Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Hank Ballard. Enjoy!

"Let me tell you what I liked about that Gulf War: it was the first war that appeared on every television channel, including cable. And even though the TV show consisted largely of Pentagon war criminals displaying maps and charts, it got very good ratings. And that makes sense, because we like war. We're a warlike people. We can't stand not to be fucking with someone. We couldn't wait for the Cold War to end so we could climb into the big Arab sandbox and play with our nice new toys. We enjoy war. And one reason we enjoy it is that we're good at it. You know why we're good at it? Because we get a lot of practice.

This country is only 200 years old, and already we've had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years, So we're good at it. And it's just as well we are, because we're not very good at anything else. Can't build a decent car anymore. Can't make a TV set, a cell phone, or a VCR. Got no steel industry left. No textiles. Can't educate our young people. Can't get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit outta your country, all right. We can bomb the shit outta your country. Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don't we? That's our hobby now. But it's also our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya. You got some brown people in your country? Tell 'em to watch the fuck out, or we'll goddamn bomb them!"

-- George Carlin

News and Opinion

Oh, my. If only North Korea would assassinate people the right way, like the U.S. does with drones, the U.S. wouldn't have to have unfortunately-timed sanctions that appear to be indicating that they would rather have a nuclear war with North Korea.

U.S. Hits North Korea With Sanctions For Murder of Kim's Half-Brother

The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on North Korea Tuesday, a response to the regime’s 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother in Malaysia using a banned chemical weapon. The announcement from Washington came hours after South Korea announced a potentially historic breakthrough in talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over denuclearization.

Kim Jong Nam was murdered waiting to board a flight at Kuala Lumpur airport by two women who covered his face with VX, a nerve agent designated a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations. Malaysian authorities have accused Pyongyang of orchestrating the attack, a charge the North has denied.

Yet the timing of Wednesday’s announcement appears odd. The State Department said it concluded on Feb. 22 that North Korea was responsible for the attack, yet the announcement came only hours after South Korea revealed Kim Jong Un was open to talks with the U.S. about relinquishing its nuclear arsenal.

“The United States strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons to conduct an assassination,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “This public display of contempt for universal norms against chemical weapons use further demonstrates the reckless nature of North Korea and underscores that we cannot afford to tolerate a North Korean WMD program of any kind.”

North Korea negotiations: What impact did economic sanctions have on Pyongyang over the years?

As Trump Threats Stir Global Arms Race, New Report Details the Nuclear War Profiteers

A new report offers a comprehensive look at who's profiting from the new nuclear arms race. "If you have been wondering who benefits from Donald Trump's threats of nuclear war, this report has that answer," said Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

ICAN, along with Netherlands-based peace group Pax, released the report, entitled "Don't Bank on the Bomb," on Wednesday. It shows that 329 financial institutions in 24 countries invested $525 billion into the top 20 companies involved in the production, maintenance, and modernization of nuclear weapons from January 2014 through October 2017. The good news is that the number of investors marks 30 fewer institutions than in last year's report. Yet despite the shorter list, the institutions are investing about $81 billion more in these companies that make weapons of mass destruction. The increased funds, added with the fact that the nuclear-armed states are "modernizing" their arsenals as well as bellicose rhetoric from world leaders like Trump, make clear the need for the global public to campaign for divestment, the groups argue.

The report's "Hall of Shame" shows the top 10 financial institutions with the biggest investments in nuclear weapons manufacturing—all U.S. firms—are: BlackRock, Capital Group, Vanguard, State Street, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Evercore, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs. These institutions accounted for nearly half ($253 billion) of the total investments made.

The top three nuclear weapons producers, by investments, are also all based in the U.S.: Boeing, Honeywell International, and Lockheed Martin.

Those corporations, and the 17 others that are most heavily involved in nuclear weapons making, stated Fihn, "are the companies that stand to profit from indiscriminate mass murder of civilians. We grow less safe while they cash in on chaos by banking on Armageddon."

Is your financial institution funding the production of #nuclearweapons? See if your bank made the list and send them a clear message to STOP investing in weapons of mass destruction. https://t.co/iCVcvdJXuj #ProfitsofDoom #EndofNukes pic.twitter.com/XwreKs2nfD

— ICAN (@nuclearban) March 7, 2018

Legal Scholars Trash Pentagon’s Effort To Prevent Senate Debate On Yemen War

Two top legal experts have told the Senate’s leaders that they see little merit in a Trump administration legal opinion criticizing Senate efforts to debate U.S. involvement in Yemen’s civil war. “The insinuation... that the President may unilaterally engage the United States in military action to defend presidentially decreed American interests is frivolous,” write Bruce Ackerman, a Yale Law School professor, and Bruce Fein, a Reagan-era Justice Department official, in a letter obtained by HuffPost. “If the law means anything, it means that the Senate should debate and vote on S.J. Res. 54.”

At issue is a bill introduced last week by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) that invokes the War Powers Resolution and demands that senators consider whether to end U.S. assistance for a Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since 2015. The Pentagon sent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) a letter criticizing the proposal before it was even officially filed, HuffPost revealed last week. ...

The senators are working on their own response, two Hill sources have told HuffPost. And the Trump administration is not backing down from the fight: Officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community will make their case on Yemen policy to Senate staff on Wednesday morning, two sources said. Movement on the bill is expected next week and may come just as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman, arrives in Washington to visit President Donald Trump.

Inside Syria: With its enemies diverted or fighting each other, Isis is making a swift and deadly comeback

Isis was supposed to have been decisively defeated last year when it lost Raqqa and Mosul, its de facto capitals in Syria and Iraq respectively. The self-declared Isis caliphate, the size of Great Britain only three years ago, had shrunk to a few enclaves in the deserts of eastern Syria and western Iraq.

But it is turning out that the enemies of Isis had written it off too early. ... A senior Kurdish official in Syria says that 170 of their forces have died in combat with Isis in the past six weeks. On 19 February in Iraq, Isis ambushed an intelligence unit of the Hashd al-Shaabi pro-government militia in the Hawijah district west of Kirkuk and killed 27 of them. Western diplomats say that they are worried by the increasing number of pin-prick attacks, which mean that Isis is beginning to get back in business. In Qamishli, the first Isis car bomb in six months, killed five people and wounded seven last month. There are other signs of an Isis resurgence in its old strongholds. A recent visitor to Deir Ezzor province warned that “local people talk of an Isis comeback and you should not be on the roads after 3pm, because that is when the SDF [the mixed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces] abandon their checkpoints for the night”. Similarly in Hawijah, government officials are reported to be spending the night in Kirkuk where they are safe from Isis assassination squads.

The main cause of the rebirth of Isis, though still limited in scale, is not difficult to detect. Those who claimed to have destroyed the movement last year were dividing the lion’s skin when it was badly wounded but not quite as dead as they believed. After declaring victory prematurely, they became diverted by other crises. In Iraq it was the Kurdish referendum on independence that provoked the Baghdad government to send its forces that had been fighting Isis to retake Kirkuk and other territories disputed with the Kurds on 16 October. ... In Syria, it was the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin north of Aleppo on 20 January which suddenly made the military situation more favourable to Isis. Asked if Isis is getting stronger, Aldar Khalil, the co-chairman of the Executive Committee for a Democratic Society – which runs the 30 per cent of Syria held by the Kurds with US backing – says: “Go look at our cemeteries. Every day we lose five, seven or 18 martyrs. Isis are now the ones doing the attacking, while we used to be the ones who were on the offensive.”

The Arab-Kurdish SDF is said by the Americans to have a strength of 57,000 fighters, but this is not large, given the sheer size of the Kurdish-held territories. The core of the SDF is the YPG Kurds and many of these are being transferred from confronting Isis in Deir Ezzor to fighting the Turkish invasion of Afrin in the north-west. Elham Ahmad, co-chairman of the Syrian Democratic Council, which helps administer the Kurdish-held area, comes from Afrin where her family still lives. She says that “the front against Isis is fractured. My relatives who were fighting Isis in Deir Ezzor know they must go back to Afrin to fight the Turks there.” ...

It is likely that Isis will have taken measures to keep some of their experienced commanders safe and prepared hideouts and weapons caches in the desert. This is what enabled the forerunners of Isis to survive defeat between 2007 and 2011 and then re-emerge when circumstances became more favourable. Isis today looks as if it is hoping to rise again in just the same way.

U.S. military presence in Africa grew again, but “we’re not at war,” top U.S. commander says

U.S. military presence in Africa grew by more than a thousand troops over the past year, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the U.S.’s top commander in Africa, acknowledged Tuesday. Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee, Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said on any given day the total American force rounded out to roughly 7,500 troops, including 1,000 contractors. In 2017, the U.S had roughly 6,000 troops in Africa on a given day, according to AFRICOM. ...

The new numbers are the latest indication that the U.S. war on terror on the African continent shows no signs of slowing. Waldhauser said the U.S. was focused on fighting violent extremist groups like ISIS affiliates in the Sahel, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaida. The U.S. has 1,800 personnel fighting joint missions across 13 nations, the size of the continental U.S., according to the annual statement. ...

At the committee meeting, Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas asked the general, “Functionally, I would argue that we are at war in Somalia, is that an accurate reading of the situation there?” To which Waldhauser responded, “Congressman, I would say it’s an accurate reading. I wouldn't characterize that we’re at war. It’s specifically designed for us not to own that.”

But with loosened rules of engagement and a ramp-up in military activity, it’s increasingly hard to tell the difference. U.S. airstrikes rose from 14 to 35 in 2017, according to data provided by the Bureau of Investigation Journalism. And recent reports have highlighted the gray area of AFRICOM’s “advise and assist missions.” The Daily Beast reported in November that U.S. troops were involved in the massacre of 10 civilians in a village in Somalia. Waldhauser pushed back against that report, saying it “just didn’t happen.”

Leaked Files Show How the NSA Tracks Other Countries’ Hackers

When the mysterious entity known as the “Shadow Brokers” released a tranche of stolen NSA hacking tools to the internet a year ago, most experts who studied the material homed in on the most potent tools, so-called zero-day exploits that could be used to install malware and take over machines. But a group of Hungarian security researchers spotted something else in the data, a collection of scripts and scanning tools that the National Security Agency uses to detect other nation-state hackers on the machines it infects.

It turns out those scripts and tools are just as interesting as the exploits. They show that in 2013 — the year the NSA tools were believed to have been stolen by the Shadow Brokers — the agency was tracking at least 45 different nation-state operations, known in the security community as advanced persistent threats, or APTs. Some of these appear to be operations known by the broader security community — but some may be threat actors and operations currently unknown to researchers. The scripts and scanning tools dumped by Shadow Brokers and studied by the Hungarians were created by an NSA team known as Territorial Dispute, or TeDi. ...

The Territorial Dispute scripts use digital signatures to hunt APT actors. Such signatures act like fingerprints for hacking groups — they can include file names or snippets of code from known malware that the advanced threat actors use repeatedly or particular changes the advanced hackers are known to make to a machine’s core operating system settings. Such elements are called indicators of compromise, or IoC, by the security community.

None of the advanced threat groups are identified in the NSA scripts by names commonly used for them by the research community — instead the NSA calls them Sig1, Sig2, etc. — but the Hungarian researchers have spent the last year going through the scripts to try to match them to known malware samples and advanced threat groups. They have also studied the sequence of signatures in the NSA’s numbered list to determine when the Territorial Dispute team added certain operations to the list and see if the NSA may have known about certain operations before the security community.

In at least one case, involving a sophisticated hacking group known as Dark Hotel, believed to be from South Korea and targeting entities in Asia, it appears the NSA may have been tracking some of the group’s tools in 2011, about three years before the broader security community discovered them.

Italian Government in Chaos as Far-Right Parties Surge

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/06/landslide-win-italian-candidate-prom...

Voters in Lombardy, the region of northern Italy that includes Milan, elected a new governor this week, giving a landslide victory to a far-right candidate who said during the campaign that Italy must expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants in order to defend the “white race.” Attilio Fontana, the candidate of the far-right Northern League, made the remark in January as he tried to explain why his party’s promise to “stop the invasion” of Italy by African immigrants was not racist.

Speaking on his party’s radio station, Fontana said that the league’s promise to deport all 600,000 undocumented immigrants who have arrived in Italy since 2014, mostly from Africa, was “not an issue of being xenophobic or racist, but a question of being logical or rational.”

“We can’t take in everyone,” he argued, “because if we did, we would no longer be ourselves as a social reality, as an ethnic reality. Because there are many more of them than us, and they are much more determined to occupy this territory.”

“We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society should continue to exist or if it should be wiped out,” Fontana said. ...

Fontana’s center-left opponent Giorgio Gori helped to publicize the comments, tweeting the audio and commenting that the campaign pitted “those who talk of pitchforks and white race” against those who “talk about training, jobs, growth, and Europe.” ... When the final ballots were tallied on Tuesday in Milan, however, Gori was a distant second, more than 20 percentage points behind Fontana.

Violating International Law, Trump Renews Venezuela Sanctions

Who Should Be Armed in Florida Schools? Not Teachers, Lawmakers Say. But Maybe Librarians.

One of the big questions facing Florida lawmakers after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is whether schoolteachers ought to be allowed to carry weapons. Gov. Rick Scott argues that schools would not be safer with armed teachers. His fellow Republicans in the legislature, however, appear much more open to the idea.

After a debate on the State Senate floor on Monday, Republican legislative leaders struck a compromise that would keep guns away from teachers, but keep guns in schools. How? By arming librarians, counselors and coaches. The Senate agreed to exempt only teachers who work full-time in the classroom from having weapons on campus. Everyone else — no matter how closely they also deal with students — could be eligible to carry.

A $67 million voluntary school “marshal” program would allow school superintendents to work with local sheriffs to train and arm designated personnel on campus. The restriction adopted on Monday would eliminate the “vast majority” of school staff from participating, said the sponsor of the legislation, Senator Bill Galvano, a Republican. His $400 million legislative package also contains funding for school safety and mental health programs, and numerous gun control measures opposed by the National Rifle Association. It now heads to the State House for approval.

But the legislation, written and advanced unusually quickly after last month’s deadly shooting in Parkland, Fla., would still bring more guns into schools in districts that opt into the marshal program. That was not among the far-reaching demands for gun control pushed by student activists after the shooting. However, lifting gun-free safe zones in schools has been a longtime goal of the N.R.A.

Mississippi lawmakers just passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban

If Mississippi lawmakers get their way, abortion will be banned in the state after just 15 weeks of pregnancy.

On Tuesday, Mississippi state senators passed a bill to prohibit abortion in the state after 15 weeks. Though the state House already approved a version of the abortion ban back in February, the bill will be sent back to legislators for further debate, since state senators stripped it of provisions that would introduce criminal penalties for physicians who perform abortions after 15 weeks. Still, the bill is expected to encounter little resistance among lawmakers.

No other state has passed a bill to outlaw abortion so early on in a pregnancy.

The bill will need the signature of Gov. Phil Bryant, but the Republican governor indicated on Twitter Tuesday that he’s willing to sign it.

California governor denounces Jeff Sessions over immigration lawsuit

California’s governor, Jerry Brown, denounced Jeff Sessions on Wednesday after the US attorney general spoke in the state about a lawsuit over policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Brown told reporters shortly after Sessions’s speech to law enforcement officials on Wednesday that it was unprecedented for the attorney general to “act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer”. The Democrat accused Sessions of lying and of trying to appease Donald Trump. He said Sessions’s actions were about dividing America.

Earlier, Sessions, escalating the Trump administration’s rhetoric against the most populous US state, accused California of obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts and vowed to stop the state’s defiance. Sessions made the remarks to a law enforcement group a day after Trump’s justice department sued Democratic-governed California over so-called sanctuary policies that try to protect illegal immigrants from deportation. “California is using every power it has – and some it doesn’t – to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them,” Sessions, the top US law enforcement officer, said in prepared remarks.

“In recent years, California has enacted a number of laws designed to intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officers – to intentionally use every power it has to undermine duly established immigration law in America,” Sessions added.

Jeff Sessions’ lawsuit against California is about more than just sanctuary policies

The Department of Justice sued California on Tuesday, claiming three state laws unconstitutionally interfere with efforts to strictly enforce federal immigration law. Sessions is scheduled to speak to state law enforcement officials Wednesday morning in Sacramento, and he is expected to elaborate on his rationale for filing the lawsuit. Sanctuary policies allow states and cities to shield undocumented immigrants in various ways to block the Trump administration’s campaign to detain and deport as many of them as possible. ...

So far, coverage of the lawsuit has mostly focused on one specific sanctuary policy, California law SB54, which took effect this year. Under the law, local cops are prohibited from alerting immigration agents when people are about to be released from custody for low-level offenses. ... “These provisions impermissibly prohibit even the most basic cooperation with federal officials,” the Justice Department argues in its lawsuit, claiming the policies create “an obstacle to the United States’ enforcement of the immigration laws.” ...

The third law that’s under fire requires state inspections of federal immigrant detention centers. State lawmakers enacted the measure in response to reports of poor conditions and detainee abuse in the facilities, many of which are operated by private prison companies. As the Justice Department’s lawsuit notes, the law also requires California’s attorney general to ensure that due process is being provided to civil immigration detainees, and investigate “the circumstances around their apprehension and transfer” to federal detention facilities.

Sessions maintains that everything about the facilities should be kept secret — unless the federal government decides the information should be released to the public. The lawsuit also claims the state “has no lawful interest in investigating federal law enforcement efforts.”

Dems Team Up with GOP to Weaken Bank Rules, Which Critics Say May Lead to More Bailouts & Misconduct

Democrats Join Trump In Deregulating Wall St. More

Parasitism and “tax reform”: Trump’s corporate tax cuts fuel stock buybacks, not investment

In the 10-plus weeks since President Donald Trump signed into law his $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the rich, US companies have funneled the vast bulk of their windfalls into stock buybacks rather than using it, as promised by the White House, to invest in production, jobs and higher wages for workers.

By mid-February, $171 billion in stock buybacks had been announced—more than double the $76 billion announced in the same period of 2016-2017, according to the stock market research firm Birinyi Associates. This is the largest amount ever recorded at this point in a new year.

Catalyst Capital, a market research firm, predicts that 2018 will be the biggest buyback year on record, with corporations spending $1.2 trillion to push up their share values and reward their major shareholders, far surpassing previous years. Compared to these huge sums, the amount being spent by corporations in “tax reform” bonuses for their workers is a pittance. Of the 500 companies in the S&P 500, 44 have announced bonuses or raises because of the new tax law. The total new money these 44 companies plan to spend on workers this year is just $5.2 billion, according to research by Rick Wartzman, William Lazonick and the Academic-Industry Research Network published by the Washington Post in February.

Certain companies, like Bank of America, are providing one-time bonuses “in the spirit of shared success.” Bank of America’s $1,000 bonus will cost the company $145 million. Meanwhile, it will spend at least $17 billion for stock buybacks in just the first half of this year. For every dollar spent by the bank on its 145,000 employees, it is spending $117 on enriching its owners, including its top executives.

Speaking to the Financial Times, the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan, declared quite openly, “We expect most of the benefits from tax reform to flow to the bottom line through dividends and share buybacks.”

Labor Rallies Behind Laura Moser After She Overcomes Party Effort to Stomp Out Her Congressional Bid

Laura Moser, despite an attack from her own party, made it through the first round of a Texas primary on Tuesday, winning a place in a runoff against Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, an EMILY’s List-backed candidate.

Moser, in the May runoff in the state’s 7th Congressional District, will have the support of organized labor, which stridently opposes Fletcher, a partner in a law firm that represents employers and has played a significant role in targeting unions in the state. During the primary, the state AFL-CIO voted to anti-endorse Fletcher, meaning members were urged to vote for anyone but her. With just one candidate now running against Fletcher, Moser’s endorsement is all but assured. “The Texas AFL will have to formally endorse her, but it is a given,” said one high-ranking union official.

“Lizzie Fletcher’s law firm, and Lizzie herself as a partner, profited from the pain and loss of immigrant women janitors,” Joe Dinkin, a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, told The Intercept after the results were called. “That’s not right. If Democrats are going to win in November, we need candidates who fight for working families, not fight against them.”

Dinkin said the WFP would be spending money against Fletcher in the runoff, as it did already.

After Victorious Strike, W. Virginia Teacher Sends Message to Oklahoma Educators Poised to Walk Out

As West Virginia Strike Winds Down, Angry Teachers Look to Bolster Progressives in Elections

As the roars of hundreds of teachers began to fade outside the West Virginia Capitol, Steve Buford walked across the grounds back to his car. “They’re gonna pay for this in November,” he muttered. A deal had just been announced: School employees like Buford were told they would be getting a 5 percent raise and a temporary freeze on their health care costs. But the state Senate balked and the teachers remained on strike for another week before the raise was approved. Nonetheless, school employees like Buford, 61, a former coal miner turned electrical technician at Riverside High School in Belle, West Virginia, may end their strike this week, but they are not satisfied. Buford, for his part, has his sights set on the 2018 election.

“I don’t think this is a strike or a work stoppage. I think this is a movement for a better future for West Virginia,” Buford said, predicting a “landslide” win for local pro-labor Democrats. Across the state, supporters of the strike have overwhelmingly blamed Republican Gov. Jim Justice and the GOP-held state legislature for meager teacher pay and shrinking benefits. Signs reading “We will remember in November!” were a common sight on picket lines.

An agreement reached last Tuesday between teacher union reps and Justice that would have sent teachers back to the classroom with slightly better pay was rejected by the striking rank-and-file a day later, and school workers in all 55 counties returned to the capitol and picket lines Thursday morning, demanding more. Amid the unrest, the appeal of progressive Democrats in this conservative state has surged among public sector workers and supporters of the state’s beleaguered labor movement.

Illinois Democratic Party Chair Funds Mailers Attacking Progressive Candidates

The Illinois Democratic machine has unleashed a wave of attacks on fellow Democrats in local races, with state party chair Michael Madigan funding mailers knocking several progressive candidates as Donald Trump stooges and foot soldiers in the tea party.

Madigan’s campaign committee has spent nearly $19,000 on mailers attacking two Our Revolution-backed candidates in State Central Democratic Committee elections, Elizabeth Lindquist and Art Bardsley. The postcards say Lindquist and Bardsley are Trump supporters and “members of a group supported by Tea Party activists.” The group referenced by the mailers is Represent.Us, which advocates for politicians on all sides of the political spectrum who support an end to gerrymandering, open primaries, transparency in campaign financing, and rooting out corruption from politics.

The attack comes as the Illinois machine faces one of its most credible assaults in a generation, with Madigan ally Rep. Daniel Lipinski facing a primary challenge from Marie Newman, a progressive, pro-choice advocate who is now neck in neck with him in the polls. And in Chicago, a populist-reformer is going right at the heart of the machine, targeting the pol in charge of Cook County’s tax assessment, a key source of power for the state party bosses.

Madigan represents the backbone of Illinois Democratic Party politics, having served as state party chair for 20 years and as speaker of the state House since 1983. His intervention in the committee race could have the effect of keeping progressives out of the party’s state central committee, which comprises one man and one woman from each congressional district in Illinois. The seats are highly coveted among those seeking to influence or hold power within the Illinois Democratic Party, and committee members choose the state’s Democratic National Committee representatives.

As Democrats Shift Left on Palestine, 2020 Contender Kamala Harris Gives Off-the-Record Address to AIPAC

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris gave an off-the-record speech at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, on Monday. Her speech, which emphasized the need for a strong relationship between the United States and Israel, came amid a gradual leftward shift on Israel among some members of the Democratic Party.

Democratic lawmakers are increasingly sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians; while not anti-Israel, more and more rank-and-file party members believe the U.S. should be more mindful of Israeli human rights violations. AIPAC is a powerful, pro-Israel lobbying force and has made opposition to former President Barack Obama’s Iran deal a key priority. It is also currently supporting legislation to make some support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — which seeks to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law — a felony.

Harris, widely considered a 2020 presidential contender, spoke at a Monday session called “A Conversation with Senator Kamala Harris,” which was not listed on the conference’s program or website. Its occurrence was revealed in social media posts by conference attendees Avraham Spraragen, a Cornell University student, and Elan Karoll, the IlliniPAC co-president. ...

Harris has taken a number of steps to ingratiate herself with the pro-Israel community. Last year, she gave a public address to AIPAC attendees, in which she repeated familiar mantras in support of the current U.S.-Israeli relationship. ... Her national security adviser, Halie Soifer, has long been an advocate for Israel. She was the Obama campaign’s Jewish outreach liaison in Florida in 2008. “[Obama] has never wavered when it comes to Israel’s defense,” Soifer said to a group of elderly voters during that campaign. She previously worked for other notably pro-Israel members of Congress — such as former Florida Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler and Delaware Sen. Chris Coons — and advised former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Squirrel!

President “David Dennison” is getting sued because he didn’t sign Stormy Daniels’ hush agreement

Watch @savannahguthrie's full interview with Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer pic.twitter.com/8koWFXvYh1

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 7, 2018

President “David Dennison,” also known as Donald Trump, is facing a lawsuit because he didn’t sign the “hush agreement” that would have kept Stephanie Clifford, also known as porn star “Stormy Daniels,” from talking about their alleged affair over a decade ago.

In the alleged non-disclosure agreement between Trump and Clifford, Trump is referred to throughout as “David Dennison” and Clifford as “Peggy Petterson.” Only in a separate, code-breaking document is Dennison identified as Trump. That part of the document in the court filing Clifford brought forward on Tuesday is blacked out, but Clifford’s attorneys says “David Dennison” refers to Trump.

Notably absent from the document is Trump’s signature. ...

Clifford’s lawsuit alleges that Trump avoided signing in order to plausibly deny any knowledge of the deal down the line.

And Wednesday, Clifford’s lawyer Michael Avenatti appeared on NBC's "Today" show to say she would be returning the $130,000 payment, which was part of the alleged non-disclosure agreement.

Climate change tightens grip on US west coast despite progressive aspirations

California’s exposure to climate change has been laid bare with warnings that San Francisco faces a far worse threat from rising seas than previously thought, while the agricultural heart of the state will increasingly struggle to support crops such as peaches, walnuts and apricots as temperatures climb. The findings, from two new scientific studies, come as California’s neighboring west coast states Oregon and Washington have both faltered in their legislative attempts to address climate change and deliver a rebuke to Donald Trump’s dismissal of the issue.

The problems faced by the progressive coastal bastions have been sobering on two fronts: not only is the western flank of the US experiencing the escalating consequences of climate change, but widespread Democratic dominance at state level has failed to enact ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“In Washington, we are holding a very good policy hostage because it’s not perfect. Inclusion and equity concerns means we are losing momentum and public support on climate change.” The quibbling comes as climate change tightens its grip on the west coast. San Francisco can lay claim to being one of the greenest cities in the US, through its embrace of clean energy, mandated recycling and banning of single-use plastic bags, yet it faces a steep challenge to avoid the ravages of sea level rise.

Researchers using satellite-based radar and GPS have discovered large areas of land beside the San Francisco bay is sinking, exacerbating the threat from sea level rise and storms. Places such as San Francisco airport, Foster City and Treasure Island are subsiding by as much as 10mm a year, doubling the area previously considered at risk of flooding by the end of the century, according to the Science Advances-published study. In all, around 48 to 166 sq miles of the bay’s shoreline is set to be prone to flooding, even under a moderate rate of sea level rise. This scenario would worsen if melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica trigger a far faster rate of ocean expansion.

A 250-mile protest run: the fight to save Navajo land and US national parks

When an eclectic group of ultra-runners and members of the Navajo Nation were faced with Donald Trump’s plans to destroy their natural playground, they protested in the only way they could – they ran.

If you asked the average runner what they enjoy most about their weekend runs they would probably all say something slightly different. But when you delve far enough under the surface, it all boils down to the same elusive concept: freedom. And nothing symbolises the liberating thrill of connecting to nature more than running through the panoramic expanses of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments.

So, when Donald Trump announced plans to sweep all of this away in the largest elimination of public land in US history, the obvious thing for runners and film-makers Johnie Gall, Andy Cochrane and Greg Balkin to do was to bring everyone together and run across it in six mile relays – all 250 miles of it – in a single weekend. The result is one of the most inspirational and unique environmental protest films you’re likely to see.

Gorilla sanctuary workers in eastern DRC kidnapped by militia

Eighteen employees of a gorilla sanctuary in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have been abducted by a militia group, sources have said.

An official with an NGO said the abduction took place on Monday in the area of Nzovu, in Kahuzi-Biega national park. They said an armed group called the Mai-Mai Raia Mutomboki was responsible.

The abductees comprised nine administrative employees who were carrying out an inventory and nine guards, the source said.

Kashombana Bin-Saleh, administrator of Shabunda territory, confirmed the news. “[Eighteen] workers in the Kahuzi-Biega national park were kidnapped by militiamen,” Bin-Saleh said. “The 18 are alive and talks for negotiating their release will start as soon as a team from the [park] arrives in Shabunda.”

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