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This evening's music features r&b saxophone player and singer Bull Moose Jackson. Enjoy!

“Do you know we are being led to
Slaughters by placid admirals,
And that fat, slow generals are getting
Obscene on young blood?
Do you know we are ruled by TV?”

-- Jim Morrison

News and Opinion

This article contains an excellent analysis of the way that MSNBC is catapulting the propaganda.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Sees a “Russia Connection” Lurking Around Every Corner

One day after her network joined the rest of corporate media in cheering for President Trump’s missile attack on Syria, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was back to regular business: seeing Russian collaboration with Trump at work. It’s “impossible,” fellow anchor Lawrence O’Donnell told Maddow on April 7, to rule out that “Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week – so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all of the praise he’s picked up over the past 24 hours.” Maddow concurred, suggesting that only the FBI’s ongoing probe into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russian electoral interference will determine the truth. “Maybe eventually we’ll get an answer to that from [FBI Director] Jim Comey,” Maddow said.

The Washington Post noted that the “conspiracy theory” drew “derision from across the political spectrum.” But it was not out of place.

MSNBC, the country’s most prominent liberal media outlet, has played a key role in stoking the frenzy over Trump’s alleged involvement with Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential race — in lock step with the Democratic Party’s most avid partisans. ... And no leading media figure has done so more than Maddow. In the period since Election Day, “The Rachel Maddow Show” has covered “The Russia Connection” — and Russia, generally — more than it has any other issue. ... In the six-week period we reviewed, Maddow covered Russia not just more than any other issue, but more than every other issue combined.

British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told. GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said. Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors. ...

According to one account, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at “director level”. After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation. In late August and September Brennan gave a series of classified briefings to the Gang of Eight, the top-ranking Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. He told them the agency had evidence the Kremlin might be trying to help Trump to win the presidency, the New York Times reported.

One person familiar with the matter said Brennan did not reveal sources but made reference to the fact that America’s intelligence allies had provided information.

Russia Vetoes U.N. Resolution on Syria as Questions Linger over Deadly Chemical Attack

Here's an excerpt from an interview with journalist John Pilger to whet your appetite for more at the link:

Trump Finds His Groove with Warmaking

John Pilger: The United States is a war state and, very much like Israel, it doesn’t really, as far as the U.S. elite is concerned, it doesn’t really function properly without being on a major war footing. And the problem with Trump was that he didn’t, apparently, didn’t quite get this, at first. Well, now he’s got it. He’s been hauled into line. It seemed in the beginning that Trump wanted to do a deal, make peace with Russia. And he made some rather bellicose noises about China, and about the Middle East.

But he wasn’t really on message with those who control the U.S. in terms of its “relations,” so-called, and I use that word almost in a satirical way, that the CNN person who’s used it without the satirical intention. But, he didn’t understand that there has to be a permanent obeisance to a war industry, a state of war, a kind of state of managed chaos.

If there is a U.S. foreign policy, it is about division. It is about causing chaos, and keeping, as I heard somebody say, the pieces in the air. It is about fragmenting societies, and in that way you control them. And the suffering Middle East has been the result of that basically imperial policy, beginning, of course, with Britain and France, now controlled by the United States. ...

The U.S. really only ever attacks defenseless countries. I suppose we should draw some comfort from that because there are two nuclear armed powers out there, Russia and China, that are not defenseless. But Syria, as far as the U.S. is concerned, is defenseless. And its ships stand off in the eastern Mediterranean, and fire these horrific weapons at Syria, or its planes, from a great height.

Keiser Report: #KushnerAtWar

Tillerson’s Bad Hand in Kremlin Showdown

The Russian media offered no complete account of what may have been accomplished during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s two-day visit to Russia, but there were hints of what the Russian negotiating position would have been behind closed doors and what may have justified Vladimir Putin making two hours available for Tillerson in what was otherwise a very busy day for the Russian President relating to domestic concerns. ...

Tillerson came to discuss reinstatement of the Memorandum of Understanding on Deconfliction in Syria because on the U.S. side there was great concern over Russia’s refusal now to speak at the regional level to U.S. military counterparts and avert clashes on the ground and in the air that could lead to escalation of confrontation and possibly to all-out-war. The Russian withdrawal from the deconfliction arrangement following the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airfield on April 6 put the continuation of U.S.-led military operations against Islamic State militants inside Syria in danger.

On April 8, senior Pentagon officials were denying that the Russians had severed all military-to-military hot lines, but there was a cold sweat in Washington. The uncertainty over whether Syrian and Russian air defenses might take aim at NATO aircraft had already led the Belgians to publicly announce cessation of all their flights within the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition. Presumably other NATO members had come to the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, my information backchannels indicate that the Russians set down their preconditions for reinstatement of the deconfliction arrangements: no further U.S. air attacks on Syrian government positions. We may be sure that this was the major subject for discussion and possible agreement during Tillerson’s talks with Putin.

The result may be something similar to the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the U.S. claimed victory publicly as the Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba, but privately the U.S. had granted what Moscow had wanted, the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. But Putin is no Nikita Khrushchev, who lost prestige among his Kremlin peers for striking the agreement with the Americans; Putin is likely to gain stature from such an arrangement.

MIT Scientist Disputes 'Evidence' of Assad Sarin Attack

I have reviewed the [White House intelligence summary, released April 11, 2017] carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.

This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.

However, if one assumes, as does the White House, that the source of the sarin was from this location and that the location was not tampered with, the most plausible conclusion is that the sarin was dispensed by an improvised dispersal device made from a 122 mm section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on both sides. ...

The only source the document cites as evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government is the crater it claims to have identified on a road in the North of Khan Shaykhun.

I have located this crater using Google Earth and there is absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft. ...

Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin.

Stephen Cohen: Will Syrian State Collapse & Fall into More Chaos If Assad Is Toppled?

More US troops could be needed to fight ISIS in Syria, commander says

The US general commanding the coalition fight against ISIS expects the fight for its de facto capital to have hit the city center by this summer, and in an exclusive interview with CNN, he held out the possibility that more US troops may be needed for that tougher fight. ...

Pressed if he would be surprised if that fight continued into next year, he said, "In Raqqa city? Yes."

After the grueling fight for the main Iraqi stronghold of ISIS, its northern city of Mosul, the focus of the coalition and new administration of President Donald Trump has shifted to Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the militant group's self-declared caliphate. The battle -- for a city a lot smaller in size than Mosul yet still highly symbolic -- is expected to be long and complex, given the array of opposing forces positioned around the city.

Townsend held out the possibility that further US troops could be required for the assault against the ISIS-held city, currently flanked to the north, east and west by coalition-backed Syrian rebel forces, called the SDF.

U.S. says 'credible reports' Russia tried to interfere with Montenegro elections

The United States said on Wednesday there are credible reports that Russia attempted to interfere in elections last October in Montenegro, which formally became a member of NATO this week. The accusation came as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met Russian officials in Moscow and as President Donald Trump prepared to meet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House.

"We are very concerned about Russian interference in the October elections in Montenegro, including credible reports of Russian support for an attempted election day attack on the government," a senior White House official told reporters at a briefing ahead of Stoltenberg's visit. The official said Washington supports efforts by Montenegrin authorities to investigate.

'Mother of All Bombs': US Forces Drop Massive Non-Nuclear Bomb in Afghanistan

U.S. forces have dropped what is known as the "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan. The device is the largest non-nuclear device in the Air Force arsenal, Fox News' Jennifer Griffin reported. It was dropped in Nangarhar Province, an eastern area near the Pakistan border.

It's the first time the 21,000-pound ordnance has been used in combat, said Griffin. The device, developed in 2003 by the U.S. Air Force, is called the M.O.A.B, short for Massive Ordnance Air Blast. It's often referred to as the "mother of all bombs."

The attack was launched in an area where a U.S. Green Beret was killed Saturday by small-arms fire while operating against ISIS targets.

'Great chemistry': Trump abandons China criticism as Russia ties suffer

Less than two months after branding China the “grand champion” of currency manipulation, Donald Trump has performed a breathtaking pirouette away from those allegations, declaring: “They’re not currency manipulators”. Trump’s verdict, delivered in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, was the latest hint that ties between the world’s two largest economies were warming after the billionaire’s shock election ushered in a period of intense uncertainty that stirred fears of a trade war or even military confrontation. ...

Trump also backed away from earlier criticism of Beijing’s alleged inaction over North Korea, describing how after receiving a history lesson on the subject from Xi he had come away convinced that, “it’s not so easy”.

Trump’s sudden enthusiasm for a country he has previously lampooned as a US enemy came as he proclaimed that relations with Moscow might have hit “an all-time low”. “We’re not getting along with Russia at all,” Trump said on Wednesday as last week’s airstrikes on Syria, Moscow’s key Middle Eastern ally, dominated a peppery encounter between Russian president Vladimir Putin and secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

New satellite images appear to show North Korea “primed and ready” for sixth nuclear test

As tensions on the Korean peninsula ratchet up, new analysis suggests the North Korean government is “primed and ready” to conduct its sixth nuclear test — a move which would be seen as a direct threat to the safety of South Korea, Japan and the U.S.

While the exact timing of such a test is unknown, it could happen as early as Saturday, when the country prepares to celebrate the 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder.

North Korean monitoring service 38 North, which analyzes commercial satellite imagery for changes at the country’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, believes that the all the preparations have been made to conduct a nuclear test — though it points out that the decision to conduct the test can only come from leader Kim Jong Un. ...

Suspicions that a nuclear test was set to be conducted have grown in recent days as the country prepares to celebrate the “Day of the Sun” on April 15, a date which marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of the country’s founder Kim Il Sung. About 200 reporters are in Pyongyang to cover the event, including journalists from the U.S. and Japan.

Burmese Nobel Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi Has Turned Into an Apologist for Genocide Against Muslims

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the the most celebrated human rights icons of our age: Nobel Peace Laureate, winner of the Sakharov Prize, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an Amnesty International-recognized prisoner of conscience for 15 long years. These days, however, she is also an apologist for genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rape.

For the past year, Aung San Suu Kyi has been State Counselor, or de facto head of government, in Myanmar, where members of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the northern Rakhine state have been shot, stabbed, starved, robbed, raped and driven from their homes in their hundreds of thousands. In December, while the world focused on the fall of Aleppo, more than a dozen Nobel Laureates published an open letter warning of a tragedy in Rakhine “amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

In February, a report by the United Nations documented how the Burmese army’s attacks on the Rohingya were “widespread as well as systematic” thus “indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.” More than half of the 101 Rohingya women interviewed by UN investigators across the border in Bangladesh said they had suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence at the hands of security forces. ... And the response of Aung San Suu Kyi? This once-proud campaigner against wartime rape and human rights abuses by the Burmese military has opted to borrow from the Donald Trump playbook of denial and deflection. Her office accused Rohingya women of fabricating stories of sexual violence and put the words “fake rape” — in the form of a banner headline, no less — on its official website. ...

Around 1,000 Rohinga are believed to have been killed since October and more than 70,000 have been forced to flee the country. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi continues to shamelessly tell interviewers, such as the BBC’s Fergal Keane last week, that there is no ethnic cleansing going on and that the Burmese military are “not free to rape, pillage and torture” in Rakhine.

Ahmadinejad shocks Iran by announcing he's running for president again

Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shocked the country Wednesday when he registered to run for the top job again, in next month’s election — despite recently saying he had no interest in the job. The surprise announcement also defies a warning from Iran’s supreme leader in September that he should not take part in the election.

In front of reporters from the AP, Ahmadinejad visited the Interior Ministry and filed the necessary documents just one day after registration opened. Current President Hassan Rouhani — until now seen as a shoe-in for a second term in office — hasn’t even registered for the election yet, though 197 other hopefuls have.

In September, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested that Ahmadinejad should not make a return to politics, four years after his second term as president finished. But the hard-line conservative has decided to ignore the advice of Iran’s most powerful figure.

“The supreme leader requested that I don’t stand, and I had accepted,” Ahmadinejad told reporters. “It was advice. He said that he won’t say stand or don’t stand."

Leftist Candidate Surges in French Presidential Election

In a surprising twist in the French presidential election, leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is surging in the polls, raising the possibility of a run-off vote between the pro-worker and pro-immigrant candidate and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is also gaining voters on a staunchly progressive platform, reminiscent of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) campaign in the U.S. presidential election.

Mélenchon has "promised to increase the minimum wage by 16 percent, to strive for a 32-hour working week, reinstate retirement at age 60, make all medical care free, increase unemployment benefits, nationalize the arms industry and electricity companies, and hire 60,000 teachers. Income tax for high earners would rise to 90 percent, while all personal earnings over €400,000 per year would be confiscated," summarizes the Irish Times. He's also gained voters' support with his sense of humor, describing the rise of his center-right opponent Emmanuel Macron—an investment banker who has never held public office—as a "hallucinogenic mushroom."

Just 10 days before France's first round of voting on April 23, Mélenchon is now polling at 19 percent. That puts him within striking distance of Le Pen and Macron, who are polling at 24 percent and 23 percent, respectively.

"Mélenchon's rise means that with up to a third of voters undecided, no two opinion polls entirely alike and margins of error to account for, it is impossible to say with certainty who of the front four will go head-to-head in the second round," observes the Guardian. The Irish Times further notes: "At present, Mélenchon is the only candidate with momentum, which raises the possibility he could reach the second round on May 7th."

California officer subject to criminal investigation for beating jaywalker

A California police officer seen on video hurling a jaywalker to the ground and repeatedly punching him in the face will be the subject of a criminal investigation, authorities have said. The “disturbing” and unreasonable actions of the officer, a two-year veteran of the department, were not within policy, Sacramento police said in a statement. The officer was already on unpaid administrative leave as a result of the incident and will now be subject to a criminal investigation.

[A]fter a review, police found no charges were called for and the man was set free. The names of the man and the officer have not been released.

Trump's Dr Strangelove antics are starting to spook the markets

Financial markets are starting to have doubts about Donald Trump. The euphoria that sent share prices on Wall Street to record levels has quickly dissipated amid fears that the new president is dangerously unpredictable. Evidence that Trump does not really have a clue about what he is doing is mounting by the day. The failure to get Congress to agree to a repeal of Obamacare was the first sign of trouble, since it raised questions about whether the White House would be able to pass an economic stimulus package.

But there has been more to unsettle investors since then – much more. First there was the U-turn over Syria, then the sabre rattling over North Korea. Now Trump has decided, in flat contradiction of what he said on the campaign trail, that China is not gaining an unfair trade advantage through the manipulation of its currency. The kindest interpretation of this latest flip-flop is that Trump wants to keep Beijing sweet while the US launches military action against North Korea, although this prospect is not exactly designed to make investors any less nervous. ...

Trump appears to think that the strength of the dollar is a vote of confidence in him. If only. The greenback is strong because the Fed is the one major central bank in the world that is raising borrowing costs, and investors have been assuming that the US central bank will accelerate the pace of interest rate increases in response to a Trump-inspired pick-up in growth. That scenario is starting to look less likely. The response in the currency markets to Trump’s latest comments was predictable. Traders took their signal from the White House and dumped the dollar. More significantly, perhaps, demand for gold and the Japanese yen, traditional safe havens in times of uncertainty, rose to their highest level since the US presidential election last November.

Share prices remain close to their record highs but for how long? Cannier investors have taken one look at Trump’s Dr Strangelove-style foreign policy antics and decided to park their money elsewhere.

Trump's border wall plan hits snag as congressman backs environmental suit

A US congressman and environmental group have filed the first lawsuit targeting Donald Trump’s plan to build a 30ft wall on the US-Mexico border.

The suit, brought by Congressman Raúl M Grijalva of Arizona and the Center for Biological Diversity in the US district court for Arizona, seeks to require the government to undertake a comprehensive environmental impact analysis before beginning construction. Such a review would probably take several years to complete, delaying indefinitely the fulfillment of one of Trump’s signature campaign promises. ...

Randy Serraglio, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity said the existing border fence had already caused significant environmental damage, including flooding and erosion. In July 2008, a heavy thunderstorm produced a damaging flash flood at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona after the border fence prevented water from flowing away naturally. On the same day, border infrastructure was responsible for the deaths of two people and $8m in damage to Nogales, Mexico, when water was trapped on the south side of the border.

Expanding construction on the border could exacerbate the flooding problems, in addition to threatening the survival of species such as jaguars, ocelots, and wolves, Serraglio said. Additional environmental degradation would probably be caused by the construction of new roads and infrastructure to enable construction of the wall in remote wilderness areas.

Obama funded this ‘clean coal’ plant. Now Rick Perry is celebrating its opening

Energy secretary Rick Perry, his department announced, would attend a celebration of the U.S.’s first coal-fired electricity unit equipped to capture carbon dioxide, the principal gas that drives the planet’s warming, and then store it underground — more popularly known as a “clean coal” facility.

The Petra Nova project, a joint venture of NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp, was declared operational in January. A 240 megawatt coal unit of the larger W.A. Parish plant in Thompsons, Texas, can now capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted when the coal burns, according to the companies. The carbon dioxide is then piped in liquid form to a nearby oil field where it is used to draw additional oil from the ground, a practice that helps strengthen the economics of the endeavor. Perry will actually be attending a valve-turning that pipes already stored carbon dioxide to the oilfield, according to NRG. ...

Obama stimulus funding also supported another carbon capture initiative that has, only now in the Trump years, come online — a project at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland’s Decatur, Illinois ethanol plant, which strips carbon dioxide out of the fermentation process that makes ethanol. Both the Petra Nova and Decatur projects are expected to sequester more than a million tons of carbon dioxide in the ground annually, which means that in the context of capturing and storing carbon they would count as large-scale industrial projects.

However, these amounts still pale in comparison to the amount of carbon dioxide that humans put in the atmosphere annually from energy use — about 32 billion tons — underscoring that carbon capture and storage has a very long way to go before it makes a major dent in the climate change problem.

Scott Pruitt Faces Anger From Right Over E.P.A. Finding He Won’t Fight

In his first weeks on the job, Mr. Pruitt drew glowing praise from foes of Mr. Obama’s agenda against global warming, as he moved to roll back its centerpiece, known as the Clean Power Plan, and expressed agreement with those who said the E.P.A. should be eliminated.

But now a growing chorus of critics on the other end of the political spectrum say Mr. Pruitt has not gone far enough. In particular, they are angry that he has refused to challenge a landmark agency determination known as the endangerment finding, which provides the legal basis for Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan and other global warming policies. ...

“The endangerment finding must be redone, or all of this is for naught,” said Steven J. Milloy, who runs a website, JunkScience.com, aimed at debunking the established science of human-caused climate change, and who worked on the Trump administration’s E.P.A. transition team.

“If you get rid of the endangerment finding, the rest of the climate regulations just sweep themselves away. But if they don’t get rid of it, the environmentalists can sue, and then there’s going to have to be a Trump Clean Power Plan,” said Mr. Milloy, who is also a former policy director for Murray Energy, a major coal company whose chief executive, Robert E. Murray, was a backer of Mr. Trump’s campaign and his push to undo climate change policy.

The 2009 legal finding is at the heart of a debate within the Trump administration over how to permanently reverse Mr. Obama’s climate change rules. The finding concludes that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and welfare by warming the planet, which led to a legal requirement that the E.P.A. regulate smokestacks and tailpipes that spew planet-warming pollution.

Also of Interest

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

'The Resistance' That Doesn't Resist War

Pushing Australia into War with China

Secret US nuclear bomb videos revealed

Trump, Empire and Our Long Retreat to Tyranny

How to Jam the Trump Brand

We Are Barely Even Trying

Clinton campaign plagued by bickering

Dirt as a Carbon Sink?

A Little Night Music

Bull Moose Jackson - Watch my Signals

Bullmoose Jackson - Fare Thee Well, Deacon Jones

Bull Moose Jackson and his Buffalo Bearcats - Moosey

Bull Moose Jackson - Heavyweight Baby

Bull Moose Jackson - Hodge-Podge

Bull Moose Jackson - Nosey Joe

Bull Moose Jackson and his Buffalo Bearcats - I Wanna Hug Ya, Kiss Ya, Squeeze Ya

Bull Moose Jackson - Aw Shucks Baby

Bull Moose Jackson - Bearcat Blues

Bull Moose Jackson And his Buffalo Bearcats - I Want A Bowlegged Woman

Bull Moose Jackson - Big Ten Inch