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“Simplistic ideas are the weapons with which the thoughtful are clubbed.”

-- James Rozoff

News and Opinion

Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence

For days now, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnesses and from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. ...

A little more than a week ago, as Mohammed Ali Kalfood reported in The Intercept, “Fighter jets from a Saudi-led [U.S. and U.K.-supported] coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. The latest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes.” Kalfood interviewed 21-year-old Yemeni Khaled Hassan Mohammadi, who said, “We saw airstrikes on a market last Ramadan, not far from here, but this attack was the deadliest.” Over the past several years, the U.S. has launched hideous civilian-slaughtering strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Iraq. Last July, The Intercept published a photo essay by Alex Potter of Yemeni victims of one of 2015’s deadliest Saudi-led, U.S.- and U.K.-armed strikes.

You’ll almost never hear any of those victims’ names on CNN, NPR, or most other large U.S. media outlets. ... At most, you’ll hear small, clinical news stories briefly and coldly describing what happened — usually accompanied by a justifying claim from U.S. officials, uncritically conveyed, about why the bombing was noble — but, even in those rare cases where such attacks are covered at all, everything will be avoided that would cause you to have any visceral or emotional connection to the victims. ...

If we are constantly bombarded with images and stories and dramatic narratives highlighting our own side’s victims, while the victims of our side’s violence are rendered invisible, it’s only natural that large numbers of us will conclude that only They, but not We, are committing civilian-killing violence. That’s a really pleasing thing to believe, no matter how false it is. Having media outlets perpetrate self-pleasing and tribal-affirming — but utterly false — narratives is the very definition of propaganda. And that’s what largely drives Western media coverage of these terrorist attacks every time they occur in the West.

CIA photographed detainees naked before sending them to be tortured

Classified pictures showing CIA captives bruised, blindfolded and bound raise new questions about US’s willingness to use ‘sexual humiliation’ on suspects

The CIA took naked photographs of people it sent to its foreign partners for torture, the Guardian can reveal.

A former US official who had seen some of the photographs described them as “very gruesome”.

The naked imagery of CIA captives raises new questions about the seeming willingness of the US to use what one medical and human rights expert called “sexual humiliation” in its post-9/11 captivity of terrorism suspects. Some human rights campaigners described the act of naked photography on unwilling detainees as a potential war crime.

Unlike video evidence of CIA torture at its undocumented “black site” prisons that were destroyed in 2005 by a senior official, the CIA is said to retain the photographs. ...

Stripping the victims of clothing was considered necessary to document their physical condition while in CIA custody, distinguishing them at that point from what they would subsequently experience in foreign custody – despite the public diplomatic assurances against torture that the US demonstrably collected from countries with a record of torturing detainees.

The CIA naked photos scandal is a wake-up call

As the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported today, the CIA took photographs of its prisoners while they were naked, bound and some bruised, just before they were to be shipped off to some of the world’s worst dictators at the time – which included Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi – for torture. The photos were described by a former US official as “very gruesome”.

The report is a stark reminder that the US continues to keep secret, to this day, some of the worst actions of the Bush administration. And it’s all the more relevant given that after the tragic terrorist attack in Brussels, torture has once again become central to the US political debate. On national television immediately following the attacks, the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump again called for waterboarding – a war crime Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for after the second world war. Trump has also repeatedly claimed he would do “much worse” than waterboarding to captives as president. ...

Because the Obama administration shamefully refused to prosecute the architects of the torture program – and the Justice Department lawyers who gave them legal cover – war crimes are now merely portrayed as a policy dispute between the two political parties. ...

Stripping suspects, taking humiliating photographs of them, sending them around the world into the hands of torturers: these sound like the actions of a crazed dictatorship. They should be the stuff of nightmares. In fact, they’re the stuff of American policy in the 21st century. This is the latest in a series of wake-up calls.

Gosh, Mr. Kerry, do you suppose that there is something that the Obama administration could have done to elide the problem of candidates promoting torture as policy and calling for massive civil rights abuses? Anything at all? Prosecutions of previous crimes? Bueller? Bueller?

John Kerry: election campaign descending into 'embarrassment' for US

The chaos of the 2016 US presidential election “is an embarrassment to our country”, secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday, as he reflected on the candidates’ anti-Muslim sentiment and world leaders’ growing concern.

Asked about what he hears from leaders abroad regarding the US election, Kerry told CBS’s Face the Nation: “I think it’s fair to say that they’re shocked.

“It upsets people’s sense of equilibrium about our steadiness, about our reliability,” Kerry said. “And to some degree I must say to you, some of the questions, the way they’re posed to me, it’s clear to me that what’s happening is an embarrassment to our country.” ...

Texas senator Ted Cruz has proposed sending police to surveil, “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods, and surrounded himself with advisers whom experts call “terrifying” on issues of civil rights. ...

Donald Trump has proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, and said he would order the military to torture prisoners and to bomb the families of terror suspects, in contravention of international law. The Republican frontrunner has separately wavered on whether to denounce white supremacist groups that have rallied to his campaign.

Increased Anti-Terror Spending Marked by Exponential Rise in Attacks

CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria

Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter 5-year-old civil war.

The fighting has intensified over the past two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other as they have maneuvered through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed. ...

President Barack Obama recently authorized a new Pentagon plan to train and arm Syrian rebel fighters, relaunching a program that was suspended in the fall after a string of embarrassing setbacks, which included recruits being ambushed and handing over much of their U.S.-issued ammunition and trucks to an al-Qaida affiliate.

Amid the setbacks, the Pentagon late last year deployed about 50 special operations forces to Kurdish-held areas in northeastern Syria to better coordinate with local militias and help ensure U.S.-backed rebel groups aren't fighting one another.

But such skirmishes have become routine.

Syrian Regime Forces Have Ended the Islamic State's Reign of Terror in Palmyra

Syrian troops surged into Palmyra on Sunday morning, dealing a blow to the Islamic State (IS) after a 10-month reign of terror in the ancient desert city.

"The armed forces and groups of the popular defense committees have fully taken control of Palmyra," an unnamed Syrian military official said on Sunday.

Palmyra's 2,000-year-old ruins and nearby modern town fell to the extremist group during a lightning offensive last May. It was a humiliating defeat for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces either fled or were killed in the streets.

IS appears to have suffered unprecedented losses during the battle to keep the town. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said at least 400 jihadists were killed.

"That's the heaviest losses that IS has sustained in a single battle since its creation," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory. He said that 188 government-allied troops were also killed. ...

The loss of the city is a significant blow to IS, which is now squeezed on battlefronts across Syria and Iraq, where it has failed to mount a successful major offensive in nearly nine months.

With the road linking Palmyra to Raqqa now under army control, IS fighters in the ancient town can only retreat east toward the Iraqi border.

Turkey is deliberately 'unleashing' Isis terrorists into Europe, says Jordan's King Abdullah

Turkey is exporting Isis-linked terrorists to Europe, according to King Abdullah of Jordan.

The monarch's remarks came in a meeting with members of the US Congress, in which he said that Islamist militants were being "manufactured in Turkey" and "unleashed" into Europe.

He also used the debriefing, held after a cancelled rendezvous with US President Barack Obama, to remind the US politicians of Turkey's alleged complicity in buying Isis oil.

“The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy," said King Abdullah. "Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.”

This is an excellent article, well worth a full read:

Deadly Blowback from Neo-Imperial Wars

In what may be the most dramatic blowback yet from Western military intervention in the Middle East, terrorism and the mass influx of foreign migrants are now putting the very existence of the European Union at risk. Foreign wars fanned by European and American interventionists in the name of democracy and humanitarianism now threaten those same values in Europe as never before since the end of World War II.

This threat comes at a time of popular discontent over the region’s chronic economic weakness, caused by Germany’s austerity policies and the straightjacket of the euro monetary union. The region has been further buffeted by the rise of right-wing parties, confrontations with Russia over Ukraine and NATO expansion, and the potential withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the E.U. In short, Europe faces a perfect storm. ...

Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission, said, “The challenge to the European project today is existential. The refugee crisis has brought that to light. What was unimaginable before now becomes imaginable, namely the disintegration of the European project.” ...

Remarkably few voices are stating the obvious: The crisis isn’t simply caused by foreign extremists bent on destroying Western values. Like Br’er Rabbit, Europe punched the Middle Eastern tar baby repeatedly, only to become hopelessly stuck. Whether Europe will prove as wise as its folkloric counterpart and find a way to get free remains to be seen.

General election stalemate: Why are EU voters failing to choose?

Kurds Warn of Post-IS Fight With Shi’ite Militias

Kurdish commanders are warning that once the fight against so-called Islamic State group is over, another conflict could begin – this time against the Iraqi government’s paramilitary units known as the Hashd al-Shaabi.

Kurdish Peshmerga counter-terrorism commander Polad Jangi told VOA the Kurds are unlikely to leave areas they have helped to free from Islamic State. ...

“The Kurds are not going to end up going to take a place, shedding blood for that place, and then being kicked out of that place.”

At stake are the so-called “disputed areas” of Iraq, areas claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurds, such as oil-rich Kirkuk.

“We are not going to give that city back up,” Jangi insisted. “And we know that eventually that's going to be a big problem for us with the Iraqi government.”

Chomsky, Snowden, Greenwald on Privacy in the Age of Surveillance

What is privacy and what is an individual's right to it?

That is the question that renowned linguist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky, National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald sought to answer on Friday evening as the three (virtually) shared a stage for a panel discussion at the University of Arizona in Tuscon.

Coming amid the FBI's public battle against Apple as well as days after the bombings in Brussels last week, which have spurred another round of calls for heightened security and surveillance, the conversation challenged the rhetoric that national security requires that governments can access individual communications.

‘The morning that first-quarter GDP died’

American consumers are carrying the U.S. economy, but they aren’t carrying it very fast.

A number of forecasters on Monday chopped their estimates for first-quarter growth after a second straight subpar reading on consumer spending.

The economy is now expected to grow about 1.5%, down from a previous 2.3% estimate, an updated MarketWatch survey of analysts shows. The U.S. expanded at a 1.4% annual pace in the 2015 first quarter.

The bevy of downgrades took place after the government reported a meager 0.1% increase in consumer spending in February. The original 0.5% spike in January was also lowered to 0.1%.

“This is the morning that Q1 GDP died,” wrote Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. He cut his forecast to 0.6% from 1.5%. Consumer spending accounted for more than two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

California Reaches Deal to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour

Hoping to avoid a costly ballot fight, California lawmakers and labor unions on Saturday reportedly reached an agreement to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour gradually by 2023.

Governor Jerry Brown is expected to make a formal announcement on Monday, but a source close to the negotiations revealed the content of the deal to the Los Angeles Times two days ahead.

"According to a document obtained by The Times, the negotiated deal would boost California's statewide minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on Jan. 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increases through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply, delaying their workers receiving a $15 hourly wage until 2023," the Times reports.

A minimum wage initiative that would have raised the wage to $15 by 2021, which was championed by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, had recently qualified for the November ballot forcing state lawmakers to take swift action.

"For Brown, it's political pragmatism," the Times reports, "numerous statewide polls have suggested voters would approve a minimum wage proposal—perhaps even a more sweeping version—if given the chance."

State Senator Mark Leno, (D-San Francisco), told The Associated Press that, if approved, the deal will "go before the Legislature as part of his minimum-wage bill that stalled last year."

"This is not a done deal," Leno cautioned, adding that "everyone's been operating in good faith."

Federal Corruption Prosecutions Plummet Under Barack Obama

According to a new report from Syracuse University researchers, federal corruption prosecutions have hit a two-decade low. In all, such prosecutions have dropped by more than 38 percent since 1995.

Much of that decline has happened under President Barack Obama: In just the last five years, the number of federal corruption prosecutions have dropped by more than 30 percent. A few years after scandals over congressional earmarks and then stimulus spending, prosecutions for “theft or bribery in programs receiving federal funds” saw the largest decrease — plummeting by 80 percent since 2010.

Bernie Sanders Wins Landslides in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii; Corporate Media Downplays Them

Like Obama in 2008, Sanders Seeking Superdelegate Switcharoos

On the heels of landslide victories in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, and Washington, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are urging so-called "superdelegates"—Democratic party big-wigs who can support the candidate of their choosing on the convention floor—to join the revolution. 

After his recent wins, Sanders trails rival Hillary Clinton by only 268 pledged delegates, according to the Associated Press tracker. Meanwhile, Clinton's lead among superdelegates is sizeable: she currently claims 469 to his 29.

But, as ABC News pointed out, the elected officials and party elites who hold superdelegate posts "can swap their vote at any point until voting takes place at the party convention and will face grassroots pressure—and pressure from the campaign—to back the will of their hometown voters." ...

In Washington state, for example, where Sanders won close to 73 percent of the vote on Saturday, a majority of the 17 superdelegates have endorsed Clinton. A petition calling on those superdelegates to "Let the voters decide," and to support their constituents' wishes, has gathered close to 25,000 signatures as of Monday morning.

With Plan to Barnstorm New York, Sanders Challenges Clinton: 'Let's Debate!'

With the momentum in Bernie Sanders' favor following a triple victory in the 'Pacific Primary' over the weekend—beating rival Hillary Clinton by landslide margins in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii—his campaign thinks it's time to treat voters in upcoming states to something they haven't seen in nearly three weeks: a televised debate.

With the next primary in Wisconsin on April 5th followed by the Wyoming caucus on April 9th, the Sanders campaign is now calling for a televised debate with Clinton in New York sometime prior to that large state's primary on April 19th. ...

Asked by the New York Times on Sunday, a Clinton campaign spokesperson declined to comment about the debate proposal.

Ralph Nader: Why Bernie Sanders was Right to Run as a Democrat

During a recent town hall in Columbus, Ohio, Sen. Bernie Sanders said the unthinkable. At least, you would have thought he did, judging by the response of several Democratic operatives. Sanders was deemed “extremely disgraceful” by Donna Brazile, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and “a political calculating fraud” by Brad Woodhouse, a former DNC communications director.

What was his crime? The old-fashioned Rooseveltian New Dealer had answered a question about why he is running as a Democrat, instead of as an independent, with typical candor: “In terms of media coverage, you had to run within the Democratic Party,” he observed, adding that he couldn’t raise money outside the major two-party process.

As one of the more successful third-party presidential candidates in recent U.S. history, I know firsthand the obstacles Sanders might have faced if he had run as an independent. The reality is that Sanders is right, and the backlash against him reflects all too well what two-party tyranny can do to a more-than-nominal third-party challenger. This is especially true of candidates like Sanders, who — despite advancing political views similar to the classic Democratic New Deal platform — now sits well to the left of the party’s corporatist, hawkish establishment. ...

But as the backlash against his Ohio comments demonstrates, the party’s patience with Sanders is wearing thin. With today’s dominant Democrats favoring hawkish foreign policy and the entitlements of Wall Street, Sanders is seen as a Trojan horse. Cries of “get out,” already sounding in some Democratic quarters, will become increasingly fervid, notwithstanding Sanders’s years of support for Democratic causes and his pledge to endorse the Party’s eventual nominee.

By running as a Democrat, Sanders declined to become a complete political masochist, and he avoided exposing his campaign to immediate annihilation by partisan hacks. Because if he had run as an independent, he would have faced only one question daily in the media, as I did: “Do you see yourself as a spoiler?” The implication being, of course, that he had no chance of winning. His popular agenda would have been totally ignored by a horse-race-obsessed mass media, which would have latched on instead to a narrative in which Sanders was unfairly hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances against whichever Republican wound up with the other major-party nomination, as if any Democrat is automatically entitled to the votes of progressives.

Angela Davis on Not Endorsing Any Presidential Candidate: "I Think We Need a New Party"

FBI says it has limited records on Clinton email case

The FBI hasn't traded any correspondence with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or her representatives in the course of the law enforcement agency's “active, ongoing investigation” of the private email account and server she used as secretary of state, an FBI official told a federal court on Friday.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for FBI records about the probe, which is believed to have been underway for about nine months, FBI records official David Hardy said his agency had only a smattering of correspondence with the State Department about the matter and no records at all of authorizations to discuss the Clinton email inquiry with the media or other outside parties.

The suit, filed by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, also sought copies of all emails and other files the FBI has managed to retrieve from Clinton's server and backup devices such as thumb drives. The FBI appeared to acknowledge that some such records exist but said releasing them at this time could impair the probe.

"Any records responsive [to that request] still cannot be disclosed without adversely affecting the pending investigation," Hardy said in a written declaration. The FBI official wrote that he was limited in what he could say publicly about the inquiry, but he added that the agency was submitting a classified declaration to U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss with more details about the probe.

Bison to return to Montana after 140 years in the Canadian wilderness

Descendants of a bison herd captured and sent to Canada more than a century ago will be relocated to a Montana Native American reservation next month, in what tribal leaders bill as a homecoming for a species emblematic of their traditions.

The shipment of animals from Alberta’s Elk Island national park to the Blackfeet reservation follows a 2014 treaty among tribes in the US and Canada. That agreement aims to restore bison to areas of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains where millions once roamed.

“For thousands of years the Blackfeet lived among the buffalo here. The buffalo sustained our way of life, provided our food, clothing, shelter,” Blackfeet chairman Harry Barnes said. “It became part of our spiritual being. We want to return the buffalo.”

The 89 plains bison, also known as buffalo, will form the nucleus of a herd that tribal leaders envision will soon roam freely across a vast landscape: the Blackfeet reservation, nearby Glacier national park and the Badger-Two Medicine wilderness — more than 4,000 square miles combined.

Exxon Must Hold Shareholder Vote on Climate Change Resolutions, SEC Says

ExxonMobil must allow shareholders to vote on at least two prominent resolutions on climate change, the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled.

One measure calls on Exxon to take moral responsibility for climate change and adopt a policy to limit average global temperature increases. A second would compel the oil giant to explain how its business would be affected by the worldwide commitment to slowing climate change. They are among seven resolutions on global warming proposed for Exxon's May 25 annual meeting.

"The SEC has rejected Exxon's attempt to silence investors' concerns about growing financial risks associated with climate change trends, including escalating global demand for low-carbon energy," said Shanna Cleveland, a senior manager at Ceres, a Boston nonprofit that coordinates action on issues important to many of the nation's largest institutional investors. ...

The seven resolutions for this year's Exxon meeting continue a 25-year campaign by activist shareholders to get Exxon to confront the threat of climate change. Investor groups have fought to have the company invest in renewable energy, cut harmful emissions and perform carbon risk assessments. Exxon has regularly rejected shareholder requests, and no climate change resolution has been adopted. As with many publicly traded companies, Exxon's management often asks the SEC to rule on whether it must submit resolutions for a shareholder vote.

Mixed news in Canada's 2016 budget for clean energy

On Tuesday, Justin Trudeau’s government unveiled their first budget. There’s good news, and there’s bad news. First, the good stuff: Canada’s 2016 budget takes several encouraging steps on climate change and clean energy investment: new tax measures that boost job-creating clean energy companies, funding for electric vehicle infrastructure, and money to help communities in northern Canada shift away from expensive, polluting fossil fuels and toward renewable energy are a few of the most promising moves.

Now, for the bad news: unfortunately, even while increasing support for clean energy, the government failed to live up to its campaign promise to put an end to polluting and wasteful fossil fuel subsidies. Not only is it a waste of Canadians tax dollars, but these continued subsidies threaten to undermine what otherwise looks to be a climate-friendly, forward-thinking budget.

It simply doesn’t make sense to allocate public money to tackle the climate challenge with your left hand while you fuel the cause of the problem with money from your right hand.

Trudeau’s first budget not only failed to tackle existing subsidies that they promised to end, but it even went on to introduce new handouts to fossil fuel producers, and doubled down on a big LNG subsidy introduced by the Harper government last year. This continued financial support for some of the most polluting, and most profitable companies in the world speaks loudly, and stands in stark contrast to Trudeau’s campaign promise to begin phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in line with a commitment Canada first made with other G20 government leaders way back in 2009.

Also of Interest

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

Fidel Castro rails against 'Brother Obama' after US president's trip to Cuba

US ground troops are back in Iraq as Iraqi division hides in the mountains

Kerry Balks at Supplying MH-17 Data

Why Is Clinton Polling Worse Than Her Delegate Count? Early Voting.

Why Young People Are Right About Hillary Clinton

Millennials Like Socialism — Until They Get Jobs. Or Until a Pollster Tells Them That It Would Mean Tax Increases But Doesn’t Tell Them, for Example, That the Tax Increases Would Replace Healthcare Insurance Premiums and Out-Of-Pocket Medical Expenses. And Doesn’t Tell Them That “More Government Services” Means Something Other Than, Say, Trash Collection Twice a Week Instead of Once a Week.

Congressman Praises Bernie Sanders’s Israel-Palestine Stance: “I Totally Agree With Him”

Meet Donald Trump’s Money Men: Big Wall Street Banks in the Shadows

Big Coal dealt a big blow: Montanans shut down largest mine in North America

Scale of Hearst plot to discredit Orson Welles and Citizen Kane revealed

A Little Night Music

Willie Kent - Born In The Delta

Willie Kent - Someone Like You, Lonesome Whistle Blow

Willie Kent & His Gents - Slow And Easy

Willie Kent - All My Life

Willie Kent, Barrelhouse Chuck & Johnny B. Moore - Mama Told Me

Willie Kent & Willie James Lyons - Dust My Broom

Willie Kent - Boogie All Night Long