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This evening's music features jump blues singer and guitarist Peppermint Harris. Enjoy!

“Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity.”

-- Martha Gellhorn

News and Opinion

Wow. We've not even completed the quadrennial opening ceremony of the hats and rings and the McCarthyite media wurlitzer is already cranking out propaganda furiously. I can't wait until the pageant gets going in earnest!

NBC News, to Claim Russia Supports Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Just Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party

NBC News published a predictably viral story Friday, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.” But the whole story was a sham: the only “experts” cited by NBC in support of its key claim was the firm, New Knowledge, that just got caught by the New York Times fabricating Russian troll accounts on behalf of the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to manufacture false accusations that the Kremlin was interfering in that election.

To justify its claim that Tulsi Gabbard is the Kremlin’s candidate, NBC stated: “analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they’ve spotted ‘chatter’ related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns.” What NBC – amazingly – concealed is a fact that reveals its article to be a journalistic fraud: that same firm, New Knowledge, was caught just six weeks ago engaging in a massive scam to create fictitious Russian troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter in order to claim that the Kremlin was working to defeat Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones in Alabama. The New York Times, when exposing the scam, quoted a New Knowledge report that boasted of its fabrications: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the [Roy] Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.'” That fraud was overseen by New Research’s CEO, Jonathon Morgan. ...

Even worse, Morgan’s firm is behind one of the recent Senate reports on Russian social media election interference as well as the creation of “Hamilton 68,” the pseudo-data-driven dashboard constantly used by U.S. media outlets to claim that its enemies are supported by the Kremlin (that tool has so been abused that even some of its designers urged the media to stop exaggerating its meaning). During the Alabama race, Morgan – in a tweet he deleted once his fraud was exposed – cited the #Hamilton68 data that he himself manipulated with his fake Russian accounts to claim that Russia was interfering in the Alabama Senate race. ...

The victorious Democratic Senate candidate who won the Alabama Senate race and who repeatedly cited New Knowledge’s fake Russian accounts during the election to claim he was being attacked by Russian bots, Doug Jones, insisted he had no knowledge of the scheme and has now called for a federal investigation into New Knowledge. ...

This is the group of “experts” on which NBC News principally relied to spread its inflammatory, sensationalistic, McCarthyite storyline that Gabbard’s candidacy is supported by the Kremlin. ... What’s particularly unethical about the NBC report is that it tries to bolster the credentials of this group by touting it as “the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election,” while concealing from its audience the fraud that this firm’s CEO just got caught perpetrating on the public on behalf of the Democratic Party.

Why All Anti-Interventionists Will Necessarily Be Smeared As Russian Assets

Mere hours before [Tulsi Gabbard's] campaign officially launched, NBC News published an astonishingly blatant smear piece titled “Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard,” subtitled “Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.” One of the article’s authors shared it on Twitter with the caption, “The Kremlin already has a crush on Tulsi Gabbard.” The article reported that media outlets tied to the Russian government had been talking a lot about Gabbard’s candidacy, ironically citing as an example an RT article which documented the attempts by the US mainstream media to paint Gabbard as a Kremlin agent. The article’s authors cited the existence of such articles combined with the existence of “chatter” about Gabbard on the anonymous message board 8chan (relevant for God knows what reason) as evidence to substantiate its blaring headline. Even more hilariously, the source for its weird 8chan claim is named as none other than Renee DiResta of the narrative control firm New Knowledge, which was recently embroiled in a scandal for staging a “false flag operation” in an Alabama Senate race which gave one of the candidates the false appearance of being amplified by Russian bots.

This article is of course absurd. As we discussed recently, you will always see Russia on the same US foreign policy page as anti-interventionists like Tulsi Gabbard, because Russia, like so many other nations, opposes US interventionism. To treat this as some sort of shocking conspiracy instead of obvious and mundane is journalistic malpractice. There are many, many very good reasons to oppose the war agendas of the US-centralized empire, none of which have anything to do with having any loyalty to or sympathies for the Russian government. But we will continue to see this tactic used again and again and again against any and all opposition to US-led interventionism for as long as the Russiagate psyop maintains its grip upon western consciousness. And make no mistake, these smears have everything to do with anti-interventionism and nothing to do with Russia. There will never, ever be an antiwar voice who the political/media class and their centrist followers espouse as good and valid; they’ll never say “Ahh, finally, someone who hates war and also isn’t aligned with Russia! We can get behind this one!” That will never, ever happen, because it is the opposition to war and interventionism itself which is being rejected, and in the McCarthyite environment of Russia hysteria, tarring it as “Russian” simply makes a practical excuse for that rejection.

All the biggest conflicts in the world can be described as unipolarism vs multipolarism: the unipolarists who support the global hegemony of the US-centralized empire at any cost, versus the multipolarists who oppose that dominance and support the existence of multiple power structures in the world. The governments of Russia, China, Iran and their allies are predominantly multipolarist in their geopolitical outlook, and they tend to be more in favor of non-interventionism, since unipolarity can only be held in place by brute force and aggression. Unipolarists, therefore, can always paint western anti-interventionists as Russian assets, since the Russian government is multipolarist and opposed to the interventionism of the unipolarists. ...

But we can’t keep living this way. We all know this, deep down. The people at the helm of the unipolar world order are advancing an ecocidal world economy which is stripping the earth bare and filling the air with poison while at the same time pushing more and more aggressively against the multipolarist powers, one of which happens to have thousands of nuclear warheads at its disposal. The unipolarity so enthusiastically promoted by the neoconservatives and their fellow travelers has reached the end of the line after just a few short years, and now it’s time to dispense with it and try something else. They will necessarily smear us with everything but the kitchen sink for saying so, but we are right and they are wrong. The state of the world today proves this beyond a doubt.

Trump wants to Make America Glow Again.

Russia follows US in suspending nuclear deal

Vladimir Putin has said Russia will suspend its involvement in a cold war-era nuclear pact, following a similar decision by the US, and begin developing new nuclear-capable missiles banned by the treaty.

The move came a day after Donald Trump confirmed the US would exit the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty. The US had complained for several years that a Russian cruise missile violated the treaty, a claim that Russia has denied.

The INF treaty, concluded in the final years of the cold war, banned the deployment of short and medium-range missiles up to a range of 5,500km by both countries. The pact is credited with helping to keep nuclear-capable missiles out of Europe.

The US scraps the INF treaty: Another step toward nuclear war

Unbeknownst to President Kennedy [during the Cuban Missile Crisis], who was seeking to avoid a nuclear war, or his general staff, many of whom wanted to start one, such a war would have wiped out not 300 million, people but all of humanity. The theory of nuclear winter, discovered in the mid-80s and subsequently accepted by scientific consensus, concludes that a full-scale nuclear war, as planned by the United States military, would render the entire planet uninhabitable for a century. But it is precisely such a nuclear apocalypse that the United States is not just blindly stumbling toward, but directly preparing for. As a recent article in Foreign Affairs told its readers: “Prepare for Nuclear War.”

On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the United States would suspend its compliance with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, a 1987 agreement between the Soviet Union (and subsequently Russia) and the United States that bans the deployment of missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. ... Little need be said about the White House’s official justifications for leaving the treaty: that Russia is in violation of the treaty’s provisions, despite repeated offers by Moscow for not only the United States, but international authorities and journalists, to inspect its missiles. The White House’s allegations are echoed by people who do not believe them and left unquestioned by a media apparatus that functions as a mouthpiece for the military.

In an article that fully backs the White House’s accusations against Russia, the New York Times' David Sanger, a conduit for the Pentagon, spells out with perfect lucidity the real reasons why the United States is leaving the INF treaty:

“Constrained by the treaty’s provisions, the United States has been prevented from deploying new weapons to counter China’s efforts to cement a dominant position in the Western Pacific and keep American aircraft carriers at bay. China was still a small and unsophisticated military power when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of a rapidly-weakening Soviet Union, negotiated the INF agreement.”

Sanger’s own words make perfectly clear why the United States wants to leave the treaty, which has nothing to do with Russia’s alleged violations: Washington is seeking to ring the island chain surrounding the Chinese mainland with a hedge of nuclear missiles. But Sanger somehow expects, without so much as a transition paragraph, his readers to believe the hot air spewed by Pompeo about Russia’s “bad behavior.”

The US withdrawal from the INF treaty is not the result of Trump’s peculiar fondness for nuclear weapons. Rather, it is the outcome of a reorientation of the United States military toward “great-power” conflict with Russia and China.

The Yankee Plot to Overthrow Nicolás Maduro and Steal Venezuela’s Oil

The U.S. Helped Push Venezuela Into Chaos — and Trump’s Regime Change Policy Will Make Sure It Stays That Way

Washington has been trying to topple Venezuela’s government for at least 17 years, but the Trump administration has taken a more openly aggressive tack than its predecessors. ... It would be a terrible mistake to keep going down this road. Trump’s policies have only worsened the suffering of Venezuelans and made it almost impossible for the country to pull out of its prolonged economic depression and hyperinflation. A negotiated solution is necessary to resolve the political conflict in Venezuela, yet the Trump administration’s commitment to extralegal regime change is rapidly precluding this option. Worse still, Trump’s apparent strategy is to increase suffering through sanctions — more of which were just announced — until a fraction of the military carries out a coup to create a new, pro-Washington government.

The fairness of the 2018 presidential election, which the opposition boycotted, is up for debate, but the main problems with the regime change strategy have to do with other considerations. Venezuela is a polarized country and overthrowing the government — even if Washington were not involved in the fight — would only increase this polarization and the chances of greater violence or even civil war. ... Venezuela’s political polarization, however, also intersects with a great chasm that permeates most of Latin American society: a division by class and race. As in most of the Americas, the two are correlated. In the opposition protests that have occurred over the past decade, one could see these differences in the clothes worn by pro- versus anti-government protesters and in their skin tones. The opposition crowds and their leaders have been considerably whiter and from higher income groups than Venezuelans who supported the government. In the most recent protests, there has been an increase in anti-government actions in working-class and poor areas in Caracas, but the class and racial divide between Chavistas and opposition has not gone away.

Another line of Venezuelan polarization is the belief in sovereignty and self-determination. The Chavistas have made independence from the U.S. a centerpiece of their agenda, and their government, when it had money, pursued policies in the hemisphere that sought more independence for the region as well. The opposition and enemies of the Chavista governments, by contrast, have worked closely with the U.S. government for the past two decades — as can be seen in the coordination of this latest attempted coup. Washington’s intervention aggravates the polarization along the lines of sovereignty, and opens the opposition to charges of alignment with a foreign power — and a power that has historically played a terrible role in the region. To appreciate the animosity that this would create, think of how much ill will has been generated in the U.S. by Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and multiply that by a few orders of magnitude.

The polarizing impact of the Trump regime change operation is what makes it so dangerous. Inflation is probably over 1 million percent annually, and the economy is estimated to have shrunk by a Latin American record of 50 percent over the past five years. Millions have left the country to look for work. The opposition would almost certainly have won the last presidential election if they had participated and mostly united around a single candidate. (For the record, the U.S. reportedly threatened an opposition candidate who did participate, Henri Falcón, with personal financial sanctions if he ran for president.) ...

Venezuela cannot exit from this political crisis by one side vanquishing the other, as the proponents of regime change assume. The Vatican played a role as mediator in 2016, and Uruguay and Mexico — who have remained neutral in the political conflict — offered this week to help mediate. But the Trump team is a powerful influence on the opposition, and they have so far shown no interest in a peaceful solution.

Maduro warns White House will be 'stained with blood' if Trump invades

Venezuela’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, has warned Donald Trump he will leave the White House “stained with blood” if he insists on pursuing what he called a “dirty” imperialist conspiracy to overthrow him. “Stop. Stop, Trump! Hold it right there! You are making mistakes that will leave your hands covered in blood and you will leave the presidency stained with blood,” Maduro warned during a combative interview with the Spanish journalist Jordi Évole. “Why would you want a repeat of Vietnam?” ...

[I]n his television interview Maduro – who came to power after the 2013 death of his political mentor, Hugo Chávez – signalled that he had no plans to go anywhere. “If the north American empire attacks us, we will have to defend ourselves … We aren’t going to hand Venezuela over,” Maduro said. ...

Asked if he feared that Venezuela could be plunged into war by the crisis, Maduro said: “Everything depends on the extent of the madness and aggression of the northern empire and its western allies. It’s not up to us … We are getting ready to defend our right to peace.” Speaking to CBS on Sunday, Trump said he had rejected talks with Maduro “because so many really horrible things have been happening in Venezuela”. Asked if military action was possible, he replied: “Well I don’t want to say that. But certainly it’s something that’s on the – it’s an option.”

The lapdogs of Europe are preparing to bark and show their teeth! Who would have thought that they would respond so willingly to Trump as their master? I guess poodles have no self respect.

European nations set to recognise Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's leader

The UK, France, Germany and other European countries are expected to recognise Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela on Monday if the current president, Nicolás Maduro, has not set a date for fresh elections by then. However, in a combative interview broadcast on Sunday night, Maduro said: “We don’t accept ultimatums from anyone. I refuse to call for elections now – there will be elections in 2024. We don’t care what Europe says.”

EU leaders, including the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, started expressing their support for Guaidó before the midnight deadline on Sunday night. Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan is due to fly to Ottawa to meet European and Latin American leaders in a new international contact group to discuss the most effective ways of supporting Guaidó. Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said: “This crisis poses huge security, humanitarian and economic challenges for the entire hemisphere.”

France’s Europe minister, Nathalie Loiseau, foreshadowing the stance of most European leaders, said: “If by tonight Maduro does not commit to organising presidential elections, then France will consider Juan Guaidó as legitimate to organise them in his place and we will consider him as the interim president until legitimate elections in Venezuela [take place].” She dismissed Maduro’s proposal of an early parliamentary election, calling it a farce, and said “the ultimatum ends tonight”.

France, Germany, Spain and the UK have been closely coordinating their support for Guaidó, assessing the best form of sanctions to press Maduro into holding the elections. None supports the kind of military intervention repeatedly suggested by the US president, Donald Trump. They regard Trump’s claim that a military option is on the table as counter-productive since it conjures up memories of past US destabilisation in Latin America.

Venezuela's Maduro rejects European ultimatum on elections

John Bolton Threatens to Send Venezuela's Maduro to Offshore US Prison at Guantánamo

National Security Adviser John Bolton—the neoconservative who's played a key role in the Trump administration's effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government—suggested on Friday that President Nicolás Maduro could find himself locked away in the U.S. military prison at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba if he does not soon step aside.

Bolton—who has repeatedly threatened U.S. military action to force out Maduro—made the threat in a "crazy" radio interview (mp3) with right-wing commentator Hugh Hewitt about President Donald Trump's broader policy toward Venezuela, including the administration's endorsement of self-declared "Interim President" Juan Guaidó, and sanctions imposed via executive order against the state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA).

On Hugh Hewitt’s show, John Bolton suggested that Venezuelan president Maduro could be sent to Guantanamo https://t.co/5B85dU44CH pic.twitter.com/feivveWHRn

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 1, 2019

Bolton, meanwhile, has maintained his threats on behalf of the administration. Asked by Hewitt on Friday whether he'd requested that the Pentagon draw up plans for military intervention in Venezuela, Bolton responded: "You are a persistent questioner, Hugh. All I'll say is all options are on the table."

Trump wants to keep US troops in Iraq to 'be able to watch' Iran

Donald Trump wants to keep US troops in Iraq, in order to “watch” Iran. The president made the comment in an interview given to CBS’ Face the Nation because the network is this year’s Super Bowl broadcaster. Despite the invasion of Iraq being “one of the greatest mistakes … that our country has ever made”, he said, he wanted to maintain a military presence. Asked if he wanted to strike Iran, Trump said: “No, because I want to be able to watch Iran. All I want to do is be able to watch. We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It’s perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up.” He added: “We’re going to keep watching and we’re going to keep seeing and if there’s trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we’re going to know it before they do.”

Trump was answering questions about his commitment to reduce the US military presence in the Middle East, which has led to confusion and controversy over whether he will withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and when. He also risked reopening a damaging split with his own intelligence chiefs, who have said Iran is abiding by the nuclear deal from which he withdrew. “I disagree with them,” Trump said, justifying his position with reference to mistakes made regarding Saddam Hussein’s military capabilities before the Iraq war. “Guess what?” he said. “Those intel people didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and they got us tied up in a war that we should have never been in. And we’ve spent $7tn in the Middle East and we have lost lives.”

The decision to maintain a presence in Iraq, Trump told CBS, would mean the US could strike quickly against Isis or al-Qaida. “We’ll come back if we have to,” he said. “We have very fast airplanes, we have very good cargo planes. We can come back very quickly, and I’m not leaving. We have a base in Iraq and the base is a fantastic edifice. I mean I was there recently, and I couldn’t believe the money that was spent on these massive runways. And these –I’ve rarely seen anything like it. And it’s there. And we’ll be there.”

Asked when he would withdraw from Syria, the president said he would first move troops to Iraq and ultimately bring them home.“We have to protect Israel,” he said. “We have to protect other things that we have. But we’re – yeah, they’ll be coming back in a matter of time. Look, we’re protecting the world. We’re spending more money than anybody’s ever spent in history, by a lot.”

Trump Says He Wants US Troops in Iraq to "Watch Iran." Iraqis' Response: Get Out

Baghdad is firing back on Monday with calls to potentially boot U.S. troops out of Iraq in response to President Donald Trump's comments that he wants to keep them there to "watch Iran." ... But U.S. troops have no right to do that, said Iraqi President Barham Salih, adding that Trump's comments were "surprising."

"Trump did not ask us to keep U.S. troops to watch Iran," Salih said at a forum in Baghdad. The agreement between Washington and Baghdad is for the troops to combat terrorism, he said, and doing otherwise would be "unacceptable."

"The Iraqi constitution rejects the use of Iraq as a base for hitting or attacking a neighboring country," he said. "The U.S. is a major power ... but do not pursue your own policy priorities, we live here," he stated, and added, "It is of fundamental interest for Iraq to have good relations with Iran" and its other neighbors.

According to NPR, Trump's comments also sparked the ire of Iraq's main militias, who said they could push for a vote in parliament to kick out U.S. troops. The outlet also noted a "growing sentiment" held by Iraqis that U.S. troops should go.

Yemen war: UN anchors ship off Red Sea port for 'neutral ground' talks

Yemen peace talks have been held onboard a UN-chartered boat anchored in the Red Sea in an attempt to find a neutral venue acceptable to both sides. Patrick Cammaert, a retired Dutch general and head of the UN mission in Yemen, chaired the meeting on the ship moored off the port city of Hodeidah. Houthi rebel military officials had refused to meet in government-held areas in southern Hodeidah, citing security fears.

The dispute over the talks venue had prevented military leaders from the two sides meeting since 2 January. The first two meetings had been held in Houthi-controlled zones.

The meetings of the regional redeployment committee (RCC) are seen as critical to building on the UN-brokered agreement reached in Stockholm in December under which Houthi fighters would be redeployed out of Hodeida’s city and port. The agreement envisaged a new security force taking over the city, a move critical to preventing famine and to opening humanitarian corridors.

An excellent article that calls out the racist U.S. mainstream press. Worth a full read.

The Same Media That Opposed Democracy in South Africa Now Warn Against It in Israel/Palestine

When apartheid reigned in South Africa, Western media commentary frequently suggested that if a one person, one vote system were adopted, black South Africans would massacre whites, oppress them or force them to flee. The same line of thinking can today be found in media discussions of Israel/Palestine, with warnings that Israelis and Palestinians sharing a single, democratic country would lead to Palestinians slaughtering Jewish people or driving them out. Such analyses reveal the racist assumption that black people and Arabs are too prone to irrational violence to be trusted with democracy. A New York Times (9/20/81) article by Richard Neely said that, if the United States pressured South Africa to adopt a one person, one vote system, America might be “helping to precipitate a race war of all against all.” That Neely’s primary concern was violence carried out by black people was clear when his article went on to say that:

certainly the lives of the 740,000 Asians in South Africa would be jeopardized under any one-man one-vote constitution, which can be altered by parliament, if the experience of either Kenya or Uganda is indicative.

William Safire wrote in the New York Times (8/7/86) that one person, one vote,

means majority rule, and nonwhites are the overwhelming majority in South Africa. That means an end to white government as the Afrikaners have known it for three centuries; that means the same kind of black rule that exists elsewhere in Africa, and most white South Africans would rather remain the oppressors than become the oppressed.

Safire was either unable or unwilling to conceive of the possibility that black people might not oppress white people, even though there were scant examples of that happening compared to voluminous cases of whites oppressing blacks. ...

Predictions of mass violence against whites by blacks in South Africa proved false. Nor, despite some emigration, has there been a mass exodus of white South Africans; their population has declined by some 13 percent since the first free election in 1994. But this has not stopped media pundits from making equivalent claims about Israel/Palestine: claiming that a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine—that is, a single multiethnic, democratic state, comprising the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and pre-1967 Israel, in which all citizens are equal, regardless of ethnicity or religion—is bound to lead to a widespread slaughter of Jewish people. Tony Bayfield argued in the Guardian (3/23/05) that if “the Jews of Israel” were to be “swallowed up as a minority in a binational entity—Judaism would, I believe, also cease to exist, except perhaps for a tiny remnant of Jews.” In Bayfield’s view, Palestinians are such savages that an attempt to have them live as equals with Israelis would somehow wipe out virtually the whole of the Jewish faith—across the entire world. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin wrote in (4/29/14) wrote that endorsements of the one-state solution “amount to calls for genocide.” ...

Whether in South Africa or Israel/Palestine, the argument has been the same: Hypothetical threats posed by the oppressed to their oppressors justify continued subjugation.

Queen to be evacuated if Brexit turns ugly – reports

British officials have revived cold war emergency plans to relocate the royal family should there be riots in London if Britain suffers a disruptive departure from the European Union, two Sunday newspapers have reported.

“These emergency evacuation plans have been in existence since the cold war but have now been repurposed in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit,” the Sunday Times said, quoting an unnamed source from the government’s Cabinet Office, which handles sensitive administrative issues.

Special documentary on France's 'gilets jaunes' movement

Act 12: Yellow Vests march through Paris honoring injured protesters

There ought to be a law. Oh wait, there is one. There are people in prison for violating the law. The people who run the prison get to violate the law with impunity. Look at who the inhumanely lawless people are now. Justice? Pffftttt!!! This is 'murica!

“‘Vicious’ And ‘Brutal'” — Life Inside a Freezing Federal Prison With No Heat

On Saturday morning, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City to demand answers. Hundreds of people incarcerated at the federal detention facility in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn have been living without heat, light, telephone access, and lawyers for the past week, as the region endured arctic temperatures. After touring the facility with other elected officials, Nadler, the newly seated chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said what he found was disturbing.

“There’s a total lack of urgency or concern on the part of the prison administration with respect to getting the heat and the hot water, getting the services we need,” he said on the steps of the detention facility after his visit. Several hundred people, many of whom have family members inside, had gathered in protest outside the facility. While some cells did have heat, others were extremely cold, Nadler said, and all were without power. ... A number of people incarcerated at Metropolitan Detention Center have a medical condition called sleep apnea and without functioning medical equipment they run the risk of a stroke, Nadler said. “When I said to the warden, how many people do you have with CPAP machines, he said he didn’t know. I said, ‘Did you know there was a problem?’ He said, ‘No one raised it to me until now.’ Basic medical conditions are being ignored.”

Prison officials are in no rush to improve the situation, he said. “In an emergency condition, they are so eager to solve this condition that the contractors have left for the day and won’t be back until Monday.” Nadler said. “This shows the complete lack of urgency.” Other elected officials who toured the prison described similar medical concerns. ... New York City Council Member Brad Lander, who toured the Metropolitan Detention Center with other elected officials, described the prison’s Facilities Manager John Maffeo as “openly contemptuous” of the congressional representatives’ inquiry into conditions at the incarceration site.

The Metropolitan Detention Center houses more than 1,600 federal prisoners, ranging from around a half-dozen people convicted on federal terrorism charges to defendants who have not yet been found guilty of any crime. Union officials representing prison employees told the New York Times that power first went out at the jail on January 5, but that the heating issues began in earnest the week before last. On January 27, an electrical fire knocked out primary power to the jail. Under emergency power, lights were kept on in hallways, but not in the cells, and the prison went into lockdown.

“It’s awful,” said David Patton, the head of the public-interest legal advocates Federal Defenders of New York, who also toured the facility. “They’ve been on lockdown. There is no lighting. There is some heat, but it’s sporadic unit-to-unit. We were in one cell where the temperature was 50 degrees and there was water leaking into the cell.” In some units, the heat is functioning, Patton said. “But even then,” he added, “you’re talking about the high 60s, and people are wearing essentially short-sleeve hospital scrubs.” ... Armed with a court order, one defense lawyer made it into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Saturday to meet with this client. A publicly filed letter to the court from the lawyer, Anthony Cecutti, describes what he found. His client “arrived shivering and sick, with a cough and runny nose,” Cecutti wrote. “He described the past week as ‘torturous,’ ‘vicious’ and ‘brutal;’ a ‘mindfuck.’ He was desperate for a hot cup of tea, and grateful to walk from his unit to the West Building. He described himself as ‘broken.’” Cecutti’s client described a detention unit in which the cells are dark, meals are cold, and there continues to be neither heat nor hot water.

Lights Back On at NYC Jail After Hundreds Protest, But Prisoners Still Without Heat in Winter

Wow. This is taking "it takes one to know one" a bit too far.

Officers Accused of Abuses Are Leading Chicago Police’s “Implicit Bias” Training Program

Sergio Herrera, a Chicago police officer, was accused in a 2010 lawsuit of teaming up with another officer to mace and beat a black man for no reason. The man was sitting in his parked car when Herrera’s colleague approached the vehicle. As the man went to retrieve his identification, the officer told him to “cuff up,” at which point Herrera entered the fray, spraying the man with mace according to the lawsuit. Both officers then allegedly proceeded to throw the man to the ground, strike him in the head with handcuffs, and dig their knees into his back. When the man asked for medical assistance, his pleas were ignored. Instead, the police took him to the station. The lawsuit charges that the man’s ribs were fractured, and that he was left with permanent injuries as a result of the incident. The city of Chicago ended up paying the victim a settlement of $75,000, without admitting wrongdoing. Out-of-court settlements for civil rights violations are a common outcome for the department, which is plagued by lawsuits.

Now, Herrera has a new assignment: to be one of several officers who oversee the Chicago Police Department’s “implicit bias” trainings, a program intended to curb incidents of racist police violence.

Herrera’s role is part of a troubling pattern: The trainings are a key part of the city’s efforts to reform its notoriously abusive police force, but revamped trainings that debuted in 2017 have in many cases been overseen by some of the alleged abusers themselves.

Sixteen of the 17 police officers — excluding only Officer Angela McLaurin — who have provided instruction for the procedural justice training program since the start of 2017 have together garnered a total of 111 misconduct complaints, according to police documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The misconduct complaints range from false arrests to illegal searches and include use of excessive force, often against people of color in Chicago. One officer who provided training has faced seven accusations of mistreating black people since 2011. Six other officers have together been accused of abuses in at least ten civil rights lawsuits, with at least half of those cases resulting in settlements or payments to the plaintiffs.

Sherrod Brown: Medicare for All Not 'Practical.' Progressives: 'OK. Thank You, Next.'

While not a 2020 presidential candidate yet, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) broke from the pack of announced and expected Democrats on Friday by coming out against Medicare for All—characterizing a system that would cover everybody and leave nobody as not "practical"—and was greeted by a widespread reaction of "Thank you, Next" and "Adios" from progressives no longer willing to entertain half-measures when it comes to solving the nation's healthcare crisis or bolstering the private insurance industry.

"I know most of the Democratic primary candidates are all talking about Medicare for all. I think instead we should do Medicare at 55," Brown said during a question and answer session at the Chamber of Commerce in Clear Lake, Iowa. Brown said that reducing the age or letting people over 55 buy into the existing Medicare system early would have a better chance of getting through Congress. "I'm not going to come and make a lot of promises like President Trump did ... I'm going to talk about what's practical and what we can make happen. And if that makes me different from the other candidates so be it," Brown said.

Progressive critics like Splinter's Libby Watson, however, took issue. "You know what isn't practical?" she added. "Spending twice as much as other rich nations for worse outcomes."

thank u next https://t.co/jSCdvhAO68

— libby watson (@libbycwatson) February 2, 2019

"It's always 'practical' to leave people behind, and maintain corporate power," tweeted Michael Lighty, a healthcare policy expert and founding fellow at the left-leaning Sanders Institute. But ith the right kind of "leadership," he noted: "We can make the necessary possible."

AOC Blows Anderson Cooper’s Mind With Popular Solutions

'Socialism Surging in Iowa' Giving Cold Feet to Centrist Democrats Contemplating 2020 Run: Report

Amid warnings within progressive circles that the "moderate Democrat" remains a serious obstacle to the kind of transformative change many rank-and-file party members and voters in general say they want, new reporting by Axios on Saturday shows that it might be the centrists who are getting cold feet as they register just how hungry the electorate has become for policy solutions like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tuition-free higher education, and taxation that targets the nation's wealthiest.

Citing informed sources, Axios reports that both "Michael Bloomberg and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, each of whom were virtual locks to run, are having serious second thoughts after watching Democrats embrace "Medicare for All," big tax increases and the Green New Deal. Joe Biden, who still wants to run, is being advised to delay any plans to see how this lurch to the left plays out. If Biden runs, look for Bloomberg and McAuliffe to bow out."

In addition, internal polling taken by what Axios describes as one "prominent 2020 hopeful" discovered Democratic voters in Iowa, one of the key early caucus states in the presidential primaries, "has moved sharply left." Offering a specific example, the polling reportedly "found that 'socialism' had a net positive rating, while 'capitalism' had a net negative rating."

'The Climate Crisis You Haven't Heard of': Even if Carbon Emissions Fall, a Third of Himalayan Ice to Melt by 2100

From the North Pole to Greenland to Antarctica, a series of recent scientific findings on ice loss has heightened alarm among experts, but a landmark study out Monday focuses on what the lead author called "the climate crisis you haven't heard of"—the "shocking" amount of ice the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region is set to lose due to rising temperatures by 2100.

Even if policymakers around the world heed scientists' urgent warnings and take immediate, ambitious actions to meet the primary goal of the Paris agreement—to limit global average temperature rise within this century to 1.5°C—about a third of the region's glaciers will still melt, disrupting rivers across Asia, according to the new report from the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). If planet-warming carbon emissions are cut by half and the global average temperature rise hits 2°C, researchers predict the HKH region—home to Mount Everest—will lose about half of its ice. If carbon emissions continue unabated, global average temperature will soar 4-5°C, and a devastating two-thirds of glaciers will melt in what's often called the world's "Third Pole."

The much-awaited #HKHAssessment report was launched today at @icimod
Mountains, Climate Change, Sustainability and People!
Learn more: https://t.co/atcuoFkIhl
Full report: https://t.co/g0ltiusGs4
Press release: https://t.co/AhAbZI9bSf https://t.co/tooJO5ewbw

— ICIMOD (@icimod) February 4, 2019

No matter the degree of melt, the consequences are expected to be dramatic, particularly for the 1.9 billion people reliant on regional resources. As lead author Philippus Wester of ICIMOD put it, "Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks of the HKH cutting across eight countries to bare rocks in a little less than a century."

"Impacts on people in the region, already one of the world's most fragile and hazard-prone mountain regions, will range from worsened air pollution to an increase in extreme weather events," Wester said. "But it's the projected reductions in pre-monsoon river flows and changes in the monsoon that will hit hardest, throwing urban water systems and food and energy production off kilter."

Food Shocks and Mass Famine Are Our Shared Future

More than ever, the world’s ways of keeping hunger at bay are taking a pounding as food shocks become more frequent. Potatoes are being baked in heat waves. Corn is being parched by drought. Fruit is being bitten by frost. And a long-term study suggests that for the world’s farmers and graziers, fishing crews and fish farmers, things will get worse as the world warms. Australian and US scientists report in the journal Nature Sustainability that they examined the incidence of what they call “food shocks” across 134 nations over a period of 53 years.

They found that some regions and some kinds of farming have suffered worse than others; that food production is vulnerable to volatile climate and weather changes; and that the dangers are increasing with time.

“The frequency of shocks has increased across all sectors at a global scale,” the authors report. “Increasing shock frequency is a food security concern in itself. Conflict-related shocks across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East since 2010, combined with adverse climate conditions, are responsible for the first uptick in global hunger in recent times.” More than half of all shocks to food production were climate-related, and drought was the biggest factor. Extreme weather accounted for a quarter of shocks to livestock, and disease outbreaks another 10%, but the biggest single factor for pastoral farmers arose from geopolitical conflict and other crises. ...

The latest study is a reminder that, in some ways, the future has already arrived: the forewarned rise in climate extremes such as flood, heat and drought can be detected in the annual harvest tally around the globe. And although a high percentage of the food supply damage can be linked to social conflict or political stress, climate change seems increasingly to be a factor in civil and international violence.

How the Green New Deal Became the Green New Deal

The signature effort that has become attached to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the “Green New Deal,” was originally intended to go by a different name, she told The Intercept in a recent podcast interview. But as social media and news outlets covering the platform began coalescing around the term, which had long been used by the Green Party, Ocasio-Cortez ceded to the public, she said.

In addition to using social media to teach her followers about the inner workings of Congress and some of the more complex policy fights, Ocasio-Cortez said she also uses Twitter to listen and see what kind of messaging gains traction. ... She cited the Green New Deal as an example of a time she used social media to gauge public reaction to the branding of a policy. Her campaign had been floating the idea of a Green New Deal before the general election, interviewing policy experts, academics, and activists about it. At the time, though, “Green New Deal” was only a working title and the campaign hadn’t yet settled on what they would call it or how they would talk about it to the public, “I wasn’t 1,000 percent sure on that kind of branding, if you will, or how we would talk about that.”

The term had long been floating around left-wing policy spaces. A Green New Deal has been part of the Green Party’s platform for more than a decade, and Jill Stein had been campaigning on it since 2012. Early use of the term traces back, oddly, to Thomas Friedman, who wrote a New York Times column in 2007 about the concept and later expanded the idea in a book. The following year, Barack Obama made a Green New Deal, or “Green Jobs,” part of his presidential platform, and brought Van Jones into his administration to try to implement a small a version of it. The concept didn’t fully take off until a new wave of progressive candidates campaigned on a more aggressive version of it — but its sudden surge into the mainstream happened after Sunrise, a youth-led environmental organization, held a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi’s office. ...

“Green New Deal was a working title, and we almost had the understanding that was going to be called something else,” she said. “But it kept leaking, and catching, and people just started writing articles calling it a Green New Deal before we even said anything or called it that ourselves. And so because of that, that was in a moment where it was listening, and I was like OK let’s not try to force our own thing on this, if this is building traction, if it’s easily being communicated, then let’s just run with it.”

Also of Interest

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

Watch 15th Vigil for Assange

“A Fundamentally Illegitimate Choice”: Shoshana Zuboff on the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Great Middle East Head-Fake

“I Oppose Interventionism, But-” But Nothing. Stop Being A Pro Bono CIA Propagandist.

Venezuela - Coup Propaganda Claims Gang Violence Is Coup Supporting Protest

A Serious Green New Deal Would Take Up One-Third of the Economy—Are We Ready for That?

Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake At Night? Try The Doomsday Clock For A Truthful State Of The Union

The Wealthy Are Victims of Their Own Propaganda

The shutdown is over. Can Joshua Tree recover?

Four Reasons Shaun King Is Cautiously Optimistic About the Democratic Party in 2020

A Little Night Music

Peppermint Harris - I Got Loaded

Peppermint Harris - I Cry For My Baby

Peppermint Harris - The Blues Pick On Me

Peppermint Harris - My Time After While

Peppermint Harris - Fat Girl Boogie

Peppermint Harris - It's You, Yes, It's You

Peppermint Harris - Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie

Peppermint Harris - Texarkana Bound

Peppermint Harris - Just Me And You

Peppermint Harris - Got A Big Fine Baby

Peppermint Harris - Mama Mama

Peppermint Harris - Three Sheets In The Wind