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This evening's music features blues guitarist and lap steel player Sonny Rhodes. Enjoy!

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

News and Opinion

Why New Laws Against White Supremacist Violence Are the Wrong Response to El Paso

The recent white supremacist mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and the Justice Department’s new willingness to label this kind of attack domestic terrorism have prompted renewed calls for the creation of more powerful anti-terrorism laws to investigate and prosecute right-wing domestic extremists. The FBI Agents Association urged Congress to “to make domestic terrorism a federal crime.” Rod Rosenstein, the former U.S. deputy attorney general, suggested to the New York Times that domestic terrorism investigations in the United States should be modeled on the way the FBI has pursued would-be attackers who sympathize with Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other foreign terrorist groups — using informants, surveillance, and stings to cultivate a snitch culture. “In the same way that honorable members of mosques report people who express violent designs, so, too, should people report violent white nationalists to the police,” Rosenstein told the Times.

But recent media reports claiming there are no federal domestic terrorism laws inhabit a world of alternative facts, where repeating something often enough makes it appear true.

“It may seem appealing to provide new authorities for domestic terrorism, but the reality is that the FBI has all the authorities it needs to investigate and prosecute white supremacist violence effectively,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The notion that there are inadequate authorities is a myth.” The logic behind that myth goes something like this: Domestic terrorism is not a crime per se, so there is no domestic terrorism law. But this ignores the fact that international terrorism is not a crime per se, either. Terrorism prosecutions since 9/11 have never been about a lack of laws. Indeed, terrorism laws, including those that can be applied against domestic extremists, were expanded in the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Terrorism prosecutions are a decadeslong story of arbitrary application, which has created a lasting perception that these laws are applicable only to international terrorism defendants.

That’s simply false. A host of anti-terrorism laws are available to federal prosecutors whether the accused terrorist is an ISIS sympathizer or a white nationalist. These include laws that bar, and classify as terrorism, the use or attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, attacks on mass transit systems, and hostage-taking, among others.

Brazil Supreme Court Minister Rules to Protect Press Freedom for Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept

In a crucial victory for press freedom in Brazil, Minister Gilmar Mendes, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, has barred the Bolsonaro administration and Justice Minister Sergio Moro from investigating The Intercept Brasil and journalist Glenn Greenwald for its reporting on unethical and potentially illegal conduct involving Moro. Mendes, in a sweeping decision, wrote that any attempt to investigate journalists for their reporting would “constitute an unambiguous act of censorship” and would violate Brazil’s constitution. ...

President Bolsonaro has publicly stated multiple times in recent weeks that Greenwald has “committed crimes” and that he “may do jail time.” In July, a right-wing publication, which regularly publishes anonymously sourced leaks and rumors that benefit members of Bolsonaro’s party, reported that Greenwald’s finances were under investigation by prosecutors controlled by Justice Minister Moro in relation to The Intercept Brasil’s publications.

After Mendes’s opinion, however, any investigations by the government into Greenwald should halt. The petition to the Brazilian Supreme Court was originally filed on July 11 by the center-left environment-focused political party Rede Sustentabilidade, which translates to the Sustainability Network. The leadership of Rede Sustenabilidade was a strong supporter of Justice Minister Moro, until the revelations by The Intercept Brasil and their concerns about the effects any investigation of the journalists involved would have on press freedom in Brazil. ...

Minister Mendes’s ruling is only preliminary, but the full court may take months or years to take on the case, so Mendes’s ruling may stand for a significant length of time. It is a powerful rebuke of those in the Bolsonaro government who have indicated they would like to sweep aside important press freedom rights for all journalists.

Wired’s Gee-Whiz High-Tech Militarism

A deluge of major Western publications stated last month that the US destroyed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman (e.g., New York Times, 7/18/19; NPR, 7/19/19; NBC News, 7/18/19). Citing unproven reports from Donald Trump and the US Department of Defense, the outlets stated that the drone came within 1,000 yards of a US Navy warship, after ignoring “multiple calls to stand down.” Iran denied the accusations, providing a time-stamped video meant to demonstrate that the drone remained airborne “before and even after the time Americans claim” (BBC, 7/19/19). The US, meanwhile, provided a dubious series of photos, with no indication of when they were taken or their relationship to each other.

Most of the aforementioned media noted Iran’s denial. Wired’s take, however—entitled “The Marines’ New Drone-Killer Aces Its First Real World Test” (7/22/19)—ignored Iran’s response entirely. Instead, Wired accepted the US’s warmongering narrative fully, even cheerleading the military for its engineering prowess.

The article’s cause for celebration: The US Marines took down a drone for the first time by blasting radio signals to interrupt communications between the drone and its base, rather than using more conventional weapons such as guns or lasers. The article wasn’t concerned with the geopolitical or moral context of a potential act of US aggression against Iran. Rather, as Wired made explicit, its focus was the technological tour de force of downing the drone:

But the significance lies less in heightened tensions in the region than it does in the weapon of choice. The strike marks the first reported successful use of the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, an energy weapon that blasts not artillery or lasers but radio signals.

After listing the technical merits—and, to a far lesser extent, shortcomings—of the energy weapon, the article proceeded to call the use of this weapon “fun.” Wired has a history of portraying US military operations as dazzling, do-good technological marvels. Days before championing the Marines’ energy weapon, the outlet published a ringing endorsement of the Air Force’s new rescue helicopter (7/19/19), which doubled as an advertorial for both the Air Force and aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Not unlike a car commercial, the article detailed the vehicle’s bells and whistles: Twice the fuel capacity! Extra range! New surveillance cameras! Weapon mounts! The idea that some of the countries targeted might seek to develop defenses to these devastating attacks was described as the “challenge” of “rapid evolution of opposition to the American military.” ...

It’s one thing to detail the technical properties of machinery, and quite another to try to leverage those properties into public support for US belligerence. In Wired’s propagandistic imagination, military weapons resemble otherworldly creations, high-tech spectacles, the stuff of science fiction. Within that framing, there’s no need to consider the people around the world for whom those weapons are all too real.

Trump: South Korea should pay 'substantially more' for defense costs

President Trump said Wednesday that South Korea should pay more money to the United States, arguing Americans pay too much to cover its ally's defense costs.

Trump also said in the tweet that talks have already begun with South Korea on increasing the $990 million it now pays the U.S. for defense.

...Talks have begun to further increase payments to the United States. South Korea is a very wealthy nation that now feels an obligation to contribute to the military defense provided by the United States of America. The relationship between the two countries is a very good one!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2019

South Korea did not immediately respond to Trump's remarks, according to Reuters.

US state department’s top official for Latin America resigns

The US Department of State’s top official for Latin America has resigned, reportedly amid disputes over immigration policy. The state department did not comment on the departure of Kimberly Breier, a former CIA analyst and an expert on Mexico. ...

Several reports said Breier’s resignation from the post of assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere followed a heated internal dispute over an agreement with Guatemala at the end of July, requiring Central American immigrants to seek asylum in that country before coming to the US. The accord designated Guatemala a “safe” country able to process asylum claims and accommodate migrants fleeing poverty, violence and climate change from the region.

The state department, including the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is reported to have vigorously opposed the deal, on the grounds that Guatemala, plagued by the same problems as its neighbours, was in no state to honour the agreement. But the agreement was forced through by Trump and immigration hardliners in the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the resignation, Breier was chastised in an internal administration email chain by Stephen Miller, Trump’s far-right policy adviser, for being half-hearted in defending the Guatemala agreement, saying it was “her job” to do so. ...

Breier’s resignation is the fourth departure of an assistant secretary of state so far this year, in an administration in a constant state of turmoil over policy and turf wars.

Mass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Leave Kids Without Parents

Detroit Man Who Suffered From Mental Illness and Diabetes That Trump Deported to Iraq—a Country He Had Never Even Been To—Found Dead

A Detroit man who was born in Greece died Tuesday after being deported to Iraq, a country he had never been to and where he did not speak the language, making him one of the latest victims of President Donald Trump's war on immigrants.

Jimmy Aldaoud, 41, likely died from complications due to diabetes, his lawyer Edward Bajoka confirmed in a Facebook post. Bajoka detailed Aldaoud's background and mental illness, and laid the blame for his death squarely at the feet of the White House:

Jimmy was found dead today in Iraq. The likely cause of death was not being able to get his insulin. He is a diabetic. He was forcefully deported to Iraq a couple of months ago. He was born in Greece and had never been to Iraq. He knew no one there. He did not speak Arabic. He was a member of the Chaldean minority group. He was a paranoid schizophrenic. His mental health was the primary reason for his legal issues that led to his deportation.

Rest In Peace Jimmy. Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration.

In a statement, ACLU lawyer Miriam Aukerman said that Aldaoud's death was preventable and a tragedy for Michigan's Chaldean community. "Jimmy's death has devastated his family and us," said Aukerman. "We knew he would not survive if deported." Aukerman added that Trump's deportation policies are likely leading to more deaths that aren't public.

US calls China ‘thuggish regime’ for targeting American diplomat who met Hong Kong protesters

A US official has described China as a “thuggish regime” for disclosing the photographs and personal details of a US diplomat who met student leaders involved in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

The denunciation was unusually sharp and came as tensions between Washington and Beijing surged over an expanding trade war and military rivalry in the western Pacific, among other disputes.

The Hong Kong office of China’s foreign ministry on Thursday asked the US to explain reports in Communist party-controlled media that American diplomats were in contact with leaders of protests that have convulsed Hong Kong for nine weeks.

Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao published a photograph of a US diplomat, who it identified as Julie Eadeh of the consulate’s political section, talking to student leaders in the lobby of a luxury hotel.

The photograph appeared under the headline “Foreign Forces Intervene”, continuing a theme of previous protests from Beijing officials, who have blamed Hong Kong’s unrest on “black hands” from the US.

Worth a full read. Here's a taste:

Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China

The problem with a currency war is that it is a war without winners. This was demonstrated in the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s, which only deepened the Great Depression. As economist Michael Hudson observed in a June interview with journalist Bonnie Faulkner, making American products cheaper abroad will do little for the American economy, because we no longer have a competitive manufacturing base or products to sell. Today’s workers are largely in the service industries—cab drivers, hospital workers, insurance agents and the like. A cheaper dollar abroad just makes consumer goods at Walmart and imported raw materials for U.S. businesses more expensive.

What is mainly devalued when a currency is devalued, Hudson says, is the price of the country’s labor and the working conditions of its laborers. The reason American workers cannot compete with foreign workers is not that the dollar is overvalued. It is due to their higher costs of housing, education, medical services and transportation. In competitor countries, these costs are typically subsidized by the government.

America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses. If the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are typically put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories. The nonperforming loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally). As observed by Jeff Spross in a May 2018 Reuters article titled “Chinese Banks Are Big. Too Big?”:

[B]ecause the Chinese government owns most of the banks, and it prints the currency, it can technically keep those banks alive and lending forever. …

It may sound weird to say that China’s banks will never collapse, no matter how absurd their lending positions get. But banking systems are just about the flow of money.

Political and labor unrest is a major problem in China. Spross wrote that the government keeps everyone happy by keeping economic growth high and spreading the proceeds to the citizenry. About two-thirds of Chinese debt is owed just by the corporations, which are also largely state-owned. Corporate lending is thus a roundabout form of government-financed industrial policy—a policy financed not through taxes but through the unique privilege of banks to create money on their books.

China thinks this is a better banking model than the private Western system focused on short-term profits for private shareholders. But U.S. policymakers consider China’s subsidies to its businesses and workers to be “unfair trade practices.” They want China to forgo state subsidization and its other protectionist policies in order to level the playing field. But Beijing contends that the demanded reforms amount to “economic regime change.” As Hudson puts it: “This is the fight that Trump has against China. He wants to tell it to let the banks run China and have a free market. He says that China has grown rich over the last fifty years by unfair means, with government help and public enterprise. In effect, he wants the Chinese to be as threatened and insecure as American workers. They should get rid of their public transportation. They should get rid of their subsidies. They should let a lot of their companies go bankrupt so that Americans can buy them. They should have the same kind of free market that has wrecked the US economy. [Emphasis added.]”

Central Banks Are in Panic Mode — for Good Reason

On July 30, 2019, the day before the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, cut interest rates by one-quarter of one percent, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note closed the day at 2.06 percent. Early this morning, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury stood at 1.65 percent, a stunning decline of 41 basis points in 8 days. A yield evaporation on U.S. sovereign debt that resembles a snow cone in July is not consistent with a strong economy. It is consistent with a seriously sputtering economy and a stock market out over its skis in terms of valuation.

In addition to the collapsing yield in the benchmark 10-year, we now have a seriously inverted yield curve with the 3-month T-bill yielding 2.01 percent this morning versus the 10-year T-note yielding 1.65 – a difference of 36 basis points. An inverted yield curve means that investors are gobbling up longer-term Treasury debt (thus driving down its yield) on the expectation that as the economy slows or goes into recession, there will be less demand for money, thus lower inflation, thus ever lower long-term yields to be had; thus it’s better to grab what you can get now.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury may be falling more rapidly than it otherwise would because the Federal Reserve finds itself in the unenviable situation of having a half empty arsenal to manage a future recession or more severe economic upheaval.

When the Fed faced the financial slowdown of 2007 and the epic financial crash of 2008, it started with 5.25 percent interest in its arsenal, allowing it to slash rates by a half-percentage point in September of 2007; another quarter point in October; another quarter point in December; a three-quarter point cut on January 22; another panic cut of a half-point on January 30; another three-quarter point cut on March 18; followed by four more cuts that year that evaporated the Fed Funds rate to the so-called zero-bound range of 0 to 0.25 percent.

The Fed’s rate-cut on July 31 of this year was its first since the financial crisis. It started this easing program from a meager 2.25 to 2.50 percent Fed Funds rate. It now has just 2.00 to 2.25 percent left in its arsenal. Should it need to ease as aggressively as it did in 2008, it would be completely out of bullets in four months’ time. That’s a serious problem because deep recessions or major financial shocks do not end in four months.

Trump’s tariffs cost US businesses $3.4 billion in June, trade advocacy group says

President Donald Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. businesses $3.4 billion in June alone, according to Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a coalition of trade associations and agriculture commodity groups.

That represents a $2.4 billion increase from what businesses paid the same month last year, despite a 31% decline, or $7.5 billion, in imports.

The figures compiled from U.S. Census Bureau data capture the first month after the escalation of tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. ...

The pain promises to get worse, now that Trump last week announced a 10% tariff on an additional $300 billion in Chinese imports, effective Sept. 1.

Democratic Socialist Lawmaker Persuades Fellow Denver City Council Members to End Contracts With For-Profit Prison Operators

Two for-profit prison operators lost a combined $10.6 million in contracts after a progressive councilwoman convinced her fellow members of the Denver City Council to end the city's involvement with Core Civic and the GEO Group.

City councilor Candi CdeBaca, who won her seat in June after campaigning on a Democratic Socialist platform, organized community members to speak out Monday against the two companies' contracts with the city, under which they have long operated six halfway houses in Denver.

The companies also run the majority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) immigration detention centers, where children and adults have been subjected to neglect and abuse under the Trump administration and where at least 24 people have died since President Donald Trump took office.

"We've watched these large entities gobble up smaller providers with public dollars and little to no transparency or accountability," CdeBaca told her fellow council members. As Ryan Grim reported in The Intercept Thursday, CdeBaca called on members of local groups—including the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, the ACLU, and Black Lives Matter—to speak at the city council's meeting.

After hearing from the advocates, seven of CdeBaca's 12 colleagues joined her in voting to end the contracts.

Sanders leads fight against 'obscene' Trump plan to cut food stamp access

The 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is leading a coalition of 19 senators and 120 US representatives in demanding that Donald Trump’s administration rescind a proposed rule that would dramatically limit access to food stamps for low-income families.

“In a nation where the three wealthiest people own more wealth than the bottom half, increasing the barriers for hungry families is unconscionable,” the lawmakers, all of whom are Democrats, wrote in a letter.

The letter comes as the Department of Agriculture said it planned to tighten eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), a government program that provides free food to roughly 40 million Americans. The move would cut about 3.1 million people from the program.

“We are moving toward a system of oligarchy, where political decisions in Washington enrich the wealthy while devastating the poor,” Sanders told the Guardian in a statement. “President Trump and the billionaires in his administration – after giving away over $1tn in tax cuts to mainly the rich and large corporations – are now trying to strip nutrition assistance from more than three million people.”

Poll Shows Most Americans With Employer-Provided Insurance Support Moving to Medicare for All

A Business Insider poll published Thursday found that most Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage support switching over to Medicare for All, undermining the right-wing narrative that the U.S. public is wedded to private insurance plans.

You know how some 2020 Democrats who’ve been bankrolled by insurers & pharma have been claiming that most Americans would never be OK with replacing their private insurance with Medicare for All?

Well...this new poll destroys their argument. https://t.co/w9S15UzIrQ

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 9, 2019

The survey showed that 59 percent of respondents who have employer-provided insurance "said they would support switching their employer-based health insurance to a government plan under Medicare for All" as long as quality of coverage would remain the same or improve.

As Common Dreams reported last week, former Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), and other corporate Democratic presidential candidates claim Americans are afraid of giving up their employer-provided plans in favor of Medicare for All. ...

The poll also found that Americans on government-run healthcare plans such as Medicare and Medicaid are more satisfied with their coverage than those on employer-sponsored plans, which have soared in cost over the past two decades.

Oops: Biden says “we choose truth over facts” pic.twitter.com/bkohPsOmJC

— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) August 8, 2019

Linking El Paso Massacre to ICE Raids, Sanders Says Trump's Campaign of Terror Against Immigrants Must Be Defeated

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday joined rights groups in condemning the racist El Paso massacre and large-scale ICE raids in Mississippi as part of the broad terrorization of immigrant communities that President Donald Trump has unleashed.

This is evil. Days after immigrants were gunned down in El Paso, Trump is continuing the attacks on immigrant families.

Our job is to reject Trump's racist agenda, end the terror inflicted on immigrant communities and bring families together, not tear them apart. https://t.co/NAjZes02Aw

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 8, 2019

Sanders's tweet came hours after ICE agents raided food processing plans in six Mississippi cities, rounded up suspected undocumented workers, and sent them to a Louisiana detention center. As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, the raids—which were reportedly the largest-ever workplace enforcement action in a single state—ripped hundreds of parents away from their children and left loved ones in despair.

Buttigieg Already Courting SUPER-DELEGATES For Support

House Democrats Hoarding Cash to Ward Off Progressive Upstarts

Somewhere out there, the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lurks. So wary House Democrats are amassing campaign war chests to scare off progressive upstarts from challenging them in primaries — or trounce them if they try.

A look at 41 incumbent House Democrats who face potential 2020 party primary opponents shows 16 have already stockpiled over $1 million in campaign funds. The figures from Federal Election Commission reports for the first six months of this year show that 20 raised over $500,000 during that period alone.

That’s not stopping challengers from targeting powerful committee chairmen and other well-financed incumbents, though the hurdles they face are clear.

So far only four Democratic challengers in these races have at least $100,000 socked away. The most is $352,000 by business consultant Marie Newman, who’s waging a primary rematch against Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of Congress’ most conservative Democrats. He has double her cash on hand, though she’s out-raised him so far this year. ...

Upsets like Ocasio-Cortez’s are rare. ... Even so, leading Democrats are urging lawmakers to be aggressive fund raisers.

Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders

Trump administration authorizes 'cyanide bombs' to kill wild animals

The Trump administration has reauthorized government officials to use controversial poison devices – dubbed “cyanide bombs” by critics – to kill coyotes, foxes and other animals across the US.

The spring-loaded traps, called M-44s, are filled with sodium cyanide and are most frequently deployed by Wildlife Services, a federal agency in the US Department of Agriculture that kills vast numbers of wild animals each year, primarily for the benefit of private farmers and ranchers. In 2018, Wildlife Services reported that its agents had dispatched more than 1.5 million native animals, from beavers to black bears, wolves, ducks and owls. Roughly 6,500 of them were killed by M-44s.

On Tuesday, after completing the first phase of a routine review, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would allow sodium cyanide’s continued use in M-44s across the country on an interim basis. Yet the traps are facing increasing opposition, and have, in the past, led to the inadvertent deaths of endangered species and domestic pets and caused harm to humans.

In the months before the EPA announced the reauthorization, conservation groups and members of the public flooded the agency with comments calling for a complete national ban on the predator-killing poison. According to an analysis provided by the Center for Biological Diversity, which is a leading opponent of M-44s, 99.9% of all comments received by the EPA opposed the reauthorization of sodium cyanide for predator control purposes.

ExxonMobil is after us again. @NewYorkStateAG is currently suing them for fraud.

Now, ExxonMobil is attempting to intimidate witnesses from testifying by making them disclose all contact they’ve had with 350. #exxonknew #MakeThemPayhttps://t.co/Artfvfev8z

— 350 dot org (@350) August 8, 2019

Documents Reveal Monsanto Surveilled Journalists, Activists & Even Musician Neil Young

Revealed: how Monsanto's 'intelligence center' targeted journalists and activists

Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism.

The documents, mostly from 2015 to 2017, were disclosed as part of an ongoing court battle on the health hazards of the company’s Roundup weedkiller. They show:

• Monsanto planned a series of “actions” to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including writing “talking points” for “third parties” to criticize the book and directing “industry and farmer customers” on how to post negative reviews.

• Monsanto paid Google to promote search results for “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam” that criticized her work. Monsanto PR staff also internally discussed placing sustained pressure on Reuters, saying they “continue to push back on [Gillam’s] editors very strongly every chance we get”, and that they were hoping “she gets reassigned”.

• Monsanto “fusion center” officials wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering “legal action”. The fusion center also monitored US Right to Know (USRTK), a not-for-profit, producing weekly reports on the organization’s online activity.

• Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were “covering up unflattering research”.

The internal communications add fuel to the ongoing claims in court that Monsanto has “bullied” critics and scientists and worked to conceal the dangers of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide.

#IPCC Special Report on #ClimateChange and Land:

Land is where we live.
Land is under growing human pressure.
Land is a part of the solution.
But land can’t do it all. #SRCCL press release https://t.co/yvthAXgk7V
SPM https://t.co/kIjgQJt7hP pic.twitter.com/x9KxDgTJWH

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) August 8, 2019

Supersizing Climate Change: U.N. Says Meat Production Destroys Land & Diminishes Key Water Sources

FBI and police monitoring Oregon anti-pipeline activists

Law enforcement groups, including the FBI, have been monitoring opponents of a natural gas infrastructure project in Oregon and circulated intelligence to an email list that included a Republican-aligned anti-environmental PR operative, emails obtained by the Guardian show. The South Western Oregon Joint Task Force (SWOJTF) and its members were monitoring opponents of the Jordan Cove energy project, a proposal by the Canadian energy company Pembina to build the first-ever liquefied natural gas export terminal on the US west coast, as well as a new 232-mile pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas to the port of Coos Bay. The Trump administration has named Jordan Cove as one of its highest-priority infrastructure projects. Jordan Cove opponents have raised concerns about the project’s significant environmental impacts, impacts on public lands, indigenous rights and climate change.

The emails, obtained via open records requests, reflect the increased scrutiny and surveillance to which law enforcement agencies are often subjecting indigenous and environmental groups, activists say. It also comes amid an uptick in civil disobedience and direct actions challenging fossil fuel infrastructure projects – particularly in the wake of the Native American-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. They also reflect a nationwide tendency for rightwing partisans, law enforcement agencies and the fossil fuel industry to ally with one another in the suppression of such activities.

An email distribution list associated with the taskforce included addressees in the FBI, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Forest Service (NFS), Oregon state police (OSP), and various Oregon municipal police and sheriffs departments. But some of its recipients are outside any government agency, most notably Mark Pfeifle, the CEO of the political consultancy Off The Record Strategies. Pfeifle was previously a Bush administration PR adviser on national security. More recently, Pfeifle worked with law enforcement on a counter-information operation against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.

Emails circulated on the SWOJTF email list include activists’ social media posts, emails and rally announcements.

The records reveal the existence of other law enforcement intelligence activities related to monitoring the work of environmental groups. In a November 2018 email to Valencia, a BLM law enforcement analyst noted her role in the “Forest Intelligence Group (FIG)” that is also tracking activists. ... In a telephone interview, a spokesman for the US attorney in Oregon also confirmed the existence of another body mentioned in the emails: a “domestic terrorism working group” led by the assistant US attorney, Craig Gabriel, that meets “roughly quarterly” in Portland. He said that the group was mostly made up of federal agencies but included some local law enforcement.

Jordan Cove opponents expressed alarm upon learning about the level of scrutiny they are receiving from so many different law enforcement entities. “It is outrageous that our Oregon public agencies are actually working to plan how to stifle the very southern Oregonians whose drinking water, property and communities are threatened by this project,” said Sylvia Mangan, a retired public health nurse who lives on one of the proposed pipeline routes.

Also of Interest

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

'Blood on their hands': the intelligence officer whose warning over white supremacy was ignored

The Persistent Myth That Trump Opposes War

Philippines: US rights volunteer branded 'enemy of state' shot outside home

Italy's Matteo Salvini calls for fresh elections as coalition fractures

Corbyn: Johnson plotting abuse of power to force no-deal Brexit

For Cliff May, War Pays

No, There Will Be No Russian Base In Iran

Trump’s Favorite Bank Just Forked Over a Pile of Documents to Democrats

House Finance Chair Maxine Waters Wins Praise for Prioritizing Public Policy Over Raising Wall Street Cash—and Corporate Dems Are Miffed

Activist Confronts Democrat Josh Gottheimer on Video for Funding Trump's War on Immigrants

Study of Massive Smoke Cloud From 2017 Wildfires Offers Terrifying Hint of How Even Small Nuclear War Would Escalate Climate Crises

Climate crisis may be increasing jet stream turbulence, study finds

A Little Night Music

The Daylighters w/ Sonny Rhodes - Something Is Wrong

Sonny Rhodes - Country Boy

Sonny Rhodes - You Better Stop

Sonny Rhodes - I Was Kidding

Sonny Rhodes - Half Smart Woman

Sonny Rhodes - All Night Long They Play The Blues

Sonny Rhodes - She's Excited

Sonny Rhodes & The Texas Twisters - House Without Love

Sonny Rhodes - One More Drink

Sonny Rhodes - Up above my head

Sonny Rhodes - If The Blues Fits, Wear It

Sonny Rhodes - Bellinzona Piazza Blues