Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues slide guitarist J.B. Hutto. Enjoy!

“There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.”

-- Richard Lederer

News and Opinion

Yemen: End airstrikes and give child victims justice, says UN body

A UN human rights body has called on Saudi Arabia to end airstrikes in Yemen and start ensuring the perpetrators of attacks on children are brought to justice. The call by the UN committee on the rights of the child will add further pressure on the Saudis to rethink the four-year war in Yemen.

In the US, a cross-party group of senators have urged the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to rethink his decision to certify that arms sales can go ahead because Saudi Arabia is taking steps to protect civilians. The senators say the judgment is impossible to reconcile with the known facts, including the recent increase in the death toll. ...

The latest UN report from a 15-strong panel in Geneva found that since March 2015 at least 1,248 children have been killed and the same number injured, amounting to about 20% of the total deaths and injury since the war began. The report condemns “the dramatic consequences for civilians, and particularly for children who are being killed, maimed, orphaned, and traumatised, of military operations, aggravated by an aerial and naval blockade that has rendered many millions of people, including a high proportion of children, food insecure”.

It says the independent assessments undertaken by Saudis of their air raids are “insufficiently independent, lack detail and have no mechanism for enforcement”.

Rep. Ro Khanna Condemns Saudi Barbarity from Disappearance of Saudi Journalist to War in Yemen

Trump announces Jamal Khashoggi investigation but says he won't halt Saudi arms sales

Donald Trump has said US investigators are looking into how Jamal Khashoggi vanished at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but made clear that whatever the outcome, the US would not forgo lucrative arms deals with Riyadh. The president’s announcement raised concerns of a cover-up of evidence implicating Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in plans to silence the dissident journalist. Those fears were also heightened by an announcement that the Turkish and Saudi governments would conduct a joint investigation into the case.

Senior Republicans in Congress, briefed on US intelligence, have meanwhile signaled they were prepared to force the US to take punitive action if Khashoggi was found to have been murdered by the Saudi regime. “We’re being very tough. And we have investigators over there and we’re working with Turkey, and frankly we’re working with Saudi Arabia. We want to find out what happened,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday morning. ...

Any sense that the administration might seek to impose serious consequences on Saudi Arabia was dispelled by the president. Asked at an impromptu press conference in the Oval Office whether the US would cut arms sales if the Saudi government was found to be responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance, the president demurred, saying the US could lose its share of the huge Saudi arms market to Russia or China. In the Oval Office Trump pointed out that the disappearance took place in Turkey and that Khashoggi was not a US citizen. On being told that the journalist was a US permanent resident, Trump said: “We don’t like it even a little bit. But whether or not we should stop $110bn [£83bn] from being spent in this country – knowing they have … two very good alternatives. That would not be acceptable to me.”

He continued: “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country – they are spending $110bn on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country.” ...

The Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker, one of a handful of senators briefed on US intelligence on the case, said he believed Khashoggi was murdered and that the “intel points directly” at the Saudi government. “I think they did it and unfortunately I think he is deceased. But they certainly could produce him and change the narrative,” Corker told CNN. The senator told MSNBC he had seen intelligence in a secure room at the Senate and concluded: “It does appear that he’s been murdered, and I think over the next several days, things are going to become much clearer.”

Is This the Beginning of the End of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance?

The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi last Tuesday is threatening to upend the terms of the decades-long alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the nine days since Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian resident of Virginia and a Washington Post columnist, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, politicians, media figures and foreign policy elites – even those who have fawned over the authoritarian Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — have grown increasingly critical of the U.S.-Saudi alliance. The U.S. has long given the Saudis a blank check, politically and militarily, and there have been voices advocating for a rethinking of that decades-old relationship for nearly as long as it has lasted. But the widespread belief that the Saudis assassinated Khashoggi inside their consulate has brought those voices squarely into the center. Suddenly, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is being called into fundamental question.

President Donald Trump initially responded to questions about Khashoggi’s disappearance by saying “I don’t like hearing about it, and hopefully that will sort itself out.”  But on Thursday, he began to sound much less confident in his defense of Saudi Arabia, the first foreign country he visited as president. He said that it was beginning to look as though Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was indeed murdered, but worried that jobs would be at risk if arms sales to the country were halted.

In the Senate, the kingdom is starting to lose its traditional bipartisan support, with almost every member of the Foreign Relations Committee calling on Trump to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance. The Washington Post, meanwhile, has devoted extraordinary resources, both on the reporting and editorial side, to the case of its columnist. Washington-based lobbying firms that do business with Saudi Arabia — particularly Hogan and Lovells, the Glover Park Group, and Brownstein — are facing a difficult decision, as pressure mounts across the board to break with the kingdom. The New York Times has withdrawn its sponsorship of an upcoming technology conference in Riyadh. Meanwhile, the Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and CNBC Squawbox co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin have announced they will pull out. A CNN spokesperson told Buzzfeed News they are reconsidering their sponsorship, and a spokespeople for CNBC and Fox Business told The Intercept they are “monitoring the situation.”

The shift in discourse over Saudi Arabia is palpable in the think-tank world as well. The vice president for security at the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, called on the United States to freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s disappearance. ... Prominent right-wing columnist and Council of Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot, a long-time defender of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, warned that if the Saudis did indeed kill Khashoggi, there “must be hell to pay.”

The Saudis will keep killing civilians and journalists as long as we keep arming and assisting them. The President should immediately halt arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 11, 2018

Naming Names, Turks Turn Up Heat on Saudis in Consulate Case

A Turkish newspaper close to the government has published a list of 15 men it says formed a hit squad of Saudi government agents the Turks suspect of killing and dismembering a prominent critic inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. While Turkey has not leveled the charges publicly, two Turkish officials speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed that the government considers the men to be Saudi operatives who flew last week to Istanbul in pursuit of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident. Khashoggi has not been seen since he entered the consulate on Oct. 2.

One of the men on the list published by the newspaper, Sabah, is an autopsy expert at Saudi Arabia’s internal security agency, according to the two Turkish officials. Another appears to be a lieutenant in the Royal Saudi air force. The officials, citing confidential intelligence, said all worked for the Saudi government.

In recent days, anonymous Turkish officials have leaked a steady stream of details about the alleged killing. They say they believe the operation was ordered by the highest levels of the Saudi court in part because of its scale and complexity. The leak of the list of 15 Saudis appears to be part of a Turkish government campaign intended to put pressure on the Saudi government to admit that Khashoggi was killed, and to spur wider international outrage. The Times found corroborating information about two of the men — the lieutenant and the autopsy expert — by comparing the names and photographs in Sabah, the newspaper, with social media profiles and Saudi media reports.

Franco exhumation: row escalates between Spanish government and late dictator's family

Brazil's far-right presidential candidate denies ties to Steve Bannon after son's claims

The far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro said Thursday his campaign had no ties to former White House strategist Steve Bannon, contradicting claims by one of Bolsonaro’s sons. Bolsonaro, who won the first round of Brazil’s presidential election Sunday and is the front-runner in polls for the 28 October runoff, was asked about connections to Bannon during an event in Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro said that if his son Eduardo Bolsonaro had met with Bannon, “he didn’t tell me about it”.

“We don’t have the resources to pay for the campaign ... even if [a marketing strategist] approached us,” Bolsonaro said. He described the reports of connections to Bannon as “typical fake news”.

In August, the Brazilian magazine Epoca quoted Eduardo Bolsonaro as saying Bannon “had put himself at our disposal to help”. In the interview, Bolsonaro said the help would not be financial, but rather “internet tips, sometimes an analysis, interpreting data, those kinds of things”. Also in August, Eduardo posted on Instagram a picture of himself with Bannon. The caption said that the two had met and that Bannon was an “enthusiast” of his father’s candidacy and they would “unite forces against cultural Marxism”.

Israel fines New Zealand women $18,000 for urging Lorde concert boycott

An Israel court has ordered two New Zealand women to pay damages for harming the “artistic welfare” of three Israeli teenagers after the pop star Lorde cancelled a planned performance in Tel Aviv. Judge Mirit Fohrer ruled that Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab of New Zealand must pay damages to Israeli teenagers Shoshana Steinbach, Ayelet Wertzel and Ahuva Frogel totalling more than NZ$18,000 for writing a letter urging the singer to cancel her concert in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reports.

It is believed to be the first effective use of a 2011 Israeli law allowing civil lawsuits of anyone who encourages a boycott of Israel. The Israeli teenagers claimed their “artistic welfare” was damaged because of the cancellation and that they suffered “damage to their good name as Israelis and Jews”.

It remained unclear whether the claimants would be able to collect the cash. A spokesperson for the New Zealand ministry of foreign affairs said it would be up to the courts of New Zealand to decide whether the claim for damages was enforceable. “Whether a foreign judgment is enforceable in New Zealand will be governed by the laws of New Zealand and is a question for the Courts of New Zealand to determine.”

San Francisco Jewish Federation also funding far-right fringe groups, not just Canary Mission

The recent revelation that San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation funneled $100,000 to the anti-BDS blacklisting website Canary Mission shocked many. But that donation was only one in a long list of controversial far-right fringe causes supported by the federation through one of its largest “supporting foundations” – the Helen Diller Family Foundation. The federation’s guidelines forbid contributions to organizations that promote bigotry and extremism. However, IRS 990 forms for the years 2014 to 2016 from the foundation – which is how its Canary Mission donation was discovered by the Forward earlier this month – reveal a list of donations to such groups.

These include the highly controversial Project Veritas ($100,000 in 2016), run by conservative activist and provocateur James O’Keefe, who uses stealth videos to try to smear left-wing groups and journalists. According to the documents, the federation also supported a foundation initiated by populist far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders ($25,000 in 2015), who has campaigned against the “Islamization” of his country and stopping all Muslim immigration, promoted legislation that would ban the Koran in the Netherlands, and been called an “anti-Muslim bigot” by the ADL.

Both were among beneficiaries of donations from the Diller Foundation, along with gifts to several other groups that have been connected with promoting hate and suspicion of Muslims – as well as political right-wing organizations that have no connection to Israeli or Jewish causes, such as the Tea Party Patriots ($150,000 in 2016).

Another group funded by Diller is the American Freedom Defense Initiative (also known as Stop Islamization of America), which was created by Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller to oppose the alleged spread of Islamic law across the United States. The ADL said the group, which received $150,000 in 2014, “has sought to rouse public fears about a vast Islamic conspiracy to destroy American values.” The foundation has also supported the American Freedom Law Center (a $10,000 donation in 2014; $175,000 in 2015; and $100,000 in 2016), which is run by David Yerushalmi. The ADL said he has a “record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.”

Rep. Ro Khanna Introduces Internet Bill of Rights as Facebook & Google Admit Privacy Breaches

The Facebook hack is way worse than previously thought

Facebook revealed Friday that the biggest security breach in the company’s history is much worse than they first thought.

When the social media giant first reported the breach two weeks ago, it said that up to 50 million accounts could have been impacted. On Friday it downgraded that figure to 30 million, but the scale of the information the hackers accessed was much worse than initially reported.

Along with basic details like email address and phone number, the hackers gained access to personal data like who or what users were searching for on the platform. And for a subset of 14 million Facebook accounts, the outlook gets very grim: Hackers accessed deeply personal information, including relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, and the device types used to access Facebook.

Facebook also admitted hackers had access to the last 10 places users checked in to or were tagged in, the people or Pages they follow, and their 15 most recent searches.

Why are stock markets falling and how far will they go?

A volatile week across global stock markets has escalated into a heavy sell-off, with European stock markets plunging to their lowest level in 20 months on Thursday. In the UK, the FTSE 100 entered correction territory – falling 10% from its peak in May - after Wall Street suffered its biggest drop in eight months on Wednesday. The sell-off is being fuelled by mounting investor concern over rising US interest rates, which could curtail growth in the world’s biggest economy and have a damaging knock-on effect for global growth.

The yield, or interest payment to investors, on two-year US government bonds hit the highest level since 2008, in a sign of the rising borrowing costs for companies and consumers. Donald Trump also raised eyebrows among investors by branding the US Federal Reserve “crazy” for planning further rate rises. The US economy is booming, propelled further by Trump’s tax cuts earlier this year, which has prompted the US central bank to raise interest rates to keep a lid on inflation. Many economists are however now starting to warn that the economy is reaching a peak ahead of a slowdown next year.

Raising interest rates further could exacerbate that slowdown, although the increases may be necessary to curb additional inflation from rising oil prices and higher import costs in the US from Trump’s trade tariffs. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has downgraded its forecast for global growth forecast and warned that Trump’s trade war with China and Europe was partly to blame for the revision.

Wall Street Is Spending Big to Protect Its Ability to Jack Up Rents in California

For some on Wall Street, the financial crash of 2008 represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Homeowners who’d been walloped by the very crisis Wall Street had created were struggling to pay their mortgages, so financiers swooped in and bought up foreclosed homes, knowing the assets would eventually rise in price again. But with so many people foreclosed on and out of work, selling the homes was difficult, so Wall Street hit on a different approach: renting them out. Now, the biggest practitioner of this gambit is spending heavily to make sure it stays lucrative.

Blackstone Group, a private equity giant that is also now the world’s largest real estate management firm, has pumped in $6,859,747 so far to battle a ballot measure in California that would allow cities to re-establish rent control laws, including on single-family homes. That figure constitutes $1 out of every $7 supporting the “No on Prop 10″ campaign and is part of a $45.5 million assault, mostly from corporate landlords and property developers, on the right of cities to determine their own rental laws.

Currently, cities in California are banned from pursuing rent control for apartments built after 1995 and for all single-family home rentals, of which there are 2 million in the state. Blackstone has a portfolio of over 12,700 single-family rentals in California, and if it helps defeat Prop 10, the firm can continue to jack up rents to an unlimited degree. ...

Prop 10 would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, a 1995 state law that blocked cities and counties from establishing new rent control laws. Costa-Hawkins also incentivizes evictions, allowing landlords to raise rents to market rates when units become vacant, even if that unit was previously rent-controlled. Critics contend that the law has contributed to a housing crisis in California. In every metropolitan area in the state, between 30 and 60 percent of the population cannot afford local rents.

23andMe and Ancestry genetic tests are making it extremely easy for cops to track all white people

So many white people have bought into consumer genetic testing that it’s now possible for law enforcement agencies to use genetic data to hunt down virtually anyone of European descent — even if they’ve never spit in a trendy tube themselves — by tracking their distant relatives who have already been lured to companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com.

According to a study published in the academic journal Science, it’s not all that difficult to find someone in the U.S. based on existing, easily accessible ancestral data. And it’s all thanks to the 15 million people who have voluntarily submitted to the autosomal genetic tests. After all, that’s how police found and finally arrested the so-called “Golden State Killer,” Joseph James DeAngelo, in April — by matching DNA from decades-old crime scenes to the online DNA database run by GEDmatch, a Florida-based, open-access genealogy website. Through that new, inexpensive technology, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department got a sense of DeAngelo’s family tree and narrowed down their suspect profile to an older, 5-foot-11-inch white male.

Since then, at least 13 cases have been reportedly solved through such long-range familial searches, according to the study, which was published Thursday.

With that in mind, the researchers analyzed a dataset of 1.28 million people who used a genetic testing kit with a direct-to-consumer provider, and found that about 60 percent of searches for people of European descent resulted in a third cousin or closer match, otherwise indicating a shared ancestor that would offer a person’s identification upon further research.

The US is checking immigrant kids’ teeth to see if they actually belong in adult detention

In the U.S. immigration system, the difference between being 17 and 18 is a crucial one. Undocumented minors who cross the border are housed under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. They stay in shelters, not detention centers, and they are on a path to be released to family-member sponsors. They also receive special protections under the law. Immigrants 18 and older, however, fall under the jurisdiction of ICE. They are often kept in detention centers that are akin to prisons.

Young immigrants, though, don’t always come with birth certificates or other documentation of their age. When that’s the case, ORR contractors and ICE sometimes turn to a highly disputed science to determine how old the immigrants are: forensic odontology. ORR and its contractors work with specialized dentists to conduct “age assessment” reports on minors suspected of being adults. Immigrant detainees are X-rayed, and those images are sent to a forensic dentist, who looks at the person’s wisdom teeth and performs a statistical analysis, factoring in a person’s race and gender using studies on different dental populations. ...

ORR is prohibited from using forensic odontology exclusively to determine age by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Reauthorization and Protection Act. But the agency has broken that law in the past. In 2016 a federal judge found that ORR had used X-rays alone to send a Somali boy to ICE detention. The judge ordered that the child be returned to ORR custody.

'This Is Pathetic': Progressives Furious as Schumer Rubber Stamps 15 More Right-Wing Judges for Trump

With progressives still mobilized and angrier than ever following Judge Brett Kavanaugh's successful confirmation to the Supreme Court amid credible sexual assault allegations, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) provided further cause for fury—and added to already deafening calls for new leadership in the Democratic Party—by cutting a deal behind closed doors with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) late Thursday to fast-track 15 more of Trump's right-wing judges to lifetime federal court positions.

"Make no mistake, today was yet another step in the GOP's takeover of our courts, stacking the deck against women and families at every level. Immediately following Kavanaugh's confirmation and all of the energy and despair around it, this deal is especially painful," NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue said in a statement. "Through this deal," Hogue continued, "Democrats allowed Mitch McConnell and Republicans in Congress to fast track 15 more of Donald Trump's nominees, including David Porter and Mark Norris, whose biased views and extreme anti-choice records indicate they will shape our country in Donald Trump's brutal image for decades to come." ...

Senate Democrats' deal with McConnell is the second time in just two months that Schumer has agreed to help the GOP confirm a slew of Trump's federal court nominees—many of which are hand-picked by the right-wing Federalist Society—with almost zero debate or public scrutiny. ...

"This period will be long remembered not just for the historic number of judges Trump has been able to confirm, but also because of how passive Democrats were in response," Demand Justice chief counsel Chris Kang said in a statement. "The progressive grassroots have awoken to the crisis of Trump's takeover of the courts, and are not going to tolerate this kind of weakness for much longer."

Russians aren’t spreading fake news about the midterms on Facebook. Americans are.

Facebook expected a fresh onslaught of disinformation from the Kremlin ahead of the midterms. Instead, the company revealed this week the greater threat has originated from within the U.S.

Facebook said Thursday it was shutting down close to 800 U.S.-based pages and accounts, some of which have millions of followers, for spamming users with biased politically-oriented content that violates the network’s policies.

“Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a blog post. “People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here.”

Facebook added that there is no indication any of the accounts are linked to Moscow.

Republican pair apparently pose as communists to make Democratic donation

Two young Arizona Republicans tried to make a donation to a congressman while posing as members of a university communist party, in an apparent attempt to tie the Democrat to the far left. On Friday afternoon in Flagstaff, two men who called themselves Jose Rosales and Ahmahd Sadia walked into the campaign office of first-term Democrat Tom O’Halleran, with $39.68 and an urgent desire for the “Northern Arizona University Communist party” to be given a receipt for the donation.

The pair walked in to sign up to volunteer but they brought along a jar full of money that they said they wished to donate. After being directed to a finance staffer, they were told to fill out paperwork. In doing so, they identified themselves as members of the Northern Arizona University Communist party. They made clear they were not an official group but were holding meetings. But they also insisted on a receipt. When told they would only get an emailed receipt, Rosales scratched out one email address and wrote down another. The process raised eyebrows among O’Halleran’s staff.

Lindsay Coleman, finance director for the campaign, drove to the local Republican field office in order to return the money. Almost immediately, the man who identified himself as Rosales appeared and was identified as “Oscar”. He accepted the money from Coleman. Speaking to the Guardian, Coleman identified the second man as a field organizer for the Arizona Republican party and said Ahmahd Sadia was not his real name. The Guardian later learned that the man had been fired from his job with the party.

'The Guy Who Defended Company That Caused Worst Oil Spill in US History' Just Confirmed to Head DOJ's Environmental Division

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) joined with Senate Republicans on Thursday to confirm Jeffrey Bossert Clark—a climate-denying former attorney for the fossil fuel industry—to lead the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.

"Clark's blatant hostility toward environmental protection is good news for polluters, but awful news for the rest of us," warned Environmental Working Group (EWG) president Ken Cook. "The guy who defended the company that caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history is not likely to aggressively go after corporate environmental outlaws."

The new assistant attorney general's nomination has been stalled for more than a year due to concerns about his history as a lawyer. Clark has represented B.P. in lawsuits that stemmed from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in suits attacking the U.S. government's authority to craft regulations that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions. In his new post, as E&E News reports, "Clark will lead the federal government's litigation positions in cases dealing with pollution control laws, public lands, natural resources, wildlife, and tribal issues." Jeffrey Wood—who worked for Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he was a senator for Alabama—has been running the division during the lengthy confirmation process.

"[Clark] is a favorite of the Federalist Society, having chaired that group's environmental law and practice group. But his nomination is strongly opposed by groups that care about protecting the environment," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told The Hill. "He is exactly the wrong person to be in this job of enforcing regulations to protect our environment."

Roundup of Wild Horses in California Could Lead to Illegal Slaughter

Depending on who you ask, the wild horses of the Devil’s Garden Plateau, in the northeastern corner of California, are a magnificent part of the state’s natural heritage or an invasive blight on a fragile landscape. According to the U.S. Forest Service, however, they’re also a pest.

This week, the Forest Service began a roundup of 1,000 mustangs in the 470 square-mile Devil’s Garden region of the Modoc National Forest, which is a designated wild horse territory. Wild horse advocates fear that hundreds of these horses could end up in Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses. ... According to the Forest Service’s plan for reducing the mustang population, the younger captured horses will be put up for adoption. Horses older than 10 years will be put up for adoption and for sale. For a period of 30 days, these older animals, expected to number about 300, will be sold to buyers who are prohibited from selling them off for slaughter. After that period however, the remaining senior mustangs will be sold for $1 each, up to 36 a week per buyer, “without limitations” — meaning that they can be sold to buyers who may transport the horses to Mexico or Canada and sell them to slaughterhouses. The last horse slaughterhouse in the United States closed in 2007.

Opposition to horse slaughter in the United States is overwhelming. For years, Congress has prohibited the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the vast majority of public lands serving as wild horse habitat in the United States, from selling mustangs to buyers who will in turn resell them for slaughter. The prohibition has been routinely included as a rider in Congress’s annual appropriations for the Interior Department, which includes the BLM. The Forest Service, however, is part of the Agriculture Department, which is subject to no such restriction. Under previous administrations, the Forest Service has abided by the prohibition anyway, recognizing that Congress intended to ban the sale of mustangs for slaughter generally, not just by the BLM. Under the Trump administration, which has proposed eliminating the rider in next year’s budget, that pattern has begun to change. ...

According to Laura Snell of the University of California Cooperative Extension, who works closely with the Forest Service, “The population of horses on Devil’s Garden needs to be between 200 and 400 animals. It’s now at nearly 4,000.” Snell holds the horses responsible for land degradation on the high desert plateau, including the destruction of native grasses by overgrazing and the depletion of scarce water sources. ... Suzanne Roy, campaign director for the American Wild Horse Campaign, believes that the Forest Service’s real motivation for diminishing the wild horse population in Devil’s Garden is to appease the livestock industry.

Devil’s Garden, like the vast majority of public lands, is leased out to ranchers to graze their cattle. Roy believes that ranchers see the wild horses as encroaching on their pastures — even though cattle in Devil’s Garden vastly outnumber mustangs and are subsidized richly by taxpayers. Ranchers pay for grazing rights on public lands at far below market rates: $1.41 per animal per month, versus more than $20 on private ranges. Indeed, the Forest Service’s plan for wild horses in Devil’s Garden — the plan that set the limit for a sustainable mustang population at just a few hundred — was paid for by the California Farm Bureau, an agriculture industry lobbying group. Snell said it was “a common thing” for the Forest Service to rely on the agriculture lobby to fund a study in which its constituents have a direct economic interest.

Also of Interest

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

Jamal Khashoggi Wasn’t the First — Saudi Arabia Has Been Going After Dissidents Abroad for Decades

Google CEO Tells Senators That Censored Chinese Search Engine Could Provide “Broad Benefits”

The Quiet but Furious Nationwide War Against Pipelines

A Little Night Music

J.B. Hutto & The Hawks - Mistake In Life

J.B. Hutto - That's The Truth

J.B. Hutto And His Hawks - Too Much Alcohol

J.B. Hutto - Lone Wolf

J.B. Hutto And His Hawks - Things Are So Slow

J.B. Hutto - I Feel So Good

J.B. Hutto & The Hawks - Hip Shakin'

J.B. Hutto - Look At The Yonder Wall

J.B. Hutto - Lulubelle's Here

JB Hutto - Mutualité, Paris - May 10, 1982 (starts around 8:00)