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This evening's music features Chicago blues harmonica player Little Walter. Enjoy!

"This week the US Air Force provocatively launched an unarmed ICBM missile from Vandenberg Air Base in California out over the Pacific Ocean. I hope North Korea lodges a protest at the UN and a demand for sanctions…."

-- Jeffrey St Clair

News and Opinion

North Korea accuses CIA of biochemical plot to kill Kim Jong-un

North Korea has accused the CIA of attempting to assassinate its leader, Kim Jong-un, using unspecified biochemical substances during a public ceremonial event in the capital, Pyongyang.

The ministry of state security issued a statement claiming the US intelligence agency had bribed a North Korean citizen, named only as Kim, to carry out the plot. It said possible locations for the killing included the mausoleum where Kim Jong-un’s father and grandfather – the country’s founder – lie in state, or a military parade. ... Like other North Korean claims, the allegation that the CIA plotted to assassinate Kim is impossible to verify. Media reports about the regime are tightly controlled by the state’s propaganda machinery and often designed merely to burnish the leader’s reputation. ...

While the CIA’s long history of attempting covert assassinations of political leaders across the world is notorious, the intelligence agency was forced to cut back on such operations after a Senate inquiry in the 1970s exposed the scale of the assassinations and concluded the policy was counter-productive. ... In spite of cutting back on assassinations, the US has continued to engage in what it refers to as targeted killings and has mounted attacks since the 1970s on leaders such as the late Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Kim, the alleged hitman, was described as “human scum” who had received payments totalling at least $740,000 and was given satellite transceivers and other materials and equipment, according to the ministry. He had multiple contacts with South Korean intelligence personnel, and an accomplice who had a Chinese-sounding name, Xu Guanghai of the Qingdao Nazca Trade Co.

Anger grows in South Korea over US anti-missile system

The anger is palpable on a narrow road that cuts through a South Korean village where about 170 people live between green hills dotted with cottages and melon fields. It's an unlikely trouble spot in the world's last Cold War standoff. ... "Just suddenly one day, Seongju has become the frontline," said a tearful Park Soo-gyu, a 54-year-old strawberry farmer. "Wars today aren't just fought with guns. Missiles will be flying and where would they aim first? Right here, where the THAAD radar is." ...

Anger has boiled over in Seosongri village since last week when U.S. and South Korean military workers used the early-morning hours to rush key parts of THAAD into place. ... Hundreds of banners hang on trees and fences along a kilometer (half-mile) stretch of the road up to where police have cut off access. They say "Withdraw the illegal THAAD immediately" and "Stop US militarism," slogans that would feel familiar in a leftist rally but are unusual in the country's traditionally conservative southeast. ...

The local anger highlights what has arguably become the most explosive issue ahead of a presidential election next week. The May 9 vote will likely end a decadelong conservative rule that maintained a hard line against North Korea and agreed to the THAAD installation. Front-runner Moon Jae-in, who calls for engagement with the North, has said the deployment of THAAD should be reconsidered. Some media have questioned whether the United States and a caretaker government that took over for ousted former President Park Geun-hye are rushing to complete THAAD before the election.

Ex-nuke commanders launch ‘crisis’ group to educate Trump

A global coalition of former military leaders and diplomats who had responsibility over nuclear weapons is launching a "shadow security council" to offer advice to world leaders on how to reduce what they consider to be the growing danger of a nuclear conflict fueled by the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and destabilizing moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Nuclear Crisis Group, which will be announced in Vienna on Friday, boasts nearly two-dozen members of the nuclear priesthood of at least eight major nations — including a former commander of the U.S. atomic arsenal; the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Pakistan; a retired admiral who was in charge of India's nukes; the ex-heads of the Chinese military's strategic studies and science institutes; and Russia's former foreign minister and chief atomic weapons designer. Others joining the initiative include Thomas Pickering, the United Nations ambassador under George H.W. Bush who also served as ambassador to Russia, India and Israel.

Their aims include offering public and private advice in real time to Trump’s team and leaders of other governments in the hope their collective credentials will make officials listen — and take concrete steps to avoid escalation and make a nuclear exchange, whether accidental or on purpose, less likely.

Questions for US military after doubt cast on efficiency of Afghan bombing

After dropping its largest conventional bomb ever used in combat in Afghanistan on 13 April, the US military said the massive ordnance air blast, or Moab, was a “very clear message to Isis” that they would be “annihilated”. Defence secretary Jim Mattis said the bomb was “necessary to break Isis”. The Afghan government claimed the bomb killed 94 Isis militants, while harming no civilians.

But a new investigation by independent analysts casts doubt on the efficiency of the bomb, suggesting it inflicted far less damage than initially reported – and raising questions again over why the bomb was dropped. Using satellite imagery, ground footage and 3D visualisation, Alcis, an institute for geographical analysis, surveyed the targeted area in Nangarhar province. It found 38 buildings and 69 trees destroyed within a 150-metre radius, challenging statements from locals who told reporters the bomb had damaged houses up to two miles away.

The imagery also shows no 300-metre crater, as had been expected prior to the strike. Alcis believes damage done further away is a result of ground fighting.

Iraq, US in talks to keep American troop presence after IS

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is in talks with the Trump administration to keep American troops in Iraq after the fight against the Islamic State group in the country is concluded, according to a U.S. official and an official from the Iraqi government.

Both officials underlined that the discussions are ongoing and that nothing is finalized. But the talks point to a consensus by both governments that, in contrast to the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, a longer-term presence of American troops in Iraq is needed to ensure that an insurgency does not bubble up again once the militants are driven out. ...

U.S. forces in Iraq would be stationed inside existing Iraqi bases in at least five locations in the Mosul area and along Iraq's border with Syria, the Iraqi government official said. They would continue to be designated as advisers to dodge the need for parliamentary approval for their presence, he said. ...

The U.S. official emphasized that there were no discussions of creating independent American bases in Iraq, as such a move would require thousands more personnel. He said the troops levels would be "several thousand ... similar to what we have now, maybe a little more."

U.S. military to pitch revised Afghan war plan to Trump in next week

The U.S. military said on Thursday it will offer recommendations on the war in Afghanistan to President Donald Trump within the next week, amid expectations of a request for thousands of more troops to break a stalemate with Taliban insurgents.

Theresa Whelan, acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict, testified to the Senate that the Pentagon was completing its review of potential adjustments to U.S. war plans. "I expect that these proposals will go to the President within the next week and the intent is to do just that, to move beyond the stalemate," Whelan said.

It has been three months since Army General John Nicholson, who leads U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said he needed "a few thousand" additional forces, some potentially drawn from U.S. allies. ...

So far, Trump has offered little clarity about whether he might approve more forces for Afghanistan, where some 8,400 U.S. troops remain more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban government was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces.

NSA collected & stored 151 million call records in 2016

Since Snowden spilled his secrets, U.S. surveillance targets have surged

In the four years since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the lid off U.S. surveillance overseas, the number of targets the U.S. is monitoring around the globe has steadily increased.

Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications on 106,469 targets, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

That’s up from 89,138 targets in 2013, the year Snowden fled his intelligence post in Hawaii and began spilling secrets on the extent of surveillance activities. ... The data is contained in an annual Statistical Transparency Report, which offers details on how the government employs certain national security powers given to it by Congress.

By “targets,” the report says, it refers to individuals, groups or even foreign nations that use a particular telephone number or email address.

France Presidential Debate: Macron widens lead over Le Pen in final days before vote

Heh, the US has a new partner in its coalition of the clueless.

Theresa May’s Brexit Britain can no longer be considered a serious country

For over a year now, virtually all signs coming out of London suggest that Europeans are not just bidding farewell to an EU member state. They must also come to grips with a future in which their neighbours across the Channel and the North Sea are no longer predictable or rational.

Britain’s reputation for reliability is simply not reconcilable with the presence of Boris Johnson in the cabinet. The country’s reputation for stable government cannot be squared with the impending Brexit-induced chaos and upheaval in Scotland and Northern Ireland. With every new round of applause from Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen in France and Donald Trump, Britain’s image as one of “the good guys” in the global fight for liberal values looks more obsolete.

And then there is Theresa May herself. Her claim this week that the EU is trying to influence the elections in Britain through a leak to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is the latest example of a long list of statements that simply make no sense. Britain is not the centre of the world, and the idea that EU leaders would sit together plotting a victory for Jeremy Corbyn is laughable.

Far more likely is that EU leaders decided to leak the proceedings of their dinner on Sunday with May in order to warn their own public about how irrational Britain has become. How the country believes itself to have the upper hand in a negotiation with a group of nations seven times its own size. How it wants to be part of the single market while refusing to recognise the authority of the European court governing that market. And, most alarmingly, how badly informed May still is about the practical consequences both of Brexit and of a no-deal crash out of the EU. ...

As painful as it is for all those in Europe who loved the Britain they thought they knew, there is no escaping it: under the leadership of Theresa May the United Kingdom can no longer be considered a serious country.

NAACP Calls on Louisiana to Charge Police Officers Who Shot & Killed Alton Sterling in Viral Video

Killer Cop Conviction Is an Exception: Don’t Expect Justice From the Sessions DOJ

On Tuesday, Michael Slager, a former police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Walter Scott’s civil rights. Slager’s 2015 shooting of Scott — in the back and as he ran away unarmed — was caught in a video that left no doubt about the officer’s crime, but as part of the deal Slager, who would have been facing a second state trial after a first ended in a hung jury last December, had his murder charge dropped. ...

Yet those who welcomed Slager’s conviction were immediately reminded of just how elusive that justice remains. News of the officer’s plea deal was in fact quickly eclipsed by a leaked report that the DOJ would decline to pursue charges against two Baton Rouge officers who last July tackled Alton Sterling, who was selling CDs outside a store, and shot him in the chest and back while he was on the ground. That shooting, too, was caught on camera, fueling protests that were violently met by police. ...

[A]ffected communities’ confidence in the DOJ lagged long before Sessions’s deeply contested appointment to run it. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department aggressively pursued investigations of systemic civil rights violations by police departments across the country, forcing them to reform or face litigation. But even as it condemned one police department after the other, the DOJ rarely held individual officers accountable for their crimes (Slager is an exception), leaving communities from Baltimore to Ferguson frustrated by reports that called for change but delivered no justice.

Until individual officers face consequences, advocates have long argued, the killings won’t stop.

The latest tragic illustration of that point is Jordan Edwards, a high school freshman who was killed while driving away from a party in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs. Police initially said the car he was in had been charging at police, then changed their account when dash cam video showed that was not true. On Tuesday, Roy Oliver, the officer who shot into the car, was fired. He has yet to be charged or arrested.

Texas is about to start fining sanctuary city officials up to $25,000

Texas lawmakers have approved a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, warning they will punish local law enforcement chiefs with jail time if they refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The bill was approved by the Senate Wednesday night along party lines, 20-11, and it is now headed to the governor’s desk for final approval. ...

The ban expands the provisions of the SB4 bill passed by the Texas House at the end of April, which makes it a criminal offense for law enforcement officers to not comply with ICE “detainer requests,” where suspected undocumented immigrants can be held for up to 48 hours. Under the ban, local jurisdictions that do not comply with federal immigration laws could face fines of up to $25,000 per day and police chiefs, sheriffs, mayors, and cops could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, the most serious misdemeanor category in the state. ...

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will likely sign the bill into law, tweeting after the Wednesday vote: “I’m getting my signing pen warmed up.”

There’s Nothing Apple’s CEO Cares About More Than Not Paying Taxes

In an exclusive interview with CNBC’s resident stockmonger Jim Cramer, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a proud announcement: His company will begin to invest $1 billion to create new jobs in the United States, as opposed to on the other side of the world, where its iPhones, iPads and laptops are made. Cook will be lauded for this, and yes, jobs are good. But don’t think for a moment this isn’t about saving Apple a buck in the long run.

This ostensible decision of the heart very clearly became something more strategic, as Cramer noted that while a billion is a big number, it’s relatively tiny given Apple’s liquid war chest, which now tops $250 billion in cash. Cook’s reply:”It’s $1 billion of our U.S. money, which we have to borrow to get, that’s another whole topic.” Why would a company with $250 billion in cash need to borrow 1/250th of that in order to launch its vaunted U.S. jobs program?

“We have to borrow” is of course, untrue. The company could repatriate its vast offshore holdings — which it’s accumulated deliberately, through years of byzantine tax-dodging schemes — but would then have to pay taxes to the IRS, which might bump Apple down from The richest corporation in the history of capitalism to merely One of the richest corporations in the history of capitalism.

The Republican guarantee about pre-existing conditions is not a guarantee

House Republicans passed their version of the American Health Care Act on Thursday, beginning the process of repealing the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. It was a second try for the bill, and this time Speaker Paul Ryan was able to win over moderate, swing-state Republicans with the addition of $8 billion in funds (proposed by Michigan Rep. Fred Upton) over the next five years to help with the coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. ...

So, is the addition of $8 billion in funds over five years — which swayed some moderates to the bill — on top of the previously included $130 billion over 10 years enough money?

It doesn’t look like it. For one thing, the $138 billion in federal money is supposed to be used for a bunch of different things besides high-risk pools, including helping people pay for high premiums and direct payments to health care providers.

Here’s the big picture: $138 billion sounds like a lot of money. But it’s actually tiny compared to the amount of federal spending that would be cut by the bill, roughly $1.2 trillion by 2026, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the earlier version of the bill. And it’s even tinier compared to the entire health care sector, which amounted to roughly 3.2 trillion in 2015.

The bottom line is you can’t get $1.2 trillion worth of health care for $138 billion. And that means some people won’t get health care.

Protests Erupt After House Republicans Pass Healthcare Bill That Could Hike Premiums for Millions

Hmmm... people kicked out of nursing homes with nowhere to go? Perhaps somebody should take the names of all of the congressworms that voted for this abomination and post a website, updating their addresses as the years go by so that the newly homeless can hang out with the congressworms.

House GOP Just Voted to Slash Medicaid — Which Pays for 60 Percent of People in Nursing Homes

The American Health Care Act, which squeaked through the House of Representatives on Thursday, is terrible for many Americans in many ways. But what’s gotten almost no attention is the horrendous effect it could have on Americans in nursing homes. ...

Many middle-class Americans are unaware that the huge cost of nursing home care – which in some areas can run over $100,000 a year — is not covered by Medicare. Those who need it and cannot pay for it themselves can generally receive coverage from Medicaid, though they usually must spend down all their savings first. When all is said and done, Medicaid pays the bills for over 60 percent of nursing home residents — people who cannot care for themselves and without Medicaid would have literally nowhere to go. ...

[T]he AHCA slashes $880 billion dollars from Medicaid spending over the next ten years, or about one-sixth of the $5 trillion it would otherwise cost the federal government. Precisely how much of a catastrophe the AHCA could be is impossible to say as of now, since Republicans passed the bill without first having it scored by the Congressional Budget Office. But there’s little question it will be disastrous if anything like it becomes law. This didn’t matter to Republicans in the House. The question now is whether it will matter at all to Republicans in the Senate.

Trump Praises Universal Healthcare Hours After Shameful Trumpcare Vote

As calls for single payer escalate in the wake of Thursday's devastating Republican healthcare vote, President Donald Trump inadvertently gave a boost to the demand when he praised Australia's taxpayer-funded, universal coverage system in a meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Trump's statement Thursday night that Australia has "better healthcare than we do" delighted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime single-payer advocate who laughed heartily when he heard it during an interview on MSNBC.

Australia's system, known as Medicare, provides citizens with universal access to doctors and public hospitals, largely funded through general taxation.

"That's great," Sanders said after collecting himself. "Let's take a look at the Australian healthcare system. Maybe he wants to take a look at the Canadian healthcare system or systems throughout Europe. Thank you, Mr. President. Let us move to a Medicare-for-All system that does what every other major country on earth does—guarantee healthcare for all people at a fraction of the cost per capita that we spend. Thank you, Mr. President. We'll quote you on the floor of the Senate."

Thank you Mr. Trump for admitting that universal health care is the better way to go. I'll be sure to quote you on the floor of the Senate. pic.twitter.com/GTFRHiKw6k

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 5, 2017

Republican healthcare bill heads to Senate, where it may undergo drastic changes

As House Republicans cheered the “beginning of the end” of the Affordable Care Act at a celebration in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Senate Republicans welcomed the bill with muted fanfare. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, hailed the vote as “an important step” and a “job well done”. But Republicans in the upper chamber swiftly vowed to draft their own healthcare legislation rather than take up the House-passed American Health Care Act. ...

The widespread consensus among Republicans was that it was difficult to truly weigh in on the House legislation due to the hurried process through which it was passed. Most Senate Republicans confessed to not knowing what was even in the House bill and declined to take an explicit position absent a score from the Congressional Budget Office. “I’m not so sure this is good civics here – a bill [that has] not been scored, not been amended – but it is what it is,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Citing concerns with preexisting conditions and changes to Medicaid, Graham said the final drafting “will be done by the Senate”.

GAO: Biggest Fiscal Threat to U.S. Is Interest on Treasury Debt – Not Social Welfare Programs

On Wednesday, the General Accountability Office (GAO), the bipartisan congressional watchdog, released an in-depth report on the U.S. government’s challenging fiscal outlook. Despite its surprising revelations, the study received little to no coverage by major media outlets.

While most Americans have been led by political rhetoric to believe that government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest threats to the future U.S. fiscal picture, the GAO study found the following:

“While health care spending is a key programmatic and policy driver of the long-term outlook on the spending side of the budget, eventually, spending on net interest becomes the largest category of spending in both the 2016 Financial Report’s long-term fiscal projections and GAO’s simulations.”

The GAO cited a simulation that showed net interest payments on U.S. debt increasing “from $248 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2045 in 2016 dollars.”

Another measurement of government debt is its percentage ratio to Gross Domestic Product – a means of evaluating how much of a drag it’s inflicting on the overall economy. The GAO study found the following:

“Debt held by the public rose as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), from 74 percent at the end of fiscal year 2015 to 77 percent at the end of fiscal year 2016. This compares to an average of 44 percent of GDP since 1946.”

The report further noted that both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and GAO’s own projections indicate that the federal government’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and policy changes must occur. ...

Given these valid and serious concerns on the non sustainability of growing U.S. debt, one has to question the Trump administration’s plan for tax cuts. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the plan could result in $5.5 trillion in revenue losses over a decade. Their analysis suggests the tax plan could increase U.S. debt to 111 percent of GDP by 2027. The group notes that this “would be higher than any time in U.S. history and no achievable amount of economic growth could finance it.”

Medical scientists report on the impact climate change is having on health

[C]limate change is already affecting personal human health around the world. This subject was the focus of a summary report just published by the Medical Society Consortium. What I really liked about this report is that it breaks down some of the key impacts by region. Unfortunately, the report is limited in scope to the USA. However, the general conclusions and trends can be illuminating for people outside the USA as well. ...

The study reports that if you live on the West Coast, wildfires, extreme temperatures, poorer air quality, extreme weather events, and agricultural risks are occurring. On the East Coast, you can add vector-borne diseases as a risk area. The central USA region is also similarly being affected. ...

[W]ith respect to extreme weather, the report correctly notes that the frequency and severity of some weather events such as heavy downpours, floods, droughts, and major storms are increasing. This harms our health because these events can cause direct injury and death as well as displacement. Extreme weather can also harm vital infrastructure like communication systems, homes, and reduce the availability of clean water and food. Finally, extreme weather can lead to acute outbreaks of infectious disease while at the same time reducing access to health care.

Air pollution is another example area. Climate change is affecting air quality in many ways, including increasing chemical reactions in surface air (air we breathe), increasing pollen, and leading to more forest fires. Lower air quality obviously affects people with breathing problems (such as asthma and allergies). It can prolong the pollen seasons and worsen allergy symptoms. Less obvious effects like increased humidity and more heavy rainfalls can exacerbate air-quality problems indoors through mold growth for instance.

One issue I was not aware of was the threat of climate change to nutrition. Increases in carbon dioxide actually result in a lowered nutritional value of grown food such as wheat, rice, barley, and potatoes. This occurs because plants produce less protein and more sugars/starches in a carbon rich atmosphere. Plants also are less effective at taking in essential soil minerals. This is all in addition to the threats to our food system by droughts and extreme weather. We’ve certainly seen very severe droughts in the USA (2011 in Oklahoma and Texas, 2012 in Midwest USA, and 2012–2016 in California) that have caused severe problems in the agricultural industries.

Carbon Pollution and Water - An Intimate Connection

Noise pollution is drowning out nature even in protected areas

Scientists used over one million hours of sound recordings from 492 locations in protected areas in the US to calculate that in about two-thirds of places, the noise pollution from human activities was double the background sound levels. A fifth of the protected areas suffered human noise levels that were 10 times background levels, the researchers found.

“Next time you go for a walk in the woods, pay attention to the sounds you hear – the flow of a river, wind through the trees, singing birds, bugling elk. These acoustic resources are just as magnificent as visual ones, and deserve our protection,” said Rachel Buxton, at Colorado State University and who led the study published in the journal Science on Thursday. “They make us feel good and are important for our physical and emotional wellbeing,” she said. “We actually have research that shows that natural sounds improve our mood, increase our memory retention and restore our senses.”

Animals use noise for many essential functions, such as dodging predators, finding food and mates and maintaining relationships in social groups, Buxton said: “So not being able to hear these sounds has serious consequences.” The impact of noise can cascade across entire ecosystems, she said, even leading to effects on plants as the wildlife that interact with them changes. “Although plants can’t hear, many animals that disperse seeds or pollinate flowers can hear, and are known to be affected by noise,” said Buxton, adding that plant grazers could also become more abundant if noise drives their predators away.

The researchers identified the key causes of noise pollution as roads and air traffic, settlements and the extractive industries, such as forestry, fracking and mining. With a tenfold increase in background noise, as found in a fifth of the protected areas, natural sounds that would have been detectable 100m away can only be heard when 10m away. In the areas defined as wilderness, which are meant to entirely to be “untrammeled by man”, according to US law, 12% still experienced a doubling of background noise due to human activities.

An excellent Earth Day speech, here are a few excerpts:

The End of the Age of Protest

A few days ago, the carbon dioxide readings at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai’i cracked 410 parts per million, an all-time record and a frightening one. On Earth Day, climate marches took place in cities across the world. Trump’s policies didn’t drive the spiking CO2 levels, but they did propel tens of thousands onto the streets for a few hours of fun. Where were those people during eight years of Barack Obama, an oil and gas man of some distinction? Where were they during eight years of Bill Clinton, one of the greatest environmental con men of our time?

Has Trump finally shattered our illusions, so that we can see clearly the forces—economic, political and technological—that are plunging the planet toward a man-made heat death? Is he, in fact, a kind of clarifying agent for the real state of things?

One can hope so.

Except one mustn’t hope.

As Kafka, the High Priest of Realism, admonished his readers, “There is hope. But not for us.”

Hope is an illusion, an opiate, an Oxycontin for the masses.

Instead of hope, we need a heavy dose of realism. A realism as chilling as reality itself. ...

This new reality compels us—for those who are willing to look—to confront the shedding of another illusion, an illusion that mainstream environmentalists have been marinating in since the 1970s, when our most progressive president, Richard M. Nixon, cynically created the modern environmental regulatory state in order to split the anti-war movement, pacify the Left and smother a much more radical defense of the natural world.

The green regulatory state–as personified by the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the BLM (Bureau of Livestock and Mining), as well as thousands of laws, administrative rules and regulations, the meaning of which can only be divined by lawyers, lobbyists and professional environmentalists — has not slowed the decimation of native forests, the extirpation of wildlife or the poisoning of our air and water. It has simply codified and systematized the destruction, allocating the looting to a coterie of well-connected corporations large enough and shrewd enough to navigate the legal labyrinth for their own bloody profits. ...

Small, scruffy and unruly as it is, we’ve seen the power of our movement in the past. When our backs are—often literally—against the wall, when the battle lines are clear from the immobilizing fog of liberal rhetoric and free from the timid advice of professional compromisers. We’ve seen it emerge from the Lacandon jungle to say enough is enough and overtake the streets of Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization. We’ve seen grandmothers and housewives expose the toxic crimes of Love Canal and corn farmers shut down nuclear power plants. We’ve taken the international timber industry to its knees on its home turf, blocked strip mines, pipelines and river killing dams. We’ve thrown monkey-wrenches big and small into the gears of the System. It has been done and it will be done again and again. No grant applications or protest permits needed.

Also of Interest

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

Kent State anniversary: Documentary tells story of fatal 1970 protests

Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence

Gaius Publius: Honeymoon of the Generals in the Age of Trump – Wolfowitz on McMaster, Mattis

Trump ran as a foreign-policy realist. Instead he’s become another interventionist neocon

Washington’s Blind Ambition: the Monster in the Mirror

Oliver Stone Honored with Press Freedom Award

Why Study History?

Homeless, a Democrat and in jail: is this America's most unlikely candidate?

A Little Night Music

Little Walter - My Babe

Little Walter - Everybody Needs Somebody

Little Walter - Flying Saucer

Little Walter - Just Your Fool

Little Walter - Diggin My Potatoes

Little Walter - I'm A Business Man

Little Walter - Blue And Lonesome

Little Walter - Juke

Little Walter + Muddy Waters - Walkin On

Little Walter - Too Late

Little Walter - Mellow Down Easy