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This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Jimmy Rogers. Enjoy!

"The drones are a terrorist weapon, they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people."

-- Noam Chomsky

News and Opinion

U.S. Has Only Acknowledged A Fifth of Lethal Drone Strikes, New Study Finds

Over the past decade, the United States has claimed broad authority to carry out drone strikes across the world, even in places far from the battlefield. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. acknowledged killing between 2,867 and 3,138 people in strikes that took place in countries like Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.

Although in the waning days of his presidency, Obama took some steps to improve transparency about drone strikes, including providing the total estimated death toll, a new report by the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies says that the U.S. is still lagging in providing a full accounting of its drone program. Among other failures, the report, titled “Out of the Shadows: Recommendations to Advance Transparency in the Use of Lethal Force,” says that the U.S. has only acknowledged approximately 20 precent of its reported drone strikes — failing to claim responsibility or provide details in the vast majority of cases.

Meanwhile, the drone program is intensifying. Since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, the rate of drone strikes per month has increased by almost four times Obama’s average. Yemen in particular has been a target of many of these operations, with between nine and eleven strikes hitting the country this year, according to statistics compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The authors of the new report say that the government’s failure to provide information or legal rationales for its strikes is making it impossible to understand the full scope of the government’s targeted killing program, as well as its impact on civilians.

The Drone War: Understanding Who Must Die From Above

In late October of 2016, I took a break from reading for my various social science courses to work for a couple of hours at my work-study job at the Vassar College Athletics Communications Office. On this particular day, I had to provide commentary and audio for a video stream of the game which is played live online, largely for parents and family members of the players. At halftime, the parents of someone on the team approached my boss to talk, and in this conversation, one parent casually commented that the other loved to watch their child play while in their office at General Atomics. General Atomics, the defense contracting company which, among other things, manufactures the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper, the two most-used military drones. ...

In the context of the game stream, one is completely aware of the rules of the contest and the bounds of play, the participants are numbered and their names are listed, they are in uniform, and their actions are occurring within a clear set of guidelines and norms. No one is trying to speculate on the loves, hates, future plans, or deep-seeded beliefs of players based on the footage. Further, the contest is projected with my description and the assistance of statistics and information provided by a team of people there, who know the athletes, and the coaches, and can hear and see close up what is occurring. In the other context, the U.S. military takes control over decisions of life and death in places they do not and cannot understand, making decisions based on their understandings of patterns of life and metadata from thousands of feet in the air. There are not rules to what they are seeing, there are no uniforms, and there is rarely information in any fashion from people who are physically present. Instead, it is just the video, being watched from thousands of miles away, as people are targeted for death.

How do we begin to understand an outlook where an un-narrated stream of a sporting event would be self-explanatorily difficult to understand, but similar video footage gathered by unmanned aerial vehicles is sufficient to understand who below must die? ...

A myriad of ethical and moral problems arise in the face of this new way of killing engaged in the United States. The dominant institutional justification for drone-use, as outlined by former President Barack Obama and others involved, asserts that the strikes of drones are safer, smarter, more efficient, more accurate, and cost less lives (American and otherwise) than the methods used in traditional warfare.  They are the civilized way of waging war. Over the course of his eight years in office, Obama repeatedly asserted that he was not “opposed to all war” but instead “opposed to dumb wars,” one of which being the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. He contrasted drone-use with “conventional airpower or missiles” and “invasions of these territories” saying that drones are more precise, cause less civilian casualties, and do not “unleash a torrent of unintended consequences” such as causing people to see the U.S. as an invading and occupying force.

However, an engagement with the realities of drone warfare proves these notions to be false. Instead of being ethical, drone-use has unleashed an often indiscriminate volley of bombs on thousands of people in many countries, and drone violence has become a go-to answer to the problem of American existential fear of terrorism.

Syrian Troops Battle Rebels in Daraa, Advance on Iraq Border

Syrian government forces and rebels were locked in their heaviest fighting yet in Daraa on Monday, as opposition activists feared troops would try and retake the southern city despite a "de-escalation agreement." Pro-government forces meanwhile advanced to a second location along the border with Iraq, where they are expected to link up with state-sanctioned militias on the other side. Most of the desert territory is controlled by the Islamic State group. ...

On Friday, the Syrian coalition established its first toehold on the Iraqi border in three years, with the help of Russian airstrikes against Islamic State militants. The troops bypassed U.S. special operations forces embedded with local opposition fighters at the Tanf and Zakf desert outposts dozens of kilometers (miles) to the south.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, now a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, warned in a brief that the opposition forces have been cornered. He said the Syrian government was determined to "link up to pro-Iranian forces on the Iraqi side of the border."

U.S. Cyberweapons, Used Against Iran and North Korea, Are a Disappointment Against ISIS

America’s fast-growing ranks of secret cyberwarriors have in recent years blown up nuclear centrifuges in Iran and turned to computer code and electronic warfare to sabotage North Korea’s missile launches, with mixed results.

But since they began training their arsenal of cyberweapons on a more elusive target, internet use by the Islamic State, the results have been a consistent disappointment, American officials say. The effectiveness of the nation’s arsenal of cyberweapons hit its limits, they have discovered, against an enemy that exploits the internet largely to recruit, spread propaganda and use encrypted communications, all of which can be quickly reconstituted after American “mission teams” freeze their computers or manipulate their data.

It has been more than a year since the Pentagon announced that it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks. The mission was clear: Disrupt the ability of the Islamic State to spread its message, attract new adherents, pay fighters and circulate orders from commanders.

But in the aftermath of the recent attacks in Britain and Iran claimed by the Islamic State, it has become clear that recruitment efforts and communications hubs reappear almost as quickly as they are torn down.

The Trump Administration Makes Its Case For Arming Saudi Arabia In Secret

The Trump administration is engaged in a last-ditch lobbying effort to stop the Senate from condemning a $500 million weapons transfer to Saudi Arabia as the kingdom wages a brutal, U.S.-backed war in Yemen. After President Donald Trump signed a hastily-assembled $110 billion weapons deal during his visit to Saudi Arabia last month, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Al Franken, D-Minn., introduced a bipartisan resolution of disapproval for a transfer of precision-guided weapons. If passed, it would force the Senate to vote on whether to block the transfer.

Ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, however, senior officials from the State Department and Pentagon are holding a top-secret briefing on the arms sale to persuade the senators and their staff to support it, according to an invitation obtained by The Intercept.

The briefing, which was organized by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will be conducted by Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s acting assistant secretary for political-military affairs, and Timothy Lenderking, deputy assistant secretary for near-eastern affairs. Both are career officials at the State Department, not political appointees. They’ll be joined by an unnamed brigadier general-level Defense Department official.

“It’s really unfortunate that Senate majority leadership decided to hold this briefing in secret,” said Kate Kizer, advocacy director at the Yemen Peace Project, which opposes the arms deal. “Americans deserve to know the conduct of our allies, especially when the U.S. is intimately involved in starving potentially millions of Yemeni civilians by continuing to provide unconditional support to the Saudi-led coalition.”

Israel to reduce electricity supplied to Gaza at Abbas’ request

Israel’s security cabinet agreed to reduce the amount of electricity Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip at the request of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. ...

At the security cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli military officials described a worsening economic and humanitarian situation in Gaza, and said military commanders believe that further reductions in the electricity supply to Gaza are likely to hasten an escalation in violence, Haaretz reported, citing an unnamed Israeli official familiar with the issue who was present at the meeting.

World Ignores Opposition Violence at Venezuela Protests

Central America braces for return of US military-led foreign policy

Central America is bracing itself for a return to military-led US foreign policy amid rising fears that sweeping aid cuts and mass deportations could destabilise the region.

Gen John Kelly, the US secretary of homeland security, will this week lead a high-level meeting on economic and security issues in Central America, where violence, corruption and poverty have forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in Mexico and the United States. The talks will be held in Miami at the base of Southern Command, which oversees US military operations in Latin America and which Kelly led before entering the Trump administration. The two-day meeting comes less than a month after Trump proposed slashing foreign aid to Mexico and Central America while increasing funds for the Pentagon.

Analysts say such a move would in effect kill Barack Obama’s ambitious – though imperfect – policies to tackle some root causes of forced migration by investing in justice and security reforms, and prevention and development programmes. ...

Almost 15,000 people were murdered in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – known as the northern triangle – in 2016, making it the most dangerous region outside of Syria. Impunity is rife across the region. The UN refugee agency estimates that about 200,000 Central Americans crossing into Mexico each year are fleeing violence and would qualify for international protection.

Activists are alarmed by the leadership, location and scope of the Miami meeting, which appears to focus on boosting business and security, instead of helping build institutions and promoting the rule of law.

'May the farce be with you': Political chaos continues in the UK

My goodness, there is a place where there are no superdelegates, they vote on paper ballots and elections have consequences.

Tories may have to ease austerity plans, says Michael Gove

The lack of a majority government means the Conservatives will probably have to ease austerity plans and boost spending on public services, the newly appointed environment secretary, Michael Gove, has said. ... Discussions between May’s team and the Democratic Unionist party over what concessions the Northern Ireland party will seek in return for propping up a Conservative government are scheduled for later on Tuesday.

The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, is expected to largely avoid sectarian issues, such as Orange parades, as conditions under which her MPs would provide “supply and confidence” to a minority government, and instead focus on budget-based matters. The DUP has opposed some austerity measures, including the bedroom tax, and mooted changes to some universal benefits for pensioners, such as the winter fuel allowance.

Asked whether the Conservatives would need to give ground on this, Gove told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that some concessions were inevitable. “We don’t have a majority, and one of the things that I do think that we need to do is to make sure that when we bring forward a programme it commands the broadest possible level of confidence,” he said. “And we also need to reflect on what the election result told us about the way people want to see the economy managed in the future."

ICE arrests in metro Detroit terrify Iraqi Christians

A family Sunday at the beach turned out to be a nightmare for the Barash family and for metro Detroit's Chaldean population -- Catholics who hail from Iraq.

Authorities seized Moayad Barash, 47, and whisked him away, his daughter Cynthia, 18, said. Barash, a Baghdad native, was one of 30 to 40 people seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Sunday -- all of whom face the threat of deportation.

"My dad is Christian and Donald Trump is sending him back to a place that is not safe whatsoever," Cynthia Barash said, referring to the persecution of Christians in Baghdad, Mosul and across the largely Muslim nation. The ICE action comes amid the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.

In Michigan, many of the Iraqis detained have been living in the United States for years. Some have earlier convictions for minor crimes. Moayad, for example, had been caught with marijuana two or three decades ago and had been charged, his daughter said.

Full Interview: Naomi Klein on "No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics"

COVFEFE Act would make social media a presidential record

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) introduced legislation Monday to classify presidential social media posts — including President Trump's much-discussed tweets — as presidential records.

The Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (COVFEFE) Act, which has the same acronym as an infamous Trump Twitter typo last month, would amend the Presidential Records Act to include "social media."

Presidential records must be preserved, according to the Presidential Records Act, which would make it potentially illegal for the president to delete tweets.

"President Trump’s frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account as a means of official communication is unprecedented. If the President is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference. Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post," said Quigley in a statement.

Trump Assigned Himself an Awful Lot of Homework That Isn’t Getting Done

The ceremonial signing of executive orders has become a trademark of the Trump presidency, with elaborate photo ops and presentations of the president’s bizarre signature happening at a record-breaking rate. But in so doing, he has assigned himself — or, at least, the agencies and departments he ostensibly leads — a record amount of homework.

It’s not getting done.

The vast majority of Trump’s executive orders merely direct federal agencies to issue reviews and reports on a host of issues, from education to immigration to financial services to trade. Though the media often present executive orders as actually accomplishing the elimination of regulations or rollback of statutory law, they’re mostly a form of political theater designed to give the appearance of forward motion. “Let’s just dash off a memo, everyone can say we did something today,” said Jon Michaels, an administrative law professor at UCLA.

According to a review of all executive orders and memoranda, the president has ordered 88 different actions for federal agencies in 2017 alone, most of them direct reports to him. If you include actions that spill into 2018, 2019, and 2020, there are 154 specific actions in all. This is actually a very conservative estimate, because some orders require every agency in the federal government, of which there are over 400, to submit a report.

Since the inauguration, 27 deadlines have come and gone, including 13 reports to the president, three reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), three publications, three memoranda from OMB, and five miscellaneous actions like resumptions of a temporary ban or solicitation of public comment. The Intercept has only been able to determine that 13 of these 27 deadlines have been met, with at least two of those coming in late and another three under court-ordered injunction. The others are either unclear or didn’t yield a response from the federal agency under deadline, including the Departments of Defense, State, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, and OMB.

Jeff Sessions poised for legal minefield as he prepares to testify on Russia

The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is likely to step into a legal minefield on Tuesday when he answers questions under oath before the Senate intelligence committee about his contacts with Russian officials and his role in the firing of the FBI director, James Comey.

What Sessions tells the committee could in turn affect the legal jeopardy of Donald Trump, who has also said he is willing to speak about his interactions with Comey under oath, although he did not indicate in what forum.

The attorney general - who failed to inform the Senate about his meetings with Russian officials in his confirmation hearings - will face particularly tough questioning from the senators over his apparent role in Comey’s dismissal.

Sessions will be appearing before the intelligence committee five days after Comey’s testimony raised new questions about the attorney general’s role. After Comey’s appearance on Thursday, the justice department put out a statement contradicting the ousted FBI director’s account of an appeal he made to Sessions to make sure he was not left alone with the Trump, who Comey believed was pressuring him to curb the scope of the investigation of contacts between the Trump campaign and Kremlin representatives.

Trump urged to cut Bears Ears monument to 'smallest area' possible

Ryan Zinke, the US interior secretary, has recommended to Donald Trump that Bears Ears national monument in Utah be reduced in size to the “smallest area compatible” with its conservation. Zinke, who was tasked by Trump to review the 1.3m acre monument, said that there is “no doubt that it is drop-dead gorgeous country and that it merits some degree of protection” but that the scope of the designation was not appropriate.

The interior secretary said he had recommended to Trump that “the monument needs to be right-sized and that is absolutely critical that an appropriate part be co-managed by the tribal nations”.

Zinke’s interim review of Bears Ears, which is named after a pair of mesas in south-eastern Utah surrounded by land considered of historical and cultural importance by local tribes, does not suggest a size the monument should be reduced to but notes that the area could be used for activities including mining, grazing, logging and hunting. ...

Under the Antiquities Act, which was created in 1906, the US president has the unilateral power to declare tracts of land or ocean to be protected. No president has previously scaled back or scrapped a national monument, meaning that Trump is almost certain to face a legal challenge if he chooses to do so. A public comment period for Bears Ears and the other national monuments will be open until July 10, to be followed by Zinke’s final recommendations to Trump.

Multi-million dollar upgrade planned to secure 'failsafe' Arctic seed vault

The Global Seed Vault, built in the Arctic as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds, is to undergo a multi-million dollar upgrade after water from melting permafrost flooded its access tunnel. No seeds were damaged but the incident undermined the original belief that the vault would be a “failsafe” facility, securing the world’s food supply forever. Now the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, has committed $4.4m (NOK37m) to improvements.

The vault is buried 130m inside a mountain in the Svalbard archipelago and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. The vault was opened in 2008, sunk deep into the permafrost, and was expected to provide protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters” and “to stand the test of time”.

But the vault’s planners had not anticipated the extreme warm weather seen recently at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year. “The background to the technical improvements is that the permafrost has not established itself as planned,” said a government statement. “A group will investigate potential solutions to counter the increased water volumes resulting from a wetter and warmer climate on Svalbard.” ...

A transformer station, which gives off heat, has already been moved out of the tunnel, and drainage ditches are to be dug into the mountainside above the seed vault, to channel melt water away from the tunnel. A waterproof wall is also to be constructed inside the access tunnel to provide extra protection for the seed vault itself. “The measures form part of a long-term plan to provide additional security to the seed vault, based on a precautionary approach,” said the government statement.

Chase Iron Eyes: The Fight Against the #DAPL Continues

Virginia Power Company Pushing Employees to Protect Pipeline in Democratic Governor Primary

A Democratic primary in Virginia that shaped up as a contest between the party’s populist wing and its establishment has added a new twist: The state’s biggest power company is helping to get out the vote — and it isn’t hard to figure out why. The two Democrats in the race, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former Rep. Tom Perriello, have found few areas of policy disagreement throughout the campaign, though Perriello has emerged as the favorite of the progressive flank of the party, garnering endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

One issue where they do disagree, however, is one that Dominion Energy cares about deeply: the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, an epic project that would span from West Virginia to the South Carolina border, cutting through Virginia. Perriello is against it, while Northam wants a strong environmental review, but ultimately wants to leave the decision to federal regulators.

In May, Dominion Energy Chief Executive Thomas Farrell sent a letter to the company’s 76,000 current and former employees and shareholders, suggesting they “take time to review the candidates’ positions and see how they stand on critical projects such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.” The letter went on to emphasize the importance of the pending project to Dominion. “I urge you to exercise your constitutional right to vote in the primary of your choice,” the letter went on.

To make sure that constitutional right is exercised, Dominion set up a pledge-to-vote website, and sent another letter on June 8, reminding folks about the upcoming primary on June 13. Around the same time Dominion sent out its follow-up note, a Goldman Sachs analysis, flagged by influential Richmond Associated Press reporter Alan Suderman, warned investors that the company’s future profits were at risk because “one of the leading Democratic Party candidates has openly discussed opposition to some of the new pipelines proposed in Virginia.”

The follow-up note, like the first one, mentions neither candidate by name. But the message is clear enough: This state-regulated utility wants to pick the most favorable regulator it can in the Democratic primary.

Also of Interest

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

Twelve Blasphemous Thoughts: Some Summer Sacrilege

How the Establishment Imposes ‘Truth’

The Mainstream Media Has No Business Bitching About “Conspiracy Theories”

Sins of the father: daughters of men who killed for Argentina's regime speak out

Jeremy Corbyn’s Critics Predicted He Would Destroy Labour. They Were Radically Wrong.

The U.S. Government Has Become the Ultimate Extension of Donald Trump’s For-Profit Brand

NBC’s Kelly Hits Putin with a Beloved Canard

Oliver Stone Reveals a Vulnerable Putin

Reminder: Democracy Does Not Exist In America

Why Trump Can’t (Lawfully) Fire Mueller

Here's a very well-done example of the new genre of articles written in self-defense by people smeared by mainstream media trolls:

Lee Camp: How to Write Propaganda for the NY Times – As Demonstrated in an Article About Me

Here's another from the genre:

The Lying McCarthyist ‘Daily Banter’ Staff Just Published One Lie Too Many

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Rogers with Louis Myers - House Rocker, Ludella, You're So Sweet, That's Alright, Walkin' By Myself

Jimmy Rogers & His Rocking Four - Chicago Bound

Jimmy Rogers - Round About Boogie

Jimmy Rogers - What Have I Done

Jimmy Rogers and His Rocking Four - She Loves Another Man

Jimmy Rogers - If It Ain't Me(Who You Thinking Of)

Jimmy Rogers - Trace Of You

Jimmy Rogers - My Last Meal

Jimmy Rogers - One Kiss

Jimmy Rogers - Act Like You Love Me