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"America is ruled by an elite class which has slowly created a system where money increasingly translates directly into political power, and which is therefore motivated to maintain economic injustice in order to rule over the masses more completely. The greater the economic inequality, the greater their power. Nobody would willingly consent to such an oppressive system where wealth inequality keeps growing as expensive bombs from expensive drones are showered upon strangers on the other side of the planet, so a robust propaganda machine is needed."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Theresa May rebukes Donald Trump over NHS comments

Theresa May has rebuked Donald Trump over his claim the NHS is failing, publicly backing her health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, after he tweeted disagreement with the US president’s view. The response from May – who generally seeks to avoid criticising Trump – came after the president condemned Democrat plans for a universal healthcare system by noting in a tweet Saturday’s protest march in London demanding more NHS funding.

The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

Hunt responded via Twitter:

I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover. NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage - where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance https://t.co/YJsKBAHsw7

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) February 5, 2018

Asked whether May backed Hunt’s opinion, her spokesman said: “The prime minister is proud of having an NHS which is free at the point of delivery. ... Asked whether No 10 backed Hunt’s specific tweet, the spokesman said: “Jeremy Hunt is the health secretary and of course he speaks for the government on these matters.”

Jeremy Corbyn also denounced Trump’s view:

Wrong. People were marching because we love our NHS and hate what the Tories are doing to it. Healthcare is a human right. https://t.co/Pmo2xYSqZh

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) February 5, 2018

Seoul: N. Korea to send nominal head of state to S. Korea

North Korea will send its nominal head of state and other senior officials to South Korea this week, Seoul officials said Sunday, as the rivals push through with rare rapprochement steps ahead of this month’s Winter Olympics in the South.

Kim Yong Nam, the head of the North’s parliament, will be the highest-level North Korean official to visit South Korea since the North sent then-No. 2 Hwang Pyong So at the close of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.

Kim’s trip touched off immediate media speculation that direct contacts between Pyongyang and Washington may be possible during the Olympics, with the U.S. sending Vice President Pence to the Games that start Feb.9.

On Sunday night, the North sent a message via a cross-border communication channel saying its high-level delegation will visit South Korea from Feb. 9-11, the South’s Unification Ministry said in a statement. It said the North’s delegation includes Kim and three other officials but gave no further details.

Syria : Turkey deploys its army in southern Aleppo

Turkey’s Worst Day Yet in Syria Offensive: At Least 7 Soldiers Killed

Turkey’s military suffered its worst day yet in the two-week offensive in Afrin, Syria, when at least seven soldiers were killed and a tank was destroyed in the fighting, official Turkish news outlets reported on Sunday.

But the losses may be higher, according to other reports.

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led militia defending the city in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said its fighters had killed eight Turkish Army soldiers in two episodes northeast of the city on Saturday. Two tanks were destroyed, he said.

An independent monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that two tanks had been destroyed and that 19 Turkish soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen had been killed in total on Saturday.

It was the single biggest one-day loss for the Turkish forces since they pushed into Syria on Jan. 20, vowing to take the enclave from the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Turkey describes as terrorists. The losses bring to at least 14 the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the offensive so far.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a statement on his Twitter account that Turkey would retaliate for the losses. “They will pay for this twice as much,” he wrote.

Investigation of chemical attacks in Syria being sabotaged –Russian envoy to UN

WMD Claims in Syria Raise Concerns over U.S. Escalation

It’s the WMD story all over again.

Not unlike the spurious claims that paved the way to war with Iraq 15 years ago, anonymous “U.S. officials” are once again accusing a targeted “regime” of using “weapons of mass destruction” and issuing threats that the U.S. military may have to “hold it accountable.” Once again, Western media is broadcasting these accusations and threats without skepticism or investigation. The Washington Post story is titled “Trump administration: Syria probably continuing to make, use chemical weapons.” The Reuters story, which was carried by the New York Times, says, “U.S. officials have said the Syrian government may be developing new types of chemical weapons, and President Donald Trump is prepared to consider further military action. President Bashar al Assad is believed to have secretly kept part of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.”

Jerusalem Online says, “A U.S. official says Syrian President Assad’s forces may be developing new types of chemical weapons, which could reach as far as the U.S.” Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes a U.S. official saying, “They clearly think they can get away with this.” The accusations follow a long-established pattern of officials making anonymous claims and then ratcheting up tensions and issuing calls for retaliatory action – while the media repeats the claims without the slightest amount of skepticism. The Washington Post article, for example, includes the following statement by an anonymous official: “If the international community does not take action now … we will see more chemical weapons use, not just by Syria but by non-state actors such as ISIS and beyond. And that use will spread to U.S. shores.”

Yet, based on a review of recent history, there is plenty of reason to believe that the story is false and is being broadcast to deceive the public in preparation for new military aggression. ...

Regarding the latest accusations, the following is noteworthy:

• Secretary of Defense Mattis acknowledges they do not have independent evidence.
• The accusations come from “NGOs, fighters on the ground,” according to Mattis. In other words, the accusations come from the armed opposition and “White Helmets”.
• In contrast with their media image, the “White Helmets” are neither independent nor neutral. The organization is a creation of the U.S. and U.K. governments and Western military contractors. It’s a well-funded and highly successful deception. The U.S. and U.K. train, supply and pay “volunteers” to provide them with accusations that can then be used to justify the desired aggression.

Head of Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Group: Trump’s Nuclear Policy “Puts Us on Path Toward Nuclear War”

To Counter Russia, U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back in a Big Way

A treaty committing the United States and Russia to keep their long-range nuclear arsenals at the lowest levels since early in the Cold War goes into full effect on Monday. When it was signed eight years ago, President Barack Obama expressed hope that it would be a small first step toward deeper reductions, and ultimately a world without nuclear weapons.

Now, that optimism has been reversed. A new nuclear policy issued by the Trump administration on Friday, which vows to counter a rush by the Russians to modernize their forces even while staying within the treaty limits, is touching off a new kind of nuclear arms race. This one is based less on numbers of weapons and more on novel tactics and technologies, meant to outwit and outmaneuver the other side.

The Pentagon envisions a new age in which nuclear weapons are back in a big way — its strategy bristles with plans for new low-yield nuclear weapons that advocates say are needed to match Russian advances and critics warn will be too tempting for a president to use. The result is that the nuclear-arms limits that go into effect on Monday now look more like the final stop after three decades of reductions than a way station to further cuts.

Yet when President Trump called on Congress to “modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal” in his State of the Union address last week, he did not mention his administration’s rationale: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has accelerated a dangerous game that the United States must match, even if the price tag soars above $1.2 trillion. That is the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, one that many experts think is low by a half-trillion dollars.

Mr. Trump barely mentioned Mr. Putin in the speech and said nothing about Russia’s nuclear buildup. His reluctance to talk about Russia and its leader during his campaign and first year in office — and his refusal to impose sanctions on Russia mandated by Congress — has fueled suspicions about what lies behind his persistently friendly stance toward Mr. Putin.

Senator warns YouTube algorithm may be open to manipulation by 'bad actors'

Senator Mark Warner, top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, made the stark warning after an investigation by the Guardian found that the Google-owned video platform was systematically promoting divisive and conspiratorial videos that were damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

“Companies like YouTube have immense power and influence in shaping the media and content that users see,” Warner said. “I’ve been increasingly concerned that the recommendation engine algorithms behind platforms like YouTube are, at best, intrinsically flawed in optimising for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content.” He added: “At worst, they can be highly susceptible to gaming and manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities.”

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is a closely guarded formula that determines which videos are promoted in the “Up next” column beside the video player. It drives the bulk of traffic to many videos on YouTube, where over a billion hours of footage are watched each day. However, critics have for months been warning that the complex recommendation algorithm has also been developing alarming biases or tendencies, pushing disturbing content directed at children or giving enormous oxygen to conspiracy theories about mass shootings.

The algorithm’s role in the 2016 election has, until now, largely gone unexplored.

The Guardian’s research was based on a previously unseen database of 8,000 videos recommended by the algorithm in the months leading up to the election. The database was collated at the time by Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer who built a program to detect which videos the company recommends. An analysis of the videos contained in the database suggests the algorithm was six times more likely to recommend videos that was damaging to Clinton than Trump, and also tended to amplify wild conspiracy theories about the former secretary of state.

‘Deep State’ Veterans find New Homes in Mainstream Media

“Former CIA director John Brennan has become the latest member of the NBC News and MSNBC family, officially signing with the network as a contributor,” chirps a recent article by The Wrap, as though that’s a perfectly normal thing to have to write and not a ghastly symptom of an Orwellian dystopia. NBC reports that the former head of the depraved, lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency “is now a senior national security and intelligence analyst.” Brennan, who played a key role in the construction of the establishment’s Russia narrative that has been used to manufacture public consent for world-threatening new cold war escalations, is just the latest addition in an ongoing trend of trusted mainstream media outlets being packed to the gills with stalwarts from the U.S. intelligence community. Brennan joins CIA and DoD Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash on the NBC/MSNBC lineup, who is serving there as a national security analyst, as well as NBC intelligence/national security reporter and known CIA collaborator Ken Dilanian.

Former Director of National Intelligence, Russiagate architect, and known Russophobic racist James Clapper was welcomed to the CNN “family” last year by Chris “It’s Illegal to Read WikiLeaks” Cuomo and now routinely appears as an expert analyst for the network. Last year CNN also hired a new national security analyst in Michael Hayden, who has served as CIA Director, NSA Director, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and an Air Force general. Former CIA analyst and now paid CNN analyst Phil Mudd, who last year caused Cuomo’s show to have to issue a retraction and apology for a completely baseless claim he made on national television asserting that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is “a pedophile”, is once again making headlines for suggesting that the FBI is entering into a showdown with the current administration over Trump’s decision to declassify the controversial Nunes memo. ...

The term “deep state” does not refer to a conspiracy theory but to a simple concept in political analysis which points to the undeniable reality that (A) plutocrats, (B) intelligence agencies, (C) defense agencies, and (D) the mainstream media hold large amounts of power in America despite their not being part of its elected government. You don’t need to look far to see how these separate groups overlap and collaborate to advance their own agendas in various ways. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for example, is deeply involved in all of the aforementioned groups: (A) as arguably the wealthiest person ever he is clearly a plutocrat, with a company that is trying to control the underlying infrastructure of the economy; (B) he is a CIA contractor; (C) he is part of a Pentagon advisory board; and (D) his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013 gave him total control over a major mainstream media outlet. Bezos did not purchase the Washington Post because his avaricious brain predicted that newspapers were about to make a profitable resurgence; he purchased it for the same reason he has inserted himself so very deeply into America’s unelected power infrastructure – he wants to ensure a solid foundation for the empire he is building. He needs a potent propaganda outlet to manufacture support for the power establishment that he is weaving his plutocratic tentacles through. This is precisely the same reason other mass media-controlling plutocrats are stocking their propaganda machines with intelligence community insiders.

Ecuador votes to limit presidents' terms in blow to Rafael Correa

Ecuadorians voted by a landslide to limit presidents to two terms in a nationwide referendum that delivered a blow to the former president Rafael Correa’s hopes of returning to power. Results from Sunday’s balloting showed voters approved by an almost two-to-one margin a measure reinstating the term limits that Correa eliminated from the constitution in 2015.

Lenín Moreno, who was a protege of Correa until taking office as president last year, hailed the results as a triumph for Ecuador’s democracy. Correa warned that they would usher in a new period of political instability.

The two men have been feuding bitterly almost since Moreno took office last year and quickly extended an olive branch to business leaders and indigenous groups who were bullied by Correa, a leftist firebrand. “The days of confrontation are behind us,” a triumphant Moreno said in televised remarks with his cabinet at the presidential palace. “It’s time to embrace each other.”

Correa governed Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, winning the loyalty of millions of poor Ecuadorians with generous health and social programs. But he feuded with the business community, the news media, environmentalists and indigenous groups, pushing through measures that consolidated executive power and expanded mineral exploration in indigenous territories.

Militarization Makes Police More Violent

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced yesterday the Trump Administration’s repeal an Obama-era rule limiting the distribution of certain military equipment (such as tracked vehicles, camouflage uniforms, high-powered rifles, bayonets, and grenade launchers), he dismissed concerns about police militarization as “superficial.”  The evidence suggests otherwise: militarization makes police more violent.

Earlier this year, a study conducted by researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Cincinnati, and Gardner-Webb concluded that the Pentagon’s 1033 weapons transfer program made participating departments more likely to engage in deadly violence. After receiving 1033 gear, departments were more likely to kill civilians as well as dogs.  The researchers included the number of dog killings by police (which, according to the Department of Justice, number around 10,000 a year) in order to control for possible variations in human behavior during the period of the study.

It turns out that having a hammer really does make everything look more like a nail.

As Paul Ryan Touts a Secretary’s $1.50 Weekly Pay Hike, Koch Bros. Reap $1.4B from GOP Tax Plan

Decrying 'Dog-Eat-Dog System,' #PoorPeoplesCampaign Kicks Off 40 Days of 'Moral Action'

In Washington, D.C. and more than two dozen states across the country on Monday, supporters of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival gathered to kick off 40 days of "moral action" to highlight "the human impact of policies which promote systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and environmental devastation."

Led by co-chairs Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis—and inspired by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s original Poor People's Campaign in the late 1960s—the campaign, which was announced last year, livestreamed a press conference from D.C. and delivered to lawmakers a letter outlining their demands for policy changes. ...

Barber, in a series of tweets, denounced rampant voter supression, systemic poverty, a lack of living wages, ecological devastation, and "Christian nationalism," emphasizing an urgent need for sweeping changes in public policy on a national scale.

"We are tired of a dog-eat-dog system of life," declared Rev. Saeed Richardson, director of policy for the Chicago Renewal Society.

"We are witnessing an assault on the poor, on immigrants, on black and brown people, and on the Earth," said Rev. Joan Javier-Duval in Vermont, "and we can't let it happen any longer."

"This is about fighting injustice anywhere so that we don't let ourselves lose the vision of what America can be," noted Diana Martinez of the pro-immigrant Kansas/Missouri Dream Alliance. "Because when racism and nativism become the rule of law it hurts all of us."

Wall St. plunges, Dow erases 2018's gains

U.S. stocks sold off sharply on Monday, with the Dow industrials falling back below 25,000, as a pullback from record highs deepened and investors grappled with rising bond yields and potentially firming inflation.

All three major U.S. indexes fell more than 1 percent while the Dow and S&P 500 dropped more than 2 percent. Late in the session, the Dow was down more than 1,000 points.

The energy .SPNY, financials .SPSY and healthcare .SPXHC sectors fell the most, but declines were spread broadly as all major 11 S&P groups dropped.

During Monday’s session, the benchmark S&P 500’s fall on Monday put its pullback from its Jan 26 record high at more than 6 percent.

Friday’s jobs report sparked worries over the prospects for inflation and a surge in bond yields, as well as concerns the Federal Reserve will raise rates at a faster pace than expected.

Hedge Fund-Driven Austerity Could Come Back to Bite the Hedge Funds Driving it in Puerto Rico

Virtually every headline about the Puerto Rican government’s newly released fiscal plan has focused on its finding that the island won’t be able to pay back the vast majority of funds owed to its creditors, many of them American-based hedge and mutual funds. Even in the new plan’s rosy projections for economic growth, the island would only be able to return a small fraction of its at least $74 billion in municipal debt in the next 30 years.

But informing those growth projections is an economic doctrine that has gotten it wrong in nation after nation. The borderline religious belief in austerity holds that cutting government spending is the route to growth for struggling economies, but it generally has the opposite effect in real life.

“The record is unambiguous that austerity does not lead to economic growth. It leads to contraction,” Nobel Prize winner and former chief World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz told The Intercept when asked about the plan. “What is deeply disturbing is that when you have cuts to things like health care, education, and infrastructure, that’s inevitably going to have implications for long-term economic growth.” ... Slower growth would mean even less ability for the government to pay back its creditors.

Sitglitz and other economists argued that the government’s previous fiscal plan “did not provide for economic recovery” and adopted a number of “unrealistic assumptions,” including “an over-optimistic view of how structural reforms, such as pension and other spending cuts, or downsizing the government labor force might stimulate growth, when the most likely effect is the opposite.” The next plan, they added, “must be fundamentally different than the previous one if Puerto Rico is to have a chance for recovery.”

It isn’t. Aside from even more bullish projections for economic growth, the government’s new draft is similar in spirit to the previous one and considerably longer — 92 pages compared to just 37 in the last version. It includes far more detailed proposals for sector-by-sector cuts and how to integrate more private sector involvement in the island’s essential services. To the chagrin of bondholders, neither the economists’ plan or the one put forward by Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s office predict that the island will have any capacity to service its debt over the short-term; the latter suggests it won’t be until 2048 when the island could handle paying off — at most — $15 billion.

Trump: Schiff and senior Obama intelligence figures are 'liars and leakers'

Donald Trump attacked Democrats as “un-American” and “treasonous” for failing to applaud him on Monday, only hours after attacking a laundry list of senior figures in the intelligence community as “liars and leakers”.

During a speech at an Ohio factory, the president denounced Democrats who did not clap at his state of the union address, even though partisan applause – and the lack thereof – has become a commonplace ritual of the speech. Republicans rarely clapped for Barack Obama, for instance, as was the case for Democrats listening to George W Bush. But Trump nonetheless said that Democrats were not patriotic for failing to credit him. “They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much,” he said.

Earlier on Monday, the president targeted in particular Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee. A prominent critic of the administration, Schiff opposed the release last week of a controversial memo, written by Republicans on the panel, about investigations into ties between Trump aides and Russia.

“Little Adam Schiff,” the president tweeted, “who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper!

Troubling Facts Behind Nunes Memo & FISA Court

EPA Division That Studies the Health Risks of Toxic Chemicals Is in a Fight for Its Life — Against the EPA

A small but vitally important program within the Environmental Protection Agency is in a fight for its life. The Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, is the only division of the EPA that independently assesses the toxicity of chemicals. IRIS supplies evaluations used by states, tribes, private developers, Superfund sites, and foreign countries, among others, and has long been a target of the companies whose profits can rise and fall based on its findings.

A meeting at the National Academy of Sciences on Thursday and Friday to review the program’s recent progress brought IRIS’s defenders together with its critics. Though the agenda focused on IRIS’s scientific process and whether the program has adequately incorporated guidance the academy gave it in 2014, questions about its survival permeated the meeting.

It’s not clear how IRIS might lose its ability to continue independently evaluating chemicals, but one possibility is that it would be folded into another division of the EPA, as the 2018 Senate Appropriations Bill proposes. According to that plan, staff would be moved from the current division of the agency, which is primarily concerned with science, to the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which deals with regulation.

The transfer from a scientific to a regulatory part of the agency would hobble the program, according to many familiar with its work. “Moving it would bias the risk assessments,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “You should try to keep the science separate, then use the independent science for regulation.”

An arguably bigger cause for concern is the current leader of that regulatory office: Nancy Beck, who worked at the American Chemistry Council before joining the EPA and seems to have maintained her allegiance to industry.

Also of Interest

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

The Nunes Memo and Katie Roiphe Article Show How Concerns for Due Process and Civil Liberties are Highly Selective and Self-Centered

New Report Finds Class Is a More Potent Predictor of Incarceration Than Race. But Racism Drives It.

If Americans don't like the word 'inequality', would 'fairness' be better?

Blowback: How a CIA-Backed Coup Led to the Rise of Iran’s Ayatollahs

Pawns in the Game: A Brief History of America and the Kurds

In Ukraine, Ultranationalist Militia Strikes Fear In Some Quarters

Meet the dogs of Chernobyl – the abandoned pets that formed their own canine community

A Little Night Music

Willie Love - Way Back

Willie Love w/Little Milton - Vanity Dresser Boogie

Willie Love - Willie Mae

Willie Love - Lonesome World Blues

Willie Love & his Three Aces - Nelson Street Blues

Willie Love & his Three Aces - 21 Minutes to Nine

Willie Love - Shady Lane Blues

Willie Love And His Three Aces - Feed My Body To The Fishes

Willie Love - My Own Boogie

Willie Love & his Three Aces - Everybody's Fishing