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-- William Gibson

News and Opinion

House Democratic Whip Resists Effort to End U.S. Involvement in Yemen War

The bipartisan push to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen has gained political momentum but faces resistance from the No. 2 Democratic lawmaker in the House, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

H.Con.Res.81, the resolution sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; Walter Jones, R-N.C.; Mark Pocan, D-Wisc.; Tom Massie, R-Ky.; and 34 other lawmakers, utilizes a provision of the War Powers Act to swiftly terminate U.S. military assistance for the Saudi-led war effort.

Several activists working to build support for the measure have told The Intercept that Republican caucus leaders and Hoyer, the minority whip, are pressuring lawmakers to avoid sponsoring the legislation.

The political opposition comes as new reports reveal that the Saudi-backed military coalition’s constant bombing of Yemen’s civilian infrastructure, as well as the blockade of Yemen’s primary port, has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. Nearly a quarter of the country’s 28 million residents are living in starvation and thousands, mostly children, are dying of cholera, as shipments of food and medicine have been prevented from reaching Yemen.

Debate Over Trump’s Military Powers Ignored As McResistance Focuses On Manafort

Russiagaters, who judging by the tweets I saw all weekend were certain Trump would be in handcuffs today, are making a strained effort to appear vindicated after the notoriously corrupt Paul Manafort and two guys they’d never heard of found themselves in legal hot water while a Podesta brother resigned instead. They remind me of a guy who keeps trying to make sex happen long after losing his erection. It’s okay, McResistance, it happens to every guy. Let’s just order Chinese and watch Simpsons reruns and pretend we’re not both struggling with feelings of inadequacy.

Meanwhile, this is happening.

Hardly anybody is talking about it, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis both appeared on the Senate floor today to explain to legislators why it’s essential that the current administration’s war powers not be subjected to any limitations of space or time. I’ve got no problem with people paying attention to government corruption, and I can’t blame Democrats for hoping that the charges against Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos will somehow lead to Trump’s impeachment (they won’t), but it seems pretty ridiculous to claim that someone shouldn’t be president while simultaneously granting him authority to wage endless, limitless acts of war.

Isn’t it funny how the purportedly anti-corruption, pro-social justice “Resistance” just so happens to always fall completely in line with the interests of the CIA and the military-industrial complex? For all their rainbow flag waving and Black Lives Matter supporting, for all their talk of speaking truth to power and sticking up for the little guy, what they end up actually doing is helping America’s unelected power establishment manufacture support for a new cold war with Russia, helping to censor anti-establishment voices on the internet, and propping up the agendas of the US war machine. ...

There’s more commentary than anyone could ever possibly read on the charges against three low-level Republicans which will have functionally zero impact on US affairs, but whether or not the president they claim is simultaneously (A) crazy, (B) dangerously incompetent, (C) a secret Nazi, and (D) a traitor should have limitless war powers authorization is going completely undebated.

'Crime of the century': Facebook finds 0.004% of election posts are Russia-based ahead of hearing

Afghan War Data, Once Public, Is Censored in U.S. Military Report

The American military command in Afghanistan has decided to keep secret key figures related to the growth and progress of local security forces, redacting the numbers at the behest of Afghan officials from the latest report by the government’s watchdog for spending.

The move clouds measures of progress for the Afghan security forces, the primary benefactor of the $120 billion that the United States has spent on reconstruction since the start of the war and the linchpin of President Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan. Backed by the American military and its NATO allies, the Afghans are responsible for turning the tide of the war against the Taliban in the coming years.

Among the details being kept private in the report are the number of people in the Afghan army and police force, how many of them have been wounded or killed and the state of their equipment.

“The Afghans know what’s going on; the Taliban knows what’s going on; the U.S. military knows what’s going on,” John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan, whose office compiled the quarterly report, said in an interview. “The only people who don’t know what’s going on are the people paying for it.”

Iraq to end decades-old policy of semi-independent rule in Kurdistan, says PM

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is triumphant as he describes his country’s security forces driving out Isis from its last strongholds in western Iraq. “Our advances have been fantastic,” he said in an interview with The Independent in Baghdad. “We are clearing the deserts of them right up to the border with Syria.” Isis is being eradicated in Iraq three years after its columns were threatening to capture Baghdad. Once criticised as vacillating and weak, Mr Abadi – who became Prime Minister in August 2014 – is now lauded in Baghdad for leading the Iraqi state to two great successes in the past four months: one was the recapture of Mosul from Isis in July after a nine-month siege; the other was the retaking of Kirkuk in the space of a few hours on 16 October without any resistance from Kurdish Peshmerga. ...

Soft-spoken and conciliatory, Mr Abadi is determined to end the quasi-independence of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that dates back to Saddam Hussein’s defeat after his invasion of Kuwait in 1991. He says: “All border crossings in and out of Iraq must be under the exclusive control of the federal state.” This includes the Kurdish oil pipeline to Turkey at Faysh Khabour, by which they once hoped would assure their economic independence, as well as the main Turkish-Iraqi land route at Ibrahim Khalil in the north west KRG. This crossing has been Iraqi Kurdistan’s lifeline to the rest of the world for a quarter of a century. Iraqi officials will likewise take over the international side of the airports in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah. ...
He wants the Peshmerga either to become part of the Iraqi government security forces or a small local force. ... The number of the Peshmerga may be in dispute, but Mr Abadi is adamant that “I am prepared to pay those Peshmerga under the control of the federal state. If they want to have their local small force – it must not be that large – then they must pay for it.”

If all these changes are implemented then Kurdish autonomy will be much diminished. It is easy to see why Mr Barzani is stepping down to avoid the humiliation of giving up so much of his authority. Resistance by the Kurdish leadership will be difficult since they are divided and discredited by the Kirkuk debacle. But Mr Abadi’s strength is that for the first time since 1980, the Kurds do not have any backers in neighbouring states and the US has done little during the crisis except wring its hands at the sight of its Kurdish and Iraqi government allies falling out. When Mr Barzani unwisely forced Washington to choose between Baghdad and Irbil, the Americans were always going to choose the Iraqi state.

Catalan independence versus Madrid's Article 155

Catalonia’s leader didn’t hang around to face charges

Catalonia’s deposed leader Carles Puigdemont says he will carry on his fight for Catalan independence from the “safety” of Belgium until he is given reassurances about his legal status in Spain. The former regional president is facing criminal charges of rebellion and sedition sought by Spain’s chief prosecutor. Speaking at a news conference in Brussels Tuesday, Puigdemont said he was not in Belgium to claim political asylum, but because he could act with “freedom and safety” there.

Puigdemont traveled to Belgium Monday, the same day Spain’s chief prosecutor called for criminal charges including rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds to be laid against him and other pro-independence Catalan leaders. The charges, which have yet to be approved by a judge, carry a maximum 30-year sentence.

“I am not here to demand political asylum. I’m here in Brussels as the capital of Europe,” Puigdemont said. He said he would return to Catalonia once he was guaranteed “fair and independent treatment.”

Catalonia parliament cancels meeting after Spain takes control: source

Catalonia’s parliament has canceled a meeting on Tuesday following the Spanish government’s takeover of the region, a parliamentary source said on Monday, confirming the regional legislative had accepted Madrid’s order for it to dissolve.

The Biggest Revelation Of The JFK File Releases Isn’t In The JFK Files

Seasoned conspiracy buffs refrained from getting their hopes up too high after President Trump’s announcement that he wouldn’t prevent the scheduled release of thousands of files pertaining to the assassination of President John F Kennedy by the National Archives. They were right to do so; hundreds of files ended up being held back which won’t be released until well into 2018, if at all.

Despite Trump’s assurances of eventual transparency, the probability of those files being released in full at that time is approximately zero. If they were going to be released, they would have been released as scheduled. The US intelligence community has had a quarter of a century to prepare for the release of those documents, yet they’re still being withheld at the request of the FBI and the CIA for further review on the grounds of “national security” concerns. Like that’s a thing. Like after fifty years documents pertaining to a president’s assassination could expose vulnerabilities in America’s nuclear arsenal or espionage operations or something.

Documents from half a century ago aren’t being withheld/redacted because of “national security”, they’re being withheld/redacted because of political security. Someone powerful did something appalling that is either directly or indirectly referenced in those documents, and the CIA and FBI don’t want mainstream Americans to know that they live in a country where such things can happen. It’s one thing to have a very small fringe percentage of the population digging for truth who can be dismissed as conspiracy nuts; it’s quite another to have viral stories trending online telling the American mainstream that everything they’ve been taught about their country is a lie.

Homegrown Terror: JFK Docs Show US Considered Attacks at Home to Blame on Cuba

The Deep State’s JFK Triumph Over Trump

You might have thought that almost 54 years after Kennedy was murdered in the streets of Dallas – and after knowing for a quarter century the supposedly final deadline for releasing the JFK files – the CIA and FBI would not have needed a six-month extension to decide what secrets that they still must hide. ... Many Americans cling to a comforting conviction that the Deep State is a fiction, at least in a “democracy” like the United States. References to the enduring powers of the security agencies and other key bureaucracies have been essentially banned by the mainstream media, which many other suspicious Americans have come to see as just one more appendage of the Deep State.

But occasionally the reality of how power works pokes through in some unguarded remark by a Washington insider, someone like Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the Senate Minority Leader with 36 years of experience in Congress. As Senate Minority Leader, he also is an ex officio member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to oversee the intelligence agencies. During a Jan. 3, 2017 interview with MSNBC’S Rachel Maddow, Schumer told Maddow nonchalantly about the dangers awaiting President-elect Donald Trump if he kept on “taking on the intelligence community.” ... Schumer said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Three days after that interview, President Obama’s intelligence chiefs released a nearly evidence-free “assessment” claiming that the Kremlin engaged in a covert operation to put Trump into office, fueling a “scandal” that has hobbled Trump’s presidency. On Monday, Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort on unrelated money laundering, tax and foreign lobbying charges, apparently in the hope that Manafort will provide incriminating evidence against Trump.

So, President Trump has been in office long enough to have learned how the game is played and the “six ways from Sunday” that the intelligence community has for “getting back at you.” He appears to be as intimidated as was President Obama. Trump’s awkward acquiescence in the Deep State’s last-minute foot-dragging regarding release of the JFK files is simply the most recent sign that he, too, is under the thumb of what the Soviets used to call “the organs of state security.”

Two NYPD detectives charged with handcuffing woman, 18, and raping her

Two detectives threatened an 18-year-old woman with arrest over a bottle of prescription pills, handcuffed her, drove her around in their police van and then raped her, authorities said Monday in announcing charges against the two.

The detectives, Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, were arraigned Monday on a 50-count indictment that included rape and kidnapping counts, said the acting Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez. He said DNA recovered from the woman matched both defendants.

Martins’ attorney, Mark Bederow, vowed to “vigorously” challenge the case. “We don’t believe that the story that the young woman was forcibly raped is supported by any credible evidence whatsoever,” Bederow said.

The woman said the detectives assaulted her on 15 September while they were on duty. ... The victim told her friends what happened and, later that evening, was taken to a hospital, where a sexual assault evidence collection kit was prepared. The prosecutor also said surveillance video showed the victim getting out of the police van.

Where's the Urgency? UN Experts Slam US Emergency Response to Puerto Rico

While nearly 70 percent of Puerto Rico remains without power six weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, eleven United Nations human rights experts have issued a joint statement decrying the "absence of adequate emergency response" by the United States.

"Thousands of people are displaced, with homes destroyed, and without any relief in sight," the experts noted. "More than 80 percent of the population, or close to 2.8 million people, continue to live without electricity. Few hospitals are functioning. There are allegations that the water available—for those who have access to it—may be contaminated."

"With winter approaching, we call for a speedy and well-resourced emergency response that prioritizes the most vulnerable and at risk—children, older people, people with disabilities, women, and homeless people," they declared. ...

Considering the ongoing recovery efforts in Texas and—to a lesser degree—Florida, which were also hit by storms during this year's hurricane season, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha, said: "We can't fail to note the dissimilar urgency and priority given to the emergency response in Puerto Rico, compared to the U.S. states affected by hurricanes in recent months."

FBI reportedly investigating Whitefish Energy's Puerto Rico power contract

The FBI is reportedly investigating the $300m contract awarded seemingly without tender by Puerto Rico’s power utility to Whitefish Energy, a Montana company which had just two full-time employees.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI’s San Juan field office is looking into how Whitefish was awarded the contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s shattered power infrastructure despite never having handled a similar project in the past. The Guardian has contacted the FBI for confirmation of the investigation. ...

Nearly three-quarters of Puerto Rico is without electricity, more than a month after Hurricane Maria smashed into the island. On 26 September, Whitefish was handed a contract by the power utility to repair the electricity grid. At the time, the company only had two full-time employees.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz On Trump, Shock Doctrine & “Disaster Capitalism” in Puerto Rico

The U.S. military has started pulling troops from Puerto Rico

After what many critics called a slow and inadequate response in the Puerto Rico relief effort, the U.S. military has started to withdraw forces from the island, transitioning from immediate emergency relief operations to longer-term recovery.

“We’ve already sent [back] two ships that were here initially from the beginning,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the U.S. commander for Army North, the Department of Defense’s primary liaison to FEMA, said in an exclusive interview with VICE News. “In the coming weeks, we’ll start redeploying assets as we’re no longer needed.”

The military has delivered food, water, and supplies to Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria tore through the island 40 days ago. But since mid-October, about 1,600 troops and 13 aircrafts have left, according to Buchanan. Eventually, all active-duty troops will leave Puerto Rico, although the timing depends on a number of factors. Some aid workers on the ground, however, still consider Puerto Rico an emergency situation and worry it’s too early for troops and equipment to pull out.

Well, here it is, the story that will eat the next dozen news cycles...

Mueller: Trump Campaign Adviser George Papadopoulos Hunted for “Dirt” in “Thousands of Emails”

A former adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign secretly pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with representatives of the Russian government during the campaign. According to court documents unsealed Monday, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on Trump’s campaign, confessed to repeatedly attempting to set up meetings between individuals connected to the Russian government and Trump, including people who claimed to have “dirt” about presidential rival Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Since his arrest, the unsealed document said, he has been cooperating with federal investigators.

In interviews earlier this year with FBI agents investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, Papadopoulos repeatedly lied about his activities. On June 27, he was arrested while arriving at Dulles International Airport. He pled guilty on October 5.

Papadopoulos first joined the campaign as an adviser in early March 2016. According to court documents, later that month, while traveling in Italy, he met a London-based professor who claimed to have connections to the Russian government. Shortly thereafter, that individual introduced him to a woman who claimed to be a relative of Vladimir Putin. She met with him in London. Papadopoulos reported back to the Trump campaign several times that he was working on building connections with Russian officials, stating at a meeting on the last day of March, attended by Trump, that he had connections that could “help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.”

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Papadopoulos as a campaign “volunteer,” whose ideas were variously ignored or rebuffed.

[much more detail at link - js]

Marcy Wheeler Says Indictments in Russia Probe Further Incriminate Attorney General Jeff Sessions

UN warns of 'unacceptable' greenhouse gas emissions gap

There is still a large gap between the pledges by governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the reductions scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, the UN has said.

Current plans from national governments, and pledges made by private sector companies and local authorities across the world, would lead to temperature rises of as much as 3C or more by the end of this century, far outstripping the goal set under the 2015 Paris agreement to hold warming to 2C or less, which scientists say is the limit of safety.

The UN’s findings come in its latest assessment of progress on climate change, published on Tuesday ahead of the COP23 conference, a follow-up to the Paris agreement, to be held in Bonn next week. ...

Erik Solheim, the UN’s environment chief, called for urgent action: “We still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. This is unacceptable. If we invest in the right technologies, ensuring that the private sector is involved, we can still meet the promise we made to our children to protect their future. But we have to get on the case now.”

Lancet Study Warns of Global Health Crisis and 1 Billion Climate Refugees by 2050

Climate change could force a billion people from their homes by 2050, potentially triggering major health crises around the world, according to a new study. The Lancet's annual Countdown report calls on governments to act quickly to fight pollution and other factors that have exacerbated climate change, leading to public health issues.

"We are only just beginning to feel the impacts of climate change," said Professor Hugh Montgomery, co-chair of the Lancet Countdown, in an interview with the Independent. "Any small amount of resilience we may take for granted today will be stretched to breaking point sooner than we may imagine.

The report found that "migration driven by climate change has potentially severe impacts on mental and physical health, both directly and by disrupting essential health and social services." The research also found that more humans are being exposed to extreme heatwaves and air pollution and are more commonly at risk for mosquito-borne illnesses than in past decades, due to climate change. More than one hundred million adults over the age of 65 have been exposed to dangerously hot conditions since the turn of the 21st century, while 71 percent of cities tracked by the World Health Organization have dangerous levels of air pollution.

Also of Interest

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

A basic income for everyone? Yes, Finland shows it really can work

Sorting Out the Russia Mess

Russia Probe: New York Times Writes Its Own Indictment

Why George Papadopoulos Is As Insignificant As Paul Manafort

Will Congress Ever Limit the Forever-Expanding 9/11 War?

Times Twofer: McCain and Friedman Go Off the Deep End

How America Spreads Global Chaos

Trump Aides Oppose War Authorization With Any Limits

My students heard a far-right politician on campus. Here's what they learned

There’s a Shady Puerto Rico Contract You Didn’t Hear About

An Environmental and Public Health Disaster Awaits—If USDA Gives Organic Label to Hydroponics

Trump’s Consumer Product Safety Nominee Defended Deadly Products

A Little Night Music

Cab Calloway - The Ghost of Smokey Joe

Tabby Thomas - Hoodoo Party

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs - Haunted House

Howlin' Wolf - Moaning at Midnight

Big Jay McNeely - Psycho Serenade

Charles Sheffield - It's Your Voodoo Workin'

LaVern Baker - Voodoo Voodoo

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs - The Phantom

Otis Spann - Must Have Been The Devil

Imelda May - Dealing With The Devil

Round Robin - I'm The Wolf Man

Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London

Kip Tyler & the Flips - She's My Witch

The Swanks - Ghost Train

Sonny Day & the Tony Ray Combo

Billy Riley - Flying Saucer Rock and Roll

Bill Doggett - Monster Party