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“Victory is no longer a truth. It is only a word to describe who is left alive in the ruins”

-- Lyndon B. Johnson

News and Opinion

Responding to Bernie’s Promotion of the New Cold War

In an otherwise fine video response to Tuesday night’s vapid, flag-waving State of the Union address, Bernie Sanders once again promoted the neocon think tank-generated and unproven claim that Russia interfered in America’s 2016 elections via “cyberwarfare,” and repeated the completely baseless insinuation that they colluded with Trump to do so. “How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we will be holding?” asked the Vermont Senator. “How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?”

This is not an exception to the rule for Sanders, but one more addition to an already consistent and deliberate pattern. In February of last year Sanders delivered a widely viewed video message to his massive online audience solely geared at promoting the Russiagate narrative. At the end of March, he did it again. In May, he did it again. Over and over and over again, month after month after month, Sanders has been using his immense platform as the most popular and trusted politician in America to sell these world-threatening cold war escalations to the millions of Americans who adore him.

This is a big deal. This is not some petty quibble with Sanders’ policies like disagreeing with the specifics of his stance on free trade or fracking. This is not some minor detail which can be dismissed with accusations of purism and impracticality and “Hey, no politician is perfect.” This is the single most pressing issue of our time, and Bernie Sanders is currently, actively marching our world in the exact opposite direction of where it needs to be heading. There is no threat to our species more imminent and dangerous than the threat of annihilation in a nuclear holocaust, and Sanders is helping to manufacture consent for escalations which make that possibility more and more likely.

Live from Kabul: May Jeong Says Military Victory in Afghanistan War is "Delusional"

Well, aside from the moral error that Guantanamo represents ...

Guantánamo: Bush-era officials warn keeping prison open may be $6bn error

US officials and military lawyers who helped set up and run the notorious prison at Guantánamo Bay have warned that Donald Trump risks repeating a $6bn mistake by keeping it open. In the only major foreign policy shift announced in Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the president signed an executive order to reverse Barack Obama’s eight-year effort to close the facility in Cuba – and predicted that “many” new inmates could soon be flown there.

But those involved in setting up the prison camp and running military tribunals there under George W Bush warned that the move would be counterproductive, draining money, stretching the military and acting as a recruiting sergeant for terrorist groups around the world.

“With respect to the Guantánamo military commissions, we have screwed them up so bad for so long that they are beyond redemption,” said retired Colonel Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor of the military commissions set up in 2002. “We’ve invested roughly $6.5bn on detention in Guantánamo and what has it gotten us? We wasted our money. These guys could have been housed in federal prison for a fraction of the cost. We have over a thousand troops that are dedicated to the detention operations that could be used elsewhere. We have squandered our credibility around the world in these trials,” Davis said.

Davis, who was chief prosecutor from 2005 to 2007 – when he resigned over the use of evidence extracted under torture – recalls watching 14 “high value” detainees from CIA black sites around the world being taken off a plane at the Guantánamo airstrip in September 2006. Since then, only one of them, Ghailani, has been tried and convicted – and that was in a New York federal court. “Here we are in 2018 and the other 13 men who got off the plane with him are still floundering in the system in Guantánamo,” the former military prosecutor said. “The real tragedy here is that the 9/11 victim families have needlessly been denied justice. This could have been over and done long ago, but for it becoming a political issue.”

US missile defence test fails in Hawaii with 'military unable to shoot down incoming target'

A test of America’s missile defence systems in Hawaii has reportedly failed to shoot down its target, against the backdrop of heightened tensions with North Korea.

An exercise conducted by the Missile Defence Agency was unsuccessful, with the military unable to shoot down an incoming missile launched from an aircraft, multiple outlets reported.

A Department of Defence representative confirmed a drill had taken place without responding to questions about whether it had accomplished its objectives. ...

A test in May successfully intercepted and destroyed a medium-range missile, the Pentagon said at the time, the first live-fire test of defending against an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Civilians pay price as Turkey battles Syrian Kurds

ockets fired from northern Syria into a Turkish border town killed a teenage girl and wounded another person Wednesday, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported, in the latest fallout from Ankara’s escalating offensive against a Syrian Kurdish-controlled enclave.

Doctors in the northwestern enclave of Afrin warned of a rapidly worsening humanitarian situation, adding that medical supplies at the city’s main hospital, which has received dozens of patients in the past week, were running low.

Activists say more than 65 civilians have died in Afrin since Turkey launched its aerial and ground campaign Jan. 20 to drive out a Syrian Kurdish militia. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, an extension of the outlawed Kurdish rebels fighting an insurgency inside Turkey. ...

“We appeal to the United Nations to stop this Turkish aggression,” Khalil Sabri, head of the Afrin hospital, said at a news conference aired on Kurdish and some Arab channels. “The medical supplies we have are about to run out."

Israel Increases Threats to Attack Lebanon

Israel has relatively frequent moments of stepping up war rhetoric, and these days that is aimed squarely at Lebanon, with officials openly threatening to force all of Beirut into bomb shelters and bragging about the impact the war will have on the Lebanese civilian population.

Israel’s far-right government considers war with everyone and everything inevitable, and argues at times like this that a war now is preferable to a war later. It’s not clear the US is totally on board with this, however, with US officials playing up their intention to keep supporting the Lebanese military, even as Israel vows to destroy it. This is an unusual public dispute.

Catalan independence leaders to appeal to UN over 'unlawful imprisonment'

Lawyers in London, Barcelona and Paris acting for three detained Catalan independence leaders have appealed to the United Nations, claiming the men are unlawfully imprisoned.

Submissions have been presented to the UN working group on arbitrary detention, asking it to intervene in the cases of the ousted vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, and the Catalan civil society group chiefs Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez. Any determination made by the body, which meets in Geneva, will not be binding on Spanish courts, but will be a signal of international disapproval. ...

Cuixart is president of Òmnium Cultural and Sànchez is a former president of the influential Catalan national assembly. They were arrested in October after the independence referendum, while Junqueras was detained early the following month. They have been in prison since then.

Ben Emmerson QC, who represents the men, told a press conference in London on Thursday: “Spain [has] brought unsustainable charges of sedition and rebellion against Catalonia’s leaders ... Their detention by Spain is an affront to human rights, designed to prevent them from performing their role as political representatives of the Catalan people.

“This case does not ask the UN to adjudicate on the issue of Catalan independence, but seeks the UN’s reaffirmation that governments cannot repress political dissent through arbitrary detention.”

Poland ignores Israel, proceeds with ban on saying it participated in Holocaust

Poland’s senate passed a controversial bill that would make it illegal to link the Polish people or state to the crimes of the Holocaust, ignoring Washington’s objections and outraging many Israelis who see it as an attempt to whitewash history.

The bill now has 21 days to be signed off by Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who’s already said he supports it, to become law.

The vote on the legislation, which criminalizes speech suggesting Polish complicity in Nazi crimes against the Jews, had already caused uproar in Israel when it passed through Poland’s lower house on Friday. ...

Poland’s right-wing government says the law is needed to safeguard the country’s reputation from historical inaccuracies — such as the description of Nazi-built concentration camps situated on Polish soil as “Polish death camps.”

“We have to send a clear signal to the world that we won't allow for Poland to continue being insulted,” deputy justice minister Patryk Jaki told reporters Thursday.

Tech Companies Are Under Pressure Everywhere Except Where It Matters

It was the year of the tech backlash. Throughout 2017, Facebook, Google, and Twitter were hauled before Congress to answer for their roles in election hacking. More and more prominent political, business, and media figures warned of the growing power of the technology giants, and some offered solutions rarely uttered in this country: breaking the companies up and/or turning them into public utilities. ...

The only person who doesn’t seem to agree happens to be a lead economist at the regulatory body that oversees the tech industry. Patrick DeGraba, who works in the FTC’s antitrust division, said in remarks at the New York State Bar Association that there’s no market power evident online, because consumers have other good options. “When it comes to online search, nothing stops him from going to Bing,” DeGraba said about the everyday internet user by trade publication Global Competition Review. The same “competition is a click away” theory held for Amazon’s online shopping, DeGraba said; he said he could just go to Walmart.

Yes, Google handles 63 percent of all desktop search queries, and over 94 percent of mobile search, according to analyst Statista. Google and Facebook control between 60 and 70 percent of online advertising market share in the U.S., and about 99 percent of all new ad dollars.

On the other hand, we do have Bing.

This flippancy on the part of senior FTC staff is indicative of how unseriously the agency is taking its mission.

Fight for $15 movement plans fast-food workers' strike across south

The Fight for $15, the movement that has galvanized city campaigns to raise the pay of low-wage workers, is teaming up with the civil rights leader William Barber for a day of action in support of racial justice and voting rights. The organization is calling on fast-food workers in two dozen southern cities to go on strike on 12 February, to mark the 50th anniversary of the famed Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, which began shortly before the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

On Thursday, a moment of silence will mark the anniversary of the deaths of two Memphis sanitation workers who were crushed to death by a garbage truck’s compactor. Their deaths triggered a two-month strike. On 12 February, hundreds of fast-food workers from around the south and across the US will converge on Memphis to march in honor of the 1968 strikers and to throw Fight for $15’s support behind a renewed Poor People’s Campaign, the movement King championed.

“We’re fighting for the same things the sanitation workers fought for: respect and a decent wage,” said Ashley Cathey, a fast-food worker for 11 years who earns $7.53 an hour working for Church’s Chicken in Memphis. “When the sanitation workers had their strike, they inspired other people – they showed us how to fight for better things on the job.”

“There’s no separation between the moral battle for voting rights and participation in democracy and the moral battle against systemic poverty,” Barber said. “Those battles go together.” Leaders of the two progressive movements, the Fight for $15 and a revived Poor People’s Campaign, say the collaboration is an attempt to continue King’s work and vision. He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, supporting the strike by 1,300 sanitation workers, which he saw as a step toward the goal of lifting up millions of poor Americans.

Amazon fulfillment centers don't boost employment, analysis finds

States and cities have fallen over themselves to offer huge tax breaks to Amazon in the hope of securing one of the tech giant’s order fulfillment centers. But an analysis of the impact of the centers released on Thursday found the facilities do not boost overall employment in the counties where they open.

After analyzing data for counties in 25 states containing Amazon fulfillment centers, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that within two years the centers lead to a 30% increase in warehouse and storage employment in the surrounding county. But the analysis also found no increase in overall employment in the county and, in some cases, the data suggested a reduction in overall employment.

Amazon has received over $1bn in state and local subsidies to open fulfillment centers across the US. The report questions the efficacy of such tax breaks if they do not contribute to a net growth in jobs.

“If policymakers instead invested in public services – particularly in early-childhood education and infrastructure – that would be a much stronger recipe for long-term economic development, rather than giving tax breaks to national employers like Amazon,” said EPI economist Ben Zipperer.

Zipperer and economic analyst Janelle Jones speculate that the jobs created by the centers are either being offset by job losses in other industries or that the growth is too small to affect the jobs figures.

Nunes “secretly changed” anti-FBI memo, says Schiff

House Intelligence ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff Wednesday accused Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of making “material changes” in secret to an explosive memo alleging FBI abuses of power, currently under review by the White House.

The letter accuses Republican Nunes of sending a version of the memo to the president that is different from the version the Committee approved Monday.

"It is now imperative that the Committee Majority immediately withdraw the document that it sent to the White House," Democrat Schiff wrote. "If the Majority remains intent on releasing its document to the public, despite repeated warnings from DOJ and the FBI, it must hold a new vote to release to the public its modified document."

Nunes admitted making “minor edits” to the document, but characterized them as “grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves.” Nunes said Schiff’s letter was part of an “increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication.”

Marcy Wheeler on Showdown over Nunes Memo, Mueller Probe & Reauthorization of Mass Surveillance

Hope Hicks faces some very big questions about Don Jr.’s emails

Donald Trump’s 29-year-old Communications Director Hope Hicks could be implicated in possible plot to obstruct justice by concealing emails, according to a stunning report in the New York Times Wednesday.

Part of Trump’s inner-circle and a confidant of the president, Hicks allegedly told Mark Corallo, Trump’s former legal spokesman, that explosive emails from Don Jr. prior to the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 would “never get out.” ...

Corallo, who resigned last July, is scheduled to be interview by Mueller’s team, and is reportedly ready to detail a conference call with Hicks and Trump on the morning after news broke about the meeting between Trump’s son and several Russian officials. According to three former colleagues, Corallo will tell Mueller that Hicks attempted to ease the president’s concerns by telling him that Don Jr.’s emails “will never get out.” ...

The emails were subsequently published by the Times, showing Don Jr.’s eagerness to receive scuttlebutt on Clinton from the Russians.

Wednesday's report was dismissed by Hicks’ attorney Robert Trout, who told the Times: "She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”

US Congress: Republicans rush for the exits to imperil Trump's midterm hopes

Dozens of Republicans are rushing for the exits on Capitol Hill in an exodus which has dramatically raised Democratic hopes of shifting the balance of power in Washington DC. Congressman Trey Gowdy, the Republican who made headlines with a crusade to investigate Hillary Clinton, announced his retirement on Wednesday, becoming the 38th Republican to announce they would be giving up their seat in Congress since Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.

Gowdy and other Republicans cheered the president on during his state of the union address, chanting “USA” and standing to applaud his agenda. But many of the same lawmakers have said they have had enough of Washington and the chaos in the White House, gridlock at work and angry voters back home. ...

Gowdy was the second senior Republican this week to announce his retirement, after New Jersey’s Rodney Frelinghuysen, a 12-term congressman. The pair chaired powerful committees on oversight and the nation’s finances, and follow 23 other Republicans leaving the House to quit politics altogether. A further 11 will step down in order to run for higher office in the Senate or as state governors and three more are leaving the Senate. In contrast, only 15 Democratic representatives and one senator are leaving Congress.

Federal prosecutors dismiss corruption charges against Senator Bob Menendez

Federal prosecutors decided on Wednesday not to retry Senator Bob Menendez on corruption charges that ended in a hung jury last fall, lifting the legal cloud hanging over the New Jersey Democrat as he gears up for re-election this year to the closely divided Senate. The move brings to an end a more than five-year investigation that began with never-substantiated allegations about consorting with prostitutes and eventually resulted in a bribery indictment.

Menendez, 64, was charged with trading his political influence for gifts and campaign contributions from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, 63. Their 11-week trial ended in November with the jury deadlocked. “From the very beginning, I never wavered in my innocence and my belief that justice would prevail,” Menendez said in a statement. “I am grateful that the Department of Justice has taken the time to re-evaluate its case and come to the appropriate conclusion.”

Prosecutors had said on 19 January that they would pursue a retrial, but they abandoned the case after the judge last week threw out the bribery charges related to the campaign donations. Eleven charges remained, including bribery, fraud and conspiracy.

Air pollution: black, Hispanic and poor students most at risk from toxins

Schoolchildren across the US are plagued by air pollution that’s linked to multiple brain-related problems, with black, Hispanic and low-income students most likely to be exposed to a fug of harmful toxins at school, scientists and educators have warned. The warnings come after widespread exposure to toxins was found in new research using EPA and census data to map out the air pollution exposure for nearly 90,000 public schools across the US.

“This could well be impacting an entire generation of our society,” said Dr Sara Grineski, an academic who has authored the first national study, published in the journal Environmental Research, on air pollution and schools. ...

Pollution exposure is also drawn along racial lines. While black children make up 16% of all US public school students, more than a quarter of them attend the schools worst affected by air pollution. By contrast, white children comprise 52% of the public school system but only 28% of those attend the highest risk schools. This disparity remains even when the urban-rural divide is accounted for.

Schools with large numbers of students of colour are routinely located near major roads and other sources of pollution, with many also grappling with other hazards such as lead-laced drinking water and toxins buried beneath school buildings. Grineski said there were a range of consequences. “We’re only now realizing how toxins don’t just affect the lungs but influence things like emotional development, autism, ADHD and mental health,” she said. “Socially marginalized populations are getting the worst exposure. When you look at the pattern, it’s so pervasive that you have to call it an injustice and racism.”

Polar bears could become extinct faster than was feared

Polar bears could be sliding towards extinction faster than previously feared, with the animals facing an increasing struggle to find enough food to survive as climate change steadily transforms their environment. New research has unearthed fresh insights into polar bear habits, revealing that the Arctic predators have far higher metabolisms than previously thought. This means they need more prey, primarily seals, to meet their energy demands at a time when receding sea ice is making hunting increasingly difficult for the animals.

A study of nine polar bears over a three-year period by the US Geological Survey and UC Santa Cruz found that the animals require at least one adult, or three juvenile, ringed seals every 10 days to sustain them. Five of the nine bears were unable to achieve this during the research, resulting in plummeting body weight – as much as 20kg during a 10-day study period. “We found a feast and famine lifestyle – if they missed out on seals it had a pretty dramatic effect on them,” said Anthony Pagano, a USGS biologist who led the research, published in Science. ...

With previous studies showing recent drops in polar bear numbers, survival rates and body condition, scientists said the new research suggests the species is facing an even worse predicament than was feared. The Arctic is warming twice as rapidly as the global average, diminishing the sea ice that polar bears rely upon for food and forcing many to embark from water on to land where they desperately forage for goose eggs or rubbish from bins in far-flung towns.

Coal chiefs mock reporter as critical West Virginia media voice goes bust

In a room packed with coal industry leaders in Charleston, West Virginia, a speaker held up a fake “pink slip” for a local newspaper reporter who covers the business, and mockingly said he wished the journalist could be in attendance. The crowd erupted into laughter because the reporter, Ken Ward, who has covered the industry with an unforgiving eye for years, was not there. The pink slip is a nod to the fact that his publication, the Charleston Gazette, recently filed for bankruptcy. The stunt was first reported by Taylor Kuykendall, a fellow coal reporter for the S&P Global Market Intelligence, the news and financial data website.

The speaker, Robert McLusky, is lead attorney for Massey Energy, which owned the Upper Big Branch mine when it exploded in 2010, killing 29 workers. Ward, a 25-year reporting veteran led the Gazette’s aggressive and detailed coverage of the disaster, peppering the company with questions about the regulatory corner-cutting that led to the fatal explosion.

But it was McLusky and other industry top brass who indulged in the last laugh on Wednesday, because the loss of news reporting as a check on their power has not been their only good news of late. The industry has also seen the prospect of government accountability on labor and environmental issues dwindle in the warm embrace of the Trump administration.

Also of Interest

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

The US Empire Has up to 1,000 Military Bases in 80 Countries

After Boasting About Lowering Black Unemployment, Trump Undermines the Federal Unit Defending Against Housing Discrimination

Robots will take our jobs. We’d better plan now, before it’s too late

Democratic Establishment Tries To Keep Progressives Off Congressional Ballots

A Little Night Music

Sonny Rhodes - Killing Floor

Sonny Rhodes - Travelling Bluesman

Sonny Rhodes & The Texas Twisters - House Without Love

Sonny Rhodes - You Better Stop

Sonny Rhodes - The Blues Is My Best Friend

Sonny Rhodes - Ya Ya

Sonny Rhodes - All Night Long They Play The Blues

Sonny Rhodes - Pickin' Your Bones

Sonny Rhodes Band: 2017 Blue Wing Blues Fest