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"Bernie Sanders said that he “couldn’t remember an American president with more authoritarian tendencies than Trump.” Really, Bernie? It’s hard to get more authoritarian than Obama killing American citizens by drone without an indictment, trial or declaration of war. Trump’s authoritarianism comes with the office."

-- Jeffrey St Clair

News and Opinion

Recommended for a full read:

Deep History of America’s Deep State

Everybody seems to be talking about the Deep State these days. Although the term appears to have entered the lexicon in the late 1990s, for years it referred only to shady foreign governments, certainly not to our own “indispensable nation.” Does the sudden presence of an American Deep State – loosely defined as an unelected elite that manipulates the elected government to serve its own interests – pose a novel, even existential, threat to democracy?

Not exactly. The threat seems real enough, but it’s nothing new. Consider these facts: 230 years ago, an unelected group of elite Americans held a secretive meeting with an undisclosed agenda. Their purpose was not merely to manipulate lawful government in their own interests, but to abolish it altogether. In its place, they would install a radically undemocratic government – a “more perfect” government, they said – better suited to their investment portfolios. History does not identify these conspirators as the Deep State. It calls them the Founders. The Founders did not consider themselves conspirators, but “republicans” – not in reference to any political party, but rather to their economic station in society. But their devotion to “republicanism” was transparently self-serving. A current college text, The American Journey: A History of the United States, explains though does not explicate “republican ideology”:

“Their main bulwark against tyranny was civil liberty, or maintaining the right of the people to participate in government. The people who did so, however, had to demonstrate virtue. To eighteenth century republicans, virtuous citizens were those who were focused not on their private interests but rather on what was good for the public as a whole. “They were necessarily property holders, since only those individuals could exercise an independence of judgment impossible for those dependent upon employers, landlords, masters, or (in the case of women and children) husbands and fathers.” [Emphasis supplied]

Republicanism was a handy idea if you happened to be a master or a landlord, who were the only persons this ideology considered “virtuous” enough to vote or hold political office. Thus, “republicanism” – virtually indistinguishable from today’s “neoliberalism” – created the original Deep State in the image of the economic system it was designed to perpetuate.

The Pentagon Says One Civilian Died in Drone Strike on Syrian Mosque. Witnesses Say It Killed Dozens.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced the results of an internal review into a U.S. drone attack on a mosque in a village in Syria. There had been allegations that at least 38 people, all of them civilians, had been killed in the March 16 attack, but the Pentagon review upheld the Defense Department’s initial statement that it had targeted an Al Qaeda meeting. Only one person — “small in stature” — may have been a child who was killed, the review found. The strike was “legal.”

Yet by its own admission, the U.S. military did not interview any locals who had actually been at the site of the attack, nor did any U.S. personnel visit the bombing site.

A number of first responders, medical staff, and other witnesses to the strike who spoke to The Intercept maintain that dozens of civilians were killed in the attack, which they said hit a village mosque packed with locals attending an evening service. Describing scenes of carnage that killed both ordinary worshippers and speakers who had come to deliver a lecture, their testimonies directly contradict the U.S. military claim to have hit a gathering of terrorists. ...

The accounts collected by The Intercept add to a pile of evidence countering the official U.S. narrative around the strike. A Human Rights Watch investigation published in April raised the possibility that U.S. officers may have committed a war crime by being “criminally reckless in authorizing the attack.”

Here are some excerpts from an interesting article, rich in detail from Gareth Porter:

How America Armed Terrorists in Syria

Three-term Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a member of both the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, has proposed legislation that would prohibit any U.S. assistance to terrorist organizations in Syria as well as to any organization working directly with them. Equally important, it would prohibit U.S. military sales and other forms of military cooperation with other countries that provide arms or financing to those terrorists and their collaborators. Gabbard’s “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” challenges for the first time in Congress a U.S. policy toward the conflict in the Syrian civil war that should have set off alarm bells long ago: in 2012-13 the Obama administration helped its Sunni allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar provide arms to Syrian and non-Syrian armed groups to force President Bashar al-Assad out of power. And in 2013 the administration began to provide arms to what the CIA judged to be “relatively moderate” anti-Assad groups — meaning they incorporated various degrees of Islamic extremism.

That policy, ostensibly aimed at helping replace the Assad regime with a more democratic alternative, has actually helped build up al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise al Nusra Front into the dominant threat to Assad. The supporters of this arms-supply policy believe it is necessary as pushback against Iranian influence in Syria. But that argument skirts the real issue raised by the policy’s history. The Obama administration’s Syria policy effectively sold out the U.S. interest that was supposed to be the touchstone of the “Global War on Terrorism” — the eradication of al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates. The United States has instead subordinated that U.S. interest in counter-terrorism to the interests of its Sunni allies. In doing so it has helped create a new terrorist threat in the heart of the Middle East.

The policy of arming military groups committed to overthrowing the government of President Bashar al-Assad began in September 2011, when President Barack Obama was pressed by his Sunni allies — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — to supply heavy weapons to a military opposition to Assad they were determined to establish. Turkey and the Gulf regimes wanted the United States to provide anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels, according to a former Obama administration official involved in Middle East issues. Obama refused to provide arms to the opposition, but he agreed to provide covert U.S. logistical help in carrying out a campaign of military assistance to arm opposition groups. CIA involvement in the arming of anti-Assad forces began with arranging for the shipment of weapons from the stocks of the Gaddafi regime that had been stored in Benghazi. ...

The CIA’s covert arms shipments from Libya came to an abrupt halt in September 2012 when Libyan militants attacked and burned the embassy annex in Benghazi that had been used to support the operation. By then, however, a much larger channel for arming anti-government forces was opening up. The CIA put the Saudis in touch with a senior Croatian official who had offered to sell large quantities of arms left over from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. And the CIA helped them shop for weapons from arms dealers and governments in several other former Soviet bloc countries. ...

One U.S. official called the new level of arms deliveries to Syrian rebels a “cataract of weaponry.” And a year-long investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed that the Saudis were intent on building up a powerful conventional army in Syria. ... This flood of weapons into Syria, along with the entry of 20,000 foreign fighters into the country — primarily through Turkey — largely defined the nature of the conflict. These armaments helped make al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, al Nusra Front (now renamed Tahrir al-Sham or Levant Liberation Organization) and its close allies by far the most powerful anti-Assad forces in Syria — and gave rise to the Islamic State.

Long-term US anti-Iran agenda begins with destabilizing Syria

Iran nuclear chief warns US over support for Saudi Arabia

The head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, one of the architects of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, has warned the US to stop upsetting the regional balance of power by siding with Saudi Arabia. Writing in the Guardian, Ali Akbar Salehi said “lavish arms purchases” by regional actors – a reference to the Saudi purchase of $100bn of US arms during Donald Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh – would be seen as provocative in Tehran and that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to remain “indifferent”.

Salehi said it was possible to rescue the deal’s engagement if it was met with reciprocal gestures. “Often following hard-won engagement, some western nations, whether distracted by short-sighted political motivations or the lucrative inducements of regional actors, walk away and allow the whole situation to return to the status quo ante,” wrote Salehi, who is also a vice-president of Iran. Salehi warned of “chaotic behaviour” and “further tension and conflict” if the other side disregarded Iran’s security concerns, failed to adhere to its commitments and insisted on what he called alternative facts including ideas such as the “clash of civilisations”, “Sunni-Shia conflict”, “Persian-Arab enmity” and the “Arab-Israeli axis against Iran”. ...

“Stoking Iranophobia” or failure to deliver on promises under the deal would jeopardise engagement, Salehi wrote. “We would all end up back at square one,” he cautioned. “Unfortunately, as things stand at the moment in the region, reaching a new state of equilibrium might simply be beyond reach for the foreseeable future.”

'Close al-Jazeera': Saudi Arabia gives Qatar 13 demands to end blockade

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have tabled 13 demands on Qatar, including the closure of the Qatar-funded broadcaster al-Jazeera, as the price for lifting a two-week trade and diplomatic embargo of the country. The list of demands, obtained by Associated Press, marks another escalation in the Gulf’s worst diplomatic dispute in decades.

Saudi Arabia and the other nations leading the blockade – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt – have in recent days been put under pressure by the US state department to set out their specific demands in an effort to help establish a mediation process. The Saudi-led alliance regards al-Jazeera, the most widely watched broadcaster in the Arab world, as a propaganda tool for Islamists that also undermines support for their governments. Other key demands made of Qatar include reducing ties with Iran and closing a Turkish military base, severing ties with “terrorist organisations”, and ending what the list describes as “interference in sovereign countries’ internal affairs”.

The list was handed to Qatar by Kuwait, which is attempting to mediate in the crisis. Qatar has been given 10 days to comply, but the ultimatum is silent on what would happen if the demands are not met.

[Click link for full listing of demands. -js]

US Interrogates Prisoners at UAE Torture Sites in Yemen

US Occupation of Afghanistan 'The Main Obstacle' to Peace: Taliban

The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is "the main obstacle" to peace, the Taliban's leader said Friday.

In his comments to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada also denounced the plan to increase number of U.S. troops in the country, and accused the U.S. and its allies of "destabilizing the whole region."

The Pentagon is reportedly weighing sending an additional 4,000 troops to Afghanistan. Akhundzada appeared to reference that development, saying, "The more they insist on maintaining the presence of their forces here or want a surge of their forces, the more regional sensitivity against them will intensify."

"Americans should understand that continuation of war in Afghanistan, upsurge of bombardment ... will never usher in success for them. The Afghans are not a people to kowtow to someone," he said.

Echoing previous comments made by the Taliban, he said, "The occupation is the main obstacle in the way of peace." He added that "constructive and good relations with you and the world" would follow a withdrawal of forces.

Excellent:

Cannibal Corpse

A rhetorical question conceived to initiate a line of reasoning is: did the Third Reich have political ‘centrists?’ This is neither to suggest any relation between American political centrists and Nazis or that the political decision making process is analogous. It is to ask the question: can any worldview that is less than the most extreme be considered centrist, the ‘relativist’ view, or is there non-contextual criteria, an ‘absolute’ view, that can be brought to bear?

For insight into the genesis of the question I take you back to 2003, before the American political leadership murdered a million or so innocent Iraqis, displaced several million more (Syria, anyone? Anyone?), re-vitalized a global array of torture camps and eventually created ISIS. The New York Times’ Bill Keller does the honors (top link), explaining contemporaneously how liberals were critical to selling the war. Here is Bill Clinton doing so. Here is a recap of Hillary’s role.

Further back in history, it was the American political ‘center’ that continued slaughtering innocents in Vietnam a full decade after one of its own (McNamara) concluded that the war was a lost cause. Liberals Bill Clinton and Barack Obama provided the socially benign gloss needed to the build-out of the American surveillance state. And in the realm of the economic, free-trade liberals have been the most effective proponents of neoliberalism under the delusion that a corporate-state amalgam would respond in the public interest during a crisis of capitalism.

There are two reasons for addressing this catastrophe-generating tendency now. The first is that the New York Times is calling the disenfranchised (by the DNC) supporters of old-school Democrat (and reliable guardian of empire) Bernie Sanders extreme while their own record of supporting genocidal clusterfucks (top link) has been depressingly consistent. The second is that centrist Democrats, the most likely beneficiaries of ‘the Resistance,’ never met a social catastrophe they didn’t love. ...

So, was the political leadership that launched the U.S. war against Iraq centrist? How about the political leadership that conceived and went about building-out mass incarceration, militarization of the police, the surveillance state, the ‘unitary’ presidency and the mass deportation of immigrants? These are all bi-partisan ‘accomplishments’ that received the blessing of quasi-state organs like the New York Times and Washington Post. But how likely is it that they would have been put forward as centrist if the rich and powerful had been put at risk by them?

Grenfell Tower fire: police considering manslaughter charges

Police have said they are considering manslaughter charges in relation to the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze as they revealed that the insulation and cladding tiles at the building failed safety tests. Det Supt Fiona McCormack, who is overseeing the investigation, said on Friday that officers had established the initial cause of the fire was a fridge-freezer and that it was not started deliberately.

She said they were trying to get to the bottom of why the fire grew so quickly and tests had pointed towards the cladding using aluminium composite tiles and the insulation behind it. Investigators will now seek to establish whether the use of these materials was illegal. McCormack said: “Preliminary tests show the insulation samples collected from Grenfell Tower combusted soon after the tests started. The initial test on the cladding tiles also failed the safety tests.”

She added that the insulation proved “more flammable than the cladding”. McCormack said police would investigate how the tiles were installed. “We will identify and investigate any criminal offence and, of course, given the deaths of so many people, we are considering manslaughter, as well as criminal offences and breaches of legislation and regulations,” she said.

Another hilarious episode of the pot calling the kettle black. The running dog lackey of the bourgeoisie, er, Wall Street's man in the Oval Office condemns the Republicans for replicating his own success in ripping off the American people:

Obama attacks Republican health bill as 'massive transfer of wealth' to the rich

Barack Obama sharply condemned the healthcare plan unveiled by Senate Republicans on Thursday as a “massive transfer of wealth” to the rich, at the expense of poor and middle-class Americans. In a Facebook post hours after the Republican bill was made public, the former president made some of his most pointed comments since leaving office in defense of what remains the most signature accomplishment of his two terms.

“The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a healthcare bill,” Obama wrote. “It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America.”

New Lawsuit Accuses Trump of 'Destroying Essential Historical Records'

A new lawsuit accuses President Donald Trump and White House staff of illegally destroying presidential records.

A pair of watchdog organizations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive (NSA), filed the suit Thursday a federal district court to challenge actions by the White House "that seek to evade transparency and government accountability" and appear to violate the Presidential Records Act.

That law, passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, requires that the offices of the president and vice president preserve records and make them accessible to the public.

"Yet, the evidence to date suggests that President Trump and others within the White House are either ignoring or outright flouting these responsibilities," the complaint (pdf) states, citing Trump's use of Twitter and reports of White House staff use of the encrypted messaging application Signal, which can auto-delete messages, as well as another encrypted messaging app, Confide, which deletes chats after they're read.

Republican Healthcare Bill Gives Tax Cuts to the Rich by Gutting Safety Net for Poor & Middle Class

Supreme Court ruling makes it harder to undo wrongful convictions

Would the jury have convicted these men of murder if they’d known there was another suspect? That was the pivotal question addressed by the Supreme Court in its Thursday decision to uphold the convictions of seven men in a high-profile murder case, even though the prosecution had withheld crucial information during the trial. In his majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer called the case “factually complex,” but in the end, the Court determined, “It is not reasonably probable that the withheld evidence could have led to a different result at trial.”

This is the latest SCOTUS decision to focus on impact of suppressed evidence, instead of its mere existence, making it harder to get a new trial to challenge a conviction. Before a trial, prosecutors are obligated to share any evidence that could acquit the defendant. It’s called Brady disclosure, after a 1963 Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland. There’s no standard to determine which evidence qualifies, leaving prosecutors with a tremendous amount of discretion. A defendant can successfully challenge his conviction on Brady grounds if he can prove three things: that evidence was suppressed, that it’s favorable to him, and that it could have affected the outcome of the trial. ...

Justice Breyer stated in the opinion that the suppressed evidence was “too little, too weak, or too distant from the main evidentiary points to meet Brady’s standards.” In her dissent, Justice Kagan pointed to the alternative theory the defendants could have presented with the evidence: “With the undisclosed evidence, the whole tenor of the trial would have changed … In my view, that could well have flipped one or more jurors — which is all Brady requires.”

DC cops sued for alleged cavity searches on antifa protesters

Pepper sprayed, deprived of food and water, intrusively probed, and handcuffed so tightly to the point of numbness and bleeding — these are just some of the abuses several people allegedly endured at the hands of the D.C. police in the aftermath of the Inauguration Day protests in January.

After protests surrounding Trump’s election got rowdy, the D.C. police rounded up protesters, charging over 200 people in connection with rioting, vandalism and destruction of property. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department on behalf of a photojournalist, two protesters, and a legal observer, not only claiming that the four of them were innocent, but that the officers used excessive force against them.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday evening, the ACLU said the plaintiffs were “held for hours without food, water, or access to toilets; handcuffed detainees so tightly as to cause injury or loss of feeling; and subjected some detainees to manual rectal probing.”

The lawsuit delves into graphic detail about the treatment of the photojournalist Shay Horse and the consequences he suffered. “As a result of Defendants’ manual rectal probing and grabbing of his testicles, Mr. Horse suffered humiliation, anxiety and emotional distress. He feels as if he has been raped,” the lawsuit alleges.

“The MPD’s extreme tactics against members of the public, including journalists, demonstrators, and observers, were unjustifiable and unconstitutional,” Scott Michelman, a lawyer for the ACLU said in a statement.

Trump questions impartiality of Russia investigation chief Robert Mueller

Donald Trump has questioned the impartiality of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the US election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. In an interview with Fox News aired Friday morning, Trump argued that Mueller, a former FBI director, is “good friends” with James Comey, Mueller’s successor at the spy agency whom Trump fired on 9 May. Trump later acknowledged he took this step with the Russia investigation in mind.

When George W Bush was president, Mueller and Comey worked together – Mueller as FBI director and Comey as deputy attorney general. Trump also said that some of the staffers that Mueller has hired for his investigation “are all Hillary Clinton supporters”. US news reports say some of these staffers have made campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.

Asked point blank if Mueller should recuse himself from the Russia investigation, Trump said: “Well, he’s very, very good friends with Comey, which is very bothersome. But he’s also – we’re going to have to see.” Trump added: “I mean we’re going to have to see in terms – look, there has been no obstruction. There has been no collusion. There has been leaking by Comey.”

Democrats in the Dead Zone

This year the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow larger than ever. Oceanologists predict the lifeless expanse of water below the Mississippi River Delta will swell to an area bigger than the state of Vermont, an aquatic ecosystem despoiled by industrial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, oil leaks and the lethal effects of a warming climate. But the desolate waters of the Gulf pale next to the electoral dead zone now confronting the Democratic Party, which seems to occupy about two-thirds of the geographical area of the Republic—a political landscape deadened by the Party’s remorseless commitment to neoliberal economics, imperial wars and open hostility toward the working class base which once served as its backbone.

The latest political zombie offered up as a vessel to freight the electoral asperations of the Democrats was a pious former congressional staffer called Jon Ossoff, whose name sounds like one of those creepy Svengali-like characters from a Tod Browning horror film of the 1930s. But the candidate wasn’t as scary as all that. In fact, Ossoff scared no one, which was both his campaign theme and his problem. One of his problems, anyway. Ossoff presented himself as an anodyne candidate, a nowhere man, a quiescent emissary for a return to civility in politics. He was the white Rodney King, who plaintively asked why we couldn’t all just get along. Of course, who really wants civility in politics, when you’re working two jobs, can’t pay the power bill, have a kid with asthma and just had your Ford Focus repossessed. ...

In an age crying out for a new kind of politics, Ossoff campaigned directly from the Clinton playbook (Hillary version), apparently hoodwinked into believing that absent Russian interventionism this stale platform was a winning strategy. His main opponent was Trump, not even Trumpism, which might offend some of the Republican voters he was targeting. In what became a kind of daily ritual on the campaign trail, Ossoff repeatedly scrubbed himself clean of any taint of populism or progressive inclinations. Ossoff denounced single-payer health care, kept himself at arm’s length from Bernie Sanders and never uttered even a minor critique of American imperialism. Think of him as a prettified Tim Kaine. ...

There are Pyrrhic victories, where the cost of winning a battle is so great that you lose the war. The Ossoff campaign might be considered a Pyrrhic loss, where so many financial and psychic resources are invested into a relatively minor skirmish that the defeat dooms the course of the larger war, when ultimate victory was well within your grasp. The loss is compounded by the lessons the Democratic elites have drawn from the post-mortem. That Ossof’s campaign was too progressive for the region. That the Democrats need to turn away from populism and return to the corporate-friendly conservativism of the Bill Clinton years, with a little of the old Lester Maddox race-baiting thrown in where needed. Thinking like this all but ensures that the next made-for MSDNC candidate will be even more feeble than Ossoff.

Yellowstone grizzlies can be hunted after endangered protections lifted

Protections against hunting Yellowstone national park grizzly bears will be lifted this summer after US government officials ruled Thursday that the population is no longer threatened. The delisting of the bears as an endangered species means that states would be allowed to plan limited bear hunts outside the park’s boundaries. Hunting bears inside Yellowstone would still be banned. The bears roam both inside and outside the park, and their range has been expanding as their numbers have grown.

Grizzlies in all continental US states except Alaska have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1975, when just 136 bears roamed in and around Yellowstone. There are now an estimated 700 grizzlies in the area that includes north-western Wyoming, south-western Montana and eastern Idaho, leading the US Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that the population has recovered. ... Grizzly bears once numbered about 50,000 and ranged over much of North America. Their population plummeted starting in the 1850s because of widespread hunting and trapping, and the bears now occupy only 2% of their original territory.

The Obama administration first proposed removing grizzlies as a threatened species by issuing an initial ruling in March 2016. The 15 months that have passed since then have been used to by federal officials to evaluate states’ grizzly management plans and respond to themes of concern generated by 650,000 comments from the public, including wildlife advocates and Native American tribal officials who are staunchly opposed to hunting grizzly bears.

Also of Interest

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

If the Iran deal is to survive, the west must change course

The Criminal ‘Laws’ of Counterinsurgency

Palestinians Still Demand Human Rights

A Little Night Music

Don and Dewey - Justine!

Don & Dewey - Koko Joe

Don and Dewey - My Heart Is Aching

Don & Dewey - Baby Gotta Party

Don & Dewey - Heartattack

Don & Dewey - The Letter

Don & Dewey - Bim Bam

Don & Dewey - Deacon Hop

Don & Dewey - Little Sally Walker

Don & Dewey - Farmer John

Don and Dewey - Get Your Hat