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"Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

-- Edward Snowden

News and Opinion

The Guardian has an interesting 5 year anniversary (of the Snowden revelations) interview with Snowden. Here's a teaser:

Edward Snowden: 'The people are still powerless, but now they're aware'

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies. ...

The US and UK governments, on the basis of his revelations, have faced court challenges to surveillance laws. New legislation has been passed in both countries. The internet companies, responding to a public backlash over privacy, have made encryption commonplace. Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it. “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.”

The most important change, he said, was public awareness. “The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.” ...

Towards the end of the interview, Snowden recalled one of his early aliases, Cincinnatus, after the Roman who after public service returned to his farm. Snowden said he too felt that, having played his role, he had retreated to a quieter life, spending time developing tools to help journalists protect their sources. “I do not think I have ever been more fulfilled,” he said.

But he will not be marking the anniversary with a “victory lap”, he said. There is still much to be done. “The fightback is just beginning,” said Snowden. “The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.”

Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World

MSNBC host Joy Reid still has a job. Despite blatantly lying about time-traveling hackers bearing responsibility for bigoted posts a decade ago in her then-barely-known blog, despite her reportedly sparking an FBI investigation on false pretenses, despite her colleagues at MSNBC being completely fed up with how the network is handling the controversy surrounding her, her career just keeps trundling forward like a bullet-riddled zombie. ... Both by refusing to fire her, and by steering the conversation into being about her controversial blog posts rather than the fact that she told a spectacular lie in an attempt to cover them up, Reid is being propped up despite this story constantly re-emerging and making new headlines with new embarrassing details, and despite her lack of any discernible talent or redeeming personal characteristics. ...

It is not difficult to find someone to read from a teleprompter for large amounts of money. What absolutely is difficult is finding someone who is willing to deceive and manipulate to advance the agendas of the privileged few day after day. Who else would be willing to spend all day on Twitter smearing everyone to the left of Hillary Clinton while still claiming to stand on the political left? Who else would advance the point-blank lie about “17 intelligence agencies” having declared Russia guilty in US election meddling months after that claim had been famously and virally debunked? Who else would publicly claim that Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks did not benefit anyone besides Russia? Who else could oligarchs like Comcast CEO Brian L Roberts, whose company controls MSNBC, count on to consistently advance his agendas? ...

As we’ve discussed previously, the only real power in this world is the power to control the public narrative about what is going on. The only reason governments operate the way they operate, the only reason money works the way it works, the only reason power exists where it exists, is that we’ve all agreed to play along with some made-up mental stories about those things and pretend that they are true and real. The only thing stopping the populace from collectively deciding to change the way money works, from deciding that the assholes on Capitol Hill aren’t in charge anymore, or from deciding that every billionaire in America should be butchered like a hog and turned into Slim Jims is the fact that those ideas have not become the dominant narrative. If you can control the stories that the masses tell themselves about what is in their best interests, you control everything.

This is why the alliance between Silicon Valley and US intelligence agencies is becoming more and more brazen. This is why Facebook and the NATO propaganda firm Atlantic Council announced that they’ve formed a partnership weeks after the Atlantic Council published an article explaining why westerners need to be propagandized for their own good. This is why social media corporations are being instructed on the Senate floor that they need to take action to silence sources of rebellion. This is why Julian Assange is being aggressively silenced by the western empire. And it is why Joy Reid still has a job.

North Korea just axed its top three military officials

North Korea’s three top military officials have been removed from their posts, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, leaving analysts scrambling to explain what it means ahead of this month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Citing intelligence sources, Yonhap claimed Monday that defense chief Pak Yong Sik and Ri Myong Su, chief of the Korean People's Army general staff, were both replaced, as was Kim Jong Gak, the director of the army’s political wing, although his exit was announced by North Korean state media last month. The three critical positions have reportedly been taken by younger men known within the regime as Kim loyalists.

Reuters, citing an unnamed U.S. official, later confirmed the reports, which could be an effort to consolidate Kim’s power ahead of the Trump summit in Singapore, scheduled for June 12. Reports last month suggested Kim was concerned that a military coup d’état would overthrow him while he was at the meeting in Southeast Asia.

“A Source of Positivity All the Time”: Remembering Palestinian Medic Razan al-Najjar, Killed by IDF

Israel's Netanyahu tours Europe to lobby leaders against Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on a three-day trip to Europe to push leaders in Germany, France and Britain away from the Iran nuclear deal and convince them of the need to dislodge Tehran’s military from neighbouring Syria. The Israeli prime minister has signalled a desire to keep talks focused on his archenemy. “I will meet there with three leaders and will discuss two subjects: Iran and Iran,” he said at the airport ahead of his trip on Monday.

However, the 68-year-old leader is likely to face queries about the Israeli military’s recent use of live fire against Palestinian protesters in Gaza. Troops have killed more than 120 people along the frontier and shot thousands more during two months of rallies calling, among other demands, for an end to Israel’s blockade of the coastal enclave. ...

Netanyahu flew on Monday morning to Berlin, where he is due to meet Angela Merkel, before flying to Paris to speak with Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday. He will then travel to Britain for a meeting with Theresa May.

Trump’s ambassador to Germany wants to “empower” right wing politicians around Europe

President Trump’s ambassador to Germany provoked a backlash from politicians on both sides of the Atlantic after saying he wants to “empower” European conservatives.

“I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders,” the ambassador, Richard Grenell, told Breitbart News in comments published Sunday. “I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.”

Critics accused the ambassador of undiplomatic meddling in foreign countries’ domestic affairs. Germany’s foreign ministry announced it was seeking a clarification of his remarks. The ministry, which is led by a member of the country’s left-leaning Social Democrat party, said it would to address the issue on Wednesday when Grenell meets with a deputy foreign minister.

Grenell’s Breitbart interview mark the second time he’s caused political turbulence in his new job in less than a month. Within hours or arriving to his post in Berlin in May, Grenell sent out a tweet that was widely interpreted as threatening U.S. sanctions against German companies if they continued doing business with Iran.

'Liberal elites have lost contact with ordinary people' – Slavoj Žižek on right-wing rise in Europe

New Film “Discreet Airlift” Documents the Struggle to Hold U.S. Officials Accountable for Torture

[Click the link to see the film. -js]

Emerging from the umultuous years of the Bush administration, President Barack Obama famously pledged that he would “look forward as opposed to looking backwards” with regards to possible criminal actions carried out by the preceding administration. The Bush years saw the opening of the “global war on terrorism,” a borderless, opaque conflict in which the U.S. government became a proponent of wars of aggression, extrajudicial killing, indefinite detention, and torture. Obama’s fateful decision to not seek criminal accountability for the acts of that period — as well as his failure to shut down some of its most notorious landmarks, like the prison at Guantánamo Bay — has allowed many of those responsible for post-9/11 human rights abuses to remain in or return to public service. Among those who have found themselves “falling upwards” despite their involvement in likely criminal acts is Gina Haspel, a CIA official heavily implicated in detainee torture who was confirmed last month as the director of the intelligence agency.

With no apparent consequences for official criminality, some citizens are trying to take accountability into their own hands. As part of this effort, a citizen-led group called the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture is working to investigate the role that public and private institutions in its state played in helping facilitate extraordinary rendition — essentially a kidnapping program to clandestinely move detainees to more friendly jurisdictions — and torture carried out by the U.S. government. The commission is the focus of Johanna Hamilton’s “Discreet Airlift,” a new film from Field of Vision. The film follows activists in North Carolina attempting to raise awareness about the involvement of local officials and private companies in post-9/11 torture, including Aero Contractors, a CIA-connected company that conducted rendition flights on behalf of the agency.

The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture comprises a group of academics, former government officials, legal experts, and local community leaders whose goal is to fill the gap in accountability created by the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute individuals involved in torture and other abuses.

Google Won’t Renew Its Drone AI Contract, But It May Still Sign Future Military AI Contracts

Google executives announced to company staff this morning that the tech giant won’t renew its contract to work on Project Maven, the controversial Pentagon program designed to provide the military with artificial intelligence technology used to help drone operators identify images on the battlefield. Google will continue work on the project through March 2019, according to multiple people with knowledge of the announcement, but once the 18-month contract concludes, it will not be renewed.

The company, however, has not committed to forego signing other military contracts dealing with artificial intelligence, according to multiple people with knowledge of the decision. Google declined to comment for this story. ...

Google faced growing pressure since the contract was revealed by Gizmodo and The Intercept in March. Nearly a dozen employees resigned in protest, and several thousand signed an open letter declaring that “Google should not be in the business of war.” More than 700 academics also signed a letter demanding that “Google terminate its contract with the DoD, and that Google and its parent company Alphabet commit not to develop military technologies and not to use the personal data that they collect for military purposes.”

The Defense Department has hoped to harness the latest advancements from Silicon Valley. The Defense Innovation Board, an arm of the Pentagon that makes technological recommendations, declared that winning the global race to adopt artificial intelligence was as important as “nuclear weapons in the 1940s and with precision-guided weapons and stealth technology afterward.” ...

Google, which has maintained a close relationship with the Defense Innovation Board through former Alphabet Chair Eric Schmidt, who serves on the board, quietly won the contract last September.

Max Blumenthal Reveals Surveillance Program in Yemen Run by Cambridge Analytica Parent Company SCL Group

Project Blitz: the legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America

The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society. A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian “model bills”.

Some legislation uses verbatim language from the “model bills” created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”.

At least 75 bills have been brought forward in more than 20 states during 2017 and 2018 which appear to be modelled on or have similar objectives to the playbook, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a campaign group which tracks legislation that undermines the principle of separation of church and state.

Opponents warn that the CPCF (which claims more than 600 politicians as members across state legislatures ) is using the banner of “religious freedom” to impose Christianity on American public, political and cultural life. In Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee, so-called “In God We Trust” bills have become law since 2017, which will see the phrase emblazoned on public buildings, hung in schools and displayed on the side of public vehicles including police cars.

But the Project Blitz playbook sees those largely symbolic bills as just the first stage on the way to more hardline laws. They are presented as measures to preserve religious liberty, but are intended to give businesses, pastors and childcare providers the right to discriminate against LGBT people in line with their “sincerely held religious beliefs”.

Supreme Court sides with baker who refused to make cake for a gay couple

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 Monday in favor of the baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, a ruling touted as a win by supporters of religious freedom and a loss by supporters of the LGBT community.

Jack Phillips, the owner of the Colorado-based Masterpiece Cakeshop, argued his cakes are art, and he shouldn’t be forced to make them for anyone he doesn’t want to — including a same-sex couple. But after Phillips refused to serve engaged couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig in 2012, they took him to court, claiming they were discriminated against because of their sexuality. During the closely watched case, the couple argued that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law protects them from such discrimination.

But in a narrow ruling that leaves open different decisions in similar cases, the court this time ruled in favor of Phillips, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority that Colorado had treated the baker unfairly with regards to his freedom of religion and speech. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were the only dissenters.

“The Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint,” Kennedy wrote, adding that “the record here demonstrates that the Commission’s consideration of Phillips’ case was neither tolerant nor respectful of Phillips’ religious beliefs.” LGBT people, he noted, should be protected by the Constitution in some cases but not in a way that infringes upon the religious rights of others.

Georgia cop fired for deliberately hitting black suspect with his car

A Georgia police officer has been fired after officials concluded he used excessive force and violated department protocol when he intentionally rammed his vehicle into a fleeing suspect.

Body-camera video released over the weekend shows Officer Taylor Saulters, 23, from Athens-Clarke Police Department swerving his patrol car toward Timmy Patmon, a 24-year-old black man who was wanted on non-violent felony drug probation charges. Patmon was transported to a hospital and treated for non life-threatening injuries, and was later taken into custody, Athens-Clarke Police Department said in a statement. “The extent of Patmon’s injuries were scrapes and bruises,” the police department said in a statement on Facebook. “Patmon is charged with violating his probation and obstructing a law enforcement officer.”

Public information officer Epifanio Rodriguez told VICE News that an internal affairs investigation found that Saulters, a rookie who graduated from police academy less than a year ago, violated the department’s policy by using “an excessive amount of force.”

“Officer Saulters used poor judgement in using his patrol vehicle as a means to apprehend a fleeing suspect,” the internal affairs report stated. “There are no facts that were uncovered that would have led to the justification for this level of use of force in this incident."

At least 110 Confederate monuments have been taken down in the last 3 years

At least 110 Confederate memorials or symbols have been removed from public spaces across 22 states and the District of Columbia in the last three years, ever since a white supremacist opened fire on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

That’s according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which started counting Confederate statues, flags, and other monuments scattered across America following the massacre, which left nine black parishioners dead and sparked a national debate about the meaning of those symbols. ...

But even as some Confederate memorials have been brought down, new ones have been dedicated. SPLC counted at least three new Confederate memorials dedicated since 2015. A simple stone marker commemorating “unknown Confederate soldiers” was unveiled in a private park in Crenshaw County, Alabama, last August, less than two weeks after the Charlottesville rally.

And many of the hundreds remaining in the United States are now protected by new laws that make it harder for local town officials to remove them. For example, in May, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill that says local municipalities have to seek permission from the state’s Historical Commission, whose members include individuals from a pro-Confederate group, before removing memorials.

Democrats Set to Re-Nominate Sen. Bob Menendez After Preventing Challengers, Showing How Calcified the Party Is

Fresh off escaping a federal bribery conviction thanks to a hung jury, two-term Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez is almost sure to win his party’s nomination on Tuesday for re-election in New Jersey against only token opposition. That Menendez — who has been in Congress for 26 years, and is seeking his third Senate term — is about to become the Democrats’ nominee without any real primary challenge says a great deal about the party and the U.S. political system. ...

How, then, is this sleazy career politician – who just barely escaped a multi-count federal bribery conviction – running for re-election in a Democratic Party primary with essentially no opposition? The answer is clear: because Democratic Party leaders, both in New Jersey and in Washington, unified in support of Menendez from the start, and never stopped supporting him. Even after the Obama DOJ indicted Menendez and detailed all of the behavior cited by the Senate Ethics Committee [see article -js], the Democrats’ senior lawmaker in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, made his solidarity with Menendez clear, heralding him as “one of the best legislators in the Senate and is always fighting hard for the people of his state,” adding: “I am confident he will continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead.” ...

For a very short time, it looked as if Menendez might face a credible challenger. In December, Michael Starr Hopkins, an African-American lawyer who worked on both the Hillary Clinton and Obama campaigns, signaled his intention to run, asking, quite reasonably, about Menendez’s sleazy behavior over years: “If what Menendez did doesn’t disqualify you from serving in the Senate, then what does?” Touting his commitment to “fight for Medicare for all” and other progressive causes, Hopkins argued that re-nominating “a candidate whose name is synonymous with corruption only muddies the waters, making it easy for Republicans to cry hypocrisy and for voters across the country to say that ‘both parties’ are rotten.”

But a mere four months later, Hopkins announced he was dropping his bid. The reason? He could not raise anywhere near the money needed to mount a credible challenge because, as Politico put it, Menendez “has the support of virtually all of the top Democrats in the state.” ... THis is how calcified the Democratic Party is: they even unite behind an incumbent who is drowning in sleaze and corruption, who was just “severely admonished” by the Senate Ethics Committee, whose legal defense was funded by far-right figures, and who has used his senior leadership role to repeatedly join with the Bush/Cheney and right-wing GOP factions against his own party’s supposed positions. Not only do they unite behind him, but they ensure that no primary challenge can even happen – they deny their own voters the right to decide if they want Menendez – by making it impossible for any such challengers to raise money from funders who rely on the largesse of Democratic officeholders and who thus do not want to run afoul of their decreed preferences. In the 2018 cycle, not a single Democratic incumbent has yet been defeated by a primary challenge.

Donald Trump claims he has 'absolute right to pardon myself'

In his latest broadside against the Russia investigation, Donald Trump claimed on Monday to have an “absolute right to pardon myself”. The president added: “But why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” The president’s remarks came in tweets in which he said his right to pardon had been “stated by numerous legal scholars”. Last year, he had said he had the “complete power to pardon”.

The question has never been decided by the courts but, in a non-binding opinion written in 1974, the justice department’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that a president cannot pardon himself, under the principle that “no one may be a judge in his own case”.

Trump was renewing attacks on the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations of collusion with the Trump campaign. The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested in television interviews on Sunday that Trump might have the authority to pardon himself but would be unwise to use it. Giuliani told NBC’s Meet the Press: “Pardoning himself would be unthinkable and probably lead to immediate impeachment.” He added: “He has no need to do it, he’s done nothing wrong.” ...

Last Thursday, Trump said he was considering pardoning Martha Stewart, the home decorating mogul who served five months in prison for obstructing justice and similar charges as part of a 2004 insider trading investigation, and the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

GREEN Party Set To Win Ca. Congressional Seat!

How leaving the Paris climate deal will cost the U.S. trillions of dollars

When President Trump announced the U.S. was leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, he promised to save trillions of dollars in climate-related spending. But a year after his historic decision, Trump’s promise could become a costs nightmare. Instead of savings, data published in the journal Nature shows that Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal could actually end up costing the U.S. economy trillions of dollars before the end of the century.

A group of researchers at Stanford University used 50 years of historical data to calculate the relationship between heat and productivity, and found that meeting the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious target of 1.5 degrees warming could save the economy trillions of dollars in lost productivity.

But if we miss the target — an outcome made all the more likely by Trump’s exit — things start looking grim. In the U.S. alone, the cost of failing to meet the most ambitious Paris target of 1.5 degrees, and warming by 2 degrees, could be around $6 trillion.

'Carbon bubble' could spark global financial crisis, study warns

Plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis, a new study has found. A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely, according to the study, given the current global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition.

The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.

Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors’ detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments.

That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.

Also of Interest

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

Burying the One-State Solution in Palestine/Israel

The One Question We Should All Be Asking About Establishment Russia Hysteria

Reality Winner Has Been in Jail for a Year. Her Prosecution Is Unfair and Unprecedented.

Whatever You Think of the Trump-Russia Investigation, Whistleblower Reality Winner Deserves Your Support

Seymour Hersh’s New Memoir Is a Fascinating, Flabbergasting Masterpiece

Toxic Chemicals in Drinking Water Becomes Top Campaign Issue for Midterm Candidates Across the U.S.

A Little Night Music

Walter Davis - Frisco Blues

Walter Davis - I Think You Need a Shot

Walter Davis - Come Back Baby

Walter Davis - Oil Field Blues

Walter Davis - Ashes In My Whiskey

Walter Davis - You Don't Smell Right

Walter Davis - You Are The One I Love

Walter Davis - You've Gotta Reap What You Sow

Walter Davis - 13 Highway

Walter Davis - Don't You Want To Go

Walter Davis - Red Cross Blues (Pts. 1 & 2)

Walter Davis - Blue Ghost Blues

Walter Davis - No Place To Go

Walter Davis - New "Come Back Baby"