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“We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”

-- Lydia Maria Francis Child

News and Opinion

The U.S. is deeper into Yemen’s civil war than it wants to admit

Houthi rebels in Yemen pose no direct threat to the United States, but that didn’t stop the U.S. from deploying a cadre of fearsome Green Berets to Saudi Arabia in support of the kingdom’s yearslong proxy war with Iran. The New York Times broke the story Thursday that a team of about a dozen Green Beret commandos have been deployed on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen since December, helping the kingdom’s forces find and destroy Houthi missile caches and launch sites, among other roles.

The Times’ report, citing U.S. officials and European diplomats, is the latest indication that U.S. involvement in Yemen continues to deepen beyond what military officials have officially disclosed. The latest revelation is likely to agitate a vocal cohort in Congress that has questioned the U.S. military’s enduring presence in the war-torn country.

The Pentagon has remained cagey when it comes to official U.S. activity in Yemen, insisting that American troops are taking a supporting role in the Saudi-led campaign — one officials insist is limited to logistics, intelligence sharing, and the refueling of aircrafts. But the Green Beret operation appears to go beyond that capacity and features commandos working closely alongside Saudi forces to find and destroy Houthi rockets and launch sites. ...

The U.S. military’s presence in Yemen continues to be highly controversial; the conflict has devastated the country, killing more than 10,000 people, displacing millions and causing what the U.N. has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The Saudi-led coalition bears responsibility for much of the civilian toll, according the United Nations. ... But the coalition’s ceaseless string of alleged atrocities hasn’t slowed American support, prompting critics on Capitol Hill to call for a rethink of the deepening U.S. involvement in a campaign that shows no end in sight.

Warning of 'Another Never-Ending War,' Sanders Demands Answers Over US Ground Troops in Saudi Arabia

As yet another news cycle was dominated by the latest chapter of the President Donald Trump-Stormy Daniels controversy on Thursday, the New York Times quietly published an alarming report detailing a secret U.S. Green Beret operation along Saudi Arabia's border with Yemen that was launched by the Trump White House late last year with no debate, discussion, or congressional authorization. Responding to the Times report on Thursday—which indicates the U.S. has significantly escalated its involvement in Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed alarm at the covert activities of American special forces and said he will be demanding answers about "these activities."

"I have strong concerns that the Trump administration is getting the U.S. more involved in a war in Yemen without congressional authorization," Sanders—who in March helped lead a failed effort to halt U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's relentless and illegal assault on Yemen—wrote on Twitter. "We must prevent the U.S. from getting dragged into another never-ending war. Sanders wasn't alone among progressives in condemning the secret military activity in Saudi Arabia. In a tweet on Thursday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote "our troops continue to see their involvement increase in the Saudi-led war against the Houthis" and denounced the covert operation as "an unconstitutional and unauthorized use of military force." ...

In a tweet on responding to the Times report on Thursday, Ahmad Algohbary, a Yemeni freelance journalist, wrote that the secret deployment of special forces to the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border further demonstrates that the "U.S. is illegally and directly involved in the genocidal war against impoverished Yemen."

US Gov. and Media Whitewash 'Reformer' Saudi Prince MBS as He Beheads Dissidents

#BlockHaspel: As Clock Ticks, Groups Ratchet Up Pressure to Stop Torturer Gina Haspel From Heading CIA

As the White House steps up its defense of Gina Haspel with a 27-page talking points memo, advocacy groups are staging a last-ditch effort to block her nomination to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. With just days before she faces the Senate Intelligence Committee, dozens of groups—including CodePink, ACLU, Indivisible and VoteVets—are taking to social media to highlight her role in the CIA's covert torture program and to urge constituents to demand their senators vote against her nomination.

Torture is wrong. Always. Contact your senators now and urge them to speak out against torture by voting to #BlockHaspel https://t.co/4cIPJmJwTh pic.twitter.com/glh2jMi6VR

— FCNL (Quakers) (@FCNL) May 4, 2018

Torture experts are also taking to op-ed pages in major news outlets to say that if she is confirmed by the Senate, it will be nothing short of an endorsement of torture. Writing at the Washington Post Thursday, Léonce Byimana, executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, argued that President Donald Trump "openly embraces torture, and he wants to name a CIA director who has followed orders to use it on people. There's no telling what future orders Trump might give. But we can be sure that Haspel would follow them."

Opposition to Haspel comes not only from anti-war and human rights experts but from retired members of the military as well. Last month, 109 retired generals and admirals wrote to members of the U.S. Senate to caution against her nomination, saying it "would send a terrible signal to confirm as the next Director of the CIA someone who was so intimately involved in this dark chapter of our nation's history."

Turkish boat's collision with Greek warship sparks fears of 'hot incident'

A Turkish cargo ship has collided with a Greek warship off the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos, fuelling fears of a “hot incident”, in what has long been a traditional theatre of tension between the Nato rivals. The vessel rammed into the Greek gunboat, Armatalos, early on Friday within hours of Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, giving a keynote speech on the island. ...

A Navy statement described the pre-dawn collision as occurring in Greek national waters in flagrant violation of international law. “There were no injuries,” it said. Turkey’s transport ministry also announced that there was no threat of “casualties or environmental pollution”. ...

Tensions have been running unusually high in recent months. This week Nikos Kotzias, Greece’s foreign minister, said Ankara had “come close” to “crossing a red line” when a Turkish patrol boat rammed a Greek coastguard ship off a disputed Aegean isle in February. The two neighbours nearly went to war over the uninhabited islet in 1996. ...

Senior figures in Greece’s military and naval command have expressed nervousness that the scene is being set for a clash ahead of crucial presidential elections in Turkey next month. The Islamic-leaning Justice and Development party (AKP) has joined forces with the Nationalist Movement party (MHP) to contend the election at the request of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president. The nationalists are virulently at odds with Greece over Cyprus, and other territorial disputes, and have laid claim to numerous inhabited isles in the Aegean.

Trump Orders Pentagon to Consider Reducing U.S. Forces in South Korea

President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down American troops in South Korea, just weeks before he holds a landmark meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, according to several people briefed on the deliberations.

Reduced troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Mr. Trump’s talks with Mr. Kim about his weapons program, these officials said. But they acknowledged that a peace treaty between the two Koreas could diminish the need for the 28,500 soldiers currently stationed on the peninsula.

Mr. Trump has been determined to withdraw troops from South Korea, arguing that the United States is not adequately compensated for the cost of maintaining them, that the troops are mainly protecting Japan and that decades of American military presence had not prevented the North from becoming a nuclear threat.

His latest push coincides with tense negotiations with South Korea over how to share the cost of the military force. Under an agreement that expires at the end of 2018, South Korea pays about half the cost of the upkeep of the soldiers — more than $800 million a year. The Trump administration is demanding that it pay for virtually the entire cost of the military presence.

The Pentagon just accused China of pointing lasers at U.S. aircrafts

The U.S. and China are entangled in a diplomatic spat over whether China directed military-grade lasers at U.S. pilots flying over Djibouti, which comes at a time of increased concern over China’s growing presence in the region.

Pentagon officials said they were confident Chinese nationals had shined high-powered lasers at American aircrafts as many as three times in the past several weeks, resulting in minor eye injuries and possibly causing temporary blindness. The U.S. issued an official diplomatic protest and asked Beijing to investigate the incident.

“It’s enough that we’re concerned that we demarched them,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told reporters Thursday. “We’ve asked them to investigate it.”

But China denied using lasers and instead blamed the U.S. for believing what it said to be rumors.

US-China talks end in increased tension and demand for $200bn trade deficit cut

Tensions between the US and China increased on Friday as it emerged US officials had handed Beijing a list of demands including a $200bn cut in its trade deficit and an end to state subsidies on strategic industries. The two days of talks in Beijing between Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, and Liu He, the vice-premier, ended on Friday after weeks of escalating rhetoric between the two nations.

A statement released by the official Xinhua news agency described the talks as “frank, efficient and constructive” but added that there remained “significant disagreements over certain issues”. No joint statement was released and according to The Wall Street Journal the Chinese too made demands - calling on the US to stop threatening to impose $150bn in tariffs on imports and ease national-security reviews of Chinese investments.

A document handed to Chinese officials described the trade relationship between the two countries as “significantly imbalanced”. The US’s trade and services deficit with China was $337bn last year, according to US data, and the Trump administration is pushing for a $200bn cut in that deficit by 2020. Such a cut would double Donald Trump’s previous calls for a $100bn cut. On the campaign trail and in office Trump has repeatedly attacked China’s trade policies, accusing the country of “raping” the US with its policies.

The US also called for China to immediately stop providing subsidies to certain industries. China must end some of its policies related to technology transfers, where foreign companies are forced to hand over key technologies in exchange for access to China, a key source of tension underlying the dispute, the list says.

'Government not free when financially dependent' - Barcelona mayor to Ecuadorian ex-president Correa

Last Year, Amazon Paid No Federal Income Taxes. Now, It's Trying to Kill a Local Tax That Aims to Help the Homeless

After Amazon stocks soared last week—making founder Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, $12 billion richer—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted that the company paid no federal income tax last year, which was confirmed by independent analysis on Thursday, and comes as Amazon is trying to kill a proposed tax that aims to end Seattle's homelessness crisis. ...

With no public tax return and no cooperation from Amazon, fact-checkers dug into the company's annual filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They found, based on a February 2018 filing, "that not only would the company not be paying anything in 2017 federal income taxes, but it would be getting a $137 million tax refund."

PolitiFact's findings come as the company has halted massive expansion plans in its hometown of Seattle, in an apparent effort to bully the City Council into rejecting a tax measure that the New York Times reports "would charge large employers in the city about $500 per employee, with the money going to help alleviate a housing crisis" that the company has been accused of fueling.

Amazon vice president Drew Herdener confirmed to the Seattle Times "that pending the outcome of the head-tax vote by City Council, Amazon has paused all construction planning on our Block 18 project in downtown Seattle and is evaluating options to sublease all space in our recently leased Rainier Square building." Those moves are jeopardizing plans to add 7,000 to 8,000 local jobs. ...

Our Revolution, the progressive political group that grew out of Sanders' 2016 presidential run, noted that "Amazon is on pace to be the first trillion dollar company—which makes it all the more despicable that it's extorting the city of Seattle over a modest tax to fund affordable housing in the city."

Another white supremacist was convicted of beating a black man in Charlottesville

A second white supremacist involved in the violent beating of a black man during the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was convicted Thursday on malicious wounding charges.

Georgia native Alex Michael Ramos, 34, is looking at 5 to 20 years behind bars for his role in one of the most defining scenes from the white supremacist rally in the Virginia college town last August, where six men beat DeAndre Harris in a parking garage. According to reporters in the courtroom Thursday, Charlottesville detective Declan Hickey testified against Ramos, and cited a Facebook post written by the defendant seemingly boasting about the Aug. 12 events.

“We stomped some ass,” Ramos wrote. “Getting some was fucking fun.”

In the viral video of the beating, Ramos is seen wearing a red MAGA hat and a white tank top, and along with five other white supremacists, converging on Harris and beating him as he lay curled on the garage floor. ... Ramos’ conviction by a jury in the Charlottesville Circuit Court comes two days after Jacob Scott Goodwin, another man who beat Harris, was found guilty of the same charge and faces up to 10 years in prison.

Whining or positioning for 2020? Heh, you could cut the condescension with a knife.

Clinton: Being a capitalist 'probably' hurt me with Dem voters

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton says identifying as a capitalist hurt her in the 2016 campaign.

Clinton, who beat out democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the party's nomination, said in a Wednesday interview with Time Inc. Brands executive Alan Murray that her economic policies were "probably" a hard sell for many Democratic primary voters, as reported by the Daily Beast.

“It’s hard to know, but I mean if you’re in the Iowa caucuses and 41 percent of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I’m asked ‘Are you a capitalist?’ and I say, ‘Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.’ You know, that probably gets lost in the ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a capitalist!’” Clinton said. ...

Earlier, at the Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York on Wednesday, Clinton had said that "the reputation of capitalism is pretty much in tatters for young people," according to Fortune magazine.

Hillary Has New Excuse On Why She Lost - Capitalism!

Hiroshima, Kyoto, and the Bombs of Climate Change

I spent Earth Day in Kyoto, the next day in Hiroshima, and the time since pondering the difference between the two. Hiroshima has a special grip on the planet’s consciousness. ... Millions of people come here to tour the museum—its exhibits all the more chastening for their dry and almost clinical precision. Hiroshima has become symbolic shorthand for the nuclear horror that still haunts humanity; when we think about weapons of mass destruction, it’s the mushroom cloud above the Japanese city that we see in our mind’s eye. Kyoto, in a different way, could have become shorthand for another, equally huge problem—global warming, which is producing changes even more far-reaching than a nuclear standoff.

It was in Kyoto, twenty-one years ago, that the world first came together to try to address the climate crisis, reaching a small but useful agreement to begin limiting carbon emissions. Yet the pact accomplished little, and has slipped into history. I saw no sign in Kyoto that the conference ever took place—no shrine or statue, and, what’s more, no discernible change in the way that the city operates. (Japan met its obligations to the treaty by using offset techniques, such as planting trees and purchasing carbon credits, while emissions rose.) In what is a race against time, time has largely stood still here, as it has in most places.

It’s not as if we have solved the nuclear issue, but at least we understand that it is a crisis. The entire act of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, depends on the collective understanding that these weapons are uniquely, intolerably awful. Even Donald Trump dimly groks that denuclearization is good. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is filled with the texts of treaties that have brought the number of warheads slowly, steadily down; we could see that mushroom cloud and understand its danger in our gut. With climate change, it’s different. The explosion of a billion pistons inside a billion cylinders every minute of every day just doesn’t induce the same tremble. True, Trump is alone among world leaders in dismissing global warming, but most of his peers might as well agree: they’ve done very little of what’s required even to begin addressing this issue. As a result, the explosions go off constantly. Scientists estimate that, each day, our added emissions trap the heat equivalent of four hundred thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs, which is why the Arctic has half as much ice as it did in the nineteen-eighties, why the great ocean currents have begun to slow, why we see floods and storms and fires in such sad proportion. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only atomic bombs we ever dropped; climate bombs rain down daily, and the death toll mounts unstoppably.

Volkswagen's former CEO charged in US over 'Dieselgate'

Hawaii’s most active volcano just blew

Hawaii is getting a reminder that the eight major volcanic islands on the archipelago are still being formed. On Thursday the Kilauea volcano, the youngest and most active volcano on Hawaii’s biggest island, blew up sending plumes of ash and sulfur high above the island and lava flowing into residential neighborhoods.

Residents got a sign the eruption was coming when a series of earthquakes — one a 5.0 on the Richter scale — rattled the island Thursday morning. The eruption sent a plume of ash up into the air above the volcano. By evening, residents were spotting lava flowing down onto their streets. The flow of lava started around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. People packed up their belongings and seeking shelter.

“White, hot vapor and blue fume” came out of a crack in the ground, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has been closely monitoring the activity. “Spatter began erupting shortly before 5 pm.” ...

The volcano had been under close watch for an eruption for the last few days, as numerous small earthquakes shook the area, a sign of an upcoming volcanic activity. Kilauea finally came through on Thursday, as expected.

How Scott Pruitt Helped Arkansas Poultry Giants Pollute One of Oklahoma’s Prettiest Rivers

Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, took the side of poultry companies and other businesses in Arkansas in a dispute over the pollution of an ecologically sensitive and economically vital watershed, environmental groups say. While he was representing Oklahoma as its attorney general, Pruitt helped to slow the implementation of a plan, forged years ago by both states, to clean a river in his home state.

Even before he was appointed to head the EPA, Pruitt faced questioning about his failure, as Oklahoma attorney general, to implement a standard for phosphorus levels in the Illinois River, which flows from Arkansas into Oklahoma. The river had high levels of phosphorus from animal waste, and poultry producers in Arkansas opposed the standard. In 2013, after receiving contributions from poultry companies that benefited from his inaction, Pruitt agreed to a three-year delay in the implementation of the standard, as was reported when he was first nominated to be EPA administrator.

Now, it’s become clear that under Pruitt’s leadership, the EPA has taken actions that could further undermine Oklahoma’s longstanding efforts to clean up water pollution in the Illinois River. Last July, the EPA approved the removal of a segment of the river, and three tributaries that flow into it, from a list of pollution-impaired waterways in Arkansas. The list, which is required under the Clean Water Act, creates a legal obligation to address the pollution. Although the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, or ADEQ, tried to have the waterways removed from the list in previous years, the EPA had refused. ...

But last year, without providing any new data, the EPA changed course. According to a July 17 letter, the federal agency removed four parts of the watershed from the list and retroactively approved lists that Arkansas had previously submitted in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. The letter explained that “Arkansas and Oklahoma have engaged in several cooperative efforts to achieve additional nutrient reductions in the Illinois watershed,” and noted that “several pollution controls are in place to bring the waters into attainment with the water quality standard.” As examples, the letter listed permit limits and regulations on how much waste can be applied to land.

But Mark Derichsweiler, who served for 20 years as the engineering manager for the water quality planning section of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, said the EPA’s rationale is insufficient. “There are stringent requirements” for removing a water body from the list, said Derichsweiler, who retired in 2015. “You can’t just say, ‘We’re going to try and do better, so let’s take this stream off the list.’ It doesn’t work that way. There has to be a definite plan that says, here’s what we’re going to do in the next five years. They don’t have anything like that.”

Six Animal Rights Activists Charged With Felonies for Investigation and Rescue That Led to Punishment of a Utah Turkey Farm

Six animal rights activists are facing felony charges, filed on Wednesday by a Utah prosecutor, stemming from an undercover investigation into abusive conditions on a large turkey farm. The criminal complaint includes two felony theft charges that carry possible prison terms of five years each. The six defendants include Diane Gandee Sordi, 62, a retiree who spends most of her time volunteering at animal shelters; Andrew Sharo, 24, a Ph.D. student in the biophysics program at Berkeley; and Wayne Hsiung, a lawyer and lead investigator.

In January, 2017, the six activists entered a farm in Moroni, Utah that supplies turkeys to Norbest, a large company that aggressively markets itself to the public as selling “mountain-grown” turkeys who are treated with particularly humane care. Its marketing materials feature bucolic photographs of Utah nature, designed to create an image that its turkeys are raised in fresh and healthy natural settings, accompanied by assurances that its “practices are humane” and ethical, “with the health and comfort of the birds of paramount importance.”

What the activists found at the farm was something radically different: tens of thousands of turkeys crammed inside filthy industrial barns, virtually on top of one another. The activists say the animals were suffering from diseases, infections, open wounds and injuries sustained by pecking and trampling one another. Countless chicks and adult turkeys were barely able to stand, or were lying in their own waste close to death. They also say that as a result of the filth in these barns, hepatitis and other viral diseases were rampant and spreading throughout the flock, which in turn caused the farm to put various antibiotics, including penicillin, into the barns’ water supply. ...

The activists, all volunteers with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), filmed and photographed the conditions inside the farm. “In my 20 years of investigating animal abuse, I’ve never seen conditions this horrifying at a corporate farm,” Hsiung told the Intercept. “We saw animals that looked dead but were still breathing, animals languishing who had virtually been pecked to death, many animals collapsed on the ground in their own feces and filth. It was as bad as it gets.” ...

In February of this year, Norbest was purchased by Pitman Farms of California, a supplier of Whole Foods. As the Intercept reported last September, Pitman itself has its own struggles with accusations of abuse of animals at its farms. But now that Norbest is part of Pitman, this appears to be a case where a corporate supplier of Whole Foods – which touts itself as selling the healthiest and most organic products – is pressing charges against people who exposed animal abuse and threats to the public health.

Also of Interest

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

Netanyahu uses Holocaust event to urge action against Syria, Iran

The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign

Atlantic Council Explains Why We Need To Be Propagandized For Our Own Good

Bernie Sanders “would have won” and Bernie bros are a myth, says campaign manager in new book

Hat tip divineorder:

Global Issues in Context | Glenn Greenwald, Jill Stein & Abby Martin

A Little Night Music

Guitar Jr.(Lonnie Brooks) - Roll Roll Roll

Guitar Jr.(Lonnie Brooks) - Knocks Me Out

Guitar Jr.(Lonnie Brooks) - The Hoss

Lonnie Brooks - The Frog

Lonnie Brooks - Mr. Hot Shot

Lonnie Brooks - Let It All Hang Out

Lonnie Brooks - Demonstrating

Lonnie Brooks - One Sunny Day

Lonnie Brooks - Move Over, Little Dog

Lonnie Brooks - Wound Up Tight

Lonnie Brooks - Born With The Blues