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“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

-- Hannah Arendt

News and Opinion

Pentagon says it is entertaining Trump’s request for a big military parade

Some dreams really can come true: Top officials in the White House and Pentagon are considering marching a full-scale military parade through Washington, D.C. on the orders of President Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. ...

Apparently, Trump was inspired by France’s Bastille Day parade, which he attended when he visited Paris and French President Emmanuel Macron. France goes all out for the annual parade — enlisting military tanks and jets in the celebration — and Trump told reporters at the time that the United States was “going to have to try to top it.”

Such a parade will likely cost millions of dollars. Sources told the Post that the celebration may take place on Nov. 11, in order to recognize the centennial of the end of World War I. ...

Historians, however, warned the Post that such a parade may be less evocative of American patriotism and more aligned with totalitarian or nationalist regimes like North Korea and the Soviet Union. Though President Harry Truman and President Jack Kennedy included military parades during their inaugurations, those took place during the Cold War and were meant to combat similar displays in the Soviet Union.

“I don’t think there’s a lack of love and respect for our armed forces in the United States,” Rice University presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the Post. “What are they going to do, stand there while Donald Trump waves at them? It smacks of something you see in a totalitarian country — unless there’s a genuine, earnest reason to be doing it.”

Pentagon chief sees new nuclear missile as bargaining chip against Russians

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Washington plans to develop a nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile as negotiating leverage against Moscow.

"I don't think the Russians would be willing to give up something to gain nothing from us," Mattis said in comments to the House Armed Services Committee during testimony to discuss the new U.S. defense and nuclear strategies.

The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released Friday by the Pentagon calls for the U.S. to develop "a modern nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile." The document said the sea-launched cruise missile as well as a new "low-yield" option on the Trident missile would "provide additional diversity in platforms, range, and survivability, and a valuable hedge against future nuclear 'break-out' scenarios."

Mattis indicated that the nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missile would be something that U.S. diplomats could use as negotiating leverage during future arms control discussions with Moscow. He also said that the U.S. doesn't want to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty despite Washington's contention that Russia is in violation of the Cold War-era agreement because of Moscow's deployment of a ground-launched cruise missile.

"We have an ongoing issue with Russia's violation of the INF," Mattis said. "I want to make certain that our negotiators have something to negotiate with."

Trump’s “bloody nose” plan for North Korea could make a mess of the Olympics

North Korea is saying all the right things ahead of this month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where, in a sign of improved relations, it will join its southern neighbor in the festivities. But not everyone is buying into Kim Jong Un’s charm offensive. ...

With all eyes on the Olympic Games, murmurs of a possible U.S. military intervention on the Korean Peninsula hasn’t quite thrown the famously imperturbable South Korean public into a panic. But it has struck a nerve among the country’s policymakers and government officials, who worry about what's in store after the games conclude. ...

The sudden and mysterious withdrawal last Tuesday of the United States’ pick for ambassador to South Korea, Georgetown University professor Victor Cha, further stoked these concerns throughout Seoul’s political elite. A widely respected, hard-nosed diplomat who had already been approved by South Korea in a process called agrément, Cha was reportedly dropped after disagreeing with Trump administration officials over the “bloody nose” strategy. For South Korea, the sudden nixing of Cha sent an ominous message: If Cha isn’t hawkish enough for the Trump administration, then who is?

Trump recently reassured South Korean President Moon Jae-in that the United States was not considering a “bloody nose” strike on North Korea, but former South Korean government officials told VICE News that it was a reminder that the delicate equilibrium with Pyongyang has inextricably changed. With Kim’s nuclear missile program nearing completion, the United States is no longer facing a threat-by-proxy but rather the possibility of direct attack on its own soil. For South Korea, this has introduced an uneasy new reality, in which the United States might be more willing to take matters into its own hands despite the risk of triggering a war that could leave tens of thousands dead in Korea.

China is totally going to love India’s latest nuclear missile test

India fired yet another missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead on Tuesday, ratcheting up tensions over the brewing arms race with neighboring nuclear giant China. The test of an Agni-I missile follows back-to-back launches in January of the longer-range Agni-IV and even more powerful Agni-V, which is capable of hitting China’s biggest cities on the Pacific coast. ...

Following India’s test of the Agni-V (“Agni” in Hindi means “fire”) on January 18, the Chinese state-owned newspaper, the Global Times, wrote that the launch posed “a direct threat to China's security as well as a big challenge to the global efforts of nuclear nonproliferation.” The paper argued China should respond by building up its military and economic presence in the Indian Ocean.

India has already been eyeing China’s rising profile in the Indian Ocean with unease, recently signing an agreement to build up naval infrastructure on the archipelago of Seychelles, in a move widely seen as aimed at countering Chinese influence. ...

The recent spate of tests follows a tense 10-week border standoff between India and China last summer, during which a few hundred soldiers from both sides stared each other down over a parcel of land claimed by China as well as by India’s ally, Bhutan. At another heated border standoff in the Himalayas, staring devolved into fisticuffs, during which soldiers were filmed throwing rocks at each other.

Syria: "The US wants to keep Syria weak divided and poor"

Court to rule next week on new bid by Assange to have UK case dropped

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange lost one legal bid to have a UK arrest warrant against him quashed on Tuesday but immediately launched another, to have the British authorities halt any action against him on public interest grounds. Judge Emma Arbuthnot said she would give her decision on Feb. 13. ...

Judge Arbuthnot rejected a legal argument to have the arrest warrant against him quashed on the basis that with the Swedish case dropped there was no longer any justification for it. “I am not persuaded that the warrant should be withdrawn,” Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate of England and Wales, said during the hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court.

Assange’s lawyer Mark Summers then launched a separate argument that even if his client were arrested and brought to court, it would not be in the interests of justice to take any further action. He said Assange had had “reasonable grounds” for fleeing to the embassy in 2012 because of his fear that he would be ultimately be extradited to the United States.

A United Nations working group has ruled his present situation is “arbitrary, unreasonable, unnecessary and disproportionate,” Summers noted. “The last 5-1/2 years he has spent might be thought adequate, if not severe punishment for the actions he took,” he added.

U.S. Military Launches Broad Investigation of SEAL Team 6 After Green Beret Killing in Mali

A criminal investigation into the death of Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, who was killed last June while deployed in Bamako, Mali, has prompted a broad internal military audit and investigation into SEAL Team 6, according to a military official and two others briefed on the case. Investigators suspect the two SEALs being investigated in the Melgar case were stealing cash from operational funds used for informants and other contingencies while deployed. The new investigation aims to determine whether such thefts are a routine practice among the members of the elite counterterrorism unit, according to the military official and two other people familiar with the financial investigation. All three sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. The SEALs have denied stealing the cash.

The additional investigation sheds new light on the homicide case, which gained national attention last fall, and threatens to further tarnish the reputation of SEAL Team 6, the U.S. military’s most storied and mythologized command.

Melgar, staff sergeant of the 3rd Special Forces Group, died last June after being allegedly “choked out” by SEAL Team 6 operator Anthony DeDolph as fellow SEAL Adam Matthews watched. Investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service have finished interviewing witnesses, and one of the military officials said the case was expected to be handed over to the Navy for a decision of whether to prosecute DeDolph and Matthews.

Germany: Merkel's conservatives and Social Democrats clinch coalition deal

Merkel's party loses key ministries in coalition deal

Angela Merkel has exposed herself to criticism from her own party after she took a crucial step towards ending a four-month period of political uncertainty by reaching a coalition agreement at the cost of giving the centre-left Social Democrats a greater role in government. Following a marathon of all-night dealmaking sessions and several missed deadlines, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union on Wednesday agreed on the terms of a fresh deal with the SPD, whose supporters will now get a final say on the agreement through a membership vote.

But the prize of a renewed “grand coalition” is likely to come at the cost of ceding key ministries to her junior coalition partner. The SPD leader, Martin Schulz, can be optimistic about rallying support for a new term in government after securing three influential trophy ministries. The draft coalition deal foresees the centre-left party filling the finance, foreign and labour ministries, as well as the roles for family, justice and the environment.

Schulz, who had ruled out playing a role in a Merkel government in the immediate aftermath of last year’s elections, is reportedly planning to hand his party leadership to the former labour minister Andrea Nahles and take charge of the foreign ministry himself.

The SPD mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, seen as a pragmatic centrist from the party’s liberal wing, is set to succeed the powerful Wolfgang Schäuble in the finance ministry, a key role for the future direction of the eurozone.

Amazon Invents Vibrating Wristband To Control Workers

Fear is the hottest stock on the market right now

Monday’s market plunge may have leveled off, but the “fear index” — the indicator that Wall Street uses to measure market volatility — is still soaring. ...

This index, established in the early 1990s, was essentially designed to track just how nervous investors are, and how likely stock prices are to fluctuate in the nearterm. It shows investors had been sitting comfy through early 2018, with the index value last week hovering between 13 and 14. But as the stocks dropped toward the end of last week, the fear index crawled up, finally spiking Tuesday morning at just above 50 — an increase of about 280 percent. The Dow, on the other hand, was down nearly 10 percent from where it had been prior to the free fall. ...

As the market levels off, however, so has the fear index — to some extent. But things aren’t quite copacetic in investorland: Traders as still twice as afraid as they were last week, according to the fear index, which hovered around 37 as of press time, right where it was at Monday’s close.

“They were Both Cops & Robbers”: Baltimore Police Scandal Exposes Theft, Cover-Ups & Drug Peddling

Trump is thirsty for another government shutdown

Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday he would “love to see a shutdown” if immigration reform was not part of an impending spending bill. ...

In the White House briefing room soon after, Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Trump's statement, saying he was just “encouraging people to do their jobs.”

The president has accused Congressional Democrats of holding up a long-term deal that would include a solution to the immigration impasse that led to last month’s partial three-day shutdown.

However, Trump’s comments threaten to destabilize current negotiations that had looked positive.

While Trump was baiting his opponents, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in separate news conferences, made clear a deal was close.

The House passed a temporary spending bill Tuesday to extend most agency funding until March 23, the fifth such stopgap in the last four months.

House GOP Leaves Crucial Infant Health Care Program Out of Spending Bill

House Republicans passed yet another short-term spending bill Tuesday night to avert a government shutdown. It’s the fifth continuing resolution, or CR, this fiscal year (who’s counting, though?), and while it includes funding for a number of health programs left out of previous stopgap measures, the GOP once again excluded a program meant to help vulnerable new mothers and their infants.

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, known as MIECHV, expired at the end of September and is currently operating on leftover funds. A failure to reauthorize the program will lead to enrollment freezes, contract expirations, and staff layoffs. Native American communities, where families disproportionately experience poor health outcomes and scarce funding, would be hit the hardest. The program has been lauded as a model of evidence-based policy by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, which makes it all the more jarring that more than 120 days have lapsed without reauthorization.

Congressional Republicans, who last year found a way to pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill, have been unable to find a way to pay for MIECHV, which is relatively inexpensive, currently funded at $400 million annually. The House previously introduced a provision that would make states match funds for the program using state, county, and private funds, a proposal that was controversial because it would end the program in states unable to make the match. Republicans have also suggested that MIECHV could be funded only by taking money away from other safety net programs, such as Medicaid or welfare, a proposition opposed by advocates of the home visit program.

Senate announces two-year budget deal but House could stall over Dreamers

Senate leaders on Wednesday announced a far-reaching agreement that would set federal spending levels for the next two years, a major victory for both parties after years of lamenting Congress’s reliance on short-term solutions to avert financial crises. The bipartisan plan would raise defense and non-defense spending by $300bn and provide billions of additional dollars in disaster relief funding for areas ravaged by wildfires and hurricanes last year. It would also increase the debt ceiling and allow the government to take on new debt for the next year.

However, the deal does not resolve the thorny issue of immigration reform. ...

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, unveiled the deal on Wednesday during a floor speech. “I am pleased to announce that our bipartisan, bicameral negotiations on defense spending and other priorities have yielded a significant agreement,” McConnell said. He added that the measure was not perfect but was an “achievement” nonetheless. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who followed McConnell to the floor, echoed his counterpart. “The budget deal doesn’t have everything Democrats want, it doesn’t have everything Republicans want, but it has a great deal of what the American people want,” Schumer said. ...

The legislation, however, could face barriers in the House without a commitment from the speaker, Paul Ryan, to consider legislation that would protect Dreamers, the young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. On Wednesday the leader of House Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, threatened to withhold support for any budget deal not accompanied by a promise to consider immigration legislation.

FBI agents’ texts call Congress “less than worthless” and “contemptible”

Newly disclosed text messages between two FBI employees who were lovers reveal immense adoration for then-FBI Director James Comey and contempt for Congress.

“God he’s SO good,” wrote then-FBI agent Peter Strzok on July 7, 2016, the day Comey testified before Congress about the agency’s decision not to press charges against Clinton over her use of a private email server at the State Department. “I know,” responded FBI lawyer Lisa Page. “Brilliant public speaker. And brilliant distillation of fact.” “Yep,” responded Strzok. “[Republican Rep. Jason] Chaffetz is in over his head.” ...

Chaffetz was the chairman — he has since stepped down — of the House Oversight Committee, which was interviewing Comey a few months before the election.

“God l hate Congress. So utterly worthless,” Page wrote.

“Less than worthless,” Strzok replied. “Contemptible.”

EPA head Scott Pruitt says global warming may help 'humans flourish'

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has suggested that global warming may be beneficial to humans, in his latest departure from mainstream climate science.

Pruitt, who has previously erred by denying that carbon dioxide is a key driver of climate change, has again caused consternation among scientists by suggesting that warming temperatures could benefit civilization.

The EPA administrator said that humans are contributing to climate “to a certain degree”, but added: “We know humans have most flourished during times of warming trends. There are assumptions made that because the climate is warming that necessarily is a bad thing. “Do we know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100 or year 2018?” he told a TV station in Nevada. “It’s fairly arrogant for us to think we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”

Pruitt said he wanted an “honest, transparent debate about what we do know and what we don’t know, so the American people can be informed and make decisions on their own”. Under Pruitt’s leadership, the EPA is mulling whether to stage a televised “red team blue team” debate between climate scientists and those who deny the established science that human activity is warming the planet.

Coal Lobbyist Hosted Fundraisers for Senators Evaluating His Nomination for Top EPA Post

While waiting for a nomination to the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, cozied up with the senators who would decide upon his appointment in the most direct way possible: giving them money. Wheeler, who was first rumored to be tapped for the EPA last March, raised funds for Republican senators on the committee that makes the preliminary decision on confirming appointments to the agency.  

Fundraising documents obtained by The Intercept and the watchdog group Documented show that Wheeler hosted campaign fundraisers for two members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. — last May. The event for Inhofe was held at Rosa Mexicano, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C., and the event for Barrasso took place at Wheeler’s office on K Street in the capital. Federal Election Committee records show both senators received donations of Wheeler’s law firm PAC last year. Barrasso received $2,500 and Inhofe’s leadership PAC received $1,000.

In October, Wheeler was formally nominated to serve as the deputy administrator of the EPA, the No. 2 slot at the agency. His confirmation hearing was in November; the Senate panel approved his nomination, but it never went before the full chamber for a final vote. His nomination came back before the committee at the start of the new legislative session last month and a vote is expected Wednesday. 

Wheeler manages the energy and natural resources practice at the law firm of Faegre Baker Daniels. His lobbying energy clients have included the coal company Murray Energy, the largest privately owned coal firm in the United States, as well as Xcel Energy, a major utility interest group. ... Before he joined the law firm in 2009, Wheeler spent 14 years as a staffer for Inhofe, including as chief counsel for the senator on the Environment and Public Works committee.

Canada quarrel pits British Columbia against Alberta in battle of oil and wine

Relations between two Canadian provinces have turned vinegary in an escalating row over oil and wine. The oil-rich region of Alberta announced a ban on wine imports from neighbouring British Columbia amid the brewing dispute over a contentious pipeline expansion.

The quarrel began last week when British Columbia’s provincial government called for further studies of the risk of spills if the Kinder Morgan pipeline is expanded from Alberta to Vancouver’s coastline. In response, Alberta’s premier, Rachel Notley, walked away from negotiations to purchase electricity from BC – a yearly deal worth $400m.

Then late on Tuesday, Notley instructed the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission to immediately halt all imports of British Columbia wines. “The wine industry is very important to BC. Not nearly as important as the energy industry is to Alberta and Canada, but important nonetheless,” said Notley at a press conference.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Memo and Memoer — The Bipartisan Love Affair With Mass Surveillance

The First Amendment Transcends the Law. It Gives Us Strength in Dark Times.

Lebanese leaders say Israel threatens border stability

Who is Containing Whom?

A Little Night Music

Joe Carter - Sloppy Drunk

Joe Carter - Rock Me

Joe Carter & Big John Wrencher - (Sail On) Honey Bee

Joe Carter + his Chicago Broomdusters - Treat Me The Way You Do

Joe Carter - I'm Worried

Joe Carter - Dust My Broom

Joe Carter - Hoochie Koochie Man

Joe Carter - Bobby's Rock

Joe Carter - Shake Your Moneymaker