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This evening's music features blues songwriter, piano player and singer, later to become a renowned gospel musician, Georgia Tom Dorsey. Enjoy!

"As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

-- Barbara Lee

News and Opinion

A sad day; the last decent anti-war Democrat has gone insane:

Barbara Lee Infected By Democrat Death-Cult Disease

Outraged by President Trump’s 2 hr meeting w/Putin, the man who orchestrated attacks on our democracy. Where do his loyalties lie? https://t.co/AJ6CX8xm15

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) July 7, 2017

Here's an excerpt from activist Norman Solomon's open letter to Barbara Lee:

Barbara Lee’s Slam on Trump-Putin Meeting

More than a decade and a half ago, your eloquent words and courageous vote set a high bar as you stood up against a war frenzy on the House floor. Three days after 9/11, you implemented the kind of brave wisdom that we desperately need in a world beset by the massive violence of warfare and the overarching dangers of nuclear holocaust. ...

Your declaration on Friday that you are “outraged” by a meeting between the presidents of the world’s two nuclear-weapons superpowers is the opposite of restraint. Likewise, your baiting of Trump with the question “Where do his loyalties lie?” echoes the accusations of treason hurled at you for years. Such rhetoric is far beneath you — and beneath any leader with a responsibility to encourage diplomatic discourse, especially between two nations brandishing huge arsenals of nuclear weapons. ...

Now, for whatever reasons, you have opted to participate in a profoundly irresponsible meme that castigates instead of encourages diplomatic discourse between the highest levels of the American and Russian governments. To use a word from your historic 2001 speech, it’s essential that we think through the “implications” of such a political line of attack. They include increasing the likelihood that escalated tensions between Russia and the United States could “spiral out of control.” ...

To counteract what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism,” we must get off a partisan bandwagon when it is heading toward military catastrophe. That requires — as you so wisely urged in 2001 — supporting diplomacy, urging restraint and thinking through the implications of our actions today.

US Deploys Advanced Anti-Aircraft Missiles in Baltics for First Time

The U.S. military deployed Patriot missiles to Lithuania on Monday to take part in upcoming war games, marking the first such deployment of the sophisticated missile defense system to the small Baltic nation, Lithuania's defense ministry announced.

The arrival of the Patriots “demonstrates the steadfast U.S. commitment to the security of Lithuania and its high readiness to send strategic capabilities to the region,” the ministry said.

The Patriots will take part in multinational air defense drills dubbed Exercise Tobruq Legacy 2017, which runs until July 22. ...

The Baltics have been a focal point for the U.S. military and other NATO states amid heightened tensions with Russia. Countries such as Lithuania worry about a more aggressive Russia on its border, though Moscow has said it has no designs on NATO territory.

It was unclear Monday how long the Patriots will remain in Lithuania. However, the deployment of the missiles comes ahead of a massive Russian war game slated to kick off in September.

Oh, the ignominy of having your hyper-expensive killing tools threatened by cheap, foreign knock-offs.

Cheap missiles threaten Navy's billion pound warships, think tank warns

Britain’s costly warships and aircraft are at risk from potential enemies because of rapid advances in their missile and surveillance technology, a respected think tank has warned. Technological leaps by rivals such as Russia and China have eroded the military dominance once taken for granted by the West, the paper from the Royal United Services Institute says.

The report singles out Chinese and Russian long range missiles “which threaten large land, maritime and air platforms” and could knock out satellite-based communications and positioning systems that Western militaries have become reliant on.

The report warns that “missiles costing (much) less than half a million pounds a unit could at least disable a British aircraft carrier that costs more than £3 billion. Indeed, a salvo of ten such missiles would cost less than $5 million.” The report goes on: “China and Russia appear to have focused many (but not all) their efforts on being able to put at risk the key Western assets that are large, few in number and expensive.”

US military considers ramping up Libya presence

A new diplomatic and military policy for Libya that could significantly expand US involvement in the country could be finalized by the Trump administration in the next few weeks, according to two US officials.

The policy, if approved, would aim to further the existing US goal of supporting reconciliation between rival factions in eastern and western areas of Libya. The policy could also lead to the eventual re-opening of the US embassy and the establishing of a new intelligence sharing effort led by US special forces, according to the officials.

If approved, this would be the latest country in which President Donald Trump is expanding the US counterterrorism effort.

Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently: Syrian Citizen Journalists Document a City Under Siege

Iraqi government recaptures Mosul where it suffered its heaviest defeat by Isis

Iraq is declaring victory over Isis in Mosul as Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, wearing black military uniform, arrived in the city to congratulate his soldiers at the end of an epic nine-month-long battle. Elite Iraqi government forces raised the country’s flag on the banks of the Tigris River this morning, though Isis snipers are still shooting from the last buildings they hold in the Old City. ...

The devastation in the city is huge: the closer one gets to the fighting in the centre, the greater the signs of destruction from air strikes. Wherever Isis made a stand, Iraqi forces called in the US-led coalition to use its massive firepower to turn whole blocks into heaps of rubble and smashed masonry. A volunteer medical worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said that on bad days “some 200 to 300 people with injuries had turned at my medical centre. I hear stories of many families dying, trapped in basements where they had been sheltering from the bombs.”

Asked about popular attitudes in Mosul towards Isis, Saad, who works part-time for an Iraqi radio station, said that three years ago in June 2014, when Isis captured Mosul, “some 85 per cent of people supported them because the Iraqi government forces had mistreated us so badly. The figure later fell to 50 per cent because of Isis atrocities and is now about 15 per cent.” Ahmed, Saad’s brother who lives in East Mosul, said later that he was nervous because so many former Isis militants were walking about the city after shaving off their beards. ...

Saad said that the behaviour of Iraqi combat troops, particularly the Counter-Terrorism Service, also known as the Golden Division, towards civilians was excellent and “the soldiers often give their rations to hungry people”. He was more dubious about how incoming Iraqi army troops and police would act towards local people.

Destroying Mosul to Save It: Possible US-Backed War Crimes in Iraq Exposed

As Iraqi forces celebrate their victory over the Islamic State (ISIS) in Mosul, a damning new report by Amnesty International sheds light on the killing of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition which "may constitute war crimes"—and demands that the coalition acknowledges the loss of civilian life and takes steps to lessen non-military casualties.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Mosul and millions have been displaced since ISIS took control of the city in June 2014. The crimes of the group have been well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The report notes that ISIS deliberately put thousands of civilians in harm's way, using them as human shields in the city's conflict zones, and killing people who attempted to escape.

The report also focuses on the human cost of the U.S.-led coalition's actions in Mosul. Amnesty interviewed 150 witnesses, experts and analysts about dozens of attacks, and focused on a pattern of attacks that took place between January and July 2017.

"The horrors that the people of Mosul have witnessed and the disregard for human life by all parties to this conflict must not go unpunished," says Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's director of research for the Middle East. "Entire families have been wiped out, many of whom are still buried under the rubble today. The people of Mosul deserve to know, from their government, that there will be justice and reparation so that the harrowing impact of this operation is duly addressed."

The coalition's attacks were largely carried out with Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions (IRAMs), explosives with unsophisticated targeting abilities, which "wreaked havoc in densely-populated west Mosul and took the lives of thousands of civilians," according to the report. Air strikes by U.S. planes were also frequent during this time period, and the report says the coalition did little to protect civilians from these attacks.

Kurdish Fighters Say They Clash With Turkish Forces in Northwest Syria

Syrian Kurdish fighters clashed with Turkish forces shelling Kurdish-held towns in northwest Syria on Monday, Kurdish officials said. A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin region, Rojhat Roj, said the Turkish military and Syrian rebels it supports shelled Tal Rifaat, Sheikh Issa and other towns north of Aleppo city.

The bombardment with "artillery and rocket launchers" killed two people and injured seven, he said. Kurdish fighters and allied groups retaliated and firing was continuing. There was no immediate comment from the Turkish army. ...

The mounting tensions between two U.S. allies in northwest Syria threaten to open another major front in the multi-sided Syrian war. The head of the YPG told Reuters last week that Turkish military deployments near Kurdish-held areas of northwest Syria amounted to a "declaration of war".

After Viewing Secret Evidence, U.K. Court Rules Arms Sales to Saudis Lawful

The United Kingdom's High Court has ruled in favor of the British government to allow the continuation of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite widespread concerns over breaches of international humanitarian law in the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. ... The 58-page verdict concluded that there was no “real risk” of “serious violations.”

[London-based organization Campaign Against the Arms Trade] said in a statement that it was “disappointed” with the ruling and plans to pursue an appeal.

Explaining the reasoning for their ruling, the two senior judges said that Saudi Arabia had addressed concerns by setting up its own investigatory body. ... The British government has twice blocked attempts proposed through the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish a non-Saudi-led inquiry into alleged violations of international law.

Sir Vince Cable, a former British government minister, told The Intercept following Monday’s ruling: “I am disappointed by the verdict. U.K. dependence on exports to Saudi is unhealthy and is driving our foreign policy.” Cable signed off on U.K. arms sales to Saudi Arabia in his role as business secretary in 2015, the first year of the war. He has previously claimed he was “seriously misled” by the Ministry of Defence in the process of his decision making on whether to grant permission for sales to Saudi.

Deforestation soars in Colombia after Farc rebels' demobilization

Colombia has seen an alarming surge in deforestation after the leftwing rebels relinquished control over vast areas of the country as a part of a historic peace deal. The area of deforestation jumped 44% in 2016 to 178,597 hectares (690 sq miles) compared to the year before, according to official figures released this month – and most of the destruction was in remote rainforest areas once controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). ...

Last year, as the Farc began to move toward demobilization, criminal groups moved in, taking advantage of the vacuum left behind to promote illegal logging and mining and cattle ranching. Civilians who had been ordered by the Farc to maintain 20% of their land with forest cover began expanding their farms.

“The Farc would limit logging to two hectares a year in the municipality,” said Jaime Pacheco, mayor of the town of Uribe, in eastern Meta province. “In one week [last year], 100 hectares were cleared and there is little we can do about it.” Over their 53-year existence, the Farc were far from environmental angels. While in some areas the guerrilla presence helped maintain the forests, in others the rebels promoted clear-cuts to make way for the planning of coca, the raw material used in cocaine, or illegal gold mining, both a source of income for the group. ...

“They weren’t environmentalists but they did regulate activity, and – since they had the guns – people complied,” says Susana Mullohand, an environmental activist who conducted a diagnostic study of the environmental risks of the rebel retreat. “We told the government that it would need to establish control in these areas quickly, but it hasn’t,” she said. “It’s like the wild west now, a land rush.”

Battle For the Net: Mass Day of Action Aims to Stop Trump's FCC from Destroying Free & Open Internet

Laquan McDonald shooting: officers plead not guilty to alleged cover-up

A Chicago police officer and two former officers pleaded not guilty Monday to conspiring to cover up what happened the night a white officer killed a black teenager by shooting him 16 times. Joseph Walsh, David March and Thomas Gaffney were indicted last month on charges stemming from the 2014 death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

The indictment alleges the trio quickly coordinated their stories to protect officers and lied when they said Laquan aggressively swung a knife and tried to get up, while still armed, after he was shot. But police dashcam video showed the teen was walking away from officers with a small knife by his side when he was shot by Jason Van Dyke, who has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder. The video – which wasn’t publicly released until a year after the shooting – also showed that Laquan was spun to the ground as Van Dyke repeatedly shot him in quick succession. ...

In a statement released with the indictment, the special prosecutor appointed to the case, Patricia Brown Holmes, said the officers and others “coordinated their activities to protect each other and other members of the Chicago police department”. She said the officers had gone so far as to ignore contrary evidence and failed to try to interview key witnesses.

Court House Doors Will Reopen for Millions of U.S. Consumers

Yesterday, Richard Cordray, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that was created in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, did what few Americans thought he would dare to do: he stood up to threats of being fired; threats of backlash from Wall Street titans; threats of having his agency’s budget gutted; and Congressional threats of being put on a leash by a commission appointed by the President. Despite all of these threats and more, Cordray issued the final rule that allows consumers who have been defrauded in financial transactions involving credit cards and bank accounts to have access to file a group action (known legally as a “class action”) using the nation’s courts.

The rule mandates the following wording in bank account and credit card contracts: “You may file a class action in court or you may be a member of a class action filed by someone else.”

The final rule issued by the CFPB throws a monkey wrench into the gears of Wall Street’s institutionalized wealth transfer system which has for decades been seamlessly moving the meager life savings of the 99 percent to the heretofore impenetrable vaults of the 1 percent. It guts Big Banking’s private justice system known as mandatory arbitration. ... And to shine a bright light on how this insidious system evolved over the decades, the CFPB released a 775-page historical review which is must reading for anyone who seriously cares about the devolution of citizen rights in America.

Nation "Too Broke" for Universal Healthcare to Spend $406 Billion More on F-35

The nation's most expensive weapons program isn't done showing U.S. taxpayers how much it will ultimately cost them, with Bloomberg reporting Monday that the F-35 fighter jet budget is now predicted to jump by a cool $27 billion.

Though the estimated future cost of the program had previously hovered at a mind-boggling $379 billion, an updated draft that could be submitted to Congress as early as today will reportedly exceed $406 billion—a nearly 7 percent increase.

The new cost increases may come as a hit to President Donald Trump, who has bragged about his ability to get weapons manufacturers to offer the Pentagon "better deals."

We got fucking liberals out here saying single-payer is impossible but remaining pretty quiet on the F-35 being a money pit.

— Royal (@royaltheartist) July 10, 2017

This is a response by economist Robert Pollin to a recent article in The Intercept by David Dayen.

Why Single Payer, Now, Is for Real

Is a single-payer health care system workable in California? My short answer is “yes.” I reached that conclusion by writing a research study, along with co-authors James Heintz, Peter Arno, and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, of the Healthy California single-payer bill (HB562) that was introduced into the California state Senate last spring. Our study was commissioned by the California Nurses Association, a lead supporter of the bill. ...

[Here is his response to Dave Dayen's primary argument. -js]

California law requires 40 percent of all state funding support primary/secondary education. [Thus, either healthcare taxes will have to raise an extra 40%, or the law must be changed. -js] This is the law that David Dayen claims is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to passing Healthy California. This is also why Dayen claims that single-payer organizers are “deceiving their supporters” until they admit that, before they can try to pass single payer itself, they must first raise millions of dollars to have a chance of repealing this law through a ballot initiative.

What has convinced Dayen that he knows more about organizing for single payer than the organizers themselves? From the actual organizers’ standpoint, what is the downside, much less deceitfulness, of advancing Healthy California as far as possible within the existing legislative process, building momentum on behalf of the measure at each step? If, at some point, it does become necessary to amend the state’s budget rules, either through legislation or a ballot initiative, then this administrative barrier to single payer can be attacked as one large challenge among many in the long march toward creating a decent health care system. Indeed, if California’s voters, state legislators, and governor all commit to endorsing single payer, then it follows logically that they are also advocating an adjustment in the state’s technical budget rules that will enable an amended version of Healthy California to become law.

Commentators of all persuasions, but especially progressive ones, are doing nobody a favor by offering up overwrought pronouncements on why Healthy California must inevitably fail — especially when these pronouncements are grounded neither in evidence nor the growing political support for creating a decent health care system in California and the U.S. overall.

Trump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid Campaign

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.

There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers.

‘Connect the dots’: Republicans demand probe into alleged activist funding from Russia

Forgetting the ‘Dirty Dossier’ on Trump

Yes, I realize that the editors of The New York Times long ago cast aside any journalistic professionalism to become charter members of the #Resistance against Donald Trump. But the latest frenzy over a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who was dangling the possibility of information about the Democrats receiving money from Russians represents one of the more remarkable moments of the entire Russia-gate hysteria. Essentially, Trump’s oldest son is being accused of taking a meeting with a foreign national who claimed to have knowledge of potentially illegal activities by Trump’s Democratic rivals, although the promised information apparently turned out to be a dud.

Yet, on Monday, the Times led its newspaper with a story about this meeting – and commentators on MSNBC and elsewhere are labeling Trump Jr. a criminal if not a traitor for hearing out this lawyer. Yet, no one seems to remember that Hillary Clinton supporters paid large sums of money, reportedly about $1 million, to have ex-British spy Christopher Steele use his Russian connections to dig up dirt on Trump inside Russia, resulting in a salacious dossier that Clinton backers eagerly hawked to the news media.

Also, the two events – Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer and the Clinton camp’s commissioning of Steele’s Russia dossier – both occurred in June 2016, so you might have thought it would be a journalistic imperative to incorporate a reference or two to the dossier. But the closest the Times came to that was noting: “Political campaigns collect opposition research from many quarters but rarely from sources linked to foreign governments.” That would have been an opportune point to slide in a paragraph about the Steele dossier, but nothing. ...

As I wrote on March 29, “An irony of the escalating hysteria about the Trump camp’s contacts with Russians is that one presidential campaign in 2016 did exploit political dirt that supposedly came from the Kremlin and other Russian sources. Friends of that political campaign paid for this anonymous hearsay material, shared it with American journalists and urged them to publish it to gain an electoral advantage. But this campaign was not Donald Trump’s; it was Hillary Clinton’s. “And, awareness of this activity doesn’t require you to spin conspiracy theories about what may or may not have been said during some seemingly innocuous conversation. In this case, you have open admissions about how these Russian/Kremlin claims were used.

100 companies have produced 71 percent of emissions since 1988

Only 100 energy companies have accounted for more than 71 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, researchers reported on Monday. According to a study from the British research firm Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the Climate Accountability Institute, major fuel firms operating around the globe have produced nearly three-fourths of all the greenhouse gas emissions since climate change was officially recognized by the United Nations.

Twenty-five of those firms alone produced more than half the greenhouse gas emissions, the study said. The highest emitters include investor-owned companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and others, and state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and coal producers in China.

Catalogs of greenhouse gas emissions are generally collected and presented on a nation-by-nation basis, but CDP’s report aims to assign emissions to industrial fossil fuel firms specifically. The report "offers insight into responsibility from the perspective of the producers of hydrocarbons,” Pedro Faria, CDP’s technical director, wrote in a forward to the study.

“Those companies that have made astonishing returns over decades through the extraction and production of greenhouse gas emitting products.”

Mass extinction happening faster than feared

You don’t need a scientist to know what’s causing the sixth mass extinction

One should not need to be a scientist to know that human population growth and the accompanying increase in human consumption are the root cause of the sixth mass extinction we’re currently seeing. All you need to know is that every living being has evolved to have a set of habitat requirements. ...

The human population has grown so large that roughly 40% of the Earth’s land surface is now farmed to feed people – and none too well at that. Largely due to persistent problems with distribution, almost 800 million people go to bed hungry, and between one and two billion suffer from malnutrition. As a consequence of its booming population, Homo sapiens has taken much of the most fertile land to grow plants for its own consumption. But guess what? That cropland is generally not rich in food plants suitable for the caterpillars of the 15,000 butterfly species with which we share the planet. Few butterflies require the wheat, corn or rice on which humans largely depend. From the viewpoint of most of the Earth’s wildlife, farming can be viewed as “habitat destruction”. And, unsurprisingly, few species of wildlife have evolved to live on highways, or in strip malls, office buildings, kitchens or sewers – unless you count Norway rats, house mice, European starlings and German roaches. Virtually everything humanity constructs provides an example of habitat destruction.

The more people there are, the more products of nature they demand to meet their needs and wants: timber, seafood, meat, gas, oil, metal ores, rare earths and rare animals to eat or to use for medicinal purposes. Human demands cause both habitat destruction and outright extermination of wildlife. So when you watch the expansion of the human enterprise; when you see buildings springing up; when you settle down to dinner at home or in a restaurant; you are observing (and often participating in) the sixth mass extinction.

Thousands flee wildfires in California as blazes continue across US and Canada

Wildfires have been barreling across the baking landscape of the western US and Canada, forcing thousands of residents to flee and destroying homes.

In California, two major wildfires have forced nearly 8,000 people out of their properties. About 4,000 people were evacuated and another 7,400 were told to prepare to leave their homes as fire swept through grassy foothills in the Sierra Nevada, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on Sunday. ...

In southern California, at least 3,500 people evacuated as two fires exploded in size at separate ends of Santa Barbara County and a third one threatened homes near a town in San Luis Obispo County. One of the fires grew to 12 sq miles (31 sq km), traversing a mountain range and heading south toward coastal Goleta. ...

In Canada, firefighters were contending with more than 200 wildfires burning in British Columbia that had destroyed dozens of buildings, including several homes and two airport hangars. The three biggest fires, which have grown in size to range from nine to 19 sq miles (23-49 sq km), had forced thousands of people to flee.

“We are just, in many ways, at the beginning of the worst part of the fire season and we watch the weather, we watch the wind, and we pray for rain,” outgoing premier Christy Clark told reporters in Kamloops.

Also of Interest

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

Around the Empire: Torture in the American Empire feat. Jeffrey Kaye

'But sir, it’s an American ship.' 'Never mind, hit her!' When Israel attacked USS Liberty

Enjoy The Trump Show While Wall Street Pillages The Country

The G20 From Hell

There Is No Major “Good” Government Leader

The lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr. was no Kremlin power broker

America’s Deep State Power Struggle Is At Its Most Interesting Point Yet

What happened when Walmart left

Redneck Revolt: the armed leftwing group that wants to stamp out fascism

The Uninhabitable Earth

A Little Night Music

Georgia Tom Dorsey - Rollin' Mill Stomp

Georgia Tom - Maybe It's The Blues

Georgia Tom Dorsey - You got me in this Mess

Tampa Red & Georgia Tom - Its Tight Like That

Jane Lucas (Victoria Spivey) and 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey - What's That I Smell?

Jane Lucas (Victoria Spivey) and 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey - Fix It

The Hokum Boys (Tampa Red & Georgia Tom) - Beedle Um Bum

Georgia Tom & Scrapper Blackwell - Mississippi Bottom Blues

Kansas City Kitty & Georgia Tom - How can you have the blues