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“Though American journalists may understandably want to find some protective cover by pretending that Julian Assange is not like us, the reality is – whether we like it or not – we are all Julian Assange.”

-- Robert Parry

News and Opinion

What Is Happening to Assange Will Happen to the Rest of Us

David Morales, the indicted owner of the Spanish private security firm Undercover Global, is being investigated by Spain’s high court for allegedly providing the CIA with audio and video recordings of the meetings WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had with his attorneys and other visitors when the publisher was in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The security firm also reportedly photographed the passports of all of Assange’s visitors. It is accused of taking visitors’ phones, which were not permitted in the embassy, and opening them, presumably in an effort to intercept calls. It reportedly stole data from laptops, electronic tablets and USB sticks, all required to be left at the embassy reception area. It allegedly compiled detailed reports on all of Assange’s meetings and conversations with visitors. The firm even is said to have planned to steal the diaper of a baby — brought to visit Assange — to perform a DNA test to establish whether the infant was a secret son of Assange. UC Global, apparently at the behest of the CIA, also allegedly spied on Ecuadorian diplomats who worked in the London embassy.

The probe by the court, the Audiencia Nacional, into the activities of UC Global, along with leaked videos, statements, documents and reports published by the Spanish newspaper El País as well as the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, offers a window into the new global security state. Here the rule of law is irrelevant. Here privacy and attorney-client privilege do not exist. Here people live under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Here all who attempt to expose the crimes of tyrannical power will be hunted down, kidnapped, imprisoned and broken. This global security state is a terrifying melding of the corporate and the public. And what it has done to Assange it will soon do to the rest of us.

The publication of classified documents is not yet a crime in the United States. If Assange is extradited and convicted, it will become one. Assange is not an American citizen. WikiLeaks, which he founded, is not a U.S.-based publication. The extradition of Assange would mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power. It would cement into place a terrifying global, corporate tyranny under which borders, nationality and law mean nothing. Once such a legal precedent is set, any publication that publishes classified material, from The New York Times to an alternative website, will be prosecuted and silenced.

The Trump administration’s surveillance dragnet

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that the Trump administration has purchased access to a commercial database that tracks the location and movement of millions of cell phones in order to aid in the deportation of immigrants living in the United States and to track people as they cross the border. The revelation of this program shows that the government’s illegal dragnet surveillance has been expanded since the exposure of mass National Security Agency spying by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

Promises of a national dialogue on domestic electronic spying and the passage of legislation to provide more oversight of government operations were never anything more than a sham. The federal government is now outsourcing to private contractors a significant share of the electronic surveillance it had previously been carrying out itself. This breach of the American and world population’s right to privacy, first justified by President George W. Bush under the guise of the “war on terror,” then expanded under President Barack Obama, is now being utilized in Trump’s fascistic war on immigrants. While the government claims that the cell phone data it uses is “anonymized” to protect American citizens, such measures will not be limited to immigrants. They will be used against left-wing political opponents of the government and to suppress any eruption of popular opposition by the working class.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration began purchasing cell phone location data in 2017 from a company in the suburbs of Washington, DC named Venntel. This company has multiple ties to Gravy Analytics, a major mobile advertising firm. Venntel purchases location data gathered by weather, game, commerce and other applications downloaded by cell phone users and then resells that information to its clients, in this case the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ...

The use of commercial databases is an end run around a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, Carpenter v. United States, placing restrictions on the federal government’s ability to directly collect cell phone data on individuals from the big phone companies. “In this case, the government is a commercial purchaser like anybody else. Carpenter is not relevant,” Paul Rosenzweig, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for policy, told the Wall Street Journal. “The government is just buying a widget.” Instead of following due process and going to a federal court to get a warrant to track a criminal suspect, the government is purchasing bulk data from marketing firms to spy on everyone living in or traveling to the United States. ...

While the New York Times published an editorial this weekend calling for congressional hearings into the Trump administration’s use of what the newspaper termed “the most invasive corporate surveillance system ever devised,” the revelation has passed largely in silence. It was not mentioned in the Sunday news interview programs nor raised by any of the Democratic presidential candidates. This is due to the fact that there is no section of the ruling elite that is committed to the defense of basic constitutional rights, and the assault on the democratic rights of American citizens and immigrants is bipartisan.

Worth a full read, here's a bit to get you started:

The Arctic: World War III’s Newest Battlefield

In early March, an estimated 7,500 American combat troops will travel to Norway to join thousands of soldiers from other NATO countries in a massive mock battle with imagined invading forces from Russia. In this futuristic simulated engagement—it goes by the name of Exercise Cold Response 2020—allied forces will “conduct multinational joint exercises with a high-intensity combat scenario in demanding winter conditions,"or so claims the Norwegian military anyway. At first glance, this may look like any other NATO training exercise, but think again. There’s nothing ordinary about Cold Response 2020. As a start, it’s being staged above the Arctic Circle, far from any previous traditional NATO battlefield, and it raises to a new level the possibility of a great-power conflict that might end in a nuclear exchange and mutual annihilation. Welcome, in other words, to World War III’s newest battlefield.

For the soldiers participating in the exercise, the potentially thermonuclear dimensions of Cold Response 2020 may not be obvious. At its start, Marines from the United States and the United Kingdom will practice massive amphibious landings along Norway’s coastline, much as they do in similar exercises elsewhere in the world. Once ashore, however, the scenario becomes ever more distinctive. After collecting tanks and other heavy weaponry “prepositioned"in caves in Norway’s interior, the Marines will proceed toward the country’s far-northern Finnmark region to help Norwegian forces stave off Russian forces supposedly pouring across the border. From then on, the two sides will engage in—to use current Pentagon terminology—high-intensity combat operations under Arctic conditions (a type of warfare not seen on such a scale since World War II).

And that’s just the beginning. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the Finnmark region of Norway and adjacent Russian territory have become one of the most likely battlegrounds for the first use of nuclear weapons in any future NATO-Russian conflict. Because Moscow has concentrated a significant part of its nuclear retaliatory capability on the Kola Peninsula, a remote stretch of land abutting northern Norway—any U.S.-NATO success in actualcombat with Russian forces near that territory would endanger a significant part of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and so might precipitate the early use of such munitions. Even a simulated victory—the predictable result of Cold Response 2020—will undoubtedly set Russia’s nuclear controllers on edge.

To appreciate just how risky any NATO-Russian clash in Norway’s far north would be, consider the region’s geography and the strategic factors that have led Russia to concentrate so much military power there. And all of this, by the way, will be playing out in the context of another existential danger: climate change. The melting of the Arctic ice cap and the accelerated exploitation of Arctic resources are lending this area ever greater strategic significance.

Fighting continues in Idlib as Turkey-Russia talks end inconclusively

More than 100 US troops suffered traumatic brain injury in Iran strike, military says

The number of US service members diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) stemming from Iran’s missile attack on a base in Iraq last month has shot up to more than 100, the Pentagon said Monday.

The department said 109 military members had been treated for mild TBI, a significant increase over the 64 reported a little over a week ago.

The number of injuries has been steadily increasing since the Pentagon began releasing data on the injuries about a week after the 8 January attack at al-Asad airbase in Iraq.

Pentagon officials have warned that the number will continue to change.

The department said 76 of the service members have returned to duty, while 26 are in Germany or the United States for treatment, and another seven are on their way from Iraq to Germany for evaluation and treatment.

Civilian deaths and atrocities escalate as chaos builds in Sahel

Armed militias and Islamist extremists in Mali killed at least 500 civilians and wounded many more last year in an intensifying wave of violence that threatens to undermine efforts to stabilise the poor west African state, a new report has found.

The 90-page survey by global campaigners Human Rights Watch describes how a multitude of different armed groups in Mali burned villagers alive, killed others with bombs, and pulled men off buses to execute them by the roadside, in scores of attacks on civilians.

Islamist extremists were responsible for some of the worst attacks, deliberately targeting small children, and killing 17 people at a funeral by hiding a bomb on the remains of a disabled man killed in an earlier attack.

Human Rights Watch said 2019 was the worst for civilian casualties in Mali since a coalition of Islamists and local separatist tribesmen took control over much of its northern half in 2012, prompting a French military intervention and a $1bn-a-year peace-keeping operation that has so far failed to stabilise the country. ...

There are widespread fears that the failure to quell the violence in Mali will tip the entire Sahel into violent chaos that will strengthen extremist groups and send more people fleeing to Europe. The number of attacks have increased fivefold in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016, United Nations figures have revealed.

Backed by soldiers, El Salvador's president briefly occupies Congress

President Nayib Bukele and a group of soldiers armed with automatic weapons briefly occupied El Salvador’s Congress on Sunday, stepping up a pressure campaign to force lawmakers to back a crime-fighting plan.

Watched by soldiers in full battle uniform, Bukele, 38, sat in the seat reserved for the president of Congress and cupped his hands together to pray, he said, for patience with lawmakers, few of whom turned up at the special session.

“If those shameless people don’t approve the plan of territorial control, we’ll summon you here again (next) Sunday,” he told supporters in a fiery speech outside, as he left the building.

Lawmakers were due to meet on Monday to discuss the president’s proposals, Congress president Mario Ponce said, in a possible sign of de-escalation.

Critics warned of a looming constitutional crisis, however. Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based group, called the event “an exhibition of brute force” and said the Organization of American States should urgently meet to discuss the situation.

Here’s how many bombs the US plans to buy in the next year

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2021 budget request seeks to buy fewer munitions needed for the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq as it attempts to pivot towards investments in the kind of weapons that will be used in a high-end fight against China or Russia.

The DoD has requested $21.3 billion in munitions, including $6 billion for conventional ammunition, $4 billion for strategic missiles and $11.3 billion for tactical missiles. Munitions and missiles make up 8.8 percent of overall procurement in the budget request.

Major munitions buys in the budget include:

• 20,338 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) - $533 million. That is down 8,050 units from the FY20 enacted.
• 7,360 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) - $1.2 billion. That is down 1,163 units from FY20 enacted.
• 2,462 Small Diameter Bomb 1 (SDB 1) – $95.9 million. That is down 4,616 units from FY20 enacted.
• 1,490 Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) - $432 million. That is down 197 units from FY20 enacted.
• 8,150 Hellfire missiles - $517 million. That is down 640 units from FY20 enacted.
• 601 AIM-9X sidewinders - $316.6 million. That is down 119 units from FY20 enacted.
• 125 Standard Missile-6 - $816 million. That is the same amount as purchased in FY20 enacted.
• 400 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) - $577 million. That is up 10 units from FY20 enacted.
• 53 Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) - $224 million. That is up 36 units from FY20 enacted.

Trump’s New Budget Funds Endless War & Nuclear Weapons While Slashing Aid to Poor & Hungry Americans

Trump submits $4.8tn budget proposal despite no chance of it passing

The Trump administration has submitted to Congress its 2021 budget proposal, a $4.8tn plan which has no chance of passing into law and is instead a purely political exercise, designed to put daylight between the Republican president and whichever Democratic candidate he will face at the polls in November. ...

Trump’s wish list includes a $700bn increase over federal spending in 2018 and represents as clear a statement of Republican priorities as the administration is likely to produce. It includes billions more for defense and a mission to Mars alongside deep proposed cuts to foreign aid and environmental protection and new restrictions on social welfare programs.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted a promise that “we will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget”.

The proposal released on Monday would nonetheless cut Medicaid spending by about $920bn over 10 years, a reduction in the rate of growth critics warn could effectively reduce funding to dozens of social welfare programs.

Trump would also cut by more than 20% the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the agency charged with combating the spread of coronavirus. Cuts would also include reducing food stamp spending – a key programme for lower-income Americans – by $181bn over a decade. Reforms to medical liability and how hospitals are paid for uninsured care are also proposed though spending on such programs is still projected to rise over a decade.

Trump Budget to Propose 'Savage' Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security While Hiking Pentagon and Wall Funds

Just two days after vowing the White House "will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare" in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2021, President Donald Trump on Monday is expected to unveil a $4.8 trillion blueprint that includes hundreds of billions in combined cuts to those programs over the next decade, deep reductions in safety-net spending, and a major increase in Pentagon funding.

The president's plan, according to the Wall Street Journal, calls for hiking America's already outlandish military spending to $740.5 billion in FY2021 and pouring $2 billion more into the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, Trump's budget would enact punishing cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other crucial safety net programs.

"The White House proposes to cut spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade," the Journal reported Sunday. "Of that, it targets $2 trillion in savings from mandatory spending programs, including $130 billion from changes to Medicare prescription-drug pricing, $292 billion from safety-net cuts—such as work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps—and $70 billion from tightening eligibility access to federal disability benefits." ...

On top of the steep safety net cuts, Trump's budget proposal would also slash the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 27%, the Housing and Urban Development budget by 15%, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget by 9%—even amid the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

Warnings that Trump has Social Security and Medicare in his crosshairs intensified last month when the president told CNBC in an interview at Davos that he is "going to look" at slashing Medicare and Social Security should he win reelection in 2020.

After 2020 Democrats and others seized upon Trump's comments as further evidence that his 2016 campaign vow to protect Social Security and Medicare was a lie, the president has since claimed he is attempting to "save" the programs.

With Primary 24 Hours Away, Sanders Extends Lead Over Buttigieg in New Hampshire Poll

With the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary just 24 hours away, a new Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University tracking poll released Monday showed Sen. Bernie Sanders extending his lead over former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Granite State.

The survey showed Sanders leading the field with the support of 27% of likely Democratic primary voters, up from 24% on Saturday. Buttigieg polled in second place with 19% support, down from 22% Saturday.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) jumped five percentage points since Saturday's poll to take third place, leaving Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden tied for fourth place.

The poll surveyed 500 likely Democratic primary voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.

New Hampshire poll of 2020 Dems: Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk

Sanders 27% (+3)
Buttigieg 19% (-3)
Klobuchar 14% (+5)
Warren 12% (-1)
Biden 12% (+2)https://t.co/W1C3b1e0us

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 10, 2020

A separate New Hampshire poll released Monday by the UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion also found Sanders leading Buttigieg in the state by eight percentage points—25% to 17%.

Krystal & Saagar: Media already writing off Bernie win

New: Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign has submitted a partial re-canvass request to the Iowa Democratic Party, per a letter signed by the candidate and provided to CNN.

An aide makes clear this is in “response to the Sanders campaign's request for a partial recanvass.”

— Dan Merica (@merica) February 10, 2020

Pete Buttigieg’s Policy Director Has Been Traveling the Country for Months to Meet With “Investors” in His Campaign

The presidential campaign of former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has taken the unusual step of sending its national policy director, Sonal Shah, on the road. For the past several months, she has been headlining high-dollar fundraisers across the country, according to a slew of invitations obtained from a variety of sources.

It’s common for campaigns that rely on wealthy donors to lean on surrogates and senior officials to buttress their fundraising operations, but sending the aide in charge of crafting policy on a tour of American mansions is an unusual approach and wipes out the line between policymaking and solicitation of campaign contributions. Almost all of the invitations typically tout the role of Shah, a veteran of both Google and Goldman Sachs, as the campaign’s national policy director.

The news of Shah’s intimate involvement in Buttigieg’s fundraising comes as his campaign is under fire from both Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for his reliance on wealthy donors to power his campaign (see, especially, the wine cave). Buttigieg has argued that Democrats would be fighting with one hand tied behind their backs if they refused the support of the superrich. But Buttigieg is not just a passive recipient of big money; he devotes a significant amount of time and energy to soliciting it — in part by putting his chief policy adviser in the room with high-dollar donors.

Krystal Ball: Will Pete's 'high hopes' end today?

This is absolutely worth a full read. Here's a teaser:

10,599 Corporate Lawyers Have Donated to Buttigieg’s Campaign: Here Are the Dirty Little Secrets

Pete Buttigieg, a 38-year old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city with a population of 102,000, who has never held an elected federal office and was unknown to the majority of Americans last spring, has magically risen to the top ranks of the field of Democratic contenders for President – a field that includes three sitting U.S. Senators and a former Vice President.

On top of Buttigieg’s lack of experience in Washington, Buttigieg has almost no support from the black community, which would be essential for winning the Presidency. So exactly why has Buttigieg raised $77 million from some of the smartest and richest people in America. According to our tally from the Federal Election Commission’s data, 10,599 donor entries for Buttigieg list their occupation as lawyer or attorney. On top of that, there’s a high correlation between Buttigieg’s Big Tech donors and the law firms these lawyers work for: the law firms have big antitrust departments that work for Big Tech, at a time when it is under investigations for monopoly practices.

Buttigieg fueled the suspicions that he’s a corporate pawn by initially barring the press from his private fundraisers with big donors and failing to provide a list to the media of the lawyers, millionaires and billionaires that are raising money for his campaign (bundlers). Buttigieg now allows the press to attend his fundraisers but he has still not fully come clean on his bundlers.

Is Buttigieg simply a strawman to throw the election to Trump? Is he a strawman to throw the Democratic nomination to billionaire Mike Bloomberg — who is willing to buy the Oval Office for $1 billion of his own money. Or is Buttigieg the brainchild of the biggest corporate law firms in the country who want to eliminate Senator Elizabeth Warren from the running because she has promised to break up Wall Street’s mega banks as well as the big tech giants Amazon, Google and Facebook – all of which are cash cows for the biggest corporate law firms.

There is actually evidence to support all three scenarios. [Details at the link. - js]

Puppet Pete Says Revolution And The Status Quo Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

The world’s first laboratory-grown presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg met with boos and chants of “Wall Street Pete” at a recent Democratic Party event in New Hampshire for taking a dig at the revolution-minded rhetoric favored by Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

“We cannot risk dividing Americans’ future further, saying that you must either be for a revolution or you must be for the status quo,” Buttigieg said. “Let’s make room for everybody in this movement.”

This is a talking point that the tightly scripted and focus group-tested Buttigieg has been repeatedly regurgitating all month, so it’s worth taking a look at.

Pete is just the latest model in a long line of CIA-funded counterrevolutions pic.twitter.com/PBAbIIzoxP

— Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) February 9, 2020

Claiming that it isn’t necessary to choose between revolution and the status quo is claiming that you can change the status quo without any kind of revolution. You are saying that the establishment which has created and reinforced the status quo can now suddenly, for some strange and mysterious reason, be counted upon to change it. That the status quo will change the status quo.

Anyone who has paid attention to US politics for more than a few years already knows that this is objectively false. From administration to administration, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office or who controls the House or the Senate, the status quo has been adamantly enforced along a rigid trajectory toward ever-increasing military expansionism, exploitative neoliberal economic policies, income and wealth inequality, police militarization, mass-scale imprisonment, Orwellian surveillance programs and increasing restrictions on journalism and free speech.

Change is not going to come from those institutions, it’s going to come from the people using the power of their numbers to force important changes that those institutions do not want to make. And Pete Buttigieg knows this. And so do the spooks and oligarchs who are backing him.

It is very appropriate that a military intelligence officer with ties to the CIA, who is beloved by intelligence/defense agency insiders and who appears to have been groomed by national security mandarins from the very beginning of his career, should be actively working to kill a revolutionary zeitgeist. After all, backing counter-revolutionaries is a favorite CIA activity.

Progressives already got suckered into forfeiting their revolutionary spirit in exchange for flowery prose and empty rhetoric the last time they elected Pete Buttigieg for president, back when Pete Buttigieg was named Barack Obama. It was literally the exact same script they’re trying to recycle with Puppet Pete: a plucky young underdog with a knack for sparkly verbiage overcomes the frontrunner in Iowa in a stunning upset, then rides the momentum from that initial victory on to the Democratic nomination.

And now we’re seeing the Democratic Party officially award Buttigieg the largest delegate count in Iowa, after a massive scandal and despite countless unresolved discrepancies in the numbers, and establishment narrative managers are now preparing their heartwarming David-and-Goliath stories about the small town mayor knocking out the big bad socialist frontrunner for a second consecutive time in New Hampshire in defiance of the odds and polling expectations. If that falls through they’ve got Nevada, where shit really started to get crazy in 2016, and where they’re preparing to implement a brand new caucus app which they keep trying to say is not an app but a “tool” made for iPads (which is the thing that an app is).

All this to install a man who has managed to pack an astonishing amount of corruption and scandal into a relatively brief, small-scale political career.

That’s what not choosing between revolution and the status quo looks like. It looks like continuing the status quo.

Which is why it’s so dumb when Buttigieg says “Let’s make room for everybody in this movement.” Movement? What movement? You don’t get to call it a “movement” when its entire agenda is to prevent any movement. Use a different word. “Let’s make room for everybody in this inertia,” or “Let’s make room for everybody in this stasis” or something.

Things that are more real than Pete Buttigieg:
- Milli Vanilli
- aspartame
- astroturf
- boobs in LA
- smiles at a Martha's Vineyard cocktail party
- the Gulf of Tonkin incident
- Bryan Williams' helicopter crash
- Joy Reid's time travelling hackers
- Epstein's suicide

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 10, 2020

As I’ve said many times before, I’m interested in this presidential election not because I am under the delusion that presidential elections tend to change things, but because the attempts to manipulate it, and the public’s response to those manipulations, could shake something loose that actually might. If enough people in the world’s most powerful nation wake up to the fact that they don’t have the kind of political system they were taught about in school, if they realize that everything they’ve been told about how their government operates is a lie, if they realize their lives have been made so unnecessarily difficult by a ruling oligarchic class with a vested interest in keeping them impoverished and distracted, well, then we’re looking at an actual transformative force.

I got into town 2 hours before the @BernieSanders event was set to start — line was 8 blocks long as far as I could tell.

Yes, it’s a college campus and yes he has an A-list lineup with him...

But no one else pulls crowds like this in the Dem primary. pic.twitter.com/JkbWiCHqqS

— MaryAlice Parks (@maryaliceparks) February 10, 2020

Who Can Beat Trump? After Iowa Caucus Debacle, Stakes Increase for New Hampshire Primary

Wow. This poll reflects a fundamentally different race than pre-Iowa, one in which @BernieSanders is the clear front runner. https://t.co/vgLgIgMDgQ

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) February 10, 2020

Buttigieg v Sanders: Democrats gaining frontrunner status as 'polar opposites'

A day ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders remain on a collision course. The two candidates represent disparate wings of the Democratic party and are increasingly contesting frontrunner status in the contest for the nomination to face Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. ...

On Sunday, a Boston Globe/WBZ/Suffolk University poll found Sanders leading in New Hampshire with 26% support, followed by Buttigieg with 19% and the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar in third with 13%. It was the latest in a string of surveys showing Sanders or Buttigieg leading the rest of the field. ...

In the last debate, on Friday in New Hampshire, Buttigieg and Sanders spent more time knocking other candidates, like Klobuchar or former vice-president Joe Biden, than each other. Democrats expect that to change. In campaign stump speeches, the references to each other are there.

Molly Crabapple and Norm Solomon: Bloomberg is a Billionaire Republican Who Terrorized Black and Brown Youth

Mike Bloomberg Is Spending Stupid Amounts of Money on Facebook Before Super Tuesday

If you're tired of seeing Mike Bloomberg's ads all over your Facebook feed, you might just need to log off. The billionaire’s self-funded 2020 campaign pumped out more than a half-million dollars' worth of ads across 11 new, state-specific Facebook pages between Thursday and Sunday, according to the company’s public ad archive. Pages for Texas and New York shelled out more on Saturday than some competitors’ entire campaigns.

The new posts are an attempt to take Bloomberg’s national media campaign local, drive social engagement in delegate-rich Super Tuesday states, and meet with more voters in the flesh. They come as the campaign plans to throw even more cash into ads after last week’s Iowa caucus ended in chaos for Democrats. ...

The new Facebook effort, totaling more than $558,000 so far, spans several states voting on March 3, including California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. Whereas many of Bloomberg’s other ads focus on gun control, climate change, or Trump, these spots largely veer toward directing users to in-person meetings. Kanninen told reporters the campaign held 1,200 broadly defined “events” across the country last weekend.

Bloomberg has already spent stupid amounts of money to blanket the country with TV ads, plaster his moderate message across digital media, and even meme his face into a literal meatball. That helped the former New York mayor score 15% support — good for third place — among respondents to a Quinnipiac poll of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters released Monday.

Saagar Enjeti: Bloomberg's plan is working, can Bernie stop him?

Sheldon Adelson to donate $100m to Trump and Republicans, fundraisers say

The billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, an ardent pro-Israel conservative, is expected to donate at least $100m to boost Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election efforts and Republican congressional candidates this fall, say three Republican fundraisers familiar with Adelson’s initial plans.

Adelson’s hefty checks are expected to be written to several Super Pacs – political groups that have to disclose their donors – as well as “dark money” not-for-profit organizations that can keep their donors secret, say the fundraisers.

One source predicted that Adelson, who in tandem with his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, donated more than $100m to Super Pacs and dark money groups in each of the last two presidential cycles, could wind up contributing close to $200m in 2020 given their recent spending patterns and appreciation for Trump’s policies.

Adelson and his wife have been opening their wallets wider in the Trump era.

Canada: Wet'suwet'en activists vow to continue pipeline fight after arrests

Indigenous activists in Canada have vowed to continue their fight against a multibillion-dollar pipeline project across their traditional territory after three female leaders were arrested by police early on Monday. Freda Huson, Brenda Michell and Karla Tait were among seven people detained when Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers – backed by helicopters, heavy machinery and dogs – moved in on the remote camp in north-western British Columbia. ...

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oversee 22,000 sq km of territory in British Columbia, have refused to allow the company Coastal GasLink access to their lands. The C$6.6bn (US$5bn) project has the support of 20 elected First Nations councils along the proposed route. Five of the six elected band councils in the Wet’suwet’en nation also support the pipeline. But Wet’suwet’en chiefs say the authority of these groups only applies to reservations – not traditional territory.

Last year, the British Columbia supreme court dealt a blow to the chiefs, granting an injunction in favour of Coastal GasLink, which it said has suffered irreparable harm as a result of sustained opposition to the project. The Wet’suwet’en maintain they never ceded land title to the province or federal government and thus maintain jurisdiction over the territory. ...

Over the weekend, members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in Ontario parked a dump truck with a snowplow blade near a rail line, halting the Toronto-Ottawa corridor, one of the busiest commuter rail lines in the country. Dozens of trips over the weekend were cancelled. “[Wet’suwet’en] never had a treaty with Canada. Canada can’t claim it’s their land unless they have a purchase receipt with the crown,” the group said in a statement. “Our position is they are our brethren. We have a relationship with them, and we support them in protecting their territory.”

Via Rail, which operates the country’s commuter rail line, said it would not resume service until the situation in resolved. “We are aware that this situation, which is unfortunately beyond our control, has an impact on our customers and we apologize for the inconvenience this situation is causing,” the company in a statement on Sunday.

Save the Insects, Save Ourselves: Researchers Sound Alarm on Bugpocalypse

Global conservation scientists drew renewed attention to the "insect apocalypse" underway with two companion papers published Sunday underscoring how the fate of human beings and that of insects is intertwined.

Building on the warning to humanity issued in 2017 by over 15,000 scientists—itself an updated warning from 25 years prior from the Union of Concerned Scientists—the researchers outlined what's driving the insect extinctions.

The root of the problem is clear, said the researchers: "human activity is responsible for almost all current insect population declines and extinctions."

Those activities take on various forms and can act "synergistically." They include habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation; pollution from sources including pesticides, fertilizers, and noise; invasive alien species; the climate crisis; overexploitation that can happen from activities including harvesting insects as pets or food sources; and co-extinction that threatens insects that are co-dependent on vertebrates facing extinction.

At risk with these losses is not just the insects' "innate value"—though that should not be discounted, said the researchers. Much more is at stake. From the paper:

Each species contributes a unique piece to a complex living tapestry that changes in space and time. Each species represents an unrepeatable part of the history of life. In turn, each species also interacts with others and their environment in distinctive ways, weaving a complex network that sustains other species, including us.

Indeed, human reliance on these creatures is immense given the roles they have in seed dispersal, pollination, and soil formation, as well as other roles with a clear monetary value including nature tourism and medical treatments.

And yet, noted the scientists, "there is little knowledge on the functional roles that insects play in many ecosystems, with their values likely greatly underestimated."

"It is surprising how little we know about biodiversity at a global level, when only about 10 to 20 percent of insect and other invertebrate species have been described and named. And of those with a name, we know little more than a brief morphological description, maybe a part of the genetic code and a single site where it was seen some time ago," noted co-author Pedro Cardoso from the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus, University of Helsinki, Finland.

"Conservation efforts have largely been focused on charismatic megafauna, especially birds and mammals, with little thought on ecosystem connectivity," the researchers wrote. But "knowledge gaps can be mitigated," they added, and in fact must be "to conserve insect diversity for our own survival."

According to the researchers, the "current extinction crisis is deeply worrisome," and the time for action is now.

"Many solutions are now available to support insect populations at sustainable levels, especially through preserving and recovering natural habitats, eliminating deleterious agricultural practices including harmful pesticides, implementing measures for avoiding or eliminating the negative impacts of invasive species, taking aggressive steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and curbing the deleterious effects of overexploitation of many taxa," the researchers added.

The second paper focused on those possible solutions.

For tropic forests, key measures include instituting formal protection of large areas of intact primary forest, connecting high-quality fragmented areas, and restoration of now-degraded ares.

Solutions for low-growth systems—such as savannas, deserts, and heathlands—include creating large-scale conservation corridors and practicing deliberate and careful management.

Conservation of freshwater systems must take place as well, which can be achieved by boosting natural vegetation and heterogeneity. Another change is to shift away from conventional agricultural practices to agro-ecological approaches that include wildflower strips and integrated pest management.

Urban and suburban areas are also key to helping curb insect declines, with increased insect-friendly green spaces such as railway embankments, allotments, and public parks.

An Iceberg the Size of Tampa Just Broke Off an Antarctica Glacier

A huge iceberg just broke off of one of the most fragile glaciers in Antarctica. The chunk of ice, about the size of the Tampa, Florida, cleaved from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Scientists had been keeping an eye on two huge cracks in an ice shelf down there for months. Now, the berg is finally floating freely. As it cleaved off its ice shelf, the iceberg broke into pieces, creating a bunch of smaller, floating ice hunks.

Calving events, the term for a large iceberg breaking off from an ice shelf, have become more and more common. Scientists are growing increasingly worried about the integrity of the glaciers behind them.

This iceberg alone won’t raise sea levels: Even before it broke off, it was floating on water. But it was buttressing the Pine Island Glacier, acting as a barrier between the warmer sea water and the ice that makes up the glacier.

As more ice floats off into the ocean, that could lead to a runaway disintegration of Antarctica’s glaciers, allowing water to eat away at glaciers from the bottom. There’s enough “vulnerable ice” in the West Antarctic region, between the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, to fuel up to four feet of sea level rise, according to NASA.

Also of Interest

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

Britain’s Got a Supreme Court Scandal: NEW Damning Emails Show UK Corruption in the Case Against Julian Assange

Julian Assange Wins 2020 Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award

How the Supreme Court Could Gut Reproductive Rights Without Ruling on a Single Abortion Restriction

'Hilariously unconstitutional': Rights groups file lawsuit against Georgia's anti-BDS bill

Exclusive: new leaks shatter OPCW’s attacks on Douma whistleblowers

Syria - Turkey Invades Idleb But Its Bluff Will Be Called

Keiser Report: Trade deficits = lower wages

Amplifying Urgent Need to Slash Emissions, New Map Series Shows How Climate Crisis Could Impact Europe

At New Hampshire Rally, Sanders Calls on 7,500+ Supporters to 'Transform America' on Primary Day

Pete Buttigieg Repeatedly Dodged a Question About Black Marijuana Arrests in South Bend — Then Invoked Gangs

Young People Have Been Eyeing the New Hampshire Primary Since 2017. They Could Make the Difference.

Pro-Sanders Canvassers Target Youth Vote With Unprecedented GOTV Ahead of New Hampshire Primary

Democracy Now: How undeclared voters can shift the outcome of the New Hampshire primary

New Hampshire Dem Primary Chair assures voters he won't interfere in the process

Hill Reporter: Will Dems try to block a Bernie nomination at a brokered convention?

Senior Sanders' Advisor Chuck Rocha: We're going to win in New Hampshire

NH Journalist Paul Steinhauser: Which counties to watch in New Hampshire

Will working class voters turn out in New Hampshire?

Rising: Bernie favorite tonight, will Elizabeth Warren drop out?

Rising: Does Dem elite understand Bernie is a frontrunner?

Krystal goes on Tucker to combat Chuck Todd smear of Bernie backers

'Reaper of death': scientists discover new dinosaur species related to T rex

A Little Night Music

Eddie Burns - (Don't Be) Messing With My Bread

Eddie Burns - Mean and Evil Baby

Eddie Burns - Hello Miss Jessie Lee

Eddie Burns - Orange Driver

Eddie Burns - Treat Me Like I Treat You

Eddie Burns - I Am Leaving

Eddie Burns - You better cut that out

Eddie Burns - Hard Hearted Woman

Eddie Burns - Dealing With The Devil

Eddie Burns - The Thing To Do

Eddie Burns (Big Ed) - Biscuit Baking Mama

Eddie Burns - Bad Bad Whisky

Eddie Burns - Bottle Up And Go