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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sonny Boy Williamson

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson. Enjoy!

^{Sonny Boy Williamson - Keep It To Yourself}

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

-- Martin Luther King Jr

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News and Opinion

Netanyahu praises Israeli army after killings of Palestinians

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised Israel's security forces after the killing of 17 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, just as condemnation of the Israeli army's use of live ammunition against protesters grows.

In a statement on Saturday, Netanyahu thanked his troops for "guarding the country's borders" and allowing "Israeli citizens to celebrate the [Passover] holiday peacefully".

"Well done to our soldiers," he said.

Massacre in Gaza: Israeli Forces Open Fire on Palestinians, Killing 18, Wounding As Many As 1,700

Human Rights Watch:

Gaza Killings Unlawful, Calculated

Senior Israeli officials who unlawfully called for use of live ammunition against Palestinian demonstrations who posed no imminent threat to life bear responsibility for the killings of 14 demonstrators in Gaza and the injuring of hundreds on March 30, 2018, Human Rights Watch said today.

Both before and after the confrontations, senior officials publicly said that soldiers stationed along the barrier that separates Gaza and Israel had orders to target “instigators” and those who approach the border. However, the Israeli government presented no evidence that rock-throwing and other violence by some demonstrators seriously threatened Israeli soldiers across the border fence. The high number of deaths and injuries was the foreseeable consequence of granting soldiers leeway to use lethal force outside of life-threatening situations in violation of international norms, coupled with the longstanding culture of impunity within the Israeli army for serious abuses.

“Israeli soldiers were not merely using excessive force, but were apparently acting on orders that all but ensured a bloody military response to the Palestinian demonstrations,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The result was foreseeable deaths and injuries of demonstrators on the other side of a border who posed no imminent threat to life.”

The killings highlight the importance of the International Criminal Court prosecutor opening a formal investigation into serious international crimes in Palestine, Human Rights Watch said.

White House clarification only adds to confusion over Syria withdrawal

The White House on Wednesday said the US fight against the Islamic State in Syria is “coming to a rapid end” even as Donald Trump reportedly agreed to keep troops in the war-torn country for the foreseeable future.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw US troops from Syria “very soon”, which is at odds with a January declaration that “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria”.

“The military mission to eradicate Isis in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with Isis being almost completely destroyed,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said in a statement.

“The United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small Isis presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated. We will continue to consult with our allies and friends regarding future plans. We expect countries in the region and beyond, plus the United Nations, to work toward peace and ensure that Isis never re-emerges.”

Mixed messages emerged from a meeting between Trump and his National Security Council about the US presence in Syria earlier this week. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Trump had instructed military leaders to prepare to withdraw US troops from Syria but did not agree to a timeline by which to do so.

Famous Victim Of US Torture Speaks Out

Donald Trump’s New Policies Could Make It Harder for Torture Survivors to Get Asylum

President Donald Trump's Twitter rants this weekend about “dangerous caravans” of migrants approaching the United States were followed by an announcement on Monday that the White House will push for legislation to make it harder to seek asylum in the United States. It’s the latest in a string of decisions from the administration that have rattled the hopes of persecuted people looking for refuge in the country. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he will get rid of a policy that allows asylum-seekers to have a full hearing before an immigration judge — his method of streamlining a backlogged asylum system that he claims is subject to “rampant abuse and fraud” and “is being gamed.”

Despite the federal government’s new public skepticism about asylum-seekers, many of them have endured unspeakable violence, leaving psychological and physical scars. For torture survivors in particular, a forensic evaluation by a doctor is one of the best ways to prove the harm they suffered before arriving in the U.S., providing professional documentation of the persecution they faced back home — and likely would still face if they returned. But advocates and lawyers are worried that not enough people are getting access to physical and psychological exams in a timely manner, and that the Trump administration’s policies to detain asylum-seekers by default and fast-track deportations are making the work more difficult. ...

The majority of exams are performed pro bono by medical professionals who receive specialized training from organizations like Physicians for Human Rights, or PHR, the largest provider and coordinator of forensic evaluations in the U.S. for the past two decades. They receive between 60 to 100 forensic evaluation requests every month, about half of which are for psychological examinations. While most New York City-area clients will be seen because there’s a density of providers who can perform forensic evaluations, fewer trained professionals exist in places like Houston or Los Angeles, says Homer Venters, of PHR. Around 90 percent of asylum-seekers who undergo a PHR evaluation are granted the right to remain in the United States, compared to just 43 percent overall. But Venters says that only about half of asylum-seekers manage to access a forensic evaluation at all.

Everything Keeps Changing About The Skripal Narrative Except "Russia Definitely Did It"

The latest news update on the notorious Skripal case is that the source of the alleged Novichok poisoning may have been a cereal brought to the Skripals by a family friend who happens to work for a major Russian medical company, hospitalizing them both as well as a police sergeant for some reason. Less than 24 hours earlier, we were informed that the Novichok nerve agent was actually likely administered via the handle of the front door, which according to the New York Times would have been an operation that "is seen as so risky and sensitive that it is unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin."

This is par for course in the immensely plot hole-riddled Skripal case, which since the story broke has been an endless barrage of ever-changing contradictory narratives the details of which nobody is certain of to any degree at all... except that Russia definitely did it. We've been told that the Novichok was planted in Yulia Skripal's suitcase. We were told that it was administered via the air vents in their car. We were told that it was delivered by a weaponized miniature drone. We were told that the Novichok was smeared on the family's car door handle. Now it's either the house door or Russian buckwheat cereal, depending on who you're reading. ...

Isn't that interesting? Isn't it so very, very interesting how the people investigating this attack still don't know their asses from their elbows when it comes to any aspect of the case, but it is absolutely beyond question that the Russian government was definitely with 100 percent certainty responsible for the poisoning?

Russia’s spy chief says Trump and May ordered the Salisbury nerve agent attack

Russia’s spy chief Wednesday accused the U.S. and Britain of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, calling it a “grotesque provocation” by Western intelligence agencies.

Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told an audience in Moscow that the March 4 attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been “crudely concocted by U.S. and British security services.” ...

Naryshkin’s comments came as British and Russian officials attended an emergency meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague — the first time the body has met since the attack on Skripal, a former Russian double agent. ...

Results from independent lab tests by the OPCW into the substance used in the attempted murder are expected next week. The body is not able to allocate blame for the attack, but could request that Moscow grant inspectors access to former chemical weapons sites to check stockpiles have been destroyed.

Explosive social conditions in Spain behind moves toward police state

The arrest and detention of former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont in Germany, on the request of Spanish authorities, represents a sinister attack on political opposition. It marks another step toward police-state rule in Europe. Behind this development lie economic, political and social tensions now finding expression in a growing movement of the European working class. This is especially the case in Spain, which in the last weeks has seen strikes by Amazon workers and mass demonstrations by pensioners to demand decent pensions and social security.

Despite the boast by the ruling right-wing Popular Party (PP) government and the European Union (EU) that Spain’s economy has survived the 2008 economic crisis that crippled the country for almost a decade and is well on the road to recovery, working people—whether Catalan, Basque or Spanish-speaking—confront appalling and worsening social conditions. Nearly three and a half million Spanish people are unemployed. Although the headline figure of 16.5 percent unemployed is down from 26.3 percent in 2013, this is small comfort, as a high number are in temporary, low-paid employment. According to official statistics, 21.5 million contracts were signed in 2017, of which 90 percent were temporary.

Oxfam Intercom ranks Spain as having experienced the third-highest growth of inequality in the EU since 2007. The organisation notes that the richest 1 percent of the Spanish population accounts for a quarter of the national wealth. It reports that 7,000 new millionaires were created in 2017. The fortunes of Spain’s top three richest people are equivalent to the wealth of the poorest 30 percent, i.e., over 14 million people. Meanwhile, the exploitation of the Spanish working class has intensified. While hourly productivity has increased by 6 percent since 2012, wage costs have only increased by 0.6 percent. A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of Spanish people think that it is difficult or impossible for the average worker to increase their savings, no matter how hard they work.

US acknowledges potential unauthorized spying devices in DC

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is acknowledging for the first time that foreign actors or criminals are using eavesdropping devices to track cellphone activity in Washington, D.C., according to a letter obtained by The Hill.

DHS in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) last Monday said they came across unauthorized cell-site simulators in the Washington, D.C., area last year. Such devices, also known as "stingrays," can track a user's location data through their mobile phones and can intercept cellphone calls and messages.

"[T]he National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) has observed anomalous activity in the National Capital Region that appears to be consistent with International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers," DHS wrote in response to specific questions Wyden sent them last November. It said it is also aware of IMSI use outside the Beltway.

DHS official Christopher Krebs, the top official leading the NPPD, added in a separate letter accompanying his response that such use "of IMSI catchers by malicious actors to track and monitor cellular users is unlawful and threatens the security of communications, resulting in safety, economic and privacy risks."

DHS said they have not determined the users behind such eavesdropping devices, nor the type of devices being used. The agency also did not elaborate on how many devices it unearthed, nor where authorities located them.

Public Workers Worried That Tennessee’s Billionaire Governor Is Taking Another Run at Them

Last year, Tennessee's governor attempted a frontal assault on the unionized workers that staff the state’s facilities and management jobs at public buildings, two-thirds of which are state-run colleges. Gov. Bill Haslam, the richest U.S. elected official not named Donald Trump, signed a contract with a facilities management firm to privatize those jobs. But a prodigious campaign by the campus employee union and student activists led to nearly the entire University of Tennessee system publicly opting out of the contract.

For a union that is legally prohibited from collective bargaining, going up against a stacked deck of conservative lawmakers and powerful corporations and coming out with a win was a spectacular feat. But Haslam appears to have found a work-around. The Tennessee legislature is on the verge of passing a bill to overhaul the University of Tennessee’s entire board of trustees, allowing Haslam to hand-pick the replacements. That board could pressure campuses to opt back into the privatization contract at any time over the next four years.

“We think it’s a pretty big threat,” said Thomas Walker of United Campus Workers, the lead union for facilities employees at Tennessee colleges. “This allows Haslam to create a board of political and business allies. He’s trying to make a crony board.” The bill, called the UT Focus Act, mirrors a successful 2016 effort to change out all members of the board of regents for six state universities outside the UT system. By the end, Haslam will have personally appointed every member of the public college and university governing bodies in Tennessee, all of whom can opt into the privatization contract his administration negotiated.

Teachers in Revolt: Meet the Educators in Kentucky & Oklahoma Walking Out over School Funding

As Teacher Rebellion Catches Fire, Oklahoma's GOP Governor Dismisses Educators as Spoiled Children

As teachers in the historically red states of Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona are following in the footsteps of educators in West Virginia and turning out in droves to demand higher pay, reliable pensions, and greater government investments in the public school system, some Republican state leaders are sticking to their narrative that teachers are simply asking for too much—a strategy that could backfire during the November midterm elections. 

Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Mary Fallin on Tuesday compared the protesting teachers to spoiled children.

"Teachers want more," Fallin told CBS News. "But it's kind of like a teenager wanting a better car."

Her comments followed fiery remarks by Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who last month said that educators who were protesting legislation that would slash their retirement benefits were "ignorant," "remarkably selfish," and "throwing a temper tantrum." 

Sheriff’s deputy runs down Sacramento protester and flees scene

... The Saturday incident occurred when the woman, who was carrying a sign that read “Stephon Clark Rest in Power,” walked in front of a deputy’s vehicle and motioned for him to stop. After initially slowing down, the deputy suddenly accelerated into the woman, violently knocking her to the ground.

In a press release, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Shaun Hampton acknowledged that a deputy hit the woman with his car, while simultaneously seeking to minimize and justify the deputy’s actions. “The collision occurred while the patrol vehicle was traveling at slow speeds,” Hampton said, claiming that protesters were “yelling while pounding and kicking the vehicles’ exterior.” Hampton continued: “During the incident, the Sheriff’s Department vehicle sustained scratches, dents, and a shattered rear window. The damage to the vehicle was not a result of the collision involving the pedestrian but was caused by vandals in the crowd.”

However, witnesses and cell phone camera footage of the incident tell a far different story from the one being peddled by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department.

In video published by the National Lawyers Guild Legal Observers, protesters can be seen surrounding two Sacramento Sheriff’s Department SUVs with lights and sirens on, though demonstrators did not appear to engage in any form of violent or aggressive behavior toward the vehicle. An officer can be heard warning demonstrators to back away from his vehicle four times over his public-address system. The vehicle then slows momentarily and almost comes to a complete stop before accelerating at high speed into the stunned crowd of protesters, striking a woman, and speeding off. “The vehicle accelerated and struck her, accelerated very fast and struck her violently and she fell to the ground. It was a very fast acceleration, not the way you would move with people around,” Guy Danilowitz, the legal observer who recorded the video on his cell phone, told CNN.

The California Highway Patrol announced that it is investigating the incident but refused to say whether the attack was being investigated as a “hit and run” or a lesser charge.

MLK’s Fight Against Racism, Militarism & Capitalism: Historian Taylor Branch on King’s Final Years

50 Years After Assassination, Nation Urged to Acknowledge and Embrace MLK's Radical Vision

As hundreds rallied in Memphis, Tenn. on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, progressive civil rights and anti-poverty advocates urged Americans to honor the full breadth of the leader's efforts—which went far beyond his ubiquitous "I Have a Dream" speech and pushed for the eradication of poverty and an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam.

"In this brief celebratory moment of King's life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King's strong indictment of the U.S. empire, capitalism, and racism in their own lives," wrote social critic Cornel West in an op-ed calling on Americans to resist "sterilizing" King's legacy.

If King were alive today, West argues, he would likely be silenced due to what would doubtlessly be a firm stance against U.S. military policy, the Trump administration's aggressive anti-immigrant campaigns, police brutality, and persistent income inequality.

"Neoliberal revisionists thrive on the spectacle of their smartness and the visibility of their mainstream status—yet rarely, if ever, have they said a mumbling word about what would have concerned King, such as U.S. drone strikes, house raids, and torture sites, or raised their voices about escalating inequality, poverty, or Wall Street domination under neoliberal administrations—be the president white or black."

When King was killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, he was in the city to rally sanitation workers who were fighting for fair wages and recognition of their union. The workers' struggle intersected with the issues King wished to highlight with his Poor People's Campaign, in which he hoped to find "middle ground between riots on the one hand and timid supplications for justice on the other."

The campaign represented "the beginning of a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity," King said less than a month before he was shot. "It's as pure as a man needing an income to support his family." 

"Dr. King understood that true fairness begins with racial and economic equality," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) in a statement on Wednesday. "If we are to truly honor Dr. King's life and spirit, let us recommit ourselves to the fight for justice and no longer accept silence on the things that matter."

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Facebook's Zuckerberg to testify before congress

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is coming to Capitol Hill on April 11 for his first-ever congressional testimony, a House committee announced Wednesday morning.

“This hearing will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online,” said Republican Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon and Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey in a joint statement as heads of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee said more details on the hearing would be forthcoming.

Next Wednesday, however, might not be Zuckerberg’s only congressional hearing. A Facebook spokesperson told VICE News that conversations with other committees are ongoing. Always in slight competition with the House, the Senate will likely demand their own hearing as well. Several senators, including the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley, have called for the Facebook CEO to testify.

Zuckerberg’s testimony comes in response to the revelation that a third-party app developer had improperly sold the personal data of up to 50 million Facebook users to political consulting group Cambridge Analytica, which did election work all over the globe, including for Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016. A lot is at stake in the hearings for Facebook. If they go poorly and members of Congress sense a change in public opinion, the so-far scattered calls for more privacy regulations could grow into a chorus.

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EPA Violated the Law by Failing to Investigate Civil Rights Complaints, Court Rules

A court ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency violated its duty to respond to civil rights complaints in a timely way. The case involved five organizations that had waited years for the EPA to respond to complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color. ...

Among the groups suing Scott Pruitt and the EPA were Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, a nonprofit in Albuquerque, which filed a complaint in 2002 over a hazardous waste facility in a mostly poor, Hispanic area of southeastern New Mexico; and Californians for Renewable Energy, which in 2000 challenged state permitting decisions that allowed two gas-fired power plants to be located in a mostly nonwhite, low-income community in Pittsburg, California. The EPA officially resolved all five of the complaints over the last year, declaring them closed with little or no remedy. But none of the groups, which were based in Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, California, and Michigan, feel that the situations sparking their initial complaints have been adequately addressed.

With help from Earthjustice and the Environmental Justice Clinic at Yale Law School, the groups filed a complaint in 2015 arguing that the EPA had defied the law that lays out a schedule for responding to civil rights claims. In a decision dated March 30, Federal District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong agreed. “The EPA often takes years to act on a complaint — and even then, acts only after a lawsuit has been filed,” Armstrong wrote in her decision, going on to note that “the EPA has allowed Plaintiffs’ complaints to languish for decades.”

Much environmental harm was done in those years. In Charlton-Pollard, Texas, an ExxonMobil refinery emitted more than 400 million pounds of pollution into the air between 2000, when residents filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA over the state’s permitting of the refinery, and 2017, when the agency declared the complaint resolved. ... In Flint, Michigan, the incinerator at the center of the civil rights complaint has been operating for 23 years. During that time, the plant has been emitting lead and other contaminants into the air, and three of the four original complainants have died.

USDA secretary accused of siding with industry over science in new report

Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, has been criticized for rolling back school nutrition standards, attempting to upend the food stamps program, rejecting World Health Organization guidelines on antibiotics in agriculture and ending a pesticide ban, in a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) advocacy group.

Perdue spent his first year in office “sidelining science and favoring industry”, the report claims, calling for greater congressional scrutiny of the agency. ...

For example, the USDA surprised antibiotic resistance campaigners when it said World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines against using medically important antibiotics in agriculture were “not in alignment with US policy and are not supported by sound science”. There is widespread scientific agreement that the magnitude of antibiotic use in agriculture is problematic.

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Also of Interest

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

King’s Legacy Betrayed

Intercepted podcast: Injustice League

Gaza's Passover massacre

The Local News Crisis Is Bigger Than Sinclair

Millionaires, mediocrities and militarists — a sneak preview of the Democratic Party’s new fall lineup

The curious case of Andrew McCabe's legal defense fund

Some Wisconsin police are returning military vehicles

Right-Wing Media Look at Parkland Student Activists and See a Reason to Gut Public Education

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A Little Night Music

Sonny Boy Williamson - My Younger Days

Sonny Boy Williamson - Help Me

Sonny Boy Williamson - The Goat

Sonny Boy Williamson - Red Hot Kisses

Sonny Boy Williamson - I`m A Lonely Man

Sonny Boy Williamson - One Way Out

Sonny Boy Williamson - Checkin' Up On My Baby

Sonny Boy Williamson - Pontiac Blues

Sonny Boy Williamson - Bring It On Home

Sonny Boy Williamson - Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

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