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"Democrats and their media allies bear significant responsibility for whatever terrible consequences might follow from Trump’s missile adventure. They have been leading the ridiculous charge that Trump is a Kremlin agent. Surely some of them must have considered the possibility that Trump would be driven to do something to suggest the falsity of the charge by 'standing up to Russia.'"

-- Paul Street

News and Opinion

Donald Trump’s Own Defense Secretary Warned in 2013 Against Rushing to War Against Syria

The Trump administration reacted to the apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians by the Bashar al-Assad government with a flurry of air strikes against a Syrian military airfield Thursday night. The bombing occurred after a widespread clamor for Trump to “do something” and without a thorough debate about what ultimate goal the U.S. is attempting to reach. This is exactly what Trump’s defense secretary, Jim Mattis, warned about in remarks he made in 2013.

Mattis had just retired from his role as the commander of U.S. Central Command, and agreed to be interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about U.S. policy in the Middle East. When Blitzer asked Mattis about his views on military intervention against Syria’s government, the former general sounded a stern note of caution. He stressed that the United States should not intervene without a serious and well thought-out plan, and that it would be an enormous commitment. ...

“We need to be very clear about our military end state, contributing to what political end state,” said Mattis. “Otherwise, you’re liable to invade a country, pull down a statue, and then say, ‘Now what do we do?'”

This is an excellent article from Glenn Greenwald. This excerpt barely scratches the surface of the article's excellence. It's definitely worth reading in full.

The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise For Bombing Syria

In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets. ...

The instant elevation of Trump into a serious and respected war leader was palpable. Already, the New York Times is gushing that “in launching a military strike just 77 days into his administration, President Trump has the opportunity, but hardly a guarantee, to change the perception of disarray in his administration.” ...

Democrats have spent months wrapping themselves in extremely nationalistic and militaristic rhetoric. They have constantly accused Trump of being a traitor to the U.S., a puppet of Putin, and unwilling to defend U.S. interests. They have specifically tried to exploit Assad’s crimes by tying the Syrian leader to Trump, insisting that Trump would never confront Assad because doing so would anger his Kremlin masters. They have embraced a framework whereby anyone who refuses to confront Putin or Assad is deemed a sympathizer of, or a servant to, foreign enemies.

Having pushed those tactics and themes, Democrats have painted themselves into a corner. How could they possibly do anything but cheer as Trump bombs Syria? They can’t. And cheering is thus exactly what they’re doing.

For months, those of us who have urged skepticism and restraint on the Russia rhetoric have highlighted the risk that this fixation on depicting him as a tool of the Kremlin could goad Trump – dare him or even force him – to seek confrontation with Moscow. Some Democrats reacted with rage yesterday at the suggestion that their political tactics were now bearing this fruit, but that’s how politics works.

Did Bipartisan Russia Hysteria Help Fuel Trump's Rush to Bomb Assad?

Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far. And all he had to do was start a war.

— Sam Sacks (@SamSacks) April 7, 2017

Luring Trump into Mideast Wars

Donald Trump entered military terra incognita on Thursday by launching an illegal Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in eastern Syria. Beyond the clear violation of international law, the practical results are likely to be disastrous, drawing the U.S. deeper into the Syrian quagmire. But it would be a mistake to focus all the criticism on Trump. Not only are Democrats also at fault, but a good argument could be made that they bear even greater responsibility. ...

On March 31, CNN quoted an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump’s hopes of a rapprochement with Russia were fading because he “believes in the current atmosphere – with so much media scrutiny and ongoing probes into Trump-Russia ties and election meddling – that it won’t be possible to ‘make a deal.’” Thus, Trump found himself increasingly boxed in by hostile forces. But he still tried to fulfill his promise to concentrate on defeating terrorists in Syria and Iraq. On March 30, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. administration “priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” but to concentrate on defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS instead.

But the more Trump contemplated his predicament in the following days, the more he realized how untenable it had come. Tuesday’s poison-gas incident in Idlib thus offered a way out regardless of who was actually responsible. The only way for Trump to make peace with the “deep state” in Washington was by waging war on Syria. Finally, on Thursday, hours before Trump sent a volley of cruise missiles wafting towards Syria, Hillary Clinton taunted him by declaring that America “should take out his [Assad’s] airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people.” The effect was to all but force Trump to show that he was every bit as macho as the former First Lady.

Trump is certainly a fool for going ahead with such an attack in clear contravention of international law and entangling the United States more deeply into the complicated Syrian conflict. But the blame also should go to the people who frog-marched him to the precipice and then all but commanded him to step over the edge. Within hours, all the usual suspects were congratulating one of the most scorned U.S. presidents in history for taking the leap.

Trump decided to fire away before the facts were in because the enemy he is most worried about is not the one half a world away in Syria, but the Democratic-neocon alliance in his own backyard. The political warfare in Washington is now generating more agony from real wars in the Middle East.

Legal Experts Question Whether Trump’s Syria Strike Was Constitutional

It has become normal over the past 15 years for the morning news to report that the president has bombed an obscure terror group in a far-flung region of the world. These attacks take place without any public debate or a vote in Congress — despite the fact  that the Constitution gives Congress alone the power “to declare war.”

President Bush and President Obama argued, with little pushback, that they could target a wide array of terror groups, thanks to the resolution Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 that allows the president to use “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the al Qaeda terror attacks. The 2001 resolution has since been used to justify bombing seven countries, deploying troops from Cuba to the Philippines, and conducting wars against groups with loose or nonexistent ties to al Qaeda.

But almost all experts agree that it cannot be utilized as the legal basis for Trump’s Thursday-night cruise missile attack on Syria. While Assad is a butcher and brutal dictator, he has no connection to the 9/11 attacks, and in fact his forces are fighting al Qaeda’s largest affiliate in Syria. ...

The White House and the Pentagon have yet to attempt to make a formal case that the strikes were legal. ... The administration also appears to be ignoring all issues of international law. Days before the strike, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley touted the fact the U.S. would not seek Security Council approval.

Use of chem weapons is horrific but Trump’s military action violates Constitution & UN charter. No legit domestic or international law basis

— Hina Shamsi (@HinaShamsi) April 7, 2017

Russia and Iran threaten to respond with force

In a further escalation of the rhetoric regarding last week’s US missile strikes on Syria, a joint command centre made up of the forces of Russia, Iran and militias supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, said the attack had crossed “red lines” and it would respond to any new aggression and increase its support for its ally.

“What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” said the statement published by the group on the media outlet Ilam al Harbi (War Media). ...

On Sunday, Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone with the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani. According to a Kremlin summary of the call, the two leaders noted: “The aggressive US actions against a sovereign state, which violate international law, are unacceptable.”

Where Was CIA’s Pompeo on Syria?

There is a dark mystery behind the White House-released photo showing President Trump and more than a dozen advisers meeting at his estate in Mar-a-Lago after his decision to strike Syria with Tomahawk missiles: Where are CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top intelligence officials? Before the photo was released on Friday, a source told me that Pompeo had personally briefed Trump on April 6 about the CIA’s belief that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was likely not responsible for the lethal poison-gas incident in northern Syria two days earlier — and thus Pompeo was excluded from the larger meeting as Trump reached a contrary decision.

At the time, I found the information dubious since Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other senior U.S. officials were declaring quite confidently that Assad was at fault. Given that apparent confidence, I assumed that Pompeo and the CIA must have signed off on the conclusion of Assad’s guilt even though I knew that some U.S. intelligence analysts had contrary opinions, that they viewed the incident as either an accidental release of chemicals or an intentional ploy by Al Qaeda rebels to sucker the U.S. into attacking Syria. ...

[I]n almost every similar situation that I had covered over decades, the CIA Director or the Director of National Intelligence has played a prominent role in decisions that depend heavily on the intelligence community’s assessments and actions. For instance, in the famous photo of President Obama and his team waiting out the results of the 2011 raid to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta is the one on the conference screen that everyone is looking at. Even when the U.S. government is presenting false information, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2003 speech laying out the bogus evidence of Iraq hiding WMDs, CIA Director George Tenet was seated behind Powell to lend credibility to the falsehoods.

After the attack, Secretary of State Tillerson, who is not an institutional intelligence official and has little experience with the subtleties of intelligence, was the one to claim that the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. While Tillerson’s comment meshed with Official Washington’s hastily formed groupthink of Assad’s guilt, it is hard to believe that CIA analysts would have settled on such a firm conclusion so quickly, especially given the remote location of the incident and the fact that the initial information was coming from pro-rebel (or Al Qaeda) sources.

The United States doesn't declare war anymore

President Trump justified the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian air base Thursday night as being in the “vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.” He did not ask for Congress’ authorization to carry out the strikes. ...

The U.S. has formally declared war 11 times in its history, but the last time was during World War II.

Trump ordered the Syria strike under the War Powers Resolution, which says a president has to report to Congress within 48 hours if the U.S. armed forces are introduced into a conflict. It’s a law that was enacted in 1973 to restore Congress’ role in authorizing force in response to the lack of a formal war declaration in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Under the law, troops cannot stay for more than 90 days unless Congress approves. ...

Regarding the Syria strikes, the White House said that about two dozen members of Congress were notified and briefed while the strikes were underway, but some want Trump to seek congressional approval.

Irony alert! Will the US stand up to itself? What about the more than 1,000 civilian deaths the US caused in March alone? Surely the US should stand up to the US about that!?!

US will stand up to aggressors, says Rex Tillerson before G7 talks

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, used a visit to an Italian war memorial on Monday to declare that the US would stand up to aggressors who harm civilians, as preparations were under way in nearby Lucca for a meeting of G7 foreign ministers that was expected to be dominated by the suspected chemical attack in Syria.

Tillerson travelled to Sant’Anna di Stazzema, the Tuscan village where the Nazis massacred more than 500 civilians, and alluded to last week’s retaliatory missile strike on Syria as he laid a wreath. “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” he said in short statement. “This place will serve as an inspiration to us all.”

It's not just Syria. Trump is ratcheting up wars across the world

Donald Trump’s missile strikes on Syria have attracted worldwide attention (and disgraceful plaudits) in recent days. But much less airtime is being given to his administration’s risky and increasingly barbaric military escalations on several other fronts across the world. ...

Recently, US airstrikes have claimed the lives of 200 civilians in Iraq, dozens were killed in separate strikes supposedly aimed at Islamic State in Syria and several more women and children died in a raid gone awry in Yemen. Those are just a few examples of the many attacks – launched under the pretext of defeating Isis – that wreaked havoc on civilian populations as the US military ramps up its bombing campaigns in multiple counties. At the same time, the Trump administration has been expanding official US “war zones” in Somalia and Yemen, while working to “make it easier for the Pentagon to launch counterterrorism strikes anywhere in the world” and loosening restrictions on preventing civilian deaths that were put in place by the Obama administration, as the Washington Post reported a few weeks ago.

This comes just as NBC News reported, “the National Security Council has presented President Donald Trump with options to respond to North Korea’s nuclear program – including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un”. Pressure is mounting from the outside too, as the Wall Street Journal’s right wing neocon-in-residence Brett Stephens loudly called for “regime change” in North Korea two weeks ago. Weeks ago, Trump’s defense secretary James Mattis was reportedly planning a brazen and incredibly dangerous operation to board Iranian ships in international waters. This would have effectively been an act of war. Apparently, the only reason the Trump administration didn’t carry it out was because the plan leaked and they were forced to scuttle it – at least temporarily. But that hasn’t stopped the ratcheting up of tensions towards Iran ever since he took office.

With several conflicts likely brewing with countries that have significant military power, the Trump administration is putting the US – and the world – on a potentially catastrophic collision course. And so far, pushback from politicians, the media and anyone else with influence in Washington has barely been seen.

North Korea nuclear missile tests: US Navy strike group moves towards Korean peninsula

US warships sent to Korean peninsula as tensions in the region continue to grow

The US sent naval warships to waters near the Korean peninsula Sunday as North Korea continues to defy calls from world leaders to end its nuclear testing program.

An aircraft carrier, along with several other ships, make up the Carl Vinson strike group which moved toward the peninsula Sunday. The ships have the ability to both fire and intercept missiles. ...

President Donald Trump and South Korea’s acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn spoke over the phone Saturday, agreeing to stay in continued contact about North Korea. Trump has previously said that the US is prepared to act alone to deal with any nuclear threat from North Korea.

Syria strike designed to intimidate North Korea, Chinese state newspaper says

Donald Trump’s decision to attack Syria had also been designed to intimidate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a Chinese newspaper has claimed, as G7 foreign ministers meet to discuss the fallout from last week’s missile incursion. The state-run Global Times said a US strike against North Korea would unleash carnage on the Korean peninsula. The US navy has deployed a strike group towards the western Pacific Ocean, to provide a presence near the Korean peninsula.

In an editorial entitled: ‘After Syria strikes, will North Korea be next?’, the Global Times suggested the US might now be preparing to launch “similar actions” against Pyongyang and warned of catastrophic consequences if it did. “A symbolic strike against North Korea by the US would bring a disaster to the people in Seoul,” the newspaper said, claiming a “decapitation attack” on North Korea was now “highly possible”. Such a strike would “very likely evolve into large-scale bloody war on the peninsula”.

Julian Assange on WikiLeaks' Release of the Largest Leak of Secret CIA Documents

Twitter’s lawsuit worked: Trump no longer wants to unmask anonymous critic

On Thursday afternoon, Twitter said it was filing suit against the Department of Homeland Security to stop the government from unmasking the identity of a pseudonymous critic of the Trump administration. The American Civil Liberties Union backed the suit and said it would appear in court on Twitter’s behalf.

Less than 24 hours later, the government has backed down and dropped its suit, according to a new legal filing from the company.

The Trump administration reportedly plans to undo Obama’s net neutrality rules

It’s been clear for months that the Trump administration wants to scuttle the net neutrality reforms enacted under President Obama. And on Thursday, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai reportedly told the telecoms how it’s going to happen.

Speaking to trade associations that represent the telecoms industry, Pai said he plans to reverse the classification of internet providers as utilities, according to Reuters. As part of the rollback, companies would voluntarily commit to not discriminating against certain kinds of internet services, and the Federal Trade Commission would be the agency responsible for enforcing compliance.

While other elements of the Trump agenda have been slow to take shape — such as his $1 trillion infrastructure investment plan — the White House has moved quickly to roll back Obama-era regulations of internet providers.

Google's new fact-checking feature

Now when people search Google or News for certain questions or claims, some results will display a “Fact Check” tag to help users better find true information. The Fact Check includes more information about the claim, who made it, and its veracity, though Google doesn’t do the fact-checking itself. The company leaves that to news outlets and professional fact-checking organizations like Politifact and Snopes, according to a Google blog post announcing the new feature.

While the Fact Check feature was previously available only in certain countries for Google News, on Friday the company released its first wide-scale rollout.

[To check out a result that will return a fact check, try typing "Obama is a muslim" into the google bar. - js]

Lawyers race to save seven Arkansas inmates from ‘execution by assembly line’

Lawyers representing seven death row prisoners in Arkansas who are all scheduled to die within 11 days of each other starting next week are entering the final stretch of an epic legal battle in which they try to stop the most intense bout of judicial killings in modern US history.

Should the attorneys fail in their mission, two prisoners, Don Davis and Bruce Ward, will be put to death by lethal injection on 17 April. Three days later it will be the turn of Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee, followed by Marcel Williams and Jack Jones on 24 April, and Kenneth Williams on 27 April.

On Monday, lawyers for the seven will present a collective case to a federal judge in the eastern district of Arkansas in which they will call for a permanent block on the planned killings which they denounce as “execution by assembly line”. In a bold expression of disgust directed at the Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, they state: “Our country does not participate in mass executions.”

Hutchinson set the execution dates in February, explaining that he needed to kill the inmates in such quick succession in order to deploy the state’s final batch of the sedative midazolam before it expired at the end of April.

Seattle is proving Jeff Sessions wrong about federal police oversight

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced earlier this week that the Justice Department would review its consent decrees, or court-enforced agreements that bind law enforcement agencies to implement reforms, like the one in effect in Seattle. ... “Local control and local accountability are necessary for effective local policing,” Sessions wrote in a memo about the reviews Monday. “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies.”

[I]n Seattle, federal oversight brought results — the police department’s use of serious force has dramatically fallen, even as the city’s crime rates have remained level, a Department of Justice report found Thursday.

A New McCarthyism: Julian Assange Accuses Democrats of Blaming Russia & WikiLeaks for Clinton Loss

Russian computer programmer held in Spain 'under US warrant'

A Russian computer programmer has been arrested in Barcelona, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Madrid said on Sunday.

It was unclear why Pyotr Levashov was arrested. The embassy spokesman declined to give details and Spanish police and the interior ministry were not available for comment.

RT, the Russian government-backed television channel, reported that Levashov had been arrested under a US international arrest warrant and was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks linked to alleged interference in last year’s US election.

Julian Assange vs. Allan Nairn: Did WikiLeaks Inform Voters or Aid Trump's Right-Wing Revolution?

'See you in court': activists ready for Trump to relax smog and drilling rules

Environmental campaigners promised on Saturday to wage fierce and protracted legal battles against “outrageous and wrong-headed” Trump administration moves to open Atlantic and Arctic waters for drilling and loosen smog limits. ... Donald Trump has already made sweeping efforts to boost fossil fuel industries and undo landmark efforts to combat the effects of climate change.

On Friday, attorneys for the government asked a federal court in Washington to delay a key case so the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could review its stance on rules capping smog pollution. It also emerged that the day before, interior secretary Ryan Zinke told industry insiders that Trump plans overturn bans on drilling off Alaska and the Eastern Seaboard, while making new oil and gas exploitation rights available. ...

“Smog is dangerous to kids, seniors and asthmatics,” said Seth Johnson, an attorney with environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, in a statement. “The Trump administration is taking the first step toward tearing down a crucial protection against dirty air.” A statement from the group said the court filing was “likely an indication that the federal government will try to stop defending, or will weaken implementation of, the more protective smog standard set by the EPA in October 2015”.

David Doniger, NRDC director of climate and clean air programs, said on Saturday the likely forthcoming measures on air pollution and new offshore drilling were “deeply saddening.” “It’s outrageous and wrong-headed,” he said. All efforts to undo environmental protections put in place by Obama, he said, would face lengthy and compulsory processes of consultation and review, as well as the strongest possible legal challenges at every turn. “It’s really waking people up,” he said.

Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage': scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found. The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

Scientists with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies last week completed aerial surveys of the world’s largest living structure, scoring bleaching at 800 individual coral reefs across 8,000km. The results show the two consecutive mass bleaching events have affected a 1,500km stretch, leaving only the reef’s southern third unscathed.

Where last year’s bleaching was concentrated in the reef’s northern third, the 2017 event spread further south, and was most intense in the middle section of the Great Barrier Reef. This year’s mass bleaching, second in severity only to 2016, has occurred even in the absence of an El Niño event.

US Blocks G7 Climate Statement As White House Waffles on Paris Deal

Nations attending the Group of 7 (G7) conference in Italy were unable to put out a joint statement on climate change this week because of the Trump administration's foot-dragging on environmental policies, particularly its commitment to the Paris agreement, Reuters reported Monday.

President Donald Trump signed an order last month undoing climate regulations drawn up under former President Barack Obama, particularly the Clean Power Plan (CPP), which required states to lower their carbon emissions and was a key policy in helping the U.S. meet its goals under the climate agreement.

At the conference in Rome on Monday, Italian industry and energy minister Carlo Calenda confirmed that had caused the G7's delay in releasing a statement.

"While this is under way the United States reserves its position on these key priorities," he said. "It was not possible to sign a joint declaration since it would not cover the whole range of topics in the agenda."

A source close to the G7 talks also told Reuters that Energy Secretary Rick Perry had pushed for fossil fuel interests to be included in the statement—and that his inability to commit showed the U.S.'s increasing isolation as global nations step up the fight against climate change.

Also of Interest

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

How Media Bias Fuels Syrian Escalation

Why Trump’s missiles are shaking Putin’s home front

Jeremy Scahill Tears Apart Corporate Media's "Atrocious" Syria Coverage

Trumpenstein’s Tomahawk Dog-Wag: on Real and Fake News

Sen. Ron Wyden: Government Must Explain Why It Tried to Expose Twitter User

“Why Did You Come to the United States?” Central American Children Try to Convince Courts They Need Protection

A Little Night Music

Little Brother Montgomery - The First Time I Met the Blues

Little Brother Montgomery - Riverside Boogie

Little Brother Montgomery - Michigan Water Blues

Little Brother Montgomery - Prisoner Bound Blues

Little Brother Montgomery - Pinetop's Boogie Woogie

Little Brother Montgomery - Keep Drinkin'

Little Brother Montgomery - Buddy Bolden's Blues

Little Brother Montgomery - Tasty Blues

Little Brother Montgomery & Edith Wilson - The Same Dog That Bit You

Little Brother Montgomery - Cow Cow Blues