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This evening's music features doo wop singer Bobby Hendricks. Enjoy!

“We’re capitalists and that’s just the way it is.”

-- Nancy Pelosi

News and Opinion

Paul Street nails it. Click the link, it's worth a full read. Meanwhile, here's a teaser:

Needed Now: A Real and Radical Left

It’s “socialism or barbarism.” So wrote the brilliant German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in 1915. The 20th and 21st centuries have borne her out. The list of barbarian horrors that have disfigured the human record under the class rule of capital across the last century is daunting indeed. Now, however, we have to say that Luxemburg put things too gently. Marx and Engels got closer to our contemporary reality in 1848. They wrote in “The Communist Manifesto” about how the long-standing class struggle between producers and appropriators always ends “either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

It’s socialism or barbarism if we’re lucky. To be more precise, its eco-socialism or annihilation as capital turns the planet into a giant greenhouse gas chamber. The earth science is perfectly clear. The “common ruin” of all is precisely where humanity is headed after half a millennium under the rule of a system that relies on permanent unsustainable expansion to avert collapse. “The rich,” the French ecological writer Herve Kempf observed 11 years ago, “are destroying the Earth.” Well, not the earth itself, just the chances for a decent and organized human future.

Real leftists know that five people owning as much wealth as the bottom half of the species while millions starve and lack adequate health care and half the U.S. population is poor or near-poor is capitalism working. We know that giant corporations buying up every last family farm, tapping every new reserve of cheap global labor, raping the Congo’s raw materials in alliance with warlords, purchasing the votes of nearly every elected official, extracting every last fossil fuel and driving the planet past the limits of environmental sustainability is capitalism working. We know that a giant military-industrial complex, generating vast fortunes for the owners and managers of high-tech “defense” (war and empire) firms while schools and public parks and infrastructure and social safety nets are underfunded—we know that that too is capitalism working.

The only solution, a real left would know, along with Marx, is for workers and citizens to organize collectively to overthrow the amoral profits system and take control of what they produce and how society is organized.

For now—and this must change—“the [U.S.] left” is still far too scattered, excessively siloed, overdependent on corporate foundations, overly identity-politicized, excessively episodic, excessively metropolitan and bicoastal, excessively professional and middle-class, insufficiently radical, insufficiently working-class, insufficiently anti-capitalist and insufficiently distanced from the dismal, demobilizing, depressing and dollar-drenched Democratic Party. ... The absence of a real, dedicated, persistent and serious, adult left is profoundly dangerous. People who are getting shafted and who know it are going to get behind militant and angry politicos seeking to channel their understandable rage. If there’s no effective, durable, organized, intelligent and durable through-thick-and-thin anti-capitalist left around, the job of channeling that popular anger falls by default to the white nationalist racist, nativist and sexist right—the Hitlers, Goebbels, Marine Le Pens, Geert Wilders, Matteo Salivinis, Nigel Farages, David Dukes, Steve Kings, Donald Trumps and Steve Bannons of the world. Resentment abhors a vacuum. ...

It’s no small matter, given what we know now to be the essentially ecocidal nature of modern capitalism. “If there is not future for a radical mass movement in our time,” Istvan Meszaros rightly argued 15 years ago, “there can be no future for humanity itself.”

Trump is an excellent lightning rod for the sins of capitalism:

UN: US inequality reaching a dangerous level due to Trump's 'cruel' measures

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned. Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities.

“This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian. Millions of Americans already struggling to make ends meet faced “ruination”, he warned. “If food stamps and access to Medicaid are removed, and housing subsidies cut, then the effect on people living on the margins will be drastic.” Asked to define “ruination”, Alston said: “Severe deprivation of food and almost no access to healthcare.”

Alston sounds the alarm in the final report of his investigation into extreme poverty in the US that is published on Friday and will be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva at the end of June. His findings are based on a tour he carried out in December through some of America’s most destitute communities, from Skid Row in Los Angeles, through poor African American areas in Alabama, and the stricken coal country of West Virginia, to hurricane-racked Puerto Rico.

The report amounts to one of the most scorching assessments of Trump’s leadership in his 16 months in the White House. It is likely to spark debate across the political aisle as well as globally about the US president’s rapid drive towards heightened inequality.

Ecuador's president says Julian Assange can stay in embassy 'with conditions'

Lenín Moreno, the president of Ecuador, has said Julian Assange’s asylum status in the country’s London embassy is not under threat – provided he complies with the conditions of his stay and avoids voicing his political opinions on Twitter.

However, in an interview with Deutsche Welle on Wednesday, Moreno said his government would “take a decision” if Assange didn’t comply with the restrictions. “Let’s not forget the conditions of his asylum prevent him from speaking about politics or intervening in the politics of other countries. That’s why we cut his communication,” he said. Ecuador suspended Assange’s communication’s system in March. ...

Moreno has previously described Assange’s situation as “a stone in his shoe” and repeatedly hinted that he wants to remove the Australian from the country’s London embassy. ... He denied that external pressure from the United States or any other countries had influenced his government’s treatment of Assange whom he said had “surpassed the limits of freedom of expression”.

Mariano Rajoy ousted as Spain's prime minister

Mariano Rajoy, once viewed as the great survivor of Spanish politics, has been ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence after several former members of his party were convicted of corruption in a case that proved a scandal too far. ... Rajoy, who served as premier for seven years, had managed to weather a string of corruption scandals within his People’s party (PP) but was unable to withstand political anger after Spain’s highest criminal court found the party had benefited from an enormous and illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme, known as the Gürtel case. ...

Albeit unwillingly, Rajoy has made Spanish political history by becoming the first prime minister to be removed from office through a motion of no confidence. ...

Sánchez, 46, has promised to call elections but has said his minority government will spend a few months focusing on social and educational reforms before taking Spain to the polls. His time in office is unlikely to yield profound changes and he will have to heed the demands of the parties who backed his motion. He successfully wooed the PNV by promising to stick to Rajoy’s recently approved budget, which includes increased investment in the Basque country.

Who is Pedro Sanchez, Spain's new PM?

“Mr. Handsome” is Spain’s new prime minister.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was forced to step down Friday after losing a no-confidence motion in parliament. Rajoy said it had been an “honor to serve” the Spanish people since 2011, but his position had become untenable following a corruption scandal that engulfed him and his People’s Party.

The 63-year-old will be replaced by Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, who proposed the no-confidence vote. “We're going to sign a new page in the history of democracy in our country," Sánchez said. ... The pivotal moment came Thursday when the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) revealed it was going to back the no-confidence motion, joining the anti-austerity Podemos party, two Catalan pro-independence parties and another Basque party in supporting Sánchez’s motion. ...

The political upheaval in Spain comes amid a growing crisis in Europe. As well as the ongoing issues stalking Brexit negotiations, the rise of anti-establishment populism in Italy has caused disquiet among fellow members of the European Union — and a confrontation between Rome and Brussels looks inevitable, despite the swearing in of a new Italian government Thursday. ...

There is likely to be limited upheaval in how the government operates initially, but Sánchez has promised to open talks with the Catalan separatists, indicating he is willing to take a more constructive approach to the constitutional crisis sparked by the referendum in the semi-autonomous region.

Kim Jong-un's top aide delivers letter to Donald Trump at White House

A top aide to Kim Jong-un has delivered a letter from the North Korean leader to Donald Trump in the White House ahead of a planned summit between the two men in Singapore later this month. Kim Yong-chol, a former spy chief and four-star general, became the first top North Korean official to visit the White House in 18 years. He was met outside the West Wing by the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and the head of the CIA Korea department, Andrew Kim, who ushered the 72-year-old regime veteran into the Oval Office to meet Trump and hand over a personal letter. ...

The content of the letter was not immediately apparent, though the Wall Street Journal reported it simply expressed Kim’s interest in going ahead with the Singapore summit, and does not change North Korea’s negotiating positions.

The North Korean leader laid his position out during a visit by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Thursday. Quoted by the state news agency, KCNA, Kim said “the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula will be solved on a stage-by-stage basis” in which each party addressed the interests of the other. That “stage-by-stage” process involving packages of reciprocal concessions, had been explicitly ruled out by the Trump administration, which has insisted on “complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament” of the North Korean nuclear weapons programme.

However, Trump on Thursday conceded for the first time that the negotiations with Pyongyang might require more than one summit. Pompeo also appeared to lower expectations of what might come out of a summit, after a New York meeting with Kim.

WaPo Editors: We Have to Help Destroy Yemen to Save It

Over the past year, the Washington Post editorial board has routinely ignored the US’s involvement in the siege of Yemen—a bombing and starvation campaign that has killed over 15,000 civilians and left roughly a million with cholera. As FAIR noted last November (11/20/17), the Washington Post ran a major editorial (11/8/17) and an explainer (11/19/17) detailing the carnage in Yemen without once mentioning the US’s role in the conflict—instead pinning it on the seemingly rogue Saudis and the dastardly Iranians.

This was in addition to an op-ed that summer by editorial page editor Jackson Diehl (6/26/17), which not only ignored the US’s support of Saudi bombing but actually spun the US as the savior of Yemenis, holding up Saudi Arabia’s biggest backer in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, as a champion of human rights. In recent months, however, the Post has charted a new course: vaguely acknowledging Washington’s role in the bloody siege, but insisting that the US should remain involved in the bombing of Yemen for the sake of humanitarianism.

In two recent editorials, “Can Congress Push the Saudi Prince Toward an Exit From Yemen?” (3/24/18) and “The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis Could Get Even Worse” (5/28/18), the Washington Post board has cooked up a new, tortured position that the US should not stop supporting the Saudis––a move 30-year CIA veteran and Brookings fellow Bruce Riedel argued in 2016 would “end the war overnight”—but mildly chide the Saudis into committing slightly fewer war crimes while moving towards some vague exit strategy.

Syrian president threatens to expel US forces

Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed on Thursday to recover the country's territory held by U.S. troops, threatening to expel American forces. "This is the first option. If not, we're going to resort to liberating those areas by force. We don't have any other options, with the Americans or without the Americans," Assad told RT in an interview.

"This is our land, it's our right, and it's our duty to liberate it. The Americans should leave, somehow they're going to leave," he continued. "They came to Iraq with no legal basis, and look what happened to them. They have to learn the lesson. Iraq is no exception, and Syria is no exception. People will not accept foreigners in this region anymore," he continued.

Amid New Threat of War, Former Mossad Chief Admits Israel Had 2011 Plan to Attack Iran

As critics warn that President Donald Trump has dramatically intensified the threat of war with Iran, the former head of Israel's spy agency disclosed in a television interview on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did, in fact, order the military to prepare a preemptive an attack on Iran back in 2011. The interview with Tamir Pardo, who served as as Mossad chief from 2011 to 2016, aired Thursday on the Israeli investigative program "Uvda."

"When [Netanyahu] tells you to start the countdown process, you know that he isn't playing games with you," Pardo told anchor Ilana Dayan about the order for the military to prepare to attack Iran within 15 days, according to excerpts of the interview. "If someone does that then it has two [possible] purposes: One purpose is that he really means [to attack] and the other option is that he is sending a signal, that someone out there should know," he said. "It's possible that someone in the United States would hear about it in one form or another, and that would motivate him to do something," Pardo said. Pardo explained that he then sought to verify the legality of such an order. "I checked with previous Mossad chiefs. I checked with legal advisers. I consulted anyone I could consult in order to understand who is authorized to give instructions about the whole issue of starting a war," he said, saying that such a strike would "certainly" amount to starting a war.

The possibility of the military action caused Pardo to consider resigning, but his objection and that of then-IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz led Netanyahu to drop the plans, Haaretz adds.

Tensions between Israel and Iran remain high with Israel once again appearing to "goad Iran into an escalation" following the Trump administration's Tel Aviv-backed decision to end the U.S. government's commitment to the Iran nuclear deal. That decision, warned one expert, would "put the United States on a path towards war with Iran and may trigger a wider regional war and nuclear arms race."

Female Palestinian medic murdered by Israeli snipers during protest near Gaza fence

A Palestinian woman has been shot dead by Israeli soldiers near the Gaza border fence, in another day of protests and violence, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Razan al-Najjar, 21, was shot near Khan Yunis on Friday, bringing the toll of Gazans killed by Israeli fire since the end of March to 123.

According to health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, Najjar was a volunteer with the ministry, wearing the white uniform of a medic when she was shot in the chest.

Red Cross sends war surgeons, supplies to 'sinking ship' Gaza

The International Committee of the Red Cross is sending two teams of war surgeons to Gaza and setting up a surgical unit in the enclave's main hospital to treat heavy casualties from clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians. Since protests on the Gaza-Israel border began on March 30, Israeli troops have killed 115 Palestinians and wounded more than 13,000 people, including 3,600 by live ammunition, Robert Mardini, ICRC's director for the Near and Middle East, said. ...

The ICRC will set up a 50-bed surgical unit at al-Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest. "Our priority now clearly is to help gunshot wound victims. Imagine, 1,350 people with complex cases who will need three to five operations each, a total of 4,000 surgeries, half of which will be carried out by ICRC teams," he said. "I think such a caseload would overwhelm the hospital in Geneva." ...

Mardini also said the economy of Gaza, which is blockaded by Israel and its other neighbor Egypt, was "suffocating," with high unemployment, electricity limited to four hours a day, and untreated sewage flowing into the sea. "Gaza is a sinking ship," he said.

Justifying Gaza massacre, Israel minister calls Palestinians ‘Nazis’

An Israeli government minister has justified the killings in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces by calling Palestinians “Nazis”.

Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, reacted to the rising death toll in Gaza by saying that the number of deaths “did not indicate anything” because Palestinian protestors were “terrorists” following the orders of a “Nazi” like organisation. ...

Erdan’s comments appear to echo remarks made yesterday by the Labour Friends of Israel. The pro-Israel lobby group came under sharp criticism for blaming Palestinians for their own death.

Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Lucrative Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially

Following the revelation in March that Google had secretly signed an agreement with the Pentagon to provide cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology for drone warfare, the company faced an internal revolt. About a dozen Google employees have resigned in protest and thousands have signed a petition calling for an end to the contract. The endeavor, code-named Project Maven by the military, is designed to help drone operators recognize images captured on the battlefield.

Google has sought to quash the internal dissent in conversations with employees. Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google’s cloud business unit, speaking at a company town hall meeting following the revelations, claimed that the contract was “only” for $9 million, according to the New York Times, a relatively minor project for such a large company.

Internal company emails obtained by The Intercept tell a different story. The September emails show that Google’s business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year. In fact, one month after news of the contract broke, the Pentagon allocated an additional $100 million to Project Maven.

The internal Google email chain also notes that several big tech players competed to win the Project Maven contract. Other tech firms such as Amazon were in the running, one Google executive involved in negotiations wrote. (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.) Rather than serving solely as a minor experiment for the military, Google executives on the thread stated that Project Maven was “directly related” to a major cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars that other Silicon Valley firms are competing to win. The emails further note that Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, “has some work loads” related to Project Maven.

The Limits of Police Reform: The Origins and Ends of the Police

“You’re about to get dropped,” New Jersey cop tells underage woman in body-cam footage

A New Jersey police officer warned a 20-year-old woman suspected of underage drinking that she was “about to get dropped” moments before repeatedly punching her in the head and neck, body-camera footage shows. The Wildwood Police Department released the body-camera footage Wednesday after cell phone video of the officer punching the woman, Emily Weinman, as she lay on the sand went viral over Memorial Day weekend. She wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post that she was with her 18-month old daughter, her father, and a friend at a beach in New Jersey on Saturday, when she was accused of underage drinking and having an alcoholic ice tea in her possession.

The video starts with one of the three officers involved grabbing a breathalyzer, which Weinman said she passed. The officer, however, continues to press her for details about her last name and where her family is. Eventually, he grows frustrated and tries to handcuff Weinman when she starts backing away from him. Moments later, he wrestles her onto the sand and starts hitting her in the head and neck.

The three officers, identified by police as Patrolmen Thomas Cannon, John Hillman, and Robert Jordan, have been reassigned to administrative duty, and the department has launched an investigation. Weinman was charged with disorderly conduct, minor in possession of alcohol, two counts of aggravated assault on a police officer, and obstruction, according to the City of Wildwood Police Department.

Puerto Rico sues to obtain data on deaths from Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico’s Institute of Statistics has sued the US territory’s health department and demographic registry to obtain data on the number of deaths following Hurricane Maria as a growing number of critics accuse the government of lacking transparency.

The lawsuit was filed on Thursday, the same day Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, told CNN that there would be “hell to pay” if officials don’t release mortality data. Many believe the official toll of 64 deaths is a severe undercount, and anger is building across the island as the families of victims seek answers. ...

The institute’s director, Mario Marazzi-Santiago, told The Associated Press that the information requested should be public and is urgently needed so Puerto Rico’s government can help prevent deaths in the event of another storm, noting that the Atlantic hurricane season began on Friday.

He said the institute previously won a similar lawsuit it filed in 2010 to obtain mortality data from the health department amid accusations that the government was not properly counting or classifying overall deaths.

Government officials have said they cannot release mortality data post-Maria because it is under review as ordered by the governor.

Residents outraged by new water deal allowing Nestle to pump millions of gallons from Michigan

Right now, in a small northern Michigan county, Nestle Water, a Swiss-based company, is pumping out hundreds of gallons of water every minute from a well. The water is bottled and sold for profit. The state charges Nestle $200 per year. Many Michigan residents believe the state is getting ripped off. They believe our most valuable resource is being depleted for next to nothing.

Before officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality made the final decision on the deal, they allowed public comment, and more than 80,000 Michigan residents said it was a bad deal. Only 70 people supported moving forward with the deal. Yet, somehow, the MDEQ allowed Nestle to make its way into Michigan, leaving many residents wondering why. ...

"This was some rule that was promulgated by bureaucrats," Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller said. "They are appointed, by the way, by elected officials, so just follow the chain of command."

Those in the chain of command have raised questions of their own. Gov. Rick Snyder is at the top. He appointed the director of the MDEQ, Heidi Grether. She was brought in after the Flint water crisis was exposed. Snyder's chief of staff during the Flint water crisis, Dennis Muchmore, who in 2015 proposed spending $250,000 to buy Nestle Water in Flint, is below Grether on the chain. His wife, Debra Muchmore, worked as a lobbyist and public relations consultant for Nestle. ...

Nestle claims it is helping Michigan by creating jobs.

Bred to Suffer: Glenn Greenwald on the “Morally Unconscionable” U.S. Industry of Dog Experimentation

Also of Interest

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

Indigenous Women Have Been Disappearing for Generations. Politicians Are Finally Starting to Notice.

'We're being pushed out': the displacement of black Oakland

Border Patrol Continues to Exaggerate Danger to Agents to Justify Violence Against Immigrants

The West & Gulf Couldn’t Sway These Lebanese Elections

Banning Drug Offenders From Food Stamps Ended Up Backfiring, New Study Finds

Paris deal: a year after Trump announced US exit, a coalition fights to fill the gap

A Little Night Music

Bobby Hendricks - Cast Your Vote

Bobby Hendricks - I Want That

Bobby Hendricks - Psycho

Bobby Hendricks - Good Lovin`

Bobby Hendricks - Molly Be Good

Bobby Hendricks - Go On Home Girl

Bobby Hendricks - Honey Drip

Bobby Hendricks - Busy Flirtin

Bobby Hendricks - Every Other Night

Bobby Hendricks - I'm A Big Boy Now

Drifters - Drip Drop