Hey! Good Evening!

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

“An old Russian proverb . . . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear."

The trick . . . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the trick was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful.

There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate.

Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize.”

-- Philip Wylie

News and Opinion

Trump tells U.S. troops at the border to open fire on migrants throwing rocks:

'Cities of tents': Trump heightens anti-immigrant rhetoric at White House

Donald Trump has stepped up his rhetorical attack over immigration ahead of next week’s midterm elections, using a White House address on Thursday to float what is possibly an unconstitutional clampdown on asylum-seekers – and hinted that even people throwing stones while at the US border could be targeted with military firepower. In a session lasting almost an hour in the Roosevelt Room, Trump talked tough on immigration but failed to deliver much in the way of specifics. White House aides had previously billed the event inaccurately as a policy announcement.

In lurid language that resembled one of his rally speeches more than a presidential address, he vowed to prevent the “violent” Central American migrant caravan heading to the southern border from “invading” the country. He said a comprehensive executive order would be released next week, though it was not clear what it would contain. Instead, he made vague pledges that thousands would be held indefinitely in “massive cities of tents” apparently now being built at the border with military assistance. He also implied that in future asylum seekers would only be able to petition the US for safe haven by approaching designated border posts.

In echoes of his divisive rally speeches this election cycle, he pledged to detain those crossing the border unlawfully, rather than using the system known by the stark term “catch and release”, where migrants are released into the community after apprehension, pending their court case. “We are not releasing any more. Big change, as of a couple of days ago … we are going to catch but we are not going to release, they are going to stay with us until the hearing takes place,” he said.

His most inflammatory remarks concerned the actions of US troops at the border, with 5,200 already deployed and possibly 10,000 more to follow. Trump was asked whether they might fire on migrants, and he replied: “I hope not.” Then he added: “Anybody throwing stones, rocks … we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.” He went on: “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. We’ll consider – and I told them – consider it a rifle. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle.” ... It is not clear whether the US president has the authority to order troops to respond to stone-throwing with live ammunition through an executive order.

Warning Trump Making US Soldiers Props in Racist Border 'Stunt,' Veterans Call on Active-Duty Troops to Refuse Orders to Deploy

Urging active-duty soldiers to be guided by a higher "moral or ethical standard" than the one demonstrated by their commander-in-chief, two war resisters who previously served as U.S. Army Rangers called on members of the military to refuse President Donald Trump's orders to report to the U.S.-Mexico border. In an open letter published by Common Dreams Thursday, Rory Fanning and Spenser Rapone asked soldiers to examine the context in which about 4,000 migrants are currently traveling to the U.S.—and ask themselves whether 15,000 armed soldiers should be confronting families who are expected to arrive at the border at the end of November after weeks of traveling to escape poverty, violence, and unrest.

"These extremely poor and vulnerable people are desperate for peace. Who among us would walk a thousand miles with only the clothes on our back without great cause?" wrote Fanning and Rapone. "The odds are good that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. lived similar experiences to these migrants. Your family members came to the U.S. to seek a better life—some fled violence. Consider this as you are asked to confront these unarmed men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador."

Rapone and Fanning are far from alone in their objection to Trump's plans to send up to 15,000 soldiers to the border to provide so-called "defense" against the migrants who are hoping to seek asylum in the U.S. A number of veterans and former government officials have also slammed the president's proposal, noting that the military has already been "strained by 17 years of war" while 5,200 soldiers—the same number of troops still stationed in Iraq—are already at the border.

"Service members who have repeatedly spent long periods of time away from home don't need this. And the U.S. doesn't need its military to 'defend' against a group of unarmed migrants, including many women and kids," wrote David Lapan, a former Marine who worked in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump. "This is a craven political stunt by President Trump ahead of the U.S. midterms, and a cynical capitulation by a secretary of defense who has prided himself on improving the readiness, focus, and lethality of the U.S. armed forces," Kelly Magsamen, a National Security Council official who worked in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, wrote in Defense One.

‘Troika of tyranny’: US introduces tougher policies on Venezuela, Cuba & Nicaragua

Bolton praises Bolsonaro while declaring ‘troika of tyranny’ in Latin America

John Bolton has welcomed Brazil’s far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro as a “positive sign” for Latin America as he hailed a new ally against what Bolton called a “troika of tyranny”: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In a speech in Miami on Thursday, the US national security adviser announced new sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, including a ban on US citizens taking part in trade in Venezuelan gold. Bolton also added over two dozen entities owned or controlled by the Cuban military and intelligence services to a sanctions blacklist. ...

As the Trump administration has done in the Middle East, Bolton drew a clear line between friends and foes, and used bellicose language likely to stoke growing fears in Latin America that Washington could recruit rightwing governments in Brazil and Colombia to take military action against Venezuela.

“The recent elections of like-minded leaders in key countries, including Ivan Duque in Colombia, and last weekend Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, are positive signs for the future of the region, and demonstrate a growing regional commitment to free-market principles, and open, transparent, and accountable governance,” Bolton said in his speech at Miami-Dade College.

He did not address widespread concerns about Bolsonaro’s stated admiration for Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship and its use of torture, and portrayed repression in Latin America as an exclusively communist phenomenon.

All men are not created equal: The American oligarchy’s attack on birthright citizenship

The Trump administration’s proposal to end birthright citizenship for all people born on United States soil, enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, is another milestone in the assault on democratic rights.

With this move, the American oligarchy is repudiating the basic democratic principle upon which the American republic was founded, embodied in the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal.” If the American president can, by executive fiat, strike out the 14th Amendment, what is to stop him from overturning the entire Bill of Rights, which guarantees free speech, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, due process, and the right to counsel, among other fundamental protections? ...

The move reveals the extent of the erosion of democratic principles within the ruling class. Nearly 20 years after the stolen election of 2000 and the launching of the “war on terror,” both parties have already torn the Bill of Rights to shreds, bombing countries under false pretenses, assassinating thousands with drones, conducting torture, mass surveillance and mass deportations. The Democratic Party and the pro-Democratic corporate media have either supported Trump’s birthright citizenship rescission or deliberately downplayed it. Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana announced yesterday that he was supportive of the repeal of birthright citizenship, while Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri told CNN, “I support the president 100 percent doing what he needs to do to secure the border.” NBC reported that Bernie Sanders, speaking Tuesday at a campaign rally for a Democratic Senate candidate in Maryland, deliberately avoided referencing Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship. ...

While the Republicans and Trump seek to instigate backward elements of the population to create a pogrom atmosphere against immigrants, the Democratic Party’s chief aim is to work with the military-intelligence agencies and tech companies to censor the Internet and gag any political views that the corporations and the CIA deem “non-authoritative.” Replace “foreign meddling” and “Russia” with “immigrant invaders” and “bad hombres” and the right-wing hysteria promoted by the Democrats and Republicans becomes indistinguishable. In both cases, the most vicious attacks on democratic rights are justified by endless warnings of threats to “national security.”

How Trump’s Racist Campaigning Serves ‘Rule by the Rich’

Worth a full read:

Fascism is Real, But the “Resistance” is Mostly Fake

It is generally understood among the Left that fascists are the political products of capitalism in crisis, reactionaries that promise to restore order by purging the society of unwanted peoples and ideologies. Their targets depend on the particularities of the society in crisis: in Germany, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks, enemies that Hitler conflated as one and the same. In the post-Reconstruction southern region of the United States, whites imposed the world’s first totally racially regimented society, one that would serve as a model and inspiration for emerging fascists for generations to come. The Jim Crow order was heralded as a new day for the white working man, who would no longer have to compete with Black labor -- enslaved or free -- but instead join in the profits (and priceless white social and political privilege) from Black people’s super-exploitation. ...

Fascists always win power with the assent of strong sections of the ruling class, since those are the social forces that have the biggest stake in the old order. Such was the case with Hitler, Mussolini and, yes, Trump and Bolsonaro. Therefore, the question is not, What do we do about the miscreants Trump and Bolsonaro, but, How do we defeat this system -- the rule of capital, buttressed and justified by white supremacy -- and those elements of the ruling class and their minions that have empowered these ugly fascists? That means Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. and a host of political parties and business enterprises in Brazil. It means indicting the oligarchs at the top of late stage global capitalism and their protector, U.S. imperialism, which confronts growing resistance, worldwide. ... Bolsonaro and Trump did not march into their capital cities at the head of goose-stepping mobs, overrunning the old order. They came to save the old order -- or, at least, to salvage the white supremacist aspects of it, which is what their grassroots followers care about. The entire ruling class was rewarded with trillions in tax breaks and deregulation, once Trump was in office. All of the capitalist vultures in Brazil can expect the same -- while the nation’s Black population braces for a reign of police and military terror, with leftists pushed underground or disappeared.

I have no problem labeling Trump a fascist, and Bolsonaro appears to have no problem being called one. My problem is with a phony “resistance” that defines fascism so narrowly that it applies, domestically, only to Donald Trump and his most crazed followers. For Democrats, the fascist label is mere political epithet, a demon-word hurled for election purposes. Even self-styled “progressive” Democrats will not break with a lawless U.S. “exceptionalism” that has killed upwards of 15 million people around the globe since World War Two -- six million in the Congo, alone, which makes Uncle Sam (Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump) a bipartisan mass genocidal murderer on a par with Belgian King Leopold. Except that Leopold confined his genocides mainly to the Congo, while the U.S. superpower lays waste to non-white peoples worldwide.

In the postwar U.S., white people couldn’t recognize a fascist without his uniform – which is understandable, since much of the white population were themselves fascist, in that they endorsed a police state and enforced political and social subordination for Black people at home, and supported wars to suppress non-whites' right to self-determination, abroad. ... So, where have all the anti-fascists been hiding, the last 50 years, as Black America was methodically tortured, destabilized and dismembered by the State? Did they cry “fascist” when Barack Obama broke all records in deporting undocumented people? Of course not -- no fascism there. They denounce Trump’s anti-Muslim tirades, but did they mobilize an anti-war movement to halt Obama’s proxy jihadist war against Syria that has left half a million dead? No, instead they applaud Trump when he bombs Syria and condemn Russia for defending a sovereign state from unprovoked attack by the U.S. and its allies. Do they care about international law? Never heard of it. They are not upset that the U.S. spent $5 billion to overthrow an elected government and install actual Nazis in power in Ukraine -- after which Hillary Clinton had the nerve to call Putin “Hitler.” No, the “resistance” is mad at the Russians for…everything. ...

Any real resistance to fascism would defend freedom of speech and seek to broaden, rather than further restrict, popular access to media of all kinds. But much of the “resistance” cheers Facebook and Google censorship of material that might “sow division” in U.S. society -- including Black Agenda Report -- as if conformity with imperialism and institutional white supremacy is a bulwark against fascism.

US, Turkey joint Syria patrols: "it's part of Turkey's plan to control the Syrian border"

Saudi prince told the White House Khashoggi was a “dangerous Islamist” — a week after he was murdered

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) told the White House Jamal Khashoggi was a “dangerous Islamist” — days after the journalist was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to reports published Thursday.

MBS, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, spoke on the phone to Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser John Bolton on Oct. 9, a week after Khashoggi’s disappearance, officials told The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Bolton disagreed with the crown prince’s assessment, according to the sources.

MBS tried to paint Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and a critic of the Saudi regime, as a threat to the Kingdom, claiming he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time of the phone call, Riyadh had yet to admit Khashoggi had been murdered inside the consulate. The phone call stands in contrast to the crown prince’s words at an international economic conference in Riyadh last week: “The incident that happened is very painful, for all Saudis. The incident is not justifiable.”

Jamal Khashoggi's body was 'dissolved', says Erdogan adviser

The body of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was “dissolved” after his murder and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an adviser to the Turkish president has said. “We now see that it wasn’t just cut up; [the Saudi suspects] got rid of the body by dissolving it,” Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an official in Turkey’s ruling party, told the newspaper Hurriyet on Friday.

“According to the latest information we have, the reason they cut up the body is it was easier to dissolve it. They aimed to ensure no sign of the body was left,” said Aktay, who was a friend of the dissident Saudi writer. “Killing an innocent person is one crime, the treatment and extent of what was done to the body is another crime and dishonour.”

The remarks represented the first official statement from a Turkish authority about what allegedly happened to Khasoggi’s body. Turkish investigators have been trying to determine whether Khashoggi’s remains could have been dissolved in acid at the nearby consul general’s house. An unnamed official also told the Washington Post “biological evidence” in the consulate’s garden suggested that because of acid “Khashoggi’s body was not in need of burying”.

Forensics experts have questioned the theory, as they say disposing of a body using acid can take months.

Taliban Five: Ex-Guantanamo inmates sent to peace talks with US

US justice department charges former Goldman bankers in 1MDB scandal

The US justice department has charged two former Goldman Sachs bankers and the Malaysian financier Jho Low with conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from Malaysia’s state development fund. The criminal charges are the first to be brought by US authorities over the vast, long-running scandal at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Prosecutors charge that Malaysian officials stole billions from the fund to buy property, art and other items including investments in movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street.

About $4bn disappeared from the fund and the claims of corruption led to Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak, being charged with corruption, charges he has denied.

The criminal indictment, unsealed in New York, also charged Jho Low and Ng Chong Hwa, a former Goldman Sachs banker also known as Roger Ng, with paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials. In another court filing, Tim Leissner, 48, a former Goldman Sachs partner, pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials and circumventing internal accounting controls. Leissner has been ordered to forfeit $43.7m as a result of his crimes.

Goldman Sachs has said it is fully cooperating with the investigation and that it had no knowledge of how the money from the fund was being used. Both Leissner and Ng left the bank over a year ago. The filing is likely to put pressure on the bank to reach a settlement with US authorities.

White Supremacist Steve King Won’t Answer Question About His White Supremacist Views

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican with a long history of white supremacist views, erupted in anger on Thursday when asked by a constituent to explain how his anti-immigrant ideology differed from the beliefs of the white supremacist terrorist who killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last week. The heated exchange, which was captured on video, began with Kaleb Van Fosson, an Iowa State University student who lives in King’s district, asking his representative about the apparent similarity between his own claim that “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” and the Pittsburgh gunman’s anti-immigrant statements.

Steve King blows up at questioner who pressed him on the Pittsburgh massacre #IA04 pic.twitter.com/7sFQyY9fOW

— Iowa Starting Line (@IAStartingLine) November 1, 2018

“The terrorist who committed this crime, he was quoted as saying, ‘they bring invaders in that kill our people, I can’t sit back and watch our people get slaughtered,'” Van Fosson said. “You, Steve King, have been quoted as saying, ‘we can’t restore our civilization with other peoples babies.’ You and the shooter both share an ideology that is fundamentally anti-immigration.” Before he could finish his question, the student was interrupted by King. “No, don’t you do that. Do not associate me with that shooter,” King said. “I knew you were an ambusher when you walked in the room, but there is no basis for that, and you get no question, and you get no answer.”

“I’m not an ambusher,” Van Fosson replied. “I was about to ask you, what distinguishes your ideology –” he said, before King cut in again, saying, “No, you’re done. We don’t play these games here in Iowa. No, you’re done. You crossed the line. It’s not tolerable to accuse me to be associated with a guy that shot 11 people in Pittsburgh. I am a person who has stood with Israel from the beginning — the length of that nation, is the length of my life — and I have been with them all along and I will not answer your question and I will not listen to another word from you.”

“If you don’t have a white supremacist worldview, then why did you travel to Austria and meet with a white supremacist organization?” Van Fosson interjected. “This is over if you don’t stop talking,” King said, turning to the moderator. “This is over if they don’t stop talking, I’m leaving.” The moderator then cut off the exchange, saying, “I think he’s given his answer. His answer is his answer.”

Judge Voices 'Great Concern' Over North Dakota Voter ID Law, But Rejects Tribe's Lawsuit Anyway

Despite declaring there is "great cause for concern" that thousands of Native Americans could be illegally barred from voting under North Dakota's strict and overtly discriminatory voter ID law, a federal judge on Thursday rejected a lawsuit filed by the Spirit Lake Tribe and six individual plaintiffs arguing that the law violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

"This decision ensures that hundreds, perhaps thousands of Native Americans will not be able to vote in the upcoming election," noted Slate reporter Mark Joseph Stern.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland argued that granting the tribe's request for an emergency restraining order to prevent the ID law from going into effect would cause confusion too close to the Nov. 6 midterm elections and declared that "it is highly important to preserve the status quo when elections are fast approaching."

Green Candidates Poised To Win In California

Really Intercept headline writer, do corporations have lives?

Private Prisons Fight for Their Lives in Florida Against Andrew Gillum

Florida-based Geo Group is the second-largest private prison company. Its operations across the United States and in several foreign countries netted $2.26 billion in revenue in 2017. But its operations in the state where it is headquartered are threatened by the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum.

Gillum has stated clearly that he is opposed to the prison industry. Over the summer, he pledged not to take any money from private prison corporations and vowed to eliminate them from the state of Florida. “I believe private prisons ought to be illegal in the state of Florida. They should not exist,” he said.

On the other side of the aisle, Geo Group has given heavily to Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis’s campaign. Filings show that the company gave $50,000 to DeSantis’s committee Friends of DeSantis on March 26, 2017. On August 15, the company gave another $50,000 to the campaign. Its CEO and founder, George C. Zoley, gave $50,000 on the same date. On October 3, Zoley gave another $50,000 to the committee, as well as a separate $3,400 donation.

Geo Group money is also finding other ways into the campaign. For instance, it has received a total of $150,000 over three October donations from the group Jobs for Florida. Geo Group has given $25,000 to Jobs for Florida this year.

BP Claims to Support Taxing Carbon, but It’s Spending $13 Million Against an Initiative That Would Do Just That

BP has been bullish about putting a price on carbon. The oil giant was one of six companies to call on governments around the world to adopt a global price on carbon in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks in 2015. Toward that end, it’s part of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, as well as a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council, or CLC, which hopes to place a $40-per-ton price on carbon in the U.S. The company even has a whole webpage devoted to the topic. “We believe that carbon pricing provides the right incentives for everyone — energy producers and consumers alike — to play their part in reducing emissions,” the page reads.

So why is BP spending $13 million to defeat a measure to set a carbon price in Washington state?

The “Carbon Emissions Fee Measure,” known as ballot Initiative 1631, would leverage a $15 fee on every ton of carbon dioxide produced in the state, to be scaled up by $2 per ton every year until maxing out at around $55 in 2035, depending on inflation. Revenue from the fee would be invested in building up low-carbon infrastructure, forestry programs, and green jobs. The initiative would also set an overall goal of reducing emissions by 2035 to 40 percent below what they were in 2014. If that target isn’t reached, the price will continue to rise. ...

In a letter to state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, BP Cherry Point refinery manager Robert K. Allendorfer explained his company’s opposition. After enumerating BP’s commitment to fighting climate change and to a “well-designed carbon pricing framework,” Allendorfer’s missive — sent to The Intercept by BP spokesperson Jason Ryan — lays out a three-point bill of particulars as to precisely what’s so wrong with I-1631. In his first and third points, Allendorfer does not reveal much. Some climate hawks may even agree with his first gripe: that I-1631, which would cover about 80 percent of the state’s emissions, will exempt some of the state’s largest industrial polluters, particularly those that are most exposed to international trade like Boeing. The third includes vague, boilerplate language on how passing I-1631 would make “creating a successful carbon pricing program much more difficult.”

But it’s the second reason that makes clear the real difference between the oil and gas industry’s vision for a carbon price and what’s on the ballot in Washington. I-1631 “would fail to preempt other state and local carbon regulations,” Allendorfer wrote, meaning that it would not also peel away environmental standards or infringe on state agencies’ ability to enforce them as an olive branch to industry. As such, the measure would “thereby [jeopardize] thousands of Washington jobs.” In the following paragraph, Allendorfer noted that BP supports more than 9,600 jobs in the state, as if to issue a thinly veiled threat: It’d be a shame if something happened to them. ...

I-1631 backers feel more hopeful than they have the last two times around, though no outcome is certain — particularly with the gargantuan amount of corporate cash pouring into the election. A Crosscut/Elway Poll from October found 57 percent of likely voters support the measure, as well as 50 percent of those polled overall. Whatever the outcome, Washington’s climate fight has already carried a lessons for those interested in seeing progressive climate policies passed elsewhere: If you want to get a sense of how much of a threat a given plan will pose to the world’s biggest polluters, looking at who’s funding the opposition might be a good place to start.

Japanese island disappears, without anyone noticing

Japan could see its territorial waters shrink near its maritime border with Russia after a tiny island off its north-east coast “disappeared”. The uninhabited islet, called Esanbe Hanakita Kojima, is thought to have slipped beneath the waves, apparently unnoticed by residents living in Sarufutsu, a village on the northern tip of the main island of Hokkaido 500 metres away.

Esanbe is one of 158 uninhabited islands that were given names by the Japanese government in 2014 in an effort to clarify its territorial reach and extend its exclusive economic zone. Japan’s outlying islands have taken on increasing significance amid territorial disputes with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

Esanbe Hanakita Kojima lies west of the Northern Territories, which are at the centre of a long-running dispute between Japan and Russia, where they are known as the Kurils. The islands were seized from Japan by Soviet forces days after the end of the Pacific War.

Locals were alerted to the islet’s possible disappearance in September after the author Hiroshi Shimizu visited Sarufutsu to write a sequel to his picture book on Japan’s “hidden” islands, according to the Asahi Shimbun. He alerted the local fisheries cooperative, which sent boats out to its supposed location only to find it had gone missing.

'It's a ghost page': EPA site's climate change section may be gone for good

More than a year after the US Environmental Protection Agency took down information on climate change from its website for an “update”, it now seems uncertain whether it will ever reappear. In April last year, the EPA replaced its online climate change section with a holding page that said the content was being updated to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump”.

Information previously found at epa.gov/climatechange made it clear that human activity was warming the planet, resulting in harm to Americans’ health as well as crucial ecosystems on which humans depend.

The “update” page has now given way to a page that simply states: “We want to help you find what you are looking for.” Below, there are links to search other areas of the EPA website, as well as to an archived “snapshot” of the site from the day before Trump became president in January 2017. The switch was observed by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, which tracks changes in government websites.

“It’s an embarrassment. It is a ghost page,” said Judith Enck, who was EPA regional administrator during Barack Obama’s presidency. “It’s a bit like Amazon not allowing the public to order books via its website – it’s that fundamental. There’s no other issue at the EPA more important than climate change; it affects air, water, health and whether large parts of the world will survive.”

Also of Interest

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

Trump Administration Abruptly Calls for End to War in Yemen

Seven Rules for Running a Real Left-Wing Government

‘The American People Overwhelmingly Oppose Cuts to Social Security’

The black Americans suing to reclaim their Native American identity

A Little Night Music

Lil Bob and the Lollipops - Nobody But You

Rose Mitchell - Baby Please Don't Go

Terry Timmons - Got Nobody To Love

Little Booker ?– Open The Door

Banny Price - You Love Me Pretty Baby

Gabriel and the Angels / Chumba

Earl Curry - One Whole Year Baby

Tiny Topsy - Aw! Shucks Baby

Rene Hall - Do It Up Right

Daddy Cleanhead - Something's Goin' On In My Room

Merrill Moore - Boogie My Blues Away