The Evening Blues - 11-4-16

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features slide guitarist Sonny Landreth. Enjoy!

"The U.S. is entering a dangerous political phase where a distant and cloistered political class threatens the use of state power to legitimize itself in the face of declining popular support and serial military calamities of its own making. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration used the opaque and as yet not fully explained events of 9/11 to claim legitimacy as faux protector of the American people as it launched catastrophic wars that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and unleashed ongoing chaos across the Middle East.

With uber-hawk and unindicted co-conspirator Hillary Clinton favored to win election under a cloud of suspicion for pay-to-play practices as Secretary of State and in widely declining economic circumstances an imperative to change the subject will assert itself the day after election day. Having demonstrated a propensity for wanton slaughter in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and the streets of major American cities (1994 ‘Crime’ bill), Mrs. Clinton is already busy stoking a new Cold War with Russia to cover her own activities. ...

Julian Assange has now clarified that, Clinton ‘team’ assertions to the contrary, Russia is not the source of the Wikileaks revelations that will serve as fodder for ongoing investigations if Mrs. Clinton wins election. A crisis of legitimacy is all but guaranteed. If ‘things’ begin to unwind as circumstances suggest they might, expect the war drums to beat louder."

-- Rob Urie

News and Opinion

Yemen “is one step away” from devastating famine, UN aid chief warns

The civil war in Yemen between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it started in March 2015. Now, 7.1 million Yemenis are on the brink of starvation.

“Yemen is one step away from famine,” UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said earlier this week. ...

Eighty percent of Yemen is currently in need of humanitarian assistance, and 19 of the country’s 22 governorates have reached crisis levels of food insecurity, according to the Food Programme. Due to the closure of the airport in the capital city of Sanaa; Saudi-led coalition border blockades; and repeated bombings of farms, wells, and agriculture, food supplies have dwindled.

“Malnourished children are exceeding the capacity of our centers,” George Khoury, the director of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, told VICE News. “While the conduct of hostility is one factor for deaths and killing, the major factor is not war in Yemen. People are dying silently every day because of malnutrition.”

US military members could be prosecuted for war crimes in Yemen

Members of the US armed services could be prosecuted for war crimes for providing midair refueling and other military support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the Obama administration has been warned.

Nearly 4,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed since the conflict began in earnest in March 2015, after Houthi rebels seized Sana’a. The war has pitted Saudi Arabia, which supports the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour, against Iran, which backs the Houthis.

In a letter to secretary of state John Kerry and defence secretary Ash Carter, US congressman Ted Lieu, a former air force lawyer, said the administration’s insistence that it is not taking part in target selection for coalition sorties – many of which have hit hospitals and schools – does not excuse the US from legal responsibility.

“I find it deeply troubling that the US apparently has no advanced knowledge of what targets will be struck by jets that are refueled by US personnel with US tankers,” Lieu said in his letter. “The US would appear to be violating LOAC [laws of armed conflict] and international standards by engaging in such direct military operations if US personnel are not aware if targets are civilian or military, if the loss of life and property are disproportional, or if the operation is even militarily necessary.”

Lieu, who lectured in the laws of war during his service as an air force judge advocate general (Jag), said: “US personnel are now at legal risk of being investigated and potentially prosecuted for committing war crimes. Under international law, a person can be found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes.”

Report: Saudis Quietly Backing UN Peace Plan for Yemen

The UN peace plan for Yemen, which involves the creation of an interim unity government, appeared dead on arrival when it was endorsed by the Shi’ite Houthis as a promising start, but immediately condemned by the Saudi-backed Hadi government. New reports, however, suggest the Saudis may be breathing new life into the matter.

Publicly, the Saudi government has not commented on the plan yet, but those familiar with the situation say that most if not all of the leadership supports the plan, and that they’ve been quietly pushing Hadi in the direction of allowing it as a basis for peace talks.

The plan would allow Hadi to hold a nominal leadership position, but insists it would be entirely a figurehead position with little to no real power.

US Airstrikes in Afghanistan Kill at Least 30 Civilians

U.S. airstrikes carried out Thursday in Kunduz, Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians, including women and children, local officials said.

The incident began when a U.S.-Afghan raid targeted "two senior Taliban commanders" in the northern province and the troops came under heavy fire, killing two American servicemembers. Then, the NATO-led mission said on Twitter, airstrikes were carried out  "to defend friendly forces under fire." ...

"Unfortunately more than 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed during the fighting," Reuters reports Asadullah Amarkhil, the governor of Kunduz, as saying. "This was a horrible incident," he said, adding that dozens of people were also wounded.

The U.S. military released a statement expressing condolences for the servicemembers' lives lost. It does not mention the allegations of the civilians killed. ...

Just 13 months before the incident, a U.S. airstrike on hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz killed 42 people.

Afghan report slams 'gross miscarriages of justice' at Guantánamo

A leading research organization in Afghanistan is accusing the United States of “gross miscarriages of justice” at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility in a scathing report examining the cases of eight Afghans held at the facility.

“The Afghan experience in Guantánamo in itself highlights the peril of the power to arbitrarily detain,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network said in its report. “For individuals and their families, the consequences have been gross miscarriages of justice.”

The Thursday report, called “Kafka in Cuba,” is based on publicly available U.S. military and court documents about eight of the longest-serving Afghan detainees. ...

“For Afghanistan, the mass arbitrary detentions in the early years of the US-led intervention was a major factor driving some Afghans towards insurgency,” it says. “It helped revive a conflict Afghans had hoped was finally over, one which they and the United States are still enmeshed in.”

The report found the allegations against the men to be “fantastical” and based on “hearsay, secret evidence, bad translations, gross errors of fact and testimony obtained under duress and torture.”

The public documents “show multiple, basic mistakes in Afghan geography, dates and factional membership, as well as fundamental misunderstandings, such as mistaking nonbelligerent and even anti-jihadist groups for extremists,” the report adds.

Further, the report says, none of the eight men were captured on the battlefield, but were instead handed over by Pakistani or Afghan forces or captured after tips from unknown sources. There’s evidence that at least three of the men were turned over for political or monetary reasons, according to the report.

Syrian Kurds Warn US: Turkey Can’t Be Involved in Raqqa Invasion

A new statement from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a faction which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG, has affirmed that not only will they be participating in the invasion of the ISIS capital city of Raqqa, as previously announced by the US, but that they intend to be the “only force that will take part in the operation.”

Even more noteworthy, since the Turkish government has over the past two months repeatedly publicly warned the US that the Kurds mustn’t be allowed to participate in the Raqqa operation at all, the SDF’s statement offered its own warning to the US that Turkey can’t have any role.

Turkey’s military and its allied rebel factions have been invading northern Syria for some time now, mostly fighting ISIS as well, but Turkish warplanes have repeatedly attacked Kurdish YPG forces as well, mostly notably a few weeks ago when they launched strikes against YPG forces who were engaged in an offensive against ISIS at the time.

Rebel groups clash with each other in Syria's Aleppo

Syrian rebel factions fought each other in besieged eastern Aleppo on Thursday, officials from two of the groups and a war monitor said, potentially undermining their efforts to fend off a major Russian-backed offensive.

Rebel groups have been plagued by disunity and infighting throughout the 5 1/2-year-old conflict, for ideological reasons, over tactical differences or in disputes over territory.

Fighters of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zinki and Abu Amara attempted to seize positions and weapons from Fastaqim, one of its officials said. Fateh al-Sham is a jihadist group. Zinki and Fastaqim fight under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner.

An official from the Zinki group's politburo said the clashes had finished and there were efforts under way to resolve their dispute.

Heavy fighting in Mosul as Iraqi forces launch assault on Isis militants

Heavy fighting has erupted in the eastern neighbourhoods of Mosul as Iraqi special forces launched an assault deeper into the urban areas of the city and swung round to attack Islamic State militants from a second entry point, to the north-east.

Columns of armoured vehicles wound through open desert to open the new front, pushing through dirt berms, drawing heavy fire and calling in airstrikes to enter the middle class neighbourhoods of Tahrir and Zahara. The area was once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Lt Col Muhanad al-Timimi said three explosives-laden vehicles driven by militants were destroyed, including a bulldozer that was hit by an airstrike from the US-led coalition supporting the offensive.

At least one solider was seriously wounded in the first hours of the new advance, which came under heavy fire from mortars, automatic weapons, snipers and anti-tank rockets. ...

Friday’s fighting has been the most intense urban combat in Mosul since the Iraqi offensive began over two weeks ago to drive Isis from the city, Iraq’s second-largest.

Mounting reports of US coalition strikes on civilian areas in Mosul, Iraq

How the Islamic State's latest brutal videos show the organization is failing

If you want to know how the Islamic State group is doing, you don’t have to follow the Mosul offensive. Just take a look at the recent output of the terrorist organization’s propaganda machine. A 34-minute audio recording from Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released Thursday — the first message from Baghdadi in nearly a year — emphasized violence and war, themes that have become increasingly common in the group’s messages as its attempts at statehood falter.

From its very inception, IS has built its legend through its robust propaganda arm. But as the terrorist group loses ground on its caliphate (its interpretation of an Islamic state) and the territory in Iraq and Syria it spent the last two years conquering, IS is running out of clear, tangible successes to promote. The once-feared propaganda operation has suffered as a result, showing a dramatic dip in production and a telling shift in content since January, according to two recent analyses by U.S. counterterrorism researchers.

“Statehood is essential to the IS brand,” said Mara Revkin, a resident fellow at Yale Law School’s Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization who studies Islamic legal systems and governance by militant groups. “But as IS prepares to lose Mosul, the question is whether this brand will remain attractive to potential recruits and financiers now that the group has failed to live up to its slogan of ‘remaining and expanding.’” ...

As the U.S.–backed Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga coalition encircle the IS stronghold city of Mosul — where the group’s leader first announced the caliphate — and as it loses symbolic territory like Dabiq, the town where IS prophecy holds an apocalyptic battle will take place, IS’ key message of governance increasingly rings hollow. As a result, its once utopian vision, however manufactured, has trended back toward the apocalyptic.

Julian Assange Says Trump Won't Be Allowed To Win, "Clinton And ISIS Are Funded By The Same Money"

One day after Julian Assange officially revealed for the first time that the source of hacked Podesta and DNC emails in Wikileaks' possession is not Russia, in the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be broadcast by RT on Saturday Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Islamic State’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.

As previously reported, in an August 17, 2014 email made public WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical Sunni groups.”

"I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, told Pilger in the interview. “All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some “rogue” princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”

Turkey arrests pro-Kurdish party leaders amid claims of internet shutdown

The two joint leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) have been detained along with at least 10 MPs because of their reluctance to give testimony for crimes linked to “terrorist propaganda”.

Police raided the Ankara home of co-leader Selahattin Demirtaș and the house of co-leader Figen Yüksekdağ in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, early on Friday.

Demirtaş – a charismatic leader known as the “Kurdish Obama” by some admirers – and Yüksekdağ had been targeted by several separate investigations over the past few months but this is the first time that either has been detained.

At least 10 other HDP parliamentarians were also held, lawyers said, in a major escalation of the government’s crackdown on its opponents in the wake of the failed coup on 15 July. Raids also took place in the south-eastern cities of Van and Bingöl. ...

A widespread difficulty in reaching social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as messaging app WhatsApp was also reported across Turkey after the detentions started at midnight. ...

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the arrests compromised Turkey’s parliamentary democracy.

Greens leader calls for response to Turkey arrests

Want to beat facial recognition? Get some funky tortoiseshell glasses

A team of researchers from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University have created sets of eyeglasses that can prevent wearers from being identified by facial recognition systems, or even fool the technology into identifying them as completely unrelated individuals.

In their paper, Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition, presented at the 2016 Computer and Communications Security conference, the researchers present their system for what they describe as “physically realisable” and “inconspicuous” attacks on facial biometric systems, which are designed to exclusively identify a particular individual.

The attack works by taking advantage of differences in how humans and computers understand faces. By selectively changing pixels in an image, it’s possible to leave the human-comprehensible facial image largely unchanged, while flummoxing a facial recognition system trying to categorise the person in the picture.

Where the researchers struck gold was by realising that a large (but not overly large pair of glasses) could act to “change the pixels” even in a real photo. By picking a pair of “geek” frames, with relatively large rims, the researchers were able to obscure about 6.5% of the pixels in any given facial picture. Printing a pattern over those frames then had the effect of manipulating the image.

Bugging devices found at Iran nuclear talks hotel, say Swiss officials

A number of computers at a five-star Geneva hotel that has hosted sensitive talks, including Iranian nuclear negotiations, were found to be infected with malware used for espionage, Swiss prosecutors have revealed.

But the state prosecutor’s office, OAD, has had to close the case after failing to establish who was behind the cyber-attack, a spokesperson said.

The hotel, believed to be Hotel Président Wilson, which is famous for its 1,680 sq metre presidential suite, was raided on 12 May last year after OAD had launched an investigation over suspicions of illegal intelligence services operating in Switzerland. ...

The long-running nuclear talks were a magnet for the world’s intelligence agencies as they sought to find out more about the Iranian nuclear programme and the negotiating positions of the six nations involved.

When the talks shifted to a luxury hotel in Vienna, the microwave radiation from the surveillance efforts of competing intelligence agencies was so intense that diplomats had to walk some distance from the venue to use their mobile phones.

Oregon's voters divided on corporate income tax proposal to fund services

The most expensive political battle in Oregon’s history will culminate next week when Oregonians go to the polls. But the fight isn’t between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Instead, big business has been bombarding voters with ads in an effort to see off a bill that would force them to pay more in taxes towards funding the state’s education, healthcare and senior services. ...

The proposal, Measure 97, would make any corporation with annual sales of more than $25m in Oregon pay a minimum tax of $30,001, plus a 2.5% tax on their sales above $25m.

The contentious debate over the ballot measure has left the state divided, with millions being spent on ads, mailers and TV spots. Some of the world’s largest corporations – Shell, Walmart, Comcast and Wells Fargo – have paid out of pocket to defeat the corporate tax increase in Oregon. Total contributions both in and out of state exceed over $23m.

Proposed by the union-led coalition Our Oregon, the measure is aimed at stabilizing a trembling Oregon economy and avoiding a looming $1.4bn budget shortfall for the next two years. State economists project the corporate tax increase would raise some $3bn a year in revenue, increasing the state’s budget by roughly a third.

More than most states, the Democratic-dominated Oregon relies on personal income taxes – which total 75% of the state’s tax collections – to fund services and programs like education, public safety and prisons. ... In an economic upturn – when Oregonians are making money – the state budget benefits from increased personal income tax revenue. But when a recession hits, income tax becomes a faulty cash stream, and the state is forced to shortchange programs and services. The ballot measure is intended to make the state less reliant on personal income taxes and more on gross receipts revenue from large businesses.

'Anti-white' graffiti in gentrifying LA neighborhood sparks hate crime debate

Police in Los Angeles are investigating the vandalism of art galleries in a Latino neighbourhood, including the spray-painted message “fuck white art”, as possible hate crimes.

Three galleries were targeted last month amid rising concern in Boyle Heights that an influx of galleries heralds gentrification.

A coalition of community leaders and leftwing militants has mobilised over the past year to protest, confront and in some cases intimidate galleries whom they fear will pave the way for development that will push out residents and erase a cradle of Chicano identity.

“We don’t know who actually did [the vandalism], but because it actually made a reference to anti-white art or anti-white, it’s basically saying that it’s a hate crime based on that,” detective John Parra of the LAPD’s Hollenbeck station told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

Boyle Heights is a largely low-income neighbourhood which sits across the LA river from downtown, a formerly depressed zone which is being transformed by new museums, galleries, loft apartments and skyscrapers.

Over the past year activists, some with masks, others with megaphones, have confronted realtors and tour groups, picketed galleries and used a brass band blowing with all its might to sabotage an open air-opera.

Activists scorned the notion that tagging galleries represented a hate crime. “The walls in my neigbourhood are the people’s newspaper. That’s people expressing themselves,” says Xochitl Palomera of the advocacy group Corazón Del Pueblo. “You’re talking about someone spray-painting a wall with truth. Whoever wrote that is hurting and is angry.” ...

“We want these galleries out. They are going to be destructive to the things that we have been creating.” She said there was no such thing as reverse racism. “Because you know what, we’ve been experiencing oppression for hundreds of years. We’re not going to take this sitting down.”

At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches

Prairie McLaughlin said she has daily flashbacks – “daymares” – about the police.

Sitting inside a small tipi where she is camped out while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, she took a drag of her cigarette and recounted how officers took her to a North Dakota jail last month where, she says, a group of male and female guards forcibly removed her clothes when she refused to strip in front of them.

“I’m beyond traumatized,” the 33-year-old Native American woman said through tears.

But, when asked if she was prepared to keep defending the Standing Rock tribe’s water, McLaughlin’s face hardened. “Everyone needs to stand up,” she said.

McLaughlin, the daughter of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Standing Rock Sioux tribe member and founder of the Sacred Stone camp, is one of hundreds of women who have led the growing movement to stop the $3.7bn project threatening their land and culture. Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhumane treatment.

Many say that female “water protectors”, in some cases drawing on matriarchal tribal structures, are the core spiritual leaders strategizing how to block the “black snake” pipeline and planning actions to stand up to a police force that has gone to great lengths to defend an oil corporation. ...

Indigenous women have long had a fraught relationship with American police – whether in the form of questionable fatal shootings or law enforcement inaction in the face of human trafficking crises and sexual assault epidemics.

“It’s always been happening,” McLaughlin said, but “people in the world see it now.”

One black juror and 11 whites will decide the fate of the cop who killed Walter Scott

An almost entirely white jury will determine the fate of the former police officer who fatally shot Walter Scott, a 50-year-old unarmed black man, as he fled from a traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina, in April last year.

Six white men, five white women, and one black man were seated on Wednesday after two days of deliberation. They will hear the case against Michael Slager, a five-year veteran of the force, who is white. He’s facing murder charges.

Defense attorney Andy Savage struck nine people from the potential juror pool, including five blacks and two Hispanics, the Post and Courier reported. 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, the prosecutor, dismissed three white people.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas postponed an Alabama man's execution

The state of Alabama was set to execute 74-year-old Thomas Douglas Arthur Thursday night at Holman Correctional Facility, but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a temporary stay of execution. ...

Arthur has spent more than three decades on death row for the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker, who was shot while he slept in his bed. Wicker’s wife testified that she paid Arthur $10,000 to kill her husband.

Arthur, however, has maintained his innocence. Over the years, his lawyers unsuccessfully argued for DNA tests that they said could exonerate Arthur, whose execution had been scheduled six times previously. Each one of those times, he received a stay. ...

In 2008, a man named Bobby Ray Gilbert confessed to murdering Wicker, but a state court found that Gilbert and Arthur had conspired to submit a fake confession. Crime scene testing found no DNA link to either man. Arthur’s lawyers argued that the state of Alabama lost the DNA kit that may have exonerated him.

Chicago Cubs Owners Are Bankrolling Campaign to Let Nebraska Kill Again

The Nebraska legislature succeeded in repealing the death penalty in 2015 — overriding the veto by Republican Governor Pete Ricketts. Almost immediately following the repeal, supporters of capital punishment, backed by the governor, launched a ballot drive to put the issue directly before voters in November 2016.

Governor Ricketts is a part-owner of the Cubs team; his family, which made its fortune founding the brokerage giant TD Ameritrade, purchased a 95 percent stake in the team in 2009.

It is unusual for a sitting governor to spend money backing a ballot initiative, but Pete Ricketts has spent $300,000 backing Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, which is campaigning to bring back capital punishment.

Catfood Clinton can't wait to get started.

The Coming Plague of Poverty Among the Elderly: Clinton’s Plan For Gutting Social Security

In the recent Wikileaks revelations confirming Hillary Clinton’s duplicity, one of the clearest disclosures of her policy plans concerns her intention regarding Social Security. She stated that she would return to the position of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, charged with producing recommendations for reducing the deficit, i.e. cutting government social spending.

The Commission, or “Simpson-Bowles committee”  -named after co-chairs former Wyoming Republican senator Alan Simpson, and Erskine Bowles, former Morgan Stanley board member and chief of staff under Bill Clinton-  was appointed by Obama in 2010. Among its members were some of the most persistent deficit hawks. Most significantly, the Commission was stacked with leading enemies of Social Security flailing their arms over the “impending insolvency” of the program. The day before his appointment as co-chair, Simpson said in an interview with the Washington Post: “How did we get to a point in America where you get to a certain age in life, regardless of net worth or income, and you’re ‘entitled’? The word itself is killing us.” (Feb. 17, 2010) In a later e-mail he described Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million teats,” and had characterized its beneficiaries as “greedy geezers.” Bowles’s record was in line with Simpson’s. He had earlier negotiated with Newt Gingrich how best to cut safety net programs. The ultimate objective was to privatize Social Security. ...

Hillary Clinton’s speeches to the captains of finance strongly imply that she would resume the project of privatizing Social Security. Hers will be a gradual, stealth approach. The opening salvo will be further cuts in benefits and extensions of the full-benefit retirement age. But these alone will not satisfy Wall Street. The privatization plan will be resurrected, first in the form of legislation once again to begin “partial privatization.” In the end, the objective will be to turn the program into a broker’s-fee-for-service plan entirely in the hands of Wall Street. Retired workers will no longer be unqualifiedly entitled to Social Security benefits. Their fortunes will be tied to the vagaries of the stock market and other speculative ventures favored by brokers. And retirees will pay for this “service.” There will be no refunds when the market goes belly-up.

Latest Election Poll Finds Nation Divided, Everyone Disgusted

American voters may be divided and uninspired by their presidential candidates, but they have one thing in common—they're sick of the 2016 election.

A new New York Times/CBS News poll released Friday found that a majority of voters don't think either Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton or Republican nominee Donald Trump will be able to unite Americans after the election. When asked if they feel excited, disgusted, or neither by 2016 campaign, 82 percent of respondents said they were disgusted.

Pain, anger and fear: US voters deprived of a serious presidential election

If there’s a single theme to emerge from my encounters in states as varied as Maine, Wisconsin and Nevada, it is abject disillusionment: a feeling everywhere that the country has been deprived of a serious election.

Instead of a conventional campaign, voters feel they have witnessed a Netflix political drama, an outlandish plot consisting of a Republican who is a former reality TV host, and unmasked as a sexual predator, and a Democrat who, courtesy of an aide’s husband’s sexting habit, cannot shake the shadow of an FBI investigation.

This is not politics – it is entertainment.

Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting

Back when America was “great” – say, in the 1970s – the most unpleasant emotions a presidential race might inspire were “fear and loathing”. We expected our political process to provoke antagonism and ennui. We did not expect it to trigger projectile vomiting.

But this year is different, with psychotherapists reporting widespread depression, insomnia and digestive problems among the electorate. Record numbers are voting early, by mail, as if to purge themselves of all connection to the proceedings. ...

[Trump’s] supporters – generally portrayed as laid-off blue-collar workers who, in the absence of unions, have devoted themselves to the cause of whiteness – cheer on each of his macro-aggressions. To them, he is a giant middle finger in the face of the bipartisan political elite, and the crazier he acts, the more resounding this fuck-you gets. It doesn’t matter that most of Trump’s assertions can’t stand up to fact-checking; ignorance has been enshrined by an entire alternative media, stretching from Fox News to Stormfront on the Nazi-leaning right.

On the liberal left, tragically, we do not have Bernie Sanders, who would have dispatched Trump’s populist pretensions with a wrist flick. But no, representing the side of tolerance, good government and cosmopolitanism, we have the very epitome of Democratic party elitism, a woman who labeled half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables”, a politician who is so robotic that any efforts to analyze her motives risk the charge of anthropomorphism. Consider her statement on the Standing Rock occupation in North Dakota, which could have been issued by an unmanned typewriter. As soldiers and police bore down on the protesters, she urged all parties – tribal peoples and the pipeline company that threatens their culture and habitat – “to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest”. ...

The question is not who will win but what happens the day after. ...

Of course, the election might change nothing at all. This year’s round of armed combat began with the takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge by disgruntled rural white men, all of whom were just acquitted by a jury. It came to a climax last week with the violent suppression of the Standing Rock occupation. With either Clinton or Trump, we will be left to choke on our mutual revulsion.

Why do they support Trump? Race & class at heart of US Election

Indictment 'likely' in FBI's Clinton Foundation probe

Two sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI's investigations told Fox News Wednesday that a probe of the Clinton Foundation is likely to lead to an indictment.

Fox News's Bret Baier said Wednesday that the FBI probe into a possible pay-to-play scheme between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation has been going on for over a year.

Sources told the news network that the investigation, which is conducted by the White Collar Crime division of the FBI, is a "very high priority."

One source further stated that the bureau collected "a lot of" evidence, adding that "there is an avalanche of new information coming every day."

Baier also said that the Clinton Foundation probe is more expansive than previously thought.

Hillary Clinton shows some candor in newly released emails

More than 1,000 pages of emails recovered from Hillary Clinton’s private server by the FBI during the bureau’s probe into her handling of classified information was released by the State Department Thursday afternoon, five days before the presidential election.

The State Department noted that the majority of these emails, released in response to a VICE News Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, are “near duplicates” of emails Clinton’s attorneys turned over to State in December 2014.

But there were also emails never before released. Perhaps the most notable revealed discussions about how hard the State Department should push to pursue Julian Assange after his organization, Wikileaks, released tens of thousands of State Department cables. ...

Also new and noteworthy about this cache is that, for the first time, we appear to be seeing Clinton speak candidly. In the bulk of the 30,000 or so emails that the State Department has released over the past year, Clinton’s responses were often limited to, “Pls print.” This suggests that Clinton’s attorneys did not turn over the full chain of these emails to the State Department. Moreover, the emails released Thursday contain markings that show they had been deleted before being recovered from BlackBerry mobile devices by the FBI. ...

The State Department is set to release another batch of emails Friday, said State Department spokesman Mark Toner, the last such release before Tuesday’s election.

[Hmmm... dumped Friday on the weekend before the election. Wonder if they are hoping to capitalize on a lack of time for the media to process them all before Tuesday? (duh!) - js]

[Pps... see also reporter Jason Leopold's narrative about his FOIA request that led to the revelations of Clinton's private email server - How I got Clinton's emails - js]

WikiLeaks: Podesta agrees Sanders needs to be 'ground to a pulp'

Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta said in a February email he agreed that Sen. Bernie Sanders needed to be "ground to a pulp," according to emails released by WikiLeaks.

The message, dated Feb. 21, shows Joel Johnson, the managing director at the Glover Park Group and a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, telling Podesta that the Vermont Independent and then-presidential candidate needed to be taken down.

"Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp," Johnson said in the email, according to WikiLeaks. ...

"I agree with that in principle," Podesta responded. "Where would you stick the knife in?"

Johnson responded that Sanders should be framed as an "Obama betrayer," "hapless legislator," "false promiser" and a candidate who "can't win."

FBI launches internal investigation into its own Twitter account

The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts.

The account at issue, @FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump as a “philanthropist.”

But it wasn’t until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich, that the account began to attract significant attention. ...

ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI’s Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account. ...

News of the internal investigation is at odds with the FBI’s official position, which is that the Twitter account followed all FBI procedures. ...

Since that time, there has been a series of leaks about FBI activity that appear to be designed to damage Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump. An anonymous source for example, leaked to the Wall Street Journal that there was an investigation — including “secret recordings” — into the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times, also citing anonymous sources, reported that the FBI believed that Russia was just trying to disrupt the U.S. election, not help Donald Trump.

'Pipelines Leak': Expert Finds Government Downplayed DAPL Impact on Tribe and Water

An independent pipeline expert has concluded that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' environmental assessment (EA) of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is insufficient and fails to account for the impact on tribal members, prompting the Standing Rock Sioux to demand that the federal agency "revisit" its approval of the controversial project.

The review, commissioned by the tribe, found that the Army Corps' EA "understates the risk of pipeline failure and related oil release from this pipeline impacting Lake Oahe and the Missouri River," determined (pdf) Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline engineer with the consulting firm Accufacts, Inc..

Earthjustice, which is representing the Standing Rock Sioux in its litigation against the Corps, outlined additional "areas of deficiency" identified in the review:

1. Shoddy pipeline construction
2. The risks posed by landslides were underestimated
3. Lack of proper safety constructions to contain spills
4. Failure to review impact to residents and environment downstream of the site
5. A risk review of industry spills and containment at similar sites that document problematic regulatory oversight of the industry in North Dakota

In a letter (pdf) sent late last week to Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Standing Rock Sioux chairman Dave Archambault II presents Kuprewicz's findings in contrast to the EA's determination that building a pipeline across Lake Oahe "will not affect members of the  Standing Rock Sioux Tribe or the Tribal reservation."

The review, he said, "underscores one of the fundamental deficiencies of the Final Environmental Assessment—it assumes, without foundation, that placing a massive oil pipeline just upstream from the Reservation presents no risk to the Tribe. ...

"This raises the question," Archambault continued, "if the Dakota Access pipeline is so safe that it presents no risk at all when situated on the Tribe's doorstep, why isn't the pipeline safe enough to cross the river north of Bismarck, as originally proposed? The Final EA provides no answer."

500 Clergy Hold 'Historic' Mass Gathering for Standing Rock

In a "historic" show of interfaith solidarity, 500 clergy members prayed along the banks of North Dakota's Cannonball River on Thursday where they "bore witness with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation," which has faced intimidation, violence, and arrests for protecting their sacred land and water supply from the threats of a massive oil pipeline.

According to the Episcopal News Service, "The interfaith group spent more than five hours on site, marching, singing hymns, sharing testimony, and calling others to join them in standing with the more than 200 tribes who have committed their support to the Sioux Nation as they protest the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)."

Later, roughly a hundred protesters and clergy members held a prayer circle on the lawn of the North Dakota state Capitol in Bismarck, forcing the police to order a lock-down of the building. "Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson said 14 people were arrested in the Capitol's judicial wing for refusing to leave the building. Iverson said the protesters, who were holding a sit-in and singing prayer hymns, faced disorderly conduct charges," AP reported.

Caro Gonzales, a Native American activist, told reporters that the water protectors had come to the Capitol to deliver a letter to Gov. Jack Dalrymple in support of the tribe and to ask "why he has ordered riot police to engage in police brutality at Standing Rock." Afterwards, a group of roughly 100 protesters marched from the Capitol to the governor's residence, where they were met by "dozens of riot police," Gonzales said. ...

As the pipeline's construction edges closer to the Missouri River, which the Standing Rock Sioux is hoping to protect, with little hope of abatement, pipeline opponents worldwide are planning a mass Day of Action on Nov. 15, asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the incoming U.S. president "stop the Dakota Access Pipeline—and all those after it."

New warning as Paris climate deal officially comes into force

Also of Interest

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

The Day Vladimir Putin Passed NAFTA

Creating a National Security State ‘Democracy,’ Or How the American Political System Changed and No One Noticed

US Hypocrisy: Bombing of Aleppo Is No Worse Than What Happened in Gaza and Iraq

Bulgaria Welcomes Refugees With Attack Dogs and Beatings

Mark Ruffalo: We must listen to the Dakota Access pipeline protesters, not punish them

Why Washington environmental groups are rejecting a measure to fight climate change

Hillary Clinton and the Neocons

Wikileaks and the Podesta Emails: Two Things

Multiple Jobholders Hits 21st Century High, As Full-Time Jobs Tumble

People Not In Labor Force Surge By 425,000 To 94,609,000

The New York Times Has a Fatal Wall Street Bias

Canadian army investigate mysterious 'pinging' sound coming from sea floor

Meme warfare: how the power of mass replication has poisoned the US election

A Little Night Music

Sonny Landreth - Walkin’ Blues

Sonny Landreth - Next of Kindred Spirits

Sonny Landreth - True Blue

John Hiatt & Sonny Landreth - Riding With the King

Sonny Landreth w/t Jools Holland - Back To Bayou Teche

Warren Haynes & Sonny Landreth - Death Letter Blues

Sonny Landreth & Eric Johnson - Milky Way Home

Sonny Landreth - South of I-10

And a little lullaby to end the week...

Sonny Landreth, Colin Linden and Steve Dawson - Sleep Walk