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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

-- Winston Churchill

News and Opinion

Historical Amnesia and the Destruction of the Senate Torture Report

The recent revelation that the CIA "mistakenly" deleted its copy of the Senate report on detention and torture, and then, in an "inadvertent" error, deleted the hard disk backup, may be a just such a case. The whisking of the report down the memory hole could be seen as an "inadvertent," though incredible, mistake if not for the challenge posed by recovering a little history from the memory hole. Former Chinese Premier Chou En-lai once remarked that "One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory."

In May of 2002, CIA director George Tenet promoted Jose A. Rodriguez to head of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorist Center. At the time, there were ninety-two videotapes that documented harsh interrogation.

In a meeting held on January 10, 2003, CIA director Tenet made the decision to have those videotapes destroyed, according to CIA expert John Prados. ... The CIA pretended at times that it wanted to destroy the tapes for reasons of national security and to protect the officers depicted in the tapes. But the real reason was the fear caused by the realization that the videotapes documented war crimes. ... On March 2, 2009, the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors disclosed for the first time that the CIA had "destroyed 92 videotapes documenting the harsh interrogations of two Qaeda suspects in CIA detention." The order to destroy the tapes, the Times says, was given by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time was the head of the spy agency’s clandestine service."

So, the current destruction of the senate torture report is not an isolated event or an anomaly. Evidence and indictment of torture has been whisked down the memory hole before. And if the past is not forgotten, and the pattern reemerges, the claim to have made an "inadvertent mistake" becomes, at least, a little bit harder to believe.

This is an excellent article by Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the recent book, The Brothers, John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War. Reading it, it, what leaps off the page is how little has changed with the supposed, "end of the cold war."

The CIA’s Holy War

As the Cold War entered its hottest phase in the early 1950s, a hard-line CIA officer named Harry Rositzke was given one of America’s most urgent jobs. From a base in Munich he coordinated a staggering array of covert operations aimed at weakening the Soviet Union. He ran spies, directed sabotage operations, and sent many operatives to their deaths on missions behind the Iron Curtain. It was the hardest and most brutal kind of work, but Rositzke, his superiors, and their bosses in the White House believed it was urgently necessary to prevent the very extermination of the United States.

Decades later, looking back over his career. Rositzke concluded that it had all been pointless and even counter-productive. The central effort in CIA history—the secret war against the Soviet Union—was motivated not by reality, he wrote in a memoir, but by “hysteria and paranoia.”

“The Cold War became a holy war against the infidels, a defense of free God-fearing men against the atheistic Communist system,” he recalled. “As it turned out, the image was an illusion. The specter of a powerful Russia was remote from the reality of a country weakened by war, with a shattered economy, an overtaxed civilian and military bureaucracy, and large areas of civil unrest. The illusory image was at least partly due to
a failure of intelligence.”

American covert operations during the Cold War, run mainly by the Central Intelligence Agency, were breathtaking in scope and ambition. They aimed not only to bleed the Soviet Union, but also to impose governments subservient to the United States wherever possible, overthrow defiant ones, and punish anyone in the world who questioned America’s foreign policy. Even more astonishing is how misbegotten most of these operations look from the perspective of history. They not only devastated many of the target countries, but also spread anti-American passion, weakening the national security
of the United States. Their origin lay not in sober assessments of the world, but in what Rositzke called “emotional excitability” and “systematic delusions of persecution.” ...

The CIA officer Harry Rostizke, who spent years fighting Soviet power, concluded at the end of his life that the campaign had been an “almost uniform failure.” The central problem was not, he wrote, that particular operations failed. It was that American leaders misunderstood the world, shaping it to fit their own preconceptions rather than appreciating its complexity. “The Cold War prism created in the minds of diplomatic and military strategists a clear-cut world of black and white,” he lamented. “There were no grays.”

Interesting things are afoot. Here is some evidence that the fractures in the Republican Party may actually be understated.

Neocon-Bashers Headline Koch Event as Political Realignment on Foreign Policy Continues

In the latest example of how foreign policy no longer neatly aligns with party politics, the Charles Koch Institute — the think tank founded and funded by energy billionaire Charles Koch — hosted an all-day event Wednesday featuring a set of speakers you would be more likely to associate with a left-wing anti-war rally than a gathering hosted by a longtime right-wing institution.

At the event, titled “Advancing American Security: The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy,” prominent realist and liberal foreign policy scholars took turns trashing the neoconservative worldview that has dominated the foreign policy thinking of the Republican Party — which the Koch brothers have been allied with for decades.

Most of the speakers assailed the Iraq War, nation building, and regime change. During a panel event also featuring former Obama Pentagon official Kathleen Hicks, foreign policy scholar John Mearsheimer brought the crowd to applause by denouncing American military overreach. ...

Chas Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, decried U.S. thinking on toppling foreign governments. “One has to start questioning the basic premise of regime change, whether it is to be accomplished by invasion and occupation or by covert action or the empowerment of NGO activity on the ground or other means,” he reflected. “Frankly, it generally doesn’t go well.”

“If you want to know why our bridges are rickety … our children are educationally malnourished, think of where we put the money,” concluded Freeman, pointing to the outsized military budget.

Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: The Left Forum 2016

Netanyahu asks Avigdor Lieberman to be defence minister in shock move

One of Israel’s most outspokenly hawkish and divisive political figures, the ultranationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman, has been offered the post of defence minister.

Lieberman, a former nightclub bouncer from Moldova with little military experience, has advocated for policies including the bombing of Egypt’s Aswan dam, the toppling of the Palestinian Authority, the introduction of the death penalty for terrorism as well as the transfer of Israeli Arabs into the Palestinian territories. ...

The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is attempting to enlarge his precarious coalition, which has a majority of one. ... Some Israeli reports suggested Tony Blair had been among figures trying to intercede in a deal to bring Herzog into the coalition. For his part, Herzog said Netanyahu was faced with “a historic choice” to “either embark on a journey of war and funerals” with Lieberman or choose a path of “hope for all [Israeli] citizens”.

With Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts in a deep freeze, Lieberman’s addition to the government would push any hopes of reviving talks further into the distance.

Netanyahu is using Lieberman to break Israel’s oldest elite: The military

The open conflict between Netanyahu and the IDF's General Staff, over questions of morals and values in Israel’s struggle against Palestinian violence, put him on a collision course with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon who firmly backed his generals. Netanyahu’s plan was to use his new coalition deal with the Zionist Union to put the frank defense minister in his place and to show the senior officers who’s the boss.

In all his governments, Netanyahu clashed with the security establishment. He demanded they change their tune back in the late 1990s, when he wanted them to abandon the Oslo framework. After he came back to power in 2009, they enraged him by opposing his plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations. This time, he has no intention of backing down.

Ya'alon may or may not lose his job. The deal with Lieberman could still fall through. But the message is clear: Netanyahu will no longer brook any dissent from the military. ...

If he goes ahead and appoints Lieberman as defense minister, it will be an attempt to storm the last elitist bastion. It may not happen. It’s not just Lieberman’s past statements on bombing Egypt’s Aswan Dam, beheading Arab “traitors” and toppling the Palestinian Authority. He is not temperamentally suited for a position which requires of him to participate in dozens of long weekly meetings supervising some of Israel’s most sensitive organizations and programs. He’s the kind of politician who even as a minister in the past would disappear for weeks abroad, without keeping in touch with his office.

A defense minister simply cannot switch off the mobile phone. Netanyahu is perfectly aware of the panic levels the prospect of Lieberman as defense minister is causing both in the IDF's central Tel Aviv command center and in foreign capitals. Not least the Pentagon. Maybe that’s all he wants to do: Punish Ya'alon and, for a few days at least, frighten the rogue generals and some skeptical allies. Even if he doesn’t go through with Lieberman’s appointment, he will have shaken the old elite.

Two Chinese Fighter Jets Intercepted a US Navy Plane Over the South China Sea

Two Chinese fighter jets carried out an "unsafe" intercept of a US military aircraft on Wednesday, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The incident took place in "international airspace" as the US maritime patrol reconnaissance aircraft carried out "a routine US patrol" above the South China Sea, the statement said.

The Chinese jets were reportedly J-11s, a locally-produced version of the Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet. The US aircraft was a Lockheed EP-3, a land-based reconnaissance plane. The Chinese jets reportedly came within 50 feet (15 meters) of the Navy aircraft. ...

Tensions between the two nations have been rising recently.

Congressworms fail to do their job again.

House Rejects Bill That Would Lead to Debate on ISIS War Authorization

The latest effort to force a vote on the ongoing US war against ISIS, this time by Rep. Barbara Lee (D – CA), failed once again, with the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) shot down 138-285, in a vote heavily along party lines.

The amendment aimed to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al-Qaeda, which is being broadly interpreted to authorize the ISIS War, even though ISIS is not an al-Qaeda affiliate with 90 days, and would’ve obliged Congress to come up with a formal AUMF for the current war by that time.

Rep. Lee said she aimed to force debate on the current war and end the 2001 “blank check for endless war.”

US Increasingly Open About Special Forces in Libya

Troops Seen Backing All Three Putative Governments

Officially, the US supports the “unity government” in Libya, whose territory includes a single naval base in Tripoli and a few nearby buildings. In practice, the US is seen backing the two other extent would-be governments just a seriously.

That’s becoming more and more obvious as the Pentagon is increasingly open about its ongoing ground operations in Libya. ... The US has established two bases, one in Misrata and one near Benghazi. ... The Misrata base is in territory held by the Tripoli parliament, a rival government, and the site near Benghazi is in the sphere of the Tobruk parliament, another “UN-backed government.

Ai Weiwei says EU's refugee deal with Turkey is immoral

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei described the EU’s refugee deal with Turkey as shameful and immoral as he unveiled the artistic results of his stay on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Speaking in Athens, where the works are going on public display for the first time from Friday, Ai said that although he had seen and experienced extreme and violent conditions in China, he “could never have imagined conditions like this”. ...

The artist told the Guardian: “These people have nothing to do with Europe; they are like people from outer space, but they have to come. They have been pushed out and they are being totally neglected by Europe. They are sleeping in the mud and rain and it is only volunteers giving them food or clothes.”

Ai arrived on Lesbos in December, having been invited to stage an exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. The island seemed like a good starting point for thinking about ancient Greece and its mythologies, philosophies and values. Instead Ai became caught up in what he said was the biggest, most shameful humanitarian crisis since the second world war. ...

“It is such a beautiful island – blue water, sunshine, tourists – and to see the boats come in with desperate children, pregnant women and elderly people, some 90 years old, and they all have fear and they all have it in their eyes … You think: how could this happen? I got completely emotionally involved.”

Ai said Europe needed to understand that the refugees were fleeing their countries because they had to. It was leave or die, he said.

US ‘track record’ in Brazil comes to fore as Temer’s ally visits Washington

Brazil’s Neighbors Warn of President’s ‘Dangerous’ Ouster–but Lapdog US Press Isn’t Listening

The effort to oust twice-elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been big news in the United States. Since December 2015, when Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies began an impeachment process over Rousseff’s budget maneuvers, the New York Times has had 74 pieces that mention “Rousseff” and “impeachment,” according to the Nexis news database; the Washington Post has had 138 such stories.

But something that hasn’t been big news in US corporate media has been the reaction from Brazil’s neighbors to Rousseff’s suspension pending a Senate trial. While some Latin American governments were supportive—notably, newly right-governed Argentina said it “respects the institutional process” in Brazil, while close US ally Colombia “trusts in the preservation of democratic institutionality and stability”—several others were harshly critical. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called Rousseff’s removal an “anti-democratic process that has cast a shadow on the reliability and strength of institutions.” Bolivia’s Foreign ministry said Rousseff’s opponents were trying to “destabilize democratic processes and ignore the will of the people expressed in the popular vote.”

Three Latin American countries—Venezuela and El Salvador on May 14, and Ecuador today, May 18—announced they were recalling their ambassadors from Brazil, one of the strongest expressions of disapproval a nation can take. ... The region’s major multilateral organizations have also been critical of Brazil’s process. Secretary General Ernesto Samper of the Union of South American Nations, representing the continent’s 12 nations, called Rousseff the “legitimate leader” of Brazil. ...

Prior to Rousseff’s ouster, Secretary General Luis Almagro of the Organization of American States released a strong statement:

Our Organization has made a detailed analysis of the impeachment process against Dilma, and has concluded that it does not fit within the rules that govern this process.

There is no criminal accusation against the president; rather she has been accused of the poor administration of public resources in 2014. This is an accusation that is political in character, and that does not merit an impeachment process.

A Nexis search turns up no US newspaper that reported on the recall of the Venezuelan or Salvadoran ambassadors–and Google News shows no US coverage today of Ecuador’s move. Samper’s comments do not seem to have been covered by any US paper. Almagro’s statement wasn’t quoted by any US papers, though his criticism was briefly alluded to in a handful of stories (New York Times, 4/14/16; LA Times, 4/16/16;  Washington Post, 5/12/16).

These omissions are perhaps not surprising, given that most US news coverage of Latin America is strongly guided by the attitudes of the US government.

First German Politicians, Now German Media in Credibility Meltdown

Germany’s two major parties, Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the coalition Social Democrats, are plumbing new lows in popularity and credibility So too are the nation’s media. The conflation is obvious: both are increasingly perceived as two sides of the same coin, acting in the interests of financial institutions and large corporations and their own economic advantage to the detriment of the public weal. ...

In the past ten years the number of members of both major parties has sunk round 20 percent. In the same period the circulation of newspapers and news magazines has fallen a similar amount. Television, including state television, has allegedly lost just ten percent in the same decade. But even here the numbers are deceptive. The average age of viewers of state television is currently well over 60. ...

German media’s loss of credibility was recently underscored by two recent studies. Although one was carried out by state television, which is still battling to justify a recent hike in rates, and was very favourable towards its own programme, there were a couple of rather surprising results. 60 percent of those asked were of the opinion that German news media – including state media – was not independent from political and business interests. Only ten percent saw the the media as neutral. The rest were uncertain.

The media coverage – better said propaganda campaigns – concerning austerity, the political upheaval in Ukraine and Greece bashing have become a watershed in the German public’s perception of its media. Even the advisory board of the state media group ARD heavily criticised the reporting around the events in Ukraine during and after the Maidan protests, describing it as biased, undifferentiated and fragmentary. This description would well cover the whole of reporting in German mainstream media, also in the case of Greece and austerity. Much of the coverage concerning Russia and Greece has been underlined by inveterate German racism. Many Germans, probably not most, have however moved on and are no longer receptive to this sort of manipulation. ...

How odd it has been to see the second state television channel, ZDF, attacking Pegida and the AfD as neo-Nazis, but on the other hand in a moment of Eastern Front nostalgia presenting Ukrainian troops with Nazi symbols on their helmets and uniforms fighting the rebels in the east of the country. There is a great deal to criticise concerning Pegida and the AfD, but what has occurred has been counter-productive, much as the American elite discovered in its early portrayal of Donald Trump.

Robert McChesney: Facebook's Monopoly & Surveillance Antithetical to Free Press and a Free Society

WikiLeaks rep: Julian Assange would find life no easier under President Clinton

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who is still confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, would find life no easier under a President Hillary Clinton, according to the journalist, hacker and WikiLeaks representative Jacob Appelbaum.

Speaking at a Q&A after the Cannes film festival premiere of Risk, Laura Poitras’s documentary about the WikiLeaks activist, Appelbaum said Clinton’s representatives had made it clear that, thanks to Cablegate – the 2010 leak of more than 250,000 classified US State Department messages by WikiLeaks (published by media partners including the Guardian) – Clinton’s office was in no mood to rethink their strategy when it came to Assange.

“I had a meeting with someone from then secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s office some time after the Cablegate,” Appelbaum said. “He let me know that Clinton did not like Julian or myself. I think that if Hillary Clinton were to run for president, she would continue to assert her political will and bitterness about the exposure of diplomatic cables that documented crimes.”

The drug war, brought to you by greedy interest groups. Apparently, Marijuana is a gateway drug for cash-addicted police and prison industries.

Police and Prison Guard Groups Fight Marijuana Legalization in California

Roughly half of the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted.

Drug war money has become a notable source of funding for law enforcement interests. Huge government grants and asset-seizure windfalls benefit police departments, while the constant supply of prisoners keeps the prison business booming.

Opposition to the marijuana legalization initiative, slated to go before voters in November, has been organized by John Lovell, a longtime Sacramento lobbyist for police chiefs and prison guard supervisors. Lovell’s Coalition for Responsible Drug Policies, a committee he created to defeat the pot initiative, raised $60,000 during the first three months of the year, according to a disclosure filed earlier this month. ...

Law enforcement officials in Minnesota, Washington, and other states that have debated relaxing the laws surrounding marijuana have said that they stand to lose money from reform. Police receive federal grants from the Justice Department to help fund drug enforcement efforts, including specific funding to focus on marijuana.

Asset forfeiture is another way law enforcement agencies have come to rely on marijuana as a funding source. Police departments, through a process known as asset forfeiture, seize cash and property associated with drug busts, including raids relating to marijuana. The proceeds from the seizures are often distributed to law enforcement agencies. From 2002 to 2012, California agencies reaped $181.4 million from marijuana-related asset seizures. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014, pot legalization in Washington state led asset forfeiture proceeds to go up in smoke.

George Zimmerman sells gun used to kill Trayvon Martin on auction site

George Zimmerman appears to have sold the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin four years ago, bringing an end to the latest controversy to swirl around the notorious former neighbourhood watch leader.

Zimmerman, who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager during an altercation at his Florida housing estate in February 2012, looks set to collect $138,900 for the Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun after bidding closed midday on the website unitedgungroup.com.

But the final hour of the auction was disrupted by the reappearance of the type of fake bidders who wrecked Zimmerman’s two previous attempts to cash in on the firearm during auctions last week on a rival website. At one stage on Wednesday the highest offer of $137,600 was in the name of a user called Racist McShootface, whose profile was quickly deleted. ...

Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote on Wednesday that the auction was “a national shame”.

“The marketing of the gun that killed him by the man who pulled the trigger does not feel like simply another example of flagrantly bad taste. No, it feels like a victory lap on a dead boy’s grave,” Pitts wrote.

The Age of Precarious: 6 in 10 Americans Living on the Financial Edge

An unexpected medical bill or a dip in the stock market would be all it took to send two-thirds of Americans into financial distress, according to a new poll that finds lingering lack of confidence in the U.S. economy.

Despite reports of falling unemployment, growing wages, and rising consumer confidence, a full 57 percent of respondents to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey describe the national economy as poor. Only 22 percent of people say the economy has mostly or completely recovered from the Great Recession. ...

"Even though there are signs that the economy has improved in recent years, a lot of people are not feeling that the recovery has reached them,” said Trevor Tompson, director of The AP-NORC Center. "There is evidence of optimism among the more affluent, but two-thirds of Americans would have trouble immediately paying an unanticipated bill of $1,000."

Indeed, according to the AP, "these financial difficulties span all income levels":

Seventy-five percent of people in households making less than $50,000 a year would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. But when income rose to between $50,000 and $100,000, the difficulty decreased only modestly to 67 percent.

Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent — households making more than $100,000 a year — 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000.

"The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming," Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings issues, told the AP.

Dave Dayen has a new book out:

Foreclosure Fraud Is Supposed to Be a Thing of the Past, But It Happens Every Day

Every day in America, people continue to be kicked out of their homes based on false documents. The settlements over allegations of robosigning, faulty paperwork, and illegal mortgage servicing didn’t end the misconduct. And law enforcement, along with most judges and politicians, have looked away in the mistaken belief that they wrapped up a scandal that just goes on and on.

My new book, Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, is about three foreclosure victims who ended up doing more investigation of the corrupt U.S. mortgage industry than any state or federal law enforcement or regulatory official.

They exposed the mass production of false mortgage documents in courthouses and county records offices across the country. ...

When the Justice Department and state attorneys general finished their press conferences lauding big headline settlement penalties (numbers that shrink upon inspection), they neglected the ongoing chaos in our courts. People have been tied up in foreclosure nightmares for nearly a decade, with the same kinds of false documents used to grease the evictions.

Sanders and Class Struggle in the Democratic Party

Poll: Voters want an independent to run against Clinton, Trump

Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is likely to be elected president in November, but voters are yearning for another option. ...

Fifty-five percent favor having an independent candidate challenge the Democratic front-runner and presumptive Republican nominee for president. An unprecedented 91 percent of voters 28 or younger favor having an independent on the ballot, and 65 percent of respondents are willing to support a candidate who isn’t Clinton or Trump.

According to Data Targeting’s ballot test, an independent candidate would start off with 21 percent of the vote.

Robert McChesney: Mainstream Corporate Media Covering 2016 Election Through Eyes of Clinton Campaign

Five things people should stop saying about Bernie Sanders

1 Bernie should stop criticizing Clinton!

The idea that Sanders, and to a certain extent others on the left, should stop criticizing Clinton because it gives Trump a better chance to win is ridiculous. Do people think that Clinton should get a free pass for the next six months – and potentially incentive to move to the right – on issues like Wall Street, trade, war, foreign policy and others? ... Around this time in 2008, Clinton was still heavily criticizing the inevitable nominee Barack Obama and making divisive statements that make this primary campaign look like a walk in the park. How quickly everyone forgets (or pretends not to remember.) ...

2 Bernie should criticize Trump more!

Another common refrain. In reality, Sanders criticizes Trump all the time.

3 Stop criticizing the party!

Gee, I can’t believe Sanders isn’t enthused about the Democratic party! Let’s see: the DNC chair is a vocal Clinton supporter who tried to hide Democratic debates on the worst nights possible for exposure, the committee cut Sanders off from its important voter database, various state party representatives have unfairly given Clinton an advantage in delegate selection processes, the party has a sweetheart fundraising deal with Clinton and they recently changed their rules to accept more money from corporate lobbyists – a practice that Sanders deplores. ...

It’s one thing to say that Sanders should lay off Clinton and focus on Trump. But saying “don’t criticize your party” sounds like something out of Soviet Russia.

4 Bernie should drop out!

It’s not politicians who should be dictating when Sanders drops out, that’s the voters’ job. And Sanders, despite finding his mathematical chance increasingly dwindling, continues to win primaries. Last night he won Oregon, for example. So it seems that voters don’t want him to drop out, only the politicians who are tied to the system he is constantly criticizing do.

5 Sanders supporters are out of control!

The lengths the Clinton camp and the media has gone to turn this election into a referendum on who has the better behaving supporters really has taken away from the important issues the candidates were debating.

What’s worse is Clinton surrogates outrage over a very small minority of Sanders supporters claiming they don’t want to support Clinton in the general election. ... The Clinton camp also seems to have conveniently forgotten that the phenomenon known as Pumas, hardcore Clinton supporters who were so intent on not supporting Obama after the 2008 Democratic primaries that they literally named their contingent “Party Unity My Ass.”

New National Poll: Trump Increasing Lead Over Clinton

New York billionaire has five-point lead over Clinton

A new Rasmussen poll released Thursday shows Republican front-runner Donald Trump increasing his lead over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The New York billionaire has a five-point edge over the Clinton, with 42 percent of likely voters saying they'd back him compared to 37 percent for Clinton.

The poll also shows Trump now getting 76 percent of the Republican vote; Clinton nabbed 72 percent of the Democratic vote. Thirteen percent of Democrats would prefer Trump in square-off between the two, while nine percent of Republican voters would favor Clinton in such a match-up.

California lifts water conservation order after wet winter – but drought isn't over

California decided on Wednesday to allow hundreds of local water districts to set their own conservation goals after a wet winter eased the five-year drought in some parts of the state.

The new approach lifts a statewide conservation order enacted last year that requires at least a 20% savings.

Beginning next month, districts serving nearly 40 million Californians will compare water supply and demand with the assumption that dry conditions will stretch for three years. The districts would then set savings goals through January and report their calculations to the state. ...

Regulators said they maintain the authority to return to strict conservation, if water-saving efforts dramatically slip or if last winter’s rain and snow turns out to be a blip in the easing of the drought.

BP-Sponsored 'Sunken Cities' Show Provokes Museum-Climbing Climate Protest

London's British Museum was shut down on Thursday after Greenpeace activists scaled its columns to call on the museum to drop BP's sponsorship for a "blockbuster" exhibit—about flooded cities.

BP, responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters of all time and untold greenhouse gas emissions, is sponsoring the museum's "Sunken Cities" exhibit about submerged Alexandrian cities. The exhibit opens today.

"In the eyes of BP, whose logo appears all over the show, it's an exquisite opportunity to clean up its image and distract from the polluting realities of its business," writes Greenpeace UK.

But modern cities are sinking in real time because of climate change, the activists say, and as a multinational oil company BP is one of those parties responsible. "We're here today taking a stand because of the irony of an oil company sponsoring an exhibition whose name practically spells out impacts of climate change," Greenpeace UK says. "What were they thinking?"

Watch: Our #sunkencities banner drop at @britishmuseum. Each banner names a place at risk frm climate change #DropBP pic.twitter.com/BslRf8qhJ1

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) May 19, 2016

Also of Interest

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

US Media as Conduits of Propaganda

House Republicans Rig Hearing to Block Consumers from Going to Court

Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein slams the system, law-breaking Obama, ‘Frankenstein’ Trump and ‘corporate’ Hillary Clinton

The Clinton-Colombia Connection

Hillary Clinton’s Race Problem

RIP Democratic Party

How Democrats Manipulated Nevada State Party Convention Then Blamed Sanders For Chaos

Quelle Surprise! US Big Business Prefers Clinton to Trump by 2:1 Margin

Full of fnords:

Democrats face their own unity crisis amid Nevada convention fallout

The gated Buenos Aires community which left its poor neighbours under water

Mega-tsunamis in Mars's ancient ocean shaped planet's landscape

A Little Night Music

The Cadillacs - Speedo

The Cadillacs - Down the Road

The Cadillacs with Earl "Speedo" Carroll - Peekaboo

Speedo and the Cadillacs - Naggity Nag, Who Ya Gonna Kiss

The Cadillacs - Great Googly Moo

The Cadillacs - The Boogie Man

The Cadillacs - Buzz Buzz Buzz

The Cadillacs - Zoom