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This evening's music features Chicago soul vocal group The Trends. Enjoy!

“This is the truth about mainstream media and advertising: People wouldn't have to pay to show you such messages if they were right.”

-- J.R. Rim

News and Opinion

An excellent piece from Jonathan Cook, worth a click and a full read.

The Western Media Is Key to Syria Deceptions

By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province — their final holdout in Syria — should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible. Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons—and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west.

But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we have learnt that the last supposed major chemical attack — which took place in April 2018 and was, as ever, blamed by all western sources on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad—was very possibly staged, a false-flag operation by those very al-Qaeda groups now claiming the Syrian government has attacked them once again.

Most astounding in this week’s coverage of the claims made by al-Qaeda groups is the fact that the western media continues to refuse to learn any lessons, develop any critical distance from the sources it relies on, even as those sources are shown to have repeatedly deceived it. This was true after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and it has been confirmed after the the international community’s monitoring body on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was exposed this month as deeply dishonest. It is bad enough that our governments and our expert institutions deceive and lie to us. But it is even worse that we have a corporate media addicted—at the most charitable interpretation—to its own incompetence. The evidence demonstrating that grows stronger by the day. ...

The corporations that run our media and our governments have simply conflated in their own minds — and ours — the idea that their narrow corporate interests are synonymous with “western interests”. The false narratives they generate are there to serve a system of power, as I have explained in previous blogs. That system’s worldview and values are enforced by a charmed circle that includes politicians, military generals, scientists, journalists and others operating as if brainwashed by some kind of death cult. They see the world through a single prism: the system’s need to hold on to power. Everything else — truth, evidence, justice, human rights, love, compassion—must take a back seat. It is this same system that paradoxically is determined to preserve itself even if it means destroying the planet, ravaging our economies, and starting and maintaining endlessly destructive wars. It is system that will drag us all into the abyss, unless we stop it.

Donald Trump's shift in attitude towards North Korea and Iran - "He is predictably unpredictable"

North Korea knows just whom they are dealing with:

North Korea Calls John Bolton a “Defective Human Product”

North Korea came out swinging Monday morning, declaring U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton “ignorant,” "a warmonger" and “a defective human product.”

The fiery comments, made by an unnamed spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, were a response to Bolton’s claim on Saturday that North Korea’s recent short-range missile tests violated UN Security Council sanctions.

The spokesman said that Bolton’s demand for a ban on all launches using ballistic technology “is the same as asking us to relinquish our rights for self-defense.”

The official also highlighted Bolton’s hardline approach to U.S.-North Korea relations, blaming his “hammer act” for the collapse of a major nuclear deal in 1994, when the North agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. fuel aid.

“Bolton should not be called a security adviser who works to secure security, but an adviser for security destruction who destroys peace and security," the editorial said. “It's not that strange that crooked sound will always come out the mouth of a man who is structurally flawed, and it's best that this defective human product goes away as soon as possible.”

Spreading freedom: Pence vows battlefield experience for Military Academy’s graduates

Tide of Public Opinion is Turning in Assange’s Favor

The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act has profoundly affected press coverage of the WikiLeaks founder, with much of the media turning suddenly and decisively in his favor after years of vilifying him. The sharp change has also come from some politicians, and significantly, from two Justice Department prosecutors who went public to express their dissent about using the Espionage Act to indict Assange. ...

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election establishment media, fueled by the Mueller probe, has essentially branded Assange a Russian agent who worked to undermine American democracy. Focusing on his personality rather than his work, the media mostly cheered his arrest by British police on April 11 after his political asylum was illegally revoked by Ecuador in its London embassy.

Assange’s initial indictment for conspiracy to intrude into a government computer was portrayed by corporate media as the work of a “hacker” and not a journalist, who doesn’t merit First Amendment protection. But the superseding indictment under the Espionage Act last Thursday has changed all that.

Rather than criminal activity, the indictment actually describes routine journalistic work, such as encouraging sources to turn over sensitive information and hiding a source’s identity. Since the Trump administration has crossed the red line criminalizing what establishment journalists do all the time, establishment journalists have come full-square against the indictment and behind Assange. Leading liberal outlets, who until Wednesday openly despised Assange, began on Thursday to make 180 degree turns in their editorials, commentaries and news reports.

The Trump administration appears to have gone too far in its Espionage Act indictment, eliciting not only media pushback, but perhaps complicating its extradition case. The British home secretary may now not want to been seen sending a suspect to a country that has clearly criminalized journalism. It is not clear why the U.S. released its superseding indictment when it did. It had until a June 12 deadline to do so. The U.S. government also had the option of a loophole in its extradition treaty with Britain, providing for a waiver to the “doctrine of speciality.” That would have allowed the U.S. to ask Britain to waive the provision that the UK would have to know all the charges against a suspect before an extradition decision would be made, thereby not permitting the U.S. to add more charges once Assange was on U.S. soil. One possibility is that the U.S. asked Britain for the waiver and it was refused.

2 CNN Hosts Unclear What Journalism Is

The Indictment of Assange Is a Blueprint for Making Journalists Into Felons

The U.S. government on Thursday unveiled an 18-count indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, charging him under the 1917 Espionage Act for his role in the 2010 publication of a trove of secret documents relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and diplomatic communications regarding dozens of nations. So extreme and unprecedented are the indictment’s legal theories and likely consequences that it shocked and alarmed even many of Assange’s most virulent critics.

The new indictment against Assange bears no relationship to WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign documents or any of its other activities during the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, it covers only publication of a massive archive of classified U.S. government documents that revealed a multitude of previously unknown, highly significant information about wars, government and corporate corruption, and official deceit. WikiLeaks, in 2010, published those materials in partnership with some of the largest media outlets in the world, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais, outlets that published many of the same secret documents that form the basis of the criminal case against Assange. ...

By charging Assange under the Espionage Act, the Trump administration proved that the asylum Assange obtained from Ecuador in 2012 — offered in the name of protecting him from persecution by the United States for publishing newsworthy documents — was necessary and justified.

The argument offered by both the Trump administration and by some members of the self-styled “resistance” to Trump is, ironically, the same: that Assange isn’t a journalist at all and thus deserves no free press protections. But this claim overlooks the indictment’s real danger and, worse, displays a wholesale ignorance of the First Amendment. Press freedoms belong to everyone, not to a select, privileged group of citizens called “journalists.” Empowering prosecutors to decide who does or doesn’t deserve press protections would restrict “freedom of the press” to a small, cloistered priesthood of privileged citizens designated by the government as “journalists.” The First Amendment was written to avoid precisely that danger. ...

Unlike doctors and lawyers, “journalist” is not some licensed, credentialed title which only a small, privileged set of professionals can legitimately or legally claim for themselves upon fulfilling a defined set of educational and professional requirements. Unlike those professions, the state does not license who is and is not a “journalist.” The opposite is true: a “journalist” can be, and is, anyone, regardless of education, credentials or employment status, who informs the public about newsworthy matters. The sole requirement to be a “journalist” is to engage in an act of journalism, with in turn is best defined as the reporting to the public of events in the public interest, particularly when such revelations inform the public about what democracy’s most powerful factions are doing behind a wall of secrecy. ...

In a 1977 Supreme Court opinion documenting the limitless scope of the constitutional free press guarantee, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote: “In short, the First Amendment does not ‘belong’ to any definable category of persons or entities: It belongs to all who exercise its freedoms.” ... Indeed, the First Amendment’s “press freedom” guarantee was available to everyone precisely because it was a reaction to the British Crown’s attempt to limit who possessed this right by licensing who is and is not a “journalist,” as Burger wrote for the Supreme Court in 1977.

ChuckTodd Self Owns On Assange Prosecution

Corbyn backs referendum on Brexit deal after voter exodus

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to support a second referendum on any Brexit deal after the Labour leadership came under overwhelming pressure to halt the exodus of its remain voters who backed pro-EU parties at the European elections.

The Labour leader said he was “listening very carefully” to both sides of the debate after the party fell behind the Liberal Democrats and also lost ground to the Greens.

Labour’s preference would be a general election but any Brexit deal “has to be put to a public vote”, he said. Several Labour sources noted this was a shift from his previous position that a second referendum was being kept as an option on the table to stop a damaging Tory Brexit.

He later wrote to MPs: “It is clear that the deadlock in parliament can now only be broken by the issue going back to the people through a general election or a public vote. We are ready to support a public vote on any deal.”

Corbyn’s statement, after a day of frantic lobbying from senior party figures in response to disappointing European election results and recrimination against his senior advisers, moves the party closer to backing a people’s vote. But it does not go quite far enough to satisfy the demands of those in the party who want full backing for a second referendum to be held without delay – and a commitment that the party will campaign on the remain side.

EU Parliamentary Elections: Left and Far-Right Parties Gain as Centrists Falter

Le Pen's Far-Right Wins Over Macron's Centrists

French official results confirm the far-right National Rally’s victory over French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party in the European Parliament election.

France’s Interior Ministry published results based on 81% of the votes counted, placing Marine Le Pen’s party at 24.9% support and Macron’s party at 21.5%. Some votes in France’s biggest cities, which tend to benefit Macron more, remain to be counted. ... The green party EELV came in third position with 12.8% support. ...

Three Catalan separatists — one in jail and two more fugitives from Spanish justice — have won European Parliament seats. Former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, his ex-No. 2 Oriol Junqueras and former Catalan Cabinet member Toni Comín all won seats for separatist parties in Sunday’s EU vote. ...

Junqueras is in jail in Madrid while on trial on charges that include rebellion for his part in Catalonia’s attempt to secede from the rest of Spain in 2017. ... The three were allowed to run as candidates, but will face legal hurdles to actually take possession of their European Parliament seats.

US governor blames Palestinians for ongoing Israeli occupation

A US governor has blamed Palestinians for Israel's ongoing occupation of their land, just weeks before the United States plans to unveil the economic portion of its "deal of the century" peace plan.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a longtime supporter of Israel and a member of Donald Trump's Republican Party, made his comments during a trade delegation visit to Israel this week.

"If you look at this whole conflict, to me, the biggest problem has been that Palestinian Arabs have not recognised Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," DeSantis said during a news briefing at the Hilton Tel Aviv on Monday morning.

"That kind of denialism poisons really everything," he continued.

Keiser Report: Shorthand for ‘poor’

Missouri could become first US state without an abortion clinic

Missouri could become the first US state in the modern era without an abortion clinic, officials with the last remaining facility, in St Louis, said on Tuesday.

Health officials in Missouri have refused to renew the clinic’s license, demanding that all seven physicians and trainees practicing there be made available for what officials of the women’s reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood described as an “interrogation”.

“This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis,” said Dr Lena Wen, president of Planned Parenthood. “This week, Missouri would be the first state in the country to go dark – without a health center that provides safe, legal abortion care.”

Planned Parenthood officials told reporters early on Tuesday afternoon that health investigators said the interviews could lead to board review or criminal proceedings, and declined to give any topic or bounds for the interviews or describe their investigation.

Wen said the demand for interviews was not “something we have ever seen before” and called such interviews “inappropriate and suspicious interrogation”. She added: “This has nothing to do with medicine.”

There are fears the clinic could be shut down by the end of the week.

Abortion: Democrats and Republicans whip up voters on extreme state laws

As Democrats and Republicans look to galvanize their base ahead of the 2020 election, a slew of state laws barring access to abortion have thrust the issue into the national spotlight and set up a potential court battle that could hold consequences for an entire generation.

Top Republicans have distanced themselves from a law in Alabama that effectively outlaws abortion and includes no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. But the governor of Missouri signed a similar bill into law on Friday. It bans abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy and also has no rape or incest exemptions.

Democrats have placed the issue squarely at the center of their agenda, in hope of widening the gender gap between the parties and energizing progressive voters around reproductive rights. With the new laws facing legal challenges that could ultimately land in the supreme court, social issues and the judiciary loom heavily in a campaign season that has so far has centered on the economy and the character of President Donald Trump. ...

New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand said she would impose a rare litmus test on supreme court appointments, vowing to only nominate justices who would commit to upholding Roe v Wade. New Jersey senator Cory Booker said he would establish a White House Office of Reproductive Freedom. California senator Kamala Harris has raised more than $160,000 for pro-choice groups.

Right whale population decline linked to ocean warming, research says

The endangered North Atlantic right whale faces increased odds because its main food supply has shifted due to ocean warming, according to new research. Scientists have been searching for an explanation for a precipitous decline in the North Atlantic right whale population, which has dropped from 482 in 2010 to about 411 today.

A paper by 17 authors from the US, Canada and Norway, published this month in the journal Oceanography, links an influx of warm water in 2010 to a reduction in the whales’ key food supply, Calanus finmarchicus, a small crustacean, in the Gulf of Maine, the area off the US coast in which the whales spend their summers.

As the food supply moved in response to ocean warming so did the whales, apparently putting them closer to shipping lanes and fishing locations that had been designed to avoid the whales’ usual feeding grounds. Whales also faced traveling farther for food and feeding earlier in the year, leaving them more hungry than usual before winter.

“The right whale population is not healthy and more time spent foraging may lead to additional mortality, amplifying the challenges this species faces,” the paper said. Also concerning was that the ocean warming detected in the whales’ feeding zone is expected in other parts of the ocean. According to the report, “rapid warming at the level observed in the Gulf of Maine is likely to be a more prominent feature of the future ocean”.

if any of my tweets ever go viral I hope it’s this one

the GRAND CANYON is facing a big problem right now. there’s no national news coverage about this and some very rich people want to keep it that way pic.twitter.com/9oPaNuqKtW

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

an italian developer (Stilo Development Group USA) purchased 3.5 million square feet of land less than 10 miles from the edge of the Grand Canyon

this land is located in the heart of Kaibab National Forest east of Tusayan.

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

if they get approval from the town, they plan to build over 2000 houses, a spa, a convention center, and potentially a “water park”

source - https://t.co/i0f2VBc31N

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

even worse - the only water source available on this land is groundwater, which is pumped from an aquifer that feeds important springs in the Grand Canyon

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

more groundwater pumping would lower the aquifer levels and destroy many springs

the aquifer is the sole source for Havasupai Falls and Havasu Creek that the Havasupai Tribe relies entirely on pic.twitter.com/udQsETiONu

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

this development project will also drastically increase road and air traffic around the Grand Canyon, as well as noise and light pollution pic.twitter.com/AlhC77ybfr

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

I beg you to care about this. the Grand Canyon has been a home to Indigenous Americans for over 800 years and a protected national park for 100 years (happy anniversary)

— jack (@trippypapa) May 27, 2019

like I said, there's almost no media coverage on this and it's a very real threat

apart from sharing and tagging news outlets, the best way to help is to write a letter, email, or call the town of Tusayan and tell them to keep Stilo out

— jack (@trippypapa) May 28, 2019

With Climate Crisis Fueling Storms and Floods, Historic Delay in Planting Season Threatens US Farmers and Food Prices

Farmers in the Midwest are watching the spring planting season shrink due to the climate crisis as damaging storms and flooding are making fields from Oklahoma to Arkansas impossible to sow, a situation that is driving grain prices up in futures markets in a way that could have devastating consequences.

A lower yield of corn and soybeans is already jacking prices for the staple cereals up, which could lead to a ripple effect across the economy. And farmers can lose crop insurance if they don't hit growing planting deadlines, most of which are in late May and early June, a major source of recovery for struggling farmers in an already volatile economy.

Per Reuters:

Excessive rain has caused U.S. planting to fall seriously behind schedule. Farmers still had 116 million acres of combined corn and soybeans left to plant as of May 19, far more than they ever had on the date. The previous high was 91 million acres in 1995.

...

There's a direct connection between climate change and the Midwest deluge, according to Wired. And it's only going to get worse.

More recent work, published in February by scientists at the University of Notre Dame, shows that floods aren't just getting more frequent—they'll also get more powerful in the future. Using a statistical method to blend data from global climate models with local information, the researchers predicted that the severity of extreme hydrologic events, so-called 100-year floods, hitting 20 watersheds in the Midwest and Great Lakes region will increase by as much as 30 percent by the end of the century.

Rain, tornadoes, and melting snow have combined over the past two months to make the ground in the Midwest impossible to plant in corn and soybean.

And the weather doesn't appear anywhere near letting up.

Per brokerage firm Allendale, Inc.:

Above-normal rainfall is expected across most of the Midwest and Plains farm belt over the next 15 days, further delaying planting of corn and soybeans and potentially damaging the quality of the developing winter wheat crop, forecasters said.

The delay is becoming a serious issue for the U.S. farming industry. ...

For most Midwestern farmers, planting has been stalled out for most of May. As AccuWeather staff writer John Roach reported on May 26, the yield for 2019 is now projected, at 14.2 billion bushels, to be lower than 2019's yield of 14.3 billion bushels and far lower than the initial projection of 15 billion bushels.

Trump Reportedly Moving to End Long-Term Studies of Climate Crisis

In what environmental experts warned could be President Donald Trump's most dangerous assault on science yet, the White House is reportedly moving to end long-term assessments of the impacts of the climate crisis while pushing a polluter-friendly agenda that is making the planetary emergency worse.

As the New York Times reported late Monday, "the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously."

"As a result," according to the Times, "parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations' leading climate body—warned in a landmark report last October that if carbon emissions are not dramatically and rapidly reduced, catastrophic effects of the climate crisis could be felt across the world as early as 2040. But, as the Times reported, scientists say that Trump administration's attempt to cut off government climate projections at that year "would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040."

"Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050," according to the Times. "From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions."

Philip Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told the Times that the White House's move to restrict government climate predictions "is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science—to push the science in a direction that's consistent with their politics."

Also of Interest

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

New York Times Supports False Trump Claims About An "Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program" That Does Not Exist

Chris Hedges: The Mass Media Is Poisoning Us With Hate

EU Elections Spotlight Europe’s Weakened Left

How eminent domain is blighting farmers in path of gas pipeline

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: stories behind classic portraits

A Little Night Music

The Trends - If You Don't Dig The Blues

The Trends - That's How I Like It

The Trends - Not Too Old To Cry

The Trends - (To Be) Happy Enough

The Trends - Dance With Me Baby

The Trends - Gonna Have To Show You

The Trends - Don't Drop Out Of School

The Trends - That's How I Like It

The Trends - The Soul Clap