apart, Florence’s hurricane wind field is expected to expand over the coming days, increasing its storm surge and inland wind threats, and raising the likelihood of life-threatening freshwater flooding.

By noon ET on Monday, Florence had top sustained winds of 130mph. It was centered about 1,230 miles east-south-east of Cape Fear, North Carolina, moving west at 13mph. Its center will move between Bermuda and the Bahamas on Tuesday and Wednesday, and approach the coast of South Carolina or North Carolina on Thursday, the NHC said.

Also of Interest

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

Anonymous Op-ed From Trump’s White House Shows the Dangers of America’s Imperial Presidency

Letter from Britain: The Real Reason for the ‘Anti-Semite’ Campaign Against Jeremy Corbyn

Days After Endorsing Cuomo, NYT Calls His Party's Anti-Semitism Smear Against Cynthia Nixon 'Nearly as Sleazy as It Gets'

That Time CNN Staged A Fake Interview With A Syrian Child For War Propaganda

David Sirota: Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too

Sean Patrick Maloney Calls Zephyr Teachout “Unhinged” for Accurately Describing His Voting Record

A Little Night Music

Mance Lipscomb - Sugar Babe

Mance Lipscomb - Willie Poor Boy

Mance Lipscomb - Texas Blues

Mance Lipscomb - Shake Shake Mama

Mance Lipscomb - Blues in the Bottle

Mance Lipscomb - Evil Blues

Mance Lipscomb - Jack O´ Diamonds

A Well Spent Life

Mance Lipscomb at Newport 1965