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This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin. Enjoy!

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable."

-- George Orwell

News and Opinion

Why Does Sen. Lindsey Graham Think Killing Millions of Koreans Would Be “Worth It”?

Why do so many leading U.S. politicians make mass murder sound like an ad for L’Oréal? Go back to May 1996, when Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” sat down with Madeleine Albright, the then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “We have heard that a half million children have died,” Stahl said, referring to the reported impact of United Nations sanctions on Iraq. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And — and you know, is the price worth it?” To which the dead-eyed Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

Half a million dead kids. Worth it. A now-infamous statement, which was much-quoted across the Middle East, yet provoked no public outcry in the United States at the time: no banner headlines, no scathing op-eds, no political fallout whatsoever. In fact, the very next year, the much-lauded Albright was promoted to secretary of state. It would take the former Clinton administration official seven long years to show even an ounce of regret or contrition for her outrageous remark, finally calling it “crazy” and a “terrible mistake” in her 2003 memoir, “Madam Secretary.”

Now, fast-forward to March 2018. “All the damage that would come from a war [with North Korea] would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said in an interview with CNN last week. What would that “damage” look like? Whether nuclear or non-nuclear, multiple studies and surveys of experts suggest millions of innocent North Koreans, South Koreans, and Japanese could be killed in such a conflict, making the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan look like minor skirmishes in comparison. ...

Why? Because non-American blood is cheap. Because non-American lives are considered collateral damage. Because the non-American victims of American bombs and bullets in faraway war zones — Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan — are what the British historian Mark Curtis calls “unpeople”: those whose “lives are deemed worthless, expendable in pursuit of power and commercial gain.”

Sen. Chris Murphy: The U.S. Is Exporting Violence & Killing Civilians in Illegal War in Yemen

Kim Jong Un offers to halt nuke tests in exchange for U.S. talks

North Korea is offering a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests in return for talks with U.S., a top South Korean official said Tuesday.

The potential opening comes after a delegation from Seoul held their first ever face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Monday.

Speaking in Seoul on his return from Pyongyang, national security director Chung Eui-yong claimed North Korea is open to “heart-to-heart” talks with the United States, “in an open-ended dialogue to discuss the issue of denuclearization and to normalize relations.” ...

Chung said North Korea had made clear during talks that it wouldn’t need nukes if the military threats against it were resolved and its security was assured. Pyongyang had agreed to stop conducting nuclear and missile tests while it was engaging in talks with South Korea, and promised not to use weapons, conventional or nuclear, against the South, he said.

After reports of chemical attacks, White House considers new military action against Syrian regime

The Trump administration has considered new military action against the Syrian government in response to reports of ongoing chemical weapons use, officials said, raising the prospect of a second U.S. strike on President Bashar al-Assad in less than a year.

President Trump requested options for punishing the Assad government after reported chlorine gas attacks — at least seven this year — and possibly other chemicals affecting civilians in opposition-controlled areas.

In a Feb. 25 incident, residents and medical staffers in a rebel-held Damascus suburb, Eastern Ghouta, described symptoms associated with chlorine exposure. One child died, medical staffers reported.

The president discussed potential actions early last week at a White House meeting that included Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, officials said.

One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to address internal deliberations, said that the president did not endorse any military action and that officials decided to continue monitoring the situation.

Pentagon: Operations against ISIS in Eastern Syria 'Paused'

The Pentagon says offensive operations against Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria have been paused because U.S.-backed Kurdish soldiers have shifted to a separate fight against Turkish forces. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Rob Manning, called it an "operational pause." ...

Against U.S. wishes, Kurdish members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces who had been fighting to eliminate remaining pockets of IS in the Euphrates River Valley have moved to the Afrin enclave in northwest Syria. Turkish forces have been attacking in Afrin for the past six weeks, seeking to drive out Kurdish forces.

Netanyahu attacks Iran and says Trump still set to abandon nuclear deal

Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that “darkness is descending” as Iran expands its sphere of influence in the Middle East. “The force behind so much that is bad is this radical tyranny in Tehran,” the Israeli prime minister told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) conference in Washington on Tuesday. “If I have a message for you today, it’s a very simple one: we must stop Iran, we will stop Iran.”

Plagued by a corruption scandal at home, Netanyahu is clearly relishing the role of international statesman during a five-day US trip, putting on a united front with Donald Trump on Iran and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Netanyahu told Aipac he had warned against the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Barack Obama administration and claimed vindication. Pointing to a map of the Middle East showing Iran’s alleged dominance, he said: “Darkness is descending on our region. Iran is building an aggressive empire: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, more to come.”

He said Tehran was seeking to build permanent military bases in Syria – where Iranian-backed forces support President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war – and develop factories there and in Lebanon for precision-guided missiles capable of striking Israel.

“I will not let that happen,” he said. “We will not let that happen.”

Netanyahu and Trump enjoy arguably the closest relationship of any two Israeli and US leaders. Both are also facing politically damaging domestic investigations embroiling their families. Both have dismissed the allegations as “fake news”.

Benjamin Netanyahu at AIPAC Summit: "Iran is building an aggressive empire"

Don't be evil? What the hell happened to that?

Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project

Google has quietly secured a contract to work on the Defense Department’s new algorithmic warfare initiative, providing assistance with a pilot project to apply its artificial intelligence solutions to drone targeting. The military contract with Google is routed through a Northern Virginia technology staffing company called ECS Federal, obscuring the relationship from the public.

The contract, first reported Tuesday by Gizmodo, is part of a rapid push by the Pentagon to deploy state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology to improve combat performance.

Google, which has made strides in applying its proprietary deep learning tools to improve language translation, and vision recognition, has a cross-team collaboration within its Google division to work on the AI drone project. The team, The Intercept has learned, is working to develop deep learning technology to help drone analysts interpret the vast image data vacuumed up from the military’s fleet of 1,100 drones to better target bombing strikes against the Islamic State.

The Pentagon Robbed Taxpayers of $16 Billion

Under the law, when a foreign government buys U.S. weapon systems through the Department of Defense those governments are required to reimburse the Department for research, development and other one-time costs for those systems. A recent audit by the Government Accountability Office found the department has waived $16 billion it could have recovered for taxpayers on $250 billion worth of weapons sold under the Foreign Military Sales program from 2012 to 2017.

Under the law, foreign governments can request a waiver from repaying these costs, which the department can grant for factors like interoperability or to avoid the loss of a sale. Defense contractors argued this requirement for foreign governments to repay the U.S. taxpayers raises the price of our weapon systems, making it more difficult to complete a sale.

When the department waives these repayments, that usually gives a competitive edge that defense contractors benefit from enormously. The contractors invest very little of their own money in research and development—those costs are generally paid by the taxpayers as part of the original acquisition process.

The contractors are then able to sell these weapons, developed at taxpayer expense, to foreign governments at a significant profit and only a minimal corporate investment. Allowing foreign governments to skate on the legally required repayments is little more than welfare for defense contractors, and this audit makes a compelling case for why Congress should close this loophole.

Lori Wallach and Michael Hudson Debate Trump’s Plan to Impose Steel & Aluminum Tariffs

CBO Warns Bipartisan Bank Bill Heightens Risk of Financial Crisis

The COngerssional Budget Office confirmed on Monday that bank lobbyists had successfully altered language of the so-called Citigroup carve-out, potentially allowing mega-banks Citi and JPMorgan Chase to add leverage and put more debt-fueled risk on their balance sheets. CBO gave Citi and JPMorgan a 50 percent chance of convincing regulators to let them take the carve-out, and their lobbyists are still working to increase that probability to 100 percent.

Factoring in the reality that the major banks will be lobbying regulators in the Trump administration could plausibly increase the likelihood of their success.

CBO’s cost estimate of S.2155, the bipartisan bank deregulation bill that faces its first test vote today, was obtained by the Washington Post on Monday and released publicly Tuesday morning. S.2155 would cost taxpayers $671 million over a 10-year period, CBO estimated, because of the increased possibility of bank failures and financial crisis from using more leverage and other deregulatory changes. “The probability is small under current law and would be slightly greater under the legislation,” they concluded.

Of course, if a crisis did occur, $671 million would seem like a pittance.

Elizabeth Warren attacks 'dangerous, wrong' bill to relax rules on US banks

Congress has forgotten the “devastating impact of the financial crisis”, Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Tuesday as Republicans moved closer to relaxing banking regulations implemented after the financial crash of 2008. A vote of 67-32, with support from Democrats facing tough midterm elections, allowed the Senate to begin debating a bill that would scale back some of the 2010 laws, known as Dodd-Frank, meant to prevent future abuses in the financial system.

Republican leaders said the bill would boost small banks and businesses. Senior Democrats said it was an attempt to deregulate big banks that caused the 2008 crash, inviting similar disaster.

Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, said in a morning press conference: “There’s Democratic and Republican support because the lobbyists have been pushing since the first day Dodd-Frank passed to weaken the regulations on these giant banks.

“People in this building may forget the devastating impact of the financial crisis 10 years ago – but the American people have not forgotten. The American people remember. The millions of people who lost their homes; the millions of people who lost their jobs; the millions of people who lost their savings, they remember and they do not want to turn lose the big banks again.”

Police Corruption Trial Reveals More Than 'A Few Bad Apples'

Striking West Virginia teachers just won big over Republican lawmakers

Teachers in West Virginia have reached a deal that would end their nearly two-week-long statewide strike. Both house voted unanimously to give teachers — as well all state employees — a 5 percent pay raise on Tuesday. That’s one percent more than the Republican state Senate offered the teachers on Saturday.

The West Virginia teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. Only in Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Mississippi are teachers paid less. The average teacher salary in the state is about $45,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but not all teachers make that much.

“I keep seeing this number thrown around — $45K is the average teacher salary. I’ve been teaching for 7 years and I am nowhere near that,” Leah Clay Stone, a West Virginia teacher told Dissent magazine. ...

On Saturday, it appeared that a deal had been reached that would allow the teachers to go back to work. Union leadership even called off the strike. But when Republicans in the state Senate passed a version of the bill that only included a 4 percent pay increase — less than 5 percent that teachers were demanding — the teachers stayed on strike.

DCCC Operative Says Attack on Texas Primary Candidate Won’t Be the Last Around the Country

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released an opposition dossier on Texas Democratic candidate Laura Moser two weeks ago, triggering a backlash that stretched from outside progressive groups all the way to Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. But at California’s recent state convention, Kyle Layman, the DCCC’s top staffer for the west coast, suggested it wouldn’t be the last such intervention, according to multiple sources familiar with the message he shared.

Layman has overseen what is shaping up to be an extraordinary debacle in California, with multiple failures stacking up on each other to produce the possibility that Democrats will fail to field candidates in the general election in several winnable districts. ... Failing to anticipate the easily foreseeable wave of interest in running for office as a Democrat in 2018, Layman cast a wide recruiting net. That net reeled in a lot of fish — and many more fish hopped in the boat on their own. That would be great in most states, but the problem for Democrats is that California has a top-two system, which means that regardless of party, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election.

So think about it: If there are two Republicans running, and seven Democrats in the race, Republican voters will split their votes among the two, while Democrats will have to pick between seven. So the two Republicans finish first and second, while the top Democrat comes in third and fails to make the general election. ... That’s where Laura Moser comes in. Layman, according to the people who spoke with him at the convention, explained that the DCCC did not believe Moser, unlike others in the primary, had any chance to win in the district in suburban Houston, held by longtime Republican Rep. John Culberson. In a case like that, Layman said, the party committee wouldn’t hesitate to intervene, just as it would do in California if candidates resisted gentle nudges to step aside. ...

Howie Klein, who has been writing critically about the DCCC for at least a decade, previously reported that Layman said at the convention that “the only reason they savagely attacked Laura Moser was to send a message to Orange Co. Dems that they’re going to get the same treatment.”

Before Pushing Tariffs, Wilbur Ross Had a Messy History With the U.S. Steel Industry

Among the people behind President Donald Trump’s plan to impose steep tariffs on steel was Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. On February 16, Ross released a Commerce Department report finding that the amount of steel imported to the United States threatens “to impair the national security.” The problem, according to the report, is that while steel is necessary for our defense and infrastructure, the U.S. doesn’t produce enough of it. In recent years, foreign countries have developed a much greater steel production capacity than the U.S. “On an average month, China produces nearly as much steel as the U.S. does in a year,” a press release accompanying the report explained.

What’s not mentioned in the report is that Ross, whose net worth is estimated at around $700 million, made a good chunk of that fortune selling U.S. steel companies to a foreign entity. In 2002, Ross and his investing partners began buying up steel companies that were either in or near bankruptcy, including LTV Corp., Weirton, and Bethlehem Steel. They consolidated them into the International Steel Group and, in 2004, sold that company to the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, making some $2 billion in cash on the deal. ...

At the time of the ISG sale, the Washington Post noted that Ross was able to make a stunning 12-fold gain on his initial investment in part by not paying steel workers’ pensions and retiree health care costs. But there was another way that Ross maximized his profits: by not putting up millions of dollars to ensure that the environmental messes associated with the plants he bought would be cleaned up. Several state and federal environmental laws require owners of industrial properties to place bonds to cover the estimated future costs of cleaning the sites. The government had requested $162 million from Bethlehem Steel to clean nine Superfund sites associated with the company, according to a 2007 report by the Center for Public Integrity, but the bankrupt steel company wound up negotiating a deal that was worth “$9,000 at the end of the bankruptcy process, or three-tenths of a cent on the dollar.”

The agreement ISG made with Bethlehem Steel in 2003, which was approved by a U.S. bankruptcy court, minimized the company’s responsibility for pollution that had happened before the sale. Many companies have used bankruptcy filings to evade financial responsibility for pollution. But, while one judge approved the limitation of ISG’s environmental responsibility, another lamented it. “An agreement between private parties to restrict liability for violation of federal and state environmental laws may well be contrary to public policy,” as U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz wrote in a 2011 ruling about cleanup of one of the former Bethlehem Steel mills.

Environmental racism case: EPA rejects Alabama town's claim over toxic landfill

The US Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed a civil rights case brought by residents of a small, overwhelmingly African American town in Alabama who have spent much of the past decade battling a toxic landfill they blame for causing a myriad of physical and mental illnesses.

In a 28-page letter, the EPA said there was “insufficient evidence” that authorities in Alabama had breached the Civil Rights Act by allowing an enormous landfill site containing 4m tons of coal ash to operate near residents in Uniontown. A separate claim that the landfill operator retaliated against disgruntled residents was also turned down.

Uniontown has been framed by advocates as one the most egregious examples of environmental racism in the US, where a largely poor and black population has had a polluting facility foisted upon it with little redress. “To say there is insufficient evidence is ludicrous; I just can’t take it seriously,” said Ben Eaton, who has lived in Uniontown for 33 years. Eaton blames regular headaches and burning eyes upon the landfill, which he said has an odor than can be smelled from several miles away.

“The protection we’ve got from the government is little to none,” he said. “I can’t help but feel it’s because the population is mainly black and poor. This was forced on us. If this was a white, wealthy community, this would’ve never happened.”

The huge Arrowhead landfill rubs up against Uniontown, where about 90% of the population is black and half of the town lives below the poverty line. Arrowhead, operated by Green Group Holdings since 2011, sprawls over an area twice the size of New York City’s Central Park, accepting the waste from 33 different states.

America's horrifying new plan for animals: highspeed slaughterhouses

The USDA is now accepting public comments on its proposed rule that it euphemistically dubbed the “Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection”. As a former undercover investigator who worked inside a pig slaughterhouse operating under the pilot project that was, at the time, called HIMP, I’ve seen firsthand the hazardous and cruel nature of this controversial program and can say with certainty that it’s anything but “modern”.

This expanded program, formally called the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS), would allow facilities to increase slaughter speeds, while reducing the number of trained government inspectors on the lines. In other words, the responsibility of food safety oversight is largely shifted into the hands of slaughter plant employees. Combine this with faster speeds on the kill floor and the result is problems that can – and do – go unnoticed.

For nearly six months, I worked undercover inside Quality Pork Processors (QPP), no typical pig slaughterhouse. An exclusive Hormel Foods supplier, QPP kills about 1,300 pigs every hour operating under the high-speed pilot program. That’s more than 21 pigs per minute, making QPP one of the fastest pig-killing facilities in the nation.

QPP has widely been considered a model for the USDA’s nationwide expansion of the pilot program through NSIS, but when no one thought the public or USDA was watching, behind the slaughterhouse’s closed doors, I documented pig carcasses covered in feces and abscesses being processed for human consumption, and workers – under intense pressure to keep up with high line speeds – beating, dragging, and electrically prodding pigs to make them move faster.

NSIS may also allow higher numbers of sick and injured pigs too weak even to stand (known as “downers”) to be slaughtered for food. As documented on my hidden camera, these animals endured particularly horrific abuses as they were forced to the kill floor in a desperate attempt to keep the slaughter lines moving as fast as possible.

One QPP employee even said to me on camera, “If the USDA is around, they could shut us down.” That, in a nutshell, is the underlying problem with this initiative: it’s a program that largely allows the slaughterhouse to police itself.

Also of Interest

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

The New Blacklist

As the Trial of Omar Mateen’s Wife Begins, New Evidence Undermines Beliefs About the Pulse Massacre, Including Motive

Teacher Unrest Spreads to Oklahoma, Where Educators Are “Desperate for a Solution”

New Orleans Surveillance Program Gives Powerful Tools to a Police Department With a History of Racism and Abuse

A Little Night Music

Hubert Sumlin - When You're In Love

Hubert Sumlin - Broke and hungry

Hubert Sumlin - She's Into Something

Hubert Sumlin - Road Of No Return

Les Paul with Hubert Sumlin

Willie Dixon & Hubert Sumlin - It's You, Baby

Hubert Sumlin w/Mighty Sam McClain - A Soul That's Been Abused

Hubert Sumlin - Blue Guitar

Hubert Sumlin - Groove

Hubert Sumlin - Play It, Cool

Hubert Sumlin - You Got To Help Me

Hubert Sumlin - Come On In My House

Hubert Sumlin - Hubert's Blues

Hubert Sumlin w/Billy Branch - Everything Gonna Be Alright

Hubert Sumlin and David Johansen - Killing Floor