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"World War III is coming and Armageddon tired of it."

-- Unknown punster

News and Opinion

A silly headline, but an interesting article nonetheless. Here's a teaser:

Could the Cold War Return With a Vengeance?

Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it increasingly looks as if, thanks to current Pentagon planning, a twenty-first-century version of the Cold War (with dangerous new twists) has begun and hardly anyone has even noticed.

In 2006, when the Department of Defense spelled out its future security role, it saw only one overriding mission: its “Long War” against international terrorism. “With its allies and partners, the United States must be prepared to wage this war in many locations simultaneously and for some years to come,” the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review explained that year.  Twelve years later, the Pentagon has officially announced that that long war is drawing to a close — even though at least seven counterinsurgency conflicts still rage across the Greater Middle East and Africa — and a new long war has begun, a permanent campaign to contain China and Russia in Eurasia.

“Great power competition, not terrorism, has emerged as the central challenge to U.S. security and prosperity,” claimed Pentagon Comptroller David Norquist while releasing the Pentagon’s $686 billion budget request in January.  “It is increasingly apparent that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian values and, in the process, replace the free and open order that has enabled global security and prosperity since World War II.”

Of course, just how committed President Trump is to the preservation of that “free and open order” remains questionable given his determination to scuttle international treaties and ignite a global trade war. Similarly, whether China and Russia truly seek to undermine the existing world order or simply make it less American-centric is a question that deserves close attention, just not today. The reason is simple enough. The screaming headline you should have seen in any paper (but haven’t) is this: the U.S. military has made up its mind about the future. It has committed itself and the nation to a three-front geopolitical struggle to resist Chinese and Russian advances in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Experts Can't Prove Nerve Agent Came From Russia Or Is Novichok

If Western Media Were Honest About Russia

Many of our readers have been pointing out the recent revelations that some rather significant falsehoods have been knowingly advanced by the British government about Russia and promoted uncritically by trusted media outlets of the western world. Following said revelations, there have been some attempts by the Foreign Office and those same media outlets to cover up said falsehoods. Rather than double down and risk making a bad situation worse, we here at National News Conglomerate have decided to come clean with our readers about exactly what's going on with this whole Russia kerfuffle. ...

So here's the thing, see: it isn't our job to tell you the truth. Large media corporations like ours are all owned by powerful billionaires, all of whom have a vested interest in preserving the establishment upon which they have built their massive kingdoms. Those billionaires hire executives to direct their media empires who are loyal to establishment interests, those executives in turn hire editors who are loyal to establishment interests, and those editors hire journalists who are loyal to establishment interests, effectively creating an environment wherein the only way to get ahead is to unquestioningly promote whatever narratives are being advanced by western intelligence/defense agencies and their plutocratic allies.

At this point in history, this means helping to advance a very aggressive agenda against the Russian government in the US and its client states. A 2017 Department of Defense Risk Assessment by the US Army Strategic Studies Institute says that the US empire is in what it calls “post-primacy” and may currently be on its way out the door.

So when we told you, for example, that Russia was the only government with a motive to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter, we weren't being entirely honest. The international allied intelligence and defense agencies of the western empire have every motive in the world to manufacture international support for sanctions and hawkish agendas which disrupt disobedient governments. In fact, the western alliance has far more motive to stage such an attack and frame Russia for it than Russia has for attempting to assassinate an ex-spy who has been strategically irrelevant for years.

This is also true of the alleged hacking of the DNC in the US and all the other Russia stories we've been circulating. We've been reporting these allegations as though they are unquestionable facts for many months now despite the complete absence of the sort of evidence you suckers should be demanding in a post-Iraq invasion world, when really the US-centralized empire stands far more to gain by them than Russia does. ... So just play along, okay? Let us have our proxy wars and cold war escalations, give us the surveillance and censorship and black site torture programs we've been trying to manipulate you into giving us, and this will all be over before you know it. Then we'll control the whole world at long last, and there will be no mischievous governments or alternative media or thought crimes interfering in the maturation of our beneficent relationship with the unwashed masses.

Media Warn of ‘Russian Bots’—Despite Primary Source’s Disavowal

One could forgive the average reader for thinking reporters covering bots had been replaced by bots. The formula is something we’ve seen a million times now: After a controversial story breaks, media outlets insist that “Russian bots” used the controversy to “sow discord” or “exploit tensions”; a “Russian bot dashboard” is offered as proof. (These “dashboards” let one see what Russian bots—automated online persona controlled by the Kremlin—are allegedly “pushing” on social media.)

The substance of the concern or discord is underreported or ignored altogether. Online conflict is neatly dismissed as a Kremlin psyop, the narrative of Russia interference in every aspect of our lives is reinforced, and one is reminded to be “aware” of Russian trolls online. ...

One problem, though: The “Russian bot dashboard” reporters generally cite as their primary source, Hamilton 68, effectively told reporters to stop writing these pieces six weeks ago. ... Clint Watts, the media’s most cited expert on so-called “Russian bots” and co-founder of Hamilton 68, says the narrative is “overdone.” [See this Buzzfeed article for details. - js]

Put another way: These stories are of virtually no news value, other than smearing whichever side the “Russian bots” happened to support, and reinforcing in the public mind that one cannot trust unsanctioned social media accounts. Also that the Russians are hiding in every shadow, waiting to pounce.

The March We Need Is a March for Peace

Students march for gun control; women march for a variety of causes, and, well, against anything Trump; but who is marching for less American war in the Greater Middle East? Why? Why isn’t there a passionate coalition willing to combat the American war machine? A machine that is, by now, on autopilot.

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched to protest gun violence; in January, hundreds thousands of women – and their supporters – staged a second annual protest against all things Trump. ... As I write this, on a Sunday morning, I’m certain the key weekly television programs – “Meet the Press,” “This Week,” and “Face the Nation” – will focus on, at best, three issues. First: Russia-gate, the Left’s favorite daily soap opera; Second: gun violence, the NRA, and a nation divided over firearms; and, if we’re lucky, Third: the John Bolton appointment and the potential for a future war in Iran.

You can bet there will be hardly any mention of Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan – seven of the countries in which Americans have killed and been killed in the last year. There will be no cost-benefit analysis or discussions about which conflict – if any – is in America’s vital, national interest. There will be no nationwide antiwar protests to cover, no dissenting veterans interviewed, no investigative reporters on the ground with disgruntled local civilians in a Mideast locale. No, the Sunday shows will be all about politics, or at least what passes for political discourse these days, and, of course, the ongoing national culture wars.

These are, mind you, important issues. Nonetheless, the relative silence regarding America’s seven – at least – ongoing shooting wars is itself instructive. No one cares. Military intervention, bombing, even the occasional dead servicemen – how many readers even know there were seven killed in Iraq this past week? – hardly register in the news cycle. War is the new normal.

White House: US Troops Will Remain in Syria

President Trump is still very clear he wants US troops out of Syria, and has even ordered commanders to quickly wrap up military operations in the country. It doesn’t seem to be happening, however, as White House officials have been feverishly backpedaling from the president’s comments.

President Trump was said to have been pushing for a withdrawal for months behind the scenes, and comments over the past week seemingly made that formal policy. Though Trump advisers are said to have drawn up plans for a pullout, they proposed an alternative plan to Trump, where they don’t leave at all.

White House indications are that Trump isn’t getting his way, and that instead the US is going to just stay in Syria to “eliminate the small ISIS presence” that yet remains. Since the US hasn’t been fighting ISIS on the ground in quite some time, there’s no timetable for that.

Former Catalan police chief charged over role in independence bid

A former head of the Catalan police force who gained widespread praise for his handling of the Barcelona terrorist attacks last August has been charged with belonging to a criminal organisation for his role in the events leading up to Catalonia’s illegal declaration of independence two months later.

Josep Lluís Trapero belonged to a “complex and heterogeneous criminal organisation” led by the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, the Spanish national court judge Carmen Lamela said in an indictment on Thursday. Trapero also faces charges for public order offences related to the independence declaration in October.

The regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, “shared a common goal of bringing about Catalonia’s secession and the proclamation of a republic, and in this manner changing the political organisation of the state and the government, contrary to the constitution and the statute of autonomy,” Lamela said. ... The charges against Trapero relate to events in September and October last year. In September, the Mossos did nothing to intervene when a large crowd kept members of the Spanish civil guard trapped for hours inside a Catalan government office they had been ordered to search. During the incident, several civil guard vehicles were vandalised.

On 1 October, the Mossos were expected to close down polling booths set up in schools for an independence referendum. However, the police only intervened sporadically and, in many cases, only took away ballot boxes if the schools’ occupants gave them up voluntarily.

Muslims Accused of Plotting Violence Get Seven Times More Media Attention and Four Times Longer Sentences

American courts treat Muslims differently, a new study says. Among perpetrators of ideologically motivated violent plots, those who were perceived to be Muslim received sentences that were four times longer than non-Muslims involved in similar cases. The disproportionality carried over into the court of public opinion, too: Cases of attempted violence by Muslims received 7 1/2 times more coverage from major media outlets, while successful plots were covered twice as much.

These findings are contained in a new report, titled “Equal Treatment? Measuring the Legal and Media Responses to Ideologically Motivated Violence in the United States,” released on Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, or ISPU. Built on years of research on cases of planned or successfully executed acts of ideological violence in the U.S., the report highlights glaring discrepancies in the way the judicial system and media treat such acts, depending on the background of the suspected perpetrator.

“The findings of this report build and expand on existing research, and provides quantitative backing to many people’s instinctual perceptions of what has been going on in the media and in our legal system,” said Kumar Rao, a fellow at ISPU and one of the co-authors of the report. “As it relates to acts of ideological violence, there is, frankly, a double standard in how perpetrators are described in the media, as well as how they are treated in the courts.”

NYPD settles lawsuit after illegally spying on Muslims

Muslim leaders and their lawyers say a settlement of legal claims that the New York City Police Department illegally spied on Muslims empowers them to prevent future abuse. The deal was announced Thursday by the city and the Islamic community.

Baher Azmy, legal director of Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told a news conference that the agreement ensures the NYPD will act legally as an increasingly empowered Muslim community asserts its rights.

The agreement resolved a 2012 suit in Newark, New Jersey, after the Associated Press revealed how the NYPD infiltrated Muslim student groups and put informants in mosques to try to prevent terrorist attacks. The AP reported that the effort crossed into New Jersey, where the department collected intelligence on ordinary people at mosques, restaurants and schools starting in 2002. The surveillance extended across at least 20 mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 shops, two schools and two Muslim student groups in New Jersey alone. By the NYPD’s own admission the blanket surveillance failed to produce a single intelligence lead.

Under the terms of the settlement, the NYPD confirmed that it has dismantled the surveillance unit formerly known as the “demographics unit” that carried out the spying on Muslim communities. The department also agreed that it would not engage in religious-based surveillance in the future in New Jersey, as it had already accepted for New York. In addition, there will be a new set of guidelines for intelligence gathering, and the NYPD will submit their training procedures for police officers to review by the plaintiffs in the case. The force will pay damages that amount to a total of $47,500 to businesses and mosques that suffered economic harm as a result of the blanket spying, and $25,000 to individuals who were stigmatised.

NYPD shot and killed bipolar black man after mistaking metal pipe for gun

Four New York Police officers fatally shot a bipolar black man in Brooklyn in broad daylight on Wednesday, just hours after the mayor and police commissioner were boasting about the city’s historic low in shootings.

NYPD Police Chief Terence Monahan said in a press conference on Wednesday that five officers, three in plainclothes and two in uniform, were responding to 911 calls reporting a possibly armed man in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. They encountered the suspect, Saheed Vassel, 34, at around 4.56 p.m. Police initially thought Vassel, the father of a teenage boy, had a gun, but he was holding a metal pipe.

When the officers encountered Vassel, Monahan said, “The suspect then took a two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers.” Four of the five officers present drew their weapons and fired at Vassel a total of ten times. Vassel was transported to Kings County Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Jaccbot Hinds, 40, who witnessed the shooting, told the New York Daily News that the officers got out of their unmarked vehicle and fired at Vassel without warning. “They just hopped out of the car. It’s almost like they did a hit,” Hinds said. “They didn’t say please. They didn’t say put your hands up, nothing.” ...

Vassell's father Eric Vassell told the New York Times that his son had bipolar disorder and had been hospitalized multiple times in recent years.

Oklahoma Teachers Strike Grows Stronger

Oklahoma teachers do some A+ trolling of legislators

Oklahoma teachers have been occupying the state Capitol for four straight days now, filling the entire building with huge masses of people on every level, chanting protest slogans that have grown pointed and personal as the two sides continue to stand off. Gov. Mary Fallin saw that firsthand after giving an interview to CBS News yesterday, where she said, "Teachers want more, but it's kind of like a teenage kid who wants a better car." Ever since, the teachers have been jingling their keys at her and chanting, “Where’s my car?” when she walks by.

Oklahoma teacher Lyndsey Stuart took this video of the Gov. Mary Fallin “Where’s my car?” protest at the Capitol yesterday pic.twitter.com/H4E9ILR1tp

— c b c (@chelseybcoombs) April 5, 2018

Fallin isn’t the only politician experiencing the effects of expressing anti-teacher sentiment: State Representative Kevin McDugle had to publicly back down after he posted a Facebook Live Tuesday saying he wouldn’t vote for another measure in support of the teachers because of their continued protests.

China’s retaliatory tariffs will hit Trump country hard

It was inevitable that China would respond in kind to tariffs levied against it by President Trump. The president argued that the trade deficit and Chinese theft of intellectual property necessitated taking economic action. But the net effect is that China also will charge more for American products to enter its country — tariffs that are likely to affect places whose residents voted for Trump more significantly than voters in other areas.

The products to which China will add additional duties include manufactured products such as airplanes and vinyl records. (For some reason.) But they will also apply tariffs to a number of agricultural goods, according to CNBC. ...

It won’t surprise you to learn that agricultural areas produce most of these goods. And rural areas supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Democrats think Trump’s trade war will help them win back rural America

Congresswoman Cheri Bustos just hinted at how Democrats think they could target President Donald Trump during the 2018 midterms when she slammed him for making a “slew of broken promises” to rural Americans with his trade policies.

“He made some really grand promises about making America great — he zoomed in on the kind of towns that we’re visiting today, the people in rural America, the people that I represent — and these are now broken promises,” Rep. Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois, told VICE News on Thursday between events in her district, Illinois 17th. ... Democrats need just 23 seats to take back the House — and many of their top targets represent rural areas like Bustos', where foreign tariffs on agricultural and manufacturing exports could hit hardest.

Bustos’ comments about Trump’s economic vision came the same day China released its own list of tariffs targeting up to $50 billion in U.S. products in retaliation for the Trump administration announcing $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods just the day before. Those Chinese tariffs haven’t been implemented yet, but they would target 106 products, including soybeans and airplanes, which Bustos said would affect farmers and manufacturers in her district. She also slammed a Chinese tariff on pork products that went into effect this week.

Sinclair Media Nightmare Made Possible By Clinton & Democrats

Ajit Pai’s Ties to Sinclair Broadcasting Under Investigation At FCC

The FCC’s inspector general is investigating whether Ajit Pai, the agency’s chairman, improperly used his power to benefit Sinclair Broadcasting. ... As reported by the New York Times, the investigation is focused on Pai’s decision to relax rules limiting the ownership of television stations by a single company. ...

That rule change effectively creates a loophole that would allow Sinclair’s planned $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media, which would put Sinclair stations in 72% of U.S. households. That would represent a historic level of media consolidation, which has long been criticized as a threat to healthy democratic discourse. Despite the spread of online news, television is still the dominant source of news for Americans.

One major backer of the investigation into Pai’s decision is Frank Pallone, a Democratic Congressman from New Jersey. Pallone told the Times that “for months I have been trying to get to the bottom of the allegations about Chairman Pai’s relationship with Sinclair Broadcasting.” Some of those allegations were unearthed in a Times investigation last August, which found that Pai had communicated closely with Sinclair executives as he rolled back rules, and that his decisions often aligned closely with Sinclair priorities.

Cambridge Analytica harvested millions more Facebook profiles than we thought

Cambridge Analytica apparently got access to a lot more people’s Facebook data than we thought.

The first reports, from the New York Times last week, suggested that the U.K. firm had harvested 50 million users’ data without their permission, via a third-party app, and then targeted those users with political content. Their two major clients were the Brexit and Trump campaigns. On Wednesday, Facebook subtly mentioned, at the bottom of a blog post from the chief technology officer, that Cambridge Analytica may have harvested up to 87 million users’ data.

“In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people — mostly in the U.S. — may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica,” CTO Mike Schroepfer wrote in the blog post.

Brazil: "A remarkably symbolic moment, that is going to leave the country more divided than ever"

Brazil's Lula faces jail for corruption after supreme court ruling

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces a jail term after the supreme court rejected a request to allow him to remain free while appealing against a 12-year conviction on corruption charges. The ruling in the early hours of Thursday marked an extraordinary turn of events for Brazil’s most popular politician, who left office in 2010 with an approval rating of more than 80%.

Supreme court judges ruled against him by six to five after a marathon session. The decision could end Lula’s political career and deepen divisions in the country, which has been racked by recent episodes of political violence.

Lula has said he is innocent and the charges are politically motivated to prevent him from running for president again in the October election. In an official statement, his Worker’s party described the ruling as “a tragic day for democracy and Brazil”. The case against him is part of Brazil’s sprawling “Car Wash” investigation, which has led to the jailing of dozens of top executives and politicians.

That D.C. condo deal is becoming a much bigger problem for Pruitt

Scott Pruitt has so far survived a swirl of ethics scandals, but the D.C. condo rental [from a lobbyist that had business with the EPA] is turning out to be a bigger problem. ...

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that the president wasn’t OK with the condo deal, a few days after Trump reportedly called Pruitt to say “Keep your head up” and “Keep fighting.” “We are reviewing the situation,” Sanders said. “When we have had the chance to have done a deeper dive on that, we will let you know the outcomes of that.” She added that the president still thinks Pruitt is “doing a good job,” but that they are taking the issue seriously.

The EPA’s ethics watchdog, Kevin Minoli, is reviewing the situation again, saying Pruitt didn’t actually give complete information the first time.

Also of Interest

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

‘The Doves Are Hawks and the Hawks Are Super-Hawks’

More Evidence That The UK's Russia Narrative Is A Verdict In Search Of A Crime

Yulia Skripal says she is recovering but disoriented

Birds Can See Earth's Magnetic Fields, And We Finally Know How That's Possible

A Little Night Music

Blind John Davis - Magic Carpet

Blind John Davis - C.C. Rider

Blind John Davis - Anna Lou Breakdown

Blind John Davis - No Mail Today

Blind John Davis - Boogie Woogie on Saint Louis Blues

Peter Cleighton & Blind John Davis - Moonshine Man Blues

Merline Johnson & Blind John Davis - Froggy Bottom

Lonnie Johnson w/Blind John Davis - Watch Shorty

Blind John Davis - I Love My Josephine

Blind John Davis in Chicago - Just A Dream, Kansas City, When I Lost My Baby