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"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war."

-- Charles de Montesquieu

News and Opinion

Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing”, leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs. The solution proposed to protect U.S. power in this new “post-primacy” environment is, however, more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda (“strategic manipulation of perceptions”) and more military expansionism.

The document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which U.S. power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling. Having lost its past status of “pre-eminence”, the U.S. now inhabits a dangerous, unpredictable “post-primacy” world, whose defining feature is “resistance to authority”.

Danger comes not just from great power rivals like Russia and China, both portrayed as rapidly growing threats to American interests, but also from the increasing risk of “Arab Spring”-style events. These will erupt not just in the Middle East, but all over the world, potentially undermining trust in incumbent governments for the foreseeable future. ...

The report provides a detailed breakdown of how the DoD perceives this order to be rapidly unravelling, with the Pentagon being increasingly outpaced by world events. Warning that “global events will happen faster than DoD is currently equipped to handle”, the study concludes that the U.S. “can no longer count on the unassailable position of dominance, supremacy, or pre-eminence it enjoyed for the 20-plus years after the fall of the Soviet Union.” So weakened is U.S. power, that it can no longer even “automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.”

American Fears of War Grow

An overwhelming majority of Americans — 76 percent — are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next four years, according to a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey National Security Poll out Tuesday.

The number has jumped 10 points since February, when 66 percent of Americans said they were worried about military conflict.

Although Americans are concerned about a number of national security threats, a strong plurality (41 percent) believe that North Korea currently poses the greatest immediate danger to the United States, emerging as a more urgent concern than ISIS (28 percent) or Russia (18 percent), according to the poll, which was conducted online from July 10 through July 14.

France overtakes US and UK as the world''s "soft power" leader!

Iran may opt to drop Nuclear deal in face of major violation by US

Iran’s FM Zarif in an interview with the National Interest said if it comes to a major violation of nuclear deal by Washington, Tehran has other options available, including withdrawing from the deal. ...

“Certainly Iran started an understanding, not just with the United States, but with the P5+1, endorsed by the Security Council, and at this stage we are content with simply implementing that agreement… But in order for that to serve as a solid foundation, we want to make sure that the obligations by all sides have been fully and faithfully implemented. And if we get that, then we have an opening to further progress,” Zarif said.

About Iraq’s situation, he said “It’s a situation where the initial US invasion of Iraq has led everybody to lose.”

“If we have greater influence in Iraq than some of our neighbors or some external countries, it’s because we made the right choices,” Zarif said, while referring to Iran’s support to Iraq in the fight against ISIL.

Pentagon: Rebel forces taking heavy casualties in Raqqa fight

US-backed Syrian rebels are suffering heavy casualties as they attempt to retake the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa from fighters lodged in tunnels, trenches and other defensive positions, the Pentagon said today.

Despite stiff resistance from improvised explosive devices, car bombs and even drones, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have now entered the Old City of Raqqa, breaking through a seventh-century wall laden with explosives where IS has been holding out. The contingent of Arab and Kurdish soldiers number between 30,000 and 40,000.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said casualty numbers are “absolutely” rising in the ongoing battle, now in its sixth week. The Defense Department did not provide any figures behind the loss assessment. Despite continued losses, Davis said that the Syrian effort to dislodge IS would be sustainable over the long haul. This effort is set to receive an infusion of weapons, vehicles and tactical military gear in the Senate’s new defense spending bill.

Why ISIS Fighters are Being Thrown Off Buildings in Mosul

Iraqi security forces kill Isis prisoners because they believe that if the militants are sent to prison camps they will bribe the authorities in Baghdad to release them. “That is why Iraqi soldiers prefer to shoot them or throw them off high buildings,” says one Iraqi source. A former senior Iraqi official said he could name the exact sum that it would take for an Isis member to buy papers enabling him to move freely around Iraq.

The belief by Iraqi soldiers and militiamen that their own government is too corrupt to keep captured Isis fighters in detention is one reason why the bodies of Isis suspects, shot in the head or body and with their hands tied behind their backs, are found floating in the Tigris river downstream from Mosul. Revenge and hatred provoked by Isis atrocities are motives for extrajudicial killings by death squads, but so is distrust of an Iraqi judicial system, which is notoriously corrupt and dysfunctional. ...

Fears may be exaggerated, but are not entirely without substance. Isis may have suffered heavy losses in Mosul, but can still operate. A senior Kurdish official said that “recently, during the funeral of a leader of the Shammar tribe in Rabia, no less than 17 Isis suicide bombers were discovered. This shows they can still plan and carry out operations even if they are weaker.”

Wow! Imagine that, a nation where the military budget can be cut by a mere civilian.

Head of French military quits after row with Emmanuel Macron

The head of the French armed forces has resigned amid a bitter public row with the president, Emmanuel Macron – an unprecedented dispute that has highlighted the strain on the French military, deployed in numerous operations abroad and at home. The military chief, Gen Pierre de Villiers, said in a resignation statement on Wednesday that he no longer felt able to command the sort of armed forces “that I think is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people”.

The row began last week when a government minister revealed in a newspaper interview that – despite assurances that the French military budget would rise – there would be a surprise €850m cut to military finances as Macron seeks to slash public spending. De Villiers, 60, a famously straight-talking general who commanded French forces in Kosovo, then told a closed parliamentary committee that he would not let the government “fuck with me” on spending cuts.

Macron hit back by publicly slapping down the general at the annual summer military garden party, telling army generals in a speech: “I am the boss.” Macron’s speech surprised military observers and was seen by some as a shocking humiliation of De Villiers. Meanwhile, Macron’s entourage said he was simply asserting the French president’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief of the army.

That sort of military budget cutting sure wouldn't happen in the US.

GOP's Deja Vu Budget Slashes Social Programs

House Republicans are under fire for their new 10-year budget blueprint, released Tuesday, that proposes increasing military spending by $72.4 billion while slashing more than $200 billion from social programs.

The proposed budget resolution ("Building a Better America"), delayed for weeks by party infighting, also paves a path for Republicans to rewrite the tax code. The resolution's tax reform goals include consolidating the existing individual income tax brackets and reducing the corporate tax rate. It would also enable U.S.-based businesses to pay little or no taxes on foreign profits.

To put forth a plan that Republicans claim would balance the budget within 10 years, and accounts for their desire to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy, the blueprint targets what it calls "duplicative anti-poverty programs"—federal programs that help provide poor citizens with health care, housing, food aid, and other social services—with $203 billion in budget cuts by 2027. ...

The House's budget resolution, authored by Tennessee Republican and House Budget Committee Chair Diane Black, will endure a committee markup session Wednesday morning, but without the 218 votes it needs to pass the House, floor action ahead of the August recess seems unlikely.

Last year, the budget committee's resolution never even made it to the floor, but this year there's added pressure, because Republicans need to pass the budget resolution to establish the "reconciliation" process for their desired tax code reform.

Refugees who helped Edward Snowden now look to Canada as their only hope

For two weeks they sheltered the world’s most wanted man, ferrying Edward Snowden between tiny apartments in Hong Kong’s poorest neighborhood. Now the four refugees are at the centre of a court battle in Canada, as lawyers frantically work to bring them and their children to the country amid concerns that they face grave reprisals over their actions.

“It seems like the families’ connection to Snowden has made them radioactive and put them in a uniquely vulnerable situation,” said Michael Simkin, one of the lawyers behind a motion filed this week in federal court and aimed at expediting asylum claims for the group in Canada. The families lived in obscurity until last year, when Oliver Stone’s film on the whistleblower revealed that Snowden had been protected by asylum seekers in Hong Kong.

After journalists tracked them down, the refugees – three from Sri Lanka and one from the Philippines – came forward, explaining that they had been introduced by their mutual lawyer and that their actions had come before the US demand for Snowden’s arrest was recognised in Hong Kong. Since then, the asylum seekers claim they’ve been routinely questioned by authorities to find out what they know about Snowden. Their lawyers have spoken out about relocating their clients several times over suspicions that members of Sri Lankan security forces are attempting to find them.

In May, Hong Kong rejected their asylum claims, paving the way for deportation to their home countries, where the claimants say they could face imprisonment, torture and even death. Lawyers are now appealing the decisions; though they believe they have little hope of success.

Gaza on Verge of Collapse as Israel Sends 2.2M People "Back to Middle Ages" in Electricity Crisis

U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel

The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the west. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing t-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On U.S. campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so commonplace that the Center for Constitutional Rights refers to it as “the Palestine Exception” to free speech.

But now, a group of 45 Senators – 30 Republicans and 15 Democrats – want to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: anyone guilty of violating its prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000, and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC].” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 Lobbying Agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year. ... A similar measure was introduced in the House on the same date by two Republicans and one Democrat. It already has amassed 234 co-sponsors: 63 Democrats and 174 Republicans. ...

[Want to see a demonstration of the power of AIPAC? Read on. - js]

Last night, the ACLU posted a letter it sent to all members of the Senate urging them to oppose this bill. ... Even the bravest of organizations often steadfastly avoid any controversies relating to Israel. Yet here, while appropriately pointing out that the ACLU “takes no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country,” they categorically denounce this AIPAC-sponsored proposal for what it is: a bill that “seeks only to punish the exercise of constitutional rights.” ... Thus far not a single member of Congress has joined the ACLU in denouncing this bill.

Trump had undisclosed second meeting with Putin, White House confirms

Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin held a second, previously undisclosed meeting during the G20 summit in Germany, the White House confirmed on Tuesday. There was much media scrutiny of the leaders’ formal bilateral talks on 7 July in which, the US president later said, Putin denied allegations that he led efforts to interfere in last year’s US election.

Later that evening, Trump and Putin met again informally, a White House official acknowledged on Tuesday – but only after it was publicly revealed by Ian Bremmer, the president of the international consulting firm Eurasia Group.

Bremmer said there was a dinner that evening for the G20 heads of state and their spouses, though not all of them attended. “There were a lot of empty seats,” he continued. “Donald Trump got up from the table and sat down with Putin for about an hour. It was very animated and very friendly. Putin’s translator was translating. I found out about it because people were startled.”

There was no one else within earshot, Bremmer added, and it is not known what the men discussed. Trump was not joined in the conversation by his own translator, which is thought to be a breach of national security protocol. The White House later said that the translator who accompanied Trump spoke Japanese, not Russian, and that was why Trump and Putin spoke through the Russian translator.

Worth a full read:

How Seattle Voted to Tax the Rich

Seattle further cemented its reputation as one of the most progressive cities in the U.S. last week, when its City Council passed a law to tax the rich, sponsored by socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant along with Councilmember Lisa Herbold. The law places a 2.25% tax on individual incomes over $250,000 and $500,000 for married couples. It’s expected to raise as much as $175 million to fund affordable housing, education, transit, human services, and other critical needs.

Recognizing the significance of Seattle’s new tax on the rich, the Los Angeles Times reported, “a number of cities have adopted local income taxes, but no other city has solely targeted high earners and few have adopted so high a tax rate. The measure has opened the door to political warfare in the state.” Shortly before the vote, former Microsoft CEO and Seattle billionaire, Steve Ballmer, warned city officials, most of whose campaigns are financed by big business and wealthy individuals, that a tax on the rich would “drive up wages here and cause [company executives] to think about moving jobs elsewhere. That will certainly happen.”

Despite this, the City Council unanimously passed the tax on the rich and a chorus of Democratic establishment politicians sung its praises. ... Those of us in the movement should be crystal clear on how this came about. We didn’t win this because Seattle’s Democratic establishment suddenly began to care about the crushing impact that decades of budget cuts and regressive taxes have had on working people and people of color in our city.

It was the growing might of our social movements that led to this major victory. The establishment may have ultimately voted ‘yes,’ but not because they genuinely support taxing the rich. Mayor Murray and establishment Councilmembers like Tim Burgess and Lorena Gonzalez voted for it because we built a powerful movement over a number of years which made their continued opposition politically unviable. During our election campaigns, Socialist Alternative members spoke with hundreds of thousands of voters at the door and on the phone, held dozens of rallies, and raised a record-breaking half a million dollars from ordinary people with the bold and unambiguous demand to “tax the rich.” It was a pillar of our 2015 campaign and we made it clear to everyone we talked to that we wanted to make big business and the wealthy elite pay to fund public needs.

We Must Make It Toxic for Politicians to Not Get on Board with Single Payer

Trumpcare Is Dead. “Single Payer Is the Only Real Answer,” Says Medicare Architect.

Thanks to a pair of defections from more GOP senators late yesterday, the Republican plan to repeal and replace or simply repeal the Affordable Care Act is dead — for now. But the health care status quo is far from popular, with 57 percent of Americans telling Gallup pollsters in March that they “personally worry” a “great deal” about health care costs.

Many health care activists are now pushing to adopt what is called a “single payer” health care system, where one public health insurance program would cover everyone. The U.S. currently has one federal program like that: Medicare. Expanding it polls very well. One of the activists pushing for such an expansion is Max Fine, someone who is intimately familiar with the program — because he helped create it. Fine is the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s Medicare Task Force, and he was also President Johnson’s designated debunker against the health insurance industry.

Fine, now 91, wrote to The Intercept recently to explain that Medicare was never intended to cover only the elderly population, and that expanding it to everyone was a goal that its architects long campaigned for.

After the death of the Senate healthcare bill yesterday, The Intercept reached out to Fine for comment about where Congress should go next. “Single payer is the only real answer and some day I believe the Republicans will leap ahead of the Democrats and lead in its enactment,” he speculated, “just as did Bismarck in Germany and David Lloyd George and Churchill in the UK.”

Hat tip: divineorder. An interesting article, here's a teaser:

Is the U.S. Ready for a Single-Payer Health Care System?

Ironically, as congressional Republicans have been trying to replace the Affordable Care Act, the ACA’s popularity is at an all-time high, and the majority of Americans now believe that it is the federal government’s responsibility to provide health care for all Americans. This shift in sentiment suggests that a single-payer system — a “Medicare for all” — may soon be a politically viable solution to America’s health care woes.

This system has long been an aspiration of the far left, yet even the right now seems to acknowledge its growing likelihood. Following his decision not to support the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), the Senate Republican leadership’s latest attempt to replace the ACA, Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, warned in a statement: “[I]f we leave the federal government in control of everyday health care decisions, it is more likely that our health care system will devolve into a single-payer system, which would require a massive federal spending increase.” (The BCRA, which failed in the Senate, would have kept the basic contours of the ACA but greatly reduced its ability to provide care.)

Although congressional Republicans remain uncomfortable with universal coverage as a concept, some seem to understand that the American people are coming to see health care as a right. It is very difficult to imagine how universal coverage could be sustainable over the long run without a central payment system.

While there may be openings for bipartisan compromise to address the weaknesses of the ACA,  the core of the ACA framework is unstable — a hostage to the market and political fortune. By contrast, a single-payer model stands to be much more durable and provides a chance to build a health care system around the well-being of patients rather than the profits of providers and insurers. Thirty-three percent of the American public now support a single-payer system — a 5% increase since January.

'Campaign is revenge for US lobbyist's defeat in court' – Laywer on Trump Jr. scandal

Trump Jr. Took a Meeting, Bill Clinton Took $500K

The main investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has a new focus. According to reports, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe now includes the recently disclosed meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The music publicist who arranged the meeting told Trump Jr. the lawyer had compromising information on Hillary Clinton on behalf of the Russian government, but the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, says she was only trying to lobby against the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials. If that's true, then there's another interesting Clinton tie here. Hillary Clinton also opposed the sanctions when she was Secretary of State, and that only came after her husband, Bill Clinton, received $500,000 for a speech at a Russian investment conference in Moscow. According to leaked emails, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign killed a Bloomberg story that tried to link Hillary Clinton's stance to her husband's paid gig, which means Donald Trump might not be the only 2016 candidate with a conflict of interest related to Russia.

California lawmakers extend program to cut emissions in bipartisan vote

California legislators have voted to extend a centerpiece program to cut greenhouse gas emissions, burnishing the state’s reputation as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s demolition of climate change measures.

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement on climate change, eight Republicans joined with Democrats in California’s two legislative houses to extend the cap-and-trade emissions system a further 10 years until 2030.

The emissions-lowering scheme, the second-largest of its kind in the world, aims to help the state reach its target of cutting planet-warming gases 40% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. ...

The cap-and-trade program, established in 2006 under then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, sets a limit on emissions and requires polluters to either reduce their output or purchase permits from those who have. As the limit steadily becomes stricter, it nudges businesses to take the more financially attractive option of cutting their pollution.

Study Calls for Rapid "Negative Emissions" as Scientist Warns "Shit's Hitting the Fan"

The "shit is hitting is the fan," said noted climate scientist James Hansen, countering "this narrative out there…that we have turned the corner on dealing with the climate problem." Hansen is lead author of a new study that warns that there "is no time to delay" on climate change efforts and argues that they must go beyond just slashing emissions of CO2—"the dominant control knob on global temperature"—to extracting CO2 from the air, or "negative emissions."

The team of international researchers writes that "the world has overshot appropriate targets"—a conclusion that "is sufficiently grim to compel us to point out that pathways to rapid emission reductions are feasible." ...

For a safer scenario that limits irreversible climate impacts, what needs to happen is a "rapid phase-down of fossil fuel emissions," bringing the rate of emissions right away to 6 percent a year, alongside reforestation and agricultural practices that draw carbon from the atmosphere into the soil.

Warnings as GOP Aims to Gut Protections for Endangered Species

Conservation groups are issuing warnings on Wednesday as Congressional committees in both chambers considered Republican-backed bills aimed at weakening the Endangered Species Act.

In the Senate on Wednesday, the Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing for the ironically named Hunting Heritage and Environmental Legacy Preservation (HELP) for Wildlife Act. And while its backers refer to it as the Sportsmen's Bill, critics describe it as a Trojan horse specifically designed to undermine the species protection laws.

The proposed law would block ESA protections for gray wolves in the Great Lakes region. In recent years, the gray wolf has been a primary target of similar proposals from lawmakers, who are lobbied by ranchers and hunting groups, but they have hit roadblocks in federal court. Gray wolves around the Great Lakes remain protected, due to a court ruling in 2014, but in March a federal Appeals Court overturned a lower court's ruling and allowed the gray wolf to be delisted in Wyoming.

The "HELP" law proposes prohibiting judicial review of the wolf delisting in the Great Lakes and Wyoming, which, as Earthjustice said in statement "sets a damaging precedent for undermining all laws that allow citizens from across the political spectrum to go to court to hold the government accountable for its actions."

Also of Interest

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

Thought Crimes On The Left

A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy

Bernie Sanders on how to avoid war with North Korea

Revenge Attacks on Families of ISIS Members Could Start a New Cycle of Violence in Iraq

The Price for Criticizing Israel

'People are getting poorer': hunger and homelessness as Brazil crisis deepens

Intercepted Podcast: Veni, Vidi, Tweeti

'Buried history': unearthing the influence of Native Americans on rock'n'roll

A Little Night Music

Eddie Bond - Slip, Slip, Slippin' In

Eddie Bond - Rockin Daddy

Eddie Bond - Talking Off The Wall

Eddie Bond - Old Country Rock

Eddie Bond - Tank Town Boogie

Eddie Bond - Big Boss Man

Eddie Bond - Tore up

Eddie Bond - Running Drunk

Eddie Bond - Gonna rock my baby tonight